Being able to communicate in real-time is an important element of collaboration for today’s content creator. So we’re happy to share the first integration of a real-time messaging system in Spundge. Spundge Pro subscribers can now chat with someone you’re connected with when they are logged in. That means you can curate together in real-time in Notebooks, and discuss edits in stories as you work — and do it all in a unified system.
To test it out, go into a Notebook or story when one of your contributors is also online (the green dot tells you they’re live in the Notebook or story). Then click on their avatar and start typing in the messaging box that pops up in the bottom left of your screen!
Integration with TypePad
You can now publish stories written in Spundge to any TypePad blog. That means we currently support WordPress, Tumblr, TypePad and MailChimp as publishing targets. Write in Spundge, publish to any or all of these right away.
TypePad is a blogging platform similar to WordPress. It’s known for business blogging due to its simplicity to use and stellar customer support. To find out more about whether you should use WordPress or TypePad, read Jeff Korhan’s comparison of the two platforms.
If you’re an existing TypePad user and also have a Spundge Pro account, you can add go to the Syndication tab in Settings and add TypePad as a target. Once that’s set up, you will be able to publish directly to your TypePad blog.
Spundge PRO users can now view invoices for their account by going to the Pro tab in Settings. In the screenshot below, we’re also giving you a little preview of the purchase history for an account. What can you purchase in Spundge aside from a Pro seat? You’ll have to stay tuned for some exciting news. Here’s a hint: it’ll make your stories more visually stimulating.
This is part of our series, “The Originals.” These posts focus on showcasing pop culture icons who have made their mark through content creation and branding. Keep coming back to see who will be featured.
Relatively few people have created personal brands that can withstand the test of time.
Jacqueline Kennedy, also known as Jackie O., is remembered as a demure, well-spoken and cultured woman. A fashion icon, too. She was perhaps the first First Lady to garner cultural clout equivalent to her president husband’s political power.
As noted by historian and journalist Carl Anthony, she became an icon.
“The deeper her icon was scrutinized and the less she said, the more metaphoric were the media parables idealizing her as the perfect American wife and mother, the unerring, upper-class model to follow in fashion and décor, and the adventurous jet-setter pursing culture and leisure,” said Anthony.
Kennedy, perhaps inadvertently, exemplified some of the top must-do’s of modern day personal branding. Here’s what professionals can learn from Jackie O.
Be authentic
Kennedy took her public role seriously and did what was expected of her by addressing her audience and maintaining the ideals of an all-American family. But she also kept true to herself in the way she spoke, dressed, and carried herself. This, even in the face of initial concerns and criticism from Kennedy staffers.
Kennedy’s brand, so to speak, wasn’t initially perceived as a success. But by striving to retain her identity, she ultimately won out because the public saw who she really was.
“John F. Kennedy and all of his campaign team were very, very leery of Jackie because she was very, very high society, she was very sophisticated, well groomed, well read, well spoken –– she would speak French at the drop of a hat [...] –– and they were like ‘are we really going to put this rare bird out there in front of this nation and have her accepted?’” said McLendon. ”And a crazy thing happened. Women took to her immediately. They loved her sense of style. They saw her as an idealized version of themselves and it was quickly recognized that she was a huge strategic asset.”
Balance you and your role/responsibilities
Kennedy struck a balance between her role and its expectations, and who she really was.
She did what was expected of her at the time, and used that credibility to push forward on initiatives she cared about.
“To the role of First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy brought beauty, intelligence, and cultivated taste. Her interest in the arts, publicized by press and television, inspired an attention to culture never before evident at a national level,” Black wrote. “She devoted much time and study to making the White House a museum of American history and decorative arts as well as a family residence of elegance and charm. But she defined her major role as ‘to take care of the President’ and added that ‘if you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much.’”
Her family was paramount, but Jackie O. accomplished many things while in the White House and beyond. The key was being authentic to who she was and what she cared about, and doing a masterful job of balancing her job and her passions.
We have a whole bunch of new updates to Spundge and Spundge PRO. Here’s a look at the new features you can take advantage of right now.
Autosave for stories (Spundge PRO)
Many of you were looking forward to this, and we are happy to deliver it. Spundge stories are now auto-save enabled. You won’t have to worry anymore about remembering to hit the save button as you work. The system saves work instantly as you make changes. The story editor also offers revisions if you want to go back in time.
The only sad thing about autosave is that we had to kill off our retro floppy disk save icon. Anyone else feeling nostalgic about floppy disks?
Do you want to collaborate with some of the people who curate your favorite Notebooks? Have you ever wanted to get to know the people who follow your Notebooks? We’ve made it easier for you to connect with other members of the Spundge community, and to find your friends on Spundge.
From your personal profile page on Spundge, type any name or username in the search box on the left panel. Once you found the person you were looking for, invite them to connect and then start collaborating on notebooks and stories. It’s easy to add your people to Notebooks and stories once you’re connected.
Select a blog category when syndicating to WordPress (Spundge PRO)
Now, when you syndicate a story to a WordPress site (version 3.4 and up) you can select a category for your post. This is particularly useful for people who run several sub-blogs on their WordPress installation. In that case, each sub-blog would be the equivalent of a category. (A blog in a blog = blog inception?)
