In our efforts to create a more connected phonebook, we are now releasing an easy way for our users to share their location on the website. The location can be set on all pages and we use Google's map API to retrieve the specific geo location.

In addition to letting the user enter the location manually, we are taking advantage of the W3C Geolocation API. This API lets the browser specify the location automatically if it can retrieve it using GPS or Wi-Fi signals. The feature will be built into Firefox 3.1, but for now you can use an add-on called Geode. It looks like this:

When you log into zyb.com you are asked to give your location by Geode. You can then specify the accuracy in which you want to give it. If you aren't comfortable with sharing your exact location, you can just specify the city or country. This is a great and easy way to share your location with your friends and family. The feature will be live in a few days, so go download Geode.

Today's release introduced a lot of new features - both visible and invisible ones. Among the invisible ones are support for more phone brands and types, faster synchronization and automatic Flickr account discoverability for contacts. They are significant improvements and deserve a post each, but this time I'll tell you about the new visible features instead.

OpenID

It is now possible to sign in and sign up using OpenID. All existing users can also login using their OpenID and then associate the OpenID with the existing account.  That means you don't lose any contacts or events because everything stays the same, except you can now use OpenID to authenticate yourself.

FriendPlayer

During the last months, our product and design team has been experimenting with different ways of showing what your contacts have been up to. First came the Friendstream, which was a graphical representation of the usual date sorted list of status updates and events. Now, they came up with a Friendplayer, which is very unique and give you a brilliant way of getting the latest updates from your contacts. It looks a bit like a cross between the Friendstream and a video player.

Public API

On zyb.com/feeds you can see a list of all  the different kind of information and formats you need to create mash-ups or third-party integrations. Currently we support 6 different formats and you can retrieve contacts, calendar events, SMS'es and activities on the Life- and FriendPlayer. The formats are RSS, JSON, FOAF, SIOC, VCard and VCalendar.

The information is protected by a special key that only the account owner knows, but is free to distribute. The key can be changed easily, which will render all the old URLs useless.

Hyves social network

We've added support for the Hyves social network, primarily used in the Netherlands. This means that Hypes users can now import thumbnail pictures and other information from their friends on Hyves, and merge them with the contacts on the phone.  Most Sony Ericsson devices support contact thumbnail synchronization, so you get a nice picture displayed on the phone when a friend calls.

Performance improvements

Using YSlow and Fiddler to monitor the network traffic, we have made huge improvements in the website performance. By using the right cache strategies we were able to reduce the amount of data a user needed to download significantly. Also, zyb.com relies heavily on the use of JavaScript and we have worked very hard on optimizing the code for better performance. Performance optimization is still very high on our to-do list the next 1½ month, so expect to see the site getting faster and faster during that period.

Finally, I just want to wish you happy ZYBbing and I hope you will enjoy the new features as much as we did implementing them.