Account/Profile
1. Grabatars- What is the Grabinator?
- Editing your Phovatar (photo grabatar)
3. All about Karma (explained in detail)
4. Guestbook entries-- why won't they show up?
5. Sprucing up your Profile-- with music and HTML
Games
1. Homemade Games
- I'm tired of downloading. Why can't there be more web-playable games?
- Why don't some games have a high score (I can't challenge my friends to them)? Related to: Grabbles for first indie game of the day
3. Games won't load! (blank screen or red "X" on the top corner)
4. The Screen is too small, and I can't get to some of the buttons
Message Boards
1. How to mark up your posts, i.e. different fonts, colors, sizes... and how to put images in your post (like the glitter signatures)2. The "edit" and "preview" buttons-- they are there... please use them!
Miscellaneous
1. Raffles-- unfair? Why U.S. residents only? What about the rest of us!?2. Search feature for the forums
3. High-score Grabbles-- when are they actually awarded?
4. Grab Staff and Community Leaders (CLs):
What is the Grabinator?
How to edit your grabatar:
The yellow rectangular box serves as a guide for how your grabatar will look in the end. Whatever's inside the yellow box is what will appear in your Grabatar.
Note to Gold members: If you want to use frames, make sure you leave some room on the inside edge of the yellow box, so the frame doesn't cover up parts of the photo you want visible.
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Photo uploading-- why hasn't my photo been approved?
From http://www.grab.com/boards/b/home/topic/21049
Image Guidelines:
Images may not depict:
Pet pictures must comply with the following additional guidelines:
We reserve the right to reject any photo at our discretion, and if your image is questionable at all, we will likely reject it. Please use common sense and only upload pictures the rest of the community will enjoy!
Answers to the Most Common Image Uploading Questions We Receive
Question: I just uploaded a photo, but none of my friends can see it on my profile page. How come?
Question: My image did not violate any of your guidelines, but it did not go live. How come?
Question: Does my image have to be saved in any special format to be uploaded to Grab.com?
Question: I saw an image on someone else's profile that I think is inappropriate. What should I do?
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All about karma-- explained in detail:
The number of positive votes you have does not, on its own, dictate your karma.
Rather, it's a whole complicated algorithm. In a nutshell -- and I apologize for those who have seen this sort of explanation from me before:
Every karma rating you get is worth some amount of points. In general, a positive vote is worth 1 point, and a negative one is worth 0 points.
(The numbers below are fake, so I'm using fake karma levels as well.)
100 people rate me, and 90 of those people rate me positive. So, I now have 90 points, or 90/100, or 90%. And since I have at least 30 ratings, I qualify for a specific karma level -- say, Grabmazing.
But there's more to it than that
When a "Grab-so-so" person rates me positively, it might not count as much -- so, not a full 1 point, but maybe .85. Since her karma isn't perfect, it doesn't carry full weight.
Similarly, if a GrabLousy person rates me negatively, it might actually still be worth .5 points -- much better than the 0 he was trying to give me.
Of course, when a Grabwonderful person rates me up, it really does count as 1 -- and sometimes, even a little teensy bit HIGHER! And if Grabwonderful person rates me down, it counts as a big ol' 0, as expected.
The higher the karma of the people who rate you, the more/faster your karma will move.
Hope I'm making sense here. The long and short of it:
The number of ratings you receive (and the percentage of those ratings that are positive) are only part of the formula. Each vote is weighted based on the karma of the person rating you. A fancy formula computes how the ratings are weighted, and then another fancy formula determines where your percentage, and the total number of votes you've received, plants your karma.
Finally, my own two cents' worth: Don't worry too much if your karma fluctuates up and down for a while. That happens. If you are blue and then you reach purple one day, you've got to remember that you're most likely at the BORDERLINE. All it takes is one negative vote and you're back down to blue. The good news with that is that once you've reached a higher level of karma, even if you drop back down, it won't take long to climb back up, because you're sooo close to the border (e.g. blue/purple in this example) to begin with. So don't fret! It takes a while of having the same karma before you're stabilized at that (new) level!
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Guestbook entries-- why won't they show up?
Go to your Preferences.
There is a pull-down menu dictating who can sign your guestbook (everyone, only friends, or nobody (i.e. guestbook is OFF)). Make sure they have the right selection.
Underneath this pull-down menu is a checkbox that dictates whether or not you have to approve entries before they appear on their profile. Uncheck this if you wish to have entries automatically appear on your profile as soon as people write something.
