The Cocoon Blog
The Internet as it should be: private, secure and virus free

Product updates are part of our ongoing plan to offer Cocoon users the best in Internet security, privacy and enhanced features to complement a seamless browsing experience.  Your window to the Internet just got better!

What did we change?

If you click on the Settings icon on the main Cocoon toolbar

you will be presented with a new Settings toolbar that includes access to your history, important bookmarks and notes, mailslots, browsing preferences, support and your account (you can change your password here).

With the new Support tab you can:

• Write support requests, send feedback, and submit bugs
• See responses from Cocoon Support and reply back

With the new My Account tab you can:

• Change your password from within Cocoon
• More to come!

New Bug Fix

We fixed an issue that prevented users from accessing their Yahoo! Mail.

Your feedback is important to us!

As always, the Cocoon™ service acts as a window to the Internet, where our servers and our software do the browsing for you, strip out all the bad stuff, and simply deliver the Internet content you were looking for in the first place.  Please continue to let us know what you think of Cocoon updates. We sincerely appreciate your feedback as we continue to offer ongoing enhancements and look to our users to gauge progress in this area.

If there is more that you would like to see changed or added, we would love to hear from you!   You can use our handy contact form or visit us on Twitter or Facebook!

As mentioned in a prior blog post, our developers ensure that each update comes with increased functionality and compatibility. Providing our users with a smart, sleek and trimmed add-on has become a top priority as security, privacy and functionality are enhanced with each stage of development.

We are happy to announce that this past weekend we added improved toolbar functionality. Now you can bookmark or add a note via new icons from the Cocoon toolbar:

You can access Cocoon bookmarks by clicking on the history icon in the toolbar. From the history page in list view, you will see a blue thumbtack icon to the left of a saved site. Clicking on the blue thumbtack [bookmark] will connect you with the page that you saved.

You can also access the bookmark feature in visual format by clicking on the blue thumbtack icon that appears in the upper left hand corner above the image:

Last week we updated Cocoon with two new privacy features:

1. Built in ad-blocking - server-side blocking of advertisements
2. Built in block Facebook tracking - prevents websites from identifying you through Facebook

Thank you for continuing to use Cocoon and we appreciate your feedback. If there is more that you would like to see changed or added, we would love to hear from you.

You can use our handy contact form or visit us on Twitter or Facebook!

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According to a recent report from Dasient, there were over three million impressions served per day on malicious web advertisements, with more than one million web sites estimated to be infected in the final quarter of 2010. The report also predicted that after three months of browsing, the average Internet user would have a 95% chance of hitting an infected page. Not surprising was that this same report found that most social media networks were prone to being used as distribution platforms for malware.

Our most recent Cocoon product update includes server-side blocking of advertisements. At Mashable this is the advertisement that I viewed with Cocoon prior to blocking advertising

With such constant bombardment of online advertising, my mind still has not learned how to filter out the graphics. Using Cocoon preferences all I had to do was place a check mark here

and advertisements turn into aesthetically pleasing white space…

Another New Feature: Block Facebook Tracking

You can now use Block Facebook Tracking to prevent websites from identifying you through Facebook and reporting this information back to the mother ship.

When you visit a website like CNN, you can see what your friends are recommending and sharing on CNN. Your friends can also see what you are recommending and sharing.

If you are not in the mood for reciprocity you can turn this feature off in Cocoon preferences.

You can now enjoy the news knowing you are safe from prying eyes and your friends will not be able to view your activity on CNN.

Thank you for continuing to use Cocoon and we appreciate your feedback. If there is more that you would like to see changed or added, we would love to hear from you.

You can use our handy contact form or visit us on Twitter or Facebook!

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As a recent addition to the Cocoon team roster, I’ve received a crash course in user experiences. While my newly acquainted colleagues have been working around the clock on product development, I have sorted through a slew of comments and suggestions from our highly proactive users. In just under two weeks, I have yet to see a single suggestion go unnoticed and unaccounted for.

Our developers ensure that each update comes with increased functionality, compatibility and even screen real estate! Providing our users with a smart, sleek and trimmed add-on has become a top priority as security, privacy and functionality are enhanced with each stage of development.

The Cocoon toolbar and Cocoon Favorites bar can be fully hidden to maximize browsing space and Cocoon will now remember the state each toolbar was last in, each time you restart.

Like many people these days, I spend most of my time hammering away on a small laptop screen.  For me, this means screen real estate and browser simplicity is really important.  Check out the sleek, simple look Cocoon users can now employ without having to fiddle with preferences!

