Wondering how work on Version 3 of myDailyPhoto is going? Well, then I guess it's a good thing we've decided to write up this little blog entry. A lot has been accomplished and we're certainly focusing in on a release timeline, but there's still a lot of hard work to be done.

First off, welcome aboard! I don't know why so many of you joined over the holiday break, but we're definitely glad to have you.

A couple of you have been so kind as to inform me of a little problem you're experiencing regarding this website where our use of Eastern Standard Time is causing a bit of a headache; I thought I'd just go ahead and post a message here so you can all be aware of why it's happening, and what we're doing to fix it.

If you've been wondering where on earth the myDailyPhoto crew went, we want to assure you we're still around. After a long break from coding we're ready to get back into the core of myDailyPhoto, and have even started work on the next version of myDailyPhoto.

We have no idea when mDP 3 will be released as it's way too early to even try and estimate, but things are moving quickly. If you've got any ideas for new features be sure to submit them while you still have a chance. Our Community Manager Ruth (antonymsynonym) will be happy to send your requests along, so leave her a comment if you have something in mind!

You might have noticed that we added another new little feature this evening. The best part? It involves you, your friends, and a bar. Granted it's not the kind of bar you were hoping for (the kind filled with beer and pretty girls / boys), but we think the new "Friend Bar" feature on myDailyPhoto might save you a little time and make your experience a bit better.

The bar shows all of your friends at the top of every page and allows you to quickly navigate from one profile to the next; we're even nice enough to save your spot in the list when you move around! Why? Because we love you.

You've all been ticked off at least once by our forceful image cropping; just admit it. We won't get mad because, frankly, it ticked us off, too. But that's no longer a problem!

As of 12AM EST (midnight here on the East Coast) we've started accepting images in all their vertical glory. You'll still be asked to crop the photo you upload so that it fits nice and neat in your profile, but when people click on the image for a better view they'll see the whole beautiful thing. Happy? We are.

We've made a few changes to the myDailyPhoto front page tonight; website visitors who don't have an account or are not logged in are now presented with an introductory video while those who have an account are shown some of the latest photos from the community and some personal statistics.

This is admittedly a different direction than we had ever planned on going so please bear with us while we find a comfortable design. Also, if you have an idea for any interesting statistics you'd like to see on the new front page, please let us know!

We've spent the better part of this evening implementing our new comment threading feature; now it shouldn't be so hard to keep track of comment conversations you're having with your friends.

To check out how this works go to your profile and look at all of your comments. Below the date in each one is a link that lets you see the thread of comments you've had with that person. The link will also appear on someone else's profile wherever you've left them a comment. We'll be integrating this into the 'Manage Comments' page very soon.

It's my pleasure to announce that we'll stop bugging you. Yes, that's right, you can now tell us to stop sending e-mails about new friends or comments. And if you'd like we'll also stop sending e-mails when we add really cool stuff to the site, though we'd prefer you didn't.

To change notification settings go to your 'Settings' page; you'll see a whole section devoted to just this subject. You might also notice we've moved things around to make it a bit easier to modify your preferences. There are now two settings panels, one for your account and one for your profile.

Today I took my 731st photo; for those of you paying attention that means I've now taken a photo every day for the past two years. As far as I can remember that's the longest I've ever truly committed to anything in my life, even my high school education; it's a great accomplishment for myself, and hopefully will get my parents to stop saying I never finish what I start.

I'd like to take some time, though, and share with you the enjoyable and difficult aspects of participating in a project this involving.

I'm happy to report that we've just purchased a whole new server to use as a back-up for all of the myDailyPhoto data. We'll be performing more regularly scheduled updates of the database and images (which currently number at 19,494). The good news is that by purchasing this server the back-ups can take place automatically during off-peak hours (7AM EST) daily rather than during peak-hours as we manually copy over files.

The efficiency and speed of backing up will dramatically increase and no longer cause a noticeable lag for the website, and of course our reliability and peace of mind goes through the roof. To me the need for a dedicated back-up server is a sign that this little photo community is starting to really take off; and that's exciting.

