We’ve all been there, haven’t we? You find yourself in a coffee shop abroad, sipping cappuccino and chomping a muffin as you realize that your laptop’s battery charge is just about to crush your creative session to dust. Well, perhaps you’ve got your power adapter with you but, of course, it isn’t the right one for foreign power sockets.

So you end up looking around and chatting up with strangers asking for help. Some are more responsive than others, and before you know it, you don’t just have a full battery, but you’ve made a couple of new, surprisingly interesting acquaintances.

As it turns out, forgetting your power adapter is not only a great way to meet fantastic people but also a great strategy to come up with original ideas. In fact, this is exactly how the idea for the new Smashing Riddle was born—in a coffee shop in Zürich, Switzerland—and yes, it was indeed that cinnamon muffin that made all the difference in the end.

Letters Scattered All Over The Place, Like Muffin Crumbs

Animations have a way of drawing attention to themselves. So it’s understandable that a vibrant animated GIF might raise some interest, questions, or perhaps the reasonable concern of friendly strangers. Desperately looking for a charger, I sparked a number of awkward conversations with surprisingly unsurprised, friendly strangers around me.

In the end, as the charger issue was successfully resolved, I found myself sitting behind a large wooden desk, immersed in a profound discussion with a charming, smart math student from Switzerland, and an eager, seasoned engineer from Turkey. It was a fast-paced, inspiring discussion about life stories, experiences, biggest failures and creative endeavours.

This is how it all started. The letters scattered all over the GIFs were inspired by muffin crumbs scattered all over a plate. (Image source: jentilley)

As the conversation continued—still sipping those Zürich cappucinos—I caught glimpses of one of the older animated GIFs looping on my screen, and before I knew it, the conversation was all about mysteries, riddles and mischievous animated GIFs. During an intensive, unscheduled, battery-recharge brainstorming session, we came up with a number of interesting ideas, all thoroughly written down, tagged and ready for use. One of the ideas was to play with the letters and the way they would be displayed.

You see, at SmashingMag, we cherish the idea of lasting traditions—be it monthly desktop wallpapers, editorial newsletters or those weird mystery riddles. So in the spirit of tradition, the riddle obviously had to be based on animated GIFs, but we wanted to do something entirely different from changing file names or guessing Twitter handles.

Originally, before my trip to Zürich, we had thought about using a number of invisible semi-transparent “layers” hidden in animated GIFs (erm, hey, we actually should do it for the next one!), and later on we spent quite some time prototyping the “reflection” idea in which a hidden message would be revealed once an actual mirror was placed up against the screen. The latter proved to be quite difficult later on in implementation, especially due to the wide diversity of screens out there.

During the brainstorming session, we came up with an idea to do something along the lines of Scrabble, so the readers would derive clues from a number of GIFs and construct a secret keyword out of the letters discovered in those GIFs. And what if letters were scattered all across the GIFs very much like the crumbs of the muffin were scattered all across my plate? Some letters could be hidden, others would be clearly visible, and all of them would be turned, or flipped, or rotated, or skewed for confusion—very much in the spirit of the “reflection” idea we had in the beginning. That’s one of the ideas I brought back to the office after my trip to Zürich.

A New Mystery, A New Design Challenge

Our previous mysteries required a lot of tinkering and experimentation but, frankly, quite a bit of luck as well. The most important bit was to come up with the right approach. For the new riddle, we wanted to keep things a bit simpler and apparently easier to draw in as many readers as possible without the riddle becoming too annoying after the first few tries.

Of course, the riddle shouldn’t be too easy either, so instead of hiding letters of one single word in GIFs, we felt that hiding parts of a sentence might work a bit better. We needed a twist though, something that would make the riddle a bit more interesting and cause one or two “Aha!” moments. We thought about using lowercase symbols to introduce more confusion but ‘i’ and ‘l’ might look too similar in a small resolution, so instead we looked specifically for letters that could be confusing and decided to rotate them or skew them until they actually become confusing. It wasn’t the only twist though, as you’ll see later in the article—a few fine adjustments and twists were added during the test phase later on.

