12 posts tagged “vox”

MP3 Linker Example

Vox provides a great way to check out music that people have uploaded, but what if you've got a browser that doesn't have a flash player, or you just want to listen to the music in a different media-player plugin in your browser?  This Greasemonkey script is the answer for you!

This script simply adds a hyperlink directly to the .mp3 file on any individual song file page.  Once that link is present, you can access the .mp3 directly, instead of having to go through the flash player interface. 

And, although I guess you could use this to right-click on the link and download the .mp3, I urge you not to illegally download your music and instead buy your music legally from someone like Amazon's MP3 Store or iTunes.

Want to install this script for your own use?  First install Greasemonkey, and then get the script here.  (Instructions to install Greasemonkey can be found here.)

THANKS TO: lemon, for beta-testing this script for me over Easter weekend!

(Please note this script assumes the Vox audio file that was uploaded was a .mp3 file. If it was a different audio format, this script may not provide a proper link to the file, or the file may not play back correctly in your media player.)

As promised, I spent some time over the past week putting together a Greasemonkey script to reorder the modules on the new Vox homepage.

After the feedback people left, the new order I ended up using is:

Left Column                      Right Sidebar
 1) Posts                         1) QotD
 2) Comments                      2) Vox Hunt
 3) Neighbor Activity             3) Team Vox News
 4) [This is Good] Explore Box    4) Tips Box
 5) Vox MSN Advertisement         5) Themes Box
                                  6) Advertisement
                                  7) Find your friends box

Want to install this script for your own use?  First install Greasemonkey, and then get the script here.  (Instructions to install Greasemonkey can be found here.)

As always, if you have any comments, feedback, or suggestions, or notice any bugs, please leave me a comment or send me a note.  I'll do my best to stay on top of any issues that arise.

Also, to those people who left me feedback but didn't get the exact order they wanted - I'm willing to make a custom version of this script just for you with the modules in the alternative order that you wanted.  Please leave me a comment as to whether you still want the order you suggested, and I'll send you a PM with the location where you can download/install your custom version of the script.

Enjoy!

Okay, that Greasemonkey script I mentioned the other day took a lot less time to make than I thought.  Still waiting to hear what the majority wants for the order of the modules, but my first cut at it seems to work well and doesn't interfere with the readability of the page at all:

Vox homepage, above the fold

If you haven't noticed yet, Vox pushed out another release (release 42) that fixes some of the issues people were having with the Vox homepage.  Now, you have all your recent comments, posts, and activity visible by just scrolling down the page.  The QotD and the Vox Hunt are together (although not above the fold).  As improvements go, this is MUCH better than release 41, but not quite yet what I could see myself wanting to have on my homepage.

I'm planning to put together another quick-and-dirty Greasemonkey script for the Vox homepage - the first revision of this (and only planned revision, at this time) will only re-order the content boxes around on the page.  For example, I would much prefer to have the QotD and Vox Hunt up in the top right, where currently the "Find your friends" and ad boxes are.

I'd like to make this script something that people would want to use, so for now, I'd like to hear how you'd like your homepage reordered.  Please leave a comment if you think you'd like to have your homepage reordered in any way, and let me know what your dream order for the boxes would be.  Keep the following in mind:

• On the first revision, I'm only going to reorder the stuff on the left up/down, and the stuff on the right up/down.  I'm not going to be moving things left-to-right or vice versa, or merging content of boxes.
• I'm not going to delete anything.  If you don't want ads, use an ad blocker.  I will however be amenable to putting things that aren't used often (like the find your friends widget) at the very bottom of the screen, where you won't see them often.

If I get overwhelming direction in the comments to order things a certain way, I'll definitely create a version of the script to order them that way.  If there's a more even split for what people want, I will probably pick the solution I would prefer and just implement that.  If you have any special requests after the fact, send me a note and we'll see what we can do.

I will be waiting to hear what people think until early next week (March 17th), after which I'll decide on an order, put together the script, and post a follow-up with a link for people to install it.

