Before we introduce you the features we just have made available on Wixi, all the Wixi Team would like to send you its best wishes for the new year 2009!

This month, we have made major changes, that we are sure will make you an even more happy Wixi user

- Download from friends

This feature has been requested to us over a thousand times and it is now available! Here is how it works: when you visit the Wixi of one of your friend, if you are interested in one of the files he has originally uploaded, you have now the option to either stream it, copy it to your Wixi or download it to your computer desktop.

This means you can start sharing documents, holidays photos & videos with your friend, play them from anywhere in streaming, and download them in their original quality onto your computer!

- Visits Counter

You will notice in your sidebar, below the number of files on your Wixi and your number of friends, a new counter: the Visits Counter! While this is just a ‘tiny’ addition, it is also a way to know and show how popular your Wixi is! Some of our users have already received more than 80,000 unique visits on their desktop, congratulations to them!

- Google Chrome & Safari 3 compatibility

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- Reworked UI engine

This is usually the kind of update you would not notice visually, but we have spent a lot of time on reworking the UI engine so as to improve performance (reduced memory usage, faster loading…). Also, this would simplify the fixing of browser related html/css issues, thus allowing us to add more features faster!

Should I remind you, you can vote for the next features we will be working onto at Wixi Feedback page

See you on Wixi!

Seb
Wixi Blog Admin

Let’s review the most noticeable changes one by one:

• YouTube player integration: we have made Wixi framework capable of playing media files and embedding Flash players from other contents providers as Wixi. The first service which we have integrated being YouTube and its world famous Flash video player:
  
  
  We of course are planning to add several other sources, so you can centralize all your media files on Wixi, even though they are hosted on other service providers!
• YouTube Bookmarklet: no need to upload your own video files, or capture .flv videos to reupload them, you can now add your favorite YouTube videos onto your Wixi account, and play them inside your Wixi desktop.
  
  How? Simply click on the YouTube button in the topbar, and follow the instructions to install our bookmarklet tool.
  
  
  Then, while watching videos on YouTube.com, click on the bookmarklet button and voilà!
  
  
  The video is added to your wixi account.
• YouTube search: you can now search contents on your Wixi desktop, on the public Wixi network and from YouTube. Results will appear like normal results, and by clicking on ‘Add to my Wixi’, the video will be added to your desktop, ready to play!
  
• YouTube channels: are you lacking inspiration for videos to watch? You know there are hundreds of cool videos on Internet, but don’t know where to start looking for them?
  Then, follow the guide! We have added a new button in the topbar: “YouTube”. When you click onto it, it will show you this window:
  
  
  These are the “YouTube channels”, which show you the best videos available on YouTube, sorted by period and with multiple criteria: most rated, most viewed, most discussed…
  Check the preview & description and add in a single click the ones you like to your Wixi Desktop to play them!
• upload your documents with the Flash uploader: store online your .DOC, .XLS, .PPT and .PDF documents onto your Wixi account, and download them from anywhere whenever you need them! Your documents are automatically put as private, so only you will be able to access them.
  
• new ‘Pending Friends’ tab in the dashboard: access directly all your friendships requests through this tab, for easier and faster friends management.
  
  
  New friendships requests will also appear automatically in the tab, without needing you to refresh your browser page.
• compatibility with Firefox 3.0: since the ‘Download Day’ of Firefox 3.0, we have organized a Bug fixing marathon to make Wixi fully compatible with FF3. The results? Wixi runs amazingly faster with FF3!
  
• rewritten back-end using ‘Events’: with this system, the Wixi desktop gets even more dynamic, and is able to refresh all elements (storage bar, new messages, new friendships requests, uploaded files status…) without you having to refresh your browser. This ‘event’ system is also the ground work for next exciting incoming features, such as “Who’s online”, “Chat” … applications.
• a lot of optimizations and bug fixing, like usually

We will keep developing new features and integrating other Web 2.0 services, to make one (or several ) step towards turning Wixi into THE media-centric online desktop and backup storage service that you need!

Seb
Wixi Blog Admin

You can either browse http://iphone.wixi.com/username (replace username by your Wixi username), or discover all the great contents available on the public network (approximatively 500,000 media files optimized for iPhone playback)!

Thanks to 3G network, your media: videos and music, will load faster and with a guaranteed smooth playback. Say ‘bye bye!’ to buffering times, truly access your media files when & where you want, in the palm of your hand!

Try it, you will love it!

Here is a list of all the changes related to this update:

• Merged the 3 « More (videos, photos, music) » buttons into 1 button, for less confusing, direct access to contents suggestion on the web
• New display mode of images in Fullscreen : they are not upscaled anymore, but shown in 1 :1 ratio for best rendering of your photos in your slideshows
• Faster loading speed and transitions from one media to another
• Fixed the « ghost » image bug that appeared on images playlist on embedded mode
• Fixed a minor display issue causing the More layers to show out of screen

Our team is already working on the next version of the Wixi Universal Player, which will very likely introduce new features, so stay tuned !