Whenever a new mystery is created, the first thing we do is set up the scene for the riddle. Our dear animator Guillaume knows exactly how to create just the right atmosphere. An early draft. (Large preview)

So when Paul Boag’s new book was about to be published, we jumped right into the idea, came up with a sentence and scattered parts of that sentence across three animated GIFs. Each GIF contained a few scattered letters (all uppercase) that readers were supposed to use to build words. Once you put the words from all the GIFs together, you’d be able to create a sentence—and, of course, no letters should be left unused. So once the sentence is constructed, it had to be tweeted @smashingmag using the hashtag #smashing. Of course, we’d also hidden a few clues in the image captions under each animation and in the corresponding file names.

Easy-peasy? Well, let’s see how it works, and what hidden clues those weird animations contain. (But seriously, who would put skewed letters on the floor and walls anyway, right?)

1. “Change”: Get Out Of That Desk Already

You know it, and we know it: nothing is more frustrating than stubborn management. Usually, changing workflows, processes and culture seems to be impossible, but perhaps something can be done about it after all. At least if you trust the hint provided for the very first animated GIF.

Nothing is more frustrating than stubborn management. Perhaps it’s just about time to do something about it. Three words, one of them on the floor. (Large preview)

Well, if you are playing Scrabble or any other word-building game, the first thing you have to do is gather everything you’ve gotc. So alright, we have to find three words in the GIF. Let’s collect the letters first, starting from the left-bottom corner:

TCRIEZDOU

Alright. Well, we are smart, so why don’t we just use an online anagram solver to make the sense of these letters? We don’t want to do it manually, right? Hmmmm. No result. It doesn’t make sense. That’s weird. There must be a trap. Perhaps we are missing something: we could argue about “O”, if it’s actually the letter ‘O’ or the digit ’0′, but apparently we can rule out digits since all characters are supposed to be uppercase letters. But wait a second: if you rotate “Z” through 90 degrees, you end up with an “N”, right? So perhaps the combination is different:

TCRIENDOU

Ah, that’s better. Looks more like English. We’d better watch out for those traps. Okay, if we play around with it, we can figure out that the word hidden here is… NORDIC TEU, erm, TCRIONDUCE, er… aha! INTRODUCE! Nailed it.

Okay, it wasn’t too hard. So what about the two missing words? Same game, same rules. Let’s collect the letters first:

INTRODUCE HCANEGDATIGIL-=

Mmm. Wait, wait. Only letters are allowed, so the yellow sticky notes with an equals sign and the dash are probably another trap since only uppercase letters have to be considered. We can remove them:

INTRODUCE HCANEGDATIGIL

Okay, it smells… easy. Probably the best way to avoid mistakes in discovering the words is to move letters around until they start making sense, probably with CMD+X and CMD+V. Right, right. The shiny new book on the table can’t just sit there on its own—what’s the title again? Digital Adaptation. Ah wait; wouldn’t “DIGITAL” fit nicely here, and in fact, the letters are right there, aren’t they?

INTRODUCE DIGITAL HCANEG

Well, it’s time to do something about that frustration, right? Probably just the right time for a… change?

INTRODUCE DIGITAL CHANGE

Bingo! Well, at this point we know that every animated GIF contains a couple of words, but it looks like they might be connected on their own as well. We might try to distribute the letters in an other way, but this solution does look quite fitting. Okay, let’s hope for the best and move to the next one.

2. “Convincing”: They Listen But Don’t Move

Well, perhaps you still have the enthusiasm to convince your colleagues about a more pragmatic, effective workflow. But is it really usually colleagues who need this kind of convincing?

