Even more stunning to me is that, at the end of May 2008 we had 2,498 posts, at the end of May 2007 we had 1,278 posts, and at the end of May 2006, 792 posts, May 2005, 367 posts, and May 2004, 86 posts. And May 2003? 10 posts - the first post was in April, 2003. That means year over year the pace of posting has been increasing - June 2003 through May 2004: 76 posts, 2004-2005: 281, 2005-2006: 425, 2006-2007: 486, and 2007-2008: 1,220 posts!

Hey, I suppose that means April was kind of the fifth anniversary of the site too. How about that. I can’t believe it has been five years either. Yeah, the site hasn’t existed in its current incarnation that long, but the foundations upon which the site is built have.

No wonder I often feel a bit tired. I don’t want to think about how much time those posts represent. There have definitely been days when I’ve asked myself “Why the hell do I do this?” But running the site has largely been a labor of love, and I appreciate all of you, the readers, for reading these posts. A special thanks to those who comment, since it helps me feel like I’m not just talking to myself.

And thank you to the companies, like TiVo and Sling Media, who have allowed us to review their products and given us sneak peaks before release. That’s one of the fun parts of running the site. I certainly hope to be able to bring you more product reviews in the future. (And if you have a product you think we should review, contact us.) Running this site has given me the opportunity to talk with people I never would’ve had the chance to talk with otherwise, company representatives, other bloggers, members of the media, etc. I’m thankful for those opportunities and experiences.

Thank you to the other bloggers who have offered me tips, tricks, and advice to help improve the site and our coverage. And I especially want to single out Dave Zatz of Zatz Not Funny, Alex Raiano of TiVo Blog, Ben Drawbaugh of EngadgetHD, and Brad Linder of PVR Wire. We’ve had repeated contacts via phone, email, IM, Twitter, in person, etc. over the past few years. The blogging community really is a community. (I always dread making a list like that, for fear that I’ll forget someone and unintentionally slight them.)

Thanks also to Ben and Mark, our recent blogger additions, for their contributions to the site, and for contributions yet to come.

This is by no means comprehensive, there have been countless people who have contributed to the site, directly and indirectly, via personal contact, email, comments, posts on other blogs, boards, groups, and forums, etc. I could never list them all. I certainly couldn’t have carried the site this far all on my own.

But most of all, again, thank you to all of the readers who continue to read the words we put out there. Without the readers there wouldn’t really be a point to the site in the first place. So thank you, and I hope that you continue to read an enjoy the site. And leave a comment now and then just so we know you’re out there in the wilds of the Internet.

Thanks to everyone, and I’ll do my best to make it worth sticking around for the next 2,500 posts. (At this rate, that could be next year! OK, probably not, unless I somehow start doing this full time.)

So, GerryL has just over four hours in which to contact me or he forfeits the TiVo HD and it goes to someone else. I certainly hope the new winner is watching their email, as the program official ends at 11:59PM ET tomorrow, May 28, 2008. So I think I’ll give the second winner, if drawn, until noon to get back to me. And then I’ll have to draw a third, and if the third, if drawn, doesn’t get back to me by 8PM I’ll just give up and give it to a friend or something rather than see the points go to waste.

I really never expected it to come to this, and I hope it doesn’t - four more hours.

Gerry won with this comment, congratulations Gerry! And thank you to everyone who entered, I wish I had a TiVo HD to give each of you. While the TiVo Rewards program is ending, TiVo is planning to launch a new incentive program in the coming months, so I hope to continue doing giveaways in the future.

I hope you’ll all stick around and that you enjoy the blog.

Gerry, I’ve already emailed you - please reply ASAP so I can claim the reward for you before the program ends.

If you’re curious, it is a random drawing:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -Tw

my $draw = int rand(374);
print $draw . "\n";

I’ll put this under a cut since it is long, and not interesting to most I suspect. Though I hope that this might encourage other WP users to try getting their hands dirty and tweaking things a bit.

Changing the editor buttons requires changes in two places:
wordpress/wp-includes/js/quicktags.js:

35a36
> // Modified by MegaZone / MZ
37c38
< new edButton('ed_strong'
---
> new edButton('ed_bold'
39,40c40,41
< ,'<strong>'
< ,'</strong>'
---
> ,'<b>'
> ,'</b>'
43a45
> // Modified by MegaZone / MZ
45c47
< new edButton('ed_em'
---
> new edButton('ed_italics'
47,48c49,50
< ,'<em>'
< ,'</em>'
---
> ,'<i>'
> ,'</i>'
51a54,89
> // Added by MegaZone / MZ
> edButtons[edButtons.length] =
> new edButton('ed_underline'
> ,'u'
> ,'<u>'
> ,'</u>'
> ,''
> );
>
> // Added by MegaZone / MZ
> edButtons[edButtons.length] =
> new edButton('ed_strikethrough'
> ,'s'
> ,'<s>'
> ,'</s>'
> ,'s'
> );
>
> // Added by MegaZone / MZ
> edButtons[edButtons.length] =
> new edButton('ed_big'
> ,'big'
> ,'<big>'
> ,'</big>'
> ,''
> );
>
> // Added by MegaZone / MZ
> edButtons[edButtons.length] =
> new edButton('ed_small'
> ,'small'
> ,'<small>'
> ,'</small>'
> ,''
> );
>
68c106
<
---
> /* Commented out by MegaZone / MZ
83a122
> */
117a157,165
> // Added by MegaZone / MZ
> edButtons[edButtons.length] =
> new edButton('ed_pre'
> ,'pre'
> ,'<pre>'
> ,'</pre>'
> ,''
> );
>
385a434,436
>                               + '" width="' + prompt(quicktagsL10n.enterImageWidth, '')
>                               + '" height="' + prompt(quicktagsL10n.enterImageHeight, '')
>                               + '" border="' + prompt(quicktagsL10n.enterImageBorder, '') 

wordpress/wp-includes/script-loader.php:

