Neatorama Update - November 2009

Posted by Alex in Neatorama Only on November 10, 2009 at 4:39 pm

Lots of stuff happening in Neatoland last week. Here’s a quick update:

Mystery Sale
Last week, Neatorama had its last Mystery Sale. Thank you for everyone who participated! Why was it our last one? We’re working on a new system for the Neatorama Shop and I have an inkling that it may be incompatible with the way Mystery Sales work. Perhaps we’ll bring it back in the future, but for now, the last Mystery Sale was our very last one ;)

The warehouse is officially in overdrive mode. We’ll be sending out shipments for the next week or two. Unfortunately, I don’t know where a particular order is in the queue – so please be patient, your package is on its way!

Neatorama on Yahoo!
Our post about Elena Desserich, the 6-year-old girl with brain cancer who hid love notes for her parents to find after her death, was featured on Yahoo! front page, which delivered about 2 million visitors (and over 2,700 comments – most of them are nice, but some are … wow, just wow!) in a span of just a few hours (Thanks Yahoo!) Needless to say, the servers got clobbered (though the post itself had no problem as we had put it on a CDN) So if you experienced a server hiccup last week, that was the cause.

Upcoming Queue
We changed the way the Upcoming Queue worked a little bit. Now you can browse Archived Posts (5,000+ submissions!) and keep up with comments on your submissions through RSS Feed.

The Archived Posts link is at the very bottom of the page, whereas the My RSS Feed is on the top right-hand navigation panel.

 
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Neatorama Shop » By Artist » Mike Jacobsen T-Shirts

Neatorama Update October 2009: Huffington Post and Interview with Technorati

Posted by Alex in Neatorama Only on October 27, 2009 at 1:58 am

Just a couple of updates:

10 Neatest NY Inventions Over at HuffPo
I wrote an article titled 10 Neatest New York Inventions Ever that got frontpaged at the Huffington Post. For example, whoddathunk that Jell-O (OK, OK, gelatin desert) was invented in New York?

Not satisfied with having built the first American locomotive and running for president (for the Greenback Party ticket), industrialist Peter Cooper decided to try his hand in desserts. In 1845, he patented the formula for powdered gelatin.

You may not know the name "Peter Cooper," but I bet you’ve heard of what his invention later became known as. That’s right. Jell-O.

Link – Thanks David!

Technorati State of the Blogosphere Interview
In addition to a completely new article-based front page and a new way to calculate the ranking of Technorati Top 100 Blogs, Technorati has just finished releasing their annual State of the Blogosphere 2009 report. Tucked in between all the interesting statistics and interviews with Internet heavyweights like Arianna Huffington, Seth Godin, Mathew Ingram, Simon Mackie, Andrew Breitbart, and Dean Takahashi, is little ol’ me.

Many thanks to Eric Olsen who conducted the interview and tolerated me being a rambling doofus and butchering the English language (and is that how I sound like? OMG!). We talked about the Neatorama Shop, how Neatorama grew, the blog’s counter-intuitive strategy of reducing pageviews, Neatorama’s statistics and so on and so on for about 23 minutes: Link

 
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Neatorama Update: September 2009

Posted by Alex in Neatorama Only on September 2, 2009 at 2:25 am

Hello everybody! I'm happy to be back blogging on Neatorama after being mostly absent last month (why? Here's the very cute reason). Anyway, it's good to be back! I'd like to update you on a number of going ons at the blog:

Neatorama Update
We've done some work under the hood (so to speak). The idea is that regular readers don't see any changes, though some things may be broken. If you've subscribed to the No Upcoming Queue RSS feed, you'll know what I'm talking about (the feed is now ironically only posts from the UQ!). We'll try to get that fixed soon, I promise.

In the meantime, please give the full RSS feed a chance - there's a lot of gems coming from promoted posts from the Upcoming Queue.

If you see anything broken, please email me (alex at this here blog dot com). I appreciate the help!

New Features

If you look at the right-hand side navigation bar, you'll see a number of new neat features:

  • Browse by Date
    We've gotten a lot of requests from people who like to read all of Neatorama by going back posts after posts in the archives. This "browse by date" feature should help them keep track of where they're at.
  • Browse by Tags
    I'm kind of late to the whole tagging thing (I started tagging my posts in November 2008 but have since seen the light!) It's revealing to see that we write more about Star Wars than Star Trek, as denoted by the size of the tag (reflecting the frequency the particular tag is used).

