Today we released a new version of Handmeon, and it’s got some great fun stuff. Here’s what’s new since version 392:

• Check out the new Explore section. You can tab between Recent Handmeons and Recent Sojourns, and there are next/prev links on the right side. Recent handmeons are sorted by activation date, and display when they are activated and have a photo. Recent sojourns is more complicated, but essentially they are displayed at the top when new content is “published.” The photo quality people are uploading is excellent!
• Object home is now a table of contents. We summarize the sojourns: member, dates, location, posts, rather than displaying a full-length blog view. This seems to help people grasp what’s going on.
• You can now navigate between the sojourns with the orange arrows at the top of both object home and sojourn home (example). This makes the reading experience much more like a book. The object home is the table of contents, and each sojourn is a chapter in the object’s travels.
• You can now post after you release an object and hand it off to another person. Your interaction with the object doesn’t end when you pass it on, you can still write about what you see in other posts.
• Any registered user can comment on any public post. This opens the site for interaction beyond just the creators and recipients of handmeons. Post authors can optionally be notified of comments to their posts via email. We have defaulted this to ‘on’ but you can set it in your account preferences.
• The current host, not just the creator, can edit the object photo and inscription. Object photos are now a gallery, and we display the most recent in other areas of the site.
• We added a “gestation” time, perhaps called a nag reminder, to the objects. The creator can set when we might remind the current owner of their intended circulation time. Current options are one week, one month, three months, and never. It seems like the creator has an intent about how often they’d like to see objects circulate, and they can set that intent here.
• Added the privacy setting to object creation to put it a little more in the forefront.
• We now require an object photo prior to handoff. This will keep the user experience better for the community. To date, everyone has uploaded a photo anyway, so we’re not breaking new ground here.
• We provide confirm dialogs when you click a delete button. Should’ve done this in the very first release; we just missed it until I accidentially deleted a post I’d been writing on-and-off for a week. Just nuts that I designed a delete button right next to the save button.
• Added a meta viewport to help the iPhone users. Let us know how it looks and what else we can do to support your remote browsing, writing, and sharing!
• A bunch of minor cleanup, like making the edit textareas wider, putting the post info below the post instead of between the headline and the post, some text copy changes in object create, removed the “home” link in the banner links, dealt with all the known IE6 and IE7 bugs, etc.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the member bio from displaying. D’oh. The member profile pages really need some work. We have some ideas, and your suggestions are welcome too!
• The blog got hammered by comment spam, so we’ve turned off comments until we get spam filtering installed. Please stay tuned. The “Feedback” link in the upper right still works though, and we want to keep hearing from you!