I’ve been playing around with this new version of the plugin since the night it was released last week, and so far I’m pretty happy with it. Recurring events is probably the most important update, but there are a few other nice features like venue storing, featured image etc….

I’ve also been pretty active on the support forums for this plugin recently as I feel it’s important to give back to the plugin community if I know an answer or two for questions asked on there. One issue some folks were having was that they wanted the ability to control the zoom level of the Google map that shows up in the single events display.

Here’s the solution

Under Events Calendar settings in the WordPress admin, you need to add a custom events field named something like “zoomlevel” and make it a dropdown, and give it 1 through 20 as the values. This was the second custom events field I had added, so its label is _ecp_custom_2 . This is the label value you will need for the next step below.

Next, ftp into your server, or go to “Plugins” > “Edit” in the WordPress admin, and in the free “The Events Calendar” plugin folder, you will see /admin-views directory, and a file named event-map.php. On line 17 in that event-map.php file, right after zoom: paste in this code

query_posts( array ( 'post_type' => 'tribe_events') ); ?>ID, $key, true); ?>

and save/upload the file to the server.

Now, when you add a new event post, you can see a dropdown menu that will allow you to control the zoom level of the Google Map.

April 21st came and went, and of course, no chair. So, on the 22nd, I called again, and spoke with another rep. Same thing. “It will definitely be there today. I can’t give you tracking information because we shipped the chair through a private shipping company”. Errmmmm….ok. “Private shipping company” you say? Yet again….this seems odd. Obviously, they are quite “private” as they won’t come out of hiding with my chair! The rep then told me to call Monday morning if the chair is still not here.

The 22nd came and went, still no chair. Then the weekend passed by, still no chair. On Monday, April 25th, I called OfficeMax for the third time. Finally, this rep seemed to actually have some idea of what customer service was supposed to do….She said sorry that the chair hasn’t arrived, and it should have by now. She said she would submit a ticket/alert to find out where the chair was and why it hasn’t been delivered on time. I also asked her if she would send me a gift certificate or something to try and smooth this over, and she said that she would. I’m not too sure if she will, but she sounded sincere. The amount that will be on the gift card, if it comes, remains to be seen.

Tuesday, April 26th arrived, and we missed a call from a delivery guy, saying he was unable get to the office. Then, the worst part of this entire experience…this morning (Wednesday), the delivery guy calls us at 6.45am to say he is delivering the chair. 6.45AM!? Unreal.

So, thankfully, we now have the chair, about a week after it was supposed to get here. Oh, you were wondering what the package looked like when it got here? Unsurprisingly, its condition was perfectly in line with my overall experience with OfficeMax to date.

UPDATE ** – Winner is @cshold

When Mailchimp sent me a tshirt, it quickly became one of my favorites. I’ve now got another one on the way and I’d like to give it away to one lucky winner.

It’s a male, medium shirt, grey with a cool chimp sketch drawing. Pretty soft, good quality material.

To win, all you have to do is click the “tweet” button on this post (feed readers may have to visit the actual post on my site to do so). In a few days, I’ll pick a winner at random. Thanks!

So, I’ve decided to sell it on eBay to one lucky buyer. It’s a Xeon Quad Core, 2.66GHZ,  All specs are listed on the eBay listing . The usuals are all included with the item (power cable, Apple mouse & keyboard, Apple airport, manuals, discs and Snow Leopard is up to date 10.6.6. as of today.)

It’s a wonderful and powerful machine, runs blazingly fast with 7GB’s of RAM, and looks and feels brand new. I also have the original Apple Mac Pro box ready to go and ship to the buyer.

If you or anyone you know may be interested, please let me know or place a bid, thanks very much. Let me know if you have any questions also!

So, what better way to archive my thoughts than right here where I can look back and see how incorrect my predictions were! Here are some of the thoughts I have on this subject that raise some very serious questions for the future of our society.

• I’m not sure if it will be in my lifetime, but I think someday computer generated characters (movie stars) will be the majority.
• Production houses will control everything about these new age stars/celebrities. Our society will embrace these CGI characters similar to how we currently embrace human movie stars like George Clooney, Angelina Jolie etc… These CGI stars will have huge fan bases just like a human celebrity.
• These production houses will also control or partner with the tabloids and the celebrity magazines, and create complete lives for these CGI characters, increasing their visibility in our pop culture and quickly making it the norm.
• The production houses will create life stories about each character (for humans to follow and take interest in) just like we do with human celebrities today. These characters will have Britney Spears like breakdowns, DUI’s, divorces, African-baby adoptions….the full kitchen sink of what our current celebrities go through.
• Red Carpet events could be 100% digitally controlled, without ever taking place in real life. Production houses could partner with each other to produce various aspects of the event, from who arrives with who, what advertisements are shown, and what the Oscar winning speeches are like. Imagine an award ceremony where the winner isn’t being told they have 10 seconds left and they need to wrap it up as the outro music begins to play. The production would be flawless.

