MicrostockGroup

It's about.. time!

We are happy to announce the launch of our new Submissions page ( http://www.zymmetrical.com/account/submissions/ ), which, thanks to lots of feedback from our members, has evolved into something we think is truly great to use.



New Features

- Quick overview of all your important numbers, no effort required to find out all your submissions statuses.

- Batch Describe, in whole or in steps. A completely open workflow: you can set your prices first, then choose categories, or do them at the same time, it's your choice. Finalize one, five, or even hundreds of files in one click.

- Don't have embedded IPTC keywords in some files? Optional copy and paste comma-separated or semicolon-separated keyword groups.

- Instantly Translate your keywords from any of the following languages into English: Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish.

- Improved Spellcheck.

- Integrated Flash bulk Model/Property Release form.

- Flash bulk file upload form, select multiple files at once to upload.

Pretty good, eh? We hope you find the new Submissions tools to be time-savers, and we will continue to work hard to iron out any kinks in the site as we get closer to lift-off!

Be sure to let us know what you think, your input is key to shaping these improvements.




Reviewers wanted

One side effect of our new streamlined upload process is a tsunami of great new files coming in, adding to our workload of hundreds of reviews daily.

Zymmetrical is looking for passionate, decisive, photo and graphics experts with an eye for trends and quality. Your job: work from your home/office, reviewing photo and graphic submissions from beginner hobbyists to seasoned professionals, and treat each file with the same respect and objectivity as the last.

Payment is per file reviewed.Quantity is not the trait we are looking for, however; most important to us is the dedication to help each Artist who submits to improve themselves and understand why some files just aren't acceptable.

We provide basic training and technical guidelines, but are looking for independent creatives who can fairly deal with the variety of files that arrive in the open environment of the internet. Self-confidence and an eye for detail is a must.

We are looking for applicants from all over the globe: native English-speaking is not a requirement, but you should have a reasonable proficiency in English.

If you're already active on Zymmetrical, you need to have at least an 80% approval rating to be considered.

Apply at http://www.zymmetrical.com/help/jobs/jobid/1/ if you are looking for a fun, interesting job that matches your passion for both the creative and professional aspects of stock.

Well for me it is not working at all.
IMac - tried Safari and Firefox.

Firefox the Flash seemed to work but the files have not showed up after almost 24 hours
With the Form upload it just quits a few seconds into the upload.

Safari I got an error with the Flash method
I/O Error #2038

Using the Form uploader after clicking on submit the file just disappeared from the selection box.

I did do the f5 after the initial tries but still no images showed up.

I have also cleared the cache and rebooted the computer etc.  and still the same bugs.

More questions to add:

Model Releases:  I tried to Ctrl click to add more than one release to a photo.  Maybe there's a way to do it.  (I don't have to stich releases together do I?)

This is just a little thing but it is annoying.  When you edit a photo and hit "Apply Descriptions" you bounce up to the top of your list again.   This would be very frustrating if you had dozens to edit.

If you don't hit the apply button and move onto another photo, all of the descriptions you added are lost.

Another site (maybe StockXpert?) has "read IPTC instead".  Well, I didn't know I had more than one photo checked, applied a description and messed up one that wasn't related.   I'll fix it, but oh, wouldn't it be sweet if I could hit that "read IPTC" button instead of cutting and pasting!

Been waiting till we have some answers to give before replying on this one.



1. Yes, some others mentioned that one too.  We changed it so there is now no alternating bg row shading.



2. The problem is, when they are at the pending stage, they are technically, possibly in front of the reviewers at that moment. It's literally like a factory assembly line, once the 'product' is sent on it's way to the next stage, backtracking (such as deleting the file), creates potential conflicts. We do get asked a lot for this feature though, sometimes people upload incorrect files, sometimes dupes, etc. so it would be good to have. From a workflow standpoint, it's a little hard to program at this stage. Having a 'Comment on this pending submission' option might be an intermediary solution. For now, if you send us a note about the problem, we will take care of it.