It’s difficult to convince them, though. But if not you, who else will help the company and bring it on the right path? Three words. (Large preview)

Oh well, at least it looks like those people in the meeting are paying attention to what that guy is so passionately explaining. Again, let’s collect the letters scattered over the table first, and we should keep the variations in mind as well: “M” could be a “W” and “Z” could be an “N”, and “L” in left upper corner looks surprisingly similar to a skewed “J” (by design or by mistake?). So we’ve got:

AHP[L/J]EEA[M/W][Z/N]ETG[N/Z]

Oh wait, there is another one, in the upper left corner under the plant! Is it “M” or “W”? Let’s consider both options. Okay, that’s freaky:

AHP[L/J]EEA[M/W][Z/N]ETG[N/Z][M/W]

That’s quite a few combinations. We must be smarter about this. Let’s look at the image caption. The caption talks about “convincing them”, but what does it refer to? Ah, stubborn management from the first GIF. Perhaps the guy in the GIF is trying to convince… managers?

MANAGE HP[L/J]EET[N/Z][M/W]

Umm… almost. So we have neither “R” nor “S” here, so what else could it be? Ah! Perhaps management?

MANAGEMENT HP[L/J]E

Nice! Well, there aren’t many four-letter-words with “H”, “P” and “J”, so we probably should stick with the “L”. Could it be… HPLE, or to be more precise, HELP. Well, it sounds about right, especially since “help” is also mentioned in the image caption to that GIF.

MANAGEMENT HELP

The “A” was hidden fairly well in the pie chart on the presentation wall, wasn’t it?

Good, good, it wasn’t too difficult after all. Oh snap. It was supposed to be three words. Did we miss something? Let’s take a closer look around the room again. The presentation chart has a few graphs on it, doesn’t it? Circles, bars, a pie… but that pie, there’s something suspicious about it! Doesn’t the piece of the pie look like an “A”? An invisible “A”, maybe? Well, it is…

MANAGEMENT HELP A

Alright! That’s a long shot, but let’s go with it for now, and let’s proceed with the last one.

3. “Difference”: It’s Going To Be Just Fine

Alright, we know how it works by now. Look closely everywhere on the image and gather all the letters first: that means looking on the carpet, under the chair and under the plant. And then double-check everything to make sure that we don’t miss anything. Also, we know that we can’t trust the colours and the position of letters, they didn’t help us in the past but instead confused (and annoyed) us a bit.

In fact, you’ve got nothing to lose. And who knows, in the end, it might turn out even better than you expected. Four words. The letters on the floor belong together, in one word. (Large preview)

We know that the words on the floor belong together, in one word. Let’s start with them:

ARE

Oh well, there aren’t too many options here: it could be either “ERA” or “ARE”. Could it be that easy? Well, let’s keep it this way for now, and gather all the other letters, from the left to the right:

HEFRE[M/W]KCTDE[N/Z]FIEEA

And we have something that appears to be a blank piece of paper. What’s that thing now? An invisible character? Or a sign that a character is hidden? Or an empty space? Also, could something be hidden under the book, or behind the picture, or on the other side of the chair? OK, OK, let’s not get paranoid here. Deep breath. So we’ve got three words to figure out here.

Well, it might take a while, so let’s watch out for clues. The guy in the chair seems to have it all figured out. Perhaps we should check the larger preview of the image. Oh snap, its file name is… difference.gif. Is it… could it be…?

DIFFERENCE H[M/W]KTEEA

OK, this sounds about right. The combination of available unused letters doesn’t leave that many options: WEH KTEA, MATE HKE… Hmmm. Well, since the character in the chair is victorious, and it’s all about difference, perhaps he… made it?

DIFFERENCE MAKE HTE

Better! We’re almost there:

[ERA/ARE] DIFFERENCE MAKE THE

Sometimes thumbs-up could mean more than a sign of appreciation. The invisible “L” that was missing to turn “REA” into the word “REAL”.

