luxury Louis Vuitton Wallets insider: 三月 2012

Today we’re expanding XING’s mobile offering by releasing a Windows Phone 7 app (marketplace link) to accompany our existing iPhone, Android and BlackBerry apps. While our iPhone and Android apps were created in house, we called upon the services of our partner, Zühlke Engineering, to develop the Windows Phone 7 app.

Zühlke has been a Microsoft development partner for almost 20 years, so I’m really happy that they agreed to develop our Windows Phone 7 app as they used their long-standing experience to exploit all of the features available in that operating system in order to provide our users with the best-possible mobile networking experience.

Our Windows Phone 7 app perfectly combines XING’s personal and professional networking features with Zühlke’s experience and product ideas.

Solid partnerships like this one coupled with the ongoing development of our core product help to make sure that you get ahead in business as our mobile apps mean that you can take your network with you wherever you go!

We intend to step up our efforts in this regard by releasing a XING API so that professional developers can get involved and become part of the overall process consisting of ideas, design, development and of course business networking. So don’t forget to keep an eye out for new developments in the future! (If you’d like to get in touch with us in the meantime, just send an email to business-development@xing.com containing your specific product suggestion.)

P.S.: We’ll be releasing a new version of our in-house-developed iPhone and Android apps soon. And by going to touch.xing.com you can access our Mobile Web App which allows you to comment on updates posted by your contacts while you’re out and about.

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2012年3月3日星期六

Comment on Improved Range For Your Content by Dario Kreštalica

Today’s release includes a number of new interaction and information options to improve the range of your links, group posts and Company Profiles.

The new share button.

You probably talk about your hobbies and various other topics while you’re in the office or when out and about in the evenings. If you’re also keen on sharing information you posted on XING on other sites and vice versa, you can now take advantage of our new share button without losing any of your privacy or having to make a distinction between your working and private life. The share button is a simple way for you to share content such as your blog or third-party news articles with your XING network. To do so, the site you’d like to share needs to have integrated the share button, which is why we came up with a simple button builder that also allows you to get link statistics such as the number of clicks and shares.

Some time ago we added the option to share status updates and items shared on XING (e.g. Company Profile recommendations or interesting group posts) on Twitter as well. We’ve now taken this a step further and added the option to share all of the above on Facebook as well, which of course helps you improve the range of your events, status posts, and much more.

All you need to do is enter your login details and authorize the feature and you can start sharing right away while maintaining full control over what you share with whom.

We’ve also been busy working on our Company Profiles overview page for non-logged-in users. That way companies can showcase their business on XING so that potential customers or employees not registered on XING can still see useful information if they come across the profile while using a search engine. This then grabs the visitors’ attention and encourages them to find out more. Profile managers can of course choose whether they want to take advantage of this option via the “This Company Profile is visible to search engines and non-XING members” setting.

In the run-up to Christmas we added the option to access groups from the mobile web app (http://touch.xing.com/). We’ve now taken this a step further so you can also reply to group posts while using the web app on your mobile device. We’ve got plenty of other developments in store for you, so watch this space!

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Comment on Its not our fault – we suffer from GlobalCollect by juliano

Today, once again, we’re afflicted with a service outage at the hands of our payment provider, GlobalCollect. As this is not the first such outage, I feel that we should be more vocal about the quality of service they provide us.

From the web site:

“GlobalCollect is the leading Payment Service Provider of local payment solutions for international businesses. For each of our clients, we offer the highest service level that includes a dedicated team who thrives to optimize your payment strategy. This optimization will significantly contribute to increasing your sales and reducing risk. GlobalCollect is a real partner offering a full service that is uniquely in a class of its own.”

OK – now it’s time to wake up and face reality. One hour after(!) the start of the outage, GlobalCollect sent us an automated email to inform us of the down time. Right now, GlobalCollect “service” has been out of operation for almost five hours during our prime time. Calls made to the GlobalCollect “dedicated” team on a so-called emergency number are answered by a clueless call center agent who promises a callback we have yet to receive. Calls made to the GlobalCollect office are put through to a very friendly receptionist who explains that all servers are down and that no one can answer our calls. Amazingly, it seems that there is not a single soul at GlobalCollect who can provide us with the slightest bit of information about the outage, while in the meantime our company’s business model was at a standstill.

