Squidoo has a new dashboard

Let me be the last person to blog about this and share my thoughts. :-) But I've had some time now to use it, play with it, think about it. And here are my thoughts.

Pros:

• It looks pretty. Always a good thing. Actually, it pretty much fits with the look and feel of the lens layout. Nothing wrong with trying to create some consistency for the brand.
  
• Daily Digest feature great for people who don't work on all their lenses all the time. So you come in once a month or so and it's good for you.
• Labeling quite useful for those with trillions of lenses (and those of us with a few less than that!)
  
• The tabs across the top and the links down the side make it easier to get to where you want to go from whatever page you're on.

Wishes (not Cons!):

• That the links in the Daily Digest would go to the workshop instead of the lens.
  
• WIP lens not be included in the "work on" area of the Daily Digest
  
• Change default from daily digest to lens list (this is apparently in the works for us to be able to set)
  
• Edit this lens button from the stats page for the lens (which I asked for ages ago)

Overall, it seems to me that this new version of the dashboard is really just a first step. One of those - oh my, we haven't updated this for a year, here's what we can get done quickly and easily and have something new - type deals that I've done on many a website. Change the look and add one or two new features to wow everyone, then slow down to actually add some functionality that's different. Don't get me wrong, it's a great first step. Labeling alone is a fabulous feature worth having in the arsenal. We just need to remember that this is just a first step.

Women worth a second look for being first

I can't believe I've never talked about this series over here. What is wrong with me sometimes!!

One of the first series of lenses I tackled was about the first woman to accomplish something - go into space, win a race, discover a star, direct a symphony. I'm not entirely sure where I got the idea, but I did think it would be a great resource for kids looking for someone to write about during Women's History Month. As usual, it was one of those things that just ballooned out of control and I let it lie fallow for a while. Victoria helped me out by looking through everything and making suggestions for how to make it shine. (Case of being too close and overwhelmed to think straight myself.)

It's now something I'm quite proud of, but just really getting around to promoting. There are eight lenses in the series (and I've got content for a ninth if I feel like it). I think I got it beautiful and useful. There are some amazing women out there, and many of them you've never heard of. (Unlike Amelia Earhart, whom I have pictured here.) I hope you are equally inspired.

• First Woman To ... - main page with links to all the others and some general information
• Adventure & Exploration - aviation, mountain climbing and more
• Arts & Literature - musicians, broadcasters and writers
• Business - includes CEOs, entrepreneurs and the legal field
• Nobel Prize - all the first female winners in each category
• Politics - prime ministers, cabinet members and maybe presidents
• Science - astronauts to chemists
• Sports - Olympics, driving, horse racing and tons more

Just venting

The Captain did a post recently about the dips lensmasters can hit. (The Dip is the latest book from marketing guru Seth Godin.) He provides some great insights into where and why these happen.

I'm finding myself in a bit of a dip right now, although I'm in a different place than any of Captain's spots. But it's got me a little frustrated. I'm tired of seeing 0s in my royalties area and with spending tons of time setting up shops only to get nothing out of them. I'm trying to figure out where and how I can and should do more of the writing and created better focused lenses. I start with big ideas that take hours to put together and then get no traffic because - guess what? No one really cares about that. But how to better figure it out in advance? I don't want to be doing any band-wagon kinds of lenses. Those are also a waste of time. Man, this post has gotten rambly!! Typical unfocused Susan.

Here are my general current frustrations:

• too many ideas
• too little time
• not enough focus to promotion of lenses
• frustrated by lack of sales
• low roi for store lenses
• be more targeted in choosing topics

I always say I need a plan. I'm just not entirely sure what to plan at this point.

How old do you like your books?

So I have a lot of interests when it comes to reading. Throughout much of my childhood, I focused on Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, Cherry Ames, Bobbsey Twins - see a pattern here? Also anything with horses, like Misty. My love for mysteries continues, but I've found a few other genres that fascinate me.

