New

Improvement

New Narrate Features

After a lot of user testing and feedback, we've made some big updates to how you voice and video narrate the pages of your LoudDoc. Big changes include:

1. One tool to record either voice or video for your page narration.
2. Better workflow as you move page to page on your narration.
3. A teleprompt tool where you can write talking points, detach it from the interface, and place it near your webcam so you can maintain better camera eye contact.
4. Cleaner invite process for your guest page narrators to contribute their voices to your pages.
5. Faster video and voice notation loading and playback.
6. Improved recording and playback on mobile devices.

We've had feedback from LoudDoc users that it's reduced the number of meetings they've needed with clients and they've seen a significant increase in audience feedback coming right from their LoudDoc.

We hope you'll take advantage of this feature to really improve your knowledge transfer game. Remember, reading is hard, listening is easy!

Mobile Landscape Improvements

We've also significantly improved the presentation of your LoudDoc in mobile devices when in landscape mode. Now your double page LoudDocs and presentation style LoudDocs can be viewed in landscape mode on your phone at twice the size. You'll see a lot more of the phone's viewport dedicated to displaying your LoudDoc and improving the knowledge transfer with your audience.

Navbars can be hidden while viewing your LoudDoc on a phone. Simply tap on the booklet and your navbar will disappear and increase the viewable area for your LoudDoc. Tap again to bring the navbar back.

We've also added a legend to the navbar to help people navigate your LoudDoc. When tapping on the help button, they will get a series of overlay instructions to show them how to navigate this great new piece of content.

Adding more LoudDocs to your account is also faster and easier. Simply tap the add more LoudDocs, and we'll automatically add them to your account. No more checkout required. It will be added to your next subscription renewal automatically.

Thinkific Integration

If you use Thinkific for delivering your courses, but find that you need something to make your courses "stickier" so more students complete them, then LoudDoc is for you. Our new embed code for Thinkific will allow you to embed fully interactive, narrated flipbooks into your course pages. This helps keep a student's attention and makes knowledge transfer more fun and effective. You'll see more course completions and students who are keen to share how much they enjoyed your teaching experience.

Find us in the Thinkific app market here: https://apps.thinkific.com/apps/louddoc

Up and Coming

As always, your feedback is what guides our development. In the new year, you can expect a number of big improvements and new features as we continue to improve engagement in your Simplebooklets.

Thanks again, Scott and the Simplebooklet Team.

New

[New] We're excited to release two new features to LoudDoc, based on feedback from our users. Headshots for voice narration and the ability to crop an image on your page.

Headshots for Voice Narration

You can now add a headshot to the voice narration you place on your page. It's a great way to put a face to the voice and build a stronger human connection.

Your voice narration player will now have the option of displaying a headshot, logo, or anything else you'd like to display as you narrate.

You can have more than one headshot depending on who's narrating or even if wanted to express different emotions with different facial expressions.

Adding a headshot is simple. In the your voice narration tool, before or after you record your narration, tap the upload button to add your headshot.

You can have multiple headshots as well saved in your headshot library. When you upload a headshot, it gets added to your library automatically.

Simply clicking on a headshot from your library will add it to your narration player.

Managing headshots

You can manage your headshots in your brand kit. There you'll find all the headshots you've uploaded and can remove any that you no longer want. You can also set a headshot to be your default. This will automatically apply it to your voice narrations.

We hope you take advantage of this new feature, we think it will add a lot of personality to your voice narrations.

Image Cropping

We've just updated our image management tool for any images and photos you add to your LoudDoc in the EDIT tab. Image cropping is for when you are enhancing your page with additional images you upload from our Add Image Tool.

Image cropping lets you set the size of the image container, then move the image around and resize it to show only the image area you want.

To start, go to your page with the image you want to crop. A single click on the image will reveal the image container. You can resize the entire image by grabbing and dragging the bottom right corner of the image.

To crop the image inside the image container, you can tap the orange crop tool in the top left corner (or double click on the image). This will reveal the image cropping tools (four green dots in the corners).