Phew, now, that was quite a journey! But wait a second! That guy passing by, giving a thumbs-up to the character in the chair… Doesn’t it look like an “L”? The image caption says that the words on the floor belong together, but it doesn’t say that they build up an entire word. Well, if we added “L” to [ERA/ARE]… Oh:

REAL

“REAL”! So perhaps it’s about making a real difference in the end. OK, let’s keep it in mind for now.

Yes, of course, there might be many solutions and we would accept all of them if all letters were used, but after 45 minutes of collaborative brainstorming we discovered that it was highly unlikely that you could construct an entirely different, perfectly meaningful sentence by using all letters scattered across the GIFs, leaving no letters unused. Now it’s time to bring all these words together and try to construct something more or less meaningful out of it.

“Solution”: Making Sense Of It All

INTRODUCE DIGITAL CHANGE
    MANAGEMENT HELP A
    DIFFERENCE MAKE THE [ERA/ARE/REAL]

Okay, well, it doesn’t look too scary! It’s probably as easy as something along the lines of “Help the management introduce digital change: make real difference.” In fact, yes, we would accept all solutions which include “ERA” and “ARE”, but a sentence shouldn’t be just a loose pile of unconnected words. These are all the options which you could build out of this mess of letters:

Livia Labate is one of the solvers of the riddle. Yep, it was a bit of work indeed.

• Help the management introduce digital change: make a real difference.
• Help management make the difference. Introduce digital. Change era.
• Digital era: introduce a change, help management, make the difference.
• Manage digital era change, introduce a plan, make the difference.

So here we are. A little journey from muffin crumbs to letters scattered all over the place, shady characters and a few invisible characters. Time to reveal and reward the winners.

Winners!

It’s showtime! Surprisingly to us, the riddle didn’t take much less time to resolve than the previous ones. First place was earned by the person who was quickest and the closest to solving the riddle, i.e. have found all the right words in the riddle and leaving no letters unused. Please notice that since nobody discovered the “REAL” bit, we had to relax the rules a little. We raffled the other prizes across the first people who tweeted a correct sentence, and tried our best to exclude copycats. The winners can select any prize of their choice (be it a bag, a Smashing Library account, printed books or anything else). And they all get the Smashing Cody Stress-Relief Ball, too. All winners have been contacted.

The first perfectly correct sentence with no letters left unused was tweeted by Dorin Moise from Brussels, Belgium, one hour and five minutes after the mystery went live, with: “there, make a difference: help management introduce digital change.” It’s not quite correct but it was the fastest and the most precise tweet. Congratulations, Dorin! You just won a roundtrip to our lovely hometown Freiburg for the Smashing Conference Freiburg, a stay in a fancy hotel and a few Smashing Books. Yaaay!

And here are the other winners:

• Paul Rose (1h 2min): “Make a difference, help management introduce digital change.”
• Braunson Yager (1h 17min): “Help management make the difference, introduce the digital era.”
• Charlie Park: “Introduce a digital era; help management make the change.”
• Razvan (3h 21min): “Introduce digital change: help management make a difference there.”
• Livia Labate (Washington DC, USA): “Help management introduce digital change: make a difference there!”
• Eva Kavaliotou: “Help management make the difference. Introduce digital. Change era.”
• Ed Hicks: “Digital era: introduce change, convince management, help make the difference.”
• Andreas Busschop: “Make difference. Help introduce the digital management era.”

Congratulations! And thanks to everyone who participated! We hope we didn’t waste too much of your productive work time (and didn’t cause too many headaches either).

Behind The Scenes

Guillaume Kurdjian is a 22-year-old freelance illustrator and animator from Nantes, France. Guillaume likes to experiment with stuff on his computer and climb trees.

Just like the last two times, we worked with talented Guillaume Kurdjian on a series of animated GIFs for the riddle. This time the discussion thread was a bit shorter, and after thorough conversations and prototypes, we ended up with quite a number of different GIFs, drafts, and ideas that were thrown away, as well as the ones that made it to the final stage.

