Love Hate City

While news of our new Fall episodes has been at the forefront these days, that doesn’t mean that our dev team has been twiddling their thumbs. To the contrary, we’re happy to announce that there is a new release hitting Current.com today, and we can’t wait to hear what you think of it.

Let’s face it, contributing to Current.com has never been the easiest thing to do — a refresh of this workflow has been long overdue. With this new release, clicking the “Post a Story” button (located in the green navigation bar) will now produce a submission tool overlaid on whichever page you’re on.

We’ve streamlined the process, here’s a walkthrough:

1. Title and Description Please: We now offer only two initial fields to enter, one for Title and one for Description. The new tool will work with you to customize your post, while putting the focus where it counts: clearly titling your post and adding a description.
2. Link it up: Adding a link to your post is super simple — merely copy the link into your description field. Once you paste a link, the submission tool will immediately process any and all available media (photos, video embeds, etc.) on the source page and offer them as selections for you to include in your post. Click on the one that makes the most sense, and you’re one step closer to posting.
3. Place your post where it counts most: A story is only as good as its location, and we use groups and tags to help place stories in areas that make the most sense on Current.com. You’ll find an easy groups dropdown menu pre-populated with all of the groups you belong to, along with an open field for tags. Tags are important. They help lost stories find groups to live in. If you don’t belong to a group that you think the story might make sense in, use relevant tags to help it along its merry way. It’s like Mom always said, “Don’t forget your lunch tags!”



4. Tired of the minors? Time to go pro!: Anyone can submit links to Current.com, but it takes a true professional to raise the bar by posting alongside video, images, or webcams. Clicking the “add video/image/webcam” link, you’ll open the secret door to file uploading, webcam recording, and embedding video. Are you up for the challenge?

Those of you who mastered our older submission workflow will recognize that all of the essential pieces are still here, just repositioned and streamlined.

Since we’re never content leaving well enough alone, we’ve also taken an initial stab and refining our commenting workflow as well.

You’ll notice that at the bottom of each post there is now an open comment box (regardless of login/logout status). This new comment flow acts similarly to the new submission tool. Clicking into the comment field allows you to type up a response, and you can add links and select media by following similar steps.

And as always, if you’ve connected your Current.com account to Facebook, you can publish your awesome stories and comments to your Facebook feed to share with your friends.

So what do you think? Does this make things easier? Is it simple enough? Shoot us some feedback on our Get Satisfaction page, and help us out with future product releases.

Remember our Make Common’s Day callout? Well Shana just announced Common’s pick on the Current Music Blog, take a look:

From the many amazing videos, Common hand-picked his favorite, ‘Common’s Make My Day Music Video: Clip Art’, by Josh Milowe, Elizabeth Casal and Mike Potter, collectively known as Wealthy Pictures.

Check out the video above, and look for its on-air premiere Wednesday, November 4 at 11/10c during Embedded featuring Common:

This is awesome news, and a hearty congratulations is due to all who submitted to this. Thanks!