If you grab and drag any of these corners, you'll see that the image will change shape but the image container will stay the same size. This way you can only show in your image container the part of the photo you want revealed.

When dragging the four green dots, your image will maintain its aspect ratio.

While in cropping mode, you can also change the size and ratio of the actual image container, so changing the "frame" dimensions of your image.

You can see how we've been able to change the frame of the image to be a different ratio, and we've been able to show only part of the original image we started with.

This should give all our users a lot more flexibility with the image tool when enhancing their pages.

General Updates

We've updated our homepage and over the next few weeks, you'll start to see more use cases and examples so you can get the most out of your LoudDoc account.

New

We're rolling out a number of updates this week and for the end of May. This release see's the following new features and improvements to LoudDoc.

New Dashboard

We've updated your dashboard with a new and improved interface and added some helpful tools and data.

You'll notice right off the bat we've improved how we display your existing LoudDocs. We've cleaned up their presentation and made the buttons to trigger what you want to do clearer.

We've also added a new sort feature. You can now sort your LoudDocs on your dashboard by newest, oldest, last edited, and most opens.

We've also added some new data reporting for each LoudDoc. You can see the number of opens, how many pages are in your booklet, and when you last updated.

You'll notice that in the top right corner, we've updated the way you access your account settings and profile. We've made this clearer and easier to manage.

Integrations Menu

We've added a new Integrations menu on your dashboard so you can see all the different ways you can use LoudDoc with other third party platforms. They are broken into multiple categories depending on how they work. They include reporting, content import, and content distribution. These integrations are all through our platform but its a great way to see everything that you can do and even implement them directly from their listing to your overall account.

Slack Integration

We've added a new Slack integration to LoudDoc. There are three ways you can use Slack and LoudDoc together. From the share tab of your LoudDoc, you can post to a specific channel or direct message. This will post your link and cover image to that Slack channel for easy access.

You can also use slash commands within Slack to access your list of LoudDocs and choose which one you want to appear in your channel.

And lastly, you can set up automatic notifications in a Slack channel. Basically, you'll be able to get notified automatically anytime someone accesses your LoudDoc in the Slack channel of your choosing.

You can learn more about our Slack integration here:

https://louddoc.com/integration/slack-info.php

Guest Narrations

We've improved our narration tool significantly for inviting a subject matter expert to contribute to the narration of your LoudDoc. You can now invite a guest narrator to narrate the entire LoudDoc, or any page you want. Once they complete the narration, you'll receive an email notification that they've submitted a narration for review, and you will also see a notification tag on the invite tool for that page. You can review the multiple submitted narrations, then add the one you think works the best.

Bug Fixes and Performance Enhancements

We've made some improvements to our conversion engine to keep enhancing the ability to convert multiple file formats. We've also made some improvements to some of our flip transitions for mobile devices and a few general database performance enhancements.

Stay tuned for another update at the end of May. Some big new features that are really close to being ready for release.

New

We've added a new feature over the weekend. Using the Invite narration tool, you can now invite someone to narrate the entire LoudDoc for you. The invitee doesn't need an account on LoudDoc either. Just create the invite link and share it with them through any of your favorite communication methods (email, sms, messaging). Your invitee will open the link, then have the option of narrating any of the pages in your LoudDoc.

New

Okay, exciting times for us here at LoudDoc as we get ready to release the first public version of LoudDoc. We've worked hard over the last year to design a platform that will make your document sharing more professional, more personal, and more persuasive.

Go ahead, sign up for a starter (free) plan and see just how powerful narrating your shared documents can be with the audience you communicate.

We're in a very rapid development cycle based on your feedback, so please send us your suggestions. We're at that really fun stage of development where your voice is heard and becomes a key component of the experience of LoudDoc (or in development terms - you are helping shape our code debt in the future ;)

Thanks again, Scott

New

We've made a big under the hood update to middlespot which will give you more transparency to your content and improve the performance of your desktop. All of your desktops will now appear in your GDRIVE under the folder middlespot. In that folder, you will see a folder for each of your desktops. All of the content in those folders in google drive are what are displayed on your middlespot desktop.