27,28c27,31
<                       'enterImageDescription' => __('Enter a description of the image')
<               ) );
---
>                       'enterImageDescription' => __('Enter a description of the image'),
>                         'enterImageWidth' => __('Enter image width'),
>                         'enterImageHeight' => __('Enter image height'),
>                         'enterImageBorder' => __('Enter image border weight')
>                       ) ); // MegaZone / MZ added image attributes

Another thing that I tweak is WP’s formatting code. I like having it check the XHTML nesting, etc. But for a while it drove me crazy because it would ‘correct’ perfectly valid XHTML, and often would produce invalid XHTML in the process! In the end I found that commenting out just one line and editing one other in formatting.php solved nearly all of the issues I was having.

wordpress/wp-includes/formatting.php:

64c64
<       $pee = preg_replace('|<br />\s*<br />|', "\n\n", $pee);
---
>       //MegaZone / MZ Removed $pee = preg_replace('|<br />\s*<br />|', "\n\n", $pee);
65a66
>       $allblocks = '(?:table|thead|tfoot|caption|colgroup|tbody|tr|td|th|div|dl|dd|dt|ul|ol|li|pre|form|fieldset|map|area|blockquote|address|math|style|p|h[1-6]|hr)'; //MegaZone / MZ edited list

With those small tweaks, I find WP to be a lot more usable for me. Someday I may get around to writing a plug-in to allow changing the buttons on the basic editor (I haven’t seen one, but if there is one out there let me know), but for now it is easy enough to re-apply these tweaks when I upgrade.

Now, I also make tweaks to two of my plug-ins - reCAPTCHA and Sociable. First up, reCAPTCHA. I love this plug-in, and it does an amazing job of controlling the spam comments I receive. But it had one flaw that annoyed me - it produces invalid XHTML. I strive to keep things on the site valid, so having a plug-in that produced invalid XHTML just didn’t sit well with me. I found one patch in their support group, but it had a flaw, so I used that as a starting point and created a new patch that worked correctly. That was on 2.6, and I re-implemented it on 2.7. I’ve submitted both of them back to reCAPTCHA, but they haven’t incorporated them yet, as far as I know. Oh, and one small mistake - they forgot to rev the version number in the file from 2.6 to 2.7 when they released 2.7, so I did that.

wordpress/wp-content/plugins/recaptcha/recaptcha.php:

6c6
< Version: 2.6
---
> Version: 2.7
51a52
>                       document.getElementById('submit').style.display = 'inline'; // MegaZone added
57,58c58,59
<                <style type='text/css'>#submit {display:none;}</style>
<                <input name="submit" type="submit" id="submit-alt" tabindex="6" value="Submit Comment"/>
---
>               <!-- MegaZone removed style element -->
>                <input name="submit" type="submit" id="submit-alt" tabindex="6" value="Submit Comment" />
63a65,74
> /*
> MegaZone added this function.  This will insert the style to hide the
> reCAPTCHA submit button in the header instead of the body, where it is
> invalid XHTML.  Since this disables the button even when scripting is
> turned on, there is a line of JavaScript inserted above which makes the
> button visible when scripting is on.
> */
> function recaptcha_wp_head () {
>   echo "<style type='text/css'>#submit { display: none; }</style>\n";
> }
64a76
> add_action( 'wp_head', 'recaptcha_wp_head' ); // MegaZone added
66d77
< 

And I made two really, really inconsequential changes in the name of XHTML->HTML compatibility in older browsers. I added spaces in two elements. You can really just ignore this, I was being anal.
wordpress/wp-content/plugins/recaptcha/recaptchalib.php:

125c125
<               <iframe src="'. $server . '/noscript?k=' . $pubkey . $errorpart . '" height="300" width="500" frameborder="0"></iframe><br/>
---
>               <iframe src="'. $server . '/noscript?k=' . $pubkey . $errorpart . '" height="300" width="500" frameborder="0"></iframe><br />
127c127
<               <input type="hidden" name="recaptcha_response_field" value="manual_challenge"/>
---
>               <input type="hidden" name="recaptcha_response_field" value="manual_challenge" />

With Sociable it was mainly an issue of appearance. I wanted to squeeze the icons into a small space, a single row at the bottom of the post. I fought with CSS for a while, but I never could quite get what I wanted, because of the underlaying XHTML. The plug-in normally creates the list of icons as an XHTML unordered list, with each icon within its own list item element. Trying to get it so the icons were in one solid row, with no gaps between them, just defeated me in CSS. But I knew I could make it work with small changes to the XHTML, to remove those unwanted list elements. In the process I also fixed one small bug in one of the site links in the plug-in.