We are very happy to announce some great improvements in Cocoon with a new user interface for the Firefox toolbar add-on. These improvements include:

• Blue indicator bar alerting you when you are protected by Cocoon – note the lower screen shot below.
• Easily pause Cocoon by unlocking it, allowing you to control when you want to download something onto your hard drive.
• Set Cocoon to keep you logged in after you’ve closed the browser window.
• If you have several accounts, select the pushpin to choose which user name you want retained in the log-in bar.
• Improved “History” functionality and features

Cocoon locked and protected

Cocoon unlocked not protected

Our goal is to make using Cocoon so easy you’ll always browse with it on. Like with any protection device it only works when it’s being used, and now with the “unlock” feature there’s no need to log out of Cocoon, making it easy to stay private and protected behind our proxy servers. Just make sure if you do unlock it, you turn it right back on – and the blue bar is there to remind you.

In time, as we have more file types transcoded into safe formats, there will be less reason to ever turn Cocoon off. Eventually you’ll be able to view virtually any content without having it touch your hard drive.

Please let us know what you think of Cocoon. We appreciate all the feedback we can get as we continue to develop the product. In fact, several of the features in this release were directly influenced by user comments, so keep that feedback coming!

That was a long night. Certainly the most challenging session so far. Not because of technical difficulties, product glitches, or difficult testers, but rather because Notifications is a tough concept for people to wrap their minds around.

People have a strong concept of what email is. Usually, it’s Microsoft Outlook or webmail like Hotmail, Gmail, and YahooMail. People also have a fixed idea about email addresses — theirname@gmail.com or some such thing. And people have a sense of inevitability about spam.

You give out your email address, and then you get spammed. You hope and pray that you won’t get spammed, but you get spammed. Then you get resigned to the fact that you’ll continue to get spammed. Loans and credit reports, porn and personal ads, pharmaceuticals and herbal remedies, and even spamware. (Do the guys offering spamware via spam not see the tough sell?)

It doesn’t have to be this way. People don’t have to feel powerless with email. With Cocoon, you suddenly have power over email, over how many messages you receive from a person or company, over whom you receive email from.

Here’s an example that dropped testers’ jaws to the floor. Let’s say you have a personal email address, your-name@gmail.com, and it’s linked to three Notification Addresses you’ve created. Well, what if one of those Notification Addresses is getting spammed like crazy? What do you do? Simple, delete that Notification Address. Delete. The Notification Address is gone forever. Any email going to that address goes into Internet ether, never to be seen. You don’t have to change your personal email address.

Ever tried to delete your Gmail account? It’s not fun. You can do it, but then you need to tell all your contacts about your new email address. What a hassle . . . for you and for them.

Truthfully, there were some problems with the Notification interface. The testers got the concept, but the user interface confused them. That’s something we’re already working on, and it’s the first major UI issue that had to go back to the drawing board. But that’s the process of testing. When we’re done with the redesign, Cocoon will be much better.

Another round, another group of testers.

Why do I like user testing? Well, for one, it’s social. I get to meet new people. I like the interaction and fun of discussing the concept of Cocoon with people that rarely think about what it means to be on the Internet. Most of all, I like seeing what people can do with the test version of Cocoon.

Our testers come from a wide range of backgrounds — as young as 13 and as old as 60 — people that can make a computer do back-flips, and others that can barely check their email. By the end of the night, our testers have taken their Cocoon experiences in entirely different directions. But they always, always get it. For some reason, Cocoon is easy to use. It’s all about good user interface design.

The testers feel challenged sometimes. We’re asking them to use software they’ve never seen before, sometimes to do things they’ve never done before. The UI needs to be simple, but powerful. Why have a bevy of menus when icons work just as well or better? Why stash history in long lists when the data could be viewed easily as collections of thumbnail images?

The changes to the basic browsing experience really seem to resonate with people. And, if something isn’t working right, if the testers don’t understand something in the user interface, we get a ton of insight on how to change it. That’s the part I love the most. What the testers say and do has a direct effect on how our interface feels, what it looks like, and how it works.

The first round of user testing is done. I have to say, it went a lot better than expected.

We had four people come in to test the user interface of our browsing service. I considered this the first true test of our product. Would people like the interface? Would they like the concept of Cocoon? Would they like the “Places” feature? The answer we got was a resounding yes. They liked all of it . . . a lot.

By far the biggest hit with testers was Places. You can think of Places as history, but Places is so much more. For most people, history is just a list in your browser that shows where you’ve been. Maybe it helps you find places you just visited. But that’s it. Try scrolling through long lists with weeks and weeks of accumulated websites trying to find a specific site you visited once, and which you forgot to bookmark but want right now. It’s like trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack. If you want something better, as the testers found they did, Places is for you.

Cocoon captures a thumbnail image of every “place” you visit. (You need to have the “save history” preference turned on.) You get to see your history graphically and grouped by domain name. You can search and sort your Places. You can tag pages for easy categorization and future reference. Can’t remember what day of the week you found that restaurant website? No problem, visually scroll the thumbnails. Or search for the word you think was in the name.

And the testers? They ate it up. One person “loved seeing” history. Another tester made great use of the search feature without being told what it was. Of course, if you’re a traditionalist, you can always view your history the old fashion way — as a list.

To the testers, Places almost looked like a small revolution in browsing history, (no pun intended). That’s exactly what we want.