There are only a few days left to enter to win the Vox World Tour Promotion!
We're awarding two (2) Grand Prizes of an all expense paid trip for two to see and experience the three cities where Vox was born: San Francisco, Paris and Tokyo!
Here's how to enter:
- Join Vox (if you already have an account, you’re good).
- Write a short post (1000 words or less) on what you like most about Vox. You can write about anything that you have enjoyed about Vox thus far - favorite features, cool experiences, education, interesting people that you have met, etc.
- Tag it “Vox World Tour” and make sure it’s viewable by the world. The entry must be posted by 12/31/2006 at 11:59:59 PM (PST).
Read all the details on the contest page (feel free to share it with friends), and, of course, make sure to check out the eligibility requirements.
What about that second trip? We’ll award the other
around-the-world trip to the Voxer who invited the author of the
winning entry. So, while you can only write one post to enter, you can
increase your chances by inviting your friends and family to Vox.
What are you waiting for? Pack your bags and start posting!
We're back with another installment in our Designer Interview Series. A special shout-out goes to Yasmina who just graduated from grad school. Congratulations!
Designer: Lauren Musni
Themes: Bubble Gum Skies and the upcoming Beads Love
1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your design background.
I'm a 21 year-old college student who lives in Wisconsin. I'm majoring in English and minoring in Comparative Literature. I've always been connected with the arts-- whether it be drawing, painting, graphic designing, writing, etc. Aesthetics are the one part of my life that really make sense to me. I couldn't live without being creative in some way. As far as a design background... I don't have a professional one. I suppose the best answer is my day-to-day experiences with having fun with Photoshop and taking art classes (drawing, painting, etc.) in the past. It's all self-taught or small facts here and there picked up from others around me. I would love to pursue a career in design someday, but I fear that my lack of graphics education might hold me back. After all, I'm just a lowly college student!
2. What was the inspiration behind your winning entries?
My very first photoshoot with a really good quality digital camera was my Beads photoshoot (back in January 2006). That inspired Beads Love. Right now, I'm going through a phase that involves extreme colors versus pale, delicate colors/tones. Beads Love was an opportunity to experiment with how extreme colors could get digitally. Once I picked that exact beads photo, I had a pretty good idea of what I should do next.
My Bubblegum Skies banner just kind of... happened. I had stayed up extremely late the previous night and decided to "fool around" with Photoshop the minute I woke up. There's not backstory to this banner-- just a lot of colors, a lack of sleep, and a need for something sweet. Mwa ha!
3. What is your favorite Vox feature?
My favorite feature would have to be... that it exists? Haha, I'd have to say that I absolutely love Vox's connections. How smart is it to hook Vox up to Photobucket, Flickr, Amazon, and iStock? That's a pretty amazing feature. It not only allows for easy access to pictures (and more) but it enables Voxers to gain some sense of organization. That's an important feature that is sorely lacking from other blogging sites.
4. What inspires you?
I live to observe the small details that other people don't pick up in everyday life. It's those small details that build up to something really amazing. I'm fascinated with programs like Photoshop because every feature was created specifically for the user's convenience. I don't think my skills have even touched the basis of what Photoshop and other art programs really are but that's what I'm using my everyday life for-- to find out more about art, graphics and everything beautiful. Art is life, people. And life inspires.
Designer: Yasmina Haryono
Portfolio: Bananeira.net
Themes: Lovebirds and the upcoming Tomato, Eggplant, Vox Girl, and Vox Guy
1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your design background.
These days, when I'm not busy or stressed out with schoolwork, I am taking comfort in gelato, pannacotta, tartufo,and other yummy food, making Italian food porn for Flickr, and going for daytrips to the countryside with the handsome and talented husband.
2. What was the inspiration behind your winning entries?
Well, the Lovebirds was inspired by the drawings of artist Jason Sho Green, whose bird illustrations were used (with his express permission) on our wedding invites. So, it's just a continuation of us as Lovebirds, now in a clichéd domestic bliss of "Honey, I'm Home..."
