It was so nice to finally send that newsletter out last night! for those of you who don't know what I'm referring to, here is the most recent newsletter from Pi founder Tonny Sorensen...

Even this cannot explain everything we went through in rebuilding this site for all of you wonderfully talented people.  Creating the tools and usability of a creative network is a lot harder than you might think.  Although we have held the same vision since 2009, without the right developers we could not bring that vision to life.  It is still and always a work in progress, but hopefully those of you who remember what planetillogica.com looked like in the beginning can see the amazing transformation it has gone through.  

Now we happily reintroduce to you with all the speed and tools the 21st century has to offer, your very own organic planet.  Please check it out, refer it to your friends, tell your mother! Start a group! Upload a resume! Follow! Connect! EXPLORE THE PLANET! There are about 6,000 users, who although may not have updated their site in a while, still have some amazing projects. 

Please feel free to message me with any questions or join the Beta Tester group to give feedback! Enjoy!

xxxo Destinee

(Attached below is a copy of the newsletter)

If you have logged into Planetillogica.com recently you’ve noticed things have started changing. We’ve been rolling out new features and re-designing everything. If you’ve never heard of Planet illogica before, you soon will. It’s a creative network for artistic people of all types. From models to photographers, to filmmakers, to web designers and people with big and small ideas, Pi is an active ecosystem of creativity.

When I first met Tonny Sorensen (the founder of Pi) and the rest of the Pi team, I was hit with a wave of energy and eccentric ideas. They were building something big, and they were looking for a developer who could help them realize an ambitious dream, to build a creative network that would offer creative people of all types the tools to showcase their work and an active social community that just being a member of would provide exciting opportunities. And above all it had to be "COOL", aka something you couldn't find on Facebook or deviant art, something I would personally want to use and be a part of. 

From my initial rendezvous with Pi, I learned that the site had been around since 2009 and had gone through a slew of changes in the process of gaining over 5,000 members (many of whom are well known and from all over the world). It needed new software that could grow with it and support the big features and big ideas behind it. After a lot of discussion Pi was rebuilt using Drupal 7, an open source platform that powers diverse and varied websites ranging from the White House's Official Website to the Grammy awards.It would provide the structure and tools needed to come through on the grand creative vision. Drupal itself is the product of a community of developers that spans cultures and international barriers; a perfect choice for the Planet illogica creative network.

Current Features on Planetillogica.com include:

Portfolios with drag and drop images, audio and video. Showcase your work in any format and allow your visitors to browse through videos, images or audio in the same portfolio. Drag and drop an entire folder of media from your desktop or pull it directly from YouTube or Flickr. Everything is tag-able, linked to off your portfolios, can be re-ordered via a drag and drop interface and totally findable on Google and other search engines. 

Linked Accounts – Keep your audience, your connections and your followers up to date with what you post on other networks. Pi will bring in your tweets, your Flickr images, your Tumblr content and any other feed from around the web directly to your activity stream, It updates every 5 minutes and immediately after you first enter your account info. It's easy and supports some specifically cool sub-features including:

•  Twitter, it will automatically pull your new tweets and link your username to your twitter profile. It will pull images from Twitpic and post them in thumbnails in your feed (so your tweets show up with linked images and do not require an extra click). URLs are also automatically linked.
•  Flickr - will fetch large linked images and create a beautiful stream of your new pictures or videos on this photo sharing site.
•  Tumblr - will bring in your latest tumbles in image, video, or text form.
•  Feed - Can fetch any RSS feed from any source including blogger, WordPress, and other sites.

Connections and Followers with Live Activity Streams – Connections are approved mutually linked accounts from people you work with, your friends, or just contacts that you want to follow and share your content and updates with. Follow other artists and people of interest. Login to Pi and check your 'following' activity stream, see new art, tweets, portfolios and blog entries from those people from sites around the world including pi, twitter, flickr, tumblr and more. Comment and get social in a live interactive feed.

Private Messaging with privacy controls – Control who can private message you, just your connections or everyone! 

Comments with Privacy controls – Easily allow or disallow comments on any piece of content on pi. In accounts settings choose moderated and whether or not you want to be notified when people comment on your work.

Resumes – Create multiple resumes and share them with the world, or keep them private for now. Showcase your background, skills and experience in an easy to use resume builder.

Audio Playlists with ordering information – Upload mp3 or wav files, rearrange the playlist order and put the latest or featured one on your profile.

Creative Commons Media Licensing Information – Each piece of portfolio media has a option to choose a license that ranges from copyright all rights reserved to creative commons licenses that allow people to share or reuse your work in conditions you specify. Creative commons (http://creativecommons.org) is a non-profit organization that has already helped license and organize over a billion pieces of content – cool!

Events – Got an event? Let the Pi community and the world know about it, with location and gogole mapping, you get a direct link to where it is, when and why (Facebook event integration is also on the way).

Blogs that connect to the community. Blog directly from your profile. It will automatically go out to all your followers and connected pi member activity streams. They can comment and love it in one click! If it’s especially news worthy, drop us a line and we can feature it in Pi news and it will be seen by the entire community.

Pi news to keep up to date with what’s on Pi and see selected updates from noteworthy pi artists. Get exposure through the entire community to your information or updates too.

Talent Directory - Discover new artists and opportunities 

Creative Call to Action – What you can do on Pi right now

1. Showcase your work – if you haven’t already build out a better portfolio
2. Connect your other accounts or creative spaces on various websites (twitter, flickr, tumblr more).
3. Connect and follow other artists and people you find interesting
4. Write something noteworthy on your blog and submit it as Pi news (if we feature it it will go ut to all our members and be on every page on this site)

What’s coming – where we’re going and what it means to you

• Groups – public and private
• More Activity stream features
• Better interface and portfolios, control how your features portfolios look and work.
• Chat and video conferencing.
• Everything is improving give us feedback below.

Tutorials and How to Guides – Learning More

We’re putting together some tutorials and graphic posts on how to optimize your Pi portfolio and have a better experience on the site. Hilary Law, the themer and one of the Drupal admins for Pi will be taking you through some of the most important tasks.

• Planet illogica's unique "Linked Accounts" feature allows you to put all the "you's" in one place
• Learn about our blogs and how to upload custom images to the bodies of text on Planet illogica.

Get Social and Give Some Feedback Goodness

Here are some quick questions I’ve love to know what you think.

1.       What features would you LOVE to see on Pi?
2.       What would make you tell all your friends and use the site more (don’t say a wad of cash, I see that grin)?
3.       What do you like most about Pi?

Connect or Follow me and I’ll periodically post updates about the activity, the features and the future we’re building at Pi, plus cool opportunities and the occasional lame jokeJ.

For those of you at Comic-Con this weekend be sure to check out planetillogica residents in Artists' Alley! I heard their even doing a Suggestivism book signing with Nathan Spoor, Bob Dob, Ron English, and more!  Here is a link to the Comic-Con Artists' page :)

http://www.comic-con.org/cci/cci_artalley.php

Yup check it!

http://hifructose.com/the-blog/1573-new-works-by-joshua-petker.html