Title
Expansion of 'Current Music' to facilitate usability and customizability.

Short, concise description of the idea
Simply expand the 'Current Music' field into separate 'Artist' and 'Track' (and perhaps 'Album') fields so that users can gather and integrate the differential values in their LiveJournaling.

Full description of the idea
While some users insert non-musical data into the 'Current Music' field (such as real-life auditory information, a lack of auditory information, etc.), a larger volume of users enter specific artist and song title values, as the feature was presumably intended. If the field were separated into multiple fields, several opportunities for intrasite and intersite applications would result.

Most notably, integration with websites like Last.fm or MySpace would be possible. If, instead of $e.metadata{music}, there were two variables ($e.metadata{music_artist} and $e.metadata{music_track}), 'Current Music' data could auto-link to the artist's presence on some third-party website, much like 'Current Location' currently auto-links to Google|Maps.

This is the most rudimentary example. There are other usability and customizability doors opened, as well, but I'll leave those to the more creative developers, coders, and designers to come up with. I've got my own ideas.

• Opens up integration with third-party music websites.
• Opens up music-related customization of journal styles.
• Increases and refines music-related information about users.
• Paves the way for further expansion of 'currents'.

• Should the field be divided into two or three subfields?
• How will we reconcile the change with the aforementioned users who atypically utilize the field as it is now?

Title
Currently Reading

Short, concise description of the idea
Add a "Currently Reading" option at the end of each entry, much like the Current Music option.

Full description of the idea
A place to type what book you're reading in the same way we already type what music we're listening to for each entry.

• The option would let people know what books I'm reading now, and how they influence what I'm writing.
  

• clutter could be a problem, but since the box is optional, I don't think it would be.

Title
Add Location to export fields

Short, concise description of the idea
Could you add 'Current Location' to the export to csv/xml options

Full description of the idea
All other entry fields are exported, why not Location?

• Consistency

• None

Title
Multiple Moods

Short, concise description of the idea
I want to apply more than one mood to my post, each with its associated icon.

Full description of the idea
That about covers it.

• * users can better express complex moods
• * precise wording of a mood won't hinder its association with posts of similar moods. (i.e. if I didn't have to relabel excited as "victorious" to achieve the sense of accomplishment + excitement, and could instead use both moods with their icons, then it could properly be associated with similar accomplishment and excitement posts rather than being its own small subsect of "victorious.")
• * users will not be forced to choose a "dominate" mood, from their complex personalities

• * continual adding of dropboxes to the post form could present a layout problem
• * hundreds of mood icons could hinder page loading

• Example implementation: After selecting a mood, a duplicate mood selection box appears below it. If a mood is selected from this box, another appears. Continuing until the user stops selecting moods.
• The mood selection box could be relocated in the form below Music or separate like the privacy options, to facilitate form growth.
• If page loading is a concern, mood aggregation could be limited to a "reasonable" number, 5, 10, 50, to prevent "moodiness."
• Each mood could be limited to being used only once, so the total number of moods on a post would not exceed the number of distict moods available.

Title
More Than Listening To

Short, concise description of the idea
Changing the Listening entry to Listening, Reading, Watching

Full description of the idea
Why not have that particular field as a drop down selection, to choose several options Listening, Reading, Watching...etc.

• It gives the account user more control over that particular field, rather than just entering in whatever they choose.

• Requires the user to select yet one more option in order for their post to look proper
• Could be seen as time consuming by those looking to make a quickie style post.

• Choose: *drop down menu here*

Title
Have a field for what you are watching

Short, concise description of the idea
There's a field for you to enter what you're listening to, what about one to put what you are watching?

Full description of the idea
More often than not, I've got the TV on and a movie/TV show is playing, how about another field to put that, or else make the music one interchangeable to different options.

• unsure

• unsure

• unsure

Title
Weather

Short, concise description of the idea
I'd like to be able to include information on the current weather with my posts, like the little icons that appear if you download a weather toolbar or box.

Full description of the idea
I came across a site that offers an imbed of the weather for blogs, primarily used (I think) on MySpace...but they do not seem to work on LJ. (Wouldn't with my layout, anyway.) If they can do it, I'm sure LJ can figure out a way to make this a feature.