Publishing stories into your Notebooks
Spundge stories can now be easily be added into your notebooks. Once a story has been saved and published, go to your stories library. Then add your story to a notebook by selecting the last green button (on the right). It has a nice little Notebook icon that you click on, and then you can choose which Notebook to place the story in.
Here are two ways to take advantage of this right now:
1. You can offer exclusive content just to your Notebook followers, and also make it available on your public Notebook page. this further establishes you and your Notebook as authoritative sources on a given topic.
2. You can publish content that’s only visible to contributors in your private Notebooks. Now you can set up a private Notebook as a private place to gather and curate content, and to share ideas. All in one place, and just for you and your team.
Integration with Zapier (Spundge PRO)
This may seem a bit technical, but it’s a useful feature for connecting Spundge to other services.
By using Spundge webhooks, you can now use Zapier to enable communication between Spundge and your other favorite apps. In essence, you can have Spundge work together with a selection of 193 different web services supported in Zapier. One Zaps you can set up, for example, is to enable the creation of an RSS feed for saved items in a Notebook.
If you want help getting your Spundge webhooks to work for in Zapier, send me a hello at amanda@spundge.com.
Our team at Spundge is putting together a series called “The Originals.” The blog posts focus on showcasing pop culture icons who have made their mark through content creation and branding. Keep coming back to see who will be featured on the blog.
Snow White has been through a lot. No, really.
According to the story’s original version, likely first published by the Brothers Grimm in 1812, the heroine defeated death three times. That’s different from what the popular Disney interpretation wants us believe.
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the famous brothers partially responsible for turning German folk history into popular fairy tales, were professional gatherers. Today we might call them curators.
They listened to and collected popular stories from locals in their home country of Germany and published them in a series of books.
From these stories came classics such as Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, Rapunzel, and countless others that made their way into pop culture.
The concept of curating information before creating content should come as no surprise. It’s at the very core of the creation process. The Grimms, however, showcase the possibilities that come with curating and filtering information before putting it together into a single story.
But the Brothers Grimm aren’t the only people to make tales out of tales.
Years after the original stories were published, other writers and publishers altered them to reflect contemporary values and ethics.
For instance, the story’s original version of Snow White depicts her as a seven-year-old girl who is, of course, the fairest of all. After escaping the huntsman (who’s really a big softy) and wild animals in the forest, she crashes in on the seven dwarf’s home.
In the ensuing days, poor young Snow White gets attacked by the evil queen, who poses as a saleslady and sticks her in a tight lace bodice. Snow White also gets poisoned with a hair comb and then, finally, eats the apple.
In the Brothers Grimm’s tale, the prince happens to stumble onto the seven dwarf’s house and sees the beautiful – dead – Snow White.
He asks the dwarfs if he can take her away with him because she’s gorgeous. (Few are the people who will think keeping a gorgeous dead seven-year-old girl in your castle is completely normal).
As they carry the coffin toward the prince’s castle, a clumsy dwarf stumbles, and the movement helps dislodge the piece of poison apple that was stuck in Snow White’s throat.
Can you image everyone’s face when she woke up?
At the end, of the brothers’ tale, Snow White and the (in my opinion) creepy prince get married. As a welcome gift to the evil queen, they force her to dance in red-hot iron shoes until she dies.
Now you can appreciate why Disney softened up the story for its audience…
Curating Snow White
Disney isn’t the only company to rewrite Sneewittchen. There are over 40 adaptations on film and theatre, including a pornographic movie titled Once Upon a Girl,released in 1976. According to this version, Snow White was a very busy lady.
Disney’s first interpretation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs came in 1937. It was Disney’s first animated featured film, and Snow White was the first fictional character to be awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Though Disney didn’t write the story’s original version, the production company has something in common with the Brothers Grimm (O.K… they have a lot of things in common, but we’ll stick to one point): Curation.
While Jacob and Wilhelm attentively listened to myths and legends, picking and choosing their favourite versions for publication, Walt Disney reevaluated the stories’ elements and determined which were most suitable for its young, modern audience. Nevermind the stories’ actual content, all creators were able to gather parts of the original plot and add their own flavour, like what the Brothers Grimm did with the legends of days long gone.
Curation, a current buzz word, makes storytelling feasible and much more personal. It’s at the core of research and brainstorming.
Today, journalists, bloggers, writers and authors all take part in a process of aggregation and curation before putting pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard.
Authors like the Brothers Grimm obviously didn’t come up with the concept of storytelling, but their careful selection of narratives and tales successfully gave birth to whimsical children’s tales we’ve all come to love.
Today, the beauty of digital content curation lies within its accessibility. It is now possible for anyone to take the elements they want out of published content and use it to their own advantage, whether it’s for research, an opinionated debate or to revamp classics.
The best way is to show you, so we put together a short video below to show the complete Spundge workflow and how tracking and curating content in Notebooks with colleagues set you up to create compelling blog posts and email newsletters.
Watch it:
At Spundge, we believe creating content and sharing it with the world is the best way to make yourself or your company known. We simplify the research and creation process so you can save time, share information with the right people, and drive new business with great content.
You can now publish stories written in Spundge to any TypePad blog. That means we currently support WordPress, Tumblr, TypePad and MailChimp as publishing targets. Write in Spundge, publish to any or all of these right away.