The Tomato and Eggplant was just based on my thoughts that they were fruits and not vegetables. The Vox People
was inspired by Vox itself, based on a Vox blog post about someone receiving Vox tshirts, so I thought to incorporate a Vox branding in a stylish, not-too-obvious way.
3. What is your favorite Vox feature?
Question of the Day and Vox Hunt. In this manner, I feel Vox succeeds in engaging their members to post and create
interesting content. The fact that the questions/challenge is suggested by a Vox member also adds social and individual value because I feel that in social sites like Vox, people want recognition and reciprocation of their participation. I spend a lot of time looking at various people's answers.
4. What inspires you?
Most often, friends and children. People's unusual habits and rituals. Open doors. Holes in the road.
Some of you are blogging for the first time with Vox, but others of you have been blogging for years and may have several blogs under your belt. If you're in the second category, then you might be interested in the Import feature on Vox to bring in some of the posts from your older blog(s).
Maybe you've been sharing travel stories on your Vox blog and would like to bring over some travel posts that you have on another blog, or perhaps you'd just like to share more of your blogging history with other Vox members. Whatever your reason, importing posts to your Vox blog is a very simple thing to do, and you can import from any blog with an Atom feed.
To get started, just go to the Posts section of the Organize tab. Click the Import button at the top of the page, and you'll be presented with a screen where you'll enter the URL of the blog you're importing to your Vox blog. If you're importing posts from a TypePad or Blogger blog, then you'll be asked for your username and password for that service.
Next you'll see a list of the posts available for import from the other blog. Select the posts you want to import, and set the privacy and comment levels as appropriate. Once you've taken care of those details, just click "OK" to start importing.
Now you'll see the posts from your other blog added to your Vox blog! To help you keep everything in order, the imported posts will keep their original date information and be added to your blog archives based on that date. Those posts you imported from last summer's travel blog will show up on your blog with the dates you were traveling rather than the date you imported them. They'll show up in your neighborhood a little differently -- read more about that here.
We're still in the early stages of the Import feature, and you can expect to see more options added as we build upon the start we have now. To learn more about the Import feature as it is currently implemented, take a look at Importing posts to Vox.
Tag ideas: vox tip, import
We're starting to notice a trend: Voxers doing the [this is good] gesture in real life. There are those who say that our own clamhead started it, but regardless of who did it first, it seems to be catching on...
Tomorrow's Vox Hunt prompt will be "Show us your [this is good] gesture", so get your cameras ready!
--Krissy
Vox members are spread all across the world, and we really value the diversity that brings our community. We want all of you to feel at home on Vox, and we have a few options in the "Your Account" section of the Account pages that may help in that respect.
First, we have the Language setting where you can choose from several languages. This list of languages has changed since the early days of Vox, so our members who've been here a while might want to take another look at them. We also encourage our newer members to see the available options. English, French, and Japanese are currently the languages we support with translation of the interface, but that kind of support for other languages may come as Vox grows. Read Languages on Vox to learn more about our language options.
Second, we have a Country drop down menu where you can choose your country from a long list of options. From the "Public Profile" section of the Account pages, you can select if you want to share that part of your location with others. If you do decide to display your country on your blog, you have a range of privacy options so that you can control exactly who sees that info.
Third, you can set your Time zone (in the "Your Account" section) so that the timestamps on your posts and other assets really reflect the time that you added them to your blog. This can be really nice so that when you look back at your blog in a few months, you don't find yourself wondering why you wrote a post about lunch at 4am!
We've only covered three areas here that can be changed from the "Your Account" section. Take a look at Edit Profile and Account Settings to learn more about the other information you can easily change within Account.
What are some other ways that we can help you feel at home here at Vox?