wordpress/wp-content/plugins/sociable/sociable.php:

97c97
<               'url' => 'http://bluedot.us/Authoring.aspx?>u=PERMALINK&title=TITLE',
---
>               'url' => 'http://bluedot.us/Authoring.aspx?u=PERMALINK&title=TITLE',
501c501
< );
---
> ); /* Blue Dot URL fixed - MegaZone / MZ  modded */
633c633,635
<       $html .= "\n</span>\n<ul>\n";
---
>
>       /* $html .= "\n</span>\n<ul>\n"; MegaZone / MZ  modded */
>       $html .= "\n</span>\n";
653,654c655,656
<               $link = "<li>";
<               $link .= "<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"$url\" title=\"$description\">";
---
>               /* $link = "<li>"; MegaZone / MZ modded */
>               $link = "<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"$url\" title=\"$description\">"; /* MegaZone / MZ modded */
659c661,662
<               $link .= "</a></li>";
---
>               /* $link .= "</a></li>"; MegaZone / MZ modded */
>                 $link .= "</a>";
661c664,665
<               $html .= "\t".apply_filters('sociable_link',$link)."\n";
---
>               /* $html .= "\t".apply_filters('sociable_link',$link)."\n"; MegaZone / MZ modded */
>                 $html .= "".apply_filters('sociable_link',$link);
664c668,669
<       $html .= "</ul>\n</div>\n";
---
>       /* $html .= "</ul>\n</div>\n"; MegaZone / MZ modded */
>         $html .= "\n</div>\n";

And I do make some changes to the CSS as well, though some of them are just me being anal and adding units.

wordpress/wp-content/plugins/sociable/sociable.css:

1c1,2
< div.sociable { margin: 16px 0; }
---
> /* Modified by MegaZone */
> div.sociable { margin: 16px 0px; }
4c5
< span.sociable_tagline span { display: none; width: 14em; }
---
> span.sociable_tagline span { display: none; width: 28em; }
8,10c9,11
<       top: -5em;
<       background: #ffe;
<       border: 1px solid #ccc;
---
>       top: -3em;
>       background: #ffffee;
>       border: 1px solid #cccccc;
19,20c20,21
<       margin: 0 !important;
<       padding: 0 !important;
---
>       margin: 0px !important;
>       padding: 0px !important;
26c27
<       margin: 0;
---
>       margin: 0px;
34,36c35,37
<       border: 0;
<       margin: 0;
<       padding: 0;
---
>       border: 0px;
>       margin: 0px;
>       padding: 0px;
40,42c41,43
<       opacity: .4;
<       -moz-opacity: .4;
<       filter: alpha(opacity=40);
---
>       opacity: .6;
>       -moz-opacity: .6;
>       filter: alpha(opacity=60);

And that’s it. Just a handful of simple changes to make the platform work more to my liking. Very minor changes really. I know a lot of WP users are nervous about playing around in the code, but it isn’t that bad. Remember to make a backup of the files before you edit them, and if you have a problem just revert back. If you’re going to do anything major, backup your sites DB before trying the changes. You can always restore if you really blow things up - but that’s not easy to do.

PS. Don’t forget the Style Selector in the upper-right for those of you who dislike the green-on-black color scheme.

I’ll accept entries until midnight EST Friday, May 23, 2008 - that’s two weeks from now. Entering couldn’t be simpler - just leave a comment. That’s right - all it takes is a comment, and one comment only. Take note - if you leave multiple comments you’ll be disqualified.

Also, you MUST enter a valid email address in the email box when you comment. That is how I will contact the winner to get their shipping info. I won’t even consider entries without a valid email address. Don’t worry, they aren’t used for anything else. Since there will only five days to claim to prize after the end of the contest, if I can’t contact the winner, I will have to pick another. So make sure you enter your email correctly.

Now, get to entering and good luck!

¹If you already have a TiVo HD or a Series3 you can optionally take the WD My DVR Expander and a TiVo Glo remote instead of the TiVo HD.

Leigh Ann!

Also known as LJ user trinsf.

Congratulations Leigh Ann, I’ll be emailing you to get your shipping information.

Coming soon, our final (under the TiVo Rewards program anyway) TiVo HD giveaway! There are a couple of days left to donate points to the site to help fund additional giveaways. Remember, April 28th is the last day to give anyone a referral.

If you find any links to TiVo that are still broken, please let me know so that I can fix them.

I’ve notified TiVo of the issue and I’m going to give them some time to fix things before I deal with relinking everything. Hopefully they can fix it on their end, such as via redirects to map the old URLs to the new ones. I think that’s the right thing to do anyway, there are links all over the web to pages on their site and breaking all those links doesn’t really make sense - for TiVo or anyone else. So, anyway, bear with me and give TiVo some time to put this right. Thanks, and I’m sorry for any inconvenience.

By the way, is anyone using the Custom Styles for the site? Feedback has been kind of underwhelming.

If you have any issues using this, please let me know my commenting on this post. Thanks - and enjoy!

