New Kyte Features & Improvements

Hey there - The holidays threw us off a bit from our usual four week release cycle, so today we’re particularly pleased to get these new features and improvements into the wild. As with all our releases there is nothing you need to do to upgrade - all your player embeds will automatically update to the new version and your mobile client will prompt you to update. Here are some of the highlights:

Kyte Player

New player sizes - In addition to the standard player, you can now embed “tall” or “wide” players. The new players let you take advantage of available page real-estate by exposing more of the application at once, allowing you to do things like watch a video and chat at the same time.

Embed from player - You can now embed your channel in multiple destinations from the player itself. For instance, you can be watching or producing from MySpace and then embed to your Piczo profile and WordPress blog, all without leaving the Kyte player.

SMS - You can now share a channel with your friends via SMS. Your friends will receive a link to the channel on Kyte Mobile Web.

Other Improvements - We also made a bunch of UI improvements, including a unified Share function and a redesign of the Chat function.

Kyte Mobile

iPhone - We’ve totally pimped out the iPhone experience, making it easier and more enjoyable to use.

Channel Management

Twitter Integration - This a very cool feature for all you Twitters (Twitterers?) out there. You can now configure Kyte to send out a tweet each time you produce a show.

Channel Visibility - Well it isn’t quite private channels but it’s a step in that direction. Now you can designate a channel as hidden and it will not show up in Kyte public areas (like Just Produced on the kyte.tv website, etc.). Of course people can still view your channel if you’ve embedded it somewhere public. Channels created using the Facebook app will by default be marked as hidden so that only your FB friends with access to your profile will see your channel (unless you or someone else embeds it elsewhere). You can easily change this using the channel management tools (kyte.tv --> My Kyte --> My Channels --> Manage Channel --> Edit Channel Details --> Visibility).

That about sums up the big stuff for this release. We’ve also made improvements on the back-end, but that’s all super techie stuff that’s not so fun to write about. Hope you enjoy the new features and improvements, and as always we look forward to your feedback.

P.S. Subscribe to the Kyte blog RSS feed to automatically get updates on new features!

Kyte Mobile Auto Update

Worried that you might not be running the latest and greatest version of Kyte Mobile? Don’t be. Whenever we release a new version you will be prompted to download it when you launch Kyte Mobile and make a network connection.

New Kyte Mobile Web Features

The Kyte Mobile Web application gets better with every release. Here are some of the highlights from the latest version, just released Monday:

• Kytefeed - now includes relevant chat messages, channel moderation alerts, and new trackbacks.
• Search - now you can search for Channels.
• Notifications - more AJAX-based notifcations for new shows, new slides (LifeStreams), live viewer count.

New Kyte Release

Today we released a new version of Kyte and I’d like to share with you some of the new features.Produce in Player (PiP):

This is a big one for us and something we’ve been planning for a while. The “Produce in Player” provides a simple and convenient way to quickly share pictures, video, or webcam shows right from the player itself, no matter where it’s embedded. Producing a show is really easy: Just click on ‘Produce’ and select what kind of show you want to create (either pictures, video or webcam). After you’ve created your show you can add music or go back and make edits.

By the way, you can still use the advanced Kyte producer tool. Simply click on the link at the bottom of the first “produce a show” screen.

Expanded Kytefeed

We’ve updated the Kytefeed to include your Facebook friends’ activity (if you’re using Kyte on Facebook), chat snippets, new trackback alerts, and channel moderation alerts (pending, approved, rejected).

Social Network Injection

Embedding your Kyte channel in multiple destinations is now super easy. Simply click embed and you’re on your way:

Improved Search Experience

You can now search for both channels and shows. The new search feature includes titles and tags.

Mobile Update

There are a lot of improvements on the mobile end (Kytefeed, Sharing via email) improving the mobile experience.

Hope you enjoy the new release. Please let us know what you think!

Kyte Mobile Web on the iPhone