DEMO 07 just got underway out in lovely Palm Desert, CA. Year after year, DEMO earns its reputation for being the only bi-annual event that is first to consistently identify the world’s most promising technologies that will create the markets of tomorrow. Hundreds of companies from around the world vie for the chance to launch here, but only the very best make the cut.Me.dium is very proud to have our public launch start at DEMO and invites you all to join us live via Me.dium. You’ll find us cruising the sites of the other DEMO’ers as well as some of the blogs giving frequent updates.Thanks again to all of you for your amazing input and participation in Me.dium’s community. Someday, you can tell everyone how you were in on the ground level when this whole idea took off.

We’ve had a few forum threads on the different sharing and anonymity settings available in Me.dium. I’ve been trying to keep those answers short and sweet, but have had to settle for brief and boring in an attempt to stay on subject.”No more!” I say. Tonight, I unleash the RTFM beast that resides deep within my soul!

Let’s start with the visibility settings as they’re (hopefully) a little more obvious. The little arrow next to your name and orange icon underneath the Me.dium map controls these.

Visible To All - This is the granddaddy of visibility states for making new friends and starting conversations. All Me.dium users can see your username in the map while you’re in this state. All of your friends can see your location in the friends tab and everyone can see it in chat messages. I spend most of my time this way and consider it an open invitation for friendly banter, water cooler conversations and the sharing of cool new YouTube videos (I love this job).

Visible To Friends - This is the default setting when you first login to Me.dium. Your friends can see your username in their maps. They can also see your location in the friends tab and in chat conversations. You appear as a nameless blue person to all other Me.dium users.

Visible To No One - aka “blue people.” All Me.dium users see you as a mysterious blue person. Your friends can see that you’re online, but do not see your location in the friends tab or in chat sessions.”

That’s all pretty straight and simple, but what happens when you change states?” Short Answer - it gets a little complicated, but we’ve got a team of rock star developers who’ve thought it through.

Increasing your visibility status - Your name and location suddenly appears to everyone you’re sharing it with. For example, I go from Visible To No One to Visible To Friends while on the same site with a friend. They simply see my blue icon turn yellow and my name appears. A similar process plays out when you make a new friend. Okay, this one isn’t too complicated.

Decreasing your visibility status - Your yellow icon (as it would be seen by friends) disappears for other users map for a random number of sites and/or time and then is replaced by a blue icon. For example, I’m at a site with a colleague and decide that it’s time for a YouTube break, but I would rather they not know about my short attention span. I change my status and disappear from their screen for a short period so that they cannot see my new blue icon go from site to site. I told our developers that this was the coolest feature that no one would ever see while they were developing it.

Let’s move along to the different sharing states. These are controlled by the Me.dium icon in the upper right corner of your browser’s menu and to a lesser extent by making the sidebar visible or not.

Sharing Turned Off - The Privacy Shield will appear over the Me.dium map. All sharing between your browser and Me.dium is completely blocked. You’re friends will see you online at the last site you were on before sharing was stopped in their maps and in chat conversations. The Privacy Shield also comes up whenever you enter a secure site such as a bank.

Sidebar Closed With Sharing On - You are still sharing your attention stream with Me.dium in this state, but appear offline to your friends (grayed out in the friends tab). The data you’re sharing is added anonymously to our matching algorithm to build the map for all users.

Sidebar Closed With Sharing Off - Totally off. Your friends cannot see you; we cannot see you; and you cannot see us.Well there you have it.

Questions? Comments? Please offload here.

Hey everyone.A lot of you are new to Me.dium, and some of you have been with Me.dium since we first launched the private beta in October. To everyone, I just wanted to say thank you for being a part of something that we believe could change the way we browse forever.Me.dium reveals the hidden world of people and activity behind your browser. The vision is through Me.dium, you’ll be able to access all the people out there doing the same things you are.

• You’ll be matched to people doing the same Google Searches. You’ll see which pages they go to, and be able to reach out to them.
• You’ll be matched to people reading the same articles. You’ll be able follow the crowd and discuss the news as a group. This works great for Digg users as they decide what news should be tops for the day.
• You’ll finally be able to browse the internet together, with friends and with users that you’ve met through Me.dium. Whether you’re planning a trip with friends, or just trying to figure out which computer to buy.

Well, thanks to all the great interest we’ve received over the past day or so, we need to make a few new tweaks to the system to make sure everything is working as planned. Please bear with us for the next hour or so as we take the server down to make sure Me.dium is doing its best to continue to reveal that hidden world of people and activity behind your browser.Check back soon, and in the meantime, please hop on over to our forums and let us know what you think so far.

Me.dium gives you full control over how others see you online. Mouse over your name, in the legend, to show yourself to everyone, only your friends, or to no one at all.Remember, if you share your visibility with friends, they can see where you are right now in their friends list and come join you!