Splore is proud to be partnering with the California Women’s Conference - the world’s largest annual event for women - to extend this phenomenal community to continue engaging 365 days a year through its new online community, Touchpointe, powered by Splore.  Visit http://cwc.splore.com/home to join in!

That’s right, we’ve launched our first version of a native iPhone app for Splore!  Follow the link to head out to the App Store and download the app for Free, and take it for a spin. Now you can take Splore with you wherever you go - access your favorite splores, splore sites, and take advantage of mobile features unique to the iPhone, like posting photos directly from your phone, finding other users and splores nearby, and integrated mobile notifications!

A very insightful article from someone closely aligned with the future innovation and direction of healthcare technology.  As we continue to see growing interest around the use of Splore Sites for what we refer to as a ‘collaborative medical communications platform’, we are seeing increasing evidence of this phenomena every day.  To extract a quote from the article, “The future of medicine in the U.S. is clear…highly effective communication will separate the winners from the losers.”

-Shawn

While Wall Street is being rattled, Silicon Valley is being superempowered as the I.T. revolution takes a leap forward.

Yes, you read that right.  For you Splore Site administrators out there, we know there are entirely valid times when it simply doesn’t make sense to allow your users to post content from your site to their varied social networks - Facebook, Twitter, etc. Whether constrained by regulations such as HIPAA, or just protecting the privacy of your site’s users, Splore has now enabled the ability for you to simply turn OFF all social sharing on your custom Splore site with the click of a button. You’ll find this simple, yet powerful, feature by accessing the ‘Admin’ menu on your Splore site. Click to disable, unclick to enable. Voila!

-Shawn

For those of you who missed the growing fury from users following a string of major announcements at the Facebook f8 Conference the past several days, you may want to tune in for just a quick minute.  So what’s the big uproar about this time, and why is it that every time Facebook makes a new product announcement, millions of people seem to get very angry (yet strangely that total user count keeps rising)?  Well, if you were concerned about online privacy before, well…things just got a lot more interesting.

I know - you hear talk about new Profiles, something called a Timeline, and that headline about some new Facebook Open Graph - and your eyes begin to glaze over as you head back to the couch to catch the rest of the game.  But, honestly, there is actually some really BIG news behind those obscure headlines.  Zuck called it “frictionless sharing”.  For the rest of us, the premise is that it’s an awful lot of work to click that “Like” or “+1” button as we wander around the web, and it just shouldn’t be so hard.  Well, with the new FB Open Graph, it just got easier.  App developers will now be able to effectively track your activity even when you’re logged out - where you’re eating, what you’re watching on tv, the music you’re listening to, that website you accidentally landed on…  Yep, it all becomes part of the digital story of your life (“Timeline” starting to make more sense?). And if you’re not careful, all of it may just be posted far more publicly than you intended, if you intended any sharing at all.

We’ve all seen the Facebook application permissions prompts before, many of us so frequently that we don’t really look too closely at what we’re being asked to allow.  

With these new changes, when you register with a new application you’ll only get ONE prompt asking if you want to share your activity, and from then on, no more explicit requests to share. No more friction. What you do online is shared automatically for you. The line between social media and privacy is getting quite blurry.

At Splore we’ve been quite open about our stance that user privacy should be protected by default - what some have referred to as an opt-in policy.  In simple terms, that just means that instead of having to turn privacy settings off, you decide when to turn them on.  We recognize that each of us live multi-dimensional lives, and while opening the kimono to some, under certain circumstances, is a good thing - many times we want and even NEED to protect elements of who we are.  If I’m researching a health condition that I’ve just been diagnosed with, I have a strong desire to find information, and people, and engage contextually around that topic so I can gain understanding, empathy, and potentially even form new personal relationships that may prove very meaningful over time. But if you’re like me, I would rather remain ignorant and scared, than risk exposing an intimate part of my life with complete strangers, or even my “friends”, which could include a boss, or a family member who I’d prefer to communicate with in a slightly less public forum.

