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 |  Announcements pertaining to Writing.Com! |
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| Hello, Just a quick bit of house keeping... the Public Rating and Review Counts preference has moved to the "Edit Preferences" area. With that move, Edit Text and Special Settings no longer has any "settings" and becomes Edit Text and Special Items. ~~SM |
The following winners for the January 2010 running of "Dear Me: Official WDC Contest"  were chosen from the 104 entries submitted. Each entry was judged based on the criteria provided in "Dear Me: Official WDC Contest" . Congratulations to the following three winners: First: "Dear Me..." by NickiD89   Second: "Dear Me: A Court Action" by JACE  Third: "Dear Me" by Prof Moriarty  Thanks to the judges for a difficult decision and to everyone who wrote a letter. Hopefully your letters will inspire you throughout the year.  For further inspiration, check out the site contest running this month, "Short Shots: Official WDC Contest" .~Diane |
| Hello! We're now supporting the 13 Digit ISBN format in all of our "Amazon.Com" tools. This includes, but might not be limited to the "Authors In Print" area, Amazon WritingML tags and product reviews. (Yes, you can still use both Amazon ASIN's and 10 digit ISBNs.) Better late than never! Enjoy, ~~SM |
| Hello Members! We're ready to open testing for our initial Facebook tabs: Blog and Journal. These are two different tabs, they perform exactly the same; it's just a matter of whether you prefer to have a tab titled "Blog" or "Journal"... or both blog AND journal tabs. For an example of the Blog tab in action, you can check out WdC's facebook fan page: http://www.facebook.com/writingcom ... or you can view the tab directly at: http://www.facebook.com/writingcom?v=app_191128961879 In this case, we're simply using this announcements book as our blog item.  To activate the tab(s) for your Writing.Com and Facebook account:Blog: http://apps.facebook.com/wdcblog Journal: http://apps.facebook.com/wdcjournal After following the above link, you'll be asked if you want to "Allow Access" for the Writing.Com application you've chosen. Click Allow to continue. Then you'll be asked to confirm that you're linking the correct Writing.Com and facebook accounts. Double check it and click to confirm. Then you'll need to Grant Update Permission to the Writing.Com app. This is where you'll allow Writing.Com to publish to your news feed when you add an entry to the blog/book... and where you'll grant the application recurring access permission (so you don't have to keep allowing WdC access). It's just a couple clicks to get through that. Once you've granted the permissions, you can set your Blog or Journal Book item ID. (More about your item below...) And last but not least, head to your Facebook profile and on tabs line, click the + symbol; if the app you just added isn't shown, type either "Blog" or "Journal" into the search box and you'll see it. Just click it to add it to your tab line. About your Blog / Journal Item:It must be a Book Item in your own portfolio. The access restrictions do NOT matter. If you have a private item in your portfolio and set it to be your tab item, that overrides the access restrictions for your facebook tab. Facebook, however, will then allow you to restricts access to the tab like they do with anything else (ie, friends, friends of friends, etc). This is done on facebook under "Settings" -> "Application Settings" -> "Edit Settings" for the app you want to modify -> Set the settings. Please note that facebook defaults this to Everyone! Once added, your Facebook tabs will show up in your My Authorized Accounts area. This is linked from your My Account page. The direct link is: http://www.writing.com/main/my_account/action/authorized_accounts ... You can update the tab's item or delete it at any time from that page. Again, this is being opened up as testing for our facebook integration. I've been working out a lot of issues with and I think we're to a stable point in development. Facebook provides some tools to us developers, but unfortunately (for fortunately), I'm looking to do far more with it than most sites.  That being the case --- while I encourage you to try this out and help along with comments, feedback, bug reports, etc... I ask that anyone using it to please be patient and expect occasional problems.  If you setup a tab and you'd like me to have a look, please be sure you're friends with me, "Joe Storymaster" on facebook... and then let me know I should check it out.Thanks and enjoy! I look forward to your comments. ~~SM |
| Happy Weekend Everyone! I've added a new little "emoticon tagging thingy" (sure, that's ETT for short ) that allows you to "tag" an email with an emoticon. Just use an emoticon at the very beginning of your subject line and that email will be "tagged" with that emoticon, showing it on the subject line of the email. That's probably not the best explanation, so here's an example:If you're email subject is: {e:flower} Sending you a smile... ...Then the email message will show in the recipient's email list as: *flower* Sending you a smile... The emoticon is display to the left of the subject in the recipient mailbox view and when reading the message. When replies are generated for an emoticon tagged email, the tag will automatically be included in the message. You can't change the emoticon tag mid stream, which should be a help in keeping message threads a little easier to follow. Some useful examples might be... {e:idea} Hey, I've got an idea.  Hey, I've got an idea.{e:cut} Suggested Edits  Suggested Edits{e:clock} What time is the contest ending?  What time is the contest ending?{e:note} Important information enclosed Important information enclosedOf course, there are plenty of other less useful examples and I know you'll all have a lot of fun with this update. A couple notes: Emoticons only work as the first thing in a subject line... So as to not turn our inboxes into an insane emoticon farm. And keep in mind this will only work within Writing.Com, so don't email friends at hotmail and expect them to see it...As with anything new, we appreciate your feedback and hope you'll take a moment to report any bugs you feel you've found. Thanks and enjoy, ~~SM |
