Jaikido Blog

Jaikuers may have noticed the ‘alpha’ label on the Channels page has recently changed to ‘beta.’ As a Jaiku member, you are now free to create up to three channels of your own.

Hundreds of channels have already been created: you can, for instance, follow coverage on the iPhone, join the Jaiku fans, follow the Roskilde music festival, or learn Japanese.

Browse the channel list for more channels.

Posting to channels

All channels have a screen name that starts with the number sign # to distinguish them from people. You can post to channels from any Jaiku interface, including third-party Jaiku applications, SMS, and Jaiku Mobile by starting your post with #channelname followed by your message.

Creating a channel

To create a channel, sign in with your Jaiku account (or sign up if you are a new member), click on Channels in the top navigation bar, and select “Create a new channel”.

Once you’ve given your new channel a screen name, you will be taken to the page of the new channel. You are now free to start posting to the channel directly from the Web or using any of the other Jaiku interfaces.

Customizing your channel

Click “Edit Settings” to edit the description, icon, and background of the channel and add a link to a related Web page. You can also add Web feeds (including photo feeds from Flickr) to the channel.

Inviting members

Let your friends know about your new channel! The URL of the channel is jaiku.com/channel/name where “name” is the screen name of the channel.

Channel badges

You can also add the conversation from your channel to another Web page using the Flash badges available from channel settings.

Channels are public

At this point all channels are publicly viewable and open for anyone to join. The channel administrator is able to delete entries posted to the channel. The administrator can also delete the channel.

In the future we will be adding the ability to create private channels. We appreciate your feedback, so join the #jaiku channel and share your comments and suggestions!

So it appears that some people have noticed that they gained settings for IM notifications on the user settings page. What they did not know is that we are first doing a closed beta for this much wanted feature. If you have an account on a Jabber server already (this includes Google Talk) and would like to participate in the beta, leave a comment at this post on the #devku channel. We will be adding more people to the beta group tomorrow.

It’s a videotastic day!

Jyri got videoed on stage at MobileMondayAmsterdam while talking about The Future of Participatory Media (he didn’t know he was on camera apparently, so I’m under strict instruction to not pick on him… too much).

If you’re mono-lingual like me, don’t be put off by the page not being in english - Jyri’s presentation is. You can follow along with the slides as well, they’re a bit easier to see than the on camera versions.

Jyri then went on from Amsterdam to London, where he was caught on camera again, talking about Jaiku again. Anyone would think he founded the company or something…

Have you captured video of one of our founders in the wild? Tell us where it is!

There’s been a great wee crop of Jaiku related videos recently.

First up, there’s Lifestreaming with my friends by Jonathan Greene. There’s a bit of a read there before the video, but it’s well worth it. I was rather amused to see my comment about timezones popping up there - great timing, I must say.

Now, that’s our closed Beta client - so not everyone has access to it yet. We’re still ironing out the last of the bugs before unleashing it on the world at large.

I’m reliably informed that there’s going to be some discussion about our S60 client at Supernova - if you’re lucky enough to be there, you might like to keep an eye out for it.

Secondly, there’s this video on how to add a Jaiku Widset. I have an S60 phone, so mostly I use our native S60 app, but I’ve gotta say, these Widsets are really impressive, and with over 45,000 downloads, apparently I’m not the only person that thinks so. Even Nokia’s paying attention, I think the folk over at Widsets have a winner on their hands.

I’m sure there are more great Jaiku videos out there - if you make one, or stumble across one, why not leave us a comment here to let us know?

I was Dave Graveline’s guest on the Into Tomorrow radio show this weekend. The show’s split into three hours; the part with Dave and my conversation is about halfway into Hour 3.

The fast-moving folks at WidSets, the Nokia-backed mobile Web widget app, have announced a Jaiku widget as part of their social widget bundle. According to the Jaiku Widget download page it has already been downloaded over 40,000 times.

WidSets, which passed the 1 million registered users milestone last month, is a handset manufacturer-independent Java application that enables users to download and create widgets that deliver up to date Internet content to mobile phones.

According to Nokia, WidSets works on a wide variety of mobile phone brands and is compatible on more than 300 mobile devices. That means you can use the Jaiku widget not just on Nokia phones, but also Blackberries, Motorolas, Sony Ericssons, and other mobile devices that support Java MIDP 2.0. For a complete roundup, see the list of compatible devices.

I’ve found myself using the widget quite a bit because it is lightweight, updates automatically, and the UI is so smooth. Judging from the comments on Jaiku other Jaikees like it too. You can sign in with your Jaiku screen name and password (no API key needed).

To get it, you need to first download and install WidSets on your phone. I found that the app downloads pretty quickly (it is only 159kb in size). Point your mobile phone browser to the mobile site at get.widsets.com – or go to widsets.com/social on the Web and click “Download”.

Once you’ve downloaded the Jaiku widget and signed in to your account, you can browse the following streams:

• Overview (this is the latest from you and your contacts, identical to the Overview page on jaiku.com when you are signed in)
• Your Jaikus - Jaikus by you. Identical to same on the Web
• Explore - latest public Jaikus from everyone
• Jaiku Team - news and updates from the Jaiku team
• Jaiku Support and Ideas channel - latest posts to the support channel
• Devku channel - Jaiku developer channel. New 3rd-party applications tend to be posted here first
• TWiT channel - the backchannel for the popular This Week in Tech netcast by Leo Laporte and friends.

To post a new Jaiku to your stream, select Options -> Post a Jaiku. To set your location, select Options -> Set Location.

The widget has some nice details: for instance, it displays the Jaiku icons and Flickr photo thumbnails. You can also set the phone to beep when a new Jaiku is received.

The most important feature, however, is the broadening of the range of handsets for which there is now a slick, usable Jaiku client.

I’m already looking forward to next releases of this widget. The top 3 features on my wishlist are support for commenting, posting to channels, and browsing contacts.

Keep up the great work, Nokia!