While I’m intrigued by the idea of “real-time serendipity” that these changes would suggest, do those rare moments justify the very real downside of this continued erosion of privacy? Some argue that we - the users - simply need to become more responsible and accountable for “what we say”. The privacy controls are all there, after all…at least, I’m pretty sure they are, last I checked. I would argue that for a vast majority of us out there, though, you’ll glance at the confusing headline about Timelines and Graphs, then go back to worrying about the economy, jobs, and the price of gas. But make no mistake - these continued changes will profoundly impact each of us. You may not notice it for a while, but it won’t be long before you realize that your life is on display for all your friends to see. And I, for one, am not convinced that the benefit is worth the cost.

- Shawn

In case you hadn’t noticed, we’ve introduced several new features recently, too many in fact to cover each in detail here. But here are a few teasers…

More Calendar Improvements. We’ve extended the use of calendars such that now all splore participants can create and edit their own events. What’s more, you can also enable event alerts and reminders - new options in your Account Settings. Find out automatically every time a new event is added or changed, and be reminded a day in advance so you don’t forget.

More Email Support. Similar to your ability to reply directly to an email notification of a new contribution in Splore - and have your reply automatically posted as a Comment - we’ve also added the ability for you to reply to email notifications of private messages. So now you can conduct an entire private message thread via email if you’d rather not go back to the Splore site and manage replies there. Even more, each splore participant now has a private email address that you can use to automatically post contributions directly via email (displayed under the splore toolbar).

New Multi File and Image Upload. We now support multiple images per contribution, and both image and file upload sports a new multi-select capability, and even drag-and-drop support. Try it out! Grab a file(s) from a folder and drag them onto the file or image upload control in Splore. Cool, right?

Video Upload Support. Thought we were done? Not even close. You can now upload your own videos directly into Splore - that in addition to the still supported ability to simply embed/link existing YouTube (and other) videos.

Google Forms Support. For you forms aficionados, you can now embed a Google Form directly into a splore contribution. This is one of those “hidden” gems - we’ll be adding some inline instructions and FAQs soon, but meanwhile just remember that you’ll want to use the iFrame embed code that Google Forms provides. Cut and past that code directly into your text contribution, and voila, instant forms support!

Category Bar on Dashboard. Many of you told us you really liked the category bar on the home page, so we decided to add that to your dashboard as well. Now you can navigate splores via category and never have to go back to the home page to do it!

Splore Highlighted Content. Splore creators, you’ll be happy to know that you can now “pin” content from throughout all your splore contributions and have it highlighted at the top of your splore page. What’s more, you can not only pin individual contributions, but comments, images, and file attachments as well! Make sure your splore participants can quickly find the most important content by keeping it front and center.

Splore Sites Integration. Many of you may not be aware, but we’ve been actively implementing support for custom private and public splore sites. For those of you who are using a site (or three), you’ll now see additional capability to access and interact with those sites. That includes one-click site lists on the dashboard and next to your user image on each page, the ability to filter your “My Splores” page based on one or all sites, and more is on the way. For those interested in learning more about Splore Sites, let us know!

Many New Design Enhancements. We’ve been regularly working to apply improved styling to many of the Splore pages. You’ll see improved UI on each splore details page - including a new “toolbar” with quick access to things like participant lists, the file cabinet, the Calendar, and yes, a new RSS feed capability (for those of you who just love to stay updated using your favorite RSS reader). The new splore contribution form has also been improved, and the whole page now sports an updated design that we’re applying to other pages as well (splash page, dashboard, etc.).

Thanks again for helping to make Splore a better product each and every week. Keep the feedback coming, and good Sploring!

- Shawn

Let Patients Help!  When Dave deBronkart learned he had a rare and terminal cancer, he turned to a group of fellow patients online — and found the medical treatment that saved his life. Now he calls on all patients to talk with one another, know their own health data, and make health care better one e-Patient at a time.