Welcome to roundbook's Roundeo

Do you have something to say but not much time?  You want to keep in touch with your family and friends but can't dedicate the time to writing a full blog or posting an album.  Did something just happen and you just want to quickly shout it out (good or bad)?  Find a cool website you want to share?

Then just microblog it!  I am super excited about the new microblogging feature (named Roundeo) that is now available on Roundbook.com.  It is a more interactive and intelligent way of sharing links (previously interests), a quick message, a picture, a video and profile comments. It's called Roundeo because it's cool that way.

Roundeo makes interacting online more human because you can keep in touch on the little things too and while you think the little things aren't important - they are important to those we love and keep us more connected.

Roundeo gives you the same control you have over everything you do on Roundbook.  Share your quick message with anyone or just certain groups of people.  Roundeo also integrates with everything else - your home page compiles your Roundbook blogs, photos, calendar events, and Roundeo microblogs along with everyone in your groups.  It's one quick place to stay connected.  When others come to your profile page they see all of your Roundbook, including your Roundeo microblogs in order of date posted. 

Don't be shy.  Share the "less important" but actually more interesting things that happen in your life quickly.  Your family and friends really care.  Start posting Roundeo microblogs.

Maybe you've noticed this at the bottom of yours and others' blogs and photos:



But why, what is it, why do you want it, how do you use it? 

Tags are a fairly common occurence on the Internet these days.  The problem is how to label all the different information out there to make it recognizable.  The response is by using tags.  The computer doesn't know that a picture of your dog is a picture of your dog.  But if you tag that picture of your dog as "My Dog" and every picture of your dog as "My Dog", then pretty soon you can easily find all pictures of your dog.

So view tags as a way to organize your Roundbook stuff.  Your tags are put in a tag cloud under your profile:



You can see that the Roundbook blog has certain topics that it blogs about, mainly dealing with improvements and how to do stuff.  The tags that appear the most often are the largest in the tag cloud.  When you click on the tag cloud link for "My People" you'd see all blogs with that tag.

Tags are are really easy to add, just click on the Add a tag link, then start typing.  You can add multiple tags to one item, or just add one.  You add multiple by putting a comma between each tag.

Tips for good tagging:

• Keep them consistent.  If you write a lot of book reviews, tag each book review as "Book Review".  Don't tag some "Reviews", and others "Books".  Also, keep tags consistent in plurality - to a tag, Books is different than Book.
  
• Use multiple tags to group by general categories then by more specific ones too.  For example:  Book Review, Fiction, Science Fiction would give you three tags for one posting, but allow you to group that posting with general and specific posts that are related.
• Use tags to guide others to the different things you write about.  This gives a type of theme to your Roundbook.  Here are some examples of tags that allow you to use Roundbook as a way to create themes for what you share:
  • Recipes
  • Favorite Movies
  • Favorite Music
  • Quotes I Like
  • Person's name (e.g. John, Sue)

• see content meant for them (content sent to a particular group). 
  
• make comments on your content. 
  
• convert  their guest pass to a roundbook.com account that will automatically connect them to you and attribute all their comments to their new account.

• share your Roundbook content privately with more people
• share Roundbook with others without the commitment for them to sign up.
• determine what your guests can see.
• determine how long a guest pass is valid (e.g. one month, one year, or delete it at any time).

Here's how it works - when they login, here's what they see on top of your site:



You can send guest passes by clicking on My People then the Guest Pass tab:



If you want, you can send yourself a guest pass to see how it works, then delete it later.

Then - share, share, share.  Hoping this makes sharing safely with Family and Friends even easier.

To come:  Guest passes for individual content and the ability for others to request guest passes.

  I use skype for keeping in contact with family mainly.  It's an easy application that allows us to talk to each other and have video calls for free.  However, skype has some weak points that can cause some online safety and privacy concerns for yourself or for children using it.  With its default settings, anyone can see your profile and try to contact you. 

