Announcing the Week Three Winner of the "Green by Design" Contest

Before we announce this week's winner, we wanted to take a moment to remind you that when the Green Badges receive one million impressions across the blogosphere, Six Apart will give $1000 to The Climate Project.

Add a Green Badge to your blog today to help us reach our goal!

There are still a few days to enter the contest! Get all the details about how to do so here.

And now... drumroll please...

The Week Three Winner is:

Kitty Bullard

 

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Week Three Runner-Up:

Joe Cheray

Congratulations Kitty and Joe!

Announcing the Week One & Two Winners of the "Green by Design" Contest

Two weeks ago, we told you about the “Green by Design” contest sponsored by One Million Acts of Green brought to you by Cisco.

Today, we’re happy to announce the winners of Weeks One and Two!

Haven’t submitted your eco-friendly badge yet? It's not too late! The contest is going on for another two weeks, so there’s still plenty time for you to send in your design. Learn more about how to enter.

Now, without further ado… The winners!

Week One Winner:

Martin Holland: Our Everyday Earth

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Week Two Winner:

Update: The original winner was disqualified, which makes our Runner-Up, Teresa Fields, the first-prize winner. Congratulations, Teresa!

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First-prize winners receive a one-year subscription to MailStopper, a junk mail mail stopper service provided by Tonic. Plus, we will donate $150 to a charity of their choice. (For a list of charitable organizations the winner can choose to donate to, please see the contest rules.)

Show your readers how green you are by adding one of the winning badges to your blog. Read the instructions here.

Each badge links to the One Million Acts of Green brought to you by Cisco website. One Million Acts of Green is a collaborative environmental campaign encouraging everyone to go green. One act at a time. The goal? One million acts of green!

Plus, when these badges receive a million impressions, Six Apart will donate $1000 to The Climate Project.

Congratulations to our winners. Keep those submissions coming! 

Enter the Green by Design Contest & Help the Planet

Last Friday, we blogged about how, thanks to you, our Green Badge program was a rousing success. We were hoping for 100,000 impressions across the blogosphere and we surpassed our goal by nearly two million!

When we realized how many of you were adopting the badges we designed, it occurred to us that you might have a few eco-friendly designs of your own you want to share with the world. That’s why we partnered with One Million Acts of Green brought to you by Cisco to create the “Green by Design” contest.

To enter, all you have to do is create a Green Badge with an earth-friendly design and/or message. One winner will be chosen each week this month and that person’s design will be featured on Everything TypePad for bloggers to put on their blogs, as well as on blogs across Six Apart Media's advertising platform.

Like the previous badges, the winning badge will link to the One Million Acts of Green brought to you by Cisco website. One Million Acts of Green is a collaborative environmental campaign encouraging everyone to go green. One act at a time. The goal? One million acts of green because, as we all know, we’re more powerful together than we can ever be apart.

Each weekly winner will also receive a one-year subscription to MailStopper, a junk mail stopper service provided by Tonic. Plus, we will donate $150 to a charity in the winner’s name. (For a list of charitable organizations the winner can choose to donate to, please see the contest rules.)

Two runner-ups each week will receive an honorable mention on EverythingTypePad, as well as a one-year subscription to MailStopper.

Plus, when the badges receive a million impressions (and we know they will!), Six Apart will donate another $1000 to The Climate Project.

We know that TypePad bloggers are amongst some of the most creative and generous people on the web, and that the Green Badges you create will help inspire people to take care of our planet, record their Acts of Green and make a difference.

Do your part by entering the Green by Design contest today. Because when we all do one act, we act as one, and help the planet.

