If you use OpenID, LiveID or any other 3rd party authentication provider you may want to know how many users are using each method to connect.

You may have noticed Smart-Thinker has a sleek new look! The old skin served us well but it was time for a change. When SmartSocial (the free DotNetNuke Social Networking Suite) was announced we thought we'd better jack up the website a lot.

We want your opinion - do you like the new skin or not?

As of the 14th of January, 2009, the Smart-Thinker product suite, hereafter known as “SmartSocial”, will become entirely free. This will include all modules and source with no portal restrictions.

This version integrates with the Ifinity Sitemap provider and has some SEO benefits. You can read the Full Release notes here.

This version introduces a new beta feature called Location Search which you can see in action on PokerDIY. Users can drill down by Country, Region and finally City (user data-driven) and search for users at each level. The Smart-Thinker Groups module, Event module and any other location-based module will be able to take advantage of this. For example, you might drill down to a particular city and the results page will show all users, groups, events etc for that location.

There is a very interesting proposal/debate going on on the Smart-Thinker Forums regarding the leveraging of multiple customer's buying power to pay for Sponsored Enhancements (Crowdsourcing) to increase the Smart-Thinker productivity output.

The basic idea is that a list of estimates is done for all major feature requests. Customers can then "bid" to sponsor a feature and have a say in the specification and requirements for the feature. When the full amount for the project is reached and the majority of project sponsors agree on the spec and deliverables then the enhancement is developed. The majority once again must sign it off for it to be accepted. The full detail of the proposal can be found Read More »

The Smart-Thinker Social Networking Product Suite allows you to integrate any 3rd party module with the profile feed. As of UserProfile version 4.3.14, the popular Ventrian News Article module (version 0.7.17+) now publishes events to the profile feed. It also integrates with the Ifinity Google Sitemap Provider so you can output a list of all your profiles to your Google Sitemap (more on that later).

Here is an example of a poker blog that was commented on by this

As of UserProfile 4.3.12, any module can now publish event actions to the StoryFeed view (have a look at this profile on PokerDIY (bottom right) if you have not seen the feed). For example, if you had a Gallery module you could publish an event whenever someone uploads a new picture, or if you had a News article you could send an event whenever an article was published or approved. Hopefully by the time this blog is posted the Ventrian News Article module will be published events to the Smart-Thinker UserProfile feed.

Do you use CodeSmith and the original DNNJungle C# templates to generate your DAL for your DotNetNuke Modules?

We've made some small changes to keep them up to date with the core changes, the main enhancment being the addition of the IHydratable Interface in the Info object. You can download our C# template set from our Free DotNetNuke Downloads page.

This module allows users to create private or public groups of users. Groups can be public and joinable or closed to new membership, and the group owner can decide if new members require approval or not. Users can search groups by Category, Country or freetext tags. If the group allows new members then they can join the group. The group owner can send Private Messages to the group or invite groups to Events. This module was based loosely on the MySpace and Facebook Groups implementation.

 See the Poker Groups on PokerDIY for an example of an implementation (here is an example of a Alabama poker group).