Grab your helmet, check the air in your tires, and hop on your bike because in many U.S. cities, May 12 - 16 is Bike to Work Week! Six Apart has a lot of biking enthusiasts, so we're very excited to support this event by encouraging all of our employees to bike to work this week. San Francisco's Bike to Work Day is tomorrow, Thursday, May 15th, and New York's is Friday, May 16th.
Six Apart is helping out its employees by providing maps (shaded according to steepness - a must in SF!) to help everyone plan out his/her route, as well as finding first-time riders buddies to commute with. We're also supporting ALL SF riders who pass the front of our office by handing out coffee, juice and snacks from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. tomorrow morning. If you're in our neighborhood, look for the sign that says "Six Apart Supports Bike to Work Day" and stop by to say hi and get energized!
Improve your health, financial status, productivity, and happiness by joining thousands - maybe even millions - of commuters around the country who are hopping on their bikes to get to work. Visit the Bike to Work Week website to find out more about events in your area.
Support the two-wheeled way of life with the "Passing Left" theme found in "Photo-Based" in the Design Area. Planning on cycling to work this week? Let us know in the comments!
As we mentioned last week, we had to postpone the maintenance that was due to occur on Thursday, May 8th.
We have rescheduled the maintenance for tonight, Tuesday, May 13th, starting at 6:00 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time (that's 1:00 A.M. UTC/GMT). We'll be taking Vox offline for a bit in order to move the service to a brand new home in some bright, shiny new server racks. We don't expect to be offline for more than an hour or two, but we apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause.
Again, thank you for your patience as we continue to invest in Vox's infrastructure!
Tonight, starting at 6:00 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time (that's 1:00 A.M. UTC/GMT), we'll be taking Vox offline for a bit in order to move the service to a brand new home in some bright, shiny new server racks. We don't expect to be offline for more than an hour or two, but we apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause.
Thank you for your patience as we continue to invest in Vox's infrastructure!
Update: we've postponed tonight's maintenance, and will let you know when we reschedule. Thanks for your patience!
Last week, we announced the winners of the HP "What Do You Have to Say? Theme Design Contest and promised you we'd make the winning themes available on Vox in the coming weeks. After a little more thought, we decided you shouldn't have to wait a second longer to use these creative and inspiring designs on your blogs, so we made them available for you today. Who says good things only come to those who wait?
Straight to Video
Now you can share your Flickr videos on your Vox blog!
A few weeks ago, Flickr announced that pro members are now able to share videos of up to 90 seconds in their photostream. Many of you already post photos to your Vox blog directly from your Flickr account, and now we’ve made it so you can do the same with your Flickr videos.
To post a Flickr video to your Vox blog, just follow the same steps you would if you were posting a Flickr photo. (Yes, that means you’ll find your Flickr videos in “Photos,” not “Videos.”)
Not using Flickr to add photos to Vox? Find out how to connect your Flickr account to your Vox account. Plus, using Flickr means you’ll never have to upload a photo twice, or waste valuable storage space!
Around the World with Vox and CupCate
A little over a year ago, we announced that CupCate was one of the Grand Prize winners of the Vox World Tour. A month ago, Cate and her husband, Iain, packed their bags and flew to San Francisco, the first stop of a three-cities-in-fourteen-days vacation.
While they were in SF, Team Vox was lucky enough to have a yummy lunch with Cate and Iain and some of us even made it out for a late night karaoke session at The Mint.
We were also happy to hear, however, that she took some time to enjoy a glass of wine, a roaring fire, and the luxury of utter relaxation.
Then it was off to Tokyo where she saw gorgeous cherry blossoms, the Tokyo Tower and the Sensoji Temple, and even got a special tour around Tokyo with Ayako from Six Apart’s Japan office!
And it wouldn't be a Vox World Tour without Paris in the spring time, decadent French meals, and, of course, the Eiffel Tower.
It sounds like an amazing adventure. Congratulations again to CupCate. We had so much fun with you while you were in SF and we can't wait until your next visit!
It was hard to choose from the 355 entries, but the judges have announced the winners of our month-long "What Do You Have to Say?" theme design contest, sponsored by HP. And the winners are....
And while we know it's not polite to brag, you'll forgive us for a moment while we gush about the fact that the 2nd and 3rd prize winners are both Voxers!
The Second Place theme, “Live and Learn” was submitted by Li Kim Goh, or as you may know her: gollykim. We thought it was pretty cool to hear that Li, “didn't really think about winning, but mainly [entered] just for fun [while also] creating a few new banners for [her] own Vox blog.
When asked why blog design was so important to her, Li answered, ““because it draws readers' attention and makes your blog stand out from the millions of other blogs.” With such a great design, we think Li did just that.
The Third Place winner, Terri, showed off her “funky-fresh style” with her theme, “Vector Drips.” Terri said that having her theme picked made her day. You know what Terri? It made our day too!
The best part of the contest? In the coming weeks, we’ll make all the winning themes available on Vox, TypePad and LiveJournal so that you can use them on your blog!
