Hi everyone! This morning we released another scheduled weekly development version of BlogBridge — version 2.22 — and updated most of our BlogBridge: Library sites, including our showcase, trial sites and the sandbox. So what’s new?

Traditionally, let’s start with BlogBridge which has become quite popular over the course of last several months and it’s great because it motivates and gives a spur. Keep up sending your comments and don’t forget to tell your friends. Where was I?

Oh yes, the first feature I would like to outline is the updated BlogStarz rating system. There were two new parameters added dramatically increasing the usefulness of the whole thing: number of feed views and number of times you opened articles from a feed in an external browser (clickthroughs). Personally, I immediately started using the former as it reflects the real value of a feed for me. I visit a feed often, I like it, and it gets the higher rating… Just what was needed!

The second feature on my announcement list is somehow related to feed ratings. If you are a publisher of Reading Lists it might come in very handy. From now on you can set the rating threshold and every feed below it in the guide you publish won’t show up in the resulting OPML (and JavaScript) of your Reading List. The filtering works only for gold Starz for now, meaning that if you have a threshold of 3 Starz (as shown in the picture) and you have several feeds with one or two silver Starz in your guide, they still will be published. The feature is quite experimental and you are welcome to send us the feedback.

OK, now on to the brief BlogBridge: Library news. The two most interesting features I wish to highlight are Search function and showing folders in preview areas (so-called ‘book shelves’). The search feature is perfectly visible with an unarmed eye and works as expected. You enter something and it looks for this something in all textual fields of folders and feeds registered. No surprises actually.

The preview enhancement plays best when it comes to showing the folders with no feeds in them, just sub-folders. Before today, such folders appeared simply as headers without items, which looked a bit strange as there were lots of sub-folders with loads of feeds in them. Today you can see sub-folders at the end of the sub-elements preview list. No big deal, of course, but still a pleasant eye candy.

For more details on the release, check out our history of changes page. Click here to download and run the latest Development Release (on any platform), visit our BlogBridge: Library showcase to see how it works, or start playing with it right now in our special self-managing sandbox.