esnippers' den

Downtime update

eSnippers, we had to reschedule our downtime to tonight instead of last night.  We'll be taking the eSnips website down starting at 2 AM Eastern Time on Thursday February 1, 2007. We hope to make this period of unavailability as short as possible.

Thanks again for your patience!!!

Goodbye and Thank You

Hi everyone. After a challenging, fun and extremely interesting year, I am leaving eSnips. I wanted to thank all of you for the wonderful feedback, suggestions, comments and emails you sent me. The most rewarding part of my work at eSnips was hearing what you think, understanding what you like and dislike, and seeing all the great stuff you shared on eSnips. I hope you continue to enjoy eSnips (I know I will) and that you keep telling eSnips what you think.
Hagit Katzenelson will be writing the company blog now and she will keep you updated on what's new on eSnips. Her email is hagit AT esnips DOT com. Please don't hesitate to contact her.
Thank you and I'll see you on eSnips.

Scheduled Downtime

We're currently planning a major system upgrade tomorrow, Tuesday January 30, 2007, at 2 AM Eastern Time.  As with all upgrades, a bit of downtime is required, and we hope to make it as short as possible.   

We'll continue to post updates to this downtime in every user's inbox message box just in case there are any changes.

Thank you for your patience!!

Service upgrade and expected disruptions

eSnips has been growing rapidly and it's time to move our service to a larger and better "home". We've started the transition to a new data center this week and we expect it will take a week to complete the process.
We do not expect major disruptions during this move, but you might experience a slower response from the eSnips service during this week.
Also, in order to complete the transition we will have to take down the service for 3-5 hours. I will let you know exactly when the downtime is scheduled to take place so please check for updates in the next few days.
We appreciate your patience as we complete this complex transition and apologize for the inconvenience. We will do our very best to keep the downtime as short as possible.
We're all looking forward to a faster and better service :-)
Read more about the service upgrade on the CEO (Yael's) blog.

New on eSnips: Create Your Personal Playlist

If you love listening to music on eSnips, then you'll absolutely love this new feature. You can now create a personal playlist on eSnips and listen to all the songs you want without interruptions.
All you have to do is click on the "add to playlist" button next to the song you want to listen to and it will be added to your playlist. You can keep adding songs to your playlist as you browse through eSnips and you will see how many songs you currently have on your list at the top of the page.

Click on the "Play button" and the songs you picked will start playing.

You can also pick an entire page to listen to by clicking on the "listen" link at the top of the folder. And there's more. You can play all the music files that were saved as Favorites too; play your list of Favorites, or any other eSnipper's list of Favorite music files. In the profile page, click on the "Play Music" button and all the music files that were "Favorited" by this eSnipper will be added to your playlist.

And if you want to do other things on eSnips while you listen to the songs on your playlist, click on the "external player" button next to the player and it will open in a new window. This way you can listen to the music in the background while you upload files to your eSnips account…
Please note that the playlist is not saved, if you close the playlist or leave eSnips, the list will be cleared. But don't worry; saving and sharing your playlists will be available soon!

And while we're on the subject of music, check out the brand new MP3 widget (click play to listen to the remix by DJ Enrique):

DJ_Enrique_-_Bewar...

As always, we're all waiting to hear your thoughts, comments and feedback.

New eSnips Widgets Play Music Right from Your Site

We added cool new widgets for music files and the fun thing about them is that when you click on the play button on the widget, it will play the song or track right from your site.
The eSnips widgets are easy to create and integrate into your website or blog. You decide what file on eSnips you’d like to link to and you choose a graphic style for your widget. The HTML code for the widget is generated automatically and you simply copy the code and place it in any other HTML editor to create the widget. Read more about how you can create widgets for your eSnips files here.

A few examples of the new widgets (click on the play button to listen to the music):

more breaks mixed ...	Ring Of Fire.mp3
fifty ways to leav...	M.V.P. - Bounce Sh...
Ed van der Blade a...

You can also customize the widget and change its background and font colors.

Have ideas for more widgets? Send them over.

eSnips Marketplace and New Communities

Love exclusive artwork, original music and unique fashion accessories? The new eSnips Marketplace is perfect for you.
The marketplace is where you can find what is being sold on eSnips; an amazing variety of artwork and gifts. The items are divided into 5 categories: art, crafts, fashion, music and gifts. If you want your items to be included in the marketplace, this is what you have to do:

1. Open a marketplace folder and put your items up for sale. If you're just getting started, you can find more information on how to sell stuff on eSnips here.
2. Tag each item with tags that describe it. The tags will determine which category the item belongs to:
   Items in the Art category are tagged with: art, abstract, painting, photos, digital, drawing, animation or comics.
   Items in the Crafts category are tagged with: crafts, mosaic, pottery or ceramics.
   Items in the Fashion category are tagged with: fashion jewelry, hats, accessories or handbag.
   Items in the Music category are tagged with: music, cds or tracks.
   Items in the Gifts category are tagged with: gifts, cards, gift, soap or herbs.

We've been getting sincere and helpful feedback on the eSnips communities and we're thrilled to hear you're enjoying them and find them interesting. Based on your suggestions, comments and interests, we've added a few more to the growing list of eSnips communities:
Spiritual – to join this community, tag your stuff with: spiritual, religion, faith, bible, sermon, gospel or church.
Paranormal – to join this community, tag your stuff with: paranormal, UFO, alien, esp, orbs, vampires or EVP.
Humor – to join this community, tag your stuff with: humor, funny, fun, comedy, laugh or funnies.
Pets – to join this community, tag your stuff with: pets, pet, cat, cats, dog, dogs or animals.
Wedding - to join this community, tag your stuff with: wedding, weddings, marriage or bride.
Current Affairs - to join this community, tag your stuff with: politics, democracy or society.
And there are more! The full list of communities can be found on this new page (clicking on "more" on the communities navigation bar will get you to this page). This is where you can see what new communities are added and find those you're interested in.
Please note the "Suggest a new community" link on this page. If you have ideas or topics for additional communities, please click on this link and fill out the form on the next page. We look forward to hearing all your ideas.