At the very bottom of the navigation bar, you can see the 5 most recent comments made on the blog - so comment frequently, mmkay?

New Ad Units

We're still playing around adding new ad units (showing products from the Neatorama Shop) in the front page and in the single post pages and deleting some in the navigation bar.

We're trying to reach a balance between controlling the number of ad spots and types of ads (for example, the rotating product ads are static images and not Flash) while maximizing revenue to pay the blog's operational cost (dem darned bills).

Neatorama Upcoming Queue: Top Submitters of August 2009

We promised to reward the top 5 submitters to the Upcoming Queue for the month of August ... and here they are (thanks guys!)

Congratulations to coconutnut who got the grand prize (an iPod Nano) - the rest of the people listed above will win something neat from the Neatorama Shop.

We'll continue to reward the Top Submitters, so if you haven't tried the Upcoming Queue, what are you waiting for? Here's the FAQ and Formatting Tips to maximize your chances of getting your submissions promoted.

 
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Neatorama Update: Aug 2009

Posted by Alex in Neatorama Only on August 21, 2009 at 4:53 am

IE7 and IE8 Crashes and Hang Ups
I’ve received a few emails about a looping bug in some ad scripts on the blog that crashed Internet Explorer 7 and 8 (apparently, it didn’t affect Firefox). I’d like to thank those of you who took the time to let me know. I think the issue is fixed – but if you still see any problems after flushing your browser’s cache, please let me know. My email is simply alex at this blog’s domain dot com (I’m sure you can figure it out).

Upcoming Queue
Remember that we’re having a little friendly competition for the Neatorama Upcoming Queue. Top 5 Submitter (based on Front Paged submissions, not total subs) will win very cool prizes from the Neatorama Online Shop. Top submitter will get an iPod Nano, and you’ve still got time so get crackin’!

The frontrunners as of today:

Please read the UQ FAQ and Submission Tips to increase your chances of getting your submissions promoted to the blog’s front page! Remember that copypasta submissions (that’s copying and pasting stuff directly from the article) will decrease your chances of being promoted ;)

 
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Our Newest Neatoramanaut: Say Hello to Baby Georgia!

Posted by Alex in Neatorama Only on August 21, 2009 at 12:40 am

Hello everybody – it’s my pleasure to introduce to you the newest Neatoramanaut in the family. Say hello to baby Georgia, who was born just a few days ago. No, no styling gel was involved in the ‘do above – Georgie was born with a Mohawk (Fauxhawk? Kids today!).

It certainly has been a very busy past couple of weeks – my postings on the blog have virtually stopped (and will probably remain so for the foreseeable future) – and this is the very adorable reason.

Though Georgia is our third child, and I now know some hard-learned lessons about diapers, spit ups, and 3 AM feedings, my wife and I welcome any parenting advice. In the meantime, I’d like to thank my parents who traveled a great distance to come and help us out, fellow Neatorama authors who picked up the slack in postings and everybody else who called or dropped in to say hello.

 
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Neatorama Shop » Ashleigh Brilliant T-Shirts
I May Not Be Totally Perfect ...

Neatorama Update

Posted by Alex in Neatorama Only on August 7, 2009 at 5:47 pm


Image: Nathan Mazur of Scared of Bees

Hello everyone – sorry for the slowdown in new posts, we’re busy fighting Kraken doing some work under the hood on the blog, so please pardon any hiccups! Hopefully thing will get back to normal soon … in the meantime, please pardon Neatoramabot if it drops your comment.

 
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Neatorama Update - Mystery Sale and Upcoming Queue Contest

Posted by Alex in Neatorama Only on August 5, 2009 at 2:51 am

Mystery Sale – July 2009 Update
Phew! After about two weeks of hard work, we’ve finally shipped out all Mystery Sale orders. If you haven’t received yours yet, especially if you live outside of the United States, please don’t worry – the goodies are on their way.

Though the Mystery Sale is over, you can still get geektastic Science T-Shirts, Funny T-Shirts, nifty Ice Trays and other fun stuff at the Neatorama Online Store. Thank you to everybody who participated!

