First, we're happy to announce that the team has identified and fixed the issue with the YouTube conduit; you can now find and add videos from YouTube to your library and posts. As always, thanks for your patience!
The other news we have today is about a new addition to the Six Apart family: TypePad Micro, a new free level of TypePad that is streamlined for microblogging. We see a new form of blogging emerging that lives between the quick status updates of Twitter and Facebook and the long-form posts of "classic" blogging; TypePad Micro is designed to meet that need. You can read more about TypePad Micro in Chris Alden's post on the Everything TypePad blog.
A lot of the new capabilities we've added to TypePad this year were actually inspired by some of the best things about Vox: favoriting, member profiles, a dashboard to follow other bloggers, and easy ways to post content from other social media sites. But the things that make Vox different from TypePad are still there: Vox has always been -- and still is -- the best place for "friends and family" blogging, where you're in control over who sees what. TypePad, on the other hand, is built for the blogger who wants, no, craves, attention.
Do you have a passion or interest you want to share with people beyond your Vox neighborhood? If so, we'd love it if you tried out TypePad Micro. Maybe you've always wanted to start that obsessive blog that's just about waffle restaurants. Or want a place to share videos of your favorite band (Jonas Brothers, anyone? Anyone? ...). TypePad Micro's great for those topic-specific blogs. Take it for a spin and let us know what you think.
On the Vox front, our designers are working on some cool new themes (coming soon!). We'd also love to hear your thoughts about where we should take Vox in the coming year. What are the key things you'd like to see for Vox? If you've had a chance to use TypePad this year, what are the features there that we should bring over to Vox? And, if you're thinking big thoughts, how could we connect the Vox and TypePad communities in order to bring together bloggers and their shared passions? Your feedback is really important to us, so please leave a comment here, or shoot me a message.
And again, thanks for your patience as we found and fixed the YouTube bug!
~ daisy
As many of you have noticed, the YouTube Conduit is not working. I am so sorry about this; I know how frustrating it is.
The team is looking into how to get this fixed and I will update you as soon as I hear something. In the meantime, not all is lost... There is a work-around for posting videos.
When you're in the Compose Screen, just click on "embed." Ignore the fact that it says "Widget" before everything because you can definitely use this to embed videos as well. You'll just need to input the embed code from the video, enter a title (if you want) and hit OK.
It might not show up perfectly in your compose screen, but when you hit "Save," your video should appear just the way you wanted it to.
Hopefully this will allow you to keep posting videos while we figure out what's happening on our end.
As always, thanks for your patience.
Go forth and fill your libraries with media.
Seriously, thanks to everyone for being so amazing and patient. You are the reason I love Vox.
It was a saturday morning a week before my trip to my old school's singing competition. My friend living next door and my house mate, arranged that day to help me tighten my car's loose handbrake. It was never meant to be a 3-men job, in fact, I can do it all by myself if I wanted to but as I don't have any tools, I borrowed theirs and themselves along. They have a lot more mechanical experience than I have, and it didn't take long for the handbrake to be tightened. Because it was a free saturday my friend suggested we should take the car to an open ground where the handbrake could be stretched to the limit. My house mate jumped in to the hot seat straight away before I could, but I didn't mind at all since he was insured on it as well.
The "testing gorund" wasn't far at all and soon we reached a path that leads to it. It was very rough at first and we travelled very slowly but then we saw it started to smoothen up and my other friend sitting at the back seat said, "Floor it!" My house mate stepped his foot to the floor and the car rocketed. I always feel skeptical about his driving as he may had some sort of racing experience but he always drive like Essex people on the road. He revved the car high up through 1st, 2nd and 3rd, and for some reason he decided to swerve to the right onto some grass, then left again back on to the road. But rather than staying on the road it carried on sliding to the left towards some rocks and crashed towards it. Then the next thing I knew was that it went over the rocks and stopped. The seat held me very tight and dust was surrounding outside the car.