EDIT: By the way, if you are trying to create a custom style and it would make life easier if some element on the page had a class or id attribute added, feel free to ask. I can’t promise I’ll add it, but I definitely will consider it. Most of the elements on the page already have class and/or id attributes for the default style that you can use. And feel free to share any creative styles you come up with. I may even add some to the site (with permission of course) if they’re good.

Now, as a warning, it is possible to do bad things with a style sheet. So be careful about using a style sheet supplied by some 3rd party. You may want to make a copy to host yourself, so you know what is in it, rather than linking to another site. Even if you vet the CSS before linking to it, it can change at any time without your knowledge.

I’ll accept entries until midnight EST Friday, April 25th - that’s six days from now. Entering is simple - leave a comment on this post with a link to ANY previous, non-giveaway, comment you’ve left on the blog OR in the LiveJournal community! That’s a comment made before this post - so before midnight EST Saturday, April 19th. The time stamp on your comment is the link you need for blog posts - like this. For LiveJournal community comments there is a ‘permalink’ on each comment - like this one.

You can just post the URL, but it is neater if you use HTML links. For those who don’t know HTML, thusly: <a href="http://www.gizmolovers.com/2007/05/20/major-change-wordpress/#comment-2320">like this</a>. Obviously you’d use your comment link URL and not that one. One entry per user, please.

Also, you MUST enter a valid email address in the email box when you comment. That is how I will contact the winner to get their shipping info. I won’t even consider entries without a valid email address. Don’t worry, they aren’t used for anything else.

The list at the bottom of this page may help you find your old blog comments. Remember, you can continue to donate TiVo Rewards Referral points through April 28, 2008. The more points that are donated the more giveaways there will be. Just one more donation and there will be a TiVo HD giveaway open to everyone. But the more the better - so send as many this way as possible to generate more giveaways. Remember, every seven donations is another TiVo HD.

Now, get to entering and good luck!

¹If you already have a TiVo HD or a Series3 you can optionally take the WD My DVR Expander and a TiVo Glo remote instead of the TiVo HD.

Now don’t hurt yourself doing those cartwheels…

Jack!

Congratulations Jack, I’ll contact you via email for your shipping information.

Keep those TiVo Rewards Referrals coming folks, the more points, the more giveaways! The next one starts soon - very soon.

Checking my remaining points, I think I’ll be doing one more TiVo HD giveaway with similar rules for the readers.

But here’s the deal - it looks like I’m three donations shy of having enough TiVo Rewards points for a third TiVo HD giveaway. If I have enough points donated by April 28th, the last day you can give someone a referral, then not only will I do the third giveaway - but it will be open to anyone. All it will take is a comment, no need to link to anything. (Yes, I realize I’m asking for comment hell on that post.) And I’ll take it further - if people manage to really funnel the points my way, an additional seven referrals, I’ll do another one just like it. (A TiVo HD is 35,000 points, and referrals are 5,000 points each.) So three more means one TiVo HD in a wide open giveaway, 10 more for two, 17 for three, etc… not that I think 17 will happen, but stranger things…

Like so many others, myself included, Ben was a victim of the tech bubble collapse back in 2001. And like many, he took the opportunity to strike out in a new direction - in his case, as a writer. In his own words:

In his career - well, not so much a career as a series of interesting but usually ill-advised vocational choices, if we’re being honest - Benjamin D. Hutchins has been a tech support grunt, an Internet operations tech, a small-town print reporter, a public relations writer, and a semiprofessional muser upon the random. Now he’s working on several books (none of which, just to buck tradition, is the Great American Novel), eyeing the relentless march of personal gadget technology with bemusement and often suspicion, and wondering what’s with these kids today, with their clothes and their hair and that stuff they think is music.

His first book, Off the Top of My Head: Personal Reflections of a Small-Town Newsman, can be had here or here.

I’ve always enjoyed his writing style, and for a while I’ve had the idea of having Ben contribute to the site, kind of how Lewis Black does in his Back in Black segment on The Daily Show. And it finally gelled in a conversation with him this weekend.

His ‘column’, Technosophy, will basically cover whatever he feels like writing about (with some tech/geek connection), whenever he feels like doing so. He also has a thing for somewhat geeky toys, and reviewing same. He’s already queued up two posts, and I think they present an interesting, and amusing, contrast in subject matter.

And if you like his writing style, check out his book, and I don’t say that just because I appear in a few of the anecdotes.

Welcome, Ben!

I’ll accept entries until midnight EST Friday, April 18th - that’s one week from now. Entering is simple - leave a comment on this post with a link to a previous, non-giveaway, comment you’ve left on the blog - since May 20, 2007. (That’s the first WordPress post.) That’s a comment made before this post - so before midnight EST Friday, April 11th. The time stamp on your comment is the link you need - like this. You can just post the URL, but it is neater if you use HTML links. For those who don’t know HTML, thusly: <a href=’http://www.gizmolovers.com/2007/05/20/major-change-wordpress/#comment-2320′>like this</a>. Obviously you’d use your comment link URL and not that one. One entry per user, please.

Also, you MUST enter a valid email address in the email box when you comment. That is how I will contact the winner to get their shipping info. I won’t even consider entries without a valid email address. Don’t worry, they aren’t used for anything else.

