Of course the 1 weekend out of the whole year that I'm camping and have no Internet access, YouTube decided to completely revamp their website and take down most Tube Toolbox features in the process. The good news is that you are paying $7.95 which means we have to keep up our end of the bargain to you and fix everything as soon as possible. We have already fixed most features but some were still acting funny. I *think* everything should be working now and of course, let us know if not. 

Fixes

* Bulk Comments: We finally figured out that the new YouTube Channel layout/style was the culprit. That's why a few of the older channels could have comments posted to them but none of the new ones. You should now be able to post to ALL channels again.

* Bulk Share Video: So when you're sharing a video, it gets sent to 5 people at a time. If one of those people has "friend lock" on their account which means they will only accept messages from Friends, the video does not get sent to them. Tube Toolbox was then checking your 'Sent Folder' for their username to make sure it got sent but not finding it so it would retry. and retry. and retry. This is not good. When sending messages, it is 1 user at a time so YouTube tells us "This user only accepts messages from Friends" and we can work with that. So... Now, we check to make sure that ANY of the 5 people show up in your sent folder. If it happens that all 5 people have "Friend Lock", then you would get stuck in the infinite loop again which is bad. Because of this, we changed the default "Check Sent Folder" checkbox to Un-Checked. 

* Bulk Message Sending:  There seemed to be one particular case that we can into when messages were looking like they were not sent but they actually were so that is fixed.

New Features/Changes

* Delete User Account: You can now completely delete and remove User accounts from your Tube Toolbox database. On the Log-In screen, select the user in the drop down list and press the Delete key on your Keyboard. It will prompt you to delete the user. NOTE: This removes all sending history from the user account so if you sent a message to someone from the deleted account and are Selecting Recipients when sending from a new account, you could end up sending to someone who you already sent from. Keep that in mind. We will change this in the next version.

* Added "5,000" to Friends/Subscriber filter: Added new option between 1,000 and 10,000. It's 5,000!

* Added "Max Unknown Failure": When YouTube made changes earlier this week, it caused many people to have hundreds or even thousands of Unknown Failures which cause some issues. Now, you can specificy a number of continuous Failure Unknown errors before Tube Toolbox automatically stops sending. The default is "5". From the main menu, click "Options", then "Settings" and you will see it. 

* Increased Display Size for Additional Accounts: When selecting additional accounts in Bulk  Message Sending or Bulk Share Video, the box is wider so people with long names can tell the accounts apart. 

* Unknown Failures included when Selecting Recipients: Now, if you had an Unknown Failure when sending, those users will still show up when Selecting Recipients. Before they would be filtered out which caused people to lose hundreds or thousands of users because of the most recent YouTube changes.

Version 2.8.8.0 comes with new in-program debugging information.

 If you ever have problems with any "Bulk Send" feature, you can copy ALL of the text in the Debug Information section and email it to us. This will help us identify the problem or where Tube Toolbox is getting hung up. On the Sending Status screen, click on the "Options / Debug" Tab and copy all of the text from the Textbox, then email it to us.

This was a relatively minor update...

* When sharing videos or sending messages, if you are sending from more than 1 account, we now allow you to change the Send Delay down to 0 seconds. Since you are rotating between accounts, we allow you to reduce the time between messages.

* We have had a very rare issue that no one can duplicate where a message or share video got sent to the same person 5 times in a row. It is a strange glitch that we can't figure out but seems to have to do with Internet connectivity. We put something in place that should stop this from happening now by checking your Sent box before sending a message out. If Tube Toolbox see's the user in the first page of your Sent Box, it will skip the user and move to the next person. Please note that this adds an extra second or two with each send.

* We created a new Installation file for people who were having problems installing Tube Toolbox. It can be found here: http://www.TubeToolbox.com/Downloads/TubeToolboxSetup2.exe

* Tube Toolbox will now be displayed in the center of your screen when it starts up. We used to have it remember its last position but this caused issues with people running multiple monitors.

* We will probably start a monthly newsletter soon with Tips & Tricks  

Version 2.8.7.0 brings a much-anticipated feature: Syncronizing Subscribers

This feature will be exactly like Synchronizing Friends, Videos and Favorites which means that the first time you run Tube Toolbox on a computer, it will synchronize everything but then it's up to you to re-synchronize after that. This means that for most of you, you will have to maually synchronize them for the first time by clicking the "Synchronize Subscribers" link on the main Tube Toolbox screen under the Data group. 

New Features

*  Gmail Compatibility. You can now log in to Tube Toolbox with your gmail account. Note: If you are already using your YouTube username to log in, keep using your username. This is only for people who have YouTube accounts where you can ONLY log in with your gmail account.

* Ability to skip videos you have previously gathered. This feature already exists for gathering users so I added it for gathering videos as well. 

* Export to Text file & Sorting. Now in addition to CSV and XML format, you can export users or videos to a plain text file with 1 entry per line. You can also select if you want the list ordered by name or date gathered.

Bug Fixes

* Posting Comments to User Channels.  There were certain channels that did not accept comments but instead of handling it nicely, Tube Toolbox would put up an error message saying the comment was not acceptable. Now, it simply records it as "User does not accept comments" and moves on to the next person in the list.

* Gathering "My Subscribers". You can now go to http://www.YouTube.com/my_subscribers and gather ALL your subscribers.

* Data file change. This is something that you won't notice but cetain people using Vista were having problems because of this. Starting in this new version, your data file and log files will not longer be located at "c:\program files\sincell\tube toolbox\data" - they will be located at "c:\documents and settings\(your username)\application data\sincell\tube toolbox"

* Better handling o YouTube response messages to ensure accurate results during bulk sending.

