Migration done. We’ve moved the scouta.com site and associated dbs and spidering and processing servers from a couple of ‘big’ real servers into a much more flexible set of virtualized of servers that we can turn up and down for load and specialize for various tasks as we need to. More on why this is important to us will be revelaled one day soon.

It was a nice smooth changeover as far as we can see. If you seen anything broken that we’ve missed, please sing out… email us a feedback [at] scouta [dot] com.

Over the next 24 hours or so .. that is from Fri 15 Feb to Sat 16 Feb .. we are migrating the core scouta services onto a brace of fancy new servers. So, we might have a little downtime during the transfer, but if we do, we’ll be back really soon.

Last week we released the Scouta Agent for Mac: a nifty piece of software that checks what podcast and vodcast subscriptions you have in iTunes, and uses those to provide personal recommendations. It then continues to provide recommendations based on what your watching and listening to in iTunes, iPod, iPhone, and the Apple TV.

Clinton, our application developer, is full tilt into development of the Windows version. As you’d expect, we’re eager to start testing how it runs, and see if we can pick up some of the bugs early. So, this is a call-out to anyone who uses iTunes on Windows to subscribe to podcasts and vodcasts.

The initial testing won’t do much, the updates aren’t actually send to our database, but it shouldn’t be too long before we can turn them on and you’ll start receiving recommendations.

If you’d be interested in helping us test, email feedback@scouta.com.

Yesterday we made a release that I think is Scouta’s biggest event: we released our Agent for iTunes.

When Graeme and I first talked about the Scouta concept back in 2005, the key to it’s acceptance was ease of use. Graeme then spent weeks building a proof of concept that would allow our recommendations to be based on a member’s iTunes library. That has since been redesigned and improved, and yesterday was made public.

Basically the Mac version of our Scouta Agent for iTunes will update a member’s Scouta account with their podcast and vodcast subscriptions. It will then provide recommendations based on those that are listened to or watched. The clever part, if we do say so ourselves, is that it will only take into account the ones that you’ve almost completely watched or listened to. We figure that if you’ve only listened to a few minutes of a half hour show, it’s not a favorite.

What’s even cooler is it also works seamlessly with iPods, iPhones, and the Apple TV. I listen to podcasts on my iPod every day, and now watch video podcasts on my Apple TV. The new software means Scouta gives me personal recommendations without any extra effort. I literally just watch and listen to shows on these devices, and I receive new recommendations that are sent straight to the iPod or Apple TV.

The Windows version is currently in development, and should be available soon! We also hope to look into working with other media players. So, if there are any people who are keen to help us add support for other media software, let us know.

We also spent the best part of a month working on improving the look of the site, and adding some extra features that put conversations and activity updates right in to a member’s My Scouta page. It means that if you have friends using Scouta, or have joined a Scouta Group, you can easily share podcasts or video, or stay a part of the conversations.

Many thanks to Clint, our Agent developer, and Simon, our web developer, who have been tirelessly working on the code, making it an ace service that we’re all really proud of.

You can read about and download the Scouta Agent for iTunes here.

We’ve just pushed out a few changes in our RSS feed generation that should make them work a bit better. There were a couple of cases causing RSS validation issues which we’ve sorted out. Please let us know at feedback@scouta.com if you are still having any issues with feeds.

Just as a reminder, here’s where you can find RSS from Scouta:

• Rated favourites per user at http://scouta.com/username/items. Insert any username you like, including your own. So, for example, my favourites list as RSS is http://scouta.com/members/gra/items
• Recommendations provided by Scouta at http://scouta.com/username/recommendations. Another example: see my personal recommendations feed at http://scouta.com/members/gra/recommendations
• The favourites in any group at http://scouta.com/groups/groupname/items. So, to get the faves in the Science group, try http://scouta.com/groups/Science/items. Setting up feeds for you favourite groups keeps you up to date.
• You can find the current top ten recommended items at http://scouta.com/top_10. We’re not really into driving everything from the top ten, but, well, maybe you like it?

You can, of course, take these feeds and stick them into desktop or web RSS reader applications or iTunes to give you a unique personal view of Scouta.