For reference, or if anyone is curious, accuweather has such a feature for use, but I couldn't get it to work on my page. It is here: http://netwx.accuweather.com/index.asp?partner=forecastfox&traveler=0 It would be better if it was a feature programmed right into LJ anyway. :)

It would be nice if I could include in my entry that today's weather is -4C (25F) and partly cloudy, and so on. I'd like to know what weather my friends are enduring, since they are all over the world, and I'd like to be able to look back at my entries of last year and see if it's really true, that this year is far warmer than last.

• Know what the weather is like where your friends are.
• Be able to show what the weather is like where YOU are.
• Be able to look back at previous entries and see weather patterns/changes over the years.
• Good for gardeners and outdoorsy folks.

• Takes up space.
• Might add slightly to page loading time.

• I have no idea. I'm not a programmer.

Title
Change to Location field parsing

Short, concise description of the idea
A post option or journal configuration flag that prevents text entered in a post's 'location' field from being parsed as a Google Maps link.

Full description of the idea
A lot of users slip silly places into the Location field of their posts, or information that LJ's software can't properly translate into a usable Google Maps URI. Rather than add junk hyperlinks to journal entries, a per-user or per-post option to prevent that field from being parsed might be added.

• Potentially eliminates junk links from silly entries like 'under the bed' or 'behind you', as well as from incorrectly formatted 'real' locations.

• Yet another option for users to toggle when posting.
• Not as transparent as the current arrangement.

• Adding a 'Parse for Google Maps?' checkbox next to the Location field, or with the other per-post options would probably work best. The parsing code is already in; this is just a matter of putting it behind an IF...THEN statement.

Title
Include "current location" in RSS, using GeoRSS

Short, concise description of the idea
The "current location" field does not currently appear in a journal's RSS feed. I suggest adding it in the GeoRSS format.

Full description of the idea
The "current location" field does not currently appear in a journal's RSS feed. For example, http://marnanel.livejournal.com/920410.html has a location set, but this does not appear in http://marnanel.livejournal.com/data/rss .

The GeoRSS specification (http://georss.org) describes a suitable format.

WordPress already supports this feature with a plugin: http://www.georss.org/trac/trac.cgi/wiki/GeoPress

• This information is useful for RSS aggregators which plot location information on a map. The Planet aggregator is working on adding this at present.

• GeoRSS encodes the location in a canonical format: an ordered pair of (latitude, longitude), thus:
• <georss:point>45.256 -71.92</georss:point>
• By contrast, LJ uses a freeform string. However, we can address this problem in one of two ways, as detailed below.

• We can deal with the problem of turning LJ's freeform "current location" string into a (latitude, longitude) pair: firstly, if the "current location" string gives a parseable (latitude, longitude) pair, that can be used, and all nonconforming strings can be ignored. Secondly, we could add a geocoding step for strings which don't give a parseable pair: the CPAN modules Geo::Coder::Google, Geo::Coder::Yahoo or Geo::Coder::US will turn an address given as a string into a suitable (latitude, longitude) pair.

Title
Make "Current Location" None USCentric

Short, concise description of the idea
Allow users to specify a country code for google maps linking.

Full description of the idea
If I specify my "Current Location" then a link is added that uses maps.google.com which works fine if the location is in the US but can be pot luck for a location in the UK. For example "Upton House" works but "Batsford Arboretum GL56" fails. However, if I use maps.google.co.uk to find the location it is correctly identified.

• Users outside of the US would be able to more accurately specify the location of the journal entry without having to resort to latitude,longitude syntax.
  

• An extra input box would be needed on the submit page which users would only need to use if the default maps.google.com identified the correct location.
  

• What I would like to do is to be able to specify the particular google maps site that is able to correctly identify the location be that .co.uk, .fr etc, either from a drop down list, or by typing a suffix to replace .com in maps.google.com
  

Title
'Current Location' Suggestion

Short, concise description of the idea
Enable the "Current Location" feature to link to a website other than Google Maps. Preferably something the user can choose at their discretion.

