Jamza Blog | ||
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| I wasn't too sure where to direct this project and now I've got a clearer idea. I must thank all those who've participated in helping to give this a go and test the actual concept. However I think that there is a better way to make use of the functions here and I'm going to revamp this site into a mini-hub site. This will allow people to use the site to create short mini-hub pages for information and to get backlinks to their site. If you are a webmaster and you haven't discovered yet, you can get a free backlink here just by creating your own pages. In fact you can get keyword specific backlinks when you are the first to create a specific word. Just like in Squidoo or Hubpages. Go register and create your own bubbles now. Your "lenses" or pages will remain even after the revamp, so get them whilst you can! | ||
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| Since the start of this project I figured that there would be more interest however it's hard to work out what people really want from a fun website. Jamza was never really created as anything other than an inspirational idea to try to capture the essence of what is fascinating about top 10 lists. So as such, we are a little unsure as to what direction we should take this project. A few ideas have come to mind which include a name change to make it more memorable, but also a direction change to create a more commercially oriented website. This is something we are brainstorming and this is also why there has been little change on the site over the past several months. If you have any suggestions on what to do, or perhaps you have new ideas and would like to get involved, please contact us and we will certainly hear you out. | ||
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| Thanks for all the efforts and suggestions. As always these are eternally useful and help us to make Jamza an all together more cool and fun place to hang out. Sorry it's been so long since the last update but there have been a few changes here to the site. The logo has been jazzed up to start with and we've also added some topical questions to the homepage to give people a chance to voice an opinion without the need to sign up. We have opened up the system to allow all commercial ventures to make full use of Jamza as well. You can fully utilize the bubbles facility to create a focus group around your own topics. A whole new section has been added called WikiJams which emulate the early days of Wikipedia. Every list item can have it's own wikijam which can be edited by anyone who is a member of the website. Also added recently are item voting which all contributes to the Jamza total top ten lists. These are just votes towards which items from other members lists you feel should be in the global top ten list for that particular topic. Look out, further additions coming soon. | ||
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| As the Jamza website grows, we are adding more features to keep things fun. Recently we've improved the zlist functions and also added a small Notes feature which is basically an instant message system that appears on your friends profiles. Don't ask me where we got the idea from.......duh. So further developments are being made the moment and it would be really interesting to hear from people as to what you think will help us to make this a really useful and interesting site. Currently here are a few ideas being thrown about: - podcasts - discussing lists and their merits. - a commercial section for business websites to incorporate their own lists and create co-branded widgets allowing their lists to be displayed on many sites - blog importing - would users find it useful to be able to import their rss blog feeds from other sites into Jamza? - a general public forum for the discussion of the development of the website. As always, we value highly your input, so bring it on, give us the ideas and we'll make them come true. | ||
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 If you’ve ever wondered why top ten lists are so prevalent in society, then you are not the first. These days it seems that everybody has an opinion on something, and to cut to the chase, it is often easier to create a short list of 10 of the best in any discussed topic.Of course these lists are given much more weight when the creator has some reputation for knowledge in that particular subject matter. Here is an indication of how prolific top 10 lists are. By using Google to do a search, we can compare the number of returned results with other search terms to give an indicator of its significance in society. Remember, when you search for a term in Google or any other search engine, it lists results from websites indexed in their servers. Here are the results from a quick fact finding mission we made (format, keywords, returned results): Top 10 – 2.4bn Video – 1.36bn DVD, 1.1bn Top 10 lists – 850m Music, 838m Top ten lists – 733m Art, 769m Video games, 710m Games, 686m Travel, 664m Books, 597m Lost, 422m Maps, 258m Gambling, 49m *results accurate as of August 31 2007 As you can see, this shows that the terms associated with Top tens, being “Top 10”, “Top 10 Lists”, and “Top 10 Lists” are all highly ranked on this results list. In fact Top 10 returns a result of 2.4 billion results on Google, almost double the nearest rival Video, and practically triple that of Video Games. What can be said about these results in terms of why there is such a presence of opinion lists? It points to something more fundamental in society, and especially with the advent of the internet, it shows that clear concise information is what we all crave. There is too much to read in the world, too many words and not enough trust. What has this got to do with trust? Let’s take the example of a top ten movies list as compiled by anyone. Does this really mean anything to anyone? Now take the same list but compiled by Madonna. Wouldn’t you say all of a sudden this list is more