The list at the bottom of this page may help you find your old comments. Remember, you can continue to donate TiVo Rewards Referral points through April 28, 2008. I still have enough points for at least one more major giveaway, perhaps more, before the TiVo Rewards program ends on May 28, 2008 - but the more points that are donated, the more giveaways there will be. And remember to be an active commenter if you want a chance to win.

¹If you already have a TiVo HD or a Series3 you can optionally take the WD My DVR Expander and a TiVo Glo remote instead of the TiVo HD.

I want to thank everyone who submitted a design. I was surprised by the response, I never expected so many submissions and narrowing the field to the finalists wasn’t easy, let alone picking a winner. Because of the number and quality of submissions I decided to change up the contest a bit - instead of only the winner receiving a prize, I’ll be awarding prizes to all of the finalists.

First up, what I’ll call the People’s Choice Award. The comments left on the finalists post were a little surprising to me. I had almost left entry number seven off the list, since it wasn’t quite the ‘feel’ I was looking for. But the fact that it was different and creative swayed me, and it seems several people really liked it. And so I’m awarding 10,000 TiVo Rewards Points to the entry to use as desired, congratulations to Ashley Kline!

Next up is an honorable mention for Scott Pope. Scott submitted more designs than anyone else, and had two make the list of finalists. Scott came up with a number of creative entries and in reward for his effort he wins 10,000 TiVo Rewards Points.

The third place winner did a good job of capturing the look and feel I was looking for. It is important for the logo to stand out and be recognizable in different applications, at different sizes and resolutions. The simple G on a heart works perfectly, and clearly it occurred to multiple entrants. I liked the look of this design and it was a strong contender. This third place winner receives 15,000 TiVo Reward Points, congratulations to Cory Gransee!

Second place goes to a slightly different design submitted by Donald C. Alexander, who also submitted the second finalist entry. It has the G on a heart, but instead of the G being the gear the heart is itself on a gear wheel. I liked the different take on the concept, and the 3d perspective was nice for the site. But for other applications, such as embroidered on a polo shirt, it’d probably have to be re-done to be ‘flat’ - looking dead on at the heart so there wouldn’t be perspective to deal with. It was a near thing, a few people also commented that they liked this design, but in the end it didn’t quite sway me. The second place winner receives 25,000 TiVo Rewards Points, congratulations!

And here it is, the winner and the new Gizmo Lovers logo, created by Ethan Silverthorn. The one thing I didn’t quite like about the entry was that I felt it was a tad too dark, so the final version has been lightened up a bit. But that’s the only change. The shaded version is the new logo, while the solid colored variant can be used on printed materials. Somewhat amusingly reader unteins pretty much summed up my thinking in his comment on the finalists post.

The design is clean and simple, and is very clear from a distance. It scales well and looks good, and is recognizable and readable, both small and large. It is simple and translates well to a single color variant, which is important when you start pricing out printing business cards and the like. And I can easily see it embroidered on a polo shirt, or screen printed on a T-shirt. And those are things any good site logo needs to handle. And it best captures the kind of feel I was looking for for the site.

For submitting the winning design, Ethan wins the TiVo HD grand prize.

Thank you again to everyone who submitted a design. I’ll be emailing these winning entries to see what you’d all like for the points and work out delivery of the rewards.

Mark has long been an active member of the LJ TiVo Lovers Community, which is where we first met. He brings solid experience to Gizmo Lovers - a little bio:

Mark H. Anbinder is a computer specialist, food critic, hockey fanatic, whiskey aficionado, hobbyist photographer, and technology writer based in Ithaca, New York. His words appear in 14850 Magazine, TidBITS, Mark_TV, and Macworld, and in the strangest places.

Please welcome him to the site, and stay tuned for his posts. I’m looking forward to it myself, this marks a major step in the evolution of the site. My baby is growing up. *sniff*

In other news, I apologize for not blogging since mid-Monday. Since I started my new job with Sling I’ve been working a lot trying to get up to speed as quickly as possible. I was going to try to blog some things last night, but I just didn’t have the energy. I’m going to blog some things next, and I’m hoping to also settle the logo contest if I have the energy - but I may not get to that until tomorrow. I’m very much enjoying the new job, and everyone at Sling has been wonderful at helping me get started.

I’d had conversations with Sling on and off for a long time now about potentially joining the company, including in person at CES. And recently the suggestion of working as a part-time contractor had come up as a possibility. By coincidence they contacted me on March 28th, just after I’d been told I was laid off, to see if I was still interested in doing some part-time work. Since I found myself with a sudden surplus of free time we expanded the contract terms beyond the part time work. The timing couldn’t have been better.

Readers of the blog know that I’m a long-time Slingbox user myself, and a big fan of the company’s products and direction, so I’m very excited to be working there. And I’m hopeful that this contract is only the beginning of a long-term engagement.

Anyway, I think I’ve managed to squash them all now. And everything seems to be working. I’m not too happy about some of the changes they made to the interface. The biggest complaint is moving ‘categories’ on the authoring page. It is used on every post, and it used to be right next to the editing box in a nice pull-down, now they’ve moved it down the page such that you have to scroll to get to it. Everything used to fit on one screen to write posts. That’s really annoying. I’d be a lot more annoyed by the new interface if not for the Admin Menus plug-in. The default navigation is far too obtuse. These are the plug-ins I use now.

