Seeing as Switchboard is ticking along nicely now and we are on top of the bug list, I wanted to give you a brief taster of upcoming features that we are already working on. These should be implemented within the next few weeks.

• External discussions

Using a small piece of javascript code that you place on any page of your site (or any site for that matter) external to SB, your site visitors can comment on that page directly within that page, and without leaving that page. All past and present comments can be displaying inline on the page, and will also be shown on your SB as a new external discussion.

I hope I described that without confusing you all, but we are still grinding out the fine details of this one. But I believe it to be the most exciting.

• Auto created discussions from feeds

By simply adding any valid RSS/ATOM feed link, a discussion will be started on your SB. The starting post will be the feed post. Users of your SB can then replay and post comments on that feed. Then whenever a new item is detected on that feed, a new discussion is created.

• User icons/avatars
• Whispers / private messaing system
• Feedburner integration

PLUS loads more...

If you have any ideas for new or existing features, please post away.

Welcome, welcome, welcome!

As you can see we have gone live with Switchboard and the public beta is now open at http://tooum.com Please signup for your Switchboard. It is free and does not include any ads - for the time being.

If you want to know more about us and Switchboard, please visit our new main site at http://tooum.com

• We want to know what you think!
• We want to know what you want!
• We want to know what you like!
• We want to know what you don't like!

So please tell us so that we can make Tooum and Switchboard even better.

IMPORTANT NOTE

Switchboard is currently running in beta mode, which means that it is not quite perfect - yet! We have opened up the beta to the public to gage interest, collect feedback and remove all known bugs from the system. So we would greatly appreciate your help is doing this, by simply posting you comments, bug reports and feature requests right here.

Due to a number of requests for importing functionality from other services, we have suspended all development of any new features so that we can concentrate all our man power on building the planned import system and releasing it as soon as possible.

Initial support will be for Wordpress and PHPBB, but others will also be supported. We need to know what you want to import from, so please let us know in the discussion I created.

As requested, we have implemented a new skin management system. This new system - accessible via your admin panel - lets you edit, create and delete skins for your Switchboard.

A skin is simply a CSS file that inherits the main Switchboard CSS file. This main CSS file is not editable, but any skin you create inherits its properties, so you can still edit any part of the CSS structure.

You can also publish your skin creations and mark them as public. This will let other Switchboard owners use your public skin and create new skins based off that skin.

Pretty cool, I know. So play around and let us know what you think.

A number of bug fixes have also been applied. Thankfully these were few and far between, and as of this post, we are unaware of any other bugs. But remember, if you find any, please let us know.

Stand by for further updates and new features.