Urbis CEO Steve Spurgat is featured in the July issue of Esquire Magazine. The issued just hit the newsstands worldwide.
When asked how Esquire discovered Urbis, they replied “many of our writers use your site.” So a big thanks to our members who work at Esquire!
Go out and grab your copy now!
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For $3.75 per month ($45 a year), you will receive the following benefits:
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Understanding your writing often goes deeper than peer feedback.
Have ever asked yourself questions such as these?
With the new PRO Data feature, Urbis now has the answers to these questions and more.
When you make an item PRO, click on the PRO DATA link after the item title:
You will find the following forms of analysis on your writing:
Lexical Analysis
Analysis at the word level - displaying the shortest word, longest word, number of distinct words and average number of words per paragraph. Urbis also formulates Lexical Density (number of words vs. number of distinct words), which helps the writer understand how difficult their writing is to read.
Textual Analysis
Analysis at the sentence level - displaying number of sentences per paragraph, longest sentence, and shortest sentence. Textual analysis also calculates the readability of the writing based on the three indexes: Gunning-Fog, Coleman-Liau and Automated Readability.
Phrasal Analysis
Analysis at the phrase level - displays the most common two, three, four, and five word phrases used by the writer. Urbis also shows phrases including stop words like I, a, the, and, of, was, what, and for. This data is extremely valuable when evaluating a writing for repetition and originality.
Pro data is most useful for short stories, novels, and other prose. The longer the item, the more conclusive this data becomes.
Some people have no business reviewing your writing. They just don’t match.
Starting now, Urbis is the first and only site that allows you to CHOOSE who reviews your work - using Reviewers’ talent, experience in specific generes, age range, and more.
How it Looks
What it Does
As soon as you choose Reviewers, the top 25 matching members are immediately notified. Within minutes of submitting your item, you will receive reviews from exactly the kind if Reviewer you desire.
How to Use It
1. Submit a new Item. “Request Reviewers” is the second step.
2. Click the “MAKE PRO” link adjacent to your existing items.
We are excited to tell you about some fascinating updates on Urbis!
We have Refined the Review Process…
When you write a review, you will notice this timer:
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Now, longer items are broken down into pages of 300 words or less. You may click “Next Page” (after 30 seconds to help prevent fraudulent clicking) to continue reading or stop anywhere in the item to write your review.
Before this Feature:
After this Feature:
This new feature makes the reviewing process more flexible for the Reviewer and provides a more realistic payment system for the Writer.
Rate the Reviews You Receive…
We have re-launched this Urbis feature favorite. You may now vote whether or not a Review is of high quality. You may also examine a Reviewers overall Review Quality Rating to learn how the community judges their reviewing skills.
Hide Your Reviews…
We have brought back the Hide Reviews feature. You may again control which reviews are visible on your items. Just click on the “hide review” link on the review toolbar, and your review will disappear from public view. You (and only you) may still see the hidden reviews or “unhide” them by clicking on the “hidden” link in the Sort Reviews menu.
Visit the Updated FAQ Page…
As Urbis continues to improve and launch loads of new features, members may have questions about how things work. We’ve been updating the FAQ page to be sure you have the answers you need. Check it out, you may find something you never knew you didn’t know.
Receive 100’s of Reviews in One Day…
Yes, it is possible. If you give 100’s of reviews you will receive hundreds of reviews - immediately.
Recently Urbis introduced FOUR new ways for you to invite your friends and fans to this wonderful community.
Why?
Urbis Receives Support
It’s easier for your friends and fans to support your work and give you feedback when they’re on Urbis.
Urbis Receives Credits & More Reviews
Urbis gives you credits for Reviews done by invites. More credits allow you to receive more reviews of “Anonymous Homepage Test”.
How do you invite people, Urbis?
There are now four easy ways to include everyone you’d like to invite, simply and quickly:
1. Enter your URL anywhere and everywhere. When ANYONE clicks on it and signs up, you are marked as referring them!
2. Log into your e-mail address book and choose anyone to invite. It takes less than a minute to invite all your friends.
3. Import your off-line address book.
4. Enter e-mail addresses manually.
Have you seen Urbis lately? We’ve launched a new design and some excellent features.
