One of the changes mentioned in the last post was the simplification of the settings page. We want to make sure that people can control who has access to their journal content, particularly as there is location information in there. However one risk you always face when you make security settings very customizable is that no one bothers to use it, or doesn’t understand what the effect of the settings are.
As we discussed how to make things simpler, we realised that there are actually two main types of information in peoples’ journals – user posted content and automatic tracking information. When you post a message, either through the web, or from your phone, you choose the privacy level you want. On the web there are check buttons to choose between public, family and friends, or private. From the phone you can send to 8555 for public, 8888 for friends and family and 8000 for private.
As you get to decide what you are posting about and who should see it there isn’t any need to have other settings to control the access. If you want to say in your post that you are in London and you set it to public, there’s not much point in the journal only showing your location as “United Kingdom” as anyone reading the post can see that you’re in London.
On the other hand, the automatic tracking entries get posted by the system, so you do need a way to specify who gets to see them and how detailed they should be. So now there is one check box to let you turn tracking on or off, and one setting to make your tracked entries public, friends and family, or private. There are advanced settings if you do want finer control but these are now mostly to control what things people can do on your journal, such as posting a comment, calling you, or sending you a text message.
Do not purchase ISI Connect prepaid phone cards! If you are traveling in Europe they have all switched to a system that requires a card with a chip. Its a waist of money and will only make your trip more frustrating
- I think it is cool that family/friends can see the weather, but it would be awesome if they could see my local time, based on where my phone is. And the ultimate would be a field which I can input good times to call, so the page can say “this is a good time to call” or “this is not a good time to call.” Just a suggestion. I will enjoy it anyway.
Dear Random, our phonecards are virtual, which means that you don’t need a physical card. After you create your account, you just need to dial an access number for the country you are in, enter your account number and PIN and then you can make calls and listen to voicemail or email. You can call from a normal phone, a payphone, or a mobile phone (although some access number are more expensive if you use a payphone)
Dear Alicia, friends and family can see your local time if they view the “get in touch” page of your journal. On that page they can see where you are, the weather, the local time and make a call to you or send you a text message.
We have thought about letting people define times of the day when calls should be diverted. So you could set your phone to divert to voicemail between 10pm and 8am local time. Sounds like that would be a feature you would find useful.