Seb
Wixi Blog Admin

Since its launch at TechCrunch40 in September 2007 6 months ago, Wixi has seen tremendous success in both user registration and the growth of users’ media libraries. Wixi has now:

• more than 100,000 Wixians registered as Beta testers
• 500,000 files hosted: photos: 8% – audio: 19% – videos: 54%
• 80,000 unique monthly visitors
• 50,000 streams per day, 15,000 on iPhone

Wixi has seen a tremendous amount of growth during our private beta phase, and we would like once again to thank all our Beta testers who have contributed to this success and have proven Wixi’s vision that there is a true need for on-demand access to personal media files, even when a user doesn’t have access to his computer.

We now look forward to continued feedback and our next levels of success, and invite you to keep spreading the word all around you about Wixi, the media-centric, web-based desktop where users interact with each other by privately sharing personal media, including photos, audio and video!

Wixi Team
www.wixi.com

First of all, the overall loading speed has been improved (by compressing the javascript files and caching some more data), so the whole desktop should load faster.

Here is an exhaustive list of the most noticeable changes on this new Wixi version:

• new topbar layout: added links to access directly latest contents by type: (Video | Music | Photo | Game) and search quickly on the whole Wixi network



improved presentation of the sidebar: storage bar shows user space and available free space addition of RSS2 feeds on desktop: topbar, sidebar, search results and Friends Activity window modified some tooltips to be more explicit changed default browsing mode of folders to “list” view

added a “Share now” link at bottom of any window, to directly open the “Send to friends” window

showing the status of any AJAX request: at top right hand corner, you will know if your browser is loading information (the red “Working…” label) or an error occured

• new feature on search window: search in your wixi or on whole wixi network

We have also been listening to our users’ feedback and remarks on the forums and fixed numerous bugs, including:

• better detection of files status after upload (files should be faster available and ready to play)
• removed the warning message when you want to visit another wixi (only appears if you are uploading)
• correct detection of “premium” status of an user
• improved compatibility with Internet Explorer 7
• cut friendship is no more available on “last visitors” and “most popular wixies”
• duplication of Wixi TV folder from another user: it is now handled as a normal folder on your desktop
• fixed incorrect results on Search Users feature
• various bugs on javascript errors

We hope with this version to have simplified again the sharing and made the navigation more comfortable!

Give us your feedback as usually on the forum, and be prepared for even greater changes on the next revision we will upload!

Seb,
Wixi Blog Admin

With the Wixi RSS feeds, you can stay informed on:
- all the latest files added by the friends network of any user (including yours)
- all the latest files added by any user
- all the latest files added on wixi network, filtered by category
- all the latest files matching a given keyword, and filtered by category

Get more connected to your friends, just put their feeds in your favorite RSS reader and follow their updates, isn’t that great ?!

Also, for developpers, our RSS feeds are opening several new opportunities: you can use the feeds to build your own widgets and integrate results in other applications and webservices (mashups…)
Checkout the Wixi API available at the developers pages at:

Ex: we have built a Wixi Widget for Mac Os X Dasboard based on these feeds:

Feel free to download the widget, try it and analyze the source code to see how easy it is to build your own with Wixi content (it took us only a couple of hours to make it!)

Seb
Wixi Blog Admin

Every day, hundreds of our beta testers are accesssing their Wixis through WiFi or Edge connection to play their media files and share them with their friends and relatives.

This graph speaks for itself: look at how much data bas been transferred in January when compared to December!

We would also like to thank EdgeCast, our technical provider, for the efficiency of their content delivery network, and their integrated progressive download technology, which makes all this possible by ensuring the best delivery speed to our users worldwide!

EdgeCast offers a superior, cost-effective global content delivery service that gives our users a competitive advantage in the delivery of digital media, providing our users the cost benefits and flexibility of controlling their own content delivery network while liberating them from ISP contracts, capital investments and operational hassles.

To try the service, check it out at:

Send us your feedback and ideas for improvement so we can start working on the next version – offering even more features from your iPhone mobile!

Seb,
Wixi Blog Admin

What’s the fun in having an online media desktop if you are not able to share your media files with your existing friends?

We understand that your friends are spread across various social networks or on your multiple Web mails, and of course you cannot invite them manually one by one!

Well, this is now an old story. The Wixi Team has been working hard on a new invitation tool which we are now proud to announce: http://www.wixi.com/invitations/

We have lifted all restrictions: you can now invite as many friends as you want, it’s as easy as 1, 2, 3!

1) Enter your login details
2) Select the friends you want to invite (you can select them all in a click), and see which ones are already on Wixi
3) Send your invitations!

We have been working on supporting a wide range of social networks and Web mails among the most popular, including:
GMail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, LinkedIn, Orkut …

Of course, your privacy being our first concern, we insist on the fact that none of your login details are being stored on our servers. Your contact list is used solely to invite your friends to create a Wixi account, but we do not keep their emails to send unsolicited mail.

Seb,
Wixi Blog Admin

You can now publish – in a click – a playlist of media files on any of your favorite Web sites: Netvibes, iGoogle, Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, Friendster, Orkut, Hi5, WordPress, TypePad, Multiply ….
How ? It has never been so simple! Click on “Share” inside the Wixi Flash Player, and click on the button of the site where you want your media posted.

Display your photo albums, play your music and videos on your profile and allow your friends to discover your great media content, wherever they are, with the Wixi Flash Player embedded on your favorite sites.

Let us know where you published your media in the comments!

Seb,
Wixi Blog Admin