This is only the tip of the iceberg of my thoughts on this…and I’m sure someone out there has already discussed this, but it’s definitely an interesting topic that hit me the other day…..the more I think about it, the more I see the enormous potential for corporate America to benefit from CGI characters, not to mention members of the political game! Imagine if Rupert Murdoch owned a few of these huge CGI celebrities; there are obviously huge negatives to any sort of technological advancement like this though.

Obviously the technology used in Avatar is a really small jump off in relation to everything discussed above….but how far the CGI stuff goes is yet to be seen.

Do you know of anyone discussing this topic, or any movies or tv shows that have represented it to some point? My memory is telling me that there’s a movie out there about a female CGI character that the production company tries to turn into a real celebrity…but I’m not sure if that’s just my imagination on this topic running wild..

Would love to hear your thoughts on my general ramblings above. Please share in the comments below.

We’ve learned a lot in this process. And we are clear that we did not go about this in the right way.

As an active member of the “No Spec” movement, Gap’s announcement tonight is truly a wonderful one, and professional designers (other than the ones on sites like crowdspring) around the world will surely be delighted with this outcome.

Well done to everyone that spoke out against Gap’s decision to crowd source the further development of their identity. Chalk this one up as a major win for the No Spec movement.

This one is particularly interesting as it raises some important questions about the CrowdSpring business model, and their dictatorial style. Please take a few moments to read Kathleen’s story below.

I entered the world of crowd sourcing at crowdSPRING (cS) on July 13, 2010, with high hopes of a creative challenge participating in writing projects on a global playing field. I left it feeling used, cynical and disheartened after my account there was deactivated on September 2, 2010—the second time in just 52 days–for the heinous crime of questioning staff on project award anomalies and curious website glitches.

About halfway through this first sourcing stint of mine, I was selected for a project award on August 4th. Interestingly enough this boon occurred only a day after my first deactivation (I’d complained about several ignored e-mail queries, still never adequately answered). The timing was auspicious, but it served its purpose in nudging me to participate again once they chose to reactivate me. This time, however, I worked only on nonprofit or higher award projects.

It wasn’t long, though, before project completions and award methods continued to send up red flags and suspicions of fraudulent behavior on the part of the cS staff, the buyers or both. Writing projects—mainly naming companies/products, creating taglines—are sealed in such privacy at cS that fake projects, fake awardees (ringer accounts set up only as project awardees) and outright intellectual property theft can be easily executed. More than once I suggested to cS staff that greater transparency would be a better business model for them as it would help retain savvy and talented “creatives” [their term for worker bees] over longer periods if they can see what’s truly going on.

Before my final deactivation, I’d wisely gathered data on the projects I participated in. Out of my 13 projects that closed within those 52 days of activity, more than half were not awarded by project buyers but by staff itself creating a serious in-house bias issue. More than half of the 12 people actually awarded on these had joined cS less than two weeks before their respective projects ended, including myself. One winner had joined on July 25th while his/her project ended July 26th and then hasn’t participated again since.

I also gathered data on another five projects I worked on but that had not yet closed when my account was yanked—aggravating because I was confident I had a really good chance at an award on at least two of them but was not allowed to log in for any updates on status. I’d had the good sense to keep a record of each submission and relevant data to help me track and investigate any use of my entries and changes in domain ownerships. This proved fortuitous as, indeed, the buyer on a high-ticket company-/ domain-naming project selected my work for an award. So a month after King Bee autocrat and co-founder, Mike Samson, branded me an “inactive droid,” this worker bee collected one of the larger awards given on any comparable project.

What makes my “How Curiosity Killed the Kat at crowdSPRING” cautionary tale more compelling is the e-mail trail of exchanges between myself and staff revealing the cS personalities involved and showing how questions are either ignored or non-responsively answered and, ultimately, not tolerated. Two among those sent by Samson himself outright threatened to deny my recent award selection, and only pressure by the Chicago buyer on my behalf allowed an honest project completion. I was vigilant enough to protect myself with information and careful research, but clearly many, if not most, involved in crowd sourcing are taken advantage of and never see a penny for their efforts.

I correspond with another participant who was ripped off by cS, and I imagine there are dozens of similar stories from creative sourcing sites. I can’t speak to design projects at cS or to these other sites, but the heavy cloak of secrecy combined with a dictatorial business model that simply removes anyone who dares to question it, creates an ideal recipe for fraud at crowdSPRING.

