New on Zinerepublic – 28 May 09

At Zinerepublic, we believe in democratizing the magazine publishing industry and making it easier for all of us to create magazines. So we’ve introduced crowdsourcing as a way to gather articles for magazines.

On Zinerepublic, you can create a magazine using your own and other writers’ articles on the site, contribute articles for other users’ magazines, or collaborate on magazines together with your friends.

We’ve just added up a bunch of new features on Zinerepublic that will make creating and distributing your crowdsourced magazine that much easier.

Submit an article to this zine

If you’ve started a zine on Zinerepublic, other users can now submit articles for your zine by clicking the “Submit an article to this zine” link on any of your issues. You’ll get an email notifying you that someone has submitted an article for your consideration. There’s no obligation and you get to choose whether you’d like to include the article in your latest issue or not. This means it’ll be easier for you to source for articles for your zine, and easier for your friends to submit articles to you.

If you haven’t started your own zine, you can submit articles to other users’ zines using the same “Submit an article to this zine” link on any issue page. If the editor likes your article, they can include it in the latest issue of their zine. Easy eh?

Email zine to friends

You’ll also find an “Email zine to friends” button on every issue page. Use this to spread the word about zines you like on Zinerepublic. You can even import email addresses from your Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook address books. Share the love!

Invite friends to subscribe to your zine

If you’ve started a zine on Zinerepublic, you’ll find an “Invite friends to subscribe to your zine” button on every issue that you created. Use this button to publicise your zine and invite your friends to subscribe. They’ll receive a link to check out your zine and a link to sign up and automatically subscribe to your zine if they like what they see.

Add hyperlinks and embedded objects to your articles

Finally, we’ve added support for URL hyperlinks and embedded objects like Youtube, Vimeo and Tudou videos, imeem music players and many others. So any URL links you include in your articles will be clickable, and you can add videos and music to your articles by copying and pasting the “embed code” into the article text.

Which means you can now use Zinerepublic to create your own crowdsourced music review magazine with embedded music tracks, or collaborate with friends to create a crowdsourced movie review magazine with embedded trailers. Just use your imagination and the possibilities are endless!

Please check out our new features at:

http://www.zinerepublic.com

and we hope to see you on Zinerepublic soon!

Viva La Revolucion!

Giant Lizards On My Feet!

Trendspotting on Shoplette: Puma First Round Lizoid King

We’re in a bit of a sneaker phase. Uh-oh… But who can ignore these Godzilla shoes? Check out the full series of Japanese monster inspired shoes from Puma’s monster pack!

Part of Puma’s Japanese Monster Pack. Love the green lizard skin upper and spikes on the ankle cuff. Fashioned after none other than Godzilla! Guaranteed to be a classic! from Limited Edition, Heeren, Singapore

Yummy new tote bag designs on Common Totes

The on-going tote bag design competition on Common Totes is heating up! Check out these new tote bag designs and vote for your favourites!

* Common Totes is a design community producing fresh tote bags every month, with designs submitted by the community, for the community, and where the community decides which designs go to print.

Introducing… Common Totes: Uncommon Totes for the Common People!

It’s been a crazy-crunch couple of months and we’ve just popped up for air again after launching our latest site, Common Totes, over the Easter long weekend.

Common Totes is a design community producing fresh tote bags every month, with designs submitted by the community, for the community, and where the community decides which designs go to print.

Basically, you can submit designs for tote bags, the community votes on the designs, and the best designs get made into actual tote bags for sale at the end of each month. Each winning design will be awarded a prize of US$300.

Please check out the site here:

http://www.commontotes.com

We’ve just launched the site and would really appreciate your participation by joining as a member, voting for designs and submitting some designs on our design template provided on the site. You might win and see your design made into a tote bag!

Common Totes is the fruit of our partnership with SKND Pte Ltd. Thanks go out to design studio fFurious for the visual design of the site.

So in our first year, we’ve launched three different properties (Common Totes, Zinerepublic and Shoplette) based on three of our in-house community app engines. Phew! What a busy, rocking year!