If this box is checked, that means that you have to manually go to your guestbook entries and click "Approve" on each entry you wish to show. If you wish to leave this box checked, then be sure to do the following periodically:
In your main profile page there is a section for your Guestbook. At the bottom of this section is a link called "view all messages". Click here and you'll see all the entries people have made. Click "approve" on all the ones you wish to have displayed.
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Sprucing up your profile with background music and HTML in "About Me"
http://www.geocities.com/grab_dot_com
The editor itself should provide you a stratightforward way of editing your profile and adding HTML to it. It is, after all, WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) :-)
If you want to actually mess with the HTML code itself, make sure you use the <span> tag to mark up your text. Here's a couple links to tutorials on how to use the <span> tag:
http://www.hypergurl.com/span.html
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/tutorials/html_401/article.php/3479661
Finally, make sure you press the <> button (see Lisa's site, it explicitly points you to it in the editor tutorial) when you want to edit your HTML code, so that you're not in WYSIWYG mode in the editor. Otherwise all you'll get is HTML code in your profile.
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I'm tired of downloading games. Why can't there be more web-playable games?
Many of these games you refer to are Homemade games, that is, they are made by independent developers-- ordinary people like you and me.
One of the homemade game developers, FX94, had this to add:
Agreed. We don't create web-style games for many reasons. One of the main reasons is the sound effects/music and special effects in the game. To convert it to be web-playable would not only be a awesome task, but it would loose most of what I've mention. Otherwise, the bandwidth it would use would be too high for anyone to host. We might look into it in the future, but at the moment we need to complete the projects already on the drawing board.
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Why don't some games have a high score (I can't challenge my friends to them)? Related to: Grabbles for first indie game of the day
From http://www.grab.com/boards/b/home/topic/28246
See, not every game we offer on Grab.com is fully integrated with our high score system. Gold Miner *is* -- so we know exactly how many points you ended the game with, and can save your score in your profile and such. JewelQuest sadly isn't -- we have no idea how well you do when you finish your game, because the game doesn't "talk back" to Grab at the end and tell us your score.
So for regular, in-house games on Grab, you can only earn Grabbles for playing those games that DO report back to us -- the ones that offer high scores.
For homemade games, the rules are a bit different. Many of our homemade developers do take the time to integrate with Grab's high scores -- see OMG The Bugs Are Coming. Others don't, which is understandable -- they just toiled away for weeks or months on a game; the thought of additional development must seem pretty daunting
So for indie/homemade games, the Grabbles are awarded a little earlier in the process -- once we know you started the game.
Note that our eventual goal is to make homemade games use exactly the same requirements as in-house games. But I'm not sure yet when that change will take place.
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Problems with Challenges-- not receiving them?
Make sure your preferences are set to the correct place you want challenges sent to.
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Games won't load! (blank screen or red "X" on the top corner)
http://www.geocities.com/helly52/gamehelp
for information on additional software/plug-ins you need to install to get games working properly.
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The Screen is too small, and I can't get to some of the buttons
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How to mark up your posts, i.e. different fonts, colors, sizes... and how to put images in your post (like the glitter signatures)
Now, for marking up regular text in the posts with different fonts, font sizes, and colors:
IMPORTANT THINGS TO REMEMBER!
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The "edit" and "preview" buttons... they are there, please use them!
1. The EDIT button:
2. The PREVIEW button:
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Raffles-- unfair? Why U.S. residents only? What about the rest of us!?
From http://www.grab.com/boards/b/home/topic/27983
Our commitment to offering every user, even international ones, the ability to redeem Grabbles in fun ways is unchanged. While I can't offer any specific timelines just yet, know that it is just as important to us as it is to you that we provide you with cool opportunities to use those Grabbles.
I love the ideas I've seen in this thread so far, including raffling off temporary Gold Memberships -- but that gets tricky too, for reasons you can imagine. But keep the ideas coming, and trust that we're working hard every day to make Grab the best it can be -- and to keep all of our treasured users happy.
From http://www.grab.com/boards/b/home/topic/28073
Right now, our legal experts have us keeping the raffle limited to US residents. (And, if those residents don't live near a Target, they can use the gift card online at http://www.target.com/ )
But I assure you, the Grab.com staff wants to make sure everyone can redeem Grabbles for something fun. And while I can't give you a timeline or anything just yet, I just wanted to express that it's a focus of ours and that we're working as hard and as fast as we can to get more great features out there for you -- including other ways of redeeming those Grabbles.
