Hello VOKLE Community!  My name is Marques and I’m the newest addition to the VOKLE Team.  No, this isn’t my car. It’s the Ramblin’ Wreck (from Georgia Tech).  I was born and raised in Tacoma, WA, went to college in Atlanta, GA, and now I’m in southern California. As a result, I’m happy with any temperature over 30 degrees.

My super fancy degree from Georgia Tech was Science, Technology, & Culture with an emphasis on Media Studies. This all boils down to I like to know how people communicate via technology. I LOVE Social Media. You can find me @marquesbaxter or my tech blog. When I’m not sitting behind a computer I love to sit behind a television, play ultimate frisbee, read science fiction books, and listen to music. If you must know, my favorite band is Paramore.

I’m really excited to join VOKLE. I love to see companies grow and VOKLE is one of those. Here’s to a great future.

Engagement is a key part of Facebook, so we are very excited to introduce a new way to engage with your audience on the new Facebook Timeline.

You will be able to embed your VOKLE show directly in Facebook, and have your fans interact and watch your show. Here are a couple Hosts that have already taken the leap: Summer Tomato, Bomani Jones, The YEC, Brent Smith.

To spread the love, we’re offering free customization of your shows to the first 100 Hosts that install the app.

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To get started, you must…

1. Have at least 100 Likes on your FB Page.

2. Setup the VOKLE FB app on your Page by following these quick steps.

3. Post a link of your newly created tab on our Facebook Page.

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After you complete these steps, we’ll message you on Facebook and get your show customized

- The VOKLE team

Hello everyone! Here’s the step-by-step walkthrough for setting up the Vokle app on your Facebook Page.

Questions? Let us know on our FB Page!

1. Simply install the Static iFrame Tab App and follow all steps until complete.

2. Click “Settings” and you will be taken to your “Tab Settings” where you can customize

3. Next, click “Enable” to fit the new Timeline width.

4. Under “Page Source”, enter your Series URL and add ”/facebook_fanpage” (without quotes) at the end. It should look like this: http://www.vokle.com/series/11637-bryanstars-live/facebook_fanpage“

Also change the “Height” dimensions to 2550 and check “Hide Scrollbars.”

5. Scroll down and click “Save Settings”. Once it refreshes, go back to your frontpage. You should see a new tab called “Welcome.”

6. To change the name and graphic, first click the dropdown arrow on the far right of your “Favorites” tab.

Hover over the “Welcome” tab, and click the Edit (looks like a pencil). Select “Edit Settings”.

7. You can change the name from “Welcome” to “My Live Show” and click Save.

8. To change the graphic of your show, click the “Change” link to the right of “Custom Tab Image”.

When the new page loads, click the “Change” link to upload a graphic of your choosing, or you can use ours (right-click and ‘Save As’): http://i.imgur.com/csS5r.png

After finishing all the steps, your VOKLE events should now be embedded right into Facebook and should look like this

Fan Gate

To make your shows more exclusive to your fans, you can setup a Fan Gate through your iFrame.  In the Non-Fan Page Source section, you will be able to add a custom image to draw more attention to your Like button.

For more tips on setting up your iFrame app, watch this great video from Justin Germino from Dragonblogger.com

- The VOKLE Team

We are excited to announce that you can now embed your VOKLE show directly onto your Facebook Page! Now your fans can go straight to a tab on your Page, and watch the show from there — an easy way to encourage interaction and increase your Likes.

Your Facebook Page is a place for you to build your community and to interact with it, and what better way to do that than by bringing live events right to your audience?

All it takes is upgrading your Page to Timeline, then a few quick steps.

Check out some of our broadcasters that have already started using the app:

• 3killabytes
• Brent Smith
• ThatSnazzyiPhoneGuy

We’re super excited, and hope you are too! Feel free to ping us with any of your questions.

- The VOKLE Team

NOTE: There is a known bug on Facebook with uploading the thumbnail image for the custom Page tab. More info here.

Yesterday we released some big updates to the VOKLE platform that you’ve probably already noticed. This will help you reach more people in your event along with taking interaction to a higher level.

