Folia Street Team relaunch - come join and help spread the word!

I’m really eager to get the Folia Street Team going again, as it’s been a little neglected of late. I’ve just given the group a lick of paint with a brand new logo and banner, so join the group if you are interested in helping us to find ways to spread the word about the site now that the gardening season is in full swing!

Folia Street Team – A Grassroots Campaign

p.s. I might even be creating special limited edition Street Team badges for everyone who joins! ;)

Want to create a logo for your group?

You may have noticed that the Groups page is now looking a little more colourful and a lot more interesting – we’ve been busy adding logos and banners for the most popular groups.

We’d love to add more group images, so if you are the caretaker of a group and would like to create a logo and banner for your group, download your templates here…

http://myfolia.com/images/groups/template/square.png

http://myfolia.com/images/groups/template/banner.png

…and send them to hello@myfolia.com with the name of your group and we’ll upload them for you asap.

If you aren’t the caretaker of your group but you are interested in helping out, contact the caretaker to ask them if they are okay with you creating the images on their behalf and go for it!

New Blog Widget : Latest in my Seed Stash

We've just released a new little blog widget to the site - this one shows the latest additions to your seed stash. You'll find the code to install over on the Goodies page.

Supporter Beta: The Folia Mobile App v0.1!

We’ve just released the very first version of the Folia mobile app (YaY!), and we need help to test and improve it. So, get your smartphones at the ready and point your Safari browsers at:

http://myfolia.com/mobile

What do we currently have in version 0.1?

• Planting Lists – see everything in your planted lists
• Plant Wiki – search for plants and view the wiki (you can also add new plantings from here)
• Add Milestone Events

The mobile app is currently in Supporter Beta – if you aren’t yet a Supporter, please consider becoming one as it helps us with hosting costs and allows us to make cool features like this one!

If you have an idea on how to make the mobile app better – let us know in the Suggestions & Feedback group.

If you’ve found a bug, or something isn’t working as you think it should – let us know in the Bugs & Issues group . If you could let us know what sort of device (iPhone, Android, iPad etc.) you are using, that would be great!

New! Quick Add Plantings & Milestones Box

Hi all – everyone will now see the new yellow Quick Add box on their gardener homepages. Supporters have been testing the Quick Add milestone feature out for us for the last couple of weeks, and now we think it’s ready for everyone to use.

This box lets you quickly enter events for your existing plantings, add photos and other bits and pieces. If you havent yet created the planting yet, no problems – you can now switch instantly into Add New Planting mode on the same box! Click on the “Add new planting” link in the yellow headline area to switch views.

As this is a fairly complex feature, we’d love everyone’s help to get it tested – we’ll be testing and hot-fixing all day, so if you notice anything strange, log it in the Bugs & Issues group and we’ll get it fixed asap.

If you have any thoughts or suggestions for improvements, let us know in the Suggestions & Feedback group!

Quick Add Garden Milestones: "What's happening in your garden?"

We released a new feature this morning – you’ll now find a new yellow box on your gardener dashboards called “What’s happening in your garden?”

This box lets you quickly add planting events without creating journal entries – perfect for when you want to quickly log events about your plantings but don’t have much to say about them. You can add notes, harvest quantities and all the usual bits and pieces that you can do from the existing journal page too.

As a bonus, we’ve also added a definition for each event – so you’ll never get your “flowering” mixed up with your “blooming” again! (A big thanks to our fab Folia Helpers for writing these event definitions for us!)

Below the Quick Add is a list of the most recent milestones that you’ve logged in your garden – and if you are feeling the urge to peek over the garden fence, you can also expand out to show latest milestones from gardeners you follow (network) and everyone on folia.

This is currently a Supporter Beta Feature – free account holders will not currently see this feature. If you are a Supporter, it would be fantastic if you can give us a hand to test this feature – if you find a bug, please log it in the Bugs & Issues group and we’ll get it fixed up asap!

Folia API Starts Now!

At the core of the the brand spanking new widgets is the start of our Folia API.

For those who I’ve lost already, an API is a set of rules that allow software to send and receive data from other software (like Folia). The API will allow us (or you) to build iPhone Apps, Android Apps, Flash/AIR Apps, Desktop Apps, gosh just about any type of software that can talk to Folia via the Internet.

The first set of APIs we’re opening up are public ones relating to Gardener Mini-Profile, Latest Plantings and Latest Stash. We’ve built two blog widgets that utilise the Gardener and Latest Planting APIs and we’ve released the source code on googlecode so you can grab it, pull it apart and build other things with it. We’re hoping that we have some cleaver Folians that can make Wordpress plugins or embed these into Facebook in some way – which would be totally cool!

So with the first step done we can test the structure and load ready for the next step – the full blown authenticated API.

We’ll be working on releasing bits and pieces as we go – so the best place to keep up to date with this is by joining the Folia Developers group. Even if you’re just interested in the blog widgets then also feel free to join – we want to add to these as well to make them super useful. I’m sure there are a few other datasets that people would like to be made available and built for them.

So if you’re a HTML/CSS/JS ninja, an ObjectiveC or Java rockstar, or a Flash-meister then join the Folia Developers group, tell us what you know, what you need and what you want to build!