Among these is historical fiction. I think if I had to do it again now, I'd major in history. And one of my favorite time periods is ancient Rome. OK, that isn't really a time period. But the real-life drama of the rise and fall of the Roman republic and then the Roman empire makes for some great fictional reading. So I've started a new lens with the books featuring Rome that I've read. (Which gives me a good excuse to get back into that era!) Turned out I was light on non-Caesar books and heavy on the mysteries. Go figure!

Skelanimals in plaid? Cute!!

I'm in the middle of a much-needed clean-up of the Skelanimals shop, taking down items no longer available, adding new things. And one of the new ones I'm including are the new line - Dead in Plaid. Love this new pattern!!! The "Plaid" is a mix of skulls and cross-hatching. Awesome.

You can get the Dead in Plaid in ChungKee, Jack, Marcy , Dax and Kit. Each available for $16.99 at EntertainmentEarth.com.

Uggh! What bad living gets you

Saw a number on the scale this morning that I never expected to see again. But that's what happens when you eat a ton of stuff for several days that you shouldn't. So now all my clothes are moving beyond tight and this is not good. Public proclamation of my renewed commitment to be a good girl. And I'm off to a conference next week, so that's going to be a challenge. But I can do it!! I did it before to lose 40 pounds. I'm now almost 20 pounds up from my low and about 15 pounds over what I consider an ideal weight. Damn!

Hair is cut to donate!!

Well, today was the day of my haircut for donation. Here are before and after shots of the back of my hair. That's a lot of hair gone!! My head is lighter, I'm excited about the new style and getting to actually style my hair again, and ready to enjoy the summer with short hair.

I actually went for something kind of like Posh Spice but longer to take advantage of the fact that everything was one length to my shoulders. I plan to keep that for a while, but then likely will switch to something with layers as we get later into the summer.

Hitting the birthday party circuit again

Hopefully Janet21 won't feel I'm stepping too far into her territory here, but I'm not making a habit of birthday party lenses. Yet. :-) But again, people are hitting a lens because they're looking for birthday party items and I feel compelled to do a breakout lens so they can find what they want and the birthday party supplies don't start to take over my main lens.

In this case, it's Kung Fu Panda (which has broken back into the Top 100 and is getting almost 300 visitors a week!) getting the party treatment. I just published a Kicking Kung Fu Panda Party lens today, complete with everything from invitations to cake toppers to thank you cards. Hopefully, it will garner some good attention like the Abby Cadabby one has. I anticipate a lot of birthday parties this summer will be using this theme.

Wrong day for this post but ...

I may be starting to get the hang of this take-smaller-bites thing. I had this grand idea of doing a series of lenses about the days of the week. After all there are people, movies, music, books, etc. all with the days of the week in title. Plus clothes, food and more. Made it part of the way through Monday and started to freak out. Because trying to do a Susan job on these guys just wasn't going to be worth it. So I took what I had on Monday so far and made a single lens on Monday Music. Ditched the rest and am moving on to other ideas. Yay for me! This still might be a lens that never pulls much traffic, but at least it was done with minimum of pain.

I'm now a groupmaster

I have totally gone off my rocker. Really. I wanted to have my lenses be in a group about Texas. Not too much to ask. But every single group that was out there was ... subpar. They were neglected, ignored, undeveloped. It was just sad. And the worst part was that they had taken all the great URLs.

As I often do, when I see things languishing, I step in and take charge. And that meant asking the group masters if any of them wanted to unload their groups on me. And one took me up on my offer, so I'm now the proud owner of the Lone Star State group. I'm in and I've started cleaning house, which is good. But I'm the only one in the house now. Here's hoping I can revive this group and turn it into something worth visiting!

Stats:

• Created on 12/24/2006
• Transferred to me on 5/20/2008
• Lensrank: 266,969 overall
• Highest lensrank ever: 7607
• Life of Lens visits: 54
• Earnings: 11 cents
• Lenses in the group: 5 (three were mine!)
  

I've transferred the group from Travel to Local and am starting to email worthy lenses to see if they'd like to join the group. Am also looking for good ideas of things to add to the lens before I start hacking more items off! I wish I could add Polaroids and videos. Big plans for this guy, though!! Making a note to update the stats in three months and we'll see how I'm doing.