3. The Art Manager page is where the Approved files will go. The new version will be somewhat similar to the new submissions page, and it is simply to much code to just slap into the Submissions page itself.



4. The new Art Manger will incorporate a lot of these features, including statistics data. We not have plans at this time to add a comment feature to files.  You will be pleasantly surprised by the depth of statistics data that will be available however - the idea is to provide real, useful info on who's viewing your files, and what their habits are, not just a simple view count.



5. Our Affiliate program in it's current form is strictly for purchases made by the people who come to the site using your link. We do not state anywhere in the description that we offer the microstock-standard Artist > Artist signup bonus. Offering a 70% sales commission is tough enough, and although increasing the roster of participants selling on the site is of course hugely important, it can not be at the expense of the business's bottomline.

We would prefer to work with less Artists, and maximize revenue for them, then to encourage swarms of new signups, and not be able to offer 100% service to them, because we are going broke paying out extra affiliate commissions.  This is absolutely not ruling out an Artist > Artist referral scheme coming online in the future, it just means that in a pre-launch mode, where we take things slowly and surely, this is not a type of plan that would benefit all parties at this time.



6. Back to point 4, yes we got a lotta data, the user interface to visualize it is in the works, and it will show up in the new Art Manger under an 'Analytics' section.



7. The site is constantly under development, sometimes things literally get loopy and server memories get maxed out, etc. In general, most pages are cached on the server, so there is no calls to the database, the system just drops you the straight HTML page.    This should take no more then 2-3 seconds, depending on amount of content on page.  If you consistently experience longer load times, i'd love to hear where.

TIP OF THE DAY: I gave this link to one our Reviewers and she was amazed at the speed increase browsing the site: http://fasterfox.mozdev.org/.  It is a free plugin for Firefox that increases page load time, by doing stuff like using a few connections at once to download a page.     Go ahead and install this, and then set it to 'Turbocharged' in the options. Hopefully you'll see a big difference on our site and others.



8. I did realize this on the plane the other day. One of those 'oh crap' moments. Sometimes some obvious stuff gets missed. Trying to come up with a multi-select as mentioned. In the meantime, just get the releases in the system, and link one of the models, and we will be ok.



9. I'm sure there is a solution for this, will try to get it to 'stick'.   



10. I'm not quite understanding you here, if you want to selectively apply tags or any other items, just check or uncheck the checkbox next to the title, like 'Tags'.    You don't have to touch the embedded IPTC keywords for the selected files if you don't want to, just deselect the Tags checkbox.


Thanks for all the questions and comments, and especially the compliments.    'Magnificent' makes all this effort worth it, you can get very far with us and compliments.   

An update: one of the key features of this page is the bulk edit option, and it came to our attention that the 'Page size' feature was not working correctly in all circumstances. If you changed from the default 20 submissions, it would not 'stick'. This has been fixed, so you can show and describe hundreds of submissions in one go if you want:

For speed, did you try (or maybe you already had) the Fasterfox plugin?  45 seconds would be completely out of line with anything i've experienced on a consistent basis. Most pages are cached by the server as mentioned, so there really should be no reasonable delays.
On DSL from Europe currently, the homepage loads in 2.7 sec, tag search results screen in 3.325 sec, and a photo page a 4.5 sec.   Remote desktop in Texas shows results consistent with that.   Maybe you just caught the site during an update or some other random funny business.

Our Reviewers catch dupes so it's not so big of a deal. I will have a look at your pending and do a cleanup.

If you uncheck the checkbox next to the word 'Tags', and then batch process multiple files, the original IPTC won't be touched, so I believe this would have the results you desire. You could uncheck Tags, and then batch apply Price, Category, and Release forms together, or individually - this is the intent of the system, a free workflow.   We put a big warning in red letters in the instructions, 'Read this first before you pooch your existing data!'         (or something like that).  Maybe it can be better described - I did intend to do a video tutorial/screencast but it seems people 'get it' in general.     