From http://www.grab.com/boards/b/home/topic/28008
We're committed to offering everyone fun stuff to do with your Grabbles -- but I can't offer you any timelines just yet. Rest assured, we want to, and we work 24/7 coming up with great new features to keep the site great and the most important part -- you, the users! -- happy!
Finally, I DO agree that it is not fair that only US residents can currently enter the raffle, but you have to remember a couple of things:
1. Everyone has been clamoring for a grabble shop for some time now
Apparently Grab staff chose to make some things available to some members earlier on, rather than waiting to make all things available to all members. Either way they would have run into complaints: if they waited, people would have complained "where's the grabble shop you keep promising us?"
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Search feature for the forums
In the meantime, you can use Google's Advanced Search to try to find a thread on Grab:
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High-score grabbles-- when are they actually awarded?
1. All-time high score (top 10)-- you get your grabbles immediately, after you finish playing the game.
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I want to be a part of Grab.com staff!
First of all, Grab.com is part of Intermix Networks, a company that manages a content-based Web network. So if you're looking to be part of "Grab staff", what you're really looking for is employment at Intermix Networks.
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How do you become a CL?
First of all don't ask for it!
Next, think about what you expect to see in a CL? Their primary job is to monitor the site and keep it clean. Ensure compliance with the TOS. Secondarily, they also lend assistance to users as much as they can (something that any ordinary user can also do). Is this something you want to do? Something you are capable of doing? When someone misbehaves, are you able to deal with them in a mature manner, or are you more likely to tell them off? Can you be fair and impartial when conflicts between users arise in front of you?
In short, when the staff is on the lookout for potential CLs, they observe you. In the chatrooms. In the message boards. They watch how you interact with others. If you possess the qualities they seek in a CL-- if you're nice, courteous, helpful, respectful, and can conduct yourself in a friendly and mature manner, you'll be a likely candidate. The staff observe quietly and have their discussions behind the scenes. They aren't going to let you know if you're being considered, until they've made the decision to "hire" you, and then they'll contact you with an offer.
Another note: Don't even think about faking it. People who fake being nice and helpful on the boards, yet have a hidden agenda, will almost always show it. If you have an ulterior motive behind your actions (i.e. wanting good karma, wanting to be noticed for a CL position...) don't bother-- people can almost always see right through you. At best you won't get what you want. At worst, it may come back to bite you (i.e. lower karma).
One last note: I hope that a wish to be a CL or a wish for higher karma isn't what drives you to be nice, friendly and helpful. I would hope that everyone would continue to do so for the sake of being nice, for the sake of making Grab a pleasant place to hang out, not for any tangible personal gain. :-)
It's just a fancy term for your avatar (grabatar) editor ;-)
This information pertains to editing your phovatar (photo grabatar):
There are zoom-in and zoom-out buttons on the right side of the editor, you can use those to zoom in/out the photo you want to make your grabatar.
You can move around the yellow box so it goes over whatever part of the photo you want in the grabatar. Just click on it and drag it around.
Alternatively, you can also right-click on the photo and move the photo around.
The best source of information is Abigail's Photo Uploading FAQ on the Site News forum, which I've pasted here. It basically covers all the scenarios with respect to problems you might encounter with uploading your photo:
Many of you have been asking questions about the new option to upload your favorite photos, as well as photos of your family pets, to share with others on your Grab.com Profile. I thought I'd cover a few of the most common questions and answers here, so hopefully more of you will soon be able to join in the fun!
Grab.com is dedicated to maintaining a family-friendly website, so we have strict guidelines on the types of images our members can post. All images will be reviewed by our Customer Care team before they are visible to other members; this screening could take up to 24 hours. Pictures you upload here will be visible to the world, so please only post images you want everyone to see. Please keep in mind the following guidelines when uploading photos:
- Pornography or other explicit sexual material
- Violence or gore
- Hate images
- Usage or promotion of drugs
- Other people without their permission
- Image may not be copyrighted by someone other than yourself
- Image must depict an animal
- Humans may not be the primary focus of the picture
Answer: We screen all images before they are allowed up on the live site. It can take up to 24 hours for your photo to be pushed live so that your friends can see it. Thanks for your patience!
Answer: Although you might not realize it, sometimes the image does not upload properly. When we try to screen a corrupted image file this is obvious, so we reject it. If you are sure your image is something we would allow and it did not go live, try again!