This is totally unacceptable for any serious business relationship, and we at XING are not willing to tolerate this any more. We won’t be satisfied with a letter from GlobalCollect pointing to their Internet provider as a scapegoat. By paying for your service, XING expects – at the very least – that GlobalCollect have redundant network connections, if not redundant data centers. For our part, we will definitely be looking for an additional payment service provider.

Update 1: 15.2.07 3pm
We just got a very kind message from Ron Vollebregt (Chief Operating Officer, Co-founder and co-owner of? GlobalCollect):

We fully understand your frustration and we take full? responsibility for the
problems regardless of where and how they were caused. Fact is that we
have redundancy throughout our platform (incl dual sites) but that for some as
yet unidentified reason, failover mechanisms didn’t work. I have asked
Pieter Stal to contact you to discuss the consequences.

Update 2: 16.2.07 6pm
We got a very friendly “we are sorry” message from Ron today saying the error was at their provider CSC. They promise to look into increasing redundancy. We will see, if we have problems again. In the end, I don’t care about their provider having problems, it is Global Collects duty have have at least redundancy.

WebCollect has proven to be a stable platform over the years, includes an SLA of 99.9%, and has been successfully processing millions of transactions per month. The platform is hosted by our preferred supplier CSC. The company is one of the world’s largest hosting providers, is stock listed, and has an impressive track record. Despite this, their professional and secure hosting facility located in Copenhagen, had a full outage of their entire datacenter on Saturday February 10th and Thursday, February 15th.? The outage not only affected GlobalCollect, but also all of CSC’s other clients from payment processors to traffic control centers, BASF/Shell and SAS.
Let there be no misunderstanding that as your payment service provider, GlobalCollect feels responsible for the recent events that have taken place. The nature and frequency of the incidents are unacceptable to all of us, and we will make sure that analysis of these events will be used to properly prevent outages in the future. In the meantime, we are investigating additional hosting partners to further increase redundancy.

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Comment on Improved Range For Your Content by Dario Kreštalica

Today’s release includes a number of new interaction and information options to improve the range of your links, group posts and Company Profiles.

The new share button.

All you need to do is enter your login details and authorize the feature and you can start sharing right away while maintaining full control over what you share with whom.

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Comment on Available on the Mac App Store now: Synchronize your XING contacts with your Mac address book by Karolin

Update: Unfortunately: As the sync framework – SyncServices – that our app is based has been deprecated and causes various problems in Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion” and will no longer be a part of OS X 10.8 “Mountain Lion” at all, we have decided to no longer offer the application on the Mac App Store.

As a XING member you’re well aware of the multifaceted uses our business network offers, ranging from job or client searches to expert group discussions, from events through to personal address books that are updated automatically. What was John’s phone number again? Where does Paul work? All it takes is a quick and simple login to find out this and more. Ideally, this information should also be available no matter where you are, which is why we provide smartphone apps and the Xobni and Microsoft Outlook Social Connector (OSC) plugins.

Today we’re expanding this feature set by giving Mac users the option to integrate XING contacts in their address book. The previously experimental XING Sync tool is now available on the Mac App Store. After starting the tool and completing the one-time login, it will then load and import your XING contacts into your address book which are then updated on a regular basis. In keeping with our privacy policy, only the details contacts have made available to you will be imported. A small icon in the menu bar allows you to check the tool’s latest status, i.e. “synchronizing”, “synchronized”, etc. The XING Sync tool runs on both Mac OS X 10.6 (“Snow Leopard”) and Mac OS X 10.7 (“Lion”), so you always have your up-to-date business network at your fingertips!

You can then use iTunes to synchronize your address book with, e.g. your iPhone.