What this means today.

So for now, you have complete visibility and control over the original and only copy of that file. You can edit it in your GDrive and it will be updated on your middlespot desktop.

What this means in the future.

By making this change, we will now be able to implement GDRIVE sync with your desktop. So, whenever you drop a file into your desktop folder on GDRIVE, it will automatically appear on your middlespot desktop.

You will also soon be able to see your URL links with screenshots on your middlespot desktops now displayed in your GDRIVE as well (a feature that a lot of people seem to be looking for from their Google Cloud Drive).

We hope you enjoy this new update and the features it will allow us to unlock for your middlespot desktop in the future.

On another note...

We did make some minor UI/UX improvements to your desktop as well. Some colors and highlights have been updated to emphasize important information. We also updated the flow for creating a new desktop to hopefully make it more obvious to what you can get. Also, we've improved the help overlays that appear when you click on the help icon in the bottom left toolbar.

As always, we really appreciate the feedback as we continue to improve middlespot desktops.

New

This is a big one. We've released in increments over this last week a significant update to the middlespot user interface and added some significant new features. These include:

1. Moved the control panel from a floating card to a left side toolbar.
2. Added search capabilities for your desktops.
3. Added a clearer indication of what account you are using to sign into simplebooklet.
4. Reduced the google account connection requirements to a restricted folder on your google drive.
5. Use edit mode to add and update your desktop from your mobile phone.
6. New backgrounds - designed to help you organize content on your desktop.
7. New middlespot desktop providing you quick links and the latest information on what we're up to.
8. New stickers to add to your desktop.
9. New homepage and help screens to guide you through all the updates and what you can do with middlespot.
10. Block followers of your public desktop.
11. New feedback tool to let us know how we can continue to improve.
12. New font families to make your notes more engaging and additional font sizes and an HR line break.

As you probably noticed, the biggest update is to the user interface. We've focused on reducing the number of taps it takes to interact with your desktop and move between desktops. We've also worked to increase the visible space of your desktop and make the tools much less intrusive.

Under the hood, we've also made significant progress in improving the flow and movement of your desktop. We've been able to smooth the motion in dragging and zooming when using your mouse. You'll also notice an improvement in the touch actions on your mobile phone.

As always, we really appreciate the feedback and the features you'd like to see as we work towards a tool that you can't live without.

New

We've made some updates to streamline and simplify the middlespot desktop interface. Significant changes include:

1. new streamlined control panel.
2. bottom navigation tools are reorganized.
3. simplified table of contents.
4. major enhancement to the zoom/magnification UI to improve speed and fluidity.
5. new commenting tool to leave notes on each item on your desktop.

As always, please leave your comments and feedback in our about section.

Tip

We've created a new video to help introduce you to middlespot and it's possibilities.

New

New Features and some UI improvements.

New Control Panel

We've reduced the size of the control panel and cleaned up some of the features. You will notice that the sponsor banner has been reduced in size and the desktop and account tools are now on the top of the control panel.

New desktop listing layout

There is a new modal for your desktop folder. Your desktops are categorized based on the ones you own, the ones you contribute to, and the ones you follow.

Upload and Edit DOC, PPT, and XLS Files

When you upload a file to your desktop, you will now be able to edit the file directly on your desktop. Just tap on the file and it will open in a new tab, allowing you to make changes. If you share the desktop with others, they will also be able to edit the file (if you have made them contributors to your desktop).

Image Viewing

All images now can be viewed fullscreen. Tap on any image you have added to your desktop and you'll open a new tab in your browser allowing you to view the image fullscreen.

Access All Desktop Files In Your Google Drive

All the files saved on your desktop are stored in your personal gdrive on google. You can access them by opening your GDrive and navigating to the folder that is titled middlespot.

New Keyboard Shortcuts

Open any content on your desktop by tapping the enter button. You can flip between your content using the arrow keys, then tap enter to open any content you are focused on.