I know, you’re thinking that you don’t write reviews and this couldn’t or wouldn’t happen to you. What about when you have a bad experience with a company and you blog about it? What if that company contacted you and wanted to sue? Honestly, you don’t hear companies going off when they are written about in a positive light. You have a lousy flight experience, you write about your experience and a week or two later the airline is threatening you. What do you do?

That’s something to research. What are the laws in your area? Do you want to fight for your rights or do you not care and you’ll just remove the article? What are the goals of your site and how do the answers to those questions fit in with your future plans?

Many people get online and write without really thinking through the possible repercussions of what they do; until it is too late (action has already been taken against you). The longer one writes online the more experienced one becomes in these areas. Some people decide to fight it tooth and nail. Others remove the article in question (or does whatever it takes not to go to court) to resolve the issue quickly. One response isn’t “better” than the other – it depends on your goals for you site. So, to get the ball rolling:

If you received a request to remove an article where you expressed your opinion or experience about a company or service, would you fight it or would you remove the article? The sad point in situations like this, the law might be on the writer’s side but the writer would have to spend resources to have the law recognized in their favor. Some people or companies have to learn that negative criticism will come…learn from it.

I was talking to someone online and I mentioned this situation. Their response was that they didn’t use AP articles so there was no need for concern. It didn’t cross their mind that Yahoo articles might be an AP article. One of the DMCA requests was for this article syndicated via Yahoo. This could cause a blurred sense of perception. A writer or blogger could be thinking “Yahoo is safe” when that doesn’t seem to be the case, does it? It’s not Yahoo’s content, it’s AP’s.

The bottom line is that there seems to be a disconnect on what is considered fair use. Content creators have different requirements on how their content should be used. Some writers do not mind if their articles are redistributed in full and on the flip side, others prefer permission be granted for any use but cannot get around fair use.

There are quite a few people talking about this. One cannot deny it does bring up the question, as writers, how our content should be used and just as important: how much outside content should be used on our sites.

Do you have clear policies in place on your site that lets people know how your content can be used?

I’m sure it’s completely no surprise to anyone that Tyme has been doing an unbelievable amount of work here the past few months and our latest membership round would have been dead-on-arrival without her managing the whole thing.  She’s always been on top of our membership rounds but this latest one was something special for us, and she did a marvelous job. If you want to know why going through all of the sites went exponentially smoother than it has in previous rounds, you can simply look to Tyme. She did a great job.

9rules and our new sites would not be the same unless she was here working her butt off on them.

I don’t know how she manages to do it, but every year I’ve known her she happens to turn 29 over and over.  Now that’s a feat I’m jealous of.

Happy Birthday!

We talked about how 9rules began, the changes we’ve made to the site, answered the question “Are you still using WordPress as the backend?” (hint: funny story behind that one), how we see the internet evolving - fun stuff.

You can download/listen to the interview here. It’s 52:05 minutes long.

Thanks James!

I also responded to all of the “why wasn’t my site accepted” emails I received. If you didn’t receive my response let me know and I’ll resend it. I enjoyed interacting with all of you.

That’s it. Have a great week everyone!

Update May 29, 2008 6:49pm EST: All the emails have been sent out. If you did not receive it let me know (along with your domain name).

Update June 3, 2008 4:32pm EST: I’ve added all the new members that I received a response from. If you haven’t received my email with instructions to get your site set up or responded and haven’t heard from me, let me know.

http://vocino.com/: This is the one where I said I look forward to watching him grow as a blogger. I like the innocent (enthusiastic) perspective he has towards some of his entries. So often we are filled with the “expert” authoritative perspective, which is fine, but it’s not the “only” perspective.

http://happysoda.com: This was the site I was looking at when my eyes popped. We had a cryptic conversation about anime.

http://desktopvibes.com/: When I said, “Wow, he’s all grown up!” I was talking about Glenn. He was 14 when he first started with 9rules.

That’s all that I can recall of the stream where I could spark your memory. So, without further ado - the members that were accepted in the stream and a couple I got confirmation information from:

http://bignanime.wordpress.com
http://desktopvibes.com/
http://educatedeviate.wordpress.com/
http://www.happysoda.com
http://omaemo.dasaku.net/
http://shapeshed.com/journal
http://vocino.com/

I may have a couple of others. As I said, I sent emails out with questions prior to announcing the list. Didn’t want to keep anyone waiting!