important? It symbolises her thoughts, her ideas of trend, cool and choice. Those who aspire to live like her will undoubtedly develop the same taste in movies. Now let’s take that top 10 movie list as compiled by Jonathan Ross, a prolific movie fan and popular television TV host. He is also the host for Film 2007, the most popular TV based film critic show in the UK. How important does his list become? Not only will lists affect others in the same social circle, they will also affect those who wish to be associated with that same social circle. You can work this to you and your friends benefit. Create yourself a top ten list of most trusted local services in your area. We all know the first place to ask for trustworthy electricians or builders or plumbers, is with friends and family. This is one example. Now go think how you can empower society with your choices and opinions. Make a list today. The moment you join, you can create your own lists and own topics. | ||
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 As legends go, Stevie Wonder could well be amongst one of the few and rare who make it to a list of living legends.As a legend of motown, Wonder recently announced his first US tour in more than a decade. At the ripe old age of 57, he’ll start the tour in San Diego on 23 August and will tour around finishing in Boston on 20 September. How many living legends can you name, and what really makes someone a living legend? There have been many superstars past and present who fail to make it to the legendary status, yet for some it happens so quickly and seamlessly. Take Beyonce for example, we think she has attained the status of a living legend already. Her spectacular performances and incredible talent has propelled her to heights which have long been forgotten with the onslaught of so many artists these days. Other living legends that come to mind are Tom Jones, Elton John, Rod Stewart, Neil Diamond, Shirley Bassey and potentially even Madonna. What do you think? Who makes your list? Create Yours Here | ||
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 So it has come to pass the end of an era, and Gordon Brown takes up the challenge of leading on the worlds greatest nations.In the background, Mr Tony Blair reflects on his career at the top, but do you think he was a top leader or perhaps a top villain in the world of politics? When Tony Blair came to power in May 1997, he heralded an era of change and brought the Labour Party back into power leading the United Kingdom. After 10 years, on the day he departed the famous offices of Number 10 Downing Street, he was also appointed as the Middle East envoy on behalf of the United Nations, EU, USA and Russia. "because Britain deserves better", that was the statement on the cover of the new Labour manifesto in 1997. Blair's landslide victory in 1997 fuelled by his words that the three most important priorities on coming to office were "education, education and education". Did he deliver his promise? Are we today, living in a more prosperous, safer and more educated Britain? In general opinion, it seems that Mr Blair was widely criticised for the "War on Terror" which began in 2001, but as the leader of a nation, no one leader has ever had only easy decisions to make. It would seem a shame if all the good done through new Labour and Mr Blair himself were to be lost in over-criticism of choices made. Faced with a decision to defend his nation, would you be able to make that same choice between ethics and protecting perhaps less than 1% of the risked population. When in reality you too would probably choose to be proactive and not reactive. His major contributions include -assisting the Northern Ireland Peace Process by negotiating the Good Friday Agreement after 30 years of conflict. -introducing the national minimum wage - significant increases in public spending on health and education - tuition fees for higher education - constitutional reform, devolution in Scotland and Wales - incredible performance of the British economy with no increases on income tax and the lowest rate of inflation for decades. So, we leave the comments to you, do you think Tony Blair is a top ten leader or a top ten villain? | ||
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 I'm really sorry for the trouble experienced by new members trying to register. It seems that public service email providers like Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL and many others have some very stringent email filtering rules which may mean that your activation emails are not reaching you.Unfortunately for us, the proliferation of spam in the world has caused virtually all public email providers to become very stringent with letting email through. The best way to ensure your Jamza emails reach you is simply to add the email notify@jamza.com to your contacts address book. If you can't see your activation email in your unusual inbox, take a look in your junk or bulk mail folder. It might well be there. If you are having problems, we'd like to hear about them and resolve them for you. We are currently in the process of getting whitelisted for Yahoo mail and will work on the other providers as well. It's a shame that these restrictions are placed. In fact they must hinder so many other legitimate sites out there and many people must be getting annoyed. Anyways, we hope you will be patient with us whilst we go through the teething problems of this site and look forward to all the feedback you have to give. Keep listing listers! We wanna hear your top ten. | ||
