If you are reading this blog and this is the only "odeo" you've ever seen, well then, welcome! If you have been a loyal user of odeo in the past, we welcome you to the new site. We are in the middle of transitioning and supporting the legacy links that are out there. If you have any questions, find something that's not working for you, etc. Please, log in a open a ticket right away. If you don't have an account, don't let that stop you, send an email to support@odeo.com and we'll get your ticket into the system and get right on it. We are looking forward to the new Odeo and many new features that are yet to come.

Thanks

eric @ odeo

It's a busy several days for the team at Odeo.

On Wednesday evening, I participated in a panel discussion on "Startups" at the Refresh DC monthly event. Our 5 member panel consisiting of local entreprenuers attempted to enlighten the group of about 60 or attendees on topics such as funding vs. bootstrapping, developing your idea (sharing or secret), when/who to hire, and some "lessons learned". It was an enjoyable time and I hope that we provided some valuable insight to those looking to bring more Web 2.0 opportunities to the area. Thanks to the team at Viget Labs for organizing and moderating the event.

On Thursday evening, Greg Gershman and I were given the opportunity to demo the new Odeo Beta site for the crowd at Tech Cocktail in DC. The event was very well attended and the 1223 Club in DC was packed. Thanks to Frank Gruber (somewhatfrank.com) for putting on a great event and allowing us to showcase.

Starting today, our VP of Products, Josh Kinberg will be hanging out at Podcamp NY for the weekend. This is a packed event and we are looking forward to another opportunity to showcase the new Odeo beta site. If you are at the event, look us up for a demo of the new site and an invite to the private beta.

eric@odeo

The latest updates have been pushed to beta.odeo.com. The two major things for this release are:

1) New search results layout (example: http://beta.odeo.com/search?query=warcraft). The new layout places more emphasis on channels and places the "refine by category" box in a more obvious/understandable place for users. We are currently working out a known issue with exact channel matches. Once this fixed, we will display larger thumbnails and more meta data for channels that come back as an exact match (for example, the user searches for "Mahalo Daily"). We have also made the "All" link in the refine box selected by default on this page. This will be included in the next release. ,/p>

2) Dashboard section has been implemented (http://beta.odeo.com/dashboard). For now, this page mostly replaces the old "My Subscriptions" page. We also completed the Guides section of the dashboard, but commented out the tab link until Guides are publicly accessible.

In addition, we've updated the styling on the guides pages to reflect some the updated look of the channel and episode pages. Here's an example: http://beta.odeo.com/guides/4-Wine-Guide

The edit channel style page was also updated with a few more color palette choices and the option for users to revert back to the default color scheme (previously missing).

Lastly, the on-site flash audio player is completed. It will be pushed out with the next release in less than two weeks.

Thanks for being a part of the beta and your excellent suggestions. We look forward to rolling the site into production soon along with many more features that we are sure you will find useful. As always, please drop an email to beta@odeo.com to let us know what we can do to help make Odeo your favorite media destination.

eric@odeo

Welcome to all the new beta users! Have a look around and please let us know what you think. We're still in development, so things might break and change somewhat randomnly - just let us know. And check back here to the Beta Blog for updates and new features. We'll be publishing a series of posts on how to do various things like claim a channel, customize a channel and more. Thanks for checking us out!

Just a quick note to let you know what new features were pushed to production this past weekend. We are busy adding new features and revising based on your feedback. Here's some of new things:

First off, we have revised the channel listings page to include the ability to rate and comment on shows. This is the first, basic iteration and we'll be adding more to it in the future.

You will also notice that the quicklist module has been removed from the bottom of the page. Users were giving us feedback that it was too obtrusive and covered the content at bottom of the page. We have moved the quicklist and made it a page with a link in the top navigation. As we add more features such as playlists and favorites, we think that this layout will provide a common experience.

Finally, the last major thing that you will see is the ability to submit your favorite feeds if you don't find them in our extensive library already. These are moderated so they won't show up immediately. As we roll the service out, we'll be tweaking the approval process.

As we look ahead to the next couple weeks, we are working on two major sections of the site -- Revisions to the Search Results page and the User Dashboard. We are really excited about the dashboard concept and the comps for the initial page are looking great.

eric@odeo

We are excited to announce the acquisition of blog search engine Blogdigger! Blogdigger was one of the first sites to build a search engine for blogs by aggregating content from RSS feeds. Greg has been working with us as a consultant during the design and development phase of Odeo's new website and we are excited to have Blogdigger's technology powering Odeo's search and content aggregation engine. More importantly, we are happy that Greg has chosen to join our team as Vice President of Search and Engineering.

In addition to his engineering background, Greg (along with his wife Penny) are avid podcasters; Greg is also a Baltimore native, which is good as it helps Odeo build up our east coast/DC presence in addition to our west coast team.

Be sure to check out Odeo's new beta site as we prepare to launch the new site in April.

eric@odeo

Welcome to the Odeo Beta and the first blog post.

If you are new to the beta, feel free to explore the site. Your initial thoughts on the intuitiveness of the site's navigation would be welcome feedback. If you have been with us for awhile, poke around and see if you notice what's new.

Some of the planned enhancements are:

The Channel Page is undergoing revision and will start to show some of the beginnings of the social features. On any channel, you will be able to see who is subscribed, see ratings and comments.

We are moving the "quicklist" from the bottom of the page and placing it as an object in your dashboard.

Speaking of the dashboard, you will notice that right now, there is just a simple subscriptions list. In the next couple weeks, we'll introduce the concept of the dashboard as a central place to manage your media, subscriptions, friend associates, shows that you rated, etc.

As part of the migration of the existing Odeo users / accounts, we are working on updating the audio player widget, creating a video player, moving all of the existing users and their subscriptions as well as all of the feeds currently in the Odeo database.

During April, we are planning on releasing the Odeo Desktop Media Play (OMP), a Windows application that provides the ability to play your odeo content offline on your PC as well as on many popular portable media devices. This is an exciting part of the overall Odeo functionality and will be completely synchronized with your online account allowing you to view, rate and recommend content from either the web browser or the desktop application.

I am sure that there are many more smaller items that I have missed, but this should get you started. The most important part of this blog kickoff is your participation with us to tell us what you like, don't like and the features that you see as core to making Odeo the your favorite place to discover, enjoy and manage your digital media collection.

eric@odeo