So, please have a play. And there’s more coming to feeds soon, including full Media RSS where we have the metadata available.

[Update: we just pushed out another little change to make RSS links work a little better.]

Today we released a feature that’s been on the cards for a long time. We’ve called it Scouta Play.

Before launch we realized we needed something pretty snazzy and fun to show people what Scouta could do. You see, recommendations aren’t that simple to explain because they’re a relatively new concept for most of the world.

So we decided to create a little magic on the front page that would allow you to play a video or podcast, and then rate it. Depending on how and what you rate, Scouta would then recommend more.

Anyone can now experience Scouta’s recommendations without creating an account. Zip over to the Scouta front page and you’ll see what we mean. You can select to display videos, or podcasts, or both, and play them right then and there. If you like something, rate it good, and Scouta will start learning what you love.

If you like playing with the new front page, it’s worth creating a Scouta account. Member’s ratings are stored, so over time Scouta gets a better understanding of what you love, and the recommendations will be more accurate.

Anyway, have a Play and let us know what you think.

By the way, thanks to members abigsplash and sfarmer76, this release is named Indigo.

We released another version of Scouta today, nicknamed Hicks. This release makes a huge difference to the look of the site: video clips and album art.

When a member adds a favorite to Scouta, the site automatically tries to grab a little snap shot for the bookmark. This is either the album art from a podcast, or a video clip from items like those in YouTube. Not every favorite ends up with an image, but Scouta does its best to try and find it.

We think the images make it easier to spot an interesting bookmark.

Besides the work Graeme and Simon have done on the album art, it’s been a busy few weeks with Graeme busy working on collecting extra metadata for the site. Also, as Graeme mentioned yesterday, we also had a hiccup with one of our servers that meant Scouta was off-line for a short time. So all up it’s been an interesting release.

By the way, thanks for suggesting the name Scientaestubique - it puts a new spin on the phrase “Hicks has been released.”

In our Freddy release, we’ve added a bunch of extra navigation options, so now when you land on a typical Scouta fave page, you can browse off in lots of different dimensions…

• There a couple of instant recommendation paths you can follow to other faves that are clustered close to this item.
• You can go and find the member that added this fave, and look at all their stuff, and you can also see the last fave they recommended.
• You can browse by groups or tags as well, as you could before.

Problem: now we’re getting distracted browsing away in our own web app because it is so much fun following the path of recommendation to recommendation.

Remember, when you encounter something you like, rate it Good. Then it ends up in you own favorites and you can find it later easily on your MyScouta page and it also will get downloaded if you have iTunes or another RSS reader reading you favorites feed.

Have a browse. Why not start here, or here, or here. You don’t even need to be a member to play like this.

Here in the Scouta development centre (a large roughly spherical campus that we share with about six billion others) we name major releases after people. Our first production release was Ariel, and that was followed by Bernice which was the release we went public with.

A couple of days ago we rolled out Clarice and I want to talk a little about some highlights:

• Comments: We’ve added threaded comments to both Faves and Groups, so one and all can discuss group issues or particular media Faves. There are large helpings of ajaxian goodness that makes it all work smoothly and quickly (thanks Simon) which means you can watch video or listen audio on the site while joining in the conversation at the same time. For example, take a look at London to Brighton time lapse, set the video going and browse the conversation near the bottom of the page.
• Scouta HQ: Because we now have comments running, we’ve made a special group called Scouta HQ which is a good place for you to come and chat to the Scouta team about the what and how and where and why of Scouta. Drop in there and start a conversation. We’d love to know what you are thinking.
• Invite friends: From your MyScouta page, you can invite friends by email to come and join Scouta, and when we email them we tell them how to find you. Or otherwise you can just tell them to get on over to scouta.com/members/join and fill in the quick form there.

Those are the big ticket items. We’ve also made lots of little changes that just make it better. Enjoy.

Our next big release is called Don, due in a couple of weeks. I’m not going to announce features here just yet, but just let me say that after Don, Scouta may well feel quite different.

Update: Simon blogs about the comments implementation: Sometimes, you _need_ AJAX.