Team Virb http://virb.com/team Virb 2.0 (@team) en Love me, Tender http://virb.com/team/posts/text/6063070 Tender App. We've been using their product Lighthouse for some time, and this migration completes are move to their services. Where are my discussions? Unfortunately in the move we decided it would be best if we started with a clean slate. This means that all previous discussions are no longer available. If you need or would like to bring back one of your discussions, please get in touch with us through our new support system. We apologize if this inconveniences you, our lovely user, but we think long-term it will help us better serve you and the community. Virb, notified One of the benefits of moving to Tender is that we will all be notified when a support request comes in. Previously, this was only available through the contact form. Now, the whole team can respond to an issues, file a bug with our Lighthouse system, and better serve you fine folks. We hope that this will facilitate not only better support for everyone, but help us build a better Virb. Virb: betterifiedificationism This move is a piece of our new goals as a team and as a company. By removing discussions from our care, we no longer have to maintain the code and can focus more on support. If something pops up that is a FAQ, we can easily add it to our our new knowledge base. The search is better for support issues too! If you'd like to file a support issue, or start a discussion, please login and click on the help link in the top right corner. We believe this is a win-win for us and our peeps (you), and in the future expect to see more great changes here at Virb. a]]> Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:54:42 -0800 http://virb.com/team/posts/text/6063070 Update-ification http://virb.com/team/posts/text/5693778 Comment Subscriptions We've added comment subscriptions, bringing our email notification technology all the way up to 2004. Now when someone posts a comment or replies in a thread where you have commented, you will be notified (by email). Finally, without logging into your Hub, you can enjoy people's "LOLs" in reply to your witty and insightful remark, you beautiful person you. Reengineered customization We've re-engineered customization to be easier to understand and use. We've refined the UI in hopes that it will help, not hinder you. Some of you will notice, some of you will not. It’s future compatible with our big, tasty Hub and Profile updates coming this winter. Profile Headers You can now add header images for the following skins: Classic Chrono, Gazette, and Classic Audio. Please, add your own unique headers and styles to show to others: "I am creative. I am here." It's a simple way to look your sharpest, without having to deal with frightening HTML or CSS. Custom background support is on the way too. IE Compatibility updates Being a Mac development house, sometimes we miss out on our much larger brother Internet Explorer. We've made strides to rectify this and make Virb IE-friendly-er. If that's not Windows 7 ready... then we don't know what is. Lifestream... by default The default skin for personal profiles is now Classic Chrono. We hear what you’ve been saying, and now it's easier to set up your personal Lifestream. This only affects new signups. We are very very interested in Lifestreaming, and we are very very very very (very) interested in interesting and wonderful creative content. *hint hint* Profile Performance We've added some backend optimizations to make profiles display a little bit quicker. Virb as a whole is a little bit faster today. We're still moving towards our goal of ludicrous speed. More behind the scenes enhancements arriving in the next few weeks. Marty, your future is whatever you make, so make it a good one. We've stepped back, looked at where we are and decided it's time to implement where we're going. The next major release this winter will change Virb, this includes a redesigned (and account tailored) HUB, Facebook Feeds, and piles o’ goodness for Portfolio and Audio accounts. We're really working on improving this site and how you add, share and find stuff (read: cool content). We're taking a page from the Thoreau playbook and "simplify(ing), simplify(ing)". There will be more on this later, but for now we enter our weekend cave to sleep, perchance to dream..]]> Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:04:41 -0700 http://virb.com/team/posts/text/5693778 10 Photo Sweepstakes Finalists http://virb.com/team/posts/text/4878206 Photo Sweepstakes. Each night, we'd scour through that giant pool of awesome and make a short list of candidates, ultimately settling on one photo each day that was chosen as a finalist. 10 photos emerged and the photographer of each got a free pack of Moo cards. Boom! So ends the first phase and now, the fun begins. We want the Virb community to help us determine which of those 10 shall emerge victorious and lay claim to the grand prize, a Leica C-Lux 3. You can see all the finalists below in all their photographic splendor, so help one lucky photographer by choosing which is your fave. You'll have until midnight tomorrow to head on over to the Sweepstakes page and cast your vote. Make it count. Thanks to all the photographers (and cool photo-finders) out there for taking great shots and sharing them with Virb. You'll be seeing many more nominations that weren't chosen find their way onto Explore in the coming weeks. #1 Fleamarket Time by clips alt -- #2 I can set my soul to rest by wiseacre | paul armstrong alt -- #3 Jerry in 81 El Camino by Brad Imotichey alt -- #4 angie & her niece, portland, june 2009. by meganmcisaac alt -- #5 FIREBIRD by Hernan Corera alt -- #6 Kaitlyn by Collin Hughes alt -- #7 Fete de l'Huma 2007 by Lily May's Paper Ships alt -- #8 Meta by Tom Watson alt -- #9 Breakfast of Champions by Rachel alt -- #10 the nears & the faraways; by annie stephens alt]]> Tue, 15 Sep 2009 01:19:00 -0700 http://virb.com/team/posts/text/4878206 All new: Virb Short URLs! http://virb.com/team/posts/text/4633211 Candace by Bummer City Photography ...and you'd like to share that photo with your followers on twitter. Unfortunately, that photo's url is 34 characters long and your accompanying message is 110, putting you just over the 140 character limit on twitter. What to do? A) Existing short url services You could use one of the existing url shorteners like tr.im or bit.ly. They'll knock that character count down to about 10-13. Sweet! However, those services (as well as most others) don't really give any idea as to where that link is going. It's a blind click. B) Virb's short urls Give virb's short urls a try! In the "Details" area of every entry on virb (photos, links, videos, etc), you'll find a short url for use on twitter (and any other service you decide to use it on). In the case of the photo mentioned earlier, the url virb.com/bummercity/photos/4476116 now becomes virb.com/p/4476116. Your original 34 character url is now 18 characters, with the added bonus of everyone knowing where the link is going! Not only that, but the /p/ tells them it's going to a photo page. Other slugs include /v/ for video, /a/ for audio and /t/ for text (links, status, posts, quotes). Enjoy! -- Posted by Josh]]> Mon, 31 Aug 2009 12:21:15 -0700 http://virb.com/team/posts/text/4633211 Toggle status updates in Overview http://virb.com/team/posts/text/4208200 -- Posted by Brad ]]> Mon, 10 Aug 2009 18:43:22 -0700 http://virb.com/team/posts/text/4208200 DDoS inadvertently affecting Feeds http://virb.com/team/posts/text/4150296 Twitter and LiveJournal. Thank you. -- Update, Aug 6 @ 6:35PM EST: Twitter has notified us that they have blocked certain services to better contain their ongoing denial-of-service. While they hope to have it resolved shortly, this does mean that Twitter feeds will not work. Once Twitter raises their restriction, your feeds will resume normally. Do not attempt to delete and re-feed your Twitter account. -- Posted by Brad]]> Thu, 06 Aug 2009 12:54:34 -0700 http://virb.com/team/posts/text/4150296 Getting Started with Circles http://virb.com/team/posts/text/4081652 Circles, a way for you to organize the people/places/things/etc you follow on virb into... well... circles. To give you an idea of how powerful these can be, I'll share my setup with you: Circle #1 - Photographers / Artists This circle is filled with individuals that take amazing photographs and/or create excellent artwork. A small sampling includes Tom Watson, Aaron Leavitt, Elizabeth Weinberg, Diana Pantalones, Breezy, Kolja Warnecke. Circle #2 - Music This circle is filled with bands, singer-songwriters, etc. A small sampling includes Great Northern, The Republic Tigers, Twin Falls, Spires. Circle #3 - Finders of Cool Things This circle is filled with people who find amazing stuff both on and off