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Release 86, Earthquake relief, Halloween events, Tim Daly interview

October 27th, 2011 - Happy Halloween and welcome to the official newsletter for all things LiveJournal! Bringing you information about system updates, community events, LJ social outreach, and other newsworthy nuggets from the world of LiveJournal. A quick note before we jump in: we've posted an update at BERJAYAlj_maintenance outlining a service issue that sprung up a couple days ago and was quickly resolved.

Release 86

While 'Release 86' sounds like a great name for a horror film from the early 80s, it's actually our recent system update. New additions / changes are brief. Here's the rundown:
  • Community owners can now make use of the Google Analytics feature for their community. This feature is activated on the Extensions tab of the Settings dialog.
  • The contextual hover menu has been redesigned. Roll your mouse over a friend's or community's userhead/userpic to see the new hover menu in action.
Check out BERJAYAlj_releases for all the details regarding Release 86.

Earthquake relief in Turkey

BERJAYA'Help Turkey' vGift
On October 23rd, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck the eastern province of Van in Turkey. Hundreds have been killed and over a thousand injured as an estimated 2,000 buildings collapsed during the tremor.

LJ has created a 'Help Turkey' vGift to support the recovery efforts in the region. 100% of the proceeds from the sale of the vGift will go towards aiding the recovery efforts in Turkey.

Halloween @ LJ

BERJAYAA tradition unlike any other

Eight reasons to love Halloween

BERJAYAThe itsy bitsy spider crawled up the water spout and onto your friend's LJ profile! If you have a Paid or Permanent account, you can send eight spiders now until Monday, October 31st, at midnight, PDT! You'll see both the free and the $0.99 vGifts displayed until you've sent them to your friends. If you're not receiving vGifts then you may have disabled them. To enable vGifts, visit Edit profile (under Profile), scroll down to the bottom of the page, and check your settings. Make sure the box beside 'Disable sponsored only' is NOT checked! Enjoy!

The LJ Interview: Tim Daly speaks about arts advocacy and bullying

During the interview, Tim Daly talks about the bullying issue, his role in The Creative Coalition, and his passion for rallying creative professionals around important social issues. Stay tuned, later in the week we'll have an interview in BERJAYAbullying_begone with WWE wrestler Sheamus about his career and how bullying influenced his life.

LJ news and you

We've been experimenting with various formats for presenting the news over the last couple months, In the near future, we'll be shifting news to a fixed-width (most likely 600px wide), newsletter-style entry. We realize this doesn't work for everyone. As an alternative, we've got a few ways to keep up with LiveJournal.
  • BERJAYAnews: You're here! Your spot for all topics regarding LiveJournal's operations and social outreach.
  • BERJAYAsimplynews: A text-only, lightly formatted simulcast of BERJAYAnews. Worth a look if you view the news in a highly-customized journal style.
  • BERJAYAlj_today: A new community we've started for announcing site updates as well as promoting upcoming events in active communities.
  • BERJAYAlj_maintenance and BERJAYAlj_releases: Two communities focused on announcing new features and site performance issues.

NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month 2011 is right around the corner. Rally together, brave writers, and meet up at BERJAYAlj_nanowrimo! Find support among your literary colleagues and we'll try to ease the writing experience with a couple surprises of our own. Good hunting, writers!

For news about LJ_Scribe and LJ_Photophile and recent contest winners, we'll see you under the cut! ( Collapse )

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great Halloween!
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Shop payments, Homepage redesign, Community Directory, LiveJournal Remixed

Our heartfelt thanks for sharing so much MJ love last week and for lending your support to BERJAYAgulf_aid_now and PFlag. We hope you'll continue to bid on auction items and send those purple rhino vgifts, since charity doesn't end with a rainbow parade. Frank was so inspired that he took a much-needed break to whip up his signature toasted pants nachos. Now he's dying to find out what you do to escape from the workaday grind. Tell him how you keep those creative juices flowing, and he'll twirl you a spinning pinwheel!
BERJAYA

Important stuff to know

  • Shop improvements: In response to user requests, we've added more payment methods. You can now purchase LJ Tokens using Amazon Payments, STi Prepaid Phone Cards, Pay By Cash, and more using our new Offerpal integration. Simply click the 'Use Offerpal' button on the LJ Tokens page, make your payment, and use your tokens to purchase in the LJ Shop.
  • Community Directory: We're thrilled to announce our new Community Directory, which helps you locate journals and communities that match your interests. If you'd like to suggest a community you maintain, click here and select the community from the "Work as community" drop-down menu. You can choose up to two categories (for instance, entertainment/fandom and books_writing/fan_fiction). Please note that communities must be youth-friendly (adult concepts are cool, but no graphic adult content). In addition, we only accept communities that include a clear title and description.
  • Homepage enhancements: No, you're not dreaming. We've added the following feature updates to keep you in the loop:
    • "Recent posts" shows a selection of recent entries from LiveJournal communities.
    • "Oh No They Didn't" shows popular entries from BERJAYAohnotheydidnt.
    • "LiveJournal Major Notes" provides links to the last five news posts.
    • "Feature showcase" lists LiveJournal features and services.

