Tomorrow the Grid will be releasing a new version of its IM and mapping client that has been performance tuned and had several functional and cosmetic changes incorporated based on user feedback.  Those of you who have worked with me before, or been part of the Amatomu process, will know that I like short release cycles with lots of changes based on what people actually want.  Here is what we have done:

1. The alert system has been overhauled completely so you will now get alerts when users send you messages, come online, send you blips, join your groups and all the other critical events.
2. Alerts have been reskinned so a popup rather than a full screen
3. Alerts have settings for text message, sound and vibration
4. The alert list now only shows the alert types that have alerts in them
5. The left and right joystick/arrow buttons now take you back a screen so you don;t have to use the menus for that
6. In chat, if the focus is on the tab then the left and right joystick will take you left and right between the chat sessions you have open
7. In chat, if the focus is on the text entry box then the right joystick will take you into the text entry mode
8. In chat when entering text the send message button is now in that box so you have to hit one less button to send
9. In chat, the colours now alternate depending on who said what
10. On any map view, you can now manually set your location to the centre point for fine adjustments to your location.
11. On any map view, you can now drop a text blip on the centre point of the map and bypass the SMS system
12. In My Profile -> Preferences you can now set different notification styles
13. In My Profile -> Preferences, you can now see session and total data consumption
14. The entire UI has been changed to support skinning.  In In My Profile -> Preferences you can chose from multiple themes with different colours.  In the November release we will include a more comprehensive list of themes with cool and mysterious names
15. A few items have moved around in the menu, specifically we added a Help item with our call centre number in case you get a case of helplessness
16. On all pages except the contact list, pressing * takes you home
17. On the contact list, pressing * brings up a search box that you can use to filter your list

Aside from these changes there have been several things that went on under the hood that you can’t really see.

We are continuing to use the two bots:

• The Dude (near Bela-bela) can be used to send 5 free SMSs a day by chatting to him.
• Free Candy (near Camps Bay) will tell you what compeitions we’re running if you speak to her

The roadmap for the next month or so includes making the sign-in process easier and quicker and revamping the way blips are presented.