kazle Blog

Kazle API Released

The Kazle API has been worked on secretly on the run up till Christmas. It’s purpose, to allow other developers to create their own applications for Kazle and access your account data, easily and securely.

The current release is in public testing, we will be monitoring for errors and bugs and of course we are accepting user input for improvement.

If you are interested in creating your own applications, all of the information can be found on our developers wiki located at: http://developers.kazle.com also, 2 new pages have been added to the Kazle site itself; one at http://www.kazle.com/dashboard/applications - where you can create your own applications and another at http://www.kazle.com/dashboard/settings/applications, which is for application users to terminate their sessions on applications.

When developing an application, the Getting Started guide is a good place to begin, it tells you places you need to go to begin your development.

There are 2 places we accept feedback and bug information for the API, one being the developers wiki, each page has a Discussion sub-page, that you have full access to and can edit and we will monitor those, although we are not alerted of changes so we will also accept input from our Get Satisfaction page, which we are alerted and can act more promptly from, but please state that you are writing about the API and not the Kazle site itself.

Please note that we do not provide any support for Application development.

Bug Update

We’ve being doing a massive bug fix over the past 2 weeks and still more to come but here’s a quick overview of exactly what’s been fixed.

• Timezone bug - The timezones caused an error on the new server, it’s not been resolved and they now update correctly.

• CSS issue on settings page, a content area was too wide causing a white section to the right of the site.

• Photo albums sizes were an issue, we allowed the boxes to extend down and set a width for the album text and altered the width when in manage mode, so the icons display permanently.

• Added upload link to the photo albums containing no photos.

• There was a bug in the Twitter popups for replying/reposting, it has now been resolved.

• Popups didn’t scroll with the screen and they was not always in the center, now they are fixed in the center, even when the page is scrolled.

• The location search has been re-done, it’s now powered by Google, allowing business and location searches as well as just address search. The interface has been slightly changed and your searches are based on your previous search, to overwrite this you will need to enter your current location in to the search.

• Status comments on profiles didn’t show, now they do.

• Photo uploads have been fixed, previously the server wasn’t allowing large photos to be uploaded, this has been altered.

• Photo resizing has been re-written and tweaked for each individual image size.

• Photo upload comments now show when more are loaded.

• Feed comment dates have been altered to match when new comments are posted.

• CSS issues in Safari and Chrome have been altered for the status box and navigation. The counter and status field are now positioned correctly.
• Fixed blank alert bug for photo album comments.

• Facebook connect API has been re-written, showing only 1 permission popup. Please note that the Facebook API method has changed and the initial login popup now shows in a new popup window, rather than an inline popup so you must allow popups from Kazle or atleast the networks page for it to function correctly.

That’s all for now. More features are to come like an API service and iPhone application as well as more networks and design changes.

Server Change

Unfortunately we’ve had to change our servers, which is a bit of a pain for both ourselves and you, our users.

We’ve tried to keep downtime to a minimum during the transfer, but due to data that may change on the old server such as photo uploads we’ve had to take the site down preventing from any changes to be made.

We’re going to take this move in to consideration and implement functionality to keep the downtime as small as possible if this ever happens in the future.

We hope to be back very soon!

New Design & Minor Updates

Hi there again!

We keep these updates coming and coming. We’ve had a major re-think on our design, we’ve made it a lot more colourful and bright, trying to fit in with the modern trends. Although the designs not fully implemented, we have a new header, status area and homepage and we really do enjoy it.

There’s some other small updates to how the site works and a few bug fixes, here’s a rundown on exactly what we have changed:

• Fixed email templates, since speed improvements they weren’t working
• Updated view permissions, unlogged in users can now see footer pages, privacy policy, blog etc
• Added profile permissions, allowing users to set who can see their profile, by default, everyone can
• Each session now records users last activity on the site as apposed to previously having the website open
• Added permissions per user, allowing users to restrict who can view their profile
• Start of new design implementation; homepage, header, footer, status and content area
• Updated register page to only check drop down menu’s on submit, otherwise they are quite fiddly
• Updated popups to sit fixed in the center of the screen
• Logo links to Dashboard when logged in
• Profile picture in profile links to profile picture album

Not too much changed, but the site looks a whole lot better. We assure you, the next update will be a big one, with the completion of the new design and even more features.

Even MORE Updates

I know it’s taken a while, but we’ve been extremely busy, doesn’t matter though, because we’ve released them now.

I have to say the new features are really bringing the site together, as they are our main goal as an aggregator, bringing your photos to and from other networks as well as more live feeds and status update networks.

Here’s a rundown on what we’ve added:

New Features
- Improved photo up-loader, more stable and allows multiple photo uploads.
- Import and export photo’s to and from external networks
- Added more status update networks
- Added more feed networks
- Added more feeds for photo uploads & photo importing
- More alerts & emails for friend request being accepted, if you’ve previously commented on something and an other user also does

Improvements
- Updated the email, alert and feed template system, results in faster load times.
- Added empty field checks throughout the site
- Improved photo album delete. Also removes photos and image files
- Improved session storage
- Updated the homepage feed, sizes are now calculated based on the name
- Profile photo links updated
- Road map bug

The feeds we’ve added are: LastFM, Plurk and Brightkite

The status updates we’ve added are; Bebo, Plurk and MySpace.

