The Savvy Sistah’s Neighborhood

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.

TypePad Micro

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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.

~daisy

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.

~daisy

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,

daisy

Anna Liisa's adventures can now be read on WordPress:

http://annaliisa.wordpress.com/

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.

~daisy

Blog Action Day

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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

As you Frederick County folks probably already know, the Voltaggio Brothers from Frederick's own Volt Restaurant are appearing on Top Chef, and get this: the ladies over at the E! Channel online are swooning over the Voltaggios and not just because they know their way around a buerre blanc.

After chatting with some friends and reading a few articles today, I think this blog is going to be moving over to WordPress shortly, where it will be reinvented. Stay tuned...

Hello everyone out there in cyberspace who might be reading this,

I thought I would give everyone a quick explanation and also a little bit of an advance warning as to why I am ending this blog on Vox.

This page will stay up for a little while as I gather up those past blog posts I wish to keep as a part of my own personal journal, but soon I will be taking it all down and will cease all blogging here on Vox.

My reasons for ending the blog are multiple:

1. I started my own business recently, and it has started to consume my entire life. People tell me this is normal for the life of a business owner. I am OK with it for the most part, as I enjoy my work. The problem is at night I feel so tired that I just want to veg out and relax with a hot bath and a book. The business is going very well; that is not the problem. The problem is I sit at the PC all day working, so when the evening arrives I find myself more interested in reading or taking walks or doing other things aside from sitting on the computer some more.

2. While this blogging platform seemed very exciting to me at first, I have to be honest: some of the mechanics of the Vox interface drive me bats to the point I avoid using it because it feels like such a pain in the ass as compared to other blogging platforms available. Even if the other platforms don't have cool free layouts like Vox does, they at least seem faster and more intuitive to me, and I'd rather have an ugly blog no one reads that is easy for me to use as my personal journal than a pretty blog that gets read but has features and controls so annoying I don't want to write anything. I'm sorry to say this stuff, as I think there are many nice things about Vox, and I have encountered such nice people here, but I just can't stand some of the mechanics.

3. Our computer at home has security on it--in fact, multiple layers of it. But we were recently infiltrated with some kind of virus that traced back to Vox. This is probably random-- I am not accusing the software or the users here of doing bad things. All I know is: the big bad virus looks like it came from something over here--perhaps a third party add-on or something. But all I know is, I need to be cautious. (By the way, another different virus seemed to come from Facebook-land, so I am not going over there very much any more, either.)

So...I suspect this is my last post here on Vox. If anyone would like to reach me, you can send an email to my Gmail which is annamatt. (I purposefully just phrased that sentence awkwardly to try to avoid Internet bots from grabbing my email address and spamming me, so I hope the phrasing was intuitive enough that anyone who wants to reach me can in fact do so.) I do not open my Gmail as often as my other email accounts, so please be patient with me, knowing the response will take me awhile.

I want to say a quick thank you to all the nice people I have met through Vox the past 2 years. I have really been touched by some of my interactions with random strangers on here and I appreciate everything you have all done for me. I am sorry to be leaving this community but I hope you will understand my situation.

Will I ever blog again? Most likely. I have blog post ideas in my head all the time; I am always seeing fun restaurants, shops, and places to blog about, and I am still a snack addict and a bath and body product addict who wants to share her fun finds with others. I think I just need a little time to mature my business and restore my schedule to an even keel. 

Now, it's time to go run one of those hot baths... My back hurts from sitting at this computer so much.