Full description of the idea
My suggestion is to allow the 'Current Location' feature the ability to be set by the user.

Ex: Say I'm a college student and I write a new post with my Current Location set as "The Library" Thus, with my idea, the link would take me to my college's webpage and not Google Maps.

• The "Current Location" feature would get more use. I've never seen it used specifically enough for a spot to be googled.
• Due to the above, the feature is hardly ever used. This suggestion has the potential to change that.
• It'd be way cool. :)

• The new feature could be abused. An unwelcome site full of spyware or pop up ads could be entered, much to the dismay of anyone clicking on the link.
• Implementation: I can think of a couple ways of setting up the basic format of the suggestion. I do not, however, know how hard it'd be to code it into the site. It could be potentially a lot of work.
• It's not an essential feature that needs to be changed. Just another frivolous feature - not like known problems that need to be debugged.
  

• As I see it there are two ways this could be undertaken. The first would be to have each journal set up with a certain amount of location blurbs and corrosponding sites - sort of like a Tag.
• The second would be to have a URL box attached to the 'Current Location' - the same as adding a link to my journal post.

Title
Web update could remember last used Location

Short, concise description of the idea
It would be nice if the web update page (for entering new journal entries) remembered my last-entered Location.

Full description of the idea
Since the location of my computer doesn't change on a day-to-day basis, it would be nice if the web update page could remember my last used Location.

• Wouldn't have to re-enter my City, State for each time I update.

• Laptops, for example, may not be in the same location for each post.

• I think a cookie would be a good method for remember the last location of *this* computer.
• Make it a user option so that if a user doesn't want the location to be remembered, it would not be remembered.

Title
"Location" Linking

Short, concise description of the idea
Clicking on the "Current Location" link should not link you directly to Google maps, but instead to a list of other people who have used that location.

Full description of the idea
Instead of linking directly to Google maps, clicking on the "Location" link from someone's LJ entry should link to a page that lists other users who "share this location".

As a college student, I often list my dorm room. This is "East 128" not an address. Clicking on this causes Google maps to say it can't find the address, because it's not an address. This would work well for people who prefer to put down "the office" or "school" rather than a street address.

The linked page would be similar to the interests directory, listing everyone who has listed the same location. At the top of this page, there would be a "Google map this?" sort of link. When the user clicks on it, they're taken off-site to try to map that location.

• People don't have to list the address of their location
• People won't click on a location expecting a link of others who have that location in common, such as is the case when clicking on locations or interests from the user information
• People will still have access to the Google maps feature, but clicking a "blind" link from LiveJournal won't directly take them there
• Allows for enhanced creativity in location selection
• More intuitive for the user, as it seems more logical to put "At home" than "1030 Columbia Avenue"

• Readers of those who have posted a street address will have to click twice to get to the map they want
• There have been directory problems in the past, so adding more load to the directory might not be wise

• This requires the creation of a new directory page, virtually identical to the interests.bml page
• An external link to Google maps is placed on this location.bml page, which will map the location currently being viewed

Title
Music selection...

Short, concise description of the idea
When typing in your music you can get a picture of the album cover.

Full description of the idea
We have a choice of typing in what we're currently playing. I think we should also be able to put in the album cover along with the music selection.
Type in the band... click go a page will pop up with the album cover on it... like a certain search engine or something... like cdnow.com amazon.com... something like that, that will find the cover. Then after that you end up back on your post page and type in the song title in another box that shows up... then continue on to posting your entry.

• Memory of band by picture.
• Cooler look to the post.

• Post may not show up.
• Picture may be too big for the page.
• Some people may not like the idea.

• Make sure that when you click the go button it pops another page up so the person doesn't lose the entry they typed. When they click the picture for the album that they are listening to by the band it brings them back to the page they were on and the pictures is there on the page with a box under it where they can type the song title.

Title
Reading List feature

Short, concise description of the idea
Add a per-user page which contains books which the user has just-finished, is currently-reading, and is about-to-read.

Full description of the idea
Like the interest list, but probably better implemented as a separate page, a reading list would be a very interesting feature for LJ.