An inteview with ... me!!

With the induction of the new class of Giant Squids came some exciting new additions to the program. Among them was the introduction of the Giant Squid organizers. These ladies are working hard to promote the Giant Squids and really create more community within the group.

As part of that, bdkz has started a blog - So You Want to Be a Giant Squid - designed to encourage people who are striving toward that goal. It takes a lot to get to 50 great lenses, although I will admit that it's kind of a downhill roll after that as you kind of have a rhythm going by that point.

Anyhoo, part of what bdkz is doing over on her blog is interviews with current Giants to help pass on their advice about what it takes to be a Giant and just to share more about us. And I was one of the recent victims. It was a good exercise to put down into words why and how I approach lensmaking. And I'm really enjoying learning more about my fellow Giants and how they do what they do.

All the new places to find me

Yikes! I think I may be starting to overdo it a bit. I've activated my twitter account finally, gotten my blogs on Technorati, started accounts at the bookmark sites del.icio.us, Furl, Backflip and Spurl and am blogging over on Squidtop. With two blogs there and starting a third to serve as a diary. Hmm. I've never really gotten into using Digg that much, although I like to Stumble around. Not to mention Blog Catalog, Gather and I even have a HubPages account, although I haven't done anything with it. At what point is this overload?

Buying glasses online

Yes, glasses. As in eyeglasses. Online.

I ran across a blog post at least a year ago on what eventually became GlassyEyes.com. The guy was ranting about how much it cost to get glasses at a traditional store (we're talking a couple hundred bucks even if you have a simple prescription) and he'd had it. So began the great experiment. Early days of the blog detail learning how to measure for pupillary distance and the rules about prescriptions. He started ordering glasses from various places to test them out and has been going strong ever since.

The blog includes links to reviews, comments, etc. All in all, a great resource if you're tired of paying the prices at the brick-and-mortar stores. My husband has gotten a couple of pair with great success. I got one last year and with my prescription confirmed for this year just ordered two more pair - one for dressy evening wear and a blue pair (in the picture) for every day. So now I have green, pink and blue. We tend to order from Zenni and have had no trouble to date, but there are a lot of complaints about the service. Mostly because people expect to get Nordstrom service for Wal-mart prices. Silly. Plus, they don't follow the directions that clearly state - do not call! Here's how to reach us instead. I find Zenni has more interesting styles and lower prices, which is what keeps me going back there.

Oh, my bargain? I paid $87 for my two pairs of glasses. This despite the fact that I have to pay extra for a higher strength prescription and for a higher index to keep the lenses from getting too thick. Sweet!!

Shopping for granite

So we're finally getting close to that stage in the remodel where I have to start picking things again. Just waiting on the contractor on a few things before we can finalize the cabinets, then it's off to the races with demolition. (Not looking forward to dust everywhere again!)

So I took some time this weekend to start looking at granites. I think we've fallen into having granite almost by default. I certainly keep thinking there have to be better options, but everything else just has issues. Either I have to do too much maintenance, it won't work for the way we live in our kitchen or I just think it's ugly. It's a lot for a countertop material to overcome. So granite has ended up being our default choice. Although, I've been just as concerned about finding something I'd actually love in granite as well.

I have to say, going to the stone yard to start looking was more fun than I expected in some ways (it was all inside and had AC!) and less in others (one yard was a big jumbled mess and seemed to just have tons of Baltic Brown). And, I actually found several that I was really drawn to. I'm thinking something dramatic for the island, then backing off for the side countertops.

The weird thing is that all the dramatic granites I loved were green. I'm not a green person. Look at the fabric in my craft closet - I'm a blue person. But blue granites are hard to come by (and expensive), so that wasn't really even an option. And given that most granites fall into the neutral color category anyway, I guess green is about the only "dramatic" color choice out there. Maybe not so odd after all.

Great fun to be had in Dallas (and 8 other locations!)

