esnippers' den

eSnips Social DNA for Facebook!

eSnips announces Social DNA-for-Facebook, a new service that connects people around their passions, preferences, interests and views of the world.

With Facebook now at millions of users worldwide, it has become an expansive network to keep in touch with people you know professionally and personally. eSnips Social DNA-for-Facebook takes this connection a gigantic step forward by allowing Facebook users to not only find out much deeper levels of interests, passions and views about friends inside their network but also allows them to discover others with like-minded views they have never met from around the world.

It is done through a series of fun, creative and often provocative 1-2 minute online quizzes across multiple topics (referred to as Social Genes). eSnips Social DNA quizzes range from open-ended questions about favorite movies or books to multiple choice questions about travel, celebrities, the Bush Administration, the environment, fashion, sports, relationships, shower habits and much more.

People seek intelligent and intriguing interaction around their interests. They are looking for someone who shares their taste in different aspects of their lives. Now, instead of searching in a variety of applications, users will find their match in one central application which synchronizes all their favorite topics – all of which can be shared and compared. Matches can be discovered in their networks, among their friends and all Facebook users. Enter the world of eSnips Social DNA.

Social DNA becomes incredibly fascinating when thousands of users answer hundreds of quizzes and lists encompassing all aspects of their lives and get matched.  It is then that users discover people who love science fiction as much as they prefer lasagna to any other food, or believe that Al Gore or Hillary Clinton should be the next president of the

United States

.

Friends Across the Universe

To enjoy  beautiful interpretations of some classic Beatles songs,

have a look at this folder

Friends Across the Universe , a project started by

Brian , who writes: "Friends Across the Universe Proudly Present A Tribute To The Beatles!

A Feast of some of the greatest songs ever wrote and performed by our very own Esnips Beatle Band. Please enjoy, also my thanks and love go out to all who helped in the making of this beautiful tribute. Thanks to Heather/Terry Gill for Beatle art - and last but not least thank you to Esnips for allowing us to share our music, my love goes out to all, very best wishes for Christmas – Brian"

Brian told me a while ago he wanted to create

this project.

He organized it around Beatles' songs, and it seems to me that every singer on the album really loves the song they are singing – you can hear it in their voices.

To be a vocalist with singing in their blood, to perform lyrics they love must be one of the ultimate highs.

I would like to humbly suggest it is not only a tribute to the Beatles, but also to the joy of singing, and how fantastic it can make you feel – and to some pretty damn good singers, too!

thank you Brian, and the  fabulous singers (and one piano player!) , this is a wonderful start to the holiday season.

Lonnie

Update on the download buton:

Some of you might have seen this post in the forums, as well:

"Hi Everyone –

Let me say a few words that I hope will help straighten things out...

While we know many of you use the site to distribute and promote your own work, we have to make sure the site isn't being used for unauthorized sharing of copyrighted materials. That means that we have to keep a fine ba

lance

between serving eSnippers with good intentions and making it difficult for others to use eSnips for inappropriate purposes. That's not always easy. 

We also receive frequent requests from users and artists who want to encourage the distribution of their work by enabling download by default. 

Taking all this into consideration we decided to remove the default availability of the download button. But we do hear what you are saying, and are giving it serious thought.

We are considering reversing the default so that it will first enable download and will provide an option to disable it. Let us do some more checking and see if and how it can be done. 

You might've also noticed that over the past months we've become very proactive in introducing tools that identify and prevent the uploading of infringing content to the site. In the process it sometimes happens that content is wrongly disabled. We hope you understand we make every effort to avoid that.  If anything happens to your content, please let us know and work with us. On our end, we will make every effort to fix things asap."

- Lonnie 

The download button: changes for music files

Musicians and singers – listen up!

Partly as a response to your requests, and partly because some signed artists have opened eSnips profiles and asked to prevent downloads of their work, we’ve decided to give you more control as to who gets to download your audio files.  Our new audio-only tool allows you to determine, for each file, if it can be downloaded or only listened to from the site.

Up to now, audio files could be downloaded only when you were signed in.  As of today, users who upload or already have a MP3 or WMA audio file in their folders can decide if it can be downloaded or not. 

To allow visitors to download your files in public or group folders click “edit details” next to the file.  The “edit details” link is available only in the “List” “Details” or “One by One” folder views.  On the bottom of the file edit page, you will see the text below.  By checking this box your file will be available for download.  If you don’t check it, the file will only be available for listening only.  By default, files are not available for download.  You’ll need to do this for every audio file you want to enable for download, and for every new audio file you upload.   

When you change a folder from private to either group or public, files will not be available for download unless you purposely enable it.

the DJs are up to new Trix!

Another hit from the DJ Tag Team - a mix of eSnips DJs who work together to create something excellent.

You might remember their first mix: World Tag Team -Round One .

Now DJ J Rock, DJ Manou , Mighty Jah , Steve Murray, DJ ROO, and RETROTECH introduce the new

             FX & TRX Mix

And RETROTECH designed the album art, too. We like it!

Drop by their pages, they are well worth spending time with...

(they already have new projects going on, so stay tuned!)

-Lonnie

More Upgrading

Continuing our upgrade of eSnips - we will be doing a some more today, and it will probably affect things for a bit.

See you later!

-Lonnie

2 in 1 post: Pictures from the eSnips event AND introducing our Slideshow!!

You’ve waited over a week – and pictures of the Social DNA launch event are finally here!

However, instead of presenting them to you in the old, traditional boring way, I’ve put together a slideshow with our new, amazing slideshow editor. With the editor, you can select pics from your folders, add transitions between them, add slides with text, and add effects such as shimmering stars to each pic. You can also add an audio track – for this slideshow I’ve added Genise’s and Ken’s collaboration for They Don’t Know because it’s what she sang at the event.

Start creating slideshows when you’re signed in by clicking “My Slideshows” from your “My Home” page or “Create Slideshow” on the Files bar in each folder.

Some other examples: Dj Baserock and mollyantoinette have embedded slideshows showing their work in their profile.

Enjoy

- Hagit

Site Upgrade - Maintenance

Hi!

We are just about to begin an upgrade, and that will probably

affect the community homepages.It shouldnt last too long, and navigating around

the site through search will work as usual.

See you on the other side!

Lonnie

Our first ever launch party

Today we launched the new Social DNA feature on eSnips, an interesting way to find out more about   yourself and to find people share your interests. Yesterday we had a fun launch event on the beach with some local bloggers, press, internet entrepreneurs and VCs. The atmosphere was casual, the location fantastic and even the food was great. 

During the evening, Yael gave a short intro to the Social DNA, and then we played a short clip about it. However, the undisputed star of the evening was our very own Genise Gee, who flew all the way from Scotland to sing for us. She sang two Abba covers (including Money Money Money with a wink to the VC community) and then two truly beautiful songs: They Don’t Know (with Ken’s amazing guitar backup) and Heaven, a duet which she sang with another eSnips karaoker: Catalin.

I promise pictures soon, and hopefully the video of the duet.

Genise, you’re a true performer! Just keep singing.

- Hagit

Access problems?

It seems that over the weekend we had access problems from various places around the world. We think it started and ended on Sunday, and was limited to a few places in North America, but we’re not sure because many of the users that we asked to check did have access to the site. DJ François-Yanick Bourassa, aka DJ FYB, mentioned that eSnips wasn’t available in Montreal.

If you did experience problems with the site over the weekend, can you please let us know. Thanks!

- Hagit