The idea is that the user can enter ISBN numbers and LJ will mine Amazon (configurable to access .com, .co.uk or other international variant) for the details of the book. A page would then be generated with title/author/publisher/cover image/etc.

I think that would be interesting as a first cut. As an extension, the page could highlight books that your friends are also reading, and possibly offer recommendations based on what your friends are reading.

An lj-tag to generate an inline reference to an individual entry in your reading list would also be very helpful.

An ordered list of benefits

• Easy to populate the page
• Interesting extension of metadata about users
• More potential for user interaction around their reading lists
• Potential discovery of new friends by overlap in reading interests
  

An ordered list of problems/issues involved

• High volume of traffic to Amazon.com
• Cost implications of above? I don't know what Amazon's rules are on traffic.
• Programming effort
• Storage space in databases

An organized list, or a few short paragraphs detailing suggestions for implementation

• Not much to offer here, except the suggestion of using Net::Amazon in connection with Amazon's web services API.

Title
current mood option for comments

Short, concise description of the idea
allow commenter to display "mood" via drop-down when commenting like with "picture to use"

Full description of the idea
Instead of only being able to show a picture and title w/ your comments, there could be a "mood" option to display current mood or mood toward the post. This would be a drop-down box like the picture option and NOT emoticons w/in the comment text itself like this post: http://www.livejournal.com/users/suggestions/19537.html

An ordered list of benefits

An ordered list of problems/issues involved

An organized list, or a few short paragraphs detailing suggestions for implementation

Title
Force Text for Current Mood/Music

Short, concise description of the idea
The ability to force friends to see your custom text for current mood/music titles.

Full description of the idea
Similiarly to mood icon sets, which already allow this feature, LiveJournalers should have the ability to force their own choice of words for "mood" and "music" onto the friends page of others. Let's say I don't like music, I'm more into film. So I change the word "music" to "movie" in my journal, and write my current choice in the field whenever I update. When that entry is viewed on someone's friends page, I don't want it to say "Current Music: Fritz Lang's M." I'd much rather it says what I chose it to say.

An ordered list of benefits

An ordered list of problems/issues involved

An organized list, or a few short paragraphs detailing suggestions for implementation

Title
'music' iTunes music store link

Short, concise description of the idea
A way of changing the current music thing in journals into a link to that song's profile and preview in iTunes music store.

Full description of the idea
Now that iTunes has been released on Windows, I thought perhaps it should be implemented into Livejournal. You may be aware of the 'Music store' feature, where 30 second song-clips are available to listen to, and then you can buy the full song for 99 cents if you like it. Maybe you guys should make a feature where clicking on the current music thing links through to that song in iTunes Music store? It'd be a great way to sample tracks that friends are listening to.

An ordered list of benefits

An ordered list of problems/issues involved

An organized list, or a few short paragraphs detailing suggestions for implementation

Title
A couple of default emotions to ad

Short, concise description of the idea
I have seen a couple of emotions listed regularly as "other" by people because they aren't on the list.

Full description of the idea
The emotions I am referring to are: allergic (heh, soooo common) singing (soooo many people post song lyrics), dancing (and dance to em), strong (or mighty, many variations), withdrawn/hurt, praying, and reading (people post book quotes). Can I beg they be added to the default list. I have a set of emoticons I am trying to make public to the community, and have ones prepared for these emotions.

An ordered list of benefits

An ordered list of problems/issues involved

An organized list, or a few short paragraphs detailing suggestions for implementation

Title
New Mood - 'upset'

Short, concise description of the idea
I would like to propose that 'upset' be added to the mood choices.

Full description of the idea
There have been times where I've wanted to set my mood as 'upset', because I'm not completely 'annoyed', or 'sad' or 'angry' but something more like, well, 'upset'. I am aware that I am able to type in any mood I want, but it would be nice to be able to have an icon go with it. There is 'disappointed', but I generally define 'upset' as a bit of anger + annoyance + sad.

An ordered list of benefits

An ordered list of problems/issues involved

An organized list, or a few short paragraphs detailing suggestions for implementation