When I was looking for my first car, I never expected it to be anything but a tool for getting me from A to B. I set my eyes on a Renault Clio and a Ford Fiesta when I went to Gloucester. Both had the same spec, both didn't cost a lot and neither was the insureance. All cheap and cheerful, but when I saw a sudden £300 drop on the Clio on decision day I went straight for it. There were couple of faults on it like the glove box only had 1 hinge on one side, the window scroll the passenger side fell apart and the handbrake was far too loose etc etc. but I knew I would love it because it was my first car. After spending 2 months of driving, I did. The joy of freedom going wherever you want, putting you shopping in the boot rather than your back pack and finally going somewhere far away for the weekend without taking a coach or anymeans of transport (like going back to my old school). I didn't expect it to be the car of my life but hoping it would last as long as I needed it.
And now here I am being forced to imagine what the fate would be like once I stepped outside of the car. The driver's side wouldn't open at all so I had to be the first one to get out and this is what I saw:
The car may not look too damaged but after close inspection the chassis was twisted, the radiator broke cause by the impact and gearbox casing fell apart etc simply un-repairable. My mate who crashed it got really upset and said he will buy me new car. I wasn't angry at all because I just think there's no point being so and these things will happen, so be thankful that no lives were invovled. Still, I was very upset about it since I only had it for 2 months...
I was just told that the Amazon Conduit will be fixed by tomorrow. I will post here as soon as I get word that it's back up and running.
I know this has been frustrating and I am sorry there wasn't more I could do to make it less so. I really appreciate your patience though.
Cheers,
I have applied for an extra job in the beginning of the summer so that I could make good use of my extra amount of free time. The job I applied to is some kind of security/stewart position needed in semi-big events. I applied without expecting to be accepted and so I thought as I didn’t hear from them for most of the summer, but obviously I was wrong when I received their text about going to Leeds at the end of it. I have never been to any festivals like Leeds or Glastonbury before, therefore I looked forward on this trip more than I intended.
My first impression is that it’s just like other concert you will see live but this time it’s outdoor and combined with other funfair that you can enjoy in one place. Of course I do know that the whole point of being in this place is to see people’s favourite bands and all sort of things what the fans do, dance around, throwing beer, blew-up jonnies around and simply go crazy and get thrashed. But what more I got to realise is that there are much more drama and moments that makes this festival so memorable. From time to time I inevitably spotted someone with some head-turning costume…i.e. a topless guy wearing g-string under his jeans and a fat bloke wearing a mask, vest and a skimpy pant or someone else just took her top off to show her boobs off. A girl relieving her bladder by the main stage which was a mesmerising sight for many. Also people like to bring all sorts of stuff such as sex dolls and stuff with “sex telephone numbers” written on it to hold on top of them for the live camera to broadcast. It’s quite a laugh when you look at the screen and see them co-ordinating the doll’s head to such a position that it looks like it’s having an excitement with the singer’s...
Of course that was only about the festival itself but what about the job, which I was mainly here for? At first I was thinking it is going to be very tiring and boring as I would have to stay in a position all day (11hours to be precise). And there wouldn’t be highlights of the day unless there are some good bands around. I was wrong. The bands do help making a better day but confronting people does also bring things a little bit more alive.
My job did vary from being helping and caring to being extremely strict, but being helpful wasn't that interesting so I'll just mention the strict and harsh bits. There were 2 portable loos by the sound mix(Silver tower in the picture) there are there for working crews but many others simply cannot be bothered to walk a little bit further and decided to confront me and trying to get to those toilets by all means. Of course, me alone wasn't able to defend all of them so some did manage to divert my attention and help themselves. But some, was never lucky enough as I pulled the door wide open just before he or she could lock it, and did the cheeky had gesture to tell them to go away.
Also you know usually people love to smuggle drinks into stage and throwing them around? This is one of the things that I had to look out for.
A girl dropped her can of un-opened Strongbow in front of me, I seized it, because cans are banned from the arena. She pleaded me to have it back, but I said, “No”. I didn’t spill it in front of her like other officers but I should have done.
They don’t sound much but it’s priceless when you see their gutted faces. My friends described me as a tyrant but after all those school years where people generally treated me like a joke, it definitely feels…satisfying. This is probably why I fell in love with this job.
I was posted to the “pits” (the black fences in the picture) most of the time. Those pits are there to restrict the number of people near the stage so that they won’t get squashed by themselves. However this means people had to walk round it between band changes. Some simply had too little patience to do just that and climb over it, which I had to deal with.