LiveJournal, Remixed

BERJAYA

We've added a splash of color to the community formerly known as LJNewsContests. BERJAYAremixed is the new home for LiveJournal creative contests. Moving forward, we'll be posting even more competitions (we'll keep sponsored competitions under a cut) and continue to run the LiveJournal header contests too. We'll keep the sponsored prizes interesting and give you the opportunity to vote for your favorite entries. Finalists and winners will receive LJ Tokens and get to see their designs on LiveJournal! All users are welcome to participate. You can check out our first redesign contest, sponsored by Rickshaw Bagworks, here. We look forward to seeing your artistic creations. P.S. You can continue to submit your original LiveJournal header designs for this month's contest until June 30th! We'll post a poll in the next newsletter so you can choose finalists.


For our featured photo and more fun with Frank & Meme, we'll catch you under the cut! ( Collapse )
Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next week!
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Header Design Winner, ONTD!

After a healthy dose of LJ-drama, we're pleased to announce the winner of our third monthly header design contest. We've also cooked up some tasty, purplicious userheads on BERJAYAohnotheydidnt. Speaking of which, Frank was delighted to hear about your cooking foibles last week, since it helped ease his seasonal affective disorder, brought on by anti-climactic TV season finales. To comfort Frank in his time of need, he's hoping you'll share your own tales of media woe. Tell him which former television series you miss most, and he'll bake you up a luscious cupcake to sweeten your day!BERJAYA

And the winner is ...

BERJAYA

We're thrilled to announce the winner of the third LiveJournal header design contest! Over 7,400 of you helped choose the design by BERJAYAmitashade. Our heartfelt gratitude to everyone who participated in this contest. We'll be sending LiveJournal gift certificates to one and all on Tuesday, June 1st. You may now begin posting entries to BERJAYAremixed for the next contest. In response to your requests, we've posted official rules along with LiveJournal logos and menu templates to the LJ News Contests Profile page, which should be used in all future submissions. We'll accept entries until Monday, June 21st at 3PM, PDT. We thank you, again, for sharing your passion and talent with the global LiveJournal community!

Important stuff to know

BERJAYA
  • Purple reign: We've got an exciting announcement for all of you Oh no they didn't fans! ONTD members can now dress up in stylin' purple userheads! BERJAYAfrank couldn't wait to show his love! To get yours now, sign into LiveJournal, visit BERJAYAohnotheydidnt, click Rules & Info on the upper right corner, and then click Switch to ONTD userhead on the upper left side of the profile page. Remember, you MUST be a member of ONTD to get a purple userhead, which will color you purple wherever you roam. If you go through a blue period, you can always repeat these steps to switch back anytime.
  • Traveling light: We've cut the number of default entries on journals and communities from 20 to 10 entries. We expect this to decrease load times and improve site performance. To review or update your entries setting, click here.

Visit a decade of LiveJournal Russia!


We're thrilled to see a growing number of our Russian friends reading the news and submitting pictures to BERJAYAlj_photophile. To celebrate the unique cultural heritage of LiveJournal, we're pleased to announce the publication of По живому. 1999-2009., which roughly translates into something like LJ-Uncut (*we have yet to get a translation that doesn't include dramatic physical gestures and arched eyebrows*). This anthology marks the first decade of LiveJournal in Russia. No matter what language(s) you speak, you'll enjoy a scenic journey through ten years of original photos, humor, artwork, comic strips, and more from our Russian friends. Congratulations to our team in Moscow on a book well done!

BERJAYA

For our featured photo and more fun with Frank & Meme, we'll catch you under the cut! ( Collapse )
Thanks again for joining us. We'll see you next week!
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A la carte userpics, Google Analytics, Frank recycles!