Here’s what you need to know in order to submit your design:

• The deadline for entry of Submissions is the End Date, at 11:59:59 p.m. Pacific Time.
• The Submission must include a positive environmental message.
• The Submission must be in the JPEG file format.
• The Submission must be 160 x 90 pixels in size at a resolution of 72 dpi.
• The maximum file size of the Submission is 500 kilobytes.
• The Submission must be accompanied by an email address at which Organizer can contact Participant regarding the Promotion.
• The Submission and each element thereof must be the original work of Participant.
• No Submission may have been a winner or honoree in any previous contest.
• The Submission must not be defamatory, offensive or obscene or violate or infringe on the trademark, copyright, publicity, privacy or other rights of any third party or contain any worms, viruses, trojans, backdoors, spyware, rootkits, auto-loading code or any other malware

Please email your entry to badgecontest@sixapart.com

Contest begins June 1, 2009, and ends June 25, 2009. All entries must be received by June 25, 2009, at 12 p.m. PT. Winners will be announced on the following dates: June 8th, June 15th, June 22nd and June 29th.

View all contest rules here.

GOOD LUCK!

Meet the Champions on Get Satisfaction!

We’ve been using Get Satisfaction as a forum for our TypePad members to ask questions, get answers, or suggest features to us, but most of all, it's been a great place for you to talk with your fellow TypePad fans. We’ve selected a few members around the community to be topic experts around blogging, find out more about them and join the discussion if you haven’t already.

Now In Beta: Previewing The All New TypePad

We’re thrilled to announce this summer’s biggest blockbuster: The All New TypePad. We’ve launched a preview -- a trailer, to extend the metaphor -- of this all-new version of TypePad to our beta team today and we couldn’t be more excited. The new TypePad is built for you, based on your feedback, requests, and ideas. 

When we first created TypePad, our goal was to make this revolutionary thing called a “weblog” easier for you. The web was a different place back in 2003, and how you expressed yourself and shared your story, your brand, and your life online was very different as well.

It’s time to reinvent blogging.

Our mission is still what it was when we began: to create a fun and easy blogging experience for you. But we think blogging is evolving. The web is the biggest social network of all, and you and your blog are at the center. We want to make it easier for you to share with your friends and readers, to connect with your favorite sites and services, and for others to discover and enjoy your blog. The new TypePad will connect you to the rest of the web. And we’re making connecting as easy for you in 2009 as we made publishing back in 2003.

 The first part of the new TypePad is a beautiful redesign of TypePad. We’ve eliminated some of the biggest annoyances. (2 sets of tabs, anyone?) Second, we’ve also built the All New TypePad to help you get more traffic. Third: we’ve made improvements to features you already use, like search engine optimization options, changing URLs on the fly, a revolutionary commenting experience and more. Plus, we’ve added great new features, like the ability to follow your favorite bloggers, helping you connect with your readers, and to help your audience engage with you and your blog.

We’ll be keeping the trailers coming over the next few weeks to show off the new TypePad. This will be available for everyone to preview very soon, and, of course, we’ll give you plenty of time to get used to working with the new features. (But we really think you’ll like the new TypePad best.)

We helped invent blogging, and we think it’s time to reinvent it. Interested in seeing the future of blogging by being one of our Beta testers? Join the Beta team by signing up here.

Doing More With TypePad Profiles

Ready to discover new blogs, and find out more about who’s reading yours? Want people to know about your latest blog post -- and the interesting comments you leave around the web?

Your TypePad profile tracks your comments from your favorite sites. We’ve made your profile even more fun: when you add your TypePad blog to your profile, we'll update your profile with your most recent post, so there’s more ways for people to connect to you and your blog.

 

More Control.
We’ve also added a new level of control over how your profile appears on the web. Hide specific comments if you want, or hide activity. Read our tips on how to customize your profile: change your URL, your photo, your nickname, and lots of other cool stuff.

Updated Bio
For existing TypePad bloggers, we’ve made a few changes to make your recent updates easier for your visitors to find. Since we all know that a short tagline can work to grab a reader’s attention, your profile will now display your “One Line Bio” instead of your “Extended Bio”. If you would like to use the information in your “Extended Bio” on your profile, simply copy the information into your “One Line Bio”. 

 

More Places
The greater social network is the web, and you’re at the center.  You can add your other services, like Twitter, Facebook and more to your profile. Connect with your readers, wherever they are.

 

More on the Way
This is just the beginning of some of the cool things we’re working on to help you find great blogs and new readers.

Everyone with a profile will now have the ability to follow their favorite TypePad commenters and bloggers. [Spoiler alert!] There is so much more on the way.