It may be an instinct of my police dream since childhood. I get very sensitive to violators. As soon as I spotted someone climbing over, I started running like mad before they could get away. Just like when I first spotted 2 teenagers climbing the 1st fence (they were about 30m away from me), I started running towards them. By the time I got to them, one of them started his way to the second one. I grabbed him back down and his mate as well, and I held them till my colleagues came running down, helping me out taking them away. People who saw the whole thing cheered me and say all sorts of things like “Yea, Felix” (They knew my name because it was labelled in my uniform.), “Felix, quick as a cat!”. Some girls started flirting with me so on and on. After that every time I walked pass them, they call my name, trying to “hi five” me etc. Even my colleague hi-fived me for what I did. One of my colleagues did ask in amusement, “Did you catch 2 guys by yourself?”
At this point I won’t blame you accusing me bragging myself, in fact, I did question myself, “Was it really that amazing? I was only doing what I was told.”
The other one was a big bloke who was trying to do the same thing. I might have spotted him late and by the time I got to him, he was well on his way over the 2nd fence. An instinct made me jumped up and wrapped my hand round his neck (like a high tackle in rugby) and grabbed him back down. I thought that was it, and he would give up and walk back along the pit and join the crowd. He seemed to be very determined, because even though I grabbed him down, he just turned his head, looked at me and then had another go climbing over it still with my hand wrapped round his neck. He just took me with him, literally! Of course I was also very determined not to let him go, so I pressed both my feet against the fence just to add more weight on him. He was very strong. I didn’t think I could pull him back down again but luckily my colleagues helped me out again and took him away. When I got back to my position, there were 3 teenagers looking at me and said, “Wow, can you teach me that move?”
A bloke behind me was starring at me as well looking stunned (probably saw the whole action).
“Are you alright?” I asked in a very chilled tone even I was still full of adrenaline.
“Yea” he said, turned away, still looking stunned. Then he turned back to me and ask, “Mate, are you a Ninja?”
It has been a very long time since anyone had complimented my pace of running because after all those rugby years in school I knew I was crap. But after that day, may be I’m not totally rubbish after all. My legs are still up for the job. Buffed up from cycling during the summer perhaps?
Of course there are down sides about this trip as well because although I go to the festival and get paid at the same time, I had to stand there most of the time and the pain I had in my ankles was excruciating. Yes, I did walk for 50 miles before, but standing still for 11 hours is completely different story. The amount of break I had was very little. I only had 20 mins per day to have a packed lunch and is portion was far from satisfying. Those who know me would know how much I could eat every meal and could probably picture how much torture I had.
It was an amazing adventure and as I said, I love this kind of job. Why? I’ve already told you.
There was 1 amusing incident that I didn’t know until I read the news later on. It was a girl who managed to get stuck in the toilet as she tried to retrieve her hand bag that she accidentally flushed. And if you search “leeds festival poo girl” you will find lots of links about it.
Bad news. As many of you have probably noticed, the Amazon Conduit was not fixed in the last week's release. Unfortunately, there was an undetected bug that is preventing the conduit from working.
We are working on this bug fix and hope to have the Conduit back up and running this week.
I will keep you posted.
Thank you for being so patient.
Blog Action Day is every October 15th, when blogger are asked to post something about a single issue to show our strength and conviction as an online community. It's a great way to feel connected to the greater good, and the participation of so many bloggers to support the world's leading non-profit organizations is something you can do to help, right now. By blogging today, you're supporting some of the world's leading non-profits and sharing your voice for change.
This year's topic is climate change, and we'd love to read your thoughts on the topic. If you participate, leave us a link to your post in the comments, so we know to check out your post!
Go to www.blogactionday.org to learn more, get a badge for your blog showing your participation, and see some ideas for your post on climate change.
Can't wait to read your posts!
~ daisy
It has been at least a month since I last blog, because I have just moved house with my mates for the 2nd year and we had to set things up for the house including TVs and internet. I suppose it doesn't take a month to setup the internet but because one of my housemate, who was "assigned" for the job, has given the provider the wrong address for the house. I had to wait for another 2 weeks before I could access internet by my bed again. And I had to blog this from the university's library where the only place I could get internet. There are a lot of things happened before now but I'll try to blog it when I can.
The Amazon Conduit will be working again on October 15, 2009. Thank you to everyone for your patience.
Have a great weekend,
daisy, Team Vox