If you experience any trouble with the site, let me know - either directly or leave a comment.

And note that the order of the submissions doesn’t mean anything, it was just how I happened to save them from the submission emails.

And now, the submissions:

Submission 1:

This submission also included a solid color version of the logo, which may be better for business cards and such, as well as a concept for the site banner. The banner would be transparent in the final version, so it would be white letters on the black background.

Submission 2:

This submission also included a solid color version for cards, and a banner concept.

Submission 3:

And a third submission with a solid color version and a banner concept.

Submission 4:

Submission 5:

Submission 6:

This one has a banner concept as well.

Submission 7:

This was one of the more original concepts. A final version would be transparent to work on white, etc, but the submission is just on black.

I may work with the winning designer to tweak the design for the site. Whatever I end up using will have a transparent background to work on black, white, or other colors - as I do intend to allow readers to set their colors. The contest is really primarily for the logo, secondarily the favicon. I may work with the designer on the banner concept as well if they’re willing. Some of the designers already submitted concepts, as you see.

Still, I know some people really don’t like black backgrounds, so I’m going to try to bump the implementation of user-selectable styles to the top of my list. It has been on there for a while now, and I know what I need to do, it has just been a matter of finding time. So I hope to do that for you soon.

I know some of the URLs still have ‘TiVo’ in them. Fixing that is a lower priority, since that’s minor and it also means I’ll need to setup redirection for any URLs I change, lest I break old links. I will get to it. A higher priority is finding any lingering links on the site that still point to tivolovers.com, as well as updating content to use the new name. If you spot any issues on the site, you can comment on this post or contact me directly.

Now, as for RSS feeds. Fortunately, going by the FeedBurner stats, it looks like a lot of people automatically picked up the new feed. But there are still many people pointing to the old feed. If the previous post in your feed is ‘DVR Ad-Skipping Reduces Sales Of Up To 20% Of Brands‘, then you’re still getting the full feed. If the previous post in your feed is ‘Design A New Logo For Gizmo Lovers & Win A TiVo HD‘, then you are not getting the full feed - you’re just getting the site updates.

You are probably subscribed to http://feeds.feedburner.com/tivolovers, which is now deprecated. You should unsubscribe from that feed and subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/gizmolovers or simply http://www.gizmolovers.com/feed/ - which redirects to the same thing. (The latter is probably safer, since I can redirect that as needed in the future.) If you’re subscribed to http://www.tivolovers.com/feed/ that still works (since it redirects to http://www.gizmolovers.com/feed/), but you may want to update at some point just to be safe.

Oh, and I made a small edit to the create a new logo contest post. Check that out if you’re thinking of entering.

So, how to solve this problem? Have a contest! Whomever creates the image that is selected to be the new logo for the site wins a TiVo HD. And if you already have a TiVo HD, or just don’t want one, you can pick from the other available rewards for a total of 35,000 points. (If you already have a TiVo HD, perhaps the My DVR Expander and a Glo remote. I know that’s 36,000 points, that’s OK.)

The current site logo, seen at the right, was created by reader ‘artemis908′ back in August of 2006, originally as an icon for the ‘tivolovers’ LJ community. I’d originally created the little site icon, what you see in the browser location bar, as a kind of prototype concept:

I do like the heart motif as it goes with the ‘Lovers’ aspect of the site. I really do like the current site logo, but the TiVo guy just has to go as part of the overhaul. So something similar might be nice - but I don’t want to limit any artists. You never know what someone will think of that just feels right. ‘I’ll know it when I see it.’

I’m no lawyer, nor can I really afford one, so I’ll just say that whichever design wins would become the property of the site, which is effectively myself as this is a one-man operation. The design would need to work on the site, the current logo is 100×100 pixels - though the new one could vary within reason. I’d also need a simplified site icon (favicon.ico) version. As well as the source files so it could be manipulated for use on business cards, etc. It would have to work on the black background of the site, but the design (or variants thereof) should also work on a white background - as any business card would probably be white, and I intend to offer users the ability to use alternate color schemes on the site. (It is on my ‘To Do’ list.) If you’re so inclined you’d of course be free to include the logo in any portfolio of your work.

You can submit designs via comments on this post. Or you can contact me directly if you prefer, or if you have any questions you want to ask. If you want to bounce iterations off me before posting the submission, so as to not give away any ideas during development, that’s fine.

I’ll set midnight EST, Friday March 28. 2008 as the deadline for submissions - that’s the end of this week. Though if there is enough call to extend the deadline, I would certainly consider doing so.

Once the submissions are in I may post the candidates for review and comment. But in the end, it’ll be my decision - for better or for worse. My site, my choice. If I’m not happy with it it’ll just bug me forever.

Thank you, and good luck to any who enter!

