One of the really snazzy features that will launch with the beta is the mashup. As the name implies, it is a single mashed up view of all the stuff that you have created online.

You set up your mashup on a single screen. BTW, this screen also sets up your "Where to find me online" list. We are supporting around 30 sites by default (and we will add more as we go):

43 Things, 43 People, Bebo, Blinklist, Blue Dot, ClaimID, Consumating, Del.icio.us, Digg, Flickr, GameSpot, Instructables, Jaiku, LiveJournal, MP3.com, MSN Spaces, MySpace, Newsvine, Slide, TV.com, Vimeo, Vox, Webshots, Yahoo! 360, YouTube and Zooomr

To add your profile and content from these sites, you simply select the site name from a dropdown menu and fill in your username for that site. If you use the same username everywhere, like I do, you can breeze through this process since the form field doesn't clear your username with each submission (since we're using everyone's favorite buzzword, AJAX, to set up your sites).



If you use a site that we don't support yet, you can add it manually. Simply give it a label, paste in the URL to your profile and, if that page has an RSS feed, paste that into the RSS field.



I think it is a pretty simple process that most people will be able to complete in just a minute or two.

And once you have your sites set up, you have the option of removing certain elements from your mashup.

For example, you may want to have a link to "Things I've dugg" from Digg in your Where to find me online list; however, you may not want all of those links dominating your mashup listing. You can choose to remove that feed from your mashup while still displaying it in WTFMO.

After you're done fiddling with your sites, you will be taken to the actual mashup tab. It lists all of your content in reverse chronological order just like a blog. It also labels each item so you can see exactly where it came from.



In addition to the list of items, you will also have an RSS feed of your mashup, the ability to filter the view to see items from a particular site and you will have the opportunity to place your mashup on your blog or MySpace page with our mashup badge.

Well, I think that covers everything about the mashup. We hope everyone likes it.

During the beta, we hope to introduce the super-nifty Friends Mashup where you can get all of the stuff your friends have posted in a single view. Stay tuned.

Because this is a part-time project right now and because we want to make sure everything works like we want it to (that seems like something we should be shooting for, right?), we are pushing back the beta date to December 8th.

We don't really have an extra week's worth of work to do; however, I want to get on a regular deploy schedule. We all have day jobs, so Fridays make the most sense. If something blows up, we will have the time over the weekend to address it.

So you can spend the extra week doing your holiday shopping. Look for an e-mail update next week. Thanks for your patience.

We pushed out a bunch of new code to our dev server and I just had a chance to kick it around for the first time. It is looking really great. I'm feeling really good about our chances of hitting (around) December 1st. I can't wait to have our beta group checking it out and giving us their feedback.

Just wanted to post a quick update to let everyone know that we didn't fall off the edge of the Earth. We're in crunch mode right now getting everything ready for (around) December 1st.

I recently discovered a site in Finland that has features that are similar to what we are building into Profilactic.

Jaiku allows you to keep track of things that you (and your friends) are doing right now (they call it your "presence").

Here is how their co-founder, Jyri Engeström, describes the idea of presence:

"Presence is about everyday things as they happen - what you’re doing, how you’re feeling, where you’re going. We’re enabling people to connect with the others they care about by sharing presence updates on the Web and mobile."

In addition to their website, you can get Jaiku info on your Nokia phone. The emphasis is on mobility and immediacy which makes it a perfect fit for the Finnish market.

So while some of the features (mashing up your online activities, keeping track of your friend' online activities) are similar to Profilactic, Jaiku is ultimately serving a different market.

You can check out my Jaiku page to see what it is like.

OK, that title may be a *little* (OK, a lot) misleading, but let's continue anyway.

Today, Marshall Fitzpatrick over at TechCrunch compares Multiply to Vox. Near the end of his article, he says:

"Lately I’ve taken to framing questions about data export and identity standards as rights questions. I own rights on my data; I want to be able to easily and quickly take it with me from one social network to another. If I want to have a single login across those different networks and perhaps even have multiple personas (personal, professional) then I ought to be able to do so. No one is doing all of that well, but I expect consumers to demand all of it in time."

Well, that's actually one of the goals of Profilactic. We want to make the management of your various profiles easy.