Faster Servers
We’ve upgraded our servers and now Urbis is running smoother, snappier and better than ever. Fantastic.
New Categories
We’ve added categories for Humor, Flash Fiction, Senryu, Horror and Satire. Want more categories? Share your ideas in the Urbis Forums here: http://forum.urbis.com/
Skip Feature
This new feature allows you to “skip” writings you don’t want to review, giving you more control over your review queue.
Rating & Ranking Criteria
We’ve removed Goals and added Rating & Ranking Criteria. Now you may receive ratings for your writing using ANY criterion you choose. Do you want specific ratings on your grammar, language, proper use of bathroom humor, or anything else under the sun? Urbis will automatically rank writings from highest to lowest for each criterion.
See Ratings & Rankings here: http://urbis.com/rankings
Hide Reviews
You may now hide reviews of your writings from public view. This is great for those moments that someone tells you that you suck and you really don’t.
More…
There are many more wonderful changes on Urbis like version control, indicators of new activity, seeing who your fans are, easier navigation and much more. Most of the changes came from your input — and we think that’s just super.
Urbis launched many new features and design elements. It was a bummpy transition and we thank all our members for helping us work through the kinks.
Forums
We now have forums up at http://forum.urbis.com. This is a good place to do regular forum stuff like chatting with other members, request new features, and vent about any bugs you see in Urbis.
Design and Layout
The overall design of Urbis has changed for the better. The profile pages contain a more complete collection of a member’s work including their items (now searchable by category) reviews, and stats. A member’s profile page also allows other members to view their favorites, friends and fans. The Dashboard layout is now easier to navigate and view all your account activity —access to your items, reviews, friends, goals, credits, invites, fans, favorites, and stats are all on one page.
Items/Versions
All of your items and each version are on the main Dashboard page now, along with all the stats and goals right below the item title for easy viewing. When you click on “Edit Item” you can manage all aspects of your item easily, including turning reviews on or off, deleting or adding goals, adding a new version or deleting the item. When you add a new version of an item, all the item’s goals will be automatically added to the new version. You can also easily delete one version without affecting the others.
Reviews received
When a new review is received on that item, a pink indicator will appear as (1 new!) to show you which item has the new review. You can click on the pink indicator or the item title to get to that review. The reviews can also be sorted in various ways to suit each member: newest reviews, newest comments, oldest reviews, highest quality, hidden.
Hide Reviews
You may now hide reviews from public view.
Reviews submitted
All of the reviews you have submitted are easily viewed and accessed from the main dashboard page. This new view shows you which reviews have been unlocked and whether the creator is currently a “friend” or “stranger”. We have also added the “Personal Comments” notice which appears on the items you have commented on. This indicator helps you keep track of your “Workshop Participation”.
People
Now you can see who your fans are, which are located on the “Fans” tab under “People”. Fans are people who have added you or your items to their favorites. You can also keep track of those you invited to join Urbis and receive credit for by clicking on the “Invites” tab. There are more tab options after clicking on ”See more/edit” such as “Pending” for those members who requested you to be their friend and “Requested” for those members you have requested as a friend.
Submitting Items
Submitting a new item or new version is now a simpler three-step process: 1. Uploading work. 2. Add goals. 3. Finish. All newly submitted items automatically add the goal “Best Of” and in step two you can easily add other goals. The “Best Of” goal or any others can be deleted here or later in “Edit Items”.
Goals and Ratings
All the “Overall” Ratings have now become “Best Of” Goals. Why? 1. Because some people don’t want ratings at all so now they can delete those goals. Before, it wasn’t possible to delete overall ratings. 2. The “Best Of” goal is more specific than “Overall.” 3. We now showcase the highest rated items in all goals—including “Best Of.”
Reviewing
We now require that reviewers write a minimum number of words for longer items.
Stay tuned for many more new features rolling out over the next few weeks.
-Urbis
On October 10th, Urbis sponsored a social event that brought together two groups: The Young to Publishing Group and Overtime. The Event was held at White Rabbit in NYC.
Matt Martz (St. Martin’s Press), Lauren Spiegel (Touchstone/Fireside), and Lauren Hodge (St. Martin’s Press)
Jeff Beardsey (Vintage) and Nathan Hood (Random House)
Overtime Director Noa Walsky and Katherine Tiernan of HarperCollins.
