We’re going to be consolidating all of our blogs into one blog on the Simon Solutions website. There aren’t enough hours in the day for us to post to one blog, then go to another blog to post a blog to visit our other blog. Hehe, confusing eh?

We hope it will be easier to keep up with what’s going on with Simon Solutions, if all our information is in one place.

Cheers

We’re writing to let you know that the chat feature of Oikos will be temporarily unavailable for some users.

Adobe has made security improvements to their Flash player (the platform Oikos runs on) and we’re in the process of updating the Oikos Chat system to take advantage of these new security standards.

We greatly apologize for the inconvenience, we expect to have the chat feature back up and running by Friday evening. We feel the added security will be better for everyone in the long run.

Thank you.

Well, at long last we have finished the new Oikos. I’d like to outline a few of the improvements.

One of the new features in Oikos is the What’s New window. It’s the place to catch up on everything that has happened since you last logged in. You can view a list of what your friends have been up to, or you can view a list of activity in the groups you belong to.

The new Oikos makes full use of your computer screen, it expands to completely fill your browser window. The bigger your screen, the more you can see.

The Wall is the most exciting new feature of Oikos V2. There are widgets for uploading photos, videos, audio and text. You can place these widgets anywhere on your wall. You can also set a background color, or upload a background image.

Check out the new Oikos and sign up for a free account!

FLORENCE, AL, May 29, 2008 - The Internet is fast becoming one of the best ways to strengthen the Body of Christ by keeping people connected in a safe online environment. Oikos (http://www.tryoikos.com) is one way for small groups to connect, share, and build one another up as well as enhance outreach into the community and beyond. Oikos beta has been available since September 2007, and today’s release marks the fully-enhanced version with many new features.

“People desire deeper personal connections with one another, and are constantly looking for ways to accomplish this within their busy lifestyles,” says Mike Simon, President of Simon Solutions Inc., developer of Oikos. “The Internet is becoming the number one method of Christians to stay connected to their small groups, encourage and support Christian relationships, and draw others to Christ.”

More and more people have begun using social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, and there are now a myriad of different Christian networks out there to connect people; however, these networks are open to outsiders and paid for by advertisers and do not provide a secure way to communicate privately. Oikos is like having your very own private social network just for your church’s community.

“We are excited about having greater customization, more intuitive interface, and the ability to interact with Oikos from cell phone SMS and group chat,” says Luke Thomas, youth pastor for The Father’s House (http://www.tfhny.org) in Rochester, NY. “However, it will be the enhanced customization that will really appeal to the youth. The ability to embed YouTube files and HTML will also help keep interest high. In today’s world we are competing against MySpace, Aim, and YouTube and the church needs to be able to offer our youth the same type of technology tools.”

Oikos provides an enhanced and user-friendly look, lighter and faster functionality, highly customizable personal profile pages for each member called “walls” that are easy to work with and set up, and a “What’s New” section that gives users a way to keep track of friends and news feeds while you’re logged off. In addition, it also provides small groups management, online calendars to help people keep up-to-date on events and activities within your organization, multimedia tools such as image and video sharing, improved photo commenting, an online chat with quickly updated information, forums, and online prayer.

About Simon Solutions
Simon Solutions desires to empower people through technology by building innovative and interactive online connection tools. With an aspiration to help organizations translate their visions into action, the company has developed three core solutions that they hope will stretch the boundaries of how churches, ministries, and nonprofits share community: Oikos, a revolutionary private online community platform; CharityTracker, a collaborative network to track charitable assistance; and PrayerPipeline.net, a transformative 24/7 online prayer network.

Members of the first version of Oikos had two pages, one for self-expression, one for system information. These pages used a very rigid widget system and were difficult to personalize.

But we’ve been improving everything. Oikos V2 has more pages, and the widgets are WAY more flexible. Some features (like comments, blogs, and calendar) have been pulled out of widget form and have been made into full pages so that there’s more breathing room. Things are a little different, but we’re sure you’re going to like the changes.

The header for My Pages holds your avatar and status message. On the far right-hand side of the header are buttons for each of the pages in My Pages. Read on to get an overview of each page.

The Wall is the most exciting new feature of Oikos V2. Here’s where you make use of the revamped widgets. There are widgets for uploading photos, videos, audio and text. You can place these widgets anywhere on your wall. You can also set a background color, or upload a background image.

