Hi Everyone!

We're delighted to announce that the first prototype of Music Teachers' Map is now available!

http://www.musbook.com/teacher.php

This global map of teachers will allow anyone to scroll to their area, see at a glance all the teachers nearby who teach a specific instrument, then get in contact and arrange a trial lesson. Because the map links through to MusBook profiles, it will allow prospective teachers and students to get to know each other in advance of meeting, vastly improving the chance of finding a teacher who really works for you.

Plus, it's a fantastic reputation-building tool; existing students can leave testimonials for teachers, and later next week we'll offer a much more comprehensive 'teaching' page that will display all your teaching philosophies, results, qualifications etc. etc. etc. -- directly from your profile.

We'll also be introducing all the icons soon, so you'll be able to see musical instruments represent music teachers visually on the world map!

Please check it out, and let us know your feedback: http://www.musbook.com/teacher.php

Yours,

The MusBook Team

Hi everybody!

Profile Page Widgets

Our development continues apace. Today, we're pleased to introduce Profile Widgets -- when you click on a user's profile, if they have entered events into the calendar, or put any products for sale in the shop, added videos, or uploaded recordings to MusBook.com, you'll be able to see them on the right hand side of their profile page.

This is a great way of promoting things that you'd like other users to see or hear. If you're a musician, include your latest recordings... if you're a music lover, draw your friends' attention to the videos that most inspire you!

Needless to say, this is just the start -- in the near future, you'll be able to do all sorts of other things with your data (and indeed share the widgets on other sites).

Front Page update

We've replaced the old drop-down selection boxes with a smart rotating panel that shows you all the latest new high profile content on our site. Starting, of course, with the great new MusBook TV (more on that below). Just click on the image to go straight to the content you want to see.

We'll be updating the front page panel every couple of days with interesting new features, so don't forget to check in regularly!

MusBook TV

We'll introduce a comprehensive TV platform in a month or two, but for now, we wanted to get MusBook TV off the ground, so we've updated the TV page and... there it is! Our great new channel can be watched 'as is' like a normal TV channel, or you can click 'on-demand' if you want to see our whole archive.

Enjoy!

Justin @ MusBook.com Support

Hello!

New Music Page and Shop

Well, you might have noticed that our Music and Shop sections came online today for the first time. Don't get excited! They're not very good yet. Everything works, at least, we think it does, but some sections are yet to be added, and you might well run into the odd bug or two.

For the rest of this week, we'll be honing and tweaking, gradually improving everything, and basically giving the site a really hard time!

As ever, your comments are very very welcome. support [at] musbook [dot] com is how to reach us!

Upload Your Photos

That's right, we've finally got the photo album functionality that you requested. If you've done a great concert recently, and you want to share your pics with everyone who was there (and indeed anyone who wasn't!), then all you need to do is click 'Photos' in the 'My Tools' menu. We'll be adding some easy-to-access links to this later in the week, but just so you know, it's there and ready to be used!

Add Content

That's what this site is all about, so if you've been finding it a bit hard to work out where to click to add things, then worry no longer! There's a great little 'add content' dropdown on the right hand side of the menu, which will allow you to add a job listing, a blog post, an event, or a new product... in just a single click! As we add more services like that, you'll be able to reach them from this useful little submenu in just one click.

In fact, you should really be able to add a photo album that way shouldn't you? I'll go and suggest that to the developers right now!

Yours,

Justin @ MusBook Support

Hi all

We've just been made aware of a bug that's stopping anyone for signing up as a non-individual user (eg orchestra, choir, business, festival)... We're getting this fixed right now and it will be fixed within 24 hours.

Justin @ MusBook Support

 It's 'all go' here at MusBook!

Our TV people start work on Monday, our Ad Sales people start in less than 3 weeks (are you interested in advertising on MusBook? Click here!), and in the meantime our team in India is working flat out to get the main sections Music, TV, Buzz and Consanfron finished in time for the end of September.

The best thing about working on MusBook during this 'startup' phase is that we get to see rapid changes every day. But the frustrating thing is that because everything is done 'iteratively', meaning through a process of small changes, it's always a step or two behind where we'd really like it to be!

Our new Music Center has just arrived hot from our developers' computers, but it'll be a couple of days for sure until it's even ready to be shown on the site! Our conception of what it will be in a month or two is way ahead of what's been completed so far! You'll find that each major section will start off very simply, and then gradually become more fully featured week by week, right they way through until the end of the year.

So if you promise not to expect much, we might show you the new music center next week :)

- Justin @ MusBook Support

Hello Everyone,

Well, work is continuing apace with our new Music Center, TV platform and Education Center (ConSanFron). What we're going to do is roll out very basic versions of each first, and then constantly refine them over the next few months until we've got something exception. So don't be too underwhelmed at first - don't expect something worldshatteringly great! But they will be useful tools, and they'll get better and better with time.

In the meantime, whilst some of our developers are working on the exciting glamorous new things, the others are slavishly coding away over hot computers to bring you a more reliable, better functioning site. We've a list of over a hundred little things which are being fixed right now, most way too boring to explain here, but a handful of the recent changes include:

• Latest Videos box on the front page
• Latest Blogposts box on the front page - later this week, this will show the 'most read' blogposts of the week
• and some other things including a lot of bug- and error-troubleshooting that would send you to sleep if I explained them here - they're that tedious!

Coming up, as well as the great new music/tv/buzz/consanfron sections:

• major overhaul of the directory (it'll be much easier to find people you know, and will behave more like a social network people search should)
• total redesign and relaunch of the long-awaited Music Teacher Map
• tweaking and redesign of the jobs page so that you can more easily find a  vacancy in the country that you live in

We've managed to accidently delete the link for posting a job! It'll be back later in the week but in the meantime here's where you need to go to add a job listing to the site: http://www.musbook.com/user_jobpost_add.php

More news from MusBook.com coming soon!

Yours,

Justin @ MusBook.com Support

Hi Everyone,

I'm pleased to let you know that you can now edit your profile information as if you're editing a blog! Just go into 'my profile', then 'edit profile information'. When you click on the 'about' tab, you'll find a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor. So instead of just copying in your biography, you can tell other MusBook users all about yourself by adding pictures and other images too!

But that's not all...

If you're a musician, you might like to sell your CDs or MP3s? Well, although we plan to offer that kind of functionality on MusBook in the future, there's a quick and simple way to do it right now... just use the 'source' button to paste in a Paypal sales button, or in fact any other kind of html code that you'd like to use, in order to have things appear on your profile page!

As ever, if you need any help or want to send us any feedback, just email support [at] musbook [dot] com

Best Regards

Justin @ MusBook Support