We're relieved delighted to announce that a la carte userpics are back in the shop! We fixed some of the outstanding issues (more details below). We'll be making additional tweaks, but we know how long you've been waiting, so we wanted to get them back on the shelf ASAP. Back on dry land, we're still celebrating this big blue marble we call home! Holler out a huzzah beside a tree-hugging userpic, and Frank'll send you a sweet sapling to honor your belated Earth Day birthday (since it's never too late to go green)!BERJAYA

Important stuff to know:

  • A la carte userpics are back: We've fixed the ability to purchase userpic add-ons through automatic payments. If you purchase add-ons with a one-time manual payment, you will now see details on how your purchase will be credited. Please note that if you already have at least one add-on package for your account, you can use the new Userpic Package Resizing Tool anytime to change how your add-on package(s) and time are arranged.
  • Google Analytics: We resolved the issue that was preventing you from tracking traffic to your Journal (this is not yet available for communities). Here's a reminder on how it works: If you have a Paid or Permanent account, sign up for a Google Analytics account, click on the Extensions tab in your Account settings, and paste the Google Web property ID number in the designated field. You'll need to allow up to 24 hours to view data!
  • ONTD: We're proud to report that our mighty ops guys (once again, dressed in full Ninja gear) successfully moved BERJAYAohnotheydidnt to another server, which has resulted in faster load times all around!
  • WB_Unplugged: We're excited that BERJAYAwb_unplugged is taking off! We're hoping more of you will start posting questions! Just to clarify, our objective here is to inspire you to write about and discuss topics that are too edgy for our youth-friendly homepage (no obscenity, of course). We look forward to hearing what you've got to say!

May header design contest!

We've already received a number of fantastic entries for our next LiveJournal header contest. We'll be accepting submissions at BERJAYAremixed through the end of the month! We'll then post polls so you can choose which design will appear at the top of LiveJournal during the month of June (btw, the second winning header will go live next week and will remain on LiveJournal through the end of May). The winner will be awarded a $25 gift certificate. Finalists receive $10 gift certificates. All other contributors will get $5 gift certificates (only one per user)! We can't wait to see your work!

Attention Paid and Permanent users: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle with Frank!

BERJAYA If you have a paid or permanent account, you can send five free low carbon vgifts through Monday, April 26th at 4pm, PST! You'll see both the free and the $0.99 eco-Franksters displayed until you've re-purposed all of them. Please send only one at a time. In other words, you'll need to complete check-out and start a new order for each vgift you send. If you're not receiving vgifts (from friends and/or Frank), you may have disabled them. To enable vgifts, visit Edit profile (under Profile), scroll down to the bottom of the page, and check your settings. Have fun saving the planet!


For our featured photo and more fun with Frank & Meme, we'll catch you under the cut! ( Collapse )
Thanks, again, for joining us. We'll see you next week!
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LiveJournal Major Notes: OhNoTheyDidnt, ONTD_AI, Puppy love!

BERJAYA

While we prepare for a major release, we want to take a moment to extend a warm welcome to BERJAYAohnotheydidnt, who recently joined the official LiveJournal family. Long-time maintainer, BERJAYAbrenden, will serve as ONTD's Staff Editor. In order to ensure that you never miss a beat of late night star-gazing, we'll be rebalancing our server loads to improve speed and performance, beginning this Friday night (details below). Elsewhere on LiveJournal, we'd like to extend a royal shout out to the benevolent "benches" over at ONTD_AI, who hope to raise $100,000 through Idol Gives Back! Frank is so moved by your generosity that he'd like to honor all of you superstars who donate your passion to support vital social causes. Tell us how you've made a difference, and Frank will celebrate your virtual birthday with a pair of glam shades.

BERJAYA

Important stuff to know:

  • Just a reminder that we'll soon be purging accounts that have been suspended for more than six months to bring you faster, more reliable service.
  • We receive so many clever Writer's Block questions that are too edgy to post on our homepage that we've decided to introduce an adult-friendly version of Writer's Block: BERJAYAwb_unplugged. If you wish to submit questions to Unplugged, you can join and post to the community or use the existing Writer's Block suggestion box. We look forward to reading your questions and answers!
  • BERJAYAohnotheydidnt will be spending a quiet evening in read-only mode starting tomorrow, Friday, April 9th, at 9PM, PST, which will last anywhere from 12 to 24 hours. During this time, you won't be able to post or comment, although you're welcome to catch up on back reading. Once we're done, BERJAYAohnotheydidnt should do a better job of keeping up with all of your celebrity gossip needs!

BERJAYAontd_ai gives back to Idol!

BERJAYA The generous benches at BERJAYAontd_ai are gearing up for their anniversary on LiveJournal (mark your calendars for May 15th), by ramping up their charitable giving! Having already raised tens of thousands of dollars for Haiti and Chile, they've embarked on a mission to raise $100,000 to help provide food, clothing, and shelter for needy children and families around the world in association with Idol Gives Back. They're asking all of us to support their fundraising goal by promoting their efforts on LiveJournal.