Way back when I first got to Dallas, Kevin and I went down to take in the fun at Medieval Times. Wow. It's quite the experience, but definitely a time to leave your cynical attitude at home. (Not easy for us Gen Xers.) The show is a bit corny, although they've recently reworked it to include more special effects and drama. But the food was good, the horses amazing and the experience fun if you really get into it. (Which may require more beer than I'm willing to drink.) In all, I'd say the best way to enjoy this is with a bunch of rowdy friends or with your kids. We have one here in Dallas (and the horse ranch is in the area), but they're also in eight other locations across the continent. Plan to shell out big bucks for the tickets, though. They're about twice what we paid. But, there are good online coupons on the website, and they run them in the paper here frequently as well.

The lens I made has tons of videos so you can check out the battle action and horses.

Another place makes great use of waste

The RePlayGround is my latest favorite site. These guys are designers with an eye for garbage. Too cool! They take stuff destined for the landfill (or even for the recycling bin) and turn it into neat, useful items.

The site has directions for you to make your own cool repurposed items, such as the wallet pictured here that was made from a cereal box. And they even work with companies to take their trash to turn it into neat corporate gifts. And if you're sitting on a huge pile of something that's just become scrap, contact them to see if they could use it for a project. Old calendars, wine corks, bottlecaps - just about anything can be repurposed to make a cool gift. Check it out!!

Oil-eating mushrooms?

One of the delights of researching topics is the odd-ball items you run across. In doing research for my lens on hair donation, I hit upon Matter of Trust, a San Francisco-area non-profit involved in eco-type projects. They look for ways to reuse manmade and natural surpluses, as well as fund eco-education.

One of their main natural surplus programs uses human hair swept up by salons to make mats that are then used to clean up oil spills. Pretty cool, huh? But it gets better. After the oil spill in the San Francisco Bay in November 2007, they were hoping to start their treatability study using mushrooms to break down the oil and hair and turn it into landscape-grade compost. I know!! It's just entirely too weird, but that's what makes it so cool.

The hair mat/mushroom science project is just one of the cool things MofT is involved in. So enter my lens on Matter of Trust and some of their projects. There are videos explaining the mushroom study, pictures of the oil spill cleanup and more.

Now I need to go to Philly

Several years back, we had a trip planned to Philadelphia. Just a quick weekend trip up to check out the town, go to the baseball game, nothing fancy. In fact, it was one of those lovely last-minute deals you can get on airfare. Then Kevin broke his elbow on Friday night and so much for the weekend.

Not sure why, but we've never gotten around to re-planning that trip. (The elbow incident marked a string of three straight years with surgery, but he's been surgery free for a while now.) But I have an even better reason to want to go now than just the Phillies or Constitution Hall.

Ran across this restaurant about 35 miles outside of town called Talula, where you apparently have to make your reservation a year in advance! (Which would make me actually plan!) The phones open up at 7 a.m. and there's only 8-12 seats - for the next year on that date. Wow. And after taking a look through the menu, I'm ready to sign up. (Not sure why I'm letting you in on it as that is likely to just make it harder for me to get in!!) Looks like Philly will be going on the itinerary as soon as I can get a reservation. Whee!!

Forgive the interruption

Testing a theory here that if I have my Picasa pictures pulling elsewhere, they'll continue to show up in my lens. So I'm sorry, I'm adding some random pictures. :-)

These are the other two from my Michelle Yeoh lens. (This is part of why I'm thinking this theory might be valid. I used the third one in a post about my Picasa challenges and now it shows up all the time.)



And these are four that aren't showing up often on my new lens about starting a blog at Blogger.



Photos are such a crucial part of the story. I hate that I'm having so much trouble getting them to stick.

(UPDATE: making absolutely no difference. Sigh.)

Checking out the Fairly Odds

Newest lens has been published, and I'm back in the world of kids' stuff. I love watching cartoons, although there are fewer and fewer on these days worth watching. But one I've seen almost since it first came out is The Fairly Oddparents. Don't know why it appeals to me, but it does. And it surprises me, but my favorite character is the idiot fairy, Cosmo. Mostly because he has all the best lines, the ones that you would drop into a conversation for little reason and are such non sequiturs that - unless they've watched the show - people really start to think you're strange. Quite fun.