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| Again from other peoples suggestions I've added a threading ability to the forums for lists, albums and photos. This means that you can now reply to a post that someone has made to your list/album/forum, AND the poster has the ability to reply back to your reply, giving both of you the chance to debate your particular point. Look out for the smaller reply button like this:  Also the other change is on the list voting. We decided originally to allow each user to vote once for each list, however on further thought, we realised that as the list grows or adapts to comments, you might want to review and change your vote from DISAGREE to AGREE or vice versa. Hence now if you have voted for a list already, your current vote is presented to you and you have to option to change your vote across! Again, thanks for those who suggested these improvements, and please keep emailing us with your suggestions as we want to make this a great site for you to use. | ||
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 Thank you for all those who have helped to test this and provided some valuable and insightful feedback. Your generous efforts will not be in vain and you will be rewarded handsomely when the time is right!As for this new set of upgrades, below are the changes and features introduced to give you a little idea of the new capabilities of Jamza.Introducing JamjarsAn overwhelming response was that users wanted to create your own list topics. We have added this function now, but you must first earn Jamjars in order to create a new topic. As you already know many actions means many rewards. Now, for every 50 points, you’ll receive one Jamjar, which is redeemable against advanced actions. At present you can create a custom topic with each jar.Enhanced My ProfileThe My Profile page has been enhanced to provide more information about the postings to your lists and photo forums. Now you can see both the avatar and a reply date of each posting so you can see whether you need to respond or not.Bubbles Join OptionsThis section has also been altered so that you have the option of allowing open member joins, or approval required. When you create a new bubble, you now have this option selectable at the bottom.Bubble Friend InvitationsYou may now invite your friends to participate in bubbles which you are a member of. The button appears in the bubble menu as Invite Friends. Only friends in your network who have not already been invited, will appear in your list of people to invite.Photo Album CategoriesPhoto albums can now be associated with a category. You may update your existing albums to fit into a category.EmoticonsJamza has now been improved with emotional icons which will appear in forums and messages sent in the messaging system. These will appear when you use the codes typically used for smiley icons.List VotingLists have now had the vote function capability added to them. The vote scores are simply to agree or disagree with the list. Each member will only get to vote for each list once, so choose your vote wisely. The scores are a percentage of the total number of members, so votes are an indicator of general agreement or disagreement by the Jamza community. | ||
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 So people have often done countdowns when it comes to top ten lists, or indeed top 50 lists. The lure of finding out what is in the top 3 positions has always been the premise that kept people reading on to find out more.So with this thought, would you think that for a listing site like this, it would be fun to have the top 3 positions hidden until someone actually clicks on something to reveal what is the top 3 of each list?In fact currently everything is just listed as per 1-10, I'm think of changing this so that it starts 10 down to 1, with the top 3 hidden and then the reader has to click to reveal the last 3.Or even better, what about making the top 3 only visible to members of the site? Seems only fair considering other members are taking time to tell you about their top lists and so you should have to give a little back in order to see them right?So the question still stands, forward or backwards for the lists? | ||
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 Thanks for those of you who have helped to get this going. All it takes is a few minutes to join up and you can take a look around, make your own lists and start to spread the word of Jamza to everyone you know.Perhaps you are more technically minded, in which case see if you can break this little baby and let me know what you did to break it.Anyways, since this is an ongoing project, I'd like to hear back from you guys on what features you'd like to see integrated into this.I'm really pleased that some of you have already started to provide me with excellent feedback, and this has given me more thoughts and ideas into new things which I can add to the site.Here's a question perhaps you can give me some ideas. I need a groovy name for the points which get awarded for actions, something like Clubcard points, or nectar. I'd like to think of a cool name like jamz, or something like that.Any ideas? For those of you who have been invited to the testing for shares scheme, you'll know that these points are valuable to you. So get toying and rack up the points, because what do points make? PRIZES, (or shares in this instance!) | ||
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 After a period of developing this new site, here it is for all you lot to enjoy and laugh about.In life we get many opportunities that sometimes bypass us, sometimes we consider them, sometimes we even begin them, but rarely do we take the bull by its horns and complete them.I'm not saying Jamza is anywhere near complete. No, we have big plans for this site, podcasts, videocasts, more functionality and loads more top ten questions.But here we are, the first version of the site. I think it's enough to start on and it should make for a pretty solid foundation.Enjoy, remember if you are a lucky member of the share testing scheme then do let me know of your thoughts. There's a special button only you know about under "My Profile" | ||
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Featured Top 10 List "My Top 10 things to do before I die!"by eddie 10. build my own house 9. become a knight 8. own a ferarri 7. fly a helicopter 6. climb kilimanjaro 5. See a killer whale 4. run a marathon |
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