For Editorial - you can see the blank spot underneath price, that's where the Editorial toggle will go.  We just need to tidy up the amended licensing agreement and some other formalities before getting it going.

Nata,

I can tell you slowness should not be a part of this submissions page. Perhaps it's a temporary overload over the night, I cannot say at this point why it may seem slow. The idea is batch editing - although it may 'spin' for a few seconds to perform an update, you can literally update dozens or hundreds of files in that wait time.

Be sure to check the 'Instructions' link under describe - it is all laid out there clearer then I could re-say it here:

___________________________________________________
Important - please read these instructions completely before attempting to use the Describe area. It is very easy to overwrite data in this batch system, and you could quickly do an update you may wish you hadn't. Please spend a moment here first!

After your files are uploaded, you will find them in this 'Describe' area of the Submissions page. If your uploaded files do not show up immediately in the Describe area after uploading is done, please press CTRL-F5 (or use your internet browser's Refresh button) to refresh the screen.

The Describe area let's you proof your uploaded files, as well as gives you the opportunity to optionally indicate the Category, Price, and Release form that is the best match for each file.


Each submitted file must meet the following description requirements:


Required (description items must be present in order for the file to advance to our Reviewers):

At least 10 keywords - The system automatically will read embedded IPTC keywords, or you can optionally paste comma or semicolon-separated keywords into the provided input. You can also of course type/edit keywords manually into any of the 40 keyword inputs.

There is no ranking/priority of keywords inside a particular file, so it is not necessary to put 'more important' keywords first. Plurals are not encouraged as our system can match on plurals and other root word variations, please choose the most appropriate form of each word and just use that.

Keywords must be provided in English. If you already have keyworded your submissions in another language, you can use the 'Translate' dropdown to choose the language to translate from and your keywords will be automatically translated.

Model/Property Release - Required for all submissions featuring recognizable people and/or objects and property requiring such release forms. To add new forms, click the link 'add new release forms'. After uploading via the popup window, you may associate a Release Form with a particular photo by choosing it in the Release Form dropdown.



Optional (description items are optional, and will be chosen by Reviewers if you do not choose):

Category - Choose the category you feel is most appropriate from the Category dropdown. Categories play an important role in helping Buyers find your works, so choose carefully!

Price - Choose a fair price for the file from the Price dropdown. Price range is from $3 USD to $100 USD, with photos being split by the following ratio: Large (100%), Medium (70%), Small (40%). Therefore, a photo price set to $10, would have $7 for the Medium size, and $4 for the small size.

Getting Started
To begin, click a checkbox or the area around the thumbnail picture of one or more waiting submissions, on the right of the Describe area. This will highlight it in blue and have the effect of selecting it. The description properties of the most recent item selected will show up in the inputs on the main form.

You can activate/deactivate particular description options by using the checkbox next to each title. For example, if you want to only change the price for a set of selected files, turn off the Category, Release Form, and Tags checkboxes, leaving only the checkbox next to "Price:" in the checked state. When you Apply the data in this case, only the Price would be set for the selected files.

To Apply the current information in the form to the selected files, double-check you have the correct file(s) selected (highlighted in blue on the right), check that the options in the main form are correct, and click the 'Apply Descriptions' button. This will update our system with your latest information for the selected file(s). You can do this type of update as often as is necessary.

To Submit all file(s) that you feel are ready for our Reviewers, click the 'Submit Descriptions' button, and all the selected file(s) will be sent on to our Reviewers. At this point the file(s) you have submitted will no longer appear in the 'Describe' area of the Submissions Page, but now will be in the 'Pending' area below.
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About 'Pending' Review Wait Times

We receive hundreds of submissions per day. While we try to attend to reviews as quickly as possible, we are still in our Beta pre-launch phase and cannot guarantee instant reviews at present.

