The Official Wordsy Blog

I know the site has been (intermittently?) slow lately. Yesterday a server upgrade was completed by our hosting partner Doreo and we're hoping our performance issues are now a thing of the past. Let me know if that doesn't work out for you.

I'm really sorry I haven't posted this earlier...Just...so...busy! Ah, well. Here you are:

The Winner
"As the airliner plunged with terrible silence toward an Iowa cornfield, Alex noticed that the little girl next to him, the one who had shown him her collection of springs, was smiling brightly and reaching for his hand."
Submitted by: Jeni Powell

Runners up, in no particular order
"I'm told it's not my fault, but I know the truth: my wife would still be alive today if I'd only ordered the pancakes."
Submitted by:David Talon

"Is that chocolate on your face?"
Submitted by: Norm Jenson

Congrats to you all. Prizes are on the way!

Contrary to what I said on the podcast, it's going to be the same time as last week:

Amsterdam - 18:30 (6:30pm)
GMT / UTC - 16:30 (4:30pm)
New York - 12:30 (12:30pm)
Salt Lake City - 10:30am
San Francisco - 9:30am

Joining in couldn't be easier. Here's how you can be on the show, live:

1. Dial-In to the Conference Number: 218-486-7200
2. Enter your Conference Bridge Number: 985516

Three updates for you regarding the podcast:

First, I really liked having more people on the podcast - and Erik and Phil were great guests. The original idea of doing a podcast with Richard every week just isn't working out because he works in the weekends a lot and I don't. So my first idea was to have more regulars to do the podcast with so, the show will hopefully start coming out more often. Plus: more people just means more fun.

Second, this sunday (may 4th) I'm inviting everyone to be on the podcast. That's right: including you. Don't be afraid, it'll be great fun. All you have to do is dial in. Here's how it works:

1. Dial-In to the Conference Number 1-218-486-7200
2. Enter your Conference Bridge Number: 985516

Date: Sunday May 4th
Time:
Amsterdam - 18:30 (6:30pm)
GMT / UTC - 16:30 (4:30pm)
New York - 12:30 (12:30pm)
Salt Lake City - 10:30am
San Francisco - 9:30am

So we'll see who shows up. You?

Comments on podcasts
We received a comment from Wordsy Person BottleOfShine, who said:

Uh, is there a reason why podcasts aren't treated like stories, so we can
comment on them? I am not podcast savvy, this is the only one I follow so
maybe having a comment section would be weird? But it's a pretty
interactive site, so it seems strange that the dialogue between users
would be negated! Since there's been plenty of times I've listened and had
comments, but no where to leave them...I just thought I'd ask!

Great point BottleOfShine. Comments will be on by default from now on.

That's right: win some real Dutch Chocolate. And there's more. The first prize is a real readers' treat: a box of Real Dutch Chocolate, three handmade bookmarks from http://solobooks.com, and a nice hardcover book (title will be determined based on the tastes of the winner).

So I'm sure you're curious what this contest entails. Here it is: write one sentence. That's all- a fictitious first sentence of a fictitious novel. Send that sentence to wordsypeople@gmail.com by 12pm on april 5th. The winner will be the ones that most make us think: we wish we could read on. It's that simple. Two runners up will also receive three handmake bookmarks.

We hope you have fun with our contest!

It's been a while since our last Official Blog post, but rest assured we haven't stood still. When we're not blogging we're working!

This post is to announce the availability of our new Watcher. Actually, it's going to be your Watcher. It will keep you informed of discussions going on at Wordsy. It's a page at Wordsy where you can go and check for new comments on posts you are watching. If you want, it can send you emails to tell you about replies to your comments or stories.

So who can use the Watcher?
If you have an account with Wordsy, you can use the Watcher.

How does it work?
Under every story, you'll see a link called You are not watching this post, click to start watching. If you click it, it will turn green, and say You are watching this post. You'll also see a link to your list of watched items. If you click on that, it'll take you to your Watcher List.

There's also a link to your Watcher in the navigation bar on the left of your screen.

I don't want to receive any emails!
When you are viewing your Watcher List, there is a settings button. Click on that and you can change the behaviour of the module. You can turn automatic emails of or off.

Have fun with the Watcher.

Somehow we made it to number 61 on a worldwide list of Social Communities.

Check the list.

Soon I'll put all these instructions together on a separate page, but for now here's how to install the bookmarklet...

If you're on Safari

Click this link: Wordsy This Page!, but do not release the mouse button, then drag the link to the toolbar (found below the address bar in the browser) and release the mouse button.

If you're not on Safari, check out our Bookmarklets for other Browsers.

So you're on an interesting web page - and you want to post it to Wordsy...

Used to be you had to copy the internet address, go to Wordsy.com, paste, maybe go back, copy some text, etc, etc. So much work. How horrible!

Well now, that's all over! We bring you: Wordsy Bookmarklets. The bookmarklet allows you to quickly submit web pages as stories to Wordsy. By selecting some text on the page, you can even have the description field filled in automatically. Submitting stories to Wordsy is now just a quick one-two-three:

Step 1. Browse to cool web page, optionally select some text
Step 2. Click the 'Wordsy This Page!' Bookmarklet
Step 3. Select a category, maybe add some tags, click 'Submit'

Done!

Instructions for installing the bookmarklet:

If you use Firefox
Right-click this link: Wordsy This Page!, select "Bookmark This Link...", then in the "Save in" field choose "Bookmarks Toolbar Folder" and click OK.

If you use Internet Explorer
Right-click this link: Wordsy This Page!, select "Add to Favorites", if a warning shows click Yes, then in the Save in field, select "Links" and click OK.

The bookmarklet has not been tested on Safari or Opera. If you use Opera and have used any of the bookmarklets with succes, let us know in the comments.

Update
For the Safari Bookmarklet, check here.

Boy we're really cranking them out these days.

We've created a plugin for the Wordpress Content Management System. When you install it, all your posts will have the Wordsy badge automatically added.

There's two versions of the plugin:

• Version 0.1-A, made by Jakob of Wordsy, puts the badge on all blog posts on individual pages as well as on your front page all Wordpress 'pages'.
• Version 0.1-B, made by Kingrat puts the badge on all individual posts but not on the front page specifically created pages such as 'about' and 'contact'.

If there are enough requests from users, we'll probably create a new version combining these functions and adding more. As always, chime in below.

So here's how you install it:

1. Uncompress the Zip-file
2. Upload the uncompressed folder to the wp-content/plugins folder on the server
3. Go to Plugins in WordPress and activate the plugin.
4. Every post on the site will now display a Wordsy badge.

Of course this plugin will only work if you're on a separate install of Wordpress, not if you're blog is hosted by Wordpress.com. As you're probably aware, they don't allow plugins. :-(

Update
It has been noted that the plug in does not give expected results in specific situations due to, as far as we can tell, a bug in Wordpress. The unexpected behaviour manifests itself if you display excerpts anywhere and do not write your excerpts explicitly. We have informed Wordpress of the problem and Kingrat graciously created a workaround that works for specific Wordpress versions. We'll send it to you if you email us at wordsypeople at gmail dot com. Make sure to specify your Wordpress version.