So, not only a special day.. but actually a fantastic day!

To use the Facebook Application, login at Scoutle to find your Remote Key and Remote Secret at: /My Scoutle / My Account / Communication

The Facebook Application can be found at:
http://apps.facebook.com/scoutle/

Let your friends automatically know about your Scoutle Activities, for example when you recommend a blog, get a new Friend or join a network. Install the Facebook/Scoutle Live Updater right now!

1. New intelligent widget: – Dynamic Widget

This new widget has been tested for a week now and is actually a small version of your blog profile at scoutle.com. It is updated automatically to make sure only blogs are shown that you approved. Also, visitors can visit another blog directly, going from one blog to another without passing Scoutle.com to bring visitors around even quicker. We strongly advice you to replace your current widget with this new widget that is available in two different sizes.

2. Customize your widget

We added different ways to customize your widget. You are now able to select the background color of your widget! Just login at Scoutle.com and go to My Scoutle / My Blogs and click on “Edit”.

3. Find your friends!

Want to find your existing friends inside Scoutle? Use your webmail account (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo…) to find friends that are already using Scoutle and those that are not, you can invite with a single click.

4. Scoutle is getting more social

Next to Twitter, FriendFeed and your Personal RSS Feed we now also have a Lifestream RSS Feed for you and Scoutle is supported at profilactic.com. Use these cool features to get noticed! Login, go to / My Scoutle / My Account / Communication.

5. New additional service: www.qurify.com

We are also working on other cool services that can help you and your blog get noticed on different ways. We just launched www.qurify.com to help you get your blog noticed outside the Internet. At www.qurify.com your can create your own QR Codes (which is called “to qurify”) but inside the Scoutle website, we already qurified a QR Code for you at My Scoutle / My Blogs / QR Code. Check out www.qurify.com to learn more about QR Codes.

6. Submit your RSS Feed for new extra traffic

We will upgrade to Scoutle Version 3.0 soon with even more great new features. For this it is very important that you submit the RSS Feed of your blog so login at Scoutle.com and do so right away!

7. Advice: Join or create networks

Networks are very important within Scoutle so be sure to join or create networks that are related to your blog. Also, promote these networks so you make your own connections stronger and of higher quality.

To make sure Scoutle will grow faster and faster, and drive more interested traffic to your blog, please make sure to invite all your friends and BLOG ABOUT SCOUTLE! Not only will your post be mentioned at Scoutle.com (and printed out to have a nice spot at our wall at the office) but also, this is a very effective way to get your own visitors connected to your blog and help them spread the word as well. We will continue to listen to your suggestions and add as many useful and free features that all of us can think of!

You just work on the quality of your blog… The Scouts will do the rest.

We celebrate this anniversary by launching a new and far more intelligent widget, called Dynamic. This new widget is actually a small version of your personal Scoutle blog profile. Also, in this new widget we allow your visitors to navigate directly to other blogs, bypassing the Scoutle profiles.
Of course this will drive less traffic to the Scoutle website but we are more interested in helping you, our users, to get more visitors. Of course we hope you will help us and the Scoutle community out by writing/blogging about Scoutle and invite all your friends to join as well. This will help you get more traffic as well because the more people/Scouts can find your blog, the more visitors you can welcome.

We would like to recommend all our users to replace your current stage with the new Dynamic widget. The Google Gadget and other plugins are ready.

Coming weeks we will launch new services and we STRONGLY reccomend you to submit your RSS Feeds inside Scoutle or you may miss some features and traffic!

Today a big article about Scoutle has been published in the Dutch newspaper “Financieel Dagblad”, let’s say the Dutch Financial Times. A nice article I’m very proud of. They have also made a nice illustration of how Scoutle works that we may use to create one for ourselves to show (future) users.

The reporter also contacted CEO of Blogcatalog and is quoted to “find Scoutle a nice invention”.
A nice article that will get a nice place on the wall here! Buy the paper today, read it online at www.fd.nl or read it here:

Scoutle.com in the Dutch newspaper “Financieel Dagblad”

Still busy checking to see if everything works like it should, but this is an important moment!

I can promise you this will be a huge difference! I have received many feedback from current users and in two months, I also collect a lot of information from Google Analytics and other statistics, like Crazyegg click stream data. The new version is completely different which will mark an important moment again in the Scoutle history.

This second month has it’s own cool thing. I welcome many different languages now. Yesterday, the first user from Latvia joined. Of course, this user is not likely to be matched as long as more Latvian users stay away. I will therefor try to find people that can help me translate the language table to different languages so that Scoutle can be used be people that may not know either English or Dutch.

So I hope to double the amount of users the coming month and once the second version of Scoutle comes online… I hope to double every month again!

I would suggest you just play with all ideas that you find interesting. I started working on several projects. I could use a lot of the scripts and database structures later on so I didn’t throw away time. Time is your only enemy. People asked me whether or not I had found my ‘idea’ yet. That is frustrating. Some are concerned and tell you to give it up, find a job and be happy. But you can only do that when you are satisfied and agree with it. I couldn’t… I just had the feeling the idea would come one day, even though it already took 6 months.

Together with my mother I went to Africa for a month, Kenya, Uganda and Congo (DRC). We had a lot of different experiences. Beautiful moments but also very frighting ones. For one month, I hardly could think of ‘my idea’. I guess that was a very good thing. It helped me deal with the disappointment of not having succeeded in 6 months. In fact, it gave me the energy to start again! Get that idea! Laugh at the people that told you to stop!

Now, I must say that I had a lot of support . Especially from my girlfriend and family. Of course, the fact that my girlfriend still believed in me helped so much. Probably more than I noticed. There may not be many girlfriends to find that just let you play around without showing results for such a long time. We did have our arguments, but I would recommend you to stay open and honest. I didn’t tell her “I have an idea and will let you know it soon”.

In February 2007 together with my girlfriend I went to Milan, Italy, for about 7 months. She went there for studies and I figured I should join her. I had saved a lot of money in 2006 so I would not have to worry about that. I had one more client and the money I earned with that project could cover the rent and expenses. I figured it would be a very good idea to leave home and focus on my startup in an other environment. I resigned from my work and we left.

Our time in Milan was great and I had a lot of time to think about a startup. However, I also met a lot of new friends and that takes a lot of time as well. I will definitely not say I regret having all the great moments , but if you leave to think… Go to a deserted island and not to a big dynamic city like Milan

I wouldn’t suggest that leaving home is the way to get your idea. It may even hold you away from it. I started several projects in Milan but had to stop after a month or so. For different reasons. The idea was too big for me to handle, Google announced they would start a similar service, I just didn’t like it anymore, I couldn’t be proud of it, it would be very expensive to make or maintain or… I would just forget the idea.

Leaving home to think for 7 months seems weird and absolutely doesn’t guarantee anything. It may help but can also discourage you. It was frustrating sometimes I just couldn’t think of something while my bank account was going empty faster than I hoped it would.