--Brandy & the Vox Help team
Vox has become such a huge part of Six Apart that it's hard to believe it wasn't around this time last year! Team Vox wanted to take a moment to reflect on 2006.
Vox has been in development
for more than two years, but its debut beyond the confines of Six Apart HQ came this past June. Code-named Comet, an early
version of the service launched as an invitation-only beta with all
Six Apart employees getting just a few invitations each to invite their friends
and family. Team Vox established an
energetic development schedule, releasing new features, changes and tweaks a
few times a month and paying close attention to user feedback.
Development and testing continued over the summer, and invitations were slowly doled out by the handful. Mena and a few other team members traveled to key cities across the U.S. to hold preview parties and to develop the community beyond the Bay Area. The traveling team also gave a ton of interviews and product demos which resulted in stellar press both pre- and post-launch. Vox was written up in The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News and World Report, Newsweek, Financial Times and in many more publications.
We also learned early on
that Vox’s clean, simple and colorful design had attracted some very creative users. Inspired by enthusiastic
entries to a Vox coloring contest, we announced the Vox Banner Contest where the Design
Team would choose five user-submitted banners to turn into Vox themes. After
reviewing over 600 entries from the community, the team decided to choose 50
winners and have been releasing their themes throughout the fall.
Vox opened to the public
on the evening of October 25, 2006, and Six Apart celebrated with a fun launch
party on October 26th at Bimbo’s 365 Club in San Francisco. Vox users had something to celebrate when the
Vox World Tour Promotion was announced that same day. By signing up for a Vox account and posting
about their enjoyable experiences on Vox, users are automatically registered to win
an all expenses paid trip to see and experience the three cities where it was
born - San Francisco, Paris, and Tokyo. (There's still time to enter!)
For a service that launched less than two months ago, Vox already has an active community with a vibrant, inviting personality. Vox users, or Voxers as we call them, have taken the concept of friends and neighbors very seriously, forming strong bonds with the other Voxers in their Neighborhoods. Voxers have begun to put together meetups of their own, gathering in San Diego, Boston, Long Beach and London, with more planned for next year.
It has been an exciting and rewarding year getting Vox off the ground and we can't wait to see what 2007 brings!
In the meantime, please take a moment to enjoy the Six Apart holiday movie.
I overheard some conversations seeping out of the Vox Design Lab and it looks like Austin, TX, and Nashville, TN, are up next for a cityscape treatment!
So, if you live or have lived in those cities, or have spent a good amount of time in them, now's your chance to chime in: What important buildings or landmarks should be included in Austin and Nashville's cityscapes?
Refer to the existing Cityscapes in the Design tab for inspiration, and remember that these are artistic interpretations of cityscapes made by our excellent .tiff. (who is, for the record, not a licensed cartographer).
Leave your suggestions in the comments!
-- Krissy
Mena was recently interviewed for the Times Online in an article entitled "Blogosphere 2.0: civility strikes back". You can read the article here.
In the article, Mena talks about Vox and civility in blogging:
"Trott has an interesting golden rule that she would like to see bloggers adopt. "If you aren’t going to say something directly to someone’s face, than don’t use online as an opportunity to say it," she says. "It is this sense of bravery that people get when they are anonymous that gives the blogosphere a bad reputation."
Vox was built with a lot of these issues in mind, in regards to the privacy filters, knowing your neighbors, and the fact there is a [this is good] but not a [this is bad]. The topic of online etiquette is on the minds of a lot of people, with this recent article in the New York Times as another example.
How do you feel about civility (or the lack thereof) in blogging? Any positive or negative experiences to share?
--Krissy
Last week the This Is Good box moved to the Explore page. We hope you're checking in with it! If you missed anything, you can use the arrows to read past entries.
The This Is Good box (or "TIG box" as we like to call it) highlights neat things found on Vox. We update it three times each week with links to interesting, funny, or compelling posts and photos. Hopefully it gives you a quick window into what's happening around the community, and it can be nice way to discover someone or something new. By clicking through to read the links, you might find that you want to add some new neighbors to your Neighborhood!
