Archive for Uncategorized
Some examples of successful webmixes on Symbaloo
June 18th, 2010 • 2 comments Uncategorized
These days we see more and more company-related webmixes appearing. Together with one of the main Dutch soccernews websites, Symbaloo published the World Championship webmix which has been installed a 6.000 times yet.
Since the weather and rain widgets are amongst the most used tiles on Symbaloo, Buienradar.nl is promoting a weather webmix on its homepage right now. For people who love cooking and stumbling upon new recipes, Smulwebs’ culinary webmix is the best one to visit to create the best dinners, cocktails and desserts.
Furthermore we see the Best Mafia Movies generating lots of traffic from Google.
Some more initiatives are in the pipeline at the moment. Do you see some opportunities for your company as well? Just send us an email and we’ll explain how you get the best out of Symbaloo.
Create your own expert Webmix to drive your traffic.
June 9th, 2010 • Uncategorized
Tags: 50 top startups, community, Louis Gray, symbaloo, tile, webmix
Louis Gray has created a pair of webmixes here on Symbaloo today. One of them is his choices for the 50 Top Startups in the technology world. Whether you agree with his list or not, the mix is a great way for people to see just what Louis thinks makes a great startup.
You may have different ideas on which companies should be in the webmix. You may think the whole webmix misses the boat. That’s fine. One of the great things about Symbaloo is that you have the freedom to create your own webmix and talk about it in the Symbaloo communities.
Building mixes is a simple process:
- Gather the links you want to reference
- Log in at Symbaloo.com
- Create a new empty mix
- Add a tile to the webmix
- Customize the tile’s link, title, and appearance
- Repeat steps 4 and 5 for each tile in your webmix
When you are done, share your content with the world or keep it private for your own use.
If your thoughts change, you can easily update the tiles in the webmix and add new ones as you wish. This gives you and your followers a vetted set of links and logos for whatever you are passionate about.
Symbaloo isn’t just about making your links easy for you to find and share. It is also about the conversations that the webmixes generate. We want to hear what you have to say about Louis’ lists. Check out the webmixes. Check out his blog piece. Then, head over to the community space and share your thoughts. We’ve been talking about the list since we first saw it. We would love to hear your thoughts over on the Symbaloo communities.
- What companies didn’t make the cut that you think should have?
- Would you put the companies in a different order?
- Which categories are over-represented? Which ones are missing?
We are eager to hear your thoughts, questions, and ideas. We also are eager to see what webmixes you share to the conversation. What other expert webmixes do you think we need?Hardware? Healthcare? Entrepreneurship? Or do you have other ideas?
Create your webmix and let us know they are there – we love new mixes!
Louis Gray’s 50 Top Start-ups Webmix
June 9th, 2010 • Uncategorized
Do you read Louis Gray’s technology blog? We here at Symbaloo love his blog. Insightful, entertaining, timely. All the things you could wish for in a technology blog. Today, he has blogged about Symbaloo and shared his thoughts about us..
Since several of the people here at Symbaloo know Louis, we offered him the chance to test out the latest updates to the site. He loved what he saw on the site and decided he needed a webmix that highlights the 50 Top Startup companies . Then, he surprised us and built a second webmix of the 50 core web sites he uses and recommends.
In today’s world, few of us have time to keep up with all the new tech companies and their products. Louis has made himself the expert who you can trust to let you know what is new and what people are talking about. Each of the tiles in Louis’ webmix take you to a company he feels you should know about.
The webmix gives you a visual way to access the sites for the companies on Louis’ list. Each site has its own tile, as you can see here:
Louis Gray's core websites
The companies in Louis’ webmix make a very wide range of products, both in the hardware and online worlds. The companies here help you keep connected with your network, learn what others have to say, and even help keep you in shape.
Updating webmixes is easy. If a company in the webmix changes their logo, Louis just needs to go to the mix, update the tile, click a link to update the webmix. Next time you come to Symbaloo, you get the updated webmix. Links are just as easy to change. Need to remove tiles? Drag them off the webmix to the trash.
The startup webmix is a great resource for anyone researching the technology world of today. Looking for a job? Many of these startups are hiring. Looking for a story for your blog? Check out the webmix and see how many post ideas it sparks. Want to create your own startups? Learn from the companies in the webmix – check out their blogs, about pages, and interactions. Learn from their successes!
That surprise webmix we mentioned? It’s just as useful. Louis pulled together icons and links for the sites he frequents regularly. Just like the startups webmix, every tile in this mix has been verified. You know that the links are right, because you know that a real person created the mix. As Louis changes the sites he wants to share, you will get the updates automatically.
Want to read more of what Louis thinks? Easy! Check out the first tile in either webmix: It takes you straight to Louis’ blog.
New.symbaloo.com goes to www.symbaloo.com
May 27th, 2010 • 9 comments Uncategorized
We’re getting closer to the moment that we leave the old version for good. This Thursday we will experience some downtime for a while, and http://new.symbaloo.com will be replaced by the original http://www.symbaloo.com where you will see the new version.
We foresee a downtime of Symbaloo off approximately half an hour. Of course we will do our utmost to get back as soon as possible, all your settings & tiles will remain available after this step.
Our apologies for any inconvenience caused by the update.
ps: Don’t forget to re-set the startpage in your browser back to http://www.symbaloo.com
Thanks for your help.
May 26th, 2010 • Uncategorized
Most of you know that introducing a new version means a lot of hard work. You start with the most important things like structure, database setup and designs. The more simple you want to make it for the user, the more complex it gets behind the scenes. After introduction, the important optimization phase starts. Our development team has been working on lots of fixes, thanks to your feedback and testing.