Other

* I will be moving all Feature Requests from our forum to: http://TubeToolbox.Uservoice.com

I wanted to get some requested features in that people were asking for as well as fix a few bugs and finally, add additional logging that will help me deturmine problems quicker when YouTube breaks Tube Toolbox.

New Features

*  Ability to exclude main account from Message Sending. You can now skip your main account from the message rotation and only include your 'additional' accounts. This will help with the safety of your account if you're worried. You don't have anything to worry about anyway, but some people want to be extra super extremely semi-rediculous safe when it comes to making sure no one thinks anything bad about their account. This was not added to the 'Share Video' but if someone reads this and wants it, email me and I will add it to the next version.

* Maximum send delay increased from 5 minutes to 20 minutes [quick note, you may need to use the arrow keys and not just your mouse if you want to get detail down to selecting an exact 'second' with the sliders]

* Checks when YouTube is down for maintenance to make sure you don't accidentally send while YouTube is down and waste your sends.

* Progress Screens. When gathering or synchronizing your friends, you will now see a "please wait" screen instead of it just looking like the program froze.

* Sending History Export. You can export any search results to CSV or XML to do your own reporting and analysis on the data.

* Share Video Verification.  After 15 or 20 shared videos, YouTube makes it look like your videos are being shared but they actually aren't. They are tricking you. So, Tube Toolbox has added a feature that checks your Sent box after each send to make sure it actually got sent. If it doesn't show up, then it waits and tries again later until it actually went. This may make it seem like it's sending much slower than before, but now you can be sure that they are really getting sent.

Bug Fixes

* When you add a filter then remove it, the filter stayed. It will now be removed when you remove it!

* Fixed a few misspellings (do you really care?)

* Fixed some gathering options. Along these lines, if you have problems gathering from any particular page, send me a link to the page and a description of what is happening. Many of the pages need to be programmed separately. 

Other

* Added link to our software - GoDoubleVision.com where you can buy the center video per day or per week ($4.25). More information in the previous blog.

> I think that's all. Keep the suggestions coming and keep us posted if YouTube makes changes to their site which breaks Tube Toolbox. 

YouTube has put many restrictions over the past 2 years as far as the number of Messages, Share Video and Comments you can send in a given day. So it is more important than ever to make those sends count.

We have added a new feature which will allow you to filter users by the last time they logged in - to make sure this is a current user, or by the number of uploaded videos - to make sure you don't auto-subscribe to a channel with 0 videos, or by the number of Friends - so you can connect with 'popular' users. This feature has been added to Messenging, Share a Video, Subscribe to Channels and Send Comments to Users. 

Version 2.7.0.0 has a host of requested changes along with an emergency fix. If your request didn't get in this version, email us at support@TubeToolbox.com and we will add it to the next version or at least add it to the potential list. We only have so much time to work on changes.

Emergency Fix: Sharing Videos - YouTube changed their code so that in order to share a video with more than 9 users, you must enter a CAPTCHA (security code). Plus, you cannot send to more than 5 people at a time who are not already your friend. Sounds simple but this was a PAIN to figure out because I had to sit here and do trial and error. But, I think it's all good now. Basically instead of sending to 10 people at a time, we send to 5 at a time. But the total that you can send within an hour won't change. 

New Feature: Option to skip existing users when gathering - There is now a checkbox when doing Targeted Search and Gather From Page(s) that allows you to skip people who you have already gathered. This will make sure that you can keep all new lists with "clean" users. Keep in mind that even if you gather existing users, you can filter them out when selecting your Recipeints.

Fixed: Auto-Subscribe - People were having issues with auto-subscribe and I think it's fixed now. If not, the bulk subscribe feature reports problems back up to us (like Messages and Friends requests) so if it isn't working, we'll be able to fix it faster next time.

New Feature - Auto-Refresh page after sending - For the uber-lazy (i.e. David), I added a feature so that after doing bulk-sends, it will refresh your browser. So for example after sending bulk friend requests, it will auto-refresh and show you the results. Wow, I am just realizing that I added a whole feature so you wouldn't have to click a single refresh button. =P

Fixed: Adding #UN# when sharing videos - You are now stopped before sharing a video with "#UN#". The share a video feature sends to 5 people at a time so you can't stick in a single name. I verified that it is working with comments and messages.

Fixed: Attaching a video to a comment - YouTube took out the ability to attach a video to a comment when you post a comment on someone's profile. Not sure why. But, we had to take it out of Tube Toolbox because you can't do it in YouTube. If they ever add it back, so will we.

Skipped: Three things requested which will probably make the next version is a fix to the Auto-Accept Friend Requests feature. It is broken so you gotta do it yourself for now. I also want to add a message-rotator to comments and share a video like Messages currently has. Finally, a way to clear out your sent box and inbox automatically.

As always, send feedback if things are broken and we'll do our best to get out a quick fix. Thanks for your patience on this release.

-Phil 

Long time no talk everyone! We've finally got Tube Toolbox into a comfortable spot where we've added requested features over the past year and gotten it very stable. The release of Version 2.5 brings a few new changes and a few fixes.

New Features

* Spider Search Unfiltered: In previous versions of Tube Toolbox, if you did not select any filters on the Spider Search, it would skip people who did not have public profiles posted. Now, it gathers everyone. Which means if you simply want to gather mass amounts of users to send to, this is the way to do it.

Fixes

*  Gathering from Comment Lists : In the current version, it would only gather the first page. The new version will be able to gather from multiple pages when looking at video comments. 

* Bulk Comments : Fixed problem with "Comment Pending Approval" result.

* Non-USA Users: We have tried one more time to make sure everyone can log in all over the world. If your Log In fails, it will ask you to select a country and try to log in again for that country. Keep your fingers crossed, this is one feature that we could not test ourselves.

* Bulk Share Videos: Was sometimes putting 2 usernames together which caused an error. This has been fixed.