The sites we did not accept basically fell into several broad categories:

• The site was new: We require at least six months of consistent posting. We received submissions for some awesome sites that were too new to accept. Please resubmit your site in August so the guys and I can drool over them again. I cannot stress enough to resubmit. If you want to know if your site falls into this category please do not hesitate to contact me at tyme@9rules.com.
• Content was a mashup of another entry: I talked about this in a previous article. An example: “Scrivs wrote about People Differentiation on 3by9. It’s a cool topic, check it out!” We aren’t looking for those types of entries. However, it is wonderful to be inspired by an article and add your own twist and original content. We did not accept blogs that mashup content from other sites.
• Bad navigation: If you watched the stream where we went through sites you saw an example of us clicking through sites trying to find archives, a contact page or just navigate through the site. A reader will not take that much time trying to find what they are looking for. They’ll go to the next site.
• No focus: The author of the blog used their blog to randomly dump information. Every blogger has their own style but our readers are looking for more focused content where the blog has a clear direction on the content being published.

Those are the main reasons. If you have any questions about your blog, let me know. For the sites we had questions on, I’ve already sent out the emails. I will be contacting the new members next week to get your sites set up.

Here is the list of accepted sites before you guys kill me. Congrats!

Round 6 Accepted Sites

http://www.aliedwards.typepad.com/
http://anime.osiristeam.net
http://armenthomassian.com/
http://badassideas.com/blog/
http://basugasubakuhatsu.com/blog/
http://blinkdagger.com/
http://blog.littlerockjams.com/
http://brajeshwar.com/
http://cameraporn.net/
http://cypherhackz.net/
http://deepesthealth.com
http://deliciousasianfood.com
http://designchronicle.com/memento/
http://designingthenews.com
http://dietriffic.com/
http://dotconnector.wordpress.com
http://elitebydesign.com
http://escapefromcubiclenation.com/
http://evomend.net
http://f1fanatic.co.uk
http://frozentoothpaste.com/
http://hellyeahdude.com
http://higevsotaku.com
http://intheknowtraveler.com
http://joshsanimeblog.com/
http://justenough.wordpress.com
http://kitchenparade.com/
http://lessoninlife.com
http://liewcf.com
http://marcandangel.com
http://marketingpilgrim.com/
http://maximummotorsport.co.uk
http://moetron.com/
http://msadventuresinitaly.com/blog/
http://myfla.ws
http://nothingbutgreenlights.net/
http://organizeit.co.uk/
http://panelsofawesome.com/
http://pr-squared.com
http://quickonlinetips.com
http://shamefulotakusecret.com/
http://shapeshed.com/journal
http://slowleadership.org
http://srichinmoybio.co.uk/blog/
http://sushiday.com/
http://that.animeblogger.net
http://thegeneticgenealogist.com/
http://thenext45years.com
http://twonotesahead.wordpress.com/
http://webmaster-source.com
http://whisperingcraneinstitute.wordpress.com/
http://wyblog.us/

Also as of now we will not tell you the number of submissions because people get caught up in the number and no matter how many sites we let in we are either too exclusive or not exclusive enough, which takes away from the great sites that get accepted.

At 3pm.

EST.

Yeah. See you there!

If you haven’t already you have around 6 hours left to submit for Round 6. To those that have already submitted we thank you for doing so. It’s always fun to look at new sites you never seen before.

Remember, Round 6 begins at midnight on Wednesday, May 7th. Submissions will be open 24 hours.

A couple of things…

• Yes, we announced some popular sites but we also announced smaller sites so do not think we are only accepting large sites.
• For a site to be aggregated on 9rules the site must have an RSS or Atom feed.
• We do not expect a site’s design to be exceptional (meaning we do not focus on design heavily). We do expect the design to compliment the site.
• We don’t play favorites.
• We do not accept sites without at least six months worth of entries. If you have a new site our next round is August 6th.
• If a community does not exist please submit your site anyway as we do form new communities when we have enough sites to support it.

If you have any other questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

http://cssglobe.com
http://unclutterer.com

That’s it for new additions for today. Have a great weekend everyone!

http://psdtuts.com
http://freelanceswitch.com
http://novelr.com

I’m still processing sites so I might make another announcement or two before Wednesday. Remember, the next round is May 7th, 2008 and we will not be accepting submissions again until August 2008.

Congrats to the new sites!

What It Looks Like

If you’re not used to seeing this type of look out of me, don’t worry, other people feel the same way. I always find this interesting — the idea that it doesn’t “look like a design I’d put out.” I’m pretty sure I have a particular style, but it’s not rooted in tangible things you can point to in a screenshot. I’m a stickler for the right padding between elements, keeping things uniform. I like producing a design analogy and using it throughout the site, not doing one-off design elements that never get used again. Beyond that, I like to do something new for each site I design, something that I’ll put in the toolbox and pull out at a future date. Here are some new things I did on the new 9rules:

• Using CSS text-shadow to produce a glowing effect instead of a drop shadow effect. If you have Safari (or WebKit nightly) you’ll see this on the hover effect for the 4 links up in the header. It’s simple to code (search for “text-shadow” within the CSS file) so it was fun to use.
• Deeper transparency effects. If you resize the window you’ll see the elements in the top blue header area are sliding around on top of the blue line background. The “Browse By Community” element looks especially cool with this effect.