Edit: While hacking Vox to our whims may be fun and useful, the only way it's ever going to be "fixed" for real is by sending Vox some feedback with what you would like changed.  In addition to leaving a comment for me for the short-term fix, I urge you to tell Vox what you'd like reorganized on the home page - if they get enough feedback asking for a specific change, they will probably at least consider making the change (as shown by their efforts in release 42 to fix some of the complaints they received from their release 41 modifications).

Thanks for all the people that did this today that reminded me that today's Tuesday!  This is my first one of these, and while I don't plan on doing it every week, I hope to do it often enough to remind myself of some of the stuff I take for granted, and learn not to sweat the small stuff.

Things I Loathe

1. Getting up early.  Seriously have a problem with that.  Could be related to thing I love #1 below.
2. Getting stuck in traffic.  Slightly ameliorated now that I can amuse myself with my GPS and see exactly how long I've been sitting there stuck in traffic.  But not enough to make me like it.
3. Feeling like a slug.  I NEED to start exercising again.  NEED NEED NEED.  I like how I think and feel a lot better when I do.
4. People who aren't open-minded and accepting of others.  I don't need to get into details on this one right now.
   

1. Going to bed late.  I'm a late-night person.  It just feels like I should be doing stuff then, even if what I'm doing is just reading a book or playing on the interwebs. Got to stop doing this if I want to get up early.
   
2. A good hot cup of coffee.
3. My Vox neighbors.  You all manage to cheer me up, entertain me, and teach me things on a regular basis.
4. Dave for providing me the link to a year's worth of Stereogum music downloads.  I now have 3.2 Gigs of free music sitting on my drive waiting to be listened to and rated.  So far, I'm finding I'm liking/keeping about 1 out of 3 tracks, which is pretty damn good, in my opinion.
5. The fact that we've finally been able to get Rosalie to sleep in the swing.  It's not the crib, but it's a huge improvement over only getting her to sleep on us.  The crib is coming, I promise.  But Dee is finally able to get some stuff done during the day and we're both getting some sleep at night, so I'll gladly take what we're being given.
6. Playing with Violet when I get home.  Last night I tied a headband around her head and we pretended we were rock stars, complete with times where we did guitar solos, lead-singer headbanging, drum solos, and pretended to be backup singers/dancers.  Sooo much fun.
   

Ever since Papi Chulo (formerly Pants Party) first pointed it out to me, I've been both happy and frustrated with the Vox Recent Activity page.  On one hand, it does provide an "easy" way to keep track of follow-up comments and favorites on posts you or someone in your neighborhood.  On the other hand, it can bulky with 30+ posts on the page, each with its own set of comments.  Scrolling down to older posts can put a serious case of carpal tunnel on your mouse-wheel finger, and if you have a couple of really popular threads going, you might not even know that one of the older posts has had a follow-up.  (I've also heard some people can't even load the page in their browsers, but I'm not sure this will fix that issue.)

I decided to jump on the Greasemonkey bandwagon and write a GM script to help out with this issue.  I came up with a solution that, while quick-and-dirty, does a good job of streamlining the Vox Recent Activity page: the script creates links in each post to show/hide the comments, with the default setting of all comments being hidden on initial page load.  That means your page that used to look like this:

Recent Activity Page - Normal

Recent Activity Page - After Script

Example of Expanded Thread

Want to install this script for your own use?  First install Greasemonkey, and then get the script here.
(Instructions to install Greasemonkey can be found here.)

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions on how to improve this script, please leave a comment here or send me an email.

I'm talking, of course, about discussing the recent Vox update.  I haven't made a dedicated effort to seeking out people's opinions on the new UI changes, but every post from my neighborhood on the topic seems to be on the negative side of things.  I wonder how many, like myself, actually tried out this interface during the beta phase?  I'm blushing, because I tried it, found it pretty unusable, and switched back to the "old" UI.  But I forgot to submit feedback through the survey, and I'm wondering now if there were just not enough people who tried it out, found they didn't like it, and submitted their negative review. 