UPDATE: Since launching, we’ve had some nice coverage on Bagaholicboy, with a great 5-step guide to winning US$300 in 30 days.

New on Zinerepublic – 13 Apr 09

Check out these new issues out on Zinerepublic’s zine rack!

Claudia Talks #1: Musings by Claudia Lim

Soch & The City #1: Movie reviews 09, the year so far

Kick It, Stick It #1: Clash poetry

The Little Arts Academy’s Magazine #2: Latest recipes from the LAA

Graff spotting #2: Graffiti spotting around the world

Jack’s #2: Poetry and prose in the spirit of the2ndrule

You can subscribe to these zines by logging into Zinerepublic or joining as a member and clicking “Subscribe” on the issue’s page. By subscribing, you’ll be sent an email whenever a new issue of the zine is published, and you can unsubscribe anytime. Handy, eh?

Please enjoy the zines!

Attack of the killer (tiny) robots!

Trendspotting on Shoplette – RoboQ Bumblebee

Tiny remote controlled Bumblebee that fits in the remote and charges from it too. from The Falcon’s Hangar, Waterloo Centre, Singapore

Available at The Falcon’s Hangar, Singapore, in May/June 09. Previously, you could only order these from Japan. There’s an Optimus Prime version too!

There’s something about classic black stilettos…

…that will never go out of fashion.

Trendspotting on Shoplette – Christian Louboutin black open toe leather pumps.

Wrapped stiletto heel lifts a timeless leather pump fashioned with an open toe. from shopyop.com, United States

New on Zinerepublic – 28 March 09

We released a few changes to Zinerepublic today. Do check them out, and we hope you like them!

Published issues on the zine rack

Firstly, if you’ve started a zine on Zinerepublic, you might notice that your latest unpublished issue has disappeared from the Zinerepublic home page. Don’t panic! We’ve just changed the way issues are published, so that only published issues appear in the magazine rack of the Zinerepublic home page.

This way you can add articles to your issue and work on it in secret till you’re ready for it to be released to the world. Then just click “Publish” on your issue page (or your MyMag page) and your issue will appear on the Zinerepublic home page and will be sent to your subscribers via email.

To view your current unpublished issue, click on “MyMag” at the top of the page when you’re logged in.

New article layouts

Secondly, we’ve introduced a range of article layouts for your articles, so you can select how you’d like your article to be laid out on the page, as a single column or two columns, with a large or small picture (if your article has a picture).

That’s a step towards making your articles and issues feel more “magazine-like” and hopefully make them a lot more fun to put together.

Please enjoy the new changes to Zinerepublic at:

http://www.zinerepublic.com

and feel free to drop us a comment to tell us what you think. We’d love to hear from you.

Viva La Revolucion!

DIY wallets are totally cool

Trendspotting on Shoplette – DIY duct tape wallet

Ducttape wallet. I made them myself out of duct tapes! from -, -, Singapore

There’s something beautiful in the idea of saving money by making your own wallet.

Shoplette is now your crowdsourced shopping guide

If you visit Shoplette today, you’ll notice a few changes to the site.

Your crowdsourced shopping guide

We’ve converted Shoplette into a crowdsourced shopping guide featuring products the community think are hot, that they’re craving for, or that they’ve bought. To participate, you’re no longer limited to posting something you bought. You can now suggest cool products that you like or that you’ve spotted by clicking “Suggest a product”, adding a title and photo, and telling us where you found it. So now you can create your own crowdsourced shopping guide by suggesting cool products and places to shop, and following other users’ shopping suggestions.

New new look!

We’ve made everything cleaner with a bigger product gallery, so that you can focus on what you really want to see – more great products and where to find them. We’ve done the same thing for Shoplette Shops, so that the product catalogues are more focused on the Shops’ products. We hope that will make your browsing experience more enjoyable on Shoplette.

You can check out the new Shoplette here:

http://www.shoplette.com

Please enjoy the new changes to Shoplette! And feel free to drop us a comment or email to tell us what you think.