All designs were a series of iterations to make the overall riddle not necessarily perfect, but just right. So a big “thank you!” to Guillaume for following through and being so enthusiastic and kind about all the changes made.

Ah, it is a great feeling to solve that damn riddle, isn’t it? Well, you don’t really make the difference, but it’s pretty, pretty good nevertheless. (Large preview)

As it always is with a public hashtag, it can be quite difficult to separate between the “real” tweets and copies of the tweets. We didn’t choose the hashtag #smashing by accident since it is a quite “messy” hashtag on Twitter, but it wasn’t good enough since we saw lots of weird activities going on, with people reusing tweets 1:1 which we of course didn’t accept. We did look very closely at the dates and profile and activities of every winner to prevent copycats from winning. (We probably will go with #cats next time or even better—will challenge you to construct the “right” hashtag on your own).

Poor frames on the wall must have quite a number of finger prints now; we’ll have to bring the room in order later. And yes, apparently those yellow stick-it notes were quite confusing indeed! (Large preview)

The first GIF wasn’t really a problem for anyone. However, for some weird reason the word “convincing” started to pop up in tweets, although the letter “V” didn’t make its public appearance anywhere—in neither of all those GIFs. Quite a number of readers discovered “game plan” in the second GIF and was confused about the number of words that would be hidden in the second GIF if “game plan” actually was hidden there.

Wordsmith encountered server hiccups 30 minutes after the riddle went live, but of course we don’t take any responsibility for it.

The truth is that “game plan” wasn’t the part of our initial plan, so we take no responsibility for massive headaches or confusion caused—sorry about that!. Also, apparently Wordsmith encountered server hiccups 30 minutes after the riddle went live, but of course we don’t take any responsibility for it either.

Sam Stealth-Geek Tremaine and his colleagues went as far as trying to decode the movements of the character speaking in front, using semaphore. (Image credit.)

The most trouble was caused by the second GIF which caused quite a lot of headache for many readers. You could go as far as trying to decode the movements of the animated character who could be using semaphore, a marine alphabet. This wasn’t the plan either.

Are we waiting for round 4 already?

So this is it! It was quite a journey, but we hope it was worth it. We are really sorry about all the unproductive hours that you spent solving the riddle. Well, kind of. Now, are you ready for the next round? ;-) Stay tuned!

© Vitaly Friedman for Smashing Magazine, 2014.

An entire work day. That’s how long it took to create the 8-page project proposal you wrote, edited, and packaged to perfection for a potential client. It’s the third one you’re sending out this month.

It looks ready. It feels ready. You’re confident it’s going to blow the client’s socks off.

You wait a couple of days. The client hasn’t responded yet. Did he get the proposal? Should you send a follow-up email? Maybe send another copy of the proposal just to be sure (might have been trapped in their spam folder by accident).

Eventually, you hear back from the client. But his email brings in some shattering news: He thinks you’re a talented professional, but he decides to pass on your project proposal.

What happened?

It’s tough to handle the rejection after putting in all those hours. But the truth is many freelancers struggle even in just convincing the client to read their proposal its entirety and to truly consider their offer. Besides losing out on potential business, these service providers spent time and effort they can never take back and reuse on actual paid work.

READ ALSO: Why Designers Should Get Paid for Proposals (designinstruct.com)

Rather than beating ourselves about it, let’s try to understand the reasons why clients aren’t interested in our proposals so we can tweak our approach to create better ones.

Your Proposal Doesn’t State the Problem You’re Solving

If you can’t identify the client’s problems and needs, it tells them that you don’t understand their business. Employers are hesitant to work with people who aren’t on the same page.

Before sitting down to create your next proposal, ask yourself these two questions:

1. What problem is the client trying to solve with this project?
2. What solution can I offer to the problem?

Successful proposals present solutions that will address the problems and needs of the client. It has to be detailed enough so the client can see how you are intending to deliver on your promises.