Thank you to everyone who entered the contest and CONGRATULATIONS to all the winners!
Are you going to be in New York City this weekend? If so, you won't want to miss the Billion Dollar Babes Spring Sale! We told you all about our favorite nationwide sample sale a few weeks ago, but we wanted to send out a quick reminder that this Friday, April 25th and Saturday, April 26th, you can save up to 80% on over 40 amazing designers at the NYC Spring Sale. This is a shopping experience you do not want to miss. Trust us.
Plus, the fabulous ladies at Billion Dollar Babes have a very special offer exclusively for Vox shop-a-holics. Visit http://www.bdbinvite.com/ and enter voxvip in the promo code box to receive an early start time and first look at the sale!
Not going to be in NYC? Don't worry... You can still make the L.A. sale (May 30th - 31st) or the S.F. sale (June 6th - June 7th)!
We've been up to some pretty amazing stuff at Six Apart, and our latest launch is one of the most exciting yet. Yesterday, Six Apart announced we are adding a host of social media services for paying customers, including helping customers monetize their blogs, design and template assistance, and helping VIP bloggers build their audience and visibility.
As anyone who surfs the web knows, blogging has erupted into a mainstream communications technology, and at Six Apart we want to provide our customers with everything they need to ensure their blog is a success. This means offering complete solutions and services that complement the outstanding technology on which we pride ourselves.
You're probably wondering what this means for Voxers. Since Vox is a free, advertising-supported service, the program isn't available on Vox. However, if you've ever thought about starting a blog on which you could potentially make money, now is definitely the time! Find out more about how to sign up for a TypePad account and take part in our advertising program tailor made for bloggers. And since you can cross-post directly from Vox to TypePad, you can keep your Vox blog (and all of your neighbors), and still participate in the program!
Six Apart is a company full of bloggers who are passionate about making blogging better for everyone, which puts us in a unique, and pretty cool position to actually dig in and do so. Think you'd like to work at a place like this? You're in luck. We're now hiring in New York City and San Francisco.
The Web 2.0 Expo is almost here! If you’re planning on attending, be sure to stop by the Six Apart booth (location #245) where we’ll be making some really exciting new announcements, answering any questions about our products you may have, and giving away Six Apart schwag. You can also enter to win a VUDU, the new revolutionary movie on-demand service that provides instant access to more than 6000 movies and TV shows in HD! There will be 5 drawings, so be sure to stop by our booth and drop off your card.
The fun doesn’t stop when the sun goes down… Six Apart is really excited to take part in the Web 2.0 Expo South Park Crawl on Wednesday, April 23rd from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. This is a chance for local Web 2.0 companies, as well as sponsors from popular South Park restaurants, to open their doors to conference attendees for what’s sure to be one of the biggest and best parties of the year.
Web 2.0 attendees are invited to stop by the
Six Apart offices, play our 6-hole miniature golf course, and enjoy beer, wine
and dessert, while mingling with other conference attendees and Six Apart
employees.
Going to be
in SF, but not attending Web 2.0? Let us know in the comments that you’d like
to attend the Six Apart party. We’ll pick a few lucky Voxers (at random) to come hang out
with us and play a few rounds of miniature golf. If you're chosen, you will be notified
via private message by Monday, April 21st.
Can’t wait to
see you at Web 2.0!
Ever stop to think about how many places on the web you post about your life? For many of us, we're posting on multiple blogs, as well as Facebook, Twitter and Pownce. That's a lot of time spent just to make sure all of our friends and family across the web are caught up on our lives. And while it's incredibly important to stay connected to everyone, at Six Apart, we don't think it should be quite so complicated to do so. That is why we've taken another step in our ongoing effort to create better tools for bloggers, no matter what publishing platforms you use.
We are excited to announce that today, Six Apart launched the first cross-platform blogging application for Facebook -- Blog It powered by TypePad. Blog It brings some of the best social networking aspects of Facebook to blogging, making it easy to blog or micro-blog from within Facebook. It doesn't matter if you blog using Vox, TypePad, Movable Type, LiveJournal, Blogger, Tumblr, WordPress.com or WordPress.org, or micro-blog using Twitter, Pownce or your Facebook status... Now you can update everything and everyone via one easy-to-create post on Facebook.
Plus, after you've posted using Blog It, you can choose to automatically share your post via Twitter and Pownce, in addition to the Facebook news feed. While a lot of other Facebook applications rely solely on the news feed to share your activity, Blog It is unique in that it helps you notify everyone you know across the web about what you're creating -- not just your Facebook friends.
Ready to try it out? Just add the Blog It application on Facebook and take a minute to add all your accounts. From there, you can create new blog posts and share them with your friends on Facebook, Twitter and Pownce, all just by ticking a few extra boxes. Watch this screencast to preview how Blog It works.
For more information about Blog It powered by TypePad, please visit http://blogit.typepad.com/
Now what are you waiting for? Go Blog It!
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