An IBM Connect present.....Wildfire for IBM Notes 9 and Connections 4

Very pleased for Andrew Welch to provide this guest post:

WILDFIRE 1.6 IS NOW AVAILABLE

We are very pleased to announce the next release of WildFire. It has been a long time coming, but all good things come to those who wait and just in time for IBM Connect!

We have resolved a few of the issues that have arisen due to the life-cycles of the various Social Network APIs, as well as implementing a few requests from users.
Most notably here is the support for the XING network & custom feed background colors.

As of a couple of days ago we had 6835 downloads of Wildfire from OpenNTF. We have no idea how many of these then get installed across a user base and how many are just single installs but we would love to hear if you are using Wildfire so please let us know.

In other statistics, WildFire has made nearly 5 Million API calls to Facebook in the last year alone!


Here is the list of improvements:

New network support: XING
XING was both the first and most recent requested network.  With the recent launch of the Public API for XING we thought it was time to reward our loyal WildFire users.  Now you can both post and read statuses from the XING community!

Custom feed background colors
After the overwhelming positive responses of custom background colors in iWildFire, it was decided to bring them to WildFire as well.  This will make the biggest difference for those with multiple accounts of the same type.  Now you can easily tell at a glance which network the status was retrieved from

Facebook updates
Recently Facebook removed the Offline Access permission WildFire was using.  This meant that new Facebook accounts added to WildFire could not work for more than 2 hours.  In the new version of WildFire we have moved to Facebook's new authentication protocol and users now have 60 days access.  After this time simple repeat the account creation for another 60 days.

Additionally, we have added the following Facebook Feed enhancements;

• showing check-in locations
• showing people tags
• showing direct wall posts

Connections 4 support
WildFire 1.6 now supports IBM Connections 4.  You can now read and post status updates to your Connections 4 environments.  Additionally you can also comment upon posts.

LinkedIn improvements
WildFire 1.6 now supports new data structures introduced recently in LinkedIn.

IBM Notes 9 Support
WildFire 1.6 officially supports IBM Notes 9.

Performance improvements & General Bug Fixes
Some additional changes under the hood will speed up the rendering and reduce memory usage.

URL Shortening
WildFire has long supported automatic URL shortening by TinyURL when posting a status.  However, users reported trouble in keeping track of the amount of characters that had used.  With WildFire 1.6 we have added a more user friendly interface.  Simply paste a URL into the text area, or use the new keyboard short-cut (Alt+T) and the URL is automatically shortened.  This allows you to see the exact status message and length before it is sent.

Improved screen utilisation
Do you have limited screen real-estate and find yourself switching between widgets?

Users had reported their desire to keep an eye on their social feeds, but still wanting to display multiple widgets.
WildFire 1.6 includes the functionality to hide the Status Input field.  This means less wasted space and you never have to close WildFire again!

Reduced size
WildFire 1.6 is 20% smaller in size than previous versions.


In summary, WildFire 1.6 is worth the wait.  It's smaller, faster, more user friendly and connects you with more social networks than ever before!


Written by guest blogger;

Andrew Welch
Lead Developer of WildFire

Connect 2013: Booth C49
Twitter: @AndyLWelch
LinkedIn AndrewLWelch