[multiplx]

Our last release, rollback and more...

In the last 4 weeks, we haven't pushed a major update to MultiPLX - this has been a general perception. During this time we made a lot of changes to our infrastructure. We added more servers, upgraded our database servers to latest version of the software to improve query performance, and also added more monitoring checks. We made our crawlers more robust and faster - crawling up to 5 times more feeds in any given time now.

Last week, on 25th Aug 2013, we also pushed a new build of MultiPLX web application live, bringing features like full SSL capability and better performance for our users. However, due to some incoming bug reports we had to roll back our release.

The release we pushed live brought in more features like AJAX based page refreshes, SSL, and many many bug fixes. Once the build was live, one of our users reported that he was able to see read items in his timeline, when his setting dictated otherwise. We tested it our end and found to be a genuine issue. Another issue we found was that in case of faster flipping of entries the number of unread items was getting corrupted. After deliberate discussions within our DEV team, we decided to rollback this release to not worsen the user experience.

The bugs are now fixed and tested thoroughly at our end - and our release train is ready. The train will make its stop on to the production servers early next week.

We also have decided to make more frequent releases with smaller number of features to bring them early to you.

Stay tuned!

[multiplx]

MultiPLX Refreshed: Persistent sign-in, SPF, DKIM and more

We just rolled out a new release of MultiPLX that addresses the following issues:

Added SPF records and DKIM signing to the verification emails to prevent them from reaching SPAM folders. Many users reported this problem specifically with hotmail.com/outlook.com users.

Fixed a bug introduced in our last release, the prevented persistent signed-in sessions. Check the 'Keep me signed-in' box and your sessions would be maintained for up to 90 days. Session times extend as soon as you visit the site again.

Fixed a bug where some feeds were being crawled slowly - these feeds that get updated often will now be polled up to 5x frequently.

The most frequently updated feeds, are now being polled every 2 minutes to bring in the latest content as early as possible.

Thanks for your continued patronage. We look forward to making your stay at MultiPLX more pleasant with each passing day.

[multiplx]

MultiPLX Refreshed: Bug fixes, July 2013

We just refreshed MultiPLX today, with loads of bug fixes, including the following:

In case of long feed names, we would now show ellipsis with entire name on hover

Fixed a small bug with computation of unread counts

Your timelines are now upto 15% faster

Improved the search indexing speed by up to 30% faster, search indexes now lag by a maximum of 5 minutes in real time.

Display a spinning cursor, when sending email links for publicly shared folders

Fixed a minor bug with viewing publicly shared folders in MultiPLX

Updated the coming soon list with the latest laundry list.

As always, let us know if you see issues or have feedback for us by dropping us a mail at [email protected] or visiting our forums at http://multiplx.uservoice.com.

[multiplx]

MultiPLX Refreshed: Reading Trends

We are happy to announce the arrival of the Trends functionality to MultiPLX, more so for none of our top peers, Feedly, Digg or AOL has the support.

To view your own reading habits, on the time of the day, the day of week, or for that matter, your favorite feeds used to be the most sought after features of Google Reader. In continuation of the tradition, MultiPLX now offers to all its users, the ability to see what still keeps them hooked and what is stale for them.

This should help our users with their usual spring/winter cleaning sessions, when they want to leave the obscure content for something new and refreshing.

So go ahead and Enjoy!

[multiplx]

MultiPLX Refreshed: Improvements and Fixes

We are glad to announce another refresh of MultiPLX today which brings in the following improvements and bug fixes:

1. Shared pages now work similar to feed pages with endless scroll and new item notifications.

2. Performance improvements to search index - your searches now run upto 25% faster.

3. All feed item pages now load faster as we added more caching layers to our code.

4. A modal window when open (when reading a particular entry) the background page will not scroll till the modal window is closed.

5. A rare bug in RSS feeds of public folders is fixed, that brought 0 entries on feed access.

6. A bug that caused the 'Keep me signed-in' setting to fail is fixed.

We hope the above improvements will help users adopt MultiPLX more easily, and make their experience a wonderful one.

As always, feel free to let us know of issues that you may want us to address including feature requests.

[multiplx]

MultiPLX Refreshed: Search and URL Shortener

We are glad to announce the launch of two most interesting features on MultiPLX.

Search

Missed liking/starring an entry that you saw the other day, and can't find it now. The wait is over.

With today's release we bring in the power of full text-search amongst all items in your inbox. The search results are presented in chronologically descending order and should help you find that post quick fast.

Note: We are still indexing (80% complete) the tens of millions of feed entries that you have subscribed to and thus, some results may not appear. 

URL Shortening

Fond of sharing articles with your friends and social circle, and find it hard to squeeze your thoughts into those limited characters. Well, from today you have a few more characters (at least 7) to jot while sharing. All links that you start sharing from today, will be automatically shortened using the new http://plx.io url shortener.

For all other features that you have put on the wishlist, stay tuned. We are burning the midnight oil, every single day to get them out to you, as fast as we can.

Spread the word!

[multiplx]

MultiPLX in the news lately

This post gathers various links and comments that have put MultiPLX in the news lately (in no particular order).

