Flavors.me Blog

New Service: Dribbble

Wed, 02 May 2012 11:10:35 -0400

This week we’ve added a new service, Dribbble. Dribbble lets designers share screenshots of the projects they’re working on, whether that’s an app, a typeface, an icon or illustration. When you join Dribbble you can get feedback from the community and, even better, get hired by recruiters who have signed up as Scouts.

Lily Tse uses Dribble + Flavors to share interface designs alongside her LinkedIn profile, Instagram photos, tweets, blog posts and more.

Ellliot Ross shares digital marketing designs along with his DJ mixes, LinkedIn profile, tweets, Foursquare check-ins and more.

Join them by sharing your Dribbble shots on Flavors today!

A Farewell to Streams

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 11:54:38 -0400

Last November, we rolled out a new feature on Flavors called Streams as part of a major release that included other great updates, such as a customizable mobile layout for premium users. Streams brought together your updates, check-ins, songs and more in a single timeline, and allowed you to track and follow other Flavors users, as well.

Unfortunately, since its release, this feature has had a negative impact on service update performance across Flavors sites, beyond the level we had anticipated. Our priority is giving you a powerful, highly customizable, yet easy-to-use platform for creating an online presence. Flavors sites are, of course, less useful when update frequency is low. That’s why we’ve made the tough decision to remove Streams entirely today, as well as the option to follow other Flavors users.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause the Flavors community, and hope you understand our reasoning for the change. Giving you the tools to make a beautiful, useful site on your own is what the team here at HiiDef does best. It’s our goal to keep your site’s updates steady and reliable, and we believe that removing Streams in favor of other improvements is the way forward for Flavors.

If you have any questions on these changes, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at support@flavors.me, in the forums at help.flavors.me or via @flavorsme on Twitter.

Fundraising with Flavors

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:45:08 -0500

We love to see Flavors being used as a home for creative fundraising efforts. Last year, Ruben Henriquez created a portfolio on Flavors and set up a Goodsie-powered store to help support his dream of becoming a professional photographer, garnering the attention of Huffington Post for his entrepreneurial drive.

Other projects that call Flavors home became fully funded with the help of Kickstarter, like the Rabbit Island artist residency program and documentary film The Throwaways.

Here are a couple more endeavors on Flavors with active campaigns ending soon! Your donations will help make them happen, and earn you some neat goodies in return.

Brooklyn-based band Spanish Prisoners, featured on NPR’s “Five Best Bandcamp Albums of 2011,” want to make it to South by Southwest this year. Help make their “vantasy” happen. Just 33 hours left to pitch in!

Zoneplex, a sci-fi board game by designer and musician Shelby Cinca, who also uses Flavors as a hub for his band The Cassettes, electronic music project Triobelisk and related iPad game Tri-Tri-Triobelisk. Check out the kooky video for the game and head to the Kickstarter page to support this intriguing space adventure. Just three days left!

Do you have an idea that could use some support? Flavors is a great way to display information about your project and fundraising campaign alongside social media updates from Twitter, Facebook and more.

New Service: 500px

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:14:00 -0500

Photography is a foundational element of the Flavors experience. Our fullscreen media galleries and customizable grid displays were designed to showcase high-resolution images in stunning visual fashion. And so, we are pleased to be announcing support for 500px, a photography community powered by creative people from all over the world that lets you share and discover inspiring photographs.

If you’re a photographer, 500px is your connection to a whole world of people passionate about images. It’s the place for you to upload your work and create a beautiful portfolio, interact with a talented and dedicated community, vote on photos, and have your work reviewed in return.

To celebrate the 500px and Flavors integration, we will each be giving away 10 premium account upgrades! To win, tweet a link of your Flavors site connected with 500px to @flavorsme.

Lijit Stats

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 10:09:50 -0500

Have you ever wondered who’s checking out your Flavors site?

Premium Flavors users can add Lijit analytics in the external statistics area to gather even more details about their visitors and site performance, including data on pageviews, referring sites and searches, and geography — valuable information that can help you shape your Flavors site to better take advantage of incoming traffic.

These details and more can be accessed via the Lijit analytics dashboard.

Upgrade today to access stats, premium layouts, the option to use a custom domain name (i.e. mysite.com), a contact form, custom content, a favicon and more! For a limited time, new premium users will receive a second free upgrade to share.

The New Flavors

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 08:59:00 -0500

Today we are pleased to announce the release of a major update to Flavors, including the introduction of an innovative new way to share and view content from more than 30 services around the web: Social Streams.

Social Streams

With Social Streams, users can now easily follow their favorite Flavors sites and experience photos, videos, blog posts, check-ins and more in one consistent and beautiful viewing experience.