EDIT: Of course, I woke up this morning and had a blinding flash of the obvious. The current site name at the top of the pages ‘Gizmo Lovers’ with the rainbow colored ‘Gizmo’ was just me riffing on the old ‘TiVo’ in the four TiVo colors, for lack of something better to do. It occurs to me that the design of the logo could be carried over into a new graphic site banner for the name, instead of the plain CSS-styled text used today. So if you want to put together a simple name graphic to go with the logo, I wouldn’t object.
END EDIT

I have had some thoughts about the design. But you may not want to read them if you’re the sort who likes to come up with things from a blank slate. Stop now if that’s the case.

I’m thinking of keeping the heart theme to go with ‘Lovers’, but obviously the TiVo Guy has to go. I was thinking of something like inter-meshing gears over the heart for the ‘gizmo’/tech angle. Something simple - not too busy, not specific to some tech. The simplified version for use as a site icon (favicon.ico) for the browser’s location bar and bookmarks doesn’t have to be identical, but should suggest the full version for users. For example, a single gear over the heart could be a simplified version of the inter-meshing gear concept.

Taking it further, I thought about the heart with a ‘G’ and an ‘L’ over it, - the G would have gear teeth around it, and the L would have teeth down the left side. They would inter-mesh with the L to the right and down from the G. Maybe the horizontal piece of the L could look like forklift forks, could be carrying some generic crate of gizmos. An animated version could raise/lower the forks. (Though I probably wouldn’t use an animated version as the main logo, too distracting.) I’m really not sure how that would look over the heart in the available space. Maybe just a static ‘gear’ G & L over the heart - either a modern, burnished metal look - or perhaps a steam-punk brass-with-fiddly-bits look. It might even be nice to have one of each - a little old and a little new. The favicon version of this could just have the gear-G over a heart.

The logo today is a simple 100×100 pixel image, which works well. So something the same size, or close, would be good. I wouldn’t want something much taller. Though a ‘raw’ large version would be useful for resizing for use elsewhere, just in case.

I realized well after I thought of this that the ‘G’ in my mind looked a lot like the Gizmonic Institute logo from MST3K - as represented by this model. See the ‘top view’ on page two. So something like that is what I was thinking.

Thank you and again, good luck!

And keep the comments coming folks, there are more giveaways to come!

Yes, the name of the site has changed. TiVo Lovers is now Gizmo Lovers, with the corresponding URL change to http://www.gizmolovers.com/. Don’t worry, the old URL and all the old links should still work, they’ll redirect to the new URL. I have TiVoLovers.com registered through December 3, 2016 (and GizmoLovers.com through January 17, 2018), so it should last quite a while. (And I may well keep the domains renewed beyond that point.)

There is one issue - there is no simple way to change the FeedBurner feed’s name and redirect the old one. I thought I’d be able to setup two feeds with the same content - the old and the new. But when I tried that, FeedBurner proved to be too ’smart’. It noticed the two feeds had the same source and kept giving me conflict errors. In the end I switched the old feed, http://feeds.feedburner.com/tivolovers, to carry only the site updates, and the new feed, http://feeds.feedburner.com/gizmolovers is now the full feed. So if you have an RSS reader subscribed to http://feeds.feedburner.com/tivolovers you’ll see this (as it is filed under Site Updates), but not the majority of posts. You need to unsubscribe and re-subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/gizmolovers - I’m sorry for the trouble. If you’re subscribed to http://www.tivolovers.com/feed/ you needn’t do anything, that has been mapped to the new feed and you should automatically get it. Though you might want to switch to http://www.gizmolovers.com/feed/ just in case the old domain stops working someday.

Why the name change? There are several reasons:

• Since the first day I setup the blog the name hasn’t really represented the content of the site, which goes far beyond just TiVo. That’s bothered me for a while.
• As the site has grown I’ve become increasingly conscious of the fact that I’m using TiVo’s trademark. While they haven’t asked me to stop, they could at any time and would certainly be within their rights to do so. I’d rather do so myself now rather than be forced to do so unplanned at some point.
• The name itself, ‘TiVo Lovers’, implied a bias to the site. That increasingly bothered me, as it made it easy for people discount the content as biased. It was also an issue when talking to other vendors. For example, when I talked to Digeo’s COO they brought up the name of the site and were concerned about fair coverage. And I certainly understood their concern. Even TiVo had some concerns when I did my Series3 review. They weren’t sure having me as a reviewer would be taken seriously because of the name of the site. Gizmo Lovers is a vendor-neutral name, which should help allay the bias issue.
• The site has been doing fairly well, and it is being taken more seriously by vendors that I talk to. I was somewhat surprised to have vendors recognize the site when I mentioned it to them, such as at the Blu-ray Disc Association booth during CES. Those discussions made me realize the name was a bit of an issue. And also that I might want to do things like get business cards made to hand out to promote the site and make more contacts - which brings me back to using TiVo’s name and their logo. I wouldn’t feel right using them on a card, even if TiVo didn’t object. And I think this will become more of an issue over time.

So, basically, I felt growing unease about violating TiVo’s trademark on their name and logo, and I increasingly felt that the name was limiting the options for growing and improving the site. Selecting a new name wasn’t easy, Gizmo Lovers was one of several names considered. But most of the domain names were taken, and I felt it was important to have the .com domain to go with the name. In the end Gizmo Lovers was the leading candidate - the domain as available, I liked the tone it implies, and having a similar cadence to the old name was a nice bonus for the transition.