virb... links, videos, photos, etc. A small sampling includes Pandamoranda, Melissa Garcia, Matt Hogan, Chris. ...so, what now? Here's where all this circle-creating pays off. If I head over to the Activity › Contributions page and take a peak at the drop-down in the far right, I can now filter this page by my circles. If I'm in the mood to check out *just* the recent photos from my favorite photographers, I'll select the "Photos" sub-nav option and the "Photographer" circle. If I want to see what new audio tracks some of my favorite bands have uploaded, I'll select the "Audio" sub-nav option and my "Music" circle. If I'm interested in what great new links, videos, etc have been found online, I'll select the "Links" sub-nav option and the "Finders of Cool Things" circle. And there you have it! A nifty little way to filter down to *just* the type of content I'm in the mood for. -- posted by Josh]]> Mon, 03 Aug 2009 15:55:38 -0700 http://virb.com/team/posts/text/4081652 Using Virb to Find Cool Stuff http://virb.com/team/posts/text/4077941 1. Explore Explore is controlled by the Virb team. We peruse the Virb-trix and find pieces of a particular quality which we quantify as interesting. Take for example the explore photos page: http://virb.com/explore/photos There's no math or science behind it, and each team member has their own voice, their own opinions. What we try to do is figure out what's excellent, crazy, demented or interesting within the limits that a child wouldn't be frightened, or our boss Brad. 2. Search Search, the glorious mechanism which you all know so well. We've tried to tailor our search functionality for ultimate explore-ability. Take for example this simple search: http://virb.com/search?q=Acoustic As of this evening it shows 528 profiles, 11 groups, 185 photos, 208 albums, 269 text pieces and a whole lot of creative juice. This is a fairly basic search with a very broad reaching term, but it best compensates for our team's poor ability to find all the great stuff you lovely people put out. 3. Friends Who better to recommend something you like than a friend. It's unlikely that you don't have friends with strong opinions about music. So look for the guy with geeky glasses or your designer friend and go to your HUB and send a message To do such a thing, search for your opinionated designer friend in the messages search box, click on "send message" and wait for their reply. Here is some sample text to make it even easier:
Dear Nerdy Web Designer Friend, It has come to my attention that you have the ear for the latest/best/classic acoustic music to come out of Nashville/New York/Seattle/Austin. Care to point me to their Virb-aliscious profile? Best to you and Photoshop, Kenny
Obviously, replace my name and Photoshop with Fireworks as necessary. There you go! Three ways to find really cool stuff on Virb with minimal effort (the best amount of effort). -- posted by Kenny]]> Mon, 03 Aug 2009 12:02:25 -0700 http://virb.com/team/posts/text/4077941 Personal Domains are launching in beta this week! Sign up to be one of the... http://virb.com/team/posts/status/3176459 http://bit.ly/urlbeta]]> Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:00:29 -0700 http://virb.com/team/posts/status/3176459 Countdown to 2.1 http://virb.com/team/posts/text/3093952 WebVisions conference. It was a refreshing experience to openly discuss the ups and downs of building a company and a community. Good stuff. I will make certain to post a video of the presentation (and our slides) in the coming weeks. Yet, for now, let's focus on the wave of upgrades coming soon to a Virb near you. If all goes as planned, we will begin the rollout of the 2.1 upgrades next week; most likely mid-week. If anything changes, I shall let you know. It has been two months in the making, so below you'll find a summary of some features/enhancements/fixes coming in this update. That's all for now. Stay tuned.... Modifications and Features in the 2.1 Update: - 100% new Groups - Share non-Virb media in Groups - Personal Domains - Virb Bar - Explore - Share on Virb bookmarklet - Re-Virb feature - Like, Re-Virb & Comment within Activity in the Hub - Improved activity notifications via email - Community Invitations - Links now support embedded media - API Private Beta (Phase 1) - Hub UI improvements - Follow & edit relationships without a page re-load - Growing list of 'whitelisted' sites/allowed embeds - A bunch o' bug fixes - Tour & videos section -- Posted by Brad UPDATE, JUNE 2: Personal Domains are launching in beta this week! Sign up to be one of the first to try 'em out.]]