We’ve even updated our music player for an elegant listening experience, whether via HypeMachine, Tumblr, SoundCloud, 8tracks or Bandcamp.

Only want to see photos from work friends? Simply filter the view to display content from selected sources (i.e. Flickr, Instagram and Picasa) and users (i.e. your awesome colleagues). The Social Stream reloads to display only the content you’ve selected.

If you’d like to turn off an update type from a specific site (perhaps your uncle’s hourly tweets), services can be controlled on a site-by-site basis. Go to the Following menu and disable specific services within a site’s settings to hide those updates in your Social Stream view.

Community

Our Directory has a new name: Community. No longer just a space to showcase Flavors sites, it’s also a hub for discovering and following sites in the Social Stream. Hover over the site you like, and click on the “+” to follow their updates. You can also click on the follow button in a Flavors site’s footer.

New Layouts and Display Options

We’ve revamped our layout system to make way for new layouts and features, such as gorgeous gallery and full-screen display options that make high-resolution images and video shine. Premium users can now choose from 17 beautiful layouts — twice our previous offering.

The new Display menu in the Design Panel provides granular control over the number of content columns that display for each service, creating a richer, more customized look.

Logos and Portraits

Logo support was a much-requested feature, and has now arrived. Logos can now be used in addition to or instead of background images to easily brand your site. We’ve added a Portrait option, too, which displays beside your updates in the Social Stream.

Mobile Optimization

Overall mobile performance has improved in the new version. What’s more, Premium Flavors users can enable our sleek new mobile layout, which includes font and background customizations for a smoother experience on iPhones and Androids.

Fonts For Everyone

Free accounts no longer have a restricted selection of fonts — in fact, we’ve added more. We now offer 222 fonts to all users, free or Premium, and we’ve made them available for content, too.

New Services: Songkick and Goodsie

Flavors now supports tour date service Songkick, so you can share the shows you’ve seen and scheduled, and Goodsie, an easy-to-use hosted e-commerce platform, built by the team behind Flavors.

Goodsie integration allows you to share your shop’s inventory, directing visitors to the storefront for checkout. Goodsie is free for the first 30 days and just $15 per month afterward. Give it a try!

A redesigned navigation bar, shadow effects, Google+ and LinkedIn sharing options, premium support for Lijit stats, link target options and even more are all part of the update.

Get Started!

To experience the new Flavors and get started with Social Streams, sign up at flavors.me or log in to your account.

Existing users will be prompted to update to the new version in order to log in and edit their site. Note that your layout may be modified in the new version, so some design tweaks may be needed to maintain your old look.

If you have any questions or issues, please don’t hesitate to contact our support team at support @ flavors.me

Steve Jobs Remembered

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 13:23:00 -0400

Steve Jobs had an incredible influence on creatives and businesspeople, including the HiiDef team. Here, we reflect on his work and his drive, which was both relentless and contagious, inspiring us and others to produce well-considered products while always keeping an eye on what’s next.

Not too long ago, Michael Dell suggested Apple shut down and return what little money it had left to shareholders. Steve Jobs proceeded to engineer the greatest re-emergence in business history, culminating with Apple being crowned the most valuable company on the planet. Steve Jobs was the truest of visionaries and innovators, an inspiration to us all.

- Jonathan Marcus, HiiDef Co-Founder & CEO

For those of us battling every day to establish ourselves as entrepreneurs, Mr. Jobs was an inspiration because he was steadfast in his beliefs and vision. Mr. Jobs knew what he wanted to achieve, and worked tirelessly to make it happen.

His values of form, beauty and simplicity being just as important as function has always guided my own work. Making software that performs a task is one thing, but making software that works seamlessly and is easily understandable is a true art.

I will always credit Steve Jobs for instilling those values in me with his products.

- Sean Jackson, HiiDef Developer & Designer

I remember my first trip to the Genius Bar fondly. I found it amazing that such a large company, with such diverse and complex products, could offer such personalized one-on-one support. By elevating customer support team members to “genius” status, Jobs highlighted the value and importance of user experience and customer service, inspiring me to provide personalized attention to users, ensuring they have an overall positive experience.

Jobs said it best: “It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

- Tatiana Peisach, HiiDef Customer Support

Steve made the world respect design.

- Jack Zerby, HiiDef Co-Founder & Lead Designer

Featured Flavors User: Comedian Kirk Zipfel

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 14:04:53 -0400

You’ve probably caught actor and comedian Kirk Zipfel in primetime television spots, sporting a meat poncho in a commercial for Degree or donning a pair of women’s skinny jeans in a spot for Miller Lite. His work also extends beyond 30-second slots, ranging from songwriting to creating and starring in an original web series and performing standup in California. Here he took some time to talk with us about his career and his Flavors site.

