Here's How to Stop Spamming Your Uncharted Friends

First of all, the obligatory discussion on Spam.



 Next, a brief discussion on how to avoid spam. At least at Uncharted. And at least from Uncharted.

You know, we were pretty excited when we got the ability to automatically e-mail our friends when a new story or photoset posted. But then we realized: We're going to e-mail our friends when a new story or photoset is posted. Complete with typos, embedded coding, bits of breakfast and anything else we'd like to clean up but without spamming our friends into oblivion.

But now, eureka, a solution. Here's how to fix typos, edit captions and stories on Uncharted without filling your friends' e-mail boxes with spam:

1) Open up the story or photoset you want to fix.
2) Fix the mistakes, make your corrections or additions, et cetera.
3) When you're done, do one of the following:
          A) If you're fixing a photoset, click on "Save," not "Done."
          B) If you're fixing a story, click on "Done," not "Publish."

Your story is now ready for use, sans errors. Happy viewing.

And, yes, we know our terminology is inconsistent. We're very consistent that way. We're going to fix it so when you're just saving, you're "saving," and when you're publishing, you're "publishing."

A Light Bulb Moment

Sometimes the solutions to your problems are as plain as the nose on your face.

Problem: You're a bunch of college buddies working on a fledgling social media and travel website. You're doing it on the side as members of your team are working as butchers or bakers or candlestick makers or what have you. You're trying to do it on the cheap. So when you want to promote things on your own site, you have to figure out a way to do it without spending money.

And then one member of your team has one of those light bulb moments. Ding, the light comes on. This time, it was Alan, who brought us this (click on it to embiggen):

For those of you who've visited our site, this little green thingy may look familiar. It should. It's been on the site in one form or another since we started more than a year ago. Up until earlier this week, it invited you to click away and join Uncharted. It still does, on a rotation with other stuff now. Lucky for us, Alan struck upon the idea of using this little block of space to promote our upcoming stories. To tease you with things to come. To make you want to come back again and again and again and again. And to help us find more ways to promote your stories and photos on the homepage.

So, as the advertising pros say, watch this space. It'll tell of good things to come, and lead you to them once they arrive.

One Island Down . . .

For the longest time, I’ve been intrigued by two islands.

The first is Keefer Island, a 600-foot-long blot of lava rock and sagebrush in Idaho’s Snake River, lying within the boundaries of the city of Idaho Falls. The island used to have a single willow tree, until wind pushed it down onto the cabin built by an early Idaho Falls denizen. The tree is gone. The cabin still stands. But I’ve never been there.

The other is Utah’s Antelope Island. It sprawls over 42 square miles in the middle of the Great Salt Lake, with a short chain of mountains that pops out of the ground to loom 2,500 feet above the lake’s surface. Isolated by its surrounding salty moat, the island has often called to me to explore its plains and hills. And maybe provide a location to spot the Great Salt Lake’s mythical North Shore Monster.

Now, thanks to Explorer Fishstyx, who gets around in Utah like nobody’s business, I know where to go to get to Antelope Island, and what to do when I get there. You can read about his adventures on the island here.

This is what Uncharted is all about: Exploring the unexplored. Sure, lots of people have visited Antelope Island before Fishstyx. But it’s not until you’re there, breathing that salty air, stalking antelope with your camera and otherwise enjoying the solitude of that island fortress that you can nod sagely with the others and say, “Yup. I’ve been there.” Seeing Fishstyx’s photos and reading his story now cements it in my mind: I’m going to Antelope Island this summer if it kills me. And Keefer Island won’t be far behind.

Now it's up to you. Have you visited Antelope Island? If so, we'd like to hear from you. Just because Fishstyx has published his story and photos, that doesn't mean the book is closed on this adventure. Each one of us brings a different perspective, a different eye, to each place we visit. That's what makes us explorers. And sharing our adventures at Uncharted -- whether we're the first or seventy-first to do so -- is what matters.

The Adventure Continues

A year ago, if I mentioned Uncharted, you likely would’ve asked me what I was talking about. We were used to blank faces when Uncharted came up in conversation. Most of our friends were surprised to see that this wasn’t just another practical joke, but a real, legitimate, functioning site.

And a year later, we are pleased to see a little less of that blank look when Uncharted comes up in conversation. We’re even more pleased when we run into people all over the country who have seen us around. And we love it when we see someone wearing our t-shirts or driving around with an Uncharted bumper sticker.