April header design contest poll!

BERJAYA We want to thank you for helping us select five finalists for our April Header Design contest! There were so many amazing entries that we couldn't have done it without you! We hope you'll vote for the design you want to appear at the top of LiveJournal from mid-April through mid-May. You can start submitting headers for the May contest at BERJAYAremixed now through the end of the month! In addition to fame and glory, the winner will receive a $25 gift certificate. Finalists will be awarded $10 gift certificates, while all other contributors will receive $5 gift certificates (one per user)! We can't wait to see your work!

We've got Puppy Love for our paid users!

BERJAYA If you have a paid or permanent account, you can send five free cuddly puppies through Monday, April 12th at 4pm, PST! You'll see both the free and the $0.99 puppies displayed until they've scampered off to your friends. Please send only one at a time. In other words, you'll need to complete check-out and start a new order for each fetching puppy. If you're not receiving vgifts (from friends and/or Frank), you may have disabled them. To enable vgifts, visit Edit profile (under Profile), scroll down to the bottom of the page, and check your settings. We wish you oodles of puppy love!


For our featured photo and more fun with Frank & Meme, we'll catch you under the cut! ( Collapse )
Thanks, again, for spending time with us. We'll see you next week!
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LiveJournal Major Notes: Header design contest, ONTD, Improving site speed, Snowflake cookies

BERJAYA


In anticipation of exciting things to come, we're delighted to announce that you can now start rebuilding your Userpic collection entirely from scratch! If you've been putting off the drudgery of deleting your old Userpics one at a time to reinvent yourself, help is on the way! Starting today, you'll notice all of your Userpics slowly disappearing, giving you the opportunity to create a brand new collection that meets your every changing mood and identity. In the meantime, Frank would like to honor the new month by celebrating important firsts. If you were the first among your family or friends to do something totally groundbreaking (e.g., throw out your TV, become dangerously obsessed with Arrested Development, renounce junk food, enter a hot-dog-eating contest, etc.), send Frank a mushy Muah!, and he'll honor your virtual birthday with a yummy snowflake cookie. To prevent a possible avalanche, he'll only toss his sugar cookies to the first 20 pages of commenters.

Serious stuff you should know:

  • All joking aside, congrats to our homegrown celebs at BERJAYAohnotheydidnt, who broke a LiveJournal record with over 100,000 members! Cheer them on here!
  • Just a heads up: In order to improve site efficiency, we'll soon be purging LiveJournal accounts that have been suspended for more than six months. This will help us improve overall site performance. It will also free up a lot of parked usernames! We want to thank you, again, for your patience while we get our servers up to speed. Please note that if you have a suspended account, you can still download and save your journal entries.
  • It's time to cast your vote for Round One of the second LiveJournal header design contest! We received such a dizzying number of entries (75!) that we'll ask you to choose one finalist from each of the five polls below. We'll post Round Two in next week's News so you can choose an ultimate winner. Polls remain open until Wednesday, April 5th, at 2pm, PST. Brace yourself for some tough decisions:
  • We invite you to start posting header designs to BERJAYAremixed for our next monthly contest. In addition to achieving eternal fame and glory, the winner will get a $25 gift certificate. All other participants will receive $5 gift certificates (only one per user). Entries should be 900x90 pixels and should include the LiveJournal logo and menu, so we can see what your header will look like when it's up and running (which will be from mid-May to mid-June). Thanks, again, for sharing your talent!
  • We wanted to run an idea by you. We were so blown away by all of your amazing header designs that we'd like to develop a gallery of user-made journal styles. Sadly, the last time we tried something like this, we didn't get much of a response. But given the incredible amount of creativity we've seen lately, we wanted to know if you'd be interested in a monthly journal style contest. The winning entries would be placed in a featured gallery for all LiveJournal users to adopt and adore! We'd also award gift certificates to winners and participants. Tell us what you think below. BTW, you can check out existing styles here.

Photography Book Now 2010 contest

We're pleased to be a sponsor of Blurb's international photo contest, Photography Book Now 2010, featuring a panel of distinguished judges from the world of art, publishing, and journalism, including Radius Books, The New York Times Style Magazine, the SF MoMA, and the London Sunday Times. You can start submitting photos in the areas of Fine Art, Editorial, and Portfolio now through July 15th! Winning photos will appear in a book to be published and distributed by Blurb. The grand prize winner will receive $25,000 with plenty of additional awards for runners up. You can view the contest rules here. Happy shooting!BERJAYA


For our featured photo and more drama with Frank & Meme, we'll catch you under the cut! ( Collapse )
Thanks, again, for spending time with us. We'll see you next week!