Please note: If you already have the old, experimental “XING OS X Sync Plugin” installed, you’ll need to uninstall it before installing this plugin. To do so, go to “System Preferences” and then click on “XING Sync” followed by “Unregister Sync”. To complete the uninstall process, right-click on the XING icon in the “System Preferences” overview and then on “Remove XING Sync”.

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Comment on Mobile Groups, Improvements to Polls and Events by ChrisB

It may be the shortest day of the year, but our developers have been busy and are releasing the fruits of their labor which includes a number of optimizations.

We’ve made things easier for our mobile web app users who access XING by going to touch.xing.com on their mobile device’s browser. Now users can access group posts and view new group posts either in their “Network News” stream of by tapping << followed by “My Groups” in the menu that appears. By the way, you can also “install” the mobile web app like you would with the native apps by adding a link to your home screen. And we’re still working hard to allow you to reply to group posts when out and about. Oh, and our latest Android app now also features the optimized profile, including an easy shortcut to phone people.

Last week we launched our polls feature within the scope of XING Beta Labs. We’ve now made two small improvements based on feedback we received from users. Firstly, the name of the person who created a poll is not only named, a link to their profile is also included so you can see who posted the poll originally and add a comment there if you prefer. Secondly, the total number of participants can now be seen by users who submit a vote.

And we don’t want to neglect all of the event organizers out there, so now we’re providing you with an editor so you can easily spruce up your event description text by adding headers and other forms of text emphasis.

On that note, we’d like to say thanks for reading this year and don’t worry – we’ve got plenty in store for you in 2012!

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2012年3月2日星期五

Comment on XING Prototyping Days: Shaping the future of business networking by Expart

Jens Pape, CTO XING AG

Prototyping on the roof. (Photo: Moritz K?nigsbuscher.)

From Wednesday to Friday last week, the XING office was turned on its head as staff from around the entire company joined forces to work on the XING Prototyping Days!

At this point, you may well be asking yourself, what are the Prototyping Days? Well, they’re an opportunity for everyone in the company – from HR through to customer support and on to QA – to take three days out from their usual work to get involved in a project of their choice, be it alone or as a team. Around forty projects were put forward, with people signing up to projects they found interesting.

The idea behind the Prototyping Days was to develop visions to help shape the future of business networking in the year 2015 by coming up with prototypes, pre-alpha versions, or even just a concept.

The event was kicked off in true style by Robert Powell who gave an inspirational and informative talk on prototyping based on the decades of experience he has amassed in designing automobile prototypes. After that, people split up into their groups, stocked up on nibbles and drinks, and got to work on their ideas and designs.

The designers, some of whom had been getting things ready for several weeks, then started building prototypes, line for line, long into the night. The deadline was 3 p.m. on Friday, at which time the entire company went to the alte Oberpostdirektion around the corner to attend the presentation session where each team was given five minutes to present their idea and convince the jury that their prototype was the best on offer.

The projects that were presented covered a wide spectrum, ranging from mobile apps to offline concepts and on to visionary designs. There were ideas on how expand and improve user profiles, personal networks, business life in general, as well as insights into how online and offline networking could be shaped in the future.

Presenting on stage.

The presentation session was followed by a party which gave everyone a chance to talk about their favorite presentations, which came in all shapes and forms such as trailers, sketches, and slideshows. This gave the jury time to choose the winners of the various categories (such as “most innovative”) who were given great prizes during the award ceremony for all the hard work they had put in.

All of the great ideas have now been taken on board and will be used by XING as a form of inspiration and source of ideas for the future. Since then, things have more or less returned to normal here in the office and we’ll be launching a new feature during this week’s release.

You’ll find more pictures on pictures on flickr!

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Comment on Mobile Groups, Improvements to Polls and Events by Christian Burtchen

It may be the shortest day of the year, but our developers have been busy and are releasing the fruits of their labor which includes a number of optimizations.

On that note, we’d like to say thanks for reading this year and don’t worry – we’ve got plenty in store for you in 2012!

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