So, I sent out this tweet, and then another one .

Instantly, I received replies, and so far a few seem to agree.

When an element of an identity is THIS subtle, does it have a purpose (other than fellow logo designers thinking it’s “genius”) ?

If the vast majority of the market doesn’t even know it’s there, doesn’t that make it useless in its purpose? Without the arrow in the FedEx logo, we would still be left with an iconic identity with the strong lettering, and the recognizable blue and red/ sometimes now green/orange etc. Without the arrow it still does the job rather well.

What are your thoughts?

Reading through the manual booklets for my new car and one of the brochures inside has a pretty cool cover design that I thought I’d share with you.

(This is also my first post testing the Android WordPress app)

I’m a big fan of car logos and the requirements that come along with an auto manufacturer identity.

What’s your favorite car manufacturer logo?

This goes against every bit of sales training I have ever had. This is not good business and here’s why:

1. Numbers game

   Everyone wants leads. Everyone wants a lot of leads. The more leads you get, the more sales you make. Sales 101. This applies to any contractor / freelancing business, and mostly every other type of business also. Why would you ever give a reason for someone NOT to become a lead for you? Sure, you’re busy and you may not be able to work with this client right away if they contact you, but isn’t it better that they do actually contact you?

2. Relationships

   The potential client doesn’t contact you because your website says you are “Only taking on new jobs starting August 2010″. Client moves on. They don’t bookmark your site, they don’t click through any more of your pages, and they probably never think of , or find you again. No relationship. Ever.

   Now imagine you didn’t show your “availability” on your website. The client likes your work, your style, and decides to contact you about a project they have in mind. They are reaching out to start a relationship with you! It doesn’t necessarily have to turn into a monetary one right away to make it a worthwhile relationship. You might have to respond by thanking them for contacting you, ask them a few details about their project, and let them know that you would be able to start working with them by August 2010…. Showing an availability calendar is negative. It says to the user “I can’t work with you right now”, whereas the response to an initial email from a client is positive, saying that “I can work with you in 2 months”.

   You can also add a note asking if they would like you to keep in touch with them through your newsletter where you provide free helpful tips, articles etc… Now, you have another email newsletter subscriber, and you can start building a relationship with this new contact. Oh, and you also could get a new twitter or facebook follower. All streams that allow you to build a stronger relationship with this potential client.

   Then guess what happens. In a few months times, after they chose to work with someone else and the project failed, they contact YOU because they now feel like they know you from your regular newsletter, seeing you on Twitter, or enjoying your awesome comic and they know that you are extremely experienced (because you show off your work in your newsletter, right? ). Also, now it’s August 2010! Hoorah! You now have available space in your schedule to work with them and take their project on.

   All positive. That is what good sales is, and good sales is all about relationship building. Whether it leads to an immediate or future sale should not determine your investment in it.

3. Stats, Advertising etc

   All of us invest time/energy/money into promoting our freelancing services or design firm. You hope that these efforts pay off. Whether they do or don’t, you want to know what is working and what isn’t. That’s where statistics , lead tracking and other information gathering comes in.

   You can use a service like Google Analytics to see information about your website visitors, where they are coming from , what content they look at on your site, how long they stay and much more.  You can also enhance your contact form on your website to tie in with Google Analytics using “Goals” to see when they are met, and to see specific data attached to each goal.

   Why is this important and vital to your success? Well, by generating leads from your contact form, and having “goals” set up in Google Analytics, you can determine where your visitors are coming from and what percentage of each source is likely to fill out your contact form. For example, let’s say you advertise on CNN.com with a banner ad, and also on Facebook. When you receive contact form submissions, you can see number of visits from each site, and match that to how many leads each source generates for you, and see whether your money is being spent in the right places.

   Information like this is what ensures that your advertising expenses/blogging efforts etc are working as efficiently as possible.

   However, if you have an availability  calendar on your website, you probably won’t hear from a lot of people that found your site, and wanted to work with you. Fair enough you are happy to lose that lead, but you also lost more vital information about your advertising and promotion efforts.

4. You’re worth waiting for, aren’t you?

   You want the client to contact you. No matter what. The client is excited to possibly work with you, and why shouldn’t they be. You’re awesome at what you do, right? So, when you have to tell them you won’t be able to start their project until August 2010, you help them understand why you are worth waiting for! Often, you will be able to convince them that the best way to invest their money for this project is with you, and only you. Hey, what’s the worst that can happen? They move on and work with someone else? At least you gave it a shot. You’re not even in the game if your “availability calendar” turned them off from ever contacting you in the first place.

What are your thoughts? For or against this trend of freelancers displaying their “work availability ”? Elaborate on why you think either way is best.