Wow, that s such an amazing work of Javascript. However, 200KB+ of compressed js files is killing me off and isnt it true that Prototype framework is very bloated :P (in case I dont have a dual core PC and fast internet connection). By the way, I smell this website as a potential web-based OS with social activities, am I right ?

Hey Ville, thanks for the review.

As it is stated on the site, the site creator tool is "Alpha". There are bugs, features are missing. This service is not finished, and should be considered as such, but we're working on it (should be ready for when the school starts) :)

However, sharing content (movies / music / pictures for example) should be easy.

We're working on the front page this week. You didn't mention anything about the cartoon, did you like it? I think it is quite unique and very good at explaining what we do.

I'd love to hear what you, or other readers, would like us to improve.

Hi Memphis.

Thanks for the compliment :)

You are right. Basically the idea of MySites is to give you online, web-based programs, that you can access from any device. We are planning to open up this whole "web OS" to third parties, and allow them to create and deploy new "apps" easily (expect a surprise in a few months :P).

The explorer is indeed a very advanced piece of javascript. All the rendering of MySites happens on the client side, including the views, sorting, item display.

I agree that MySites is slow on slower machines, we're working on releasing the interface for mobiles and consoles soon, which has less eye-candy :)

Ramine,

Understand the product is in 'Alpha', yet it is an open one at that, which I take as a sign (along with the fact that you're touring US with Mashable) that you're ready for users to start using it, no?

Nevertheless, fully understand there are more bugs to iron out, and there always is and I strongly believe it's better to ship sooner rather than later. Having said that, when I get enough "Oops! JSON processing failed" and "Oops! Initialization of component failed" it clearly affects my user experience, and make it harder (if not impossible) to see the value you are offering. Whether I know it's an Alpha or not is irrelevant if the service is too hard to use.

Further, I believe the processing juice should not be a problem either. I'm accessing the service via MacBook 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB of memory and running Firefox3.

In that light I would consider keeping it behind closed doors until it is closer to what you're intending it to be feature and stability wise. You could consider giving early enthusiasts who clearly would like to use the service access one at a time even if that means giving access to every person requesting it. This is a clear sign that the service is still in development, thus users know to come back later on and don't judge it for its current state.

Same goes for the user interface. Currently it is hard for me as a user to figure out how to do all that's promised in the cartoon the plays right in the beginning after you press 'push' (Cartoon in itself is quite descriptive and good).

Apart from the overview, you might want to consider giving out information and advice as the user delves deeper into the service instead of dropping it all at the beginning which is quite overwhelming. After seeing what the service can do, I only need the detail when I get that far. And to get there should be as simple, intuitive and logical as possible.

And since you asked about the cartoon specifically, I think there's nothing particularly wrong with that. Although it would be nice to be able to close it after the flag waving starts at the end of the clip.

Hope this helps. Good luck to the whole team(!) and don't let the critique put you down, but rather prove us wrong.

Hey again,

We will keep improving MySites daily, just like we have been for the past months :) September is very important for us, as the school starts again.

I think currently MySites is a good platform to save and share photos, movies and music, but we are working on making it easier to interact with other users, check out their content, and to publish it. In the coming weeks, the site will have changed a great deal (hopefully for the best :)

The page creation tool is alpha. We released it for testing anyway, so that we can get feedback, and some people are actually already using it!

The CPU power issue you pointed out is on the page creation tool as well. We will implement a pre-rendering system for pages, rather than re-rendering on the client all the time.

We focused on having the same kind of experience as an explorer on a desktop. We mostly aimed at Window XP users, and some Mac users are confused by some aspects, so we're currently making tutorial videos :)

Great! Looking forward to seeing and trying out all the future improvements.

Any comment on how this differs from Pownce?

Also, will it be working on Safari in the near future?

Hello Kristoffer,

MySites is much, much more the Pownce.

As far as I understand, Pownce is a messaging / microblogging tool, where users can write messages to their friends or everyone(which may also contain links to content).

MySites is a platform for all your online content.
We build web apps that can work from anywhere, to store, manage, publish and share any kind of content (photos, music, movies, files/docs, blogs, favorite links), and on any device (soon).

We also have a website creation tool, which is currently in alpha, which will in time offer great looking websites to online gaming teams, bands, and student communities.

In a few months, MySites will open up to third parties so that they can create new services (for ex: forums, wikis, etc) using our own infrastructure, hosting, and source code.

Support of Safari and Opera is very important to us, as we want to run on iPhones, Nintendo DS, and most mobiles :)

I hope this clarifies what we do.
Let me know if you need more details, or if you have any suggestions of things you'd like!

Actually I think Pownce started out as a kind of file sharing service. That's, indeed, what I've used it for. True, they've kind of expanded into the traditional social network kind of thing, and I'm not sure if that's such a great idea. Basically it makes things a bit muddled so even I'm not sure what I should be using it for.

Let me know when Safari support arrives :-)

[...] was critical of MySites on my earlier post and MySites has been very active working on the site since. In the video below Ramine points out [...]