Answer: Yes! Your image must be saved in either jpg or gif format. If your photo keeps getting rejected and you can't figure out why, check to make sure it is not saved in bmp or some format other than jpg or gif.
Answer: Report it to us using the Contact Us link. It is possible that it was uploaded before the screening process was in place.
Here's Lex's detailed explanation of how the karma system works, and how your karma is computed:
http://www.grab.com/boards/b/home/topic/30838
Okay, so you've signed your friend's guestbook, clicked "OK" and then-- nothing shows up on their profile! They've probably got their preferences set to approve entries before they appear. So remind your friend to do the following:
Best place to start is through Lisa's (BlueDaisies101's) website, it explains how to put music on your profile, and how to edit your "About Me" section to put HTML in it:
Here are some of my thoughts on the subject:
A web-playable game on Grab must conform to one of three formats: Java, Shockwave or Flash. This really restricts the game programmer, as he will have to develop in one of these 3 languages in order to make a web-playable game that Grab can host. Many programmers might not use any of these languages, they might program in a different language (e.g. C, C++), using a different set of tools/libraries (e.g. OpenGL). This gives them much more freedom and flexibility to use whatever they like, and whatever they are most familiar/experienced with.
Creating a game is not an easy process to begin with-- it requires a lot of time and effort to get a fully working, bug-free product out on the market. So you can imagine that many developers, after having spent a lot of time creating their game, would not want to spend additional time and energy to convert this game to another language, a task that can be equally, if not more, tedious.
Or they might simply not have the tools or knowhow to convert to another format. Or maybe converting to another format would mean losing some of the functionality that their original programming language gave them. Different programming languages have different advantages, that's why there are so many to suit different purposes.
This issue is related to the above question about downloadable/web-playable games. It deals with the actual creator of the game having to add code to his program to make it "talk to" the Grab scoring system. Here is how Lex explains it:
To earn Grabbles for playing your first web-game of the day, it must be a game that stores high scores here on the site. Once you play your first high-score-saving game of the day, that's when you earn Grabbles.
Check your preferences!
There should be a pull-down menu to dictate where you receive your challenges--
-- Grabmail only
-- Grabmail and regular email
-- Regular email only
-- No notification (you're not accepting cchallenges)
Also, if you choose to have your challenges sent to your regular email, be sure to check your Junk Mail folder. Many email programs will think that it's spam, so be sure you add [email protected] to your "safe" list, so it will filter out your challenge emails and put them in your Inbox and not the Junk Mail folder.
This is an easy one ;-) Mostly because I've already made the page for it. Check out the following site:
Here's several different options you can try. Find the one that works best for you and use it:
1. Increase your screen resolution
2. Resize your window:
a) Click on the button with the square (to the left of the "X" button) on the top right corner of your window. This maximizes the window)
b) Click on one of the corners of the window and drag it out so that the window is larger in size.
3. Press the "F11" key to make your browser full-size. You can press "F11" again to make the window return to the original size.
Let's start with images, the most popular.
http://www.geocities.com/grab_dot_com/Images.html
It actually goes through the steps of saving, uploading, and posting your pictures.
[img]http://www.mysite.com/image.jpg[/img] will work, but
[img]www.mysite.com/pic.jpg[/img] will not.
Too often I see something like this:
[img]http://www.mysite.com/images[/img]. Why won't this work? Because it's not linking to an actual image file.
The correct way to do it is to point directly to the image file, not it's directory/location: [img]http://www.mysite.com/images/pic.jpg[/img]
[b]This is bold text[/b]
This is bold text
[i]This is italicized text[/i]
This is italicized text
[u]This is underlined text[/u]
This is underlined text
[color=Blue]This is blue text[/color]
This is blue text
[size=4]Size 4 text[/size]
Size 4 Text
[font=Comic Sans MS]Comic Sans MS text[/font]
Comic Sans MS text
[font=Arial]This is an [color=Blue]example[/color] of [i][size=4]HOW[/i][/size] I can combine [b][u]all [color=Purple]sorts[/color] of[/u][/b] text markup in my post.[/font]
This is an example of HOW I can combine all sorts of text markup in my post.
For example, [font=Times New Roman] is okay, but [font = Times New Roman] is NOT.
[color=red] is okay, but [color = red] is NOT.
This isn't really a frequently asked question or a problem, but many users seem to be unaware that these features are available to them, so I thought I'd point it out so everyone can make use of them.
