We have received an invitation to have a Netscape engineer sit on the RSS Advisory Board, and have chosen to send Chris Finke, one of our senior engineers. We are excited to have Netscape representation on the board. As one of the original RSS innovators, Netscape looks forward to helping to shape the future of the standard.

At long last, the Netscape team is proud to release a Beta of the next generation My.Netscape, at: http://my.netscape.com

This site will be live tomorrow (Tuesday 3/6).

My.Netscape will retain its identity as a personalized homepage, with a minimum of ad clutter. The initial release will in fact have no ads at all! Our programming staff has worked hard to create a framework that allows for scalability and UI elegance.

We invite any and all feedback on bugs in the product and suggestions for how to better it. We will have a link to a feedback form to help in communicating your thoughts back to the development team, prominently featured at the top of the My Netscape page. We have a long list of extra features that we will add to the My Netscape experience as the weeks go by, but please do let us know how we are doing. We appreciate it!

We are also hard at work at finishing a migration feature that allows previous users of My.Netscape to import their stock portfolio and favorite bookmark preferences. We hope to have that available soon, keep an eye out.

In Figure 1 below, you will see the left side of the My.Netscape screen, including a configured Weather module. The modules can be dragged and dropped to enable easy configuration of your layout. Logging into the site with your existing Netscape.com username and password will allow you to save your module layouts and settings to view them from anywhere.

Figure 1:



In Figure 2, you will see the Add Content layer, which will allow you to easily add modules to your My.Netscape screen. We have just under 100 modules that can be added already, from the mainstream to the off beat, from niche categories to generic widgets. For those who have favorite RSS feeds that aren't listed, you can use our generic RSS feed reader. In most cases, it's as easy as clicking Add!

We hope that all of the folks who patiently waited for this release will enjoy using the new product. There's even a module for a game that many of you requested we resurrect when we launched the new Netscape.com last summer. :-)

Figure 2:

Figure 1: Our developers worked hard over the past 24 hours in the computer dungeon we've built for them.

You know all those people you see on TV who have gone in for some plastic surgery and come out with just a wee bit too much Botox? Or people who have their smile worked on and it just looks a bit too much like the smile on Jack Nicolson's version of The Joker in Tim Burton's Batman?

Well, yesterday, after our facelift to our member pages, many of you let us know loud and clear that you thought we'd crossed that line from delicate touch up to Frankenstinian abomination.

Today, we pushed an update to those changes that we hope will convince you that we were just suffering from some post-facelift swelling.

We've fixed a lot of bugs, ordered member activity in chronological order on the profile page, and added more options for the Friends' page, including as list of your friends' recent submissions (as in the last generation of the profile pages) and a Recent Friends' Activity page, which is a web-based version of our recently released Firefox extension. We've also added a new stats page and upped the font size of any Notes you want to add to the stories on your Activity pages. Also, there is now a note at the bottom of each story indicating what type of interaction you had with the story.

As always, let us know what you think. We'll keep the developers in the computer dungeon for as long as it takes to improve this site. They like it in there.

We're expanding our team!

Software Engineer

We're currently looking for a developer to supplement our browser development team that could also lend a hand with Web development. The ideal candidate will have:

• 3+ years experience in software development.
• Strong PHP/MySQL skills
• Substantial C/C++ skills
• Strong Javascript, XML, and DOM manipulation skills
• A solid understanding of XPCOM
• Experience building cross-platform applications
• and, of course, a willingness to learn, solid time management skills, and a sweet ride that I could maybe borrow sometimes.
  

Additionally:

• Familiarity with the Mozilla Firefox codebase is a plus
• Experience with XUL is preferred but not necessary
• A college degree is great, but not required; a substantial skillset can speak for itself.

