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!

Bugs & Updates

Minor update to the group and friend rankings this morning - it should be quicker, and you now get a nice pie chart showing the contribution of each person in the list in a nice graphical way.

I've fixed a bug in the group signup code, which prevented you joining groups without being invited, so that should all work now.

Also, if you've tried to use Gravatar to customise your user picture on the site, you've probably noticed that it's not working. Fortunately (in a way) it's not just the Carbon Diet. Lots of sites using Gravatar seem to be having the same problem. Unfortunately, the people behind it have disappeared, and left their site in a broken state. I've been trying to contact them for ages about this, but to no avail. I'm going to look round for an alternative method of letting you customise your pictures, so I'll keep you informed.

Compare to your friends

You can now compare yourself directly to your friends on the Carbon Diet! On your friends list, as well as in your groups, you will now see a rankings section, which takes all your friends and puts them in order of their annual carbon footprint. Obviously, we're trying to cut down around here, so the person with the lowest footprint is #1!

Comments

Another update for you all to play with! You can now add comments to your friends profile pages, as well as to groups you are a member of. They don't show in the news feed yet, but will do soon. Enjoy!

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.

Group Invitations

I've just uploaded a new feature - group invitations. You can now invite your friends to groups which you are a member of, which should make it easier to network with people. You can also create invitation-only groups, which users can't join unless they are invited by another user. Next up, I'll be adding a more general "invite your friends" option so that you can easily get your friends to use the Carbon Diet!

Public Profile, Friends, and Groups

I've just uploaded a whiole bucketload of new features for you to play with. It's taken me a few days (hence the lack of blog updates), but now you can make your profile public, so that others can see it and compare themselves to you. You can add people to your friends list so you can keep track of them, and you can create and join groups, organised around any theme you like.

As an example, and to get you started, here is a link to my profile.