BricaBox Blog

Hello friends, Kyle here with some news we’re pretty stoked about: we’re about to unleash we just unleashed some really awesome new functionality and a bunch of bug fixes for our pride and joy, BricaBox! For your reading pleasure, below you’ll find a brief list of the new stuff we rolled out this morning.

MultiContent
- Each BricaBox can now have multiple content types. Want to create your own version of 43 People, Places, and Things? Easy! Just add a content type for each. Each content type can have its own set of attributes, too. For instance, a Person might have a URL and no address, whereas a Place might have an address and no URL.
- Each content type can have its own custom layout. Just go to Manage > Blocks & Layout > Content Layout. You’ll be able to select which blocks appear for which types of content. Easy.
- Filterable content list on steroids

Community Features
- Profile comments + email notifications about ‘em (you can turn these off on your account settings page)
- Comment block now has pagination on the homepage

Engagement
- Engagement can now be toggled on and off for a BricaBox (e.g. if you’d like to disable voting on a Top 100 list)

User Interface & Bug Fixes
- Lots of UI enhancements + refinements
- A ton of backend tweaks and bug fixes

We’re really excited about where BricaBox is headed in the coming weeks and months, and you can expect more fixes, enhancements, and upgrades as we progress towards our January launch.

As always, please get in touch with us if you have any questions, feedback, comments, complaints, or otherwise; we’re all ears! I should note that a great deal of the features rolled out today are based directly on feedback from a group of very valuable people: YOU!

Cheers!

It’s almost a little silly, but we never officially announced BricaBox’s launch last week. So here we go:

“BricaBox has officially launched.”

There, I said it. It’s official.

What really happened is that we arrived in Las Vegas, and before we went out to the first round of shmooze-fests, we threw off the mask that kept non-logged in folks from seeing public sites on the platform, and allowed anyone to create a user account with us. Without announcing a thing, we came back and 12 people had registered.

So that was our launch: anyone can register, and anyone can see a public site.

What’s still closed is the ability to make new sites. This, will be rolled out in our “January release,” but if you’re too anxious and would like to get a site now, contact us and let us know what site you’d like to make. Chances are we can squeeze you into the pre-launch publishers queue Also, please sign up for our publishers email list, hosted by the Google (Groups). That’s a great way to chat with other publishers and people who are also interested in publishing a BricaBox-powered site.

If you already noticed that we launched, or only know us since we launched, you’ve also probably seen some new designing going on. Just today, Kyle updated the home and login/sign up pages. He wrote about it here.

Lastly, we’ve been very excited to have enjoyed nice press, even without sending out a single release. Check out this Twitter message from web-strategist.com’s Jeremiah Owyang:

.

Hi, Kyle here. I wanted to write a brief post explaining some of the visual changes BricaBox is undergoing as we speak. You may have noticed the brand new homepage we’ve got up at www.bricabox.com; it’s just one of the many redesigned aspects of the app we’ll be rolling out in the next few weeks. We’re taking an in-depth look at each page and identifying what we do well, as well as what we could be doing better. It’s our hope that the upcoming design changes will make BricaBox the killer publishing platform you’ve been looking for. So, if you see a page that looks funny, slightly out of whack, or just plain screwed up, our apologies, but rest assured something great is coming very soon. Cheers!

I should be packing, or QAing BricaBox, or writing up a press release, or, well, a lot of things… instead, I’m writing to say how excited I am for this trip to Vegas we’re about to take.

In a few hours, I’ll meet Kyle at JFK airport and board our JetBlue flight to Las Vegas. When we land (around noon), we’ll head to the hotel (the Hilton), and then immediately head to the Convention Center, which is right across the street. After setting up (nothing to set-up, really — just make sure everything is there), we’ll head back to the hotel to push out whatever major updates we need to before opening up to the world (actually, while Kyle is coding, I have a few important errands to run).

Then it’s time to party and shmooze. We’ll be heading to The Conversation Group’s party at Hard Rock Cafe, for sure. Other parties are sure to jot across the Twitter feed and we’ll find ourselves at those too. All this before finally heading back to the hotel again to get ready for a big next day.

On the day of the Expo, both Kyle and I will be “manning” our booth — booth 502, to be exact. We’re super excited to be right next to AdaptiveBlue, another New York, and much more semantically advanced, company. I’ve met Karen, the head of Engineering, back at the Supernova Mixer in NYC, but have yet to meet Fraser and Alex. This will be fun.

What to expect from BricaBox:

We’re launching what we’re calling a “public alpha” of the platform. Really, it’s a public beta mixed with a private alpha (the beta being the outward facing sites and the alpha being the publisher site of the platform). Either way we cut it, we expect to be one of the freshest companies there (I don’t know of anyone else launching there), though certainly one of the more technologically awesome.

More launch news will come out later regarding the launch (that’s the “press release” I was talking about).

Lastly, expect us to live blog a little. If we’re not live blogging it’s probably because we’re talking about BricaBox and meeting all the great folks at the conference. I’ll also probably do a little Twittering, so head there or “follow” innonate if you’re interested.

We’re at the office late tonight, in honor (or fear) of the 1-week-to-launch date upon us. Peep this screenshot to see one of the sites powered by the platform that we’ll launch on the 8th. It’s the community-powered “New York Technology Directory.”

By the way, you see that Technorati data? Yeah, that’s what BricaBox does. It makes your content smarter.

So things are kicking along nicely for BricaBox. With what good news shall I begin?!

• Winning 2nd Place in Sun Microsystem’s Startup Challenge at Startup Camp?
• BricaBox Launch at Blog World Expo?
• New BricaBox Headquarters?
• Next week’s Feedback Forum and a first peek at BricaBox?
• Interview with John Havens of Blog Talk Radio?

Here it goes:

News Item #1
We’re proud to say that BricaBox won 2nd place (after a double tiebreaker) at Sun Mircosystems’ “Best Startup” Contest at Startup Camp NYC. There were over 25 companies who entered and they were all awesome. Congrats go to our friends at UpNext for their 1st place finish. Also, a big thank you to Sun and the Startup Camp folks (David Berlind & Co). Also, big thanks to our friends Charlie and Alex of Path101 and Michael of A.viary for their help in the competition. It was a swell event and we had fun (by the way, I hosted a fun session called the “Business of APIs” inspired by the Mashery Conference I went to, and will post about it on my blog later this week).

News item #2:
We now have a phase 1 launch date! On November 8th, we’ll be down in Las Vegas for the Blog World Expo and from that location we’ll set some of the first sites “powered by BricaBox” live on the world. We’re really excited and will have more info about that launch soon. (Also, if you plan on being there (Las Vegas, Nov 8 - 9th), drop us a line on the contact page and or just come find us at booth 502.)

News item #3:
Next we should tell you about our new home on 23rd Street. Actually, we can’t really tell you much about it yet. That will also be its own post in the coming future. But let’s just say that we’re super happy to be in a very cool incubator space for the next few months as we transition into some longer-term startup space we’re actually helping build!

News item #4:
Next Monday, the 29th, BricaBox will be presenting at NYCE’s Feedback Forum. Spaces are limited, so if you’re interested in stopping by, checking out BricaBox and giving us some constructive criticism, please do!

News item #5:
While at Startup Camp, I had the good fortune of getting interviewed by Blog Talk Radio’s own Director of Biz Dev John Havens (most of you know him for his contributions in organizing PodCamp). Anyway, I had a great time — despite the fact that it was so early in the morning — and you can check out the interview here (or embedded below).

Even more news soon, but thats it for now.