The image above is an example of how flexible the wall is. Making that wall was a series of simple steps. First, a background image was uploaded. Then several text widgets were put on the wall, each filled with text. The font, size, and color of each widget was then set. The text widgets were moved around (some even overlapping a little) to get a jumbled sort of look. Finally a video was uploaded using the video widget. It was resized and moved around to fit on the wall just right.

The Profile page is where you can tell people a little bit about yourself. They can see a list of all your friends, and they can leave you comments.

In Oikos Version 1, each member had a widget on their page for media uploads, but it wasn’t enough. In the new Oikos, you have a full Media page, where you can create albums and upload photos, videos, and audio.

The blog was another feature that was changed from widget form and turned into a full page. Now there’s plenty of room to share your life with your friends.

The last page in My Pages is the Calendar. The calendar aggregates all the calendar events for all the groups you belong to. You can also add personal events to the calendar, making it easy to keep track of everything on your schedule.

The My Stuff menu helps you keep track of all your relationships in Oikos V2.

The first item in the pop-up menu is the My Pages window, which contains enough to warrant its own blog post. (Coming next.)

The second item in the menu is the My Friends window. Here’s where you can keep track of all your friends, check out their profiles, see who’s online, and start chat conversations. You can also view a list of all your friends who are online.

The third item in the menu is the My Groups window. You use this window to keep a list of all the groups you belong to. Click on a group to open that group’s window.

The fourth item on the My Stuff menu is the What’s New window. It’s the place to catch up on everything that has happened since you last logged into Oikos. You can view a list of what your friends have been up to, or you can view a list of activity in the groups you belong to.

Just like the first Oikos, the new version has groups. You can have an unlimited number of groups, and the groups can have an unlimited number of members. Groups keep everything and everyone organized in your Oikos.

Every group has a wall, a page that can be completely customized to represent the group. The wall is a new feature in Oikos V2, and will be covered in a coming blog post. But basically, the wall is a web page you can make without having any web development skills.

Each group has a profile page, where people can find out a little more about the group and see who the administrators are. Oikos members can swing by and leave comments for the group.

Every group has its own forum where members can discuss topics important to them.

Each group also has a media section…

a group calendar…

and a member directory where you can keep track of who is in each group.

The Oikos Version 2 member directory hasn’t changed very much since Version 1. You can view all the members of your Oikos and sort through them alphabetically. You can add people to your friends list, as well as start chat conversations. Administrators can use this page to add new members to their Oikos.

The only new feature of the member directory in V2, is the ability to see a list of everyone who is online. This replaces the “Members Online” notification ticker from Oikos V1. (We removed the ticker from the layout in V2, to make better use of screen space.)

Just like we added categories to forums, we added categories to Media in the new version of Oikos.

Inside every category is a list of media albums. You can see a thumbnail of the first media item in each album. You can see how many pictures, videos and audio files are inside. Also, you can see who created the album, and when they made it.

This view shows a thumbnail of every media item in the album. You can see the caption for each item, and how many comments it has received (more about commenting below).

A major request we received concerning media albums was for members to be able to make comments on media items. We’re happy to say, in the new version of Oikos, you have the ability to comment on everything.

From this view you can scroll through all the media items. The items will resize to fit your screen, leaving enough room to read your comments.

Another new feature is a full screen mode. When you view an album in full screen, your entire screen is blacked out, letting you view the media with no distractions.

A really cool feature of full screen is that video items fill the entire screen– it’s kind of like watching TV.

We’ve added categories to the forums in the new version of Oikos. We put them in there to help you manage your forums better. We’ve always wanted to keep the forums simple, so that they were easy to understand and use, but we thought adding categories would be a welcome improvement, without complicating things too much.

When you click on one of the categories, you get a list of the topics in that category. The topics list can be sorted by the newest topics that were made, or the list can be sorted to show you the topics with the most recent activity. You can see who created each topic, and when it was posted. You can also check on how many replies each topic has received, and when the last reply was posted.

The post view is clean and simple. On the left-hand side of the screen, you have the original post and all the replies. The replies are numbered so people in your Oikos have an easy time referring to each other’s comments.

On the right-hand side of the screen, at the top, there’s a button for subscribing to RSS feeds for the forum topic. Below that button is the Participants section, which is a list of all the people involved in the forum conversation.