I wouldn't think Vox would go ahead with such a change for everyone if they found 90% of the people who tried it didn't like it, so I'm afraid that the majority of the survey results were from people who tried the new design and liked it and bothered enough to submit feedback.  I have to take my share of the blame for not providing feedback when it could have helped, but yet I still feel that it is better to voice my opinion, albeit a bit late.

Here's what I submitted to Vox feedback this morning:

I tried out the new design when it was a beta option, and had to stop after a couple days, because it was just so damn hard to do what I wanted to do.  This is not a knee-jerk reaction, I really gave it a chance and it came up lacking for the basic actions and ways that I used Vox.  I was happy that I was able to switch back, and I hope you provide an option to opt back to the older layout (much like Google gave Gmail users a means to switch back to the old Gmail design if they didn't like the new one).

Problems with the interface that made me switch back: I can't easily follow my neighborhood updates, comments are a pain to find, and this really breaks the entire user experience I was having and enjoying.  I don't care so much about the death of [This is Good], but I feel like my Vox homepage is a splash screen with almost zero content, where before I felt like it was a very lean, efficient means of transferring information about myself and my neighbors.  Part of my desire to come to Vox was derived from what I could glean from the Vox homepage.  That part of my involvement feels missing - I feel LESS connected with my neighbors and groups than I did before.  The new "features" section is a good idea but something about it makes me feel like I won't be using it much.

I will (probably) be staying with Vox through this new design, but I'm leaning towards getting into posting on my personal site.  I know that I won't have the community aspects that Vox has had, but when it feels so awkward to use Vox, I think I may be willing to give that up for something that feels more comfortable to use & manage.

Vox has been a great place to blog, and I have enjoyed the community aspects that have made me active, both in posting and reading other people's blogs.  I'm going to stick with Vox for a while yet, and see how things go.  But in the end, my intention for having a blog was having a place for me to write and share my thoughts and experiences, and the neighborhood aspects were secondary, only.  If a wordpress blog on my own site is what it takes to keep me feeling like I can easily get my thoughts out into a written medium, I won't hesitate to go that route.  We'll see, though.  I still have faith that the Vox admin can turn this around - I just hope that my neighbors don't all jump ship without giving them a chance.  And if you are thinking of leaving for somewhere else, PLEASE leave a forwarding address.  I want to keep track of my neighborhood, even if they are scattered to the four corners of the internet.  (And I'll be you didn't even know the internet was a quadrilateral, eh?)

A big shout-out to Foxsydee, who originally suggested this tip to me!

Drafts can end up here, instead of buried on your blog

Vox is a great blogging site.  But there is one area that for a while, I thought was lacking - the ability to write a draft entry.  Sure, you can save an entry as viewable only by "you (hidden)", but all this does is publish your entry to your blog, but hide it from the world.  The published date is set (albeit changeable), and the post doesn't appear in your neighbor's recent posts or on the explore page, AND - here's the catch - probably won't EVER appear on these where you want it to, even if you later change the post's privacy level to viewable by anyone and update the date.  Too many new posts will have gone by for people to have seen what you posted unless they come to your personal blog page.

For those who do like the exposure that a new blog post can bring, there is a simple and quick solution to this problem:

1) Write and save your post as you would normally do, viewable only by you.  Make sure to make all links, photos, media, etc that you are embedding in the post ALSO viewable only by you, unless you want people in your neighborhood to see them ahead of time.  Optionally, add a tag like "draft" so you can search for the post later (this will be helpful if you're building a backlog of draft posts). 

2) Once your post is saved, you can view and edit to your heart's content to make sure it is exactly the way you want it.  Nobody but you can see the post, so this gives you a chance to view how the layout will actually look on your blog template, and give it a complete makeover before anyone even has a chance to see it, if you so desire.