Did you know that you can suggest posts and photos for the TIG box? Just click on the "suggest this is good" link at the bottom of the box. That will open up a private message where you can add links to photos and posts that you particularly enjoyed and that the rest of the Vox community should check out.
Next time you're reading a great post or you see a great photo, don't forget to suggest it for the TIG box!
--Krissy
One of the most popular aspects of Vox has been the colorful designs that are so easy to change according to our moods, hobbies or the time of year. Thanks to Vox design team and the winners of the Vox Banner Contest, new themes are added to Vox every month. To help you understand the inspiration behind some of these themes, we interviewed the banner contest winners and will run their interviews over the coming weeks.
Designer: Taylor Savvy
Themes: Arctic Circle, Autumn, Foxkeh Mt. Fuji
1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your design background.
2. What was the inspiration behind your winning entry?
I see blogs of all sorts sprouting up across the site, and using themes can be another way for someone to personify their blog to represent themselves best. I made an autumn theme to capture the warm color tones that make this season what it is known for: being vibrant and appealing to the eye. Voxers have diversity, and what better way to show it off than to have dozens of equally beautiful and unique themes to tie it all together?
3. What is your favorite Vox feature?
I love using VoxWatch when I navigate the site. I can jump onto the web, open VoxWatch, search tags that interest me (like the design tag) and can instantly see handfuls of different Voxers blogging about the subject I would like to read about. This not only makes things easy, it makes it possible for people to broadcast their ideas to people who have similar interests.
4. What inspires you?
I find my greatest inspiration to be in the variety of people I interact with in my life. Be it a single-serving friend that I speak with at a record store or a close friend joining me for a meal at the sushi bar, every single person I meet plays a part in my inspirational process. This is one of the many reasons why I love Vox -- the number of wonderful acquaintances is growing with every day.
Designer: Sara Showalter
Theme: Snowflakes
1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your design background.
2. What was the inspiration behind your winning entry?
I came up with a snowflakes banner, because I'm a December baby, so I've always kind of loved that month and the start of winter and the cold weather and Christmas. I also think, as a girl who has only ever lived in California and never seen snow actually fall from the sky, that I have a fixation with snow. I'm sure having to live in it and deal with it every winter would cure me, but in the meantime, I've built it up to this wonderful, magical thing in my head. I always make wintery layouts for my website every year, so I thought I'd turn some of those ideas into a banner.
3. What is your favorite Vox feature?
I love how I can organize all my media in one place on Vox. I've been a Flickr addict for awhile now, so I was amazed at how easily it integrated with my Flickr account. I love how easy it is to add videos and photos to my Vox entries.
4. What inspires you?
I can be inspired by a good song or even just taking a jog and clearing my head. I love looking at old pictures. Sometimes looking at old black and white pictures will inspire me. Sometimes looking at designs from the 1960's inspires me. I like to take my camera out and go for a drive and see what catches my eye. Usually I just like to sit down with a big cup of coffee, crank up some good music and create things. It gives me a nice rush.
Designer: Lizzy Enger
Themes: Icicles and Flourish
1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your design background.
2. What was the inspiration behind your winning entries?
I wanted to see some different themes, so I went through my collection of photographs and started playing with them. Sometimes I like using my designer side too.
3. What is your favorite Vox feature?
I like that it's user friendly and that you can change the look of it in an instant. I also like the Neigborhood feature.
4. What inspires you?
I like playing with shapes and colors, materials and textures. My main love is the canvas and paint, oil paint and collage mostly, and even if I don't do figurative stuff it's a time consuming process with a lot of down time. So I play on the computer when I don't work actively on a painting, with photography and photomanipulation. Not that long ago I took some old drawings and scanned them and then colored them with textures from photographs, that was a lot of fun. I guess you can say I get inspired by many things.
-- Lilia