Neatorama Software Upgrade
We’re going to be doing a maintenance/upgrade soon on Neatorama – if everything goes well, you shouldn’t notice anything. If not, then, well, pardon the hiccups!

Upcoming Queue
As I’ve posted before, the Top 5 Submitter (based on Front Paged submissions) to the Neatorama Upcoming Queue for the month of August will win very cool prizes. The top dog will win an iPod Nano, whereas the rest will get cool stuff from the Neatorama Online Store.

As of today, the field is wiiiide open:

Please read the FAQ and Submission Tips to increase your chances of getting posts promoted to the Front Page. Remember that copy & pasting your description is the surest way NOT to get your post picked up ;)

 
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Neatorama Update - Mystery Sale, Twitter Only Contest, UQ Prize, and More

Posted by Alex in Neatorama Only on July 24, 2009 at 2:16 am

Hello Neatoramanauts! It's been a while since our last Neatorama State of the Blog post, so I'd like to take a minute to update everyone.

Mystery Sale - July 2009
Thank you to everybody who participated! We truly appreciate your business and support. It took us a few days longer than I had initially expected to gear up to ship out orders, but the warehouse has started to ship out - we shipped the first batch two days ago and it'll probably take us another full week or so to complete every order.

Usually, we ship out your NeatoShop order within 1 business day or so, but the volume of shipment for the Mystery Sale is (like last time) extraordinarily high. We're working hard to continually improve this process and thank everybody for being patient :)

If you ordered from outside of the United States, please be extra patient - shipments can take up to 14 to 21 business days due to customs clearance (those guys can really take their time though they're usually much, much quicker). I'll do another round of update when we've finished shipping out.

Twitter Only Contest
We're going to post a Twitter-only contest where you can win cool stuff from the NeatoShop soon. It won't be announced on the blog, so you have to follow @neatorama on Twitter (we won't overload you with tweets, I promise!) to find out. Perhaps if it's a success, we can do the same thing on Neatorama's Facebook Fan Page ... what do you think?

Upcoming Queue Top Submitter Prize
Love it or not, I think the Upcoming Queue is one of the neatest feature of Neatorama. For those of you who are not familiar with the UQ, it is a way for the blog's readers to write a blog post. Submissions are voted up or down by other viewers and good posts are promoted to Neatorama's front page (details at the Upcoming Queue FAQ).

For the coming month of August, we're going to have a neat prize for the top 5 submitters: the number 1 submitter (based on frontpaged posts) will get an iPod Nano, whereas the rest will get some extra neat stuff from the NeatoShop.

Remember that quality, not quantity of submissions will be the key - please read the Formatting Tip first.

Neat Stories You May Have Missed
We posted a lot of neat stories on Neatorama in July, so be sure to check these out (in case you missed them):

Thank you for reading Neatorama! Please tell your friends about the blog!

 
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Neatorama Update - June 2009

Posted by Alex in Neatorama Only on June 19, 2009 at 3:41 pm

Time sure flies when you’re having fun (or in my case, buried with work). I’d like to take a minute and give you a State of the Blog update.

Upcoming Queue Top Submitter – May 2009

When we launched the Neatorama Upcoming Queue, we promised to reward Top Submitters. As a token of my appreciation, the top 5 submitters of May 2009 will get a random cool ice tray from our online store:


Ice Invaders, Gin & Titonic, Bone Chillers, and Cool Jazz ice trays
See our complete selection here: Party Ice Trays

You still have a chance to be a Top Submitter for this month (and there’s always next month) – learn more about the Neatorama Upcoming Queue here: FAQ | Tips

Neatorama Facebook Fan Page Hits 1,000 Fans

Thanks to Neatoramanaut Becky, we have a Neatorama Facebook Fan Page – and recently we’ve just hit 1,000 fans! Thank you, guys!

Rogue Ads

It’s taken a lot of work behind the scenes, but I believe we’ve significantly improved the quality of ads on Neatorama – not only are the rogue ads gone, but so are the annoying yellow teeth ads! (Scuttlebutt of the ad industry is that those yellow teeth ads are actually the best performing ads in the history of Internet ads. That’s why you see them everywhere – they’re coming from practically every single ad network on the web. Banning them cost us a pretty penny, but I think we did the right thing).