3) When it comes time for you to actually open your post up to the public, instead of just changing the privacy setting of the post, do the following:

    a. Open the post for editing

    b. In a new window or new tab, go to Vox and choose to compose a new post

    c. Select all the text in your hidden post, and copy over to the new post.  Copy the title and tags as well. (Remove the "draft" tag if you had added this previously.)  Your intent is to end up with a DUPLICATE of the original post, but in a new post window.  Tip: Use keyboard shortcuts for select-all (e.g. for Windows, CTRL-A) to get everything in the body of your post to copy over in one copy/paste action.

    d. Change the privacy level on all embedded media items on the new post (anyone, neighborhood, friends and family, etc)

    e. Do the same with the new post's overall privacy level

    f. Save the new post, and it will be visible on your blog with a current published timestamp, AND will show up in the explore and neighbor's recent post areas

    g. Once you've published the new entry, simply delete the old post (still marked as viewable only by you).

Once you get used to the steps, it should only take about 30 seconds to republish your "draft" entry as a new post (3a-3g above).

Extra things to consider:

1. If your draft post and your new post have the same title, vox will append a "-1" to the URL.  If you're really picky about your URL titles, delete the hidden post BEFORE you hit save on the new post.  When you save the new entry, Vox will name the URL the same as the original draft post's URL.

2. Don't add the draft post to any groups, or that group will see the entry before you intend it to.  Wait until you set up your final post, and only then add to the specific groups you want the entry to be cross-posted to.

3. This probably works best for people who want a time-delayed post or those who write a bunch of posts at one time but don't necessarily want to publish them all for public consumption at one time.  Anyone can get some viewing/editing benefits out of it, but these are the people that will really find this useful.

4. Vox may at some point add in a full "draft mode" to the compose process, making this whole process obsolete.  But it's still useful for now.  For example, I wrote this post a couple weeks ago, but saved it as a "draft" for a day when I was busy but still wanted to post something.  Total time to go from draft to post for me was about 90 seconds, including doing one last pass over the text to make sure I didn't want to change anything else.

• 

  Is This Your Vox Neighborhood?

  1 comment
  The neighborhood you lived in would have people moving constantly in/out of nearby houses.  You could kick people out if they don't interest you enough or are rude to you, but be careful how you interact with others - the ability to boot people from your neighborhood could be turned against you as well.
  

• You could wake up in the middle of the night (or pretty much anytime, for that matter) and immediately see what your friends have been up to recently.  Unless they've made efforts to hide it from you, of course...
  

• The Neighborhood Watch program's goal would be to introduce you to the best of the neighborhood.
  

• You could cruise the neighborhood at will, but in order to get out of your car and actually talk to someone, you would need to "identify" yourself.  This would lead to a lot less door-to-door salesmen, and the few you find would get kicked out of the community as soon as you reported them to the authorities.
  

• You could spy on your neighbors whenever you wanted, without their knowledge (unless they were keeping an eye out for stalkers.)
  

• Starting a conversation with someone that interests you would be as easy as instant messaging them "Hi", without any regard for geographic locations, times of day, or IM usernames.  However, for now, you better keep track yourself of what you've said privately to someone else, because nobody else is going to do it for you.
  

• There would be tons of cliques around, but unlike the cliques you saw in high school, these would welcome new members who share the same interest.  Plus, you can co-exist in two cliques at once without anyone calling you out on it (usually).
  

• You could spend all day sitting at home on your couch in your pajamas while you talk to countless people, and nobody would know (or care!)
  

• Your photo albums would be simultaneously displayed on your mantle and in every other house in your neighborhood.
  

• You could find out pretty much immediately what someone thinks about your thoughts - although you might have to go somewhere special to hear all of their opinions, if they're especially verbose.
  

• Every day, you would get a visitor coming to your door to ask you a new question, or urging you to show off something you have or can find on a specific topic.
  

• You could scan for people's thoughts on a specific topic, as long as they made an effort to label their thoughts with the key-words you're searching with.  Or you could just browse haphazardly and find something that captures your imagination.
  

• If you're handy with your mobile phone, you could be at home even when you're not near your house.
  

• There would be a group of concerned citizens (probably also neighbors of yours!) who are constantly working to improve your life and make it easier for you to do the things you want to do.

Any others I've missed?