MultiPLX: Visually Appealing & Responsive RSS Reader - NewsWithTags

Try out MultiPLX, a new RSS Reader - Softpedia.com

Add MultiPLX to the list of Google Reader replacements worth checking out - AppAdvice.com

MultiPLX is Google Reader and Feedly Alternative  - ChipChick

Dealing with the death of Google Reader - Tech Goondu

MultiPLX is latest RSS alternative to dance on Reader's Grave - BetaNews

MultiPLX: A Visual Google Reader Alternative To Attract The Masses - AppStorm

MultiPLX: Visually Appealing & Responsive RSS Reader

Google Reader Alternative MultiPLX Eventually Wants You to drop Facebook, Twitter - iTechPost

MultiPLX: Another Google Reader Alternative - Technology Bites

MultiPLX is RSS, Pinterest-Style - Sssimpli

MultiPLX Is An Elegant, Pinterest-Like Web Based RSS Reader - Additive Tips

RSS Reader Reinvented: The Best Google Reader Alternative (after Feedly) is MultiPLX

MultiPLX: Another Google Reader Alternative - PingNuts

MultiPLX - BetaList

MultiPLX - Phil Bradley's Blog

A Look at MultiPLX, Another RSS-Reader - Ronny Lam

MultiPLX Aims To Be Your Definitive Alternative to Google Reader - The Slanted

This is definitely not an exhaustive list of coverage, and for sure, does not cover non-English versions of the coverage (those are coming soon).

Hope you enjoy reading what people are saying about us!

[multiplx]

Keyboard Love!

To all our users, on your request we are happy to announce that MultiPLX now supports whole lot of shortcuts for easier workflows and making your reading experience faster.

Over the next few weeks, we will be adding many more keyboard shortcuts. Let us know, and we will make your cut get in there earlier.

Happy PLXing!

[multiplx]

MultiPLX Features

I take this opportunity to let everyone know of all the features that MultiPLX supports. 

Anonymous Home - you got to read something before signing than seeing our big logo and trying to find the sign-in button.

Multiple layout views - cards, list and condensed list view

Notifications - leave any reading page open and we will display the number of new items that are available

+PLX button - use the button to automatically subscribe to the site's feed without even opening MultiPLX.com

Minimalist look option - hide the advanced bar if you don't like it

Mark all as read

Mark post unread

Customizable feed list pod location - support for pushing feed list to top or to the left

Don't show image thumbnails - for those who wan't to conserve bandwidth

Don't show favicons - for those who prefer words than images

Sharing options - you name it, we have it. Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instapaper, Pocket and Buffer

Share the post with your friends via Email - the traditional way to get conversation started.

Option to hide read items from your view - see only what's unread.

Option to hide the sharing toolbar

Responsive design - our site will work in all the browsers (IE, Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera) and on every device (desktops, laptops, mobiles and tablets)

Full Keyboard shortcuts - we know we lack here but just another week, we promise! [Update: 1 July] We now support whole lot of shortcuts.

Full-text Search  [Update: 23 July] - full text search is now available to all users.

URL Shortening  [Update: 23 July] - Want to share that article with your friends, have some extra space to weave your own thoughts

What is the point in saying that you support all Google Reader features, if you don't allow users to flaunt what they are reading. Thus, we provide you the options of

Folder Sharing - make them public

Feed Clips - show them on your site/blog

Blog Roll - show them on your site/blog

RSS Feeds - let others follow your folder in their own choice of RSS readers

Email the RSS link to your friends

We are big believers of data liberation - your data is yours and yours, forever. Period. The following features have been supported from day one.

OPML export of your feed list

JSON activity stream export of all your liked, starred and shared items

That's not all. If you have been a fan of RSS, we allow you to import:

entire OPML file - any number of feeds, not 200, not 500, even thousands if you have them

starred/liked/shared items - again no limit, just import your JSON activity stream files and we will get it for you - thousands, hunreds of thousands or millions - we will import all of them.

Coming up are:

Full text search

Full-support for keyboard navigation

iOS app for iPhone and iPad

Android application

Change sorting order

Let us know of what all other features you would wish to see. Checkout our UserVoice forums and keep your thoughts pouring in.

[multiplx]

MultiPLX Refreshed!

Since, our alpha release in March and limited beta access in May this year – we are now happy and glad to announce the arrival of public beta of MultiPLX.com

We had been working hard to bring in an experience that is par at Google Reader and the speed of same. Also, we wanted to make sure that all feature requests from our UserVoice forums were addressed and ship them to you with the best quality.

With this release we introduce the following new features for all of you:

Import all your previous starred, liked and shared items – if you are a Google Reader user and have taken a checkout of your current items, choose the Upload option from the Import/Export settings page to import all of them into your current timeline. Unlike others, we have no limits on the number of imported items.

Public Folder Sharing – All folder can now be shared as public with their own public page – your friends can then add the same folder into their own timelines via the RSS links.

Feed Clips & Blog Rolls – Feed clips and Blog rolls are two features that are the most sought after ones – Don’t let your website gadgets or blog widgets die out – just import your feeds into MultiPLX and let us take care of the rest. Update your site/blog’s web code and let the feed clips and blog roll live for ever.

