How to NOT get an invite

So recently, I’ve become members of design-oriented communities such as Forrst and Dribble. I wanted to join them mainly to network with other designer, learn from them, and have the ability for them to critique my work. I used to join forums and message boards for that purpose, but I noticed that most of the active ones nowadays have a younger crowd, and I feel out of place Now, it just so happens that these design communities, or at least the well-known ones, are invite only. This is obviously to prevent random¹ people from joining and hurting the quality of the overall community.

Of course, people always want what they can’t have, and it seems that the more “elite” the community is, the more people want to join. However, there is a right way and a wrong way of going about to get an invite:

The right way:

• Showoff your talent! Create a portfolio (if you don’t have one yet) to showcase your best work!
• Add yourself to the prospect list. Most communities have this as a way for members to more easily invite people.
• Continue to improve your work, people will notice.

The wrong way:

• Mass following people in Dribbble just so you get to the top of the Prospects page.
• Asking people all over Twitter if they have invites for you. Desperate much?
• Having no talent, and not bothering to improve yourself

This is what you look like when you spam, beg, and harass people for invites

Seriously, if you have time to spam follow and beg people for invites, why not take the time to actually improve your portfolio? Did it ever occur to you that maybe the reason why you still haven’t been invited is because you’re actually not that good²? I took a look at the people who are guilty of doing it all the wrong way, and surprise surprise! Their work is mediocre at best, but usually it just sucks. There’s nothing wrong with not being good, because we all have to start at some point. But when you start being loud and larry about it, then that’s just obnoxious.

Good luck trying to get an invite.

Battle of the browsers

[Off topic, but I would really like to thank everyone who helped out with the user testing at Sherpia There were some awesome feedbacks, and they'll definitely be taken into consideration by the people still working on the site. As for the prizes, don't worry, you will get them!]

This topic was inspired by  Jem’s post about different browsers, so I thought, hey, why not give my 2 cents, because you all know how much I love blasting my opinions on this blog

If browsers were celebrities...these analogies are pretty on par!

• Safari

  This is the default browser that came with my Macbook Pro, and it’s a shitload better than the default browser that comes with Windows. It’s a nice browser with decent speed, and now it supports extensions (which are like Firefox’ add-ons), so brownie points there. But are there better browsers out there? Yes.

• Firefox

  I’ve been using this since…I don’t even remember when. But I remember being awed at the fact that I could tab the windows instead of getting separate windows. It’s also got loads of add-ons and skins, which is great for people who like a customized browser. Unfortunately, all these features mean that when you have 10 tabs open with 20 add-ons running, it’s going to laaaaaaaaag. Which is why I switched to..

• Google Chrome

  I remember¹ the hype when Google released their own browser, and for a good reason. The browser was lightening fast, and how it supports extensions and themes as well. So of course, I jumped  ship, and was loving it, until Chrome started having problems loading certain sites, all the time.

• Opera

  I downloaded it out of curiosity a while back, and I hated it. It wasn’t as fast as people claimed, and it loaded my pages weird, so I uninstalled it right away. After reading Jem’s entry, I gave Opera another try, and now I’m loving it. It’s super fast, even when I have a bunch of tabs open. The only complaint is that its widgets run as standalone programs, which is pretty stupid. Oh well

• IE

  This is only here so I can complain about what a shitty browser this is. Using it is like trying to surf the web with an eggplant – what the fuck are you thinking²?

All in all, Opera is my favorite browser. What’s yours?

The first giveaway!

Hooray for giveaways! After God knows how many years of blogging (must be like 8 or 9, if you count my first blog ever), I’m finally hosting a giveaway. But enough chit-chat, let’s get to our fabulous prizes (sorry, but you only get to choose 1 of the 3):

• 3-months of advertising on my blog
• a Victoria’s secret beauty rush lip gloss
• a custom character like lambie or kitty

Yeah, I know, the prizes aren’t really that fabulous, but the thing is, everyone can be a winner. No, seriously, all you have to do is the following:

• Be a user tester for the site I’ve been working on¹ for my summer internship.