Last year, many of you joined with us to unveil www.uncharted.net as the world’s first geo-social media network. That’s geo-social media. It’s more than just our staff sharing their adventures with you, it’s you sharing your adventures with us and each other. It’s more than just linking up with friends from around the world, it’s working with those friends to explore the world together. It’s not just a web site, it’s the people who explore, live, and feel their unique corner of the globe and share it with everyone else. It’s a community of friends.

And so the Uncharted Adventure began with a handful of professionals from a variety of disciplines, anything from a guy selling pink bunny pajamas out of his basement, to an engineer developing bio fuels, to an officer in the Air Force. And we have our share of journalists, photographers, programmers and designers too. They all work full-time jobs. Uncharted is what they do for fun on their own time. We’re grateful to the many employers who allow each member of our growing team to be involved.

And we’ve come a long way.

If you were among those who visited Uncharted on our first day, you would’ve seen three stories photographed and written by us. Back then, there were only a few people making up the Uncharted Community. Our audience was smaller, only two countries and a half dozen states.

Now, we’re viewed by each of the 50 states and over 90 countries, speaking 54 different languages. Uncharted has been featured on the radio, in magazines, and a variety of other publications. Members of our team have been guest presenters at colleges and universities, including Columbia University’s Columbia Scholastic Press Association national convention. We even sponsored one team member as he competed on the national level in orienteering.

And it’s not just us sharing anymore. Now, there are 130 explorers signed up for the journey. Last year, explorers Lisa Wheat, Xelashay and Fishstyx garnered a spot on our home page for their submissions from the Bahamas and Southern Utah respectively.

It’s also easier to find us too. More and more, we’re rising to the top in Internet search results and we have over 80 fans on our Facebook page, where Uncharted Explorers and our audience alike can receive updates and behind-the-scenes info on our progress and where Uncharted is headed in the future.

When we launched, the site didn’t allow our community to communicate with each other like we had envisioned. Now, thanks to our development team, users can choose some basic notification preferences that make it easier to connect with people from around the globe. We’re grateful for the invaluable feedback that many of you provided, paving the way for these improvements. We look forward to hearing any other suggestions you may have for the coming year.

To celebrate our first full year, we thought we’d highlight some of our favorite adventures and share some behind-the-scenes photos of our team making Uncharted what it is today, a community of friends dedicated to discovering the world one journey at a time.

And the adventure continues. We have big plans for 2010 and we’re excited to discover and rediscover the world, your corner and ours. There are countless places to go and even more people to meet. Our development team is hard at work to make it easier for you to share your adventures and link up with those who can help you find those out-of-the-way places, people and cultures just waiting to be discovered. So, check it out here. Come and join us as we continue the adventure.

Alan Murray is Executive Director
of Uncharted. He likes sea horses
and snowshoes and frequently
has the urge to leave the country.

Uncharted Meets the Geek Atlas

At heart, I suppose, I’ll always be a geek.

My best friend in high school lamented, in my presence, that he was a “geek magnet” at Bonneville High. I have a collection of rocks that look like pig noses. I tell people I work at a landfill. A radioactive landfill. A radioactive landfill where the stuff sometimes blows up or catches fire on its own. And I love my job.

But this confirms it: John Graham-Cumming, author of The Geek Atlas (available in book form here) has noticed me. Not me per se, but a video I put together a few years ago about Experimental Breeder Reactor-1, a decommissioned nuclear power plant, the first to create useful atomic power, which I pass to and from work four times a week. I posted it to uncharted.net’s YouTube channel and promptly forgot about it.

Now it’s featured at www.geekatlas.com, coinciding with Graham-Cumming’s own visit to EBR-1, one of 128 stops “Where Science and Technology Come Alive,” as Graham-Cumming subtitles his book.

And it does. EBR-1 is, to me, a fascinating place. Atomic – now nuclear – research has always been in the background here in eastern Idaho. That I work within a mile of EBR-1, however, makes the place special to me. I love to visit the decommissioned reactor and to inhale, if briefly, the air of the heady days of atomic research when scientists were optimistically hoping to tame the atom and make electricity “too cheap to meter.” Though technology has advanced, fear of nuclear power has stalled those dreams. But it’s fun to think this little bit of Idaho history – and my video, which Graham-Cumming describes as “quirky” – are getting their moment in the sun.