Exhausted!!

Just got back from singing two concerts and I'm so tired, I can barely stay upright to write this post. It was a truly excellent day. I was in a small ensemble singing an acapella version of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun and we nailed it. Always a satisfying feeling to deliver on something that was pretty difficult to learn.

Our next concert is in June at the CityArts Festival in downtown Dallas. Then a break for the summer and I'm ready for that!!

Creating a "giving" mindset

I'm still mulling this one over. I've been involved in organizing charity auctions in the past (strictly silent) and our chorus has a big auction once a year that brings in most of our funds. It involves a live auction and there's definitely a bit of the bargain-hunting mindset a foot there. I think silent auctions naturally lend themselves to this kind of mentality. The live auction part of our event tends to get a bit more action, but it's kind of late in the evening and not a lot of people seemed to stay last year for that part. I've forwarded Seth's post on to the people in charge of the auction and we shall see what kinds of ideas we can come up with to avoid the bargain thinking.

I wonder, would it still get people in the "giving" mindset if you had the bill signed? Hmm.

Getting close to vacation time!!

Summer is rapidly approaching, which means vacation time for most people. I don't have kids (thank goodness!), so I'm not necessarily tied to summer. In fact, I prefer to take vacation during school just to ensure my chosen locale isn't swamped with out-of-control children whose parents don't understand their jobs are 24/7/365. (I'll give them leap day off.)

Anyway, we had really had our hearts set on going to Italy this year, but my cheap little soul just can't see paying $10,000 for a vacation. (I wrote about this dilemma on this lens.) We can try again in a couple of years, since I'll likely be going back to Africa on a mission trip next year.

It's actually working out a little better for us anyway as we are taking several short trips (some of them together!), including one for my dad's 60th birthday party. And, the impending move of the Yankees out of Yankee stadium has us finally taking action to go to NYC during baseball season instead of after it. This will be our 12th different stadium, I think. Need to go back to count again. And make a lens about our baseball adventures!

I'm not sure I like people

Ya' know, I'm beginning to think I don't really like people all that much. (Granted that's always been up for discussion, but that's a different post.) I'm talking about celebrity type people. Famous people. The kind we tend to make SquidWho lenses about.

I have a few now, and I have to say, I'm having a hard time caring about them. Dang it! Why is my obsessive nature failing me on this one!! I almost missed that Leslie Feist was nominated for several Grammys, for goodness sake. Got her lens updated the day of. Just sad. I've managed to stay more on top of Sarah Palin, although she did announce her pregnancy within days of me creating the lens, so I was still researching. Then, almost as soon as I create my Brendan Fraser lens, one of his movies that I had listed on the page gets bumped back almost a year thanks to the writers' strike.

Sigh. Maybe I need to just do dead people. Nothing new happens with them. :-)

Some lenses are just for no reason at all

My list of lenses shows a few niches - Sesame Street, kids books, Dallas events. But I have a lot of totally random things thrown in there. Sometimes, there's just no logic at all to why I create something. And that's fine because there's often no logic at all to why a lens does well!!

This weekend, I was struck with the idea of creating a lens with novelty cycling jerseys as that is one of the most popular searches that gets people to my Count von Count lens. Go figure! (As an aside, I have already gone back into that lens and made the cycling jersey more prominent to help people find it since that's often what they're looking for. But one has to assume they're Count fans and thus will enjoy the rest of the lens too.)

Back to the cycling jerseys, I started looking around and noticed that there are a lot of cool jerseys that have designs on them. For some reason, heavy metal bands are a popular theme, as are cereals. (What is up with that?) One of my favorite designs I found was the Pink Floyd one I've featured here. Even if you didn't know it was Pink Floyd, it's still just a great design. It has become an insanely large lens in quite a short time, with more to be added, so we'll see how it goes long-term and if it's worth more effort. But it was fun seeing all the things you could get!

What's up with Picassa?