Most project proposals get thrown into the trash folder because they focus too much on credentials, past work experiences and capabilities of the service provider. Their proposals read like a resume.

The 8-page proposal you spent an entire work day on? It’s filled with fluff meant to increase the proposal’s page count, and doesn’t mention anything that can move the needle forward for the prospective client.

But if you want to set your proposal apart from the rest of the proposals the client will be reading that day, you need to be bold and state what you will achieve for them.

Will your proposed solutions improve customer acquisition? Will the project open up new opportunities for revenue? How?

In other words: What objectives will be met after the project has been completed?

In his article on Forbes.com, August Turak emphasizes the importance of knowing and stating the goals in a proposal:

"Great plans start with projections or outputs, and work their way back through the activities and money needed as inputs. Poor plans focus instead on activities and ‘budget’ in the forlorn hope that if we just stir up enough dust some of it may magically settle into money."

Your Proposal Isn’t Supported by Facts

For your proposal to have a stronger argument and a tighter hold on your client, invest some time in research.

Find relevant data, articles and research study results, then use these resources to bolster your proposed solutions.

Your Proposal Doesn’t Describe Your Project Methodology

Traditional proposals are often written and presented to the client without a project plan. It’s because, at this early stage, you won’t have enough data to plot out how and when the project will be completed.

However, you can outline the general stages of your projects, such as the research phase, planning phase, production phase, post-launch phase, and so on. Perhaps you use a standard project methodology like Agile, Getting Real or Lean Startup — you could mention that too.

Describe how your methodology helps complete projects efficiently and successfully.

Doing so gives the potential client an idea of what it will be like to work with you. And it shows that you mean business.

Also, describing your project methodology adds to the perceived value of your services.

SEE ALSO: How I Earned A Lot More on Projects by Changing My Pricing Strategy

Summary

By understanding the prospective client’s needs, he will be more likely to take your proposals seriously. And at that point, you will be a step closer to winning the client’s trust and landing new business.

Related Content

• How to Fire Bad Clients
• 7 Tips for Giving Effective Design Project Quotes
• 5 Pricing Tips to Earn More on Client Projects
• Related categories: Business and Project Management

About the Author

Stef Gonzaga is all about creating great content for a better Web. She’s a resident blogger for the project scheduling software, TeamGantt, where she writes about productivity, project management, and the latest apps. Connect with Stef on Twitter @stefgonzaga.

The post Why Clients Aren’t Interested in Your Proposals appeared first on Six Revisions.

Welcome back, WDD readers! It’s time for this month’s round of WordPress plugin goodness.

As usual, we’ve got quite a variety of plugins, with a variety of potential use cases. Take note, though: some of these plugins are very new, and some might need a few more iterations before they’re perfect; that said, they’re all pretty awesome right now, so let’s jump right in…

Bump This

Bump This adds a button when viewing a post that will allow users to “bump” the post. If enough people click that button, the “bumped” post will be moved to the top of the list of posts. This is a great way for your users to help you to put popular content where others will see it.

Some small issues: currently, only logged-in users can “bump” posts. Worse, one user can bump the same post over and over again by navigating away from the post, coming back, and just hitting the button again. That said, I’m interested to see where this idea goes once the plugin gets updated a couple of times.

Video Capture

This plugin brings video capturing to your WordPress installation. Place a shortcode into any page or post, and users will be able to record short videos, up to three minutes in length.

Once the videos are recorded, you can access them from the WordPress admin panel. You can download or delete them… and, I imagine, embed them elsewhere.

The videos themselves are rather low-quality .flv files, and are stored on a third-party server. (Boy does that ring a few alarm bells!) Still, if you need a simple, free way to get webcam video from your users, and you’re okay with the terms and conditions, this plugin can do it well.

LeadIn

LeadIn is one of the more polished plugins on this list, and incredibly useful. It integrates with a number of form plugins for WordPress, and anytime someone submits a form (ie. a contact form) on your website, they are added to a database of contacts.

