Over the past couple of weeks the team has been altering and rewriting part of E’s architecture. Now, to avoid too much lightsabery geektalk, you probably won’t notice any of the changes we’ve made to the service. But I’ll walk you through it anyway. Platform scalability is extremely important for growing companies like us, and we really like to think of ourselves as a platform, not a specific product. The changes we’ve made allow E to scale more rapidly, and make sure that future API connections get handled more effectively (think iPhone app, mass Connector release, developer API keys). The update was pushed out today, so if you are experiencing any problems or noteworthy changes in user experience, please let us know on Get Satisfaction!

After these backend changes we’ll make sure you’ll actually get an update where you’ll notice stuff has changed/added.

We’ve had a couple of requests for better Xing integration on Get Satisfaction. We just pushed out an update which should fix most of the problems there have been with integrating Xing with your cards. If any problems persist, drop us a line on Twitter or Get Satisfaction.

Sevenload had a great HD setup filming all of the conference’s presentations. Here’s our Next ‘09 presentation is awesome steady high definition.

The lovely Viktoria Trosien interviewed yours truly one year after the Amsterdam AWS event at Next 09 in Hamburg. It was a fun, in depth interview about specifics of our product, future roadmap and our opinion about competitors. Go check it out!

We want everybody to help us shape our platform. That’s why today we’re introducing a very logical feature, but a very usable one nonetheless. Are you ever standing in front of somebody, wanting to exchange a card on E, but the other person doesn’t have an account? You probably are. We have been, and wanted this feature implemented as soon as possible.

From today, using m.mynameise.com, i.mynameise.com, mynameise.com and the upcoming iPhone app, you can send your card to somebody who’s not on E by simply entering their email address. E will send a connection request to that person, that automatically connects you after the receiving person signs up for E. The request email also provides a link to your Public Card in case the receiving person needs your information fast.

Time for a short update on the development front. iPhone app is coming along nicely, those of you who are waiting: You might have read that Apple sent an email to all developers about 3.0 compatibility. We’re at that point right now. There have been many questions about how the device connectivity will work: iPhone to iPhone card exchanging will support the ‘flick’ gesture, but the app will support connecting with other phones as well through the m/i.mynameise.com method.

A small and funny detail: E recognises your gender now. You have to specify your gender in E/Settings/Account though, before the Trail messages correspond to you being a boy or a girl. No longer will your connections think you’ve undergone drastic surgical procedures.

We’ve had some troubles with the Hyves OAuth connection, but have managed to solve this fast and properly. If you’ve encountered problems, try to share another card and the automatic friending should take place regardless.

The aftermath of the Next ‘09 conference has led to many cool new things coming up. In the meantime, check out the keynote presentation on Empressr, Slideshare or Vimeo.

Last but not least, our Widgets have been a real popular feature since our last update, so we’re making sure they’ll work on all platforms. We’re working hard to get everything ready for you. If you want to support E, please point to your public profile on your social networks, Twitter bios, etc. Oh, and join our Facebook group!

Thanks to iFranz.tv

Today we’re presenting E at the Next ‘09 conference in Hamburg, Germany. And what good would conferences be without product announcements? Today we introduce the latest build of the E webservice to you, codenamed Marvin. Apart from minor bugfixes supplied to us by our lovely community, we have a couple of unique features ready for you.

Today is not about hardware, but how E will behave on the web. One of our most popular features right now is the Public Card. Your Public Card is basically one of your cards you can make public, which means you get a mynameise.com/yourname url where you can list the contact information you’d like to share, as well as your social networking profiles. You can customize it by adding a HD background.

One of the most popular feature requests was to be able to connect online, not just in real life, through the Public Card. We’ve added that functionality. Whenever you visit a Public Card now, you’ll see a lovely shiny button in the top right which will allow you to send a connection request. Select one of your own cards to share, and wait for the other to accept. The receiving party can also select a different card upon receiving the connection request.

The second new feature we’re announcing is also based on the Public Card, and shows you the first moves into our upcoming API. Want to share your public card on your site or blog? You can. You’ll be able to export your public card into a widget of your preferred size. The Public Card widget comes in the sizes of small, medium, large and megatron. You can download these as Wordpress plugins, or just embed the code on your website. It will always stay up to date.

Us here at E hope you’ll enjoy these new features and perhaps you’ll be able to draw some conclusions about what kind of platform we want to be. Just a little reminder: Sharing your cards is just the beginning. We have a lot of cool stuff coming up.