New social features

I've uploaded a couple of new social features that you can play with. There are two ways to find out if someone has written on your profile; you will now get an email notification if you've given us your address, but you can also subscribe to an atom feed for the comments. These changes should make it easier to keep up with your comments. As well as that, if you invite your friends using the "invite contacts" page, once they join up, the site will automatically send you a friend request. When inviting people, you can also select a group that they will be added to when they sign up. This should make it easier for you to create groups with your friends. As always, if you have any comments, let me know in the forum!

Invite your friends!

I've just added a page that allows you to invite your friends to use the site. On your main friends list page, there is now a link saying "invite friends". Click the link, enter a few email addresses in the form, and we send your friends a simple email saying that you've invited them, with a link to the site.

We don't keep the addresses, so we don't get anything out of this, it's just a convenient way for you to spread the word! Check it out here.

Major change to usernames

At the suggestion of a number of people, I've made a pretty major change today to the way that the login system works. Rather than requiring an email address, it now lets you sign up with a username instead. That way, you don't have to give us your email address unless you want to, once your account is created. It should reduce the signup barriers and improve privacy for users, both of which are good things. It also helps with some of the other stuff I will be doing this week.

If you already have a Carbon Diet account, when you next log in (using your email address) you will be prompted to choose a username to identify yourself. Once you've done that, you should use that username to log in from that time onwards.

Email reminders

Even though I work on the Carbon Diet every day, I often forget to add new data every week. Because of this, I've added an "email reminder" option in the user profile. If you enable it, the site will email you each week (or as often as you choose) if you haven't entered data for a while. The default is off, so it won't annoy anyone who hasn't turned it on explicitly, but it should be useful I think!