Seriously, isn’t that easy? Well, there are a couple more things you need to do (which I’ll disclose in the welcome email), but if you’re interested, just leave a comment saying so, and I’ll send you a email with further instructions. Once I see that you’ve completed the requirements, I’ll send out the prize of your choice. Whether you’re doing this because of the prizes or because you just love me like that, I’d really appreciate it either way

Online shopping safety

So it’s been exactly 1 month since I last posted, and while I have been busy with final exams/projects/papers and what not, I’ve also done an immense amount of online shopping, and damn, talk about lessons learned:

• Be VERY skeptical about sellers from China

  Yeah, shit from China are damn cheap, and that’s always tempting, but I’d rather spend twice the money at a legit US (or any other non Chinese for that matter) store and rest in peace knowing that I’ll actually get what I’m buying. Avoid places like wholesale-dress.net and iOffer like the plague unless you want to end up with dresses with different sized armholes¹ or have your mailman deliver a box of knock-off D&G necktie & cuffs instead of the phone you bought²

• If you pay through Paypal, make sure you use your credit card

  That’s because Paypal, to my disappointment, doesn’t do shit for you unless you buy through Ebay. So unless your package never got delivered, your money is pretty much gone. This is why scammers will send you empty packages or ones filled with random items: neckties, cuffs, buddha figurines (I’m not shitting you on this one), anything but what you ordered. This way, they have a tracking code to prove that they “shipped” your goods and are off the hook, since Paypal will only protect buyers against goods not shipped. Credit card companies, on the other hand, are much more aggressive when it comes to these sort of scams, and 99% of the time you can count on them to get your money back.

• Take some action!

  There are many consumer protection agencies/groups out there, both national and international. DO report the sellers and the sites where the transaction took place. Even though there’s no guarantee anything will happen, at least you’re taking action. And if you can get any sort of phone numbers, CALL. It’s a lot more effective than emailing, that’s for damn sure. Also, if possible, send back the fake packages to the post office and have it marked as “return to sender”. Don’t settle for some random-ass shit instead of what you paid for.

• Do a LOT of research beforehand

  This one should be pretty obvious, but I was obviously being stupid and totally ignored the golden rule. Look at reviews and sellers’ ratings to make sure you find someone truly legit. There are some decent sellers out there that are trying to do good business, you just need to weed out the scammers first.

Is this what you are looking for?

I was looking through my site tracker the other day, curious to see how people found this blog. Asides from the obvious, aka. links from other blogs, I also noticed that quite a bit of my visitors were referred here by search engine results. Of course, being the curious (I hate this part of me sometimes) person that I am, I checked to see what people searched for, and here is what I found:

• Super Girl

  According to Google, my site is the 3rd result if you search for “Super Girl”. But is this really what you were looking for, or did you just click this link out of curiosity? Either way, out of all my search engine referrals, almost half got here because they searched for this term.

• Blair Waldorf ‘s lingerie

  Apparently I’m not the only one infatuated with Blair’s choice of lingerie on Gossip Girl, because this is my second most popular search term. I don’t blame these people;  I used to be one of them, searching blindly for where I could buy something close to what B wore without breaking my wallet, until I found my way to Macy’s lingerie department, and that’s where you should go too if you’re stil searching

• fat smilies

  This one made me laugh, because I never knew there were actually things such as “fat” (or even obese) smilies. I thought I made up the term when I ranted about how people who were literally challenged liked giving their emoticons extra chins, hence making them appear fat. Well apparently these emoticons have a name now: fat smilies. Talk about stating the obvious

• digital perms

  Technically I never blogged about my digital perm, but I did share some great products for curly/wavy hair that I use. But in a nutshell, a digital perm basically gives you the curling iron curls, vs the I-just-got-struck-by-lightening poof of the traditional perm. It’s supposed to be less damaging, but that’s a bunch of BS because my hair pretty much died after my perm. I’m still in the painful process of nursing it back to life Oh well, at least the waves I got from my perm are pretty enough to make up for the damage.

• talking dirty

  I know I mislead some of my readers with my post about talking shit about others, but apparently it mislead a couple Googlers, who were actually trying to learn how to talk dirty to others. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t think I’ll ever write a tutorial on how to do that. Go download some pr0n¹ or better yet, read Cosmopolitan².

And that’s pretty much it. Talking dirty is about the most obscene search term I got on my list, and it’s not even that obscene at all. I was kind of hoping for something so absurd and out of this world so I could use a laugh and maybe write an entry about it. However, I did have someone search for “Jenny Wu Wingstranger” and find this blog. Stalker much?

Have you noticed any interesting search terms for your blog? If so, what are they?