 Greetings! We've updated the way the system notifies you about Gift Points in email. When an email is sent with Gift Points, that email will now include the Gift Point notification directly within it.... rather than sending two separate emails. (That's one of those things that's been driving me nuts. ) Now emails with GPs included will be denoted with a in your email list. When you mouse over that symbol, you'll see how many GPs were included with the email! When viewing the email itself, the will be show in the header area of the email with the amount. Gift Point emails themselves will include the notifier so you can quickly mouse over the amount in your email list.Three primary places where this change will be noticed is with Reviews w/GPs, cNotes w/GPs and regular emails w/GPs. Now, when you receive a Review or cNote with Gift Points; rather than two emails, the Review/cNote and GP notification are combined into one. And now, when you receive a regular WdC email where someone included Gift Points, rather than two emails, you'll get the 1 email, with GP notifier included. ** Other places this still needs to be implemented are (at least) within replies to cNotes and emailed comments from items... I'll do a search in the site code for any place the Gift Point email is sent and work with those... but please do feel free to comment on this post and point out the other times when this occurs and I'll work to get those areas combined into one email w/built-in notifier as well. This update does NOT change Gift Point logging in any way. All transactions are still logged directly to your Gift Point log. Whenever in doubt about Gift Points sent or received, your Gift Point Log is always considered to be the most accurate source of Gift Point transaction information. ** Important: There was a brief period of approximately 1 hour tonight, from roughly 1:45am to 2:45am eastern time where I had released this GP update... and then decided on a final change to the format system. Email'd GPs sent during that period will unfortunately not show the icon on the email AND the additional GP-only email had not been sent. If in doubt as to whether or not an email included GPs, please check your GP log for that time period. (I also noticed we were missing a "Replied To" icon when viewing an email -- the reply icon was shown in the list view, but not in the email itself -- so I fixed that up while I was working with the GP update.) Enjoy, ~~SM |
The following winners for the December 2009 running of "Quotation Inspiration: Official Contest" were chosen from the 38 entries submitted. Each entry was judged based on the criteria provided in "Quotation Inspiration: Official Contest" . Congratulations to the following three winners: First Place - "Snow Day" by Robert Waltz  Second Place - "Flight Home" by fyn  Third Place - "Invalid Item" by A Guest Visitor Congratulations to the winners and everyone who wrote something based on the prompt! Thanks to the judges who had a difficult decision to make! January's Contest is: "Dear Me: Official WDC Contest" |
| Greetings Members! Madlibs: We've updated our Madlib Items to be easier to use. Here's part of the text I added to the madlib form -- (for the complete details, just check out the Madlib item creation/edit page). Whereever you'd like someone to insert their own word, Type {blank:XXXX}, where XXXX is is something like Noun, Verb, Past Tense Verb, etc. When a visitor views your madlib, our system will generate a initial page with each word type and a blank to fill in. We also did a little general cleanup to Madlibs, adding an option for madlib item owner/editors to view and test their completed madlib without filling out the form each time.... plus you'll find new links after filling out a madlib to "Edit This Version" and "go back and start fresh". Thanks to Davy Kraken  for the madlibby inspiration. Survey Forms: A small, but potentially very helpful update to Survey Forms allows you to turn individual fields on and off. If the field is on, the question performs as normal. If the field is off, the question will not be displayed (or required) for those completing the form. The data from the field for anyone who's already completed the survey is kept available in your responses area. The field can be turned back on at any time. Line Count: The line count area of our word count tool has been updated. Along with showing the total number of lines, the system breaks out blank lines and text lines. Thanks to THANKFUL SONALI HAPPY WDC 24 for the suggestion!Best wishes, ~~SM |
| Happy New Year Everyone! We've activated a new feature for message forums that allows you to send gift points with new posts and replies. By default, when making a new post to a forum, including Gift Points with the post will send them to the forum's owner, sending gift points with replies send them to whomever you're replying to. Forum owners, however, can set a "direct deposit" group for the forum. With this option set, Gift Points sent with new posts will go directly to the group specified by the item setting. Replies to posts always go to the person being replied to, regardless of the direct deposit setting. In addition, any Gift Points sent through the forum system will leave a note within the post with which they were sent. The note includes both the amount sent and to which member or group they were sent. The uses for this new feature are limitless and we look forward to seeing it in action! Thanks to THANKFUL SONALI HAPPY WDC 24 for the inspiration!  Also new... on any item you've reviewed, you'll now find a "Your Review" link below the item's text where your rating is displayed. Thanks to Lorien  and Ben Langhinrichs for noting this was missing and needed. * As with anything new, we greatly appreciate your feedback -- please report any problems, issues or bugs as soon as possible. Thanks! Best wishes and happy 2010! ~~SM |
| Wishing everyone a very happy, successful and inspiration filled 2010! Best wishes, ~~SM & SMs |
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