API Platform – We are also glad to introduce a complete API platform that is at par with current Google Reader APIs – just change the domain name of your current applications code to make it work with MultiPLX. Documentation and SDK coming very soon.

Hide read items – select this option to remove items as you read them.

Option to hide the sharing bar – select this option to hide the sharing items that are shown in the modal dialog.

Added Pocket, and buffer as sharing options – you asked, we added them.

Mark all as read – Click this button to mark all current items in the home view, folder view or the feed view as read.

Advanced bottom bar – select this option to show the advanced bottom navigation bar that consists of various handy shortcuts.

Mark as Unread item – Clicking this would mark an item unread.

The following bugs have also been taken care of:

Performance issues – MultiPLX is now upto 10 times faster in various workflows. In the last two months our mean response time has been under 500 milliseconds with 99.99% uptime.

Make the title clickable - In list view clicking on the post title was not working via the modal dialog.

Many cross-browser UI issues - we now support even IE7.

Responsive issues to make MultiPLX look on various devices.

On our feature list for the next few releases are the following items:

Full SSL support

Searching within your timelines

Google Reader synchronization

Social authentication

More customization's and sharing options

Keyboard shortcuts

Going forth, we will be updating MultiPLX more than once a week to roll out smaller chunks of features and bug fixes.

Have fun folks,

MultiPLX Team

[multiplx]

Subscribing to a Website/RSS Url

Once you have created an account with MultiPLX, adding websites and/or feed URLs should not take much time. This guide should help you get started with the process.

Basically there are two ways to add a subscription:

Using the +PLX button

Adding it manually via URL

  Adding manually via URL

To add a website/feed URL, click on the +PLX blue button in top navigation bar.

In the modal dialog that opens, type in the URL in the box and click Submit. 

After a few moments, you should be viewing the latest entries from your favorite website.

Using the +PLX Button

To use the +PLX button, click on the +PLX blue button in top navigation bar. In the modal dialog that opens, look for the +PLX button. Drag (left-click and hold) on the button and take it to your browser's bookmark bar.

Now to add content, just visit your website in the browser. Once there, just click the +PLX button icon from your browser's bookmark bar. You would then be directed to MultiPLX website where you would be shown the latest entries from the website.

  Hope this helps friends! For any questions visit our forums at http://multiplx.uservoice.com.

[multiplx]

Signing up with MultiPLX

Many of you have been lately asking us as to how to sign-up for an account with MultiPLX. We thought we didn't build a confusing workflow, but guess we were wrong.

The account creation process with MultiPLX is a simple 5 step process:

To signup for MultiPLX.com, visit the site http://multiplx.com

Click on the "Request Invitation" link in the top-left card

Enter your email address in the modal popup.

Enter any promo codes you may have in the modal popup. Promo codes help you receive invitation instantly without any wait.

Click "Request Invitation"

That's it. We will email you a confirmation email/invitation code as soon as you as we can. Once you have the invitation email, click on the link in the email, create a new password for your email address, and start adding your own websites/feeds to follow.

As a thanks for reading this article, you may use the promo code of "GOOGLEREADER" (without quotes) to gain instant access to MultiPLX website.

So friends, start PLXing now.

[multiplx]

[multiplx]

MultiPLX is the real Google Reader alternative.

MultiPLX, a visual  RSS Reader designed from ground-up to be as scalable and fast as Google Reader emerges from stealth mode.

WALNUT CREEK, CA – April 17, 2013

MultiPLX  a tech startup out of Walnut Creek, CA emerges from stealth mode as an alternative to closing Google Reader.

MultiPLX is a visual RSS Reader and works as a full web service, designed from ground-up to be as scalable and fast as Google Reader.

"Although there are many variants that are trying to imitate Google Reader at the moment, most of them are desktop clients or mobile apps that depend on Google Reader engine. MultiPLX is a full web based service with a back-end that can scale-up to serve millions of users, and billions of feed posts each day with a speed that is unmatched even in desktop clients." said Emre Kosmaz founder of MultiPLX.

"The speed and scalability of  Google Reader is not something you can deliver overnight and we have been working on this project to be par with Google Reader for the last 8 months" he added.

MultiPLX already supports seamless migration from Google Reader with capability to import OPML files through Google Takeout.

MultiPLX is now in private beta and invite only mode and Google Reader users can use promotion code GOOGLEREADER to get their invitation e-mails right away.

[multiplx]

About MultiPLX

MultiPLX wants to bring RSS technology back to mainstream, changing reading experience of the general population and how they stay up-to-date.

MultiPLX is a visual RSS Reader re-imagined to deliver everything people want to see in one convenient place. With MultiPLX we envision that one day even grandmas will start using RSS reader and get their "weekly Target ads" right on their tablet, instead of having to wait for the morning paper.

MultiPLX is developed by Kosmaz Technologies LLC. Founded in 2005, Kosmaz Technologies is privately held and based in Walnut Creek, CA.

Additional information on MultiPLX can be found at www.MultiPLX.com. Media Contact: Liz Kayacan – [email protected]

[multiplx]

We are live!