While many of the features in our first phase will be about account set up and aggregation, the second phase will definitely be all about profile/identity management. Because as Marshall correctly points out, it is your data and you should be able to easily take it with you.

Sure, it's just a port of the News.com article from this past weekend; however, it is cool to be included in CNET's new Webware.com site (which is getting some love over on Digg).

One of the more basic features of Profilactic.com is the "Where to find me online" list. This list lives on the right side of all of your Profilactic pages and allows you to jump to any of your profiles or the content you have contributed on those sites.

For example, if you use Digg, you will have a link to your Digg profile and you can choose to have links to things you've dugg, things you've submitted and things you've commented.



In order to put your WTFMO list to good use outside of Profilactic, we will provide you with an HTML badge that you can slap on your blog, website or MySpace page. I plan to put mine on my blog's "About me" page.

This evening, we will be pulling the beta sign-up form. We have about 500 sign-ups, which is about 475 more than I expected, so I think we have enough people to kick it around when we launch the private beta on (or around) December 1st.

If you didn't get in on the first sign-up, I will be posting a sign-up for the waiting list when we pull the beta sign-up. If any of the initial 500 people don't participate, we will pull names from the waiting list.

We're not trying to lock anyone out. We just want to keep the beta process manageable so that we can address issues and get them resolved quickly. Having hundreds of people logging the same bug could prove to be a bad idea, but it will be better than having 1,000 people doing it (which is the pace we were on).

And if you *did* sign-up for the beta, I will be sending out an e-mail tonight explaining how the process will go.

It has been less than two weeks since we started talking about Profilactic publicly; however, the word is definitely getting out there.

In addition to the Folksonomy.org/Digg home page thing that got the whole ball rolling, we've been mentioned on:

CNET's News.com
Rafe Needleman did a piece on Profilactic and FindMeOn. Rafe didn't seem to like the name (he actually said "Yuck"). Of course, I have to laugh when a guy named Rafe Needleman wants to call someone out for their name (I kid! I kid, Rafe!). I had not heard of FindMeOn before. Very similar in idea; however, the implementations are miles apart. Check out FindMeOn.

TipMonkies.com
TipMonkies reported on the initial Folksonomy.org piece. Unlike News.com, they sort of liked the name ("somewhat humorously named").

Davis Freeberg's Digital Connection
Davis had some very nice things to say about the idea and said he wants it "now, now, now."

Emily Chang's eHub directory
Emily Chang added us to the 1,300 Web 2.0 companies listed in her eHub directory. We've received a ton of traffic and close to 100 beta sign-ups from that listing.

Claudio Capo at Soulcreation
Claudio compared us with a service called MetaThings which I was unfamiliar with. Check out www.metathings.com. Not really the same as what we're doing, but it is similar in some ways, I guess.

Chris Messina at FactoryCity
Chris basically dismisses us as a mashup of Suprglu and ClaimID (before then pimping his own service that he thought about building) in "Skip the Profilactic, Get the Real Thing". I appreciate the mention.

Profilactic.com and this blog have also been added to StumpleUpon, del.icio.us, Blue Dot, Ziki and other bookmarking services. We've actually gotten a lot of traffic and sign-ups from StumbleUpon.

We have also been contacted by a couple of video podcasts (that I'd actually heard of) to do a demo and be interviewed for their show.

Perhaps the best news of all is that some very (very) big-name bloggers have signed up for the beta. I usually take a peek at the beta sign-up numbers at the end of the day (we're over 450 now) and I have been blown away by some of the names that I see on the list.

So now that we've got everyone's attention, all we have to do is execute the idea flawlessly. :)

We think we're finally ready to set a (tentative) date for the Profilactic beta launch. We're shooting for Friday, December 1st. That gives us exactly 28 days from today.

The beta launch will have all of the single-user features (registration, log in, profile, mashup, clippings, badges, etc.) with placeholder navigation for the multi-user pieces.

The plan is to get our 500+ beta participants hammering away at the single-user stuff while we work on the the super-cool multi-user features.

We're kind of playing this by ear, so please be patient as we approach 12/1/2006.

Emily Chang was kind enough to add Profilactic.com to her eHub directory of over 1,200 Web 2.0 sites.



Since being listed, our beta sign-ups have picked back up. We're close to 300 now. Thanks, Emily.

Check out our listing