More great content. More readers. More from your friends at TypePad.

Go to your TypePad profile.

Want to learn more about your TypePad profile? Check out the FAQ.

Calling All TypePad Designers

Are you someone who designs TypePad blogs, or need a great design? Let us know in the comments. We're looking at new and interesting ways to get designers and bloggers connected.

Do you want to improve your blog but not sure where to start? Need some extra help launching a new blog? TypePad's expert Blog Services team are here for you. Our team can evaluate your blog and provide tips on best posting practices, branding, custom domains and banners, and more. Then we take care of the recommended changes for you. Find out more and sign up for our TypePad One Blog Services.

TypePad One is Here for All Bloggers

As part of our I Love Blogging launch this week we also wanted to shout to the stars that we love bloggers too!

To celebrate our love of bloggers of all types, topics and platforms, we’re launching TypePad One, your one-stop shop for blogging training, tips, tools, services and support. Whether you’re wanting to know how to add your Twitter tweets to TypePad, domain map with Go Daddy, add Feedburner email alerts or add your blog posts to your Facebook feed, we’ve got your back with tutorials and techniques to help you get the most out of every post.

TypePad One also serves as your entrée into our various support offerings including the Power Launch and Blog Tune-Up packages.

To download the full low-down go to http://typepad.com/one/.

TypePad and Twitter

Our friends at Twitter have obviously been working on improving security this week, and it seems they've made a tweak that's temporarily causing an annoyance for some of our bloggers. Anybody with a Twitter widget or script on a TypePad blog is being prompted for a Twitter login. We're talking to the Twitter team to get that fixed ASAP, but until then, just ignore the login prompt, or temporarily disable the widget if you don't want to annoy your readership.

Want to follow us on Twitter? We love new friends.

Next Generation Comments and Profiles on TypePad

As we complete the migration to the next generation platform for TypePad that Ben talked about earlier this year we've released many new features for you, our TypePad bloggers: improved design screens, AutoSave, and custom URLs to mention a few) that extend the TypePad service to any blogger across the web. Our vision is that the best way to help TypePad bloggers is to connect them with a wider community of readers, other bloggers and conversations.

Today we are launching three big things for TypePad bloggers and readers alike: profiles (a reinvention of TypeKey), new commenting capabilities in a beta service we call TypePad Connect that is free for all bloggers and extends these features to any site.  This isn’t just about providing comments and profiles for your site, but also connecting your community with the rest of the social web.

New: TypePad Profiles
The first thing you’ll want to do is signup for a swanky new TypePad Profile. TypePad profiles take advantage of things you're already doing, to keep your profile up to date and interesting. If you connect with your Twitter account we'll automatically fill in your status. Leave a comment on a TypePad Connect enabled site and we'll pull that in too.

We’ve also worked hard to make it easy for you to take advantage of our new beta commenting service on your TypePad blog currently via TypePad Connect.  TypePad Connect starts to show how we envision TypePad evolving from a design perspective to make it easier for you to communicate with your community and create great content.  These new comment capabilities integrate seamlessly with the new profiles and have great new features you’ve been requesting like threading, easy pagination, OpenID sign in, email notifications of replies and the ability to reply via email.

Today, TypePad Connect beta is available for almost all of TypePad blogs; we’re working to incorporate these commenting capabilities to every TypePad blog next year.

In the spirit of community, we talk more about how we're making TypePad Connect available to not just TypePad bloggers, but all bloggers, over at our Six Apart News post. We know not everyone in your community is on TypePad (although we're counting on you to help us win them over!) and we want you to be able to manage your own comments across a lot of services.

We're also committing to you as a community that we're here to help you. Our customer care experts are available to help you with any questions or concerns you might have with our support team.

There's plenty more coming, but we’re sure you want to try the beta of comments, profiles and TypePad Connect on your blog right now! We'll graduate comments to a full-fledged feature soon, but we'll keep it in beta until we're ready to release it to the world.

This is just the beginning. Let us know what you think and what else TypePad can do to make your blog even more successful.

Learn more and see the video demo at typepad.com/connect.