If you replied to a thread and you wish to make changes to your post (either you want to add something or rephrase something, or maybe correct a mistake or delete an irrelevant line), please try not to create a new post just for those corrections. It's much better to EDIT your original post. To do that, just look for the "edit" link underneath your original post, click on it, and edit it. When you're done, click on the green "edit post" button, and voila! Your post has been edited. It really helps keep the clutter down if you use this feature wisely.
Now that you've learned (in the section above) how to mark up your posts, you probably want to try them out. Rather than just creating a bunch of posts where you make mistakes, click on "preview" before you actually post your reply. That way, if you see any errors that need fixing, you can correct them BEFORE you actually post your reply. That keeps the rest of us from having to scroll through all your posts full of mistakes while you attempt to fix it. Use the preview button so you can see what your post will actually look like, and fix your errors before you post.
Just hang tight for now! There have been a number of threads voicing similar complaints, and although I can't find Lex's original detailed response (the one about the dozens of lawyers dictating their actions), here are some snippets of what he's said in other threads (I've italicized his posts).
I think his point is pretty clear-- the raffle is just a START of the ways in which all of us will be able to redeem our grabbles:
There are a few threads going around on this topic. I want to stress that we would love to have the current Grab Raffle open up to everyone, everywhere, but legal concerns mandate that currently the contest is limited to US residents.
We hear your concerns, loud and clear. We are tremendously appreciate of all our users -- and your dedicated efforts earning Grabbles -- even if you don't live in the USA.
As mentioned earlier in this thread, the raffle rules and regulations are there so comply with US law. If our legal team clears us to host international raffles, you bet we will.
2. This is not the ONLY thing that we will EVER be able to use our grabbles for. It's just a START. Like all new things, you can't have everything working 100% satisfactorily from the very beginning, it takes time to work out all the kinks.
Is this fair? Not necessarily. But I am reminded of the old fable "Please All, Please None"-- and I guess taking the middle ground of "Please Some" is a pretty good compromise for now.
I have faith in Grab that they will eventually make grabble-trading options available to everyone all over the world, it just takes time!
This excellent idea has been suggested many times by members throughout the past several months, and I'm pretty sure it's on the staff's radar. So rest assured that they're aware of our suggestion!
Go to www.google.com. Then click on "Advanced Search" and type in your keywords. In the box next to "Domain", type in grab.com. Then click "Search" and the results will be restricted to pages on the grab.com domain.
Note: It takes a few days for Google to update its database cache, so if the thread you're looking for was created more recently than a few days ago, chances are it won't show up in the search results right away.
This is based on my own experiences on when I actually get my grabbles for setting a daily, weekly or all-time high score:
2. Weekly high score (top 10)-- you get your grabbles on Monday at 12:00pm, for setting a weekly high score during the week prior,
3. Daily high score (top 5)-- you get your grabbles at 12:00pm the next day. So if you reach a daily high score at 12:30pm on Monday, or 9:00pm on Monday, or 11:30am on Tuesday, you'll get those grabbles at 12:00pm on Tuesday.
Here are my own thoughts on this:
Second of all, this is just like any other job hunt-- age or an online presence alone is not a factor. What skills do you have to offer this company? What kind of work do you wish to do there? Most companies like this are looking for people with tech backgrounds (i.e. for the programming jobs) or financial backgrounds (for the business side of the company). To specifically work for the Grab "department", you'd most likely need an engineering/tech/computer background. Do have experience/education in any of those areas?
Third of all, I'm sure it helps if you're physically located near Intermix headquarters or one of its subsidiaries. Are you near Los Angeles or willing/able to move there?
Finally, just like any other company, the best place to look for employment opportunities is through their website. So go to www.intermix.com and see if they're hiring!
Again, my point of view:
While there's no hard and fast rule against this, it's just common sense that a position that requires you to put some thought and care into your words before you write, isn't likely to go to a person who blurts out "pick me!"
For those of you who say "I want to be a CL, I'd make a great CL!"-- think carefully-- why do you want to be a CL? If your reasons are purely selfish, because you want to show off, because you like the feeling of power, then you're in it for the wrong reasons. Besides, your true motives will show sooner or later anyway. If your reasons are to truly contribute to the site and help out in a responsible manner, then guess what? You're not the type who will go around saying "I want to be a mod! Pick me!" in the first place, right?
Counters
Last updated: 12 July 2006