The page view history for each contact is listed in their file, so you can see what parts of your website interested them most.

The plugin also comes with a simple, optional newsletter sign-up form that only appears when a user scrolls all the way to the bottom of any page on your site. Signing up, or simply closing the “pop-in” sign up form keeps the user from ever having to see it again.

Gmail Comment Approval

Gmail Comment Approval takes a bit of set-up to make it work, but the end results are pretty awesome. Once the plugin is installed, your WordPress notification e-mails are DKIM signed, and you’ve registered your e-mail address with Google for doing this kind of thing, you can approve new comments on your WordPress site without ever leaving Gmail.

Flaunt Your Clients – Free

While it was originally designed with photographers in mind, this plugin could be used for a variety of scenarios. Essentially, it creates a new custom post type designed to accommodate client stories and testimonials. These “client pages” can be sorted by category, linked to blog posts, and more.

Google Web Fonts Customizer (GWFC)

Not happy with the fonts in your pre-made theme? GWFC adds a section to the “theme customizer” in your admin panel. This will allow you to choose any font from Google Web Fonts for your headings, paragraph text, blockquotes, and for some unfathomable reason, list items.

Meet My Team

Ever seen one of those websites where they have pictures of their team members, and you can click on them to load more information in a lightbox-like modal window? I can tell you from experience that those can be a pain in the rear to make from scratch (though it is doable).

If you can’t make one from scratch, this plugin will provide you with a custom post type designed for displaying team members and their info. A shortcode displays the team members in a responsive grid on any page or post you like.

There aren’t any settings as such. Any visual changes you wish to make will need to be done via CSS. If you have to do that, might as well just roll your own. However, if all you need is a plug-and-play solution, this’ll do it!

tinyfier-wp

tinyfier-wp optimizes your CSS, JS, and (if you want) HTML assets, removing all unnecessary data to make your site load faster. I tried it out, and well… it works. The code gets minified.

I didn’t see a huge increase in speed, probably because I’m using a basic WordPress install with the default theme as a test environment. Still, if counting bytes is your thing, give it a try.

WP Club Manager

Here’s one for the sports geeks. Simply put, WP Club Manager is designed for managing sports club websites. I’ll let their feature list tell the rest of the story:

• Can be used for almost any team sport
• Manage multiple teams
• Player and staff profiles
• Player ratings
• Player stats for each season
• Fixtures and results tables
• League tables
• Match reports
• Sponsors
• Fixture, results, player, table and sponsor widgets

Firefox OS Bookmark

Firefox OS Bookmark may be a newcomer to the market, but the reviews are glowing. If you want to register your WordPress-based site as a “hosted app” on their marketplace, this plugin will give you everything you need to pull that off.

Zethos for WordPress

A mobile app that has recently piqued my curiosity is Spritz. Basically, it makes speed reading easier by allowing you to focus on just one word at a time.

Zethos has re-created this functionality with JavaScript, allowing anyone to embed it in their web pages. This plugin embeds Zethos in every post, enabling readers to choose how they want to read your article.

The plugin needs work because, currently, there are no configuration options whatsoever. In addition, the Zethos embeds currently show up in posts in the main loop. If there is more than one post on a page, each instance of Zethos will “play” them all.

With time, though, I could see this plugin becoming a useful and fun addition to text-heavy blogs.

Featured image/thumbnail, WordPress image via Shutterstock.

WP Plugin: Add Legal Pages to your Site – only $17!

Fabulous Frosh

Two UMBC freshmen win conference Rookie of the Year honors in basketball

March Madness is the ultimate hoops party � and two standout UMBC freshmen are giving the Retriever Nation renewed hope that their basketball squads soon will return to the Big Dance for the first time since 2007 and 2008, when the women�s and men�s teams debuted at the NCAA Championships in back-to-back years.