Now apart from specific techniques that I used to execute the design, the layout and design itself was important in this iteration because it was a clean break from the past site. The old 9rules was complex and had many moving parts, and since the new 9rules is just member content, it was like starting fresh as far as the information that needed to be displayed. I wanted this new design to reflect the cleanliness and simplified content options presented, so a clean and tight visual design was the goal. Big white content area, wide columns, ample padding between layout pieces, big typography. The visual touches to separate each area are sparse, but noticeable. I especially like the layout of the member grid listing in the left column.

How It Works

The new 9rules is refreshing to me as a 9rules reader because it makes the content more accessible and is right up front. I don’t have to click from the homepage over to the “member entries listing” to find what I want, it’s right there. It sounds obvious, but straight-up usability was the goal from the onset because — dare I say — 9rules.com had been on a usability decline for over a year. Adding new features adds complexity, and we tried to please all types of users who visited 9rules — people who wanted member entries, people who wanted Clips, Notes, profiles, whatever — so the site wasn’t optimized for any particular use case. That would be impossible, because so many different types of users frequented our site. Now, we know what people want when they come to the new 9rules: they want to see blog entries from our members. And we give it to them.

It’s The Best

In my opinion, and in the opinions of a half dozen or so beta testers, this is the best version of 9rules yet. I think this opinion spawns from the visual design being cleaner, but it also comes from the minds of many visitors who never used the new features (Notes, Clips, to name a few) and yearned for a return of the old, singular functionality we used to offer. We’ve brought back the old concept, added some great new features, and dropped it into a cleaner and more usable layout, so I think those aspects combine to make it “the best” we’ve done… so far.

If you’ve got any design thoughts or technical questions, be sure to hit me up in the comments.

Members, Members, Members

There is really only one thing you need to keep in mind with Volume 3 and that is it features nothing but 9rules Member content. Every piece of content that you come across in every community is from one of our Members. The goal of 9rules is to present some of the best content from around the independent web to people who enjoy that kind of thing.

Customization

With so much wonderful content appearing before your screen we understand that not everything might pique your interests so we have allowed a bit of customization with regards to what content you see. With your my.9rules or Chawlk account you can now select your favorite communities and Members and your homepage will display content only from those communities while your favorites page displays just the content from your favorite members. We hope that this allows you to experience 9rules the way you want to experience it.

Round 6

Obviously 9rules wouldn’t be anything without our Members and we are always on the look out for more wonderful sites to share with the world. On May 7th we will be holding Round 6 for submissions into 9rules and we hope that you take the time to apply if you feel you have something to offer our audience. The round is only 24 hours and make sure to keep an eye on the blog for updates on when and where to submit your site.

New Members

We have never been ones to judge our members on the size of their readership because quality of content has no regards for how many people are reading it. With this in mind I thought it would be nice to extend an invitation to a couple of sites that I respected and who’s content I have been following for a while to see if they would want to join 9rules. Here are some of the new members, you might have heard of a couple if not all of them. We welcome them all.

• Smashing Magazine
• LifeClever
• ThePCSpy
• e*star LA
• LifeDev
• Dumb Little Man

We have more coming up, but these made it in time for our launch.

Chawlk

We started to build Chawlk immediately when we realized the changes we were going to make with 9rules. It incorporates all of the my.9r functionality that so many people have enjoyed and repackages it into a shiny new box. However, we aren’t done with it yet. Our goal was never to break out into just two sites because that doesn’t solve all the problems that we have encountered so keep an eye out as we have more surprises coming in the next 2-4 weeks. For now though don’t hesitate to join in on the great discussions that can be found at Chawlk AlphaBetaGammaZeta.

Thanks

9rules launched 3 years ago this week. We have had many ups and downs and have made more connections with wonderful people than we could ever imagine. We would not be here without the help of many people and for that we wish to thank them.

• To every member that has passed through us (not in a bowel movement kind of way) we thank you. It doesn’t matter if you are still with us because each of you have given us an experience that we have learned from and we can only hope for many more experiences from you in the future. You guys always have our backs and know how to pick us up when things aren’t looking too great. We would have no problem crashing at your place when our landlords kick us out for not making huge barrels of money off of you.
• Our audience. I have no clue what to refer to you people, but you are more than fans. It is amazing the interest you show in 9rules and when we start to think that nobody cares about us, you come along and ask when the new stuff is going to hit. You say crazy shit like “GIVE ME A PREVIEW OR I WILL JUMP OFF MY BOTTOM STEP” and we love you for it. Thank you.
• To the haters. As much as we love our Members and Audience I have to give out a thanks to all the haters, doubters and people who just for some reason or another wish for our downfall. You probably provide us with the most inspiration to push on and try new things. Without you telling us that we matter to nobody, that we should give up or that our glory days have passed us by we wouldn’t do things the way with do with such a killer attitude. Bless you.

We hope you enjoy Volume 3.