Last week’s update
Last week the Symbaloo development team completed a successful update. Maybe you’ve noticed we improved or fixed:
• Style of the preview of an RSS article
• Publish a webmix with a wallpaper
• Being able to change texts in tiles, including its color
• Remain in edit-mode, after having edited a tile
And many small other fixes that you could only notice during specific actions.
Future
In the coming months we will be optimizing many features and enabling some settings that you could use on the old version of Symbaloo. Thanks for posting your comments and feedback on our forum.
We are ready. Are you?
May 11th, 2010 • 15 comments Uncategorized
Silently, we have been testing the new version of Symbaloo with hundreds of users over the last few weeks. All key performance criteria have been met, and therefore we have started inviting users in all markets to migrate their Symbaloo with their favourites to Symbaloo 2.0!
In the coming weeks all users that have an account will receive a personal invitation to join the new Symbaloo. People who do not have an account, will see an invitation in their screen with the link to new version.
Are you curious to understand what’s new? Then check out the following page.
Dutch link
English link
French link
There’s also a tutorial video available for Dutch users.
You can visit the new Symbaloo at new.symbaloo.com.
Please share your thoughts with us!
Team Symbaloo
A sweet addition to Create, Share, Discover: Connect!
April 27th, 2010 • 9 comments Uncategorized
Tags: community, create, discover, ipad, service, share, symbaloo
We are excited to share with you the newest addition to Symbaloo: Symbaloo Communities!
With Symbaloo, users are able to share the best of the internet around their passion. Symbaloo Communities allows you to go beyond just exploring your passion. They allow you to connect with other Symbaloo users who share your passions!
Symbaloo Communities are built into Symbaloo Service. If you need support or assistance on the site itself, Symbaloo Service is your place to start. Here you can:
* Report technical issues
* Get the latest Symbaloo news
* View tutorials
More importantly, you can connect with other Symbaloo users either by specific community or just in general. There is a forum dedicated to each community where users can interact and post comments related to that community.
Those of you who have already migrated to Symbaloo 2.0 know about the new features that make navigating the web and building webmixes much easier. Symbaloo Communities allows you to talk with the other users of Symbaloo about the site itself, about topical webmixes, about tiles you would like to see added to webmixes, and about the content you find on public webmixes.
We are starting with just a few topical communities, but we see more being created as more users join Symbaloo Service. Are you passionate about a certain subject that doesn’t currently have a community attached? Contact Kimmie
How do you join the Symbaloo Communities? Head over to the site and log in. You will be prompted for your email address, password, etc… Make sure you register with the same email address that you use for Symbaloo now, since your Communities account and your Symbaloo 2.0 accounts will be connected once everyone is migrated to the new system.
Our current spotlight community is the iPad community. Here you can discuss all matters related to the iPad and Symbaloo! We found out shortly after the launch of the iPad that Symbaloo works great on it! The combination of the iPad’s touchscreen with Symbaloo’s interface makes navigating the web not only quick and easy but also extremely fun especially for the one and two-finger generation who don’t like to type or are not so good at it! Stop by the iPad Community and share your thoughts, your tips, and your links.
Webmix of the day
March 25th, 2010 • Uncategorized
Tags: publish, webmix, webmix of the day
In this this post I’d like to share something with you, that we have been very active with lately: great webmixes made by experts or fans. For those of you, who don’t know where to find webmixes, the Symbaloo Gallery contains many interesting and useful webmixes about a great variety of topics. You can simply open the gallery, by clicking on the plus sign on top of the site.
Most of the webmixes that you’ll find in the gallery are made by Symbaloo users that are an expert or have passion for a certain topic. There are even companies and websites that have published their own webmix, and keep it up to date with the latest news and relevant links. This way they extend their services to their clients or employees.
Everyday we select a webmix that we think is fun or useful and award is as webmix of the day. We publish the link on our Twitter, Facebook, Hyves and other social network accounts. At the moment, we publish an American and Dutch webmix of the day. Below you can see two examples
Help us to find and publish great webmixes to help and inspire other Symbaloo users around the globe. Please let us know at webmixoftheday@symbaloo.com what webmix you think should be awarded.
Please bear with us
December 22nd, 2009 • 1 comment Uncategorized
Tags: migration, new, symbaloo, version
As many of you probably know, we have withdrawn the new release of Symbaloo temporarily.
What made us decide to do so? We simply had to. When we gave access to the 2.0 version, we experienced performance isssues caused by hundreds of thousands of users who tried to access their starting page simultaneously. The thing with Symbaloo is that it is not an ordinary website. Every user has it’s own unique profile and every single modification like adding or removing a tile is a seperate request to the database.
So, why didn’t we foresee this? Actually, we did a lot of testing and everything worked fine. The trick is that retrieving all unique customer data at the same time is every hard to simulate. The result was that Symbaloo became very slow. So slow that we could not meet our service standards and decided to switch back to the old version. We’ve decided to take a few steps back and do some testing and work on a different migration path. We want the new release of Symbaloo to put a smile on your face.
In the coming weeks we will be testing together with users that we have invited, to provide us with their feedback. As soon as we are satisfied with the results and feedback, then we’ll launch the new version. This will be a more gradual approach. At this moment in time we can’t tell when this will be exactly.
It goes without saying that we’ll keep you posted and that all of your data will be saved once we switch to the new release. That’s about all we can say now. Meanwhile, we wish you a merry Christmas and all the best for 2010.
Please bear with us,
Koen Dantuma
Important Message about Symbaloo 2.0
December 11th, 2009 • Uncategorized
Symbaloo has decided to postpone the introduction of Symbaloo 2.0. We have been working very hard to ensure that we only release a product that works perfectly. All Symbaloo users are able to use the original version of Symbaloo.