Flavors: Have you always been a performer? And which came first for you, music or jokes?

Kirk Zipfel: I’ve been acting since I was a kid, doing theater, improv and sketch, but only got into standup in my twenties. The music had always been something I just did for fun. Standup was a work thing, a path towards a goal on TV. I never thought of myself as a songwriter, mostly because I believed my “real” songs sucked. I thought, “Any serious song has already been done 1000 times over, and probably better than I can do it. Just look at Nick Drake, and he pulled the plug 40 years ago!” But what if I wrote comedy songs that were funny and well performed? That put me in a more distinct category, which is what you want as a performer; something everyone else can’t do.

F: Who influences your comedy style?

K: When comedy broke away from the one-liners and rim shots of the 60’s and became something much more personal and self-referential was when it became great. Guys like (what a surprise) Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor led the way, followed by the precision silliness of Steve Martin (banjo master), the perfect deadpan of Stephen Wright, the primal rage of Bill Hicks, and on to the unfiltered honesty of Louis CK. Love them or not, Tenacious D single-handedly created the melodically-complex demon acoustic comedy rock genre. Those are all pretty safe choices from any “best of comedy” blog. These days some of my favorite comedians are Theo Von, Anthony Jeselnik and the thrash/Mormon rage of Tartar Control.

F: We loved your role in the Miller Lite commercial. How long did it take you to get into those skinny jeans?

K: They were women’s size 27s. I did the pliers-zipper thing on my back just to get them on. I don’t want to brag, but my ass looked fierce in them, until it turned blue from low circulation.

F: What are your plans for the coming year? Can we be on the lookout for you in other TV spots?

K: The Degree spot with Bear Grylls is now running again for football season. Commercials are a fickle provider. Hard to say what you’ll be doing more than a week in advance.

F: Where can people see you perform?

K: I’ll be at the Irvine Improv on the 27th, and doing a 30-minute set at the fantastic Room 5 in Hollywood on Oct. 27th. Check out my Flavors page at kirkzipfel.com to see what’s happening.

F: What made you chose Flavors to showcase your work?

K: I’m not one to pay someone for something I can do myself (also known as cheapness), hence the 1984 IROC (minus the transmission) decomposing in my driveway. I chose Flavors because of the extreme ease of use. I had been looking for an easy-to-manage platform and within an hour I was up and shining on the intermetsk.

Flavors Customer Support Closed on Monday, September 5

Sat, 03 Sep 2011 02:17:55 -0400

Our customer support team will be off on Monday for Labor Day. Enjoy the long weekend, Americans! While we’re out, have fun browsing the Directory. Here are a few favorites that we’ve recently featured on Twitter:

Oliver Blank, composer

Aline Calixto, samba singer

DaVinci, hip hop artist

Devereau Chumrau, actress

Shanee Pink, musician

Startup Weekend Shanghai - English Edition

LA's Best Coffee app in LA Weekly

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 04:17:24 -0400

The LA’s Best Coffee iPhone, iPad and Android app is featured in LA Weekly. Check out their Flavors-powered site to learn more and grab the app.

Java addicts outside of the Los Angeles area can get their fix, too, thanks to other apps by Blue Crow Media: San Francisco’s Best Coffee, New York’s Best Coffee and London’s Best Coffee, all with sites powered by Flavors.

Hallo! Ciao! Hei! привет! Hej!

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 09:34:00 -0400

If we just greeted you in your language, you can help us translate Flavors!

We’re looking for volunteers who can lend a hand with Dutch, Italian, Norwegian, Russian and Swedish translations, to add to our ever-growing list of supported languages.

Email support @ flavors.me with your details if you’re interested. We’ll send you a special thanks for your time when you’re done!

Flavors Support Will Be Closed on July 4

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 11:38:00 -0400

Customer support will be closed on Monday, July 4, in honor of U.S. Independence Day. In the meantime, enjoy these photos from around the Flavors community:

Happy Fourth!

New Service Option: Flickr Sets

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 11:45:00 -0400

A long-requested option for the Flickr service is here! Now you can narrow down displayed photos to specific sets under Content > Manage (click the pencil icon and select “Photos” if it isn’t already checked, then select sets).

This also allows visitors to navigate to specific sets from a handy dropdown.

Enjoying Flickr sets? Let us know at @flavorsme or help.flavors.me!