Sara Tarbert, a Delta, Pa. native, and Rodney Elliott, a local product with exceptional pedigree, were named America East Conference Rookies of the Year at the end of this season. Both players also were named to the league�s Third Team � the only freshmen to earn that position amongst the conference�s elite.

Tarbert, a 5�11� forward, received a UMBC program-record five America East Rookie of the Week honors during the 2013-14 campaign and led all conference freshmen in scoring (13.8) and rebounding (7.1). She also led the league in minutes per game (36.3) and ranked eighth in both field goal (43.5) and seventh in free throw (76.3) percentage.

�There are so many good, young players in the league and I am truly honored,� Tarbert said upon receiving the award. �Honestly, it�s kind of shocking. You really don�t play for an award, you play to play, so it�s great to be recognized for it.�

Tarbert ended the season on a 13-game double-digit scoring streak and finished the year with exactly 400 points, the fourth-highest total ever for a UMBC freshman. She added 205 rebounds, sixth-highest all-time among UMBC freshmen, and recorded six games with double figures in both points and caroms.

“We are so proud of Sara and all the hard work she put into her freshman season,” head coach Phil Stern said. “It’s a great honor and something Sara should be very proud of. For me, the most impressive thing about her freshman year was how consistent she was on a nightly basis.”

Elliott became UMBC’s first men’s basketball player to earn Rookie-of-the-Year honors in 11 league seasons. earned Rookie-of-Week honors a UMBC-record five times during the 2013-14 campaign. Like Tarbert, he finished the year as the leading scorer amongst all league freshmen with 15.0 points per game, which was the fifth-best overall figure in the conference. In addition, Elliott was fourth in America East in assists (3.6), sixth in assist-to-turnover ratio (1.0), and eighth in steals (1.3).

The 6�0� point guard � the son of former Maryland Terrapin standout Rodney Elliott, Sr.� became UMBC’s second NCAA Division I player and America East�s lone competitor this season to record 400 points (451), 100 rebounds (118) and 100 assists (108) in a season. The first-year player�s 451 points scored in the most by a freshman in UMBC�s 27 years of NCAA Division I competition.

Elliott was also selected as the America East Fans’ Choice Player of the Year, UMBC’s first in the eight-year history of the award and the first Retriever freshman in any sport to earn the selection.

�I am really honored to receive this award, it�s a humbling experience,� Elliott said. �I want to thank my family, my parents and my coaching staff – who knows where I would be without their support.�

“Rodney was thrust into a major role as a first-year college player and did a tremendous job,� said head coach Aki Thomas. �His consistency off of the court really helped him be consistent on the court. Rodney is a hard worker in the classroom, a good citizen, and a good teammate. These are all mature qualities that you normally see in veteran players.�

The last time that one conference institution could brag about two first-year honorees was in 2004-05, when Northeastern�s Shawn James and Shaylese Smallwood earned the distinctions. It has only happened four times in the four decades of America East basketball competition.

Tarbert and Elliott will have help leading the Retrievers back to national prominence. On the women�s side, another freshman, Taylor McCarley, also earned America East All-Rookie team honors and a third classmate, Emily Russo, recovered from knee surgery to record an outstanding initial campaign. For Coach Thomas� squad, freshmen Will Darley, David Kadiri and Charles Taylor, Jr. all played substantial minutes in 2013-14 and, with Elliott, form the nucleus of a team with limitless potential.

�Rodney has definitely served as a catalyst in the maturation process of our basketball program,� said Thomas. �He is a true student of the game of basketball, and I look forward to watching him grow as a player.”

(03/31/2014)

While network scientists have been poring over data from Twitter and Facebook, they’ve forgotten about Tumblr. Now they’ve begun to ask how this network differs from the rest.

The study of social networks has gripped computer scientists in recent years. In particular, researchers have focused on a few of the biggest networks that have made their data available, such as some mobile phone networks, Wikipedia and Twitter.