You can, of course, read about Idaho’s atomic history at Uncharted, here. Enjoy.

Vomit and Speaking Engagements

On a flight home from Ohio I found myself sitting in an aisle seat next to a couple in the middle of an argument. That would be my luck. In an instant, my dreams of a pleasant uneventful and sleepy flight went down the drain.

It soon became apparent that the woman was determined never to speak with her husband again. He, however, was not willing to give up so easily. I munched on some peanuts, trying to ignore the squabble. Stuck on a plane, next to a fighting couple, eating peanuts. It could be worse.

Suddenly, the husband snatched the vomit bag out of his seat pouch. I braced for the worst. Visions of a waterfall of nauseating liquid escaping his mouth, missing the bag, and falling onto my lap went through my mind.

But instead of spilling his guts, he took a pen and began drawing a pair of eyes and a nose on the bottom of the bag. Placing his hand inside, he turned to his wife and in a squeaky voice said, “Hello! I’m the Vomit Puppet!”

If she didn’t want to talk with him, that was fine, but surely she couldn't resist an intellectual conversation with the Vomit Puppet. This continued for most of the flight, his poor wife, doing everything she could to hide any hint of a smile all the way home.

So now, whenever I go on a trip, especially when I’m nervous and preoccupied, such as my recent travels to speak at Columbia University, I think, “It could be worse. You could be seated next to a man speaking to his wife through a vomit puppet.”

Fortunately, there were no puppeteers or squabbling couples on this flight to distract me from preparing my presentation, and by the time I showed up on campus the next morning I was rested and ready to go.

The invitation to speak at the Columbia Scholastic Press Association (CSPA) national convention is truly an honor. I spent most of my high school years attending or even competing to attend similar events. I always came back inspired and excited to try out the ideas that were presented and discussed. I am indebted to the many educators and professionals who donated their time, talent and money to help me build a strong foundation that would set the tone of my life and career for many years to come.

The directors and board of CSPA are educators and professionals who are fiercely dedicated to their students and make great sacrifices each year to pull off both Fall and Spring conventions. Twice a year, they come together with an army of guest speakers to inspire and instruct students from around the world. Their enthusiasm is contagious.

So, when I found myself presenting in the Joseph Pulitzer World Room, the very room where the Pulitzer Prizes are announced each year, I hoped that my presentation would rise to the occasion.

Serving as Executive Director of Uncharted has given me firsthand experience in taking ideas, often seemingly ridiculous and outrageous ones at that, and making them happen, usually with limited resources and staff. So I wanted to show students, perhaps from schools with small budgets, how to be successful on the web notwithstanding.

This expertise is likely something I would never have achieved had it not been for the devotion of others sacrificing their time to present at conferences during my high school and college years. I’m grateful for the opportunity to give back to students now what others did for me.

And it looks like I’ll be back again. CSPA has invited me to speak at their Spring convention. My thanks goes out to all those, who over the years took time to help me get going in my career. My commitment is to do the same for others.

Alan Murray is Executive Director of Uncharted.
He likes sea horses and snowshoes, and
frequently has the urge to leave the country.
To contact Alan, feel free to write to alan@uncharted.net.

Spamalicious

I promise we're not trying to annoy you. We leave that up to easy listening radio.

But seriously, we need to apologize for the, well, it's not quite a flood of e-mails announcing our most recent update, but it's not exactly the concise, neat little package we had hoped when we added these notification e-mails to the mix. But because we noticed a rather important photo was missing from the photoset, we added it. That sent out a notification. Then it needed a caption. That sent out another notification. And so on. We've settled down now. I think Andrew, our design guru, put it best when he said "You never know how things are going to work until you try them out." And that's what we're doing. Trying things out.

And in trying things out, we make mistakes. That's normal. But we do sincerely apologize for the four or so update e-mails you received from us over the past weekend, and we promise to do better in the future. Be patient with us in our affliction for some day, we may actually get this right. We're working on a fix that will allow us (and you) to tweak your captions, stories and such without spamming everyone in the universe. We'll keep you up to date on what's going on. In the meantime, keep feeding us information on how we can improve. Drop us a line through a comment on this blog or via our e-mail at feedback@uncharted.net . We look forward to hearing more from you, just as you likely look forward to hearing less from us.