There are many ideas going into myJournal that will enhance a business profile, unfortunately only so many can be implemented from the start. As myJournal grows we will of course implement these features and add new ones.

This week we have seen several new members from varying business and professional backgrounds join us, some new postings, and numerous contacts being made.

myJournal is set up to promote a business, or an individual. A strong part of this philosophy will be for businesses to connect with each other.  Although still in LIVE BETA members have already connected together for possible future business partnerships.  One such connection was made from Oksana to Steve Sugden. Oksana is producing a new pair of hair straighteners and looked to connect with Steve about stocking them at the popular Pressies4Princess store. The contact has been made and Steve has a view to possibly retailing them.

Another post from Paul Arlott at Tolra Micro Systems about wasting money on SEO services.  Paul goes onto say:

…companies deciding to offer SEO as an extra without putting the effort in required to fully understand the marketing of a site. As far as I’m concerned a site has to be marketed as a whole, that is usability, appeal to the target audience along with both on site and off site optimisations…

Agreed Paul, SEO comes not just in optimizing one page and throwing a few links, but should be taken as a whole and all elements of the site included in the overall SEO prospectus.  After all the brain will not function for long without the heart!

One of our newest members is Manou Marzban , the academic marketing manager at Microsoft.  Manou wants to promote lettings of his villa in the South of France for the summer months. He has added some beautiful images of the Villa Soleil to his virtual showroom.

This month’s news has been dominated by the presidential race for the Whitehouse, both Presidential candidates Barack Obama, and John McCain have accepted their respective party’s nominations. The battle commences!  Talking politics, Ian Parker-Joseph a member of the Libertarian Party joined us and immediately posted a press release about the CSAS scheme. Ian is quite an avid blogger on the political front and we are looking forward to reading more of his posts.

Other new members include Karen Mayer and Nikki Smith from Current Digital an advertising agency based in Bournemouth.  Andy Vining joined from BluRoute and added an extra company HottoChoc that promotes healthy eating and weight loss through chocolate.

That’s a concept Andy, eat as much chocolate as you want and never gain a pound. Where do I sign…!

Who says you can’t find that perfect match, according Gil Avenaim online dating has taken off in a very big way. “getting to know each other online first has a lot of benefits”   Gil is the director of Fast Match which is becoming one of Autralia’s premiere dating agencies.

We are looking to bring more members aboard to help us test, if you feel like getting involved with the myJournal community drop us a line at via the contact form.

We have seen several developments recently that prepare us for our main launch at the beginning of September; these include the much awaited video capabilities. Each member now gets a media library where they can upload and display their videos or show them in their blog posts as well. To do this we added embed video buttons to the blog control panel, with the ‘easy-admin’ feature right there making writing a post ‘on-the-fly’ a quick and simple affair.

Our beta testers started getting to grips with blog posting this week which produced some interesting articles and posts. Paul Arlott wrote about folder sharing and how Microsoft ‘does not usually impress him’ but, this time they have by creating a folders sharing application named - you guessed right - ‘FolderShare’ and it does what it says on the box.

Thanks for sharing this with us Paul, it looks like a nifty tool that should make fast sharing of documents a lot easier.

Though myJournal is predominately aimed at business, it also has a leisure side to it as well. The system allows a user to create a non-business blog and a non-business network, this may be for hobbies, friends, or other activities that the user feels would benefit their immediate community.

The world of business portrays many different faces, it’s not just about corporate monoliths with hundreds of staff members, it also includes small one person ‘in the basement’ types of business that cater and supply to other industies such as print, graphics, and a whole host of other areas. This brings to us Steve Barnard Long an artist whose paintings of varied scenes from Asia captures the imagination of the Far East. Steve paints for a living which also gives him the financial freedom to travel extensively through Asia looking for new scenes to paint and display in his blog.

We really enjoyed his portrayal of a Caged Songbird in Vietnam.

One of our beta testers has really been putting their membership to its full use and utilizing practically all the applications. Tara Howard an experienced hotelier and owner of the famous Langtry Manor, has populated her myJournal Langtry showroom with images from the hotel. Here you can browse luxury rooms and feast your eyes on images of the Edwardian Banquet. Tara runs a fairly comprehensive blog about her hotel and this week gave us a few hints on choosing the perfect wedding venue.

Lots of really good work put into your showroom Tara and glad you’re enjoying the applications. I would love to see some mouth watering images from the banquet.

We knew that travel would play a large part at myJournal and invited for the beta period two travel reviewers from different backgrounds. Firstly there is the Artful Lodger who gives us down to earth reviews on places to eat, stay, and visit. Anything could happen on his blog as he reviews small back street diners to trendy bistros located throughout Europe. A little less down to earth is Jack Carter who as I have been told can be either found at the best tables in Monte Carlo, beating his way through the bush in the Kalahari, or writing a great article about Space Travel. It appears Jack is looking to conquer that final frontier.

Rounding the rest of this week up is a blog post from Steve Sugden about ideas on how to increase the visibility of Hand-Makers.

Vincent comments to Steve wondered about the democratic tools Steve has in store for Hand-Makers. While Steve diplomatically let on they are still an idea yet and basically ‘watch this space.’

There is nothing like a good ‘how-to’ article’ to keep the visitors happy. We always find these kind of articles work well as they come from people who understand and know their own business better than anyone. The difference between a professional author who can write well about any subject, and a business owner who is not an experienced writer but can give the reader a personal and in-depth look at how something really works, or how to do it correctly. Oksana gave us her first article on the best way to straighten hair, while also talking about her new soon-to-be-released SPX Evolution hair Straighteners.

Last, but not least from Vincent some friendly tips on using social media networks, Ray Lerwill with luxury scarves made from Guanaco, Christine from Ellis Financial Systems discussing strategic tax software, and the Wentworth Clinic talking about their stellar dental services.

Throughout the world August has been eventful, Obama vs McCain for the big house, the Olympics in Beijing, and swimmer Michael Phelps reigning supreme as the ultimate Olympian. Talking about swimming one of our newest members include Kristine Johansen a swimming coach and the managing director of K07. Other new members who joined are Grammy Award nominee Rachel Gutek from guppyart, Aaron Wall from SEO Book, and Chris Jaisingh from PAC Solutions.

Until next time…

We have spent months testing and bug fixing and I hope there won’t be too many to report.

If you do find something or have a suggestion then please go to our help desk here “forums”, and post it in the appropriate topic.

Thanks again

• your own company billboard -

• a space where you can upload your corporate video,

• show your own ad or show off your corporate images.

• a instant chat feature to communicate with your network in real time

• Open API

• Press release service

Over the next year we will be implementing some really neat services that will aid promoting companies and individuals online. Planned for the future are such areas as:

• Ecommerce gateways

• Shopping system

• Mapping

• Travel booking

• Advertising areas for maximum exposure of your product.

• and much more…

We hope to be out of the final beta stage by the beginning of September and then our baby will open to all who wish to join in the fun.

Promoting your business is not always fruitful but the myJournal team hope you find that success here.