Flavors in the Wild: Dengue Fever on PBS Arts

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 12:27:03 -0400

LA-based band Dengue Fever, which artfully combines Cambodian pop with psychedelic rock, was recently featured on PBS Arts’ “SOUND TRACKS Presents: Quick Hits.” Watch them perform “Gendjer Gendjer” for PBS below and check out their Flavors-powered site, denguefevermusic.com.

Watch the full episode. See more Sound Tracks.

“Flavors ♥ Music” featuring “Mirror” by...

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 10:30:38 -0400

“Flavors ♥ Music” featuring “Mirror” by Kordan

Customer Support Will Be Closed On Memorial Day

Fri, 27 May 2011 13:30:00 -0400

Our team will be off duty during the Memorial Day holiday on Monday, May 30. General questions, suggestions and reports of minor issues sent to our support email address and posted in the forum will likely not receive a response until Tuesday, May 31.

In the meantime, enjoy reading interviews with featured users, such as Curt Smith, here on the blog, and finding inspiration in the Directory!

Thanks, and happy weekend!

New Premium Feature: Google Maps

Tue, 17 May 2011 13:24:48 -0400

Upgraded Flavors users have a new option under Custom Content: Maps!

The new Google Maps integration provides an easy way for businesses, festivals and site-specific projects to share their location with visitors. To create a map, head to Content > Add > Custom > Maps. Enter an address or place name, and click “Find.” When your map appears, drag the image to customize its look, give it a title, and Save. Your new map will now be displayed as an item next to services in your navigation.

Check out how these Flavors users are displaying maps on their sites:

Bistro Pacific restaurant

Basta Boutique

Porto.Come food festival

659 Bergen Street condominiums

Working for Gear geocaching adventure

To take advantage of maps and other premium features, such as a custom domain name, click on the pink “Upgrade” button in your Flavors account to subscribe for just $20 per year.

Featured Flavors User: Tears for Fears Co-founder Curt Smith

Thu, 12 May 2011 11:30:00 -0400

Curt Smith, co-founder of seminal pop band Tears for Fears, has an exciting year ahead, with a range of projects including a tour and the re-release of Mayfield. The artist recently took time out to talk to Flavors about his plans and inspirations, why he uses Flavors, and the importance of staying engaged online.

Flavors: What is the biggest change you’ve seen in the music industry since the start of your career 30 years ago?

Curt Smith: The biggest change is clearly the internet. The ability for consumers to download music, and the movement away from physical product, has been a game-changer. In addition, it’s brought about the (welcome) downfall of the major labels. Today there are few, if any, barriers to entry, no gatekeepers to keep you from getting your product into the marketplace. The issues now are twofold, 1) how artists will get fairly compensated for internet streams and digital sales, that’s obviously still working itself out, and 2) getting your product heard when there are an infinite number of distribution channels and nearly as many artists all striving for the consumer’s ear.

F: This summer will see the re-release of your long out-of-print album Mayfield. What was the impetus for making it available again now?

C: Happily, fans have been asking for it, so I just decided it was time. The company that originally released it in the late 90s doesn’t exist anymore. (So if any copies ARE still in the marketplace, nary a penny of the sales price comes to me.) It’s an album I’m proud of and I’m happy to make available once again. I’m also doing a bonus track for it, a re-recording of the song “Trees” from the album. Musician Janice Whaley, who recently completed a solo project re-recording the entire Smiths catalog, has laid down the “instrumental” portion of the song, and I recorded a new lead vocal. We’re just finishing the mixing and mastering now. For those fans who bought the original version of the album, never fear: the bonus song will also be available to buy as a digital single, so you won’t have to buy the album all over again just to get the new track! I wouldn’t do that to people.

F: “The Social Media Project” series of collaborations made via internet contacts is an intriguing project that has resulted in some lovely songs already. Can you tell us a bit about where you are with it now?

C: Thank you! I really enjoyed working both Zoë Keating and Melissa Kaplan (who I have yet to meet) on the first two tracks. Right now I’m looking for my next collaborator; I may do a tune with Janice Whaley. The joy of this project is that I’m doing it on my own time, as I’m inspired and meet a collaborator who seems right for a given song. I’m not on a deadline and will keep releasing singles as and when they’re ready.

All Is Love (featuring Zoë Keating) by curtsmith

F: What has been the most surprising or delightful result of your live music web series, Stripped Down Live, so far?

C: The best part was being inspired by the talent and creativity of the artists we had on the show. Whether they were rising stars like The Daylights, Nightmare & The Cat or Fitz & The Tantrums, or brilliant veterans like Matthew Sweet, Peter Himmelman or Gary Jules, there was an incredible energy in the studio when they performed. Especially in the heavily post-produced music scene we have today, having people in studio with the chops and fearlessness to play and sing absolutely live was a delight.