Some notes on our review process:

- Our Editors review your chosen prices, categories, and keywords. You may change the price and keywords (for approved files) in your Art Manager.

- First-come is not necessarily first-served. Our Editors pick a balanced selection from the queue each day in an effort to not flood the site with one persons content.

- Files waiting in the FTP queue generally are moved into the visible queue on this page the same day, but this time may vary. No worries, we will and always do get to your files in due time!

If you want your submissions to move through the review process as fast as possible, please ensure:

- You have followed the instructions for Editing Waiting Submissions

- You have great keywords embedded in the IPTC keywords field

- Your submissions meet all technical and conceptual standards specified on the uploads pages

- You have uploaded and associated any relevant Model or Property Releases for the waiting submissions

Remember: we would love to get every single great file online as fast as you, they are the reason our business exists; however, we must balance our resources to take care of all aspects of promoting your works.  Thank you for your patience as we work to bring your files to the clients.

And Finally..

If you have any questions or suggestions about this system, please don't hesitate to contact us!
________________________


For the Art Manager update tags - offline pending upgrades. Will be back with the new Art Manager.

Hi Icefront,

Thanks for the valuable feedback.

1 Left <> Right:   Actually our Reviewers tool is much like this page, except it has the thumbs on the left as you described, and the data on the right.  The thumbs are on the left for them because, their first task is judge the photos, secondly, proof the data.        On the Artists Submissions page, you know your own photos intimately, and probably wouldn't have uploaded them if you didn't believe them worthy: therefore, your main task it to proof the data. The thumbnail images are merely a reference point.

2. Actually the setup you described is what we had before. After extensive testing we found that having one form, with optional select/deselecting of particular description items, is much faster to use than other UI's.

3. Yes our categories suck right now.   I have a brand-new masterlist sitting right here on the wall and they will be added next week.  We are trying to have the categories as compact as possible, so I honestly think '3D Clock renders' is much too granular for our scheme.. but wait and see, perhaps we can hold a vote after the new cat's come on and see if our choices could use some additions.


Finally, it sounds like you have indeed missed a point or two about how the Submissions page is designed to be used, the whole idea of it is to 'edit the submitted' images.  Yes it's complicated but only at first- we've got people sailing away in there, once it 'clicks' how it goes. Please let me know if it really continues to be trouble for you.

Hi, well they would appear one after another because they are uploaded in serial.  As nice as that uploader is, it isn't psychic.   It need's to have all the data for each JPG file before the file is dealt with as completed.     

I would suggest letting the uploads go, go for a bike ride and enjoy last day of summer, then come back later to do the Describe part.   

I am curious about the Internet Explorer issue: any error messages, or does it just not load the page?

thx

Hi Nata,

Thanks, I just saw many submissions come in from you and have located the error you experienced in the logs. It is related to your Italian locale - programming for all the different currencies and languages inevitably turns up small bugs here and there, we will have this issue corrected shortly.       

Of course the page seems complicated at first, but the analogy I think fits best is a television remote control: there is also a lot of buttons on there, however you just use the main ones normally (volume, channel, etc.) and tune out the rest. The extra stuff is not without use or else it wouldn't be there, this submissions system is a compromise to suit different peoples workflow goals/different numbers of submitted files at once.

I guess in the end, if you don't like it, you don't like it. Many people hate the Microsoft Office UI and Microsoft put millions into usability testing before releasing it.. c'est la vie. All I know is we're seeing members and reviewers (using a similar system) blowing through the upload and description process at record speed. 

I tried the new submission page yesterday, but all options gave me an empty child window. Tried again now and get a runtime error message in the child window.

Using FF 3.0.3, is that an issue?

Regards,
Adelaide

We upgraded to a new main database server the day before last, and there is an ongoing issue related to this.  Pageloads are sloooow and the bugs you are running into are probably related to our efforts to resolve this problem.  I am currently waiting for Australia to wake up as the programmer who has the answers I need is located there, so stay tuned and we should be fixed up again.