I've been having some issues with the images on my Michelle Yeoh lens. I just switched over to pictures that I host myself over on Picassa (didn't realize that just using someone else's image address was a no-no!) and now they frequently just decide to not show up on the lens. I can see them in the Picassa gallery, but can't click on them to see them full size. But I'm having that same problem with all my pictures in all my galleries. And yet the ones I host there for other lenses are working just fine on those lenses. Frustrating.

They finally showed up this morning, but only after I put links to the pictures over here to test them. Just weird.

It's grilling time!

We finally got gas for the grill in anticipation of the kitchen being destroyed. Some day. I just have to pick a dishwasher. Ugh.

Anyway, lovely weather, barely into the 70s today, so we cooked out. Shrimp and scallops on skewers and asparagus. Yumm!! I didn't have any of the cool plates and other items I feature my outdoor entertaining lens, though, as I'm putting off those kinds of purchases until after the remodel so I don't have pack them away.

I can't believe that I've been without a dishwasher for two months or that my piano has been in storage since August. Have got to get moving on this kitchen!!

Hooray!! I'm a Giant Squid!

This is totally an insider thing at Squidoo. The kind of thing where my husband just looks at my blankly. I can tell he's trying to not roll his eyes. :-) But I (and the 40-ish others in my class) received notification today that we're Giant Squids.

So what's a Giant Squid? Basically, it's a lensmaster who has made at least 50 quality lenses. Quality being a vague term only known to headquarters, but as I'm in, I'm not quibbling. We get some special stuff like templates and testing stuff out in advance, etc. And this pretty purple badge on our lenses. Oooo! Anyway, it just makes me feel good that I made the cut. Validation for the work I've been doing.

20% off today at eBags!!!

If you love handbags or are looking for one for mom for Mother's Day, head over to eBags today. They're offering 20% off today only. I recently featured several bags from there on my new lens on Gifts for the Butterfly Lover (which would be my mom) and they have some beautiful stuff.

(Need more motivation? Click the dancing picture here and get free shipping as well.)

Soles United lens in charity challenge

My Squidoo friend bdkz (yeah, just try saying it once, much less three times fast!) has been issuing a charity challenge to all lensmasters. Part of why Seth Godin started Squidoo was to try to raise money for charity while at the same time making money. Lensmasters have the option to donate a portion (or all) of their proceeds to a list of selected charities. In fact, just about any charity can sign up to be on the list and have donations made to them.

Back to bdkz. Each month, she's challenging lensmasters to convert a lens over to donate money to a specific charity, then people vote on the best lenses and there's a winner (who gets a cool badge) at the end. For May, I've submitted my Soles United lens, which was already giving all its proceeds to Save the Children, one of bdkz's choices for this month. I'd love to see more traffic to it (and some sales) so it can raise more money.

(Hmm. Looking at the lens, the only thing I really have for sale on it is the Big Head Todd & the Monsters albums. I remember making a conscious choice not to add a lot of commercial stuff, but that doesn't help Save the Children very much, does it? On the to-do list!)

What's the rarest thing on the planet?

Apparently, it's Abby Cadabby costumes. I finally found a source for them, but they're out of stock. Ditto for the hair and wands.

I guess I understand. It's not Halloween. But surely someone in product marketing understands that little girls don't just dress up at Halloween!

I have emails set for both suppliers to be notified immediately when they come back in stock. I just hate that I have them on my two Abby Cadabby lenses and people can't get them.

Amazingly enough, there aren't even any listed on eBay! (I'm beginning to wonder if they really exist.) I have a feed set up there as well to let me know should any come available. Anyone is welcome to subscribe to it to get notification when costumes come up for auction. (And if you ever happen to run across one in a closet or at a garage sale, I can promise you'll make good money selling it!! (Let me know if you plan to list one and I'll give you some advance publicity here!)

I'm working on figuring out a good way to make a wand and Abby Cadabby hair. The wand is probably not that important because you can get just about any kind of wand, but pink and purple pigtails are another matter. Will be adding the directions to my Abby birthday party lens when they're complete.

Update: Found available costumes now!!