Speaking of the logo, the site is going to need a new one. And I’m absolutely hopeless with graphics. So I’m going to be holding a contest for a new one, that’ll be another post.

I think I’ve managed to fix all of the internal links on the site, but if you noticed anything still pointing to the old URL, or any other troubles, please let me know.

Thank you.

You know, let’s make it even more interesting, I’ll select two winners this time!

I’ll accept entries until midnight EST Friday, March 21st. Entering is simple - leave a comment on this post with a link to a previous, non-giveaway, comment you’ve left on the blog - since May 20, 2007. (That’s the first WordPress post.) The time stamp on your comment is the link you need - like this. You can just post the URL, but it is neater if you use HTML links. For those who don’t know HTML, thusly: <a href=”http://www.gizmolovers.com/2007/05/20/major-change-wordpress/#comment-2320″>like this</a>. Obviously you’d use your comment link URL and not that one. One entry per user, please.

Also, you MUST enter a valid email address in the email box when you comment. That is how I will contact the winner to get their shipping info. I won’t even consider entries without a valid email address. Don’t worry, they aren’t used for anything else.

The list at the bottom of this page may help you find your old comments.

Good luck! I’m just getting warmed up. There will be some, shall we say, larger giveaways coming to reward those who comment on the blog.

Thanks to everyone who entered, better luck next time! And there will be a next time, fairly soon in fact. So keep those comments coming.

Let’s do this fast - I’ll accept entries until midnight EST tomorrow - that’s Friday, March 14th.

Entering is simple - leave a comment on this post with a link to a previous, non-giveaway, comment you’ve left on the blog - since May 20, 2007. (That’s the first WordPress post.) The time stamp on your comment is the link you need - like this. You can just post the URL, but it is neater if you use HTML links. For those who don’t know HTML, thusly: <a href=”http://www.gizmolovers.com/2007/05/20/major-change-wordpress/#comment-2320″>like this</a>. Obviously you’d use your comment link URL and not that one.

Also, you MUST enter a valid email address in the email box when you comment. That is how I will contact the winner to get their shipping info. I won’t even consider entries without a valid email address. Don’t worry, they aren’t used for anything else.

The list at the bottom of this page may help you find your old comments.

Good luck! And this just the first commenter giveaway I’ll be doing, a little teaser of things to come.

I suppose I probably should’ve taken a break at some point for food… or drink… or sleep…

Pardon me, I have some things to take care of offline.

But the more useful additions you may notice are the ‘Print This Post’ or ‘Print This Page’ links, which open a printer friendly version of the post/page for better printing. I’ve also added reCAPTCHA to help control the comment spam. As this site gains readership it, unfortunately, also comes up on the radar for more spammers, so the volume of (attempted) spam has been increasing.

I finally added a contact page so you can email me directly. That’s linked in the top, bottom, and left navigation so it should be easy to find for new users. I’ve been meaning to do that for a while.

This version of WordPress also adds tagging support, so I’ll be trying that on for size.

At the time I mentioned I was trying out FeedBurner - well, I’ve been extremely happy with it and I’m actively using it to track the site info. If you have a blog, I strongly encourage you to check it out - and hey, it is free. I’ll also toss in a recommendation for Google Analytics while I’m at it - I’ve been using that since I started the site. Before that even, as I’ve used it on other sites as well.

There have been a few WordPress updates as well as updates to several of the plug-ins I’m using, those have gone smoothly - as evidenced by it not being noticeable on the site. Oh, if you’re doing a global search and replace on your database, be sure to back it up first. If you don’t, it is kind of a pain to write SQL to undo your mess. Not that I’d know, of course. I’m just sayin’…

There is some new content - the TiVo HD review and photos were posted, of course, and the Series3 FAQ is now the Series3 and TiVo HD FAQ, and has been updated accordingly. That will be an ongoing process - and while I’m thinking of it, I think I need to update it to reflect 8.1.7c2. I’ve also updated my Season Pass list a few times since the last update.

I’ve also added more ways to support the site by shopping through the site’s affiliate links. Now you can donate TiVo Rewards points, shop the TiVo Lovers Store, watch Amazon Unbox downloads, shop Amazon.com, shop DVRupgrade.com, shop TiVo.com, shop SlingMedia.com, shop Buy.com, shop BestBuy.com, shop Roxio.com, shop Palm.com, sign up for One True Media, shop the Amazon TiVo Store, or buy paid time for the LJ community.

I like using affiliate programs because they’re win-win as far as I’m concerned. You, the reader, can use them to purchase things you’d buy anyway, and the site benefits from referral bonus for the sale. And sometimes they offer special discounts via the affiliate programs, which I’ll be sure to share with you. I’m especially happy to finally have the site participating in TiVo’s affiliate program for sales directly through TiVo.com. I am selective about which affiliate programs I’ll use on the site. I’ve limited to vendors and resellers most directly related to the content of the site (TiVo, Sling, and Palm and associated products) since I want to stay targeted and not just shotgun all kinds of links at you. Roxio, of course, offers Popcorn 3 and Toast 8 for the Mac, and Easy Media Creator 10 for Windows, all with TiVoToGo support. And One True Media makes it easy to share photos and home movi