> Tue, 26 May 2009 21:45:05 -0700 http://virb.com/team/posts/text/3093952 Our 2.1 update is nearing completion; now packed with more surprises. A... http://virb.com/team/posts/status/2992612 Mon, 18 May 2009 13:05:40 -0700 http://virb.com/team/posts/status/2992612 The 2.1 Update, Update http://virb.com/team/posts/text/2771767 which are getting a massive revamp too). The long awaited release of personal domains will be also part of this upgrade. Finally, mask your Virb with your own WWW. Holla. To improve the sharing of content, we have reworked the bookmarklet, contribution pages and added (many) more sites to our official whitelist, allowing easy embeds of your favorite stuff. Images or videos can now be quickly attached to any link you share via the bookmarklet too. alt Explore has been a big hit with the community. We recognize that and have some upgrades in the works; including landing pages for top Videos, Audio, Photos and more. With over 100 updates and bug fixes, we're excited to push this update out in the next few weeks. For you Audio and Portfolio accounts in Virbland, stay tuned... We have a wave of new features and fixes heading your way soon. Oh, and our public API is progressing nicely too. Peace, love and sharing. -- posted by Brad]]> Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:11:00 -0700 http://virb.com/team/posts/text/2771767 Working on the new sharing bookmarklet and consolidating codebase to allow... http://virb.com/team/posts/status/2537019 Wed, 08 Apr 2009 15:10:58 -0700 http://virb.com/team/posts/status/2537019 Today's upgrade to Feeds is complete. Now seeing a > 250% speed increase on... http://virb.com/team/posts/status/2525437 Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:39:36 -0700 http://virb.com/team/posts/status/2525437 2 New Personal Skins: Soda Jerk and Chunk http://virb.com/team/posts/text/2484514 You › Customize area of your Hub if you have a Personal account. A big reason we're excited is that they were designed by someone other than me (Stephen Hallgren and Josh Lane, respectively) and they add some much needed diversity to the styles available. If you are photographer, band, filmmaker or any other type of profile besides a personal one, sit tight for a little longer. We've got some skins for you in the works. Follow us and we'll announce them here when they're ready to roll. Now, let's take a closer look... alt Soda Jerk by Stephen HallgrenDon't let the name fool you, this beautiful skin plays very well with others. It's big, tasty and does a really fantastic job of making your content shine. And, it's the first left-aligned skin in the rotation. Very nice. available in 3 flavors: Chocolate Cherry, Cherry Slush and Mint Chocolate alt Chunk by Joshua LaneSomehow, Josh has managed to create a skin that is big and powerful, yet smooth and graceful. If you love bold colors, serif fonts and thick borders, this will make you do the truffle shuffle. available in 5 flavors: Blueberry, Cherry, Grape, Green Apple, Melon So, enjoy. If you're interested in submitting a skin to us for public consumption, drop us a line. We plan on submitting lots more skins over the next few months. - posted by Simmy]]> Fri, 03 Apr 2009 15:04:30 -0700 http://virb.com/team/posts/text/2484514 From this point forward... http://virb.com/team/posts/text/2476576 launched 2 new skins and offered up a first look at the brand new Virb Groups, which we plan on launching soon. However, I promised myself I'd keep this short. Follow this profile to stay in the know, and enjoy the other tasty tidbits. We'll be talking soon. - posted by Brad]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2009 21:11:38 -0700 http://virb.com/team/posts/text/2476576 Sneak a peek: Groups http://virb.com/team/posts/text/2460621 So, here's a quick peek at the new layouts that will be launching soon. Yes, group owners/moderators, you've asked for it and now you'll be getting customization abilities. I'm not going to get into all the specifics now—more on that soon... - posted by Simmy]]> Wed, 01 Apr 2009 12:35:44 -0700 http://virb.com/team/posts/text/2460621 Hoping to get the first post up on the new Team profile today. http://virb.com/team/posts/status/2459567 Wed, 01 Apr 2009 11:08:37 -0700 http://virb.com/team/posts/status/2459567