One highlight in particular was doing “Mad World” with Gary Jules. We had never done that before - ever! The YouTube video of our duet has been viewed nearly 100,000 times now, so I’m guessing it resonated with the fans as well. Another highlight came not on the show itself but as a result of an episode: The Daylights asked me to play bass on their song “Weapons” at their two most recent Los Angeles gigs. I was quite honored and had a great time doing it.

F: What are you most looking forward to working on this year?

C: Everything! I hope to do another track or two for the Social Media Project. Right now I’m working with my writing partner Charlton Pettus on the score for a feature film. In June, I’m going to Italy with my family to celebrate my 50th birthday. This fall, I’m doing a Tears For Fears tour of the West Coast, Mexico and South America. I hope to do some more TV work, both in front of the camera - I would love to do another live music show - and on soundtrack. And in between things, I hope to play a few more solo shows in Los Angeles.

F: What has been inspiring you lately?

C: Interestingly enough, and I wouldn’t have thought this would happen, playing live. I’ve been doing a residency at the Whitefire Theatre in Sherman Oaks (which runs through June 1). As part of the show, I’ve been playing a work-in-progress song called “Beautiful Failure.” Doing the song live has actually helped me figure out how I want to record it, and I don’t think it would have come out the same if I’d gone straight into studio without performing it. So I guess you could say that playing live has been inspiring in and of itself.

F: Why did you chose to make a personal site on Flavors?

C: My manager and I work together to make sure I’m represented online where I should be, and Flavors.me is something she recommended to me fairly soon after it launched. Much as my own official website does, it aggregates my feeds from a number of the most popular sites and services. We’re able to customize it with my branding, and (perhaps most important) it looks quite professional without requiring a huge time investment to set up or to maintain.

F: As a speaker on social media, what advice would you give to those trying to make a name for themselves online?

C: I’m presuming you mean other musicians? My advice is that social media isn’t set it and forget it. You need to use it regularly. Luckily, smartphones make that pretty easy to do. I can update Twitter, Facebook, SoundCloud, even my own website right from my iPhone, so there’s no excuse not to do so. You need to engage and be engaging, not just make pronouncements. Above all: always do it yourself. Your followers can tell in a second if it’s not really you doing the updates, and once you lose the audience’s trust and credibility it’s difficult to get it back.

More from Curt Smith on: Flavors | iTunes | Amazon

New Service: The Hype Machine

Thu, 05 May 2011 17:15:08 -0400

It’s not always easy to find the best of the best in a growing sea of music blogs. Enter The Hype Machine, a music discovery engine that makes finding new tunes and MP3 blogs easy. Check through popular songs, browse the blog directory, love and follow your new favorites, and more.

Hype Machine is now available in our growing selection of services, allowing you to share your listening history, loved songs, and favorite MP3 blogs through your Flavors site.

To share your profile, head to Content > Add in the design panel and click on Hype Machine. After authorizing, go to Content > Manage and click on the pencil icon to narrow down your preferences to Loved Songs, History and Favorite Blogs.

Not a member of The Hype Machine yet? Sign up for free at hypem.com to start discovering and collecting the best tracks from around the web.

Check out these great examples of Hype Machine integration in action:

Alexandre Humeau

Selysette-Sarina Sanchez

Smoking Sound

Luiza Pimenta

Calley Hirsch

Goodsie Launches To Make Online Retail Easy

Mon, 02 May 2011 23:41:35 -0400

Goodsie Launches To Make Online Retail Easy:

New York, NY May 2nd, 2011: HiiDef, the creators of Flavors.me, announced today the launch of Goodsie, the easiest way to set up a branded shop online. Retailers of all kinds, from eBay power sellers to artisans in handmade goods marketplaces or indie bands, need their own branded storefront to connect directly with their customers and drive brand awareness.

“While there are hundreds of e-commerce options available, they’re still too complex for most retailers to use themselves. You shouldn’t need to learn to code or pay thousands of dollars to sell handmade t-shirts online. Online retail should be easy.” said Jonathan Marcus, Founder and CEO of Goodsie.

Based on the same design system as Flavors.me, Goodsie features a real-time design interface, structured product filtering, real-time analytics, seamless integration with payment gateways such as Paypal, Google Checkout, Amazon Payments and much more. Goodsie costs $15 per month after a 30-day free trial.

Hundreds of retailers are now using Goodsie to run their business such as BoomCase, Cool Hunting, Zara Terez, MilkMade Ice Cream, and Skrillex.