Running a small blog costs next to nothing (I know, Neato was once very small) but running a large one is actually quite costly. Bandwidth and server costs for Neatorama run in the 5-digits annually and growing. So unfortunately, ads are a necessary evil. Perhaps one day the Neatoama Online Shop is large enough that its revenue could sustain the blog, but for the foreseeable future, ads are our best option.

Because we have to rely on ad providers, sometimes rogue ads slip through – I appreciate everybody’s continued help in spotting them. Please let me know if you see an inappropriate ad, banner that has a self-starting audio, etc., so we can track ‘em down and ban ‘em (my contact info is at the bottom of the blog).

As a final note, I’m trying to find a balance between maximizing ad revenue and minimizing the number of ads that appear on the blog. Many of you probably noticed ads moving/appearing/disappearing starting in the past couple of weeks.

Neatorama Widget

Neatoramanaut Ajan surprised me with an gift: Neatorama’s very own RSS feed widget for Macs. Now, I won’t pretend to understand the mechanics of how it was made (I don’t have a Mac and wouldn’t know the first thing about widgets) – but it looks very neat! If you want one, click here to download it: Link – Thanks Ajan!

Note: a while ago, someone asks how to get in on the Mystery Sale and whether there is an email alert or something like that. Well, the answer is simple: visit Neatorama every day (or subscribe to our RSS feed) – the Mystery Sale is never announced beforehand and it only lasts for a short period of time, so you have to catch it when it’s going on (That’s part of the fun!)

 
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Neatorama Update - May 12, 2009

Posted by Alex in Neatorama Only on May 12, 2009 at 3:00 am

Hello everybody - I'd like to take a minute and give you an update on all things Neatorama.

Mystery Sale - Thank you to everyone who participated! We've been working hard to improve the turnaround time. The first wave of shipment has started - we will be sending out packages for the next week or two. Unfortunately, I don't know whose packages will be shipped when. We'll have another update soon!

Upcoming Queue - We continue to be pleased with your submissions to the Neatorama Upcoming Queue. As a token of our appreciation, the top 5 submitters (well, 6 actually since the last position is a three-way tie) of April 2009 will get free stuff from the store (oh, let's pick one: the Ice Invaders Ice Tray).

We will continue to reward top submitters of the UQ. As the feature is still new, you stand a very good chance in being a top submitter (For hints on how to get your posts promoted to the front page, please read the UQ FAQ and Tips).

Round Up - We've never really done any weekly round up summarizing the neatest and greatest posts on the blog, and I think it's time that we start doing that. Since the beginning of May, we've done 155 posts on Neatorama. That's a lot of posts to keep track, so here are a few noteworthy ones in case you missed them:

What do you think? Should we do a weekly round up of sorts?

 
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Neatorama Shop » Toy & Games » Science Toys

BuckyBalls Magnetic Toys are 216 rare earth magnet balls that can be shaped and molded into virtually any shape.

Tear 'em apart and snap 'em back together in unlimited ways for hours of fun! Watch the video for a quick demo of what BuckyBalls can do.

Remember to get two for twice the fun! Link
See more Science Toys »

Neatorama Upcoming Queue - Mystery Gift for March 2009 Top Submitters

Posted by Alex in Neatorama Only on April 9, 2009 at 4:57 pm

Gosh, is it April 9th already? Time certainly flies when you’re having fun … or in my case, busy working.

When we started the Upcoming Queue, we promised to reward – not penalize – its top users. The top 10 submitters for the Neatorama Upcoming Queue for March 2009 are getting free stuff (as a token of our thanks for participating). Since 4 people are tied for the last place, we decided to extend the list a bit.

So, if your names are listed above, you’ll be getting an email from me about the free gift (it’s a mystery, but I think you’ll like it!).

Who will win for April 2009? Why not YOU? The field is wide open – if you’d like to give the Upcoming Queue a look see, please visit the FAQ and Submission Tips.

 
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Neatorama Update & Laugh-Out-Loud Book Signing by Adam Koford

Posted by Alex in Cartoon & Comic, Neatorama Only on March 21, 2009 at 1:02 pm

Hi guys! I'm still alive - just really, really busy with work (wow - just checked: I haven't posted nearly anything in about a week!) Regular postings by yours truly will commence soon. Thank you to the rest of the Neatorama authors who picked up my slack :)

Mystery Sale - All mystery sale orders have been shipped as of the Thursday. If you live outside of the US, your package may take up to a couple of business weeks to deliver (the postal service is usually very quick, it's customs clearance that is slow). Interesting discussion at the forum on this topic.