BUT the best addition must be the photo import/export. There’s a new “Import” button beneath the upload button, which takes you to a page that lists all of your active networks that support for Importing, when you click on one, your photo albums (sets for Flickr) are displayed and then you select what albums you want us to import and click Import and the albums are created and photos added to it. For export, at the bottom of each album, there’s an “Export” drop down menu containing the networks you haven’t exported the album to yet, select a network and they will be sent over along with the album.

Another great addition, has to be the Photo Uploader. The old one really did suck, uploading one image at a time? How’s that helpful. This new, photo uploader, allows you to set an album, then select multiple photo’s, there is a limit of 40, but you can go back and upload more and then you are able to set captions for each of the photo’s at the same time.

So that’s all, please enjoy the updates and the rest of Kazle until we bring out even more.

Thanks for reading.

Updates for EVERYBODY!

We all use it, right? So we all benefit.

We’ve finally, yes finally, it did take a while, but we’ve released our latest update. With mainly bug fixes and also some improvements to the way forms work and brand spanking new homepage, although yet to be updated with a tour video, it’s there.  Here’s a rundown:

IMPROVEMENTS

• Improved homepage including a recorded movie and live updating feeds and latest data;
• Settings page now has dynamic checking of fields;
• Updated icons throughout the site;
• On logout, you are taken to the login page with a confirmation message.

BUGS

• (slightly) Improved photo cropping;
• Mailbox alerts and emails only sent to other users and not yourself.
• Register empty checks aren’t performed on tab press;
• Register empty checks aren’t performed on tab press;
• Update status form updates on enter press in Safari;
• Added appropriate HTML for when a user had the “Empty feed” message, they were unable to load network without it.

If you don’t understand any of it, it’s fine, neither does Shane :p The improvements are what count, we all love new things it’s the bugs that just make life easier.

Take it easy.

Kazle Progress

We have been collating bug lists and essential improvements for Kazle, putting them all together and working through them to bring you a full 1.0b release of Kazle, to give you a perfect Kazle experience.

We’ve been performing our own bug tests, also getting the data you have all submitted over on GetSatisfaction to add to our lists, so we would like to thank you all for your input, it’s very much appreciated and has helped us a great deal.

You should expect to see the next release within the next week or two, it will contain a lot of minor changes rather than anything big, the big updates are going to be released afterwards and we do have some big things planned, some previews already posted on the blog but there’s much more.

Thanks for following and hold tight.

Kazle Updates

Our first minor update since release, this was mainly an accidental update as we’re still getting used to the development area we have set up but an update non the less, I’ve added a version number to the footer of the site, we are now at 0.1b, “b” being beta and 0.1 being the version. The version will increment depending on the scale of the upgrade, not simply a .1 each time.

In this update, we’ve included; an updated compression system, which will remove those random css & javascript dropouts that occur and it’s structured in a way so that we can monitor the site and update it to give a better outcome and loading time. The second update is an interface update, the register page, it now has dynamic error checking, which checks for empty fields, values entered that already exist for fields such as username and email. So, that gives you just a bit more information as to what’s wrong.

That is all… enjoy Kazle.com.

Who Are We?

We are a rude pair aren’t we… we’ve not once introduced ourselves on our blog for our readers.

I’d personally like to say “Hello” to you all and Shane would like to do the same, as you may of guessed from me refering to ourselves as a “rude pair” that there’s two of us, myself Nick Babenko and Shane Rounce, we are both 20 years of age so still young yet and lots to learn, here’s a small paragraph on each of us:

Nick’s a programmer at heart but also enjoys creating interfaces so the two, go together really. He’s been programming and desigining for around 7 years, working on all sorts of things, like websites, content management systems and recently, social networks. He can be fairly quiet, but he can also be quite an outgoing individual. He also enjoys skateboarding and snowboarding and listening to up-beat music, you can see what he likes on his Last.FM page. If you wish to get in touch with Nick, you can email him: nick@kazle.com or via Twitter.

Shane’s primarily a web interface and logo designer but dabbles in print now and then. He’s been clicking away in Adobe Software for going on 7 years now, working on mainly Forums, Content Management Systems and eCommerce websites though he’s recently made the transition to Social Media. He’s a video games junkie and big fan of alcohol and music that makes your brain rumble. Shane’s also into Photography and a lot of his work can be seen over on his Flickr page. If you need to get in touch with shane you can email him: shane@kazle.com or via Twitter.

Kazle iPhone Application

I think it’s smashing isn’t it… You see applications roaming around the App store for companies like Facebook, MySpace and many for Twitter but none for Kazle, but that will happen. All the features cram packed in to Kazle, or atleast, will be cram packaged in to Kazle, will be available on-the-go, from your iPhone.

I’ve started the development process for the iPhone app and as it’s my first and as I’m a programmer from birth (not really, only for around 7 years) it’s a darn good one so far. I’ve done some mockup designs, which go well with both Kazle and the general sexyness of the iPhone, they are simple, well laid out and look good, that’s just my modest opinion anyway.

At the moment the progress stands at the login interface nearing completion, working on testing for the API interaction, making sure all of the data pings around exactly how it should, that’s about all really, but it’s a good start after my second day of working on it as there’s still a million and one other things to get done on Kazle.

Alas, here’s some previews, of the iPhone simulator in action as well as the designs:

Of course, they are unfinished and mockups so any comments will have to wait for release or if I ask for them.

So, if you haven’t already, sign up to kazle.com and if you need some top of the range hosting packages, limepath.com are your guys.