This evening we changed a few things around on myDailyPhoto; the most noticeable of those is the ability to navigate to a specific month and year from a user profile. Rather than having to use the monthly navigation links below the photo box you can use the drop-down menu to the top-right (just below the completion meter) and select a month. After selection you'll be taken immediately to the corresponding page for that user.

We've also added some new instructions on the webcam update tool for those of you on a Mac; it's a bit trickier the first time than it is for PC users, but after you've done it once you'll never have to worry about it again.

I'm pleased to announce that you can now update your myDailyPhoto account without ever having to click a shutter, sync a camera, or upload any files; now you can update while simply sitting in front of your computer!

The myDailyPhoto developer team has spent the entire day working on a nifty little Flash component that connects to the webcam on your computer, allowing you to snap an image and save it to your account immediately. How awesome is that?

Alright, alright, I give in; just three minutes after releasing the new profile color customization option I had four requests to add more variety.

Ruth was kind enough to ask around and get a list of requested colors and I picked the ones that I felt worked best with the website design, and of course my decision was weighted heavily based on the number of requests for each color. The winners?

Grey, purple, red, and yellow. Enjoy!

I'm pleased to announce that your myDailyPhoto profile now comes in three delicious flavors; the standard blue, pink, or green! I've personally been wanting to implement some small form of profile customization for a while now and had enough free time and motivation to do it this evening.

To change the color of your profile just go to your 'Settings' page and under the 'Profile' section you'll see the option to change your profile color scheme. I've changed mine to green in true Bostonian spirit, and because rocking a pink profile might be, well, a little too Bostonian if you know what I mean. Head on over to my profile to see what the color schemes do, and if you like it, change yours! Enjoy.

The amount of new users, comments, photo votes and everything else we've seen lately is absolutely astounding. myDailyPhoto is recording some record growth, and we like to think we'll be able to keep up this new trend. For just having started a year and a half ago we're very pleased that the community has already neared 150 members, and we're especially pleased to see that those members are actively participating in the community.

Cool charts are available in the full article!

I'm pleased to announce that Ruth (user antonymsynonym) has been selected as the new myDailyPhoto Community Manager. She'll be interacting with our users on a regular basis to try and make sure everyone is having the best experience possible on this website. She'll also be the public face of myDailyPhoto, sort of like Tom from MySpace.

Everyone please give her a big "congrats" and help welcome her aboard the management team.

Shortly after midnight on Tuesday, February 24th the myDailyPhoto server in Dallas bit the dust. We've been struggling with numerous issues at our Dallas co-location facility and they finally came to a head. Unfortunately the problem wasn't noticed until later on that morning. We immediately put together an action plan that involved moving up the date of the server switch; it was a hard decision to make, but it seemed to have the best long-term outlook.

Everything is up and running again with the API. I've also started the work on supporting JSON returns, but it has a bit further to go. Stay tuned here for details.

I'm happy to announce that myDailyPhoto mobile is back up. The feature phone (Moto Razr, Blackberry, etc) and the iPhone sites are both up. Right now the iPhone site is just a slight variant of the feature phone site, but I'll be working on a special treat for iPhone users in the near future.

As I promised, I take the opinion of our users into account. After being asked to bring it back I've re-added the lovely random profile feature. You'll find it in the primary navigation.

It's been two weeks since we release myDailyPhoto version 2.5, but the list of launch-critical pages didn't include the blog. Now that I've finally gotten around to reviving it I figured I should probably post about all of the changes.

After an entire weekend of fiddling with the iPhone SDK I finally threw in the towel; I can program in PHP, JavaScript, JSP, ActionScript and more, but that language is just down right frustrating. The application looked great, sure, but it didn't function at all.

Welcome to the new myDailyPhoto blog, covering all of our development, our API, social interaction ideas, and cool little tips. Check back often to see what we've been up to; coming up very soon are a bunch of posts about iPhone development and information on our API.