Crewparty news update:

As you may have seen Crewparty has recently made quite a few changes to the site as we evolve and move towards new and exciting features to the site. Crewparty is no longer just a Social network that offers global sms, email and notification services on multiple devices and platforms. From now on our new Labels feature allows users to: generate discussion topics that are mentioned on other social networks, including Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and more, moving all info into just one single feed; your label. No need to search, go through multiple websites and pull in new info
to your blog. Just start a feed and a label will do it all for you.
Want to invite someone outside Crewparty? No problem, just let your label work for you.

Every time you update, they will be able to read it all.

Labels will do the web searching for you, by keyword, filtering out all traffic and noise, so you can focus on building a forum for discussion on: upcoming events, interests, concerts, news or any topic you want.

Best of all, your Labels allow you to update your followers over the Web, Email or SMS all in real time, whenever you update a label.

Time to get busy, create a Label on your favourite topic and test it yourselves!

Moving on from the Labels, the Crewparty Team is working hard to improve the
site as a whole with added features to the profile and improved search
functionality and contacts features.

*Note: let us know what you think, we welcome any kind of feedback.

Thank you!

Retrieving your messages from other email accounts just got easy with our new POP3 integration.

With the POP3 service you can now download messages from up to five other email accounts, centralising all your email in Crewparty inbox.  These email accounts could be anything really… Gmail, Yahoo, Mail.ru, even your Outlook mail.  We even support SSL POP3 set ups; Gmail is an SSL (secure) email POP3 service.

Getting started is easy; Just click on your Inbox link and you will see the tab POP3 Download tab.

Add your email accounts from which you would like to retrieve messages from and then click the “CHECK POP3 mail” button (you will also see this button on the main Inbox toolbar) to fetch your message directly into your Crewparty inbox. Just click this button every time you want to fetch messages from your other email clients.

This is a great service for keeping up to date on all your communication from all over the web and desktop. Plus, with Crewparty POP3 support you can access your email messages from all your favorite email accounts on the go through our mobile site.

POP3 currently also supports attachments as well, so for example, if you receive a Gmail with photos we will not only import your message into your Crewparty Inbox, but also the attached photos into your Crewparty Mediabox…great feature to use

Accepted files as attachements: jpg, gif, and .png (attachments are added 50 MB storage limits).

As a global site we have worked hard to provide the Crewparty service in as many languages as possible, and our Crewparty Moderators have done a great job in translating the service and user interface.

For this we are eternally thankful to all our great Crewparty Moderators, who volunteer their time to make Crewparty better for all users.Today the translation engine has had a nice little redesign in features and functionality.  All Crewparty Moderators can now turn on our TRANSLATION EDITING service to begin viewing text, content, and links from the user interface, that needs to be adapted to their local language.

Crewparty, as a service that helps you organize and manage your online social presence, makes it even easier to connect and communicate. Remaining faithful to the lines of data portability and openness, Crewparty gives its users the ability to join by using their OpenID. OpenID is a new open standard that lets you sign in to web sites with a single URL that you own. This URL can be your homepage or blog, or it can be provided to you by a web site you use. In either case, you only have to sign in once to your OpenID provider and so you only need to maintain a single password. OpenID eliminates the need for multiple usernames across different websites, simplifying your online experience.
You get to choose the OpenID Provider that best meets your needs and most importantly that you trust. At the same time, your OpenID can stay with you, no matter which Provider you move to. And best of all, the OpenID technology is not proprietary and is completely free.

How is Crewparty using OpenID?

You can attach your OpenID to your existing Crewparty account or use OpenID to register for a new free Crewparty account. In both cases, you will then be able to sign in using your OpenID provider and you won’t have to use or remember a separate password for Crewparty. If you register with your OpenID, you can also pre-fill your Crewparty registration information from your OpenID provider, making it the fastest way to get started with Crewparty. To get started, enter your OpenID URL and click Sign in.

OpenID Providers

If you don’t have an OpenID yet, here are a few providers which are generally recommended by various members of the community. In the end you should choose a Provider from a company which you trust.

We are happy to have added a brand new Chat powered by Meebo.

The new chat service offers all kinds of great features, including YouTube integration, one to one private chat, multiple windows, and really great safety and moderation features.

We have added a lot of rooms to the chat including a Crewparty Main Chat, a singles room, football room, hip hop, and country specific rooms.

To get to the new chat just sign in to your Crewparty account and click the Chat link located on the left navigation and the bottom dock.

We are happy to announce that our new Crewparty mobile site is live and working great.  You can visit the mobile version of Crewparty from any mobile device web browser by going to http://m.Crewparty.com.  We recommend Opera Mini (http://m.opera.com) if you do not already have a good web browser residing on your handset.

The mobile site has all the same great features, that you get on the standard web (PC/Notebook) interface, but optimized in design and size for any mobile handset.  The site really snaps with touchscreen (iPhones/Touch devices) phones as well as keyboard/qwerty phones like your favorite Nokia, Samsung and Blackberry devices.

The new interface is really great to work with and has a very natural flow.  We feel confident that you will love the very new and innovation mobile web design.  Its clean, direct, and simple to use.  Enjoy!

Following through on our commitment to open up “walled-gardens” and give users more control of how messages are received and managed, a great new feature that allows you to forward Crewparty inbox messages to your favorite email accounts has been added.

Crewparty users can forward Crewparty messages and sms messages to any email account they own.

When you add and confirm an email address, any incoming message that comes to your inbox will be forwarded to a list of email addresses below added to your Crewparty account.

Forwarded messages and sms are not deleted from your Crewparty Inbox and always archived for your message history needs.  Screenshots below highlight the service.

To access the forward option just go to your Crewparty Inbox and click on the FORWARD tab.  It is a great way to get your Crewparty Inbox and sms messages delivered direct to your Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, Hotmail or any email account for easy access…and best of all, we support SSL connections as well ENJOY!!!

The idea behind Crewparty.com was simple, let’s create one main place where all Cruise Ships Employees, Past, Present and Future as well as their Friends and Family can Meet and stay in touch for absolutely free.

Founded by an Ex Cruise Ship Employee himself, Daniel Z, knew that Crewmembers around the world are hugely underrated and something needs to be done in order to put Crewmembers back on the map. With thousands of different global Social Networks it was time for a change, let’s create a meeting place for a very close to heart community: the Worldwide Crewmembers their Friends and Family.

As Crewmembers we know that keeping in touch with home is of paramount, and regardless of your port of call you want to be able to say “Hi mom”, Hi dad” “I love you sweetheart”  “I’m coming back home next week my love”… and the list goes on and on.  Therefore we have created a network that not only will allow you to stay in touch but also to do it with absolutely free and from literally anywhere around the Globe.

In Crewparty.com beside of all the usual Social Network features you might find (and a few cool new ones) there is one main powerful advantage, sending Free SMS (text messaging) to over 200 Countries and on more than 500 global networks. This without no doubt to a Crewmember and He’s/hers family and friends is a life saver.

There are so many things to discover about crewparty.com and I will keep you up to scratch updating the Blog with all new and exciting information.

Enjoy!

Daniel.