Upcoming Queue - I have a backlog of neat posts from the UQ that should've made it to the Front Page but didn't for some reason or another. If you've recently posted to the UQ but didn't get your post promoted, you may be pleasantly surprised in the next couple of days.

Call for models and designers - Thank you for everyone who submitted their applications! Unfortunately, we have fewer spaces than qualified applicants, so we have to make the painful decision to whittle down the picks to just a few of you. I have the final picks pretty much determined, and will email them in the next day or so.

Neatorama Layout - We're testing different layouts on Neatorama, so you may see new ads, search bar, etc. floating in and out.


Laugh-Out-Loud Cats #1083: Ape Lad [Flickr]

Laugh-Out-Loud Book Signing - Our friend and favorite illustrator Adam "Ape Lad" Koford will be signing copies of his new book The Laugh-Out-Loud Cats Sell Out, published by Abrams ComicArts and featuring an introduction by John Hodgman) at Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles (7522 Sunset Blvd) 3 to 5 pm today. Go say hello!

Top 10 Blogs - Gerard Vlemmings of The Presurfer, one of my favorite blogs on the Web, was asked by Blogs.com from Six Apart to pick 10 funny, weird, strange, and interesting blogs. We're honored to be one of 'em. The other 9 are also excellent: Link - Thanks Gerard!

 
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State of the Blog and a Surprise for Neatorama Top Commenters!

Posted by Alex in Neatorama Only on November 10, 2008 at 7:35 am

Hello everyone! It's been a few months since our last "State of the Blog" post here on Neatorama - so I figure I'd take a few minutes to update you on the status of the blog.

Neatorama got a new look a few days ago - it's still the good ol' boring gray theme (the focus, after all, should be on the posts), but we'd like to think that it's a more, um ... sophisticated and cleaner boring gray. There are minor tweaks here and there, and some of you may notice that Neatorama loads a little bit faster (those of you still browsing with IE, you'd be surprised how much faster Neatorama loads on Firefox).

We put in a new "We Recommend" section in the right-hand navigation (under the Don't Miss these Neatomonkey; click to see the list) - these are links to past articles that we think are pretty cool. I'll keep these updated on a weekly basis or so, so please check it out.

If you have a hankering for mental_floss, Bathroom Reader and exclusive Neatorama articles, please check out the Archives - click on the year links to see all of the articles posted on Neatorama (for example, this year alone we have close to 150 articles so far).

We had the pleasure of being featured on Yahoo! front page back in August (it was Stacy's Five Hoaxes That Fooled the World). The valiant Neatorama servers fought hard against the unleashed horde of Yahoo! visitors but they finally knuckled under after 3 hours. In that short time, we got over 300,000 visitors (that's about 280 visitors per second!). We thought we had good servers but the experience led us to completely revamp the hardware (which took a lot of our time and caused a few hiccups then). It's been a costly adventure, but I think we're now much better positioned for growth and traffic spikes.

We had our first Mystery Sale on Neatorama's Online Store in September and it was a blast!

We'll have one again soon (yes that's a hint) but it's not going to be announced beforehand, so you have to visit Neatorama daily to find out ...

In October, I got an email from Mitch Wilson of Hungry Hollow Art about how he discovered Neatorama one day and decided to read the entire blog. That's nearly 16,400 posts (at the time - we're now closer to 17,000 posts). When I posted about his story, it turns out that a lot of you have done the Neatorama pilgrimage! I'm impressed :)

And lastly, a surprise to three of our top commenters on Neatorama for October 2008 (see screenshot above) You guys each got a free Apple iPod Shuffle as an early Christmas gift. It's our way to say thank you for participating and making the blog better by commenting.

We've done this a couple of times before and we'll surely do it again, but we won't tell you when. Like last time, you do have to be a registered user of the blog (Register here - it's fast and easy)

Every time we did this, there was a brief spike in people commenting, which then leveled off. Note that you wont' be rewarded for swamping the blog with stupid comments (someone did try this in the past). And yes, everyone has an equal chance of winning - the top commenter list is reset on a monthly basis.

Thank you for reading Neatorama and please tell your friends about the blog!

 
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