Furthermore, you must be willing to work from home (using awesome Netscape-provided equipment), and you must be willing to let us pay you handsomely for the privilege. If you don't want to work from home, you could look into renting some office space, but that's your call. To apply, send your resume and cover letter to Tom at tom@newnetscape.com

Web designer

We'd like to find a talented, motivated individual with:

• A strong design aesthetic
• Serious CSS skills (as in, it's your middle name)
• Intimate HTML knowledge: semantics, standards (You're a hand-coder)
• Hero-level organizational skills

And bonus points if:

• You're great at illustration, icons, infographics
• You're a self-starter who needs little supervision
• You have great ideas and are willing to share

As with the Developer position, the Design position is work-from-home (with travel necessary 3-4 weeks/year). We'll provide equipment and great compensation... just bring the talent. To apply, send your resume and cover letter to Andy at andy@newnetscape.com

The Netscape development team is happy to announce documentation on our existing APIs, located at: http://www.netscape.com/api

Details on our RSS feeds, syndicated voting, FeedBurner feedflares, Video Syndication, Podcasts and Story submission bookmarklet can all be found on this page, with more great APIs to come. This page will become our API Central, where developers/integrators can come back often to see notes on improved and new APIs.

Comments and questions are welcome here, or you can always bug our resident api nerd, Chris Finke. :)

For those who wonder who is writing all of these wonderful new features on Netscape.com, we have assembled for you the following list of auto-biographies:

Tom Drapeau (http://www.netscape.com/member/tdrapeau) - Tom Drapeau is the lead developer for Netscape.com. Although it is the job he always dreamed he'd have, he's had a pretty good time for the last decade, writing code and building sites for Barnes & Noble, Online Retail Partners, Yahoo!, and Ask Jeeves. Tom is an excellent speller, having taken first place in his second grade spelling bee, and hates wearing ties.

Andy Fraley (http://www.netscape.com/member/Andy) - Andy Fraley is lead interface designer for Netscape.com. He is also an illustrator, writer and book worm. He enjoys book arts and print design, as well.


Figure 1: You can find all the developers listed on our About Page (http://www.netscape.com/about/)

Trey Long (http://www.netscape.com/member/Trey) - Trey is ye olde Netscape veteran at this point. His real name is James Long III, and he comes from a small town that knows more about fishing and mudding than the internet. He's been working IT jobs since he was 16 in everything from repair to support to programming. Trey wrote a Basic application launcher in middle school for the Math dept., it was in VGA and everything; man was it sweet! He learned C around the same time; since then his programming skills have been slowly waning. It's estimated that he will be completely worthless around 30 (only 6 years to go). He still doesn't have a degree because he's a terrible student and a slacker.

Craig Wood (http://www.netscape.com/member/Craig) - Craig Wood loves to write code. He started programming computers on a 3.5K Vic-20 in 1980. This led to a simple style of coding with shortcuts that are not often loved by other coders. However, this uber-efficient approach leaves CPUs with idle time to pursue other activities. Craig's development servers have taken to painting pictures or playing music in their free time. With an extended background in web spiders, search engine optimization and marketing, learned while working for his previous employeer, Did-it.Com, Craig was the perfect candidate to build Netscape Search. In May of 2006 Craig was excited to join the Netscape team. With the convergance of cellular bandwidth coming of age Craig has found the perfect job: writing code 2 miles out at sea while waiting for the fish to bite.

Christopher Finke (http://www.netscape.com/member/cfinke) - Chris Finke is one of several developers for Netscape.com, as well as Netscape's only in-house browser developer. His hobbies include cooking, woodworking, and writing short bios about himself. Bonus fact: Chris had never eaten a funnel cake until about a month ago, but he plans on having another one soon.

Blaine Garrett (http://www.netscape.com/member/blainegarrett) - Blaine Garrett is a new addition to the Netscape.com dev team hailing from the lovely Twin Cities. He has done development and consulting for a number of places including Reference.com and the University of Minnesota. In his spare time, he serves as the Executive Director for the TC based Arts non-profit The Art Attack and attempts to keep up on his artwork. He also pretends to be a musician and has recently started learning to play the theremin, which is only going so-so.

Travis Terry (http://www.netscape.com/member/travesty) - Travis Terry is one of the new kids on the block for the Netscape team, but he doesn't like New Kids on the Block. He's an old-school programmer from the dark days of client-side application development on Windows, who has found the light in web application development. Go Open Source! He enjoys programming, staying indoors on hot days, and programming some more with an occasional break for movies and video games.