  I have received unsolicited chats, to which I never respond (they main point to safety is to restrict your interactions online to only people you know that you know - see here).  The chat box pops up with sometimes a benign "hello" or other times explicit content.  The user trying to contact me sometimes has a profile picture that displays next to the chat.  So I looked around to see what can be done to make my skype presence safer, and more private, yet still be able to use the service.

There are a few settings you can change that make a big difference though, so here they are, and here's how and why to set them:

First:  Disable and Don't Use "SkypeMe"
"SkypeMe" is an online status you can set.  I originally thought it was the same thing as "Online" but also announcing that you were waiting or wanting people to call and chat.  However, "SkypeMe" disables all privacy settings, meaning anyone can contact you.  Therefore, in order to enable privacy settings and keep them in place, announce yourself as "Online" and never as "SkypeMe".




Second:  Enable Privacy Settings
1.  You can get to your privacy settings by clicking on File > Privacy...



2.  Choose "Only allow people in my Contact List to contact me".  Don't forget to Save at the bottom, otherwise the changes won't stay.

 

And you are done.  Now you can use the software as a great tool for keeping in touch with people you want to keep in touch with.
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Here are a couple more ideas, if you want them.

• You may change your Calls and Chat privacy settings separately in the respective sections.  If you decide to enable anyone to chat with you, I suggest disabling the "Open a chat window when someone starts to chat with me" option in advanced features under chat.  This will keep their profile picture from coming up on your screen automatically when someone starts to chat.
• To keep children from using skype without your supervision, disable it from starting up and signing in automatically.  If your child has their own skype account, you can have the password and not allow them to know the password.  Then they must come to you to sign in.
• It seems like, as I am a young male in my profile, I got more unsolicited invites than my wife without privacy settings.  You could consider not setting your gender in your profile.
• I'm still working to figure out how to best protect against unsolicited invites to skype, the above settings seems to only protect against calls and chats, not adding someone as a contact.  I'll update when I have more detail on this.

• Profile is on the right - done to put the focus on the content.
• Profile is changed to be more helfpul - done to make it more clear whose Roundbook site you are on, and to provide quick access to common tasks.
• Profile indicates whether you are connected to the person whose site you are on (if you are someone else's site).
• My People - shows the people, instead of hiding them.
• My interests - nicer look/feel.
• Video Blog - easily add youtube or other external site videos to your blogs.
• Comments - cleaner design
• Blogs - picture of person who wrote the blog next to the blog title.

1. Download printable pictures.  If a full size version of the picture is available, then click this link to go directly to the picture file.  You will need to then save the picture to your computer by clicking on the picture with the right mouse button and choosing to save the image.  The full size image is the original size uploaded by the user.
2. Rotate pictures 90 degrees right or left.  If you are on your site the image will be saved in the new rotated position automatically.  If you are on someone else's site, it will only be temporary (while you are viewing that page).

1. You find yourself writing an amazing blog, you are almost done, then you realize you don't have time to finish it.  What do you do?  Before you had to save it somewhere else by copying and pasting it, or you had to publish the unfinished version and come back and edit it later.  Well NO MORE.  You can now save blogs as drafts and work on them and publish them later.  You even have a blog draft listing too:
2. You want to attach a picture album but you haven't published your blog yet.  Well no worries, now the moment you open up to write a blog you can click on the "add photo album" link at attach a photo album.  The add photo album link is at the top of the page, just above the subject.
3. Most annoying ever category: I know how many times I've been writing a blog on this site or others and something happens - the web browser closes, a kid comes in and pushes some key,  something out of control, and BAM  the blog is gone.  There is no getting it back and all the time you spent writing the perfect story was wasted.  I even tell myself that I'll write first in a word document, then copy and paste it online.  But when it comes down to it, I forget.  Problem solved!  As you type your blogs are saved automatically (see, it last saved my draft automatically at 8:29 a.m!