Kate Ritchey (Grosset & Dunlap), Christine Bynres (Sterling Publishing), Brooke Dworkin (Sterling Publishing), Kristin Ostby (Sterling Publishing), and Christina Quintero (St. Martin’s Press)
Overtime Director Jessica Pavlas (Publishers Group West) and Steve Spurgat (Urbis.com)
Mike Del Rosario, Cecilia de la Campa, Caroline Abbey, Siobhan Wallace, Cara Bedick, David Jimenez, Ghenez Powell, and Alyson Heller (hiding) of Simon and Shuster
Mike Del Rosario, Cecilia de la Campa, Caroline Abbey, Siobhan Wallace, Cara Bedick, David Jimenez, Ghenez Powell, and Alyson Heller (not hiding) of Simon and Shuster
Stephanie Hale (Avenue A-Razorfish), Maureen Karb (Simon and Shuster), and Steve Spurgat (Urbis.com)
Josh Poole (Random House), Lindsey Benoit (Random House), and Nik Perleros (Art-Rash)
Kimberly Bayley (Scholastic), Erin Walsh (Sixth and Spring Books), Connie Hsn (Little, Brown Young Readers), Lily Kim (Writers House), and Jill Dembowski (Little, Brown Young Readers)
YPG Director Jack Sallay with Kelly Spam, both of St. Martin’s Press
Patrick Mulligan and Jessica Sindler of Gotham
Morgan Friedman (Overheardinny.com), Neil Gordon (Dutton), David Courage (HarperCollins)
Brooke Dworking( Sterling), Kate Ritchey (Sterling Publishing), Kristin Otsby (Sterling Publishing), Christine Byrnes (Sterling Publishing), Christina Quintero (Sterling Publishing), and Eve Adler (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
Andrea Dunlop (Random House) and Colleen Lawrie (Bantam/Dell)
Nathan Hood and Sabrina Singh (Random House)
On June 6, 2006 Urbis and Overtime held a book launch party for Harper Collins book “But Enough About Me” by Jancee Dunn.
Click on “continue reading” to hear audio of Jancee’s reading and see pictures from the event…
Click play to hear Jancee read from her book
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Editor Jill Schwartzman (Harper Collins) with Jancee Dunn and publicist Clare McMahon (Harper Collins)
Jill Schwartzman (Harper Collins), Steve Spurgat (Urbis), “But Enough About Me” author Jance Dunn, and Matt Jankowski (Urbis)
Rupa Bhattacharya, a writer for the Food network, with professor Jeff Gatfrall
Catherine Ghim (Harper Collins) with Noa Walsky (Overtime director)
Song writer and poet Sadhbh Hartel with Danielle Bridie of HayMarket Media
Model Sora Chung
Urbis advisor and man about town Joe Sutherland
Casey Ebro and Tessa Aye of Arcade Publishing
Laura Bonner and Tanisha Christie of Warner Books
Alicia Mertz of Michael Kors, Kat Herring of Harper Collins, Elly Weisenber of Warner Books, and Meghan Keenan of Random House
Jennifer Fragleasso of Harper Collins with Claire Fellini of the UN
Jessica Sindler of Gotham Books
Ellie Weisenberg of Warner Books with John Williams of Harper Collins
Writer Carlene Baner with Tavia Kowalchuk of Harper Collins
Artist Peter Schein with Catherine Ghim of Harper Collins
Sarah Thai of Harper Collins
Jason Singleton of MTV with Loryn Hatch
Writers Steve Prigge and Jann Yogman
Molly Brouillette of Penguin with Tim Herzog of Paradise
Jancee’s agents: David McCormick and Gillian Linden of McCormick, Williams
Kate Adler of Shakespeare and Company
Eric Lovaas of Harper Collins
Michael Skidmore and Susan Robinson
Writer Suzanne Lee with Chi Tsana of Lehman Brothers
Kyle Godfrey of Social Life Magazine
Liz Barrett and Ryan Doherty of Harper Collins, Julia Stroup of J. Crew
Jada Esterly of Endeavor Marketing
Marie Estrada, Catherine Ghim and Lisa Garrett of Harper Collins with Myles Doyle