Let’s start with the refreshed Twitter module! You can now tweet directly from a VOKLE event rather than having to be redirected to another window. You can also Retweet and Reply, all inside the chat. Now you can enlist the help of your audience to spread the word about your show!

We’ve also introduced a new way to ‘Invite Your Hero’ to join the your chat, this way you’ll be able to invite some of your favorite personalities to the chat. You can browse through our list of suggested Twitter users by clicking the left or right arrows on the header, or look for a specific user by using the search bar. Then, simply click “Invite!” and tweet away.

We’ve also introduced a new “Ask a Q” button to our chat box that will make it easier for your audience to ask video/text questions — it’s conveniently located next to the “Send” button in the Chat box.

To continue keeping VOKLE conversations fluid, engaging, and abundant — keep up with the question-asking and be sure to tweet out VOKLE to your favorite athletes, musicians, role models, friends, tech-savvy grandparents, and/or whoever else, and get them to easily create and share content.

-The VOKLE Team

Hello Vokelites! My name is Margaret, and like Steph, I am a fellow newbie to the VOKLE team as well. I was born and raised in the Bay Area in Northern California. I just moved to Southern California a few months ago and have fallen in love with its perpetual sunshine (I’m ignoring the last few days) and quirky variety of food trucks.

I was admitted to the University of the Pacific in Stockton as a Pre-Pharmacy major, but graduated in International Affairs & Commerce with an emphasis in Marketing and a minor in Japanese. A big jump, I know (my parents were ecstatic). Last year, I came back from a 10-month stint studying abroad in Osaka, Japan, during which I ate my way through Asia. And if you can’t tell already, I love food. I am a pop culture junkie who loves traveling, fashion, and Googling images of Ryan Gosling. I also draw comics poorly.

I am very excited to be a part of this team and will do my utmost to not bring VOKLE crumbling down to ruins. To be honest, there is nothing I can say about VOKLE that Steph hasn’t already said so eloquently (nor will I attempt to at risk of shameful embarrassment). So I will just end it on this note: I am elated to be on board. Please excuse my poor attempts at humor.

Greetings and salutations, good folks and friends of the VOKLE community! My name is Steph, but many people call me Slo — short for Stephanie Lo – and I just recently joined the team at VOKLE. I’m a born and bred Southern Californian with an impenetrable love for summer, sunshine, barbecues, and obnoxious fluorescent colors (see image above).

I was fortunate enough to spend four years in New York City as a student at NYU, where I studied Marketing and Management, dabbled within the realms of Entertainment, Media, & Technology, and ate way too much (or not enough?) chicken and rice from a Halal cart on 53rd and 6th. Some of my hobbies include: going to shows, eating, getting swept up in spontaneous adventures, rhythmic hand-clapping, and fist pumping. I’d like to say that I don’t do all of those at the same time, but that would be a lie.

I’m psyched to embark on my journey here at VOKLE, and look forward to doing whatever I can to help the company continue to push the boundaries of interaction and innovation. It’s hard to put into my own words exactly what it is about VOKLE that is so inspirational to me, but I know it has something to do with the following line from this most recent VOKLE spot, which was inspired by Larry Lessig’s 2007 TED Talk on the “laws that choke creativity.”

“Digital technology is the opportunity for the revival of [lost] vocal cords — culture where people produce for the love of what they’re doing, and not for the money.”

If digital technology is the opportunity for uninhibited communication, then I’m positive VOKLE is the right vehicle to navigate that opportunity, and I’m happy to be along for the ride.

While perusing the web, Shant stumbled across one of our Staff Picks on Kickstarter.com. Tour Chats has been one of our most regular broadcasters, and remains the premier haven for fans of cycling. And they need your help!

“Cycling fans usually can’t go down to the corner pub and find bike races on the TV and the camaraderie of fellow fans like other sports fans can,” explained Pamela Wood Browne, Creative Director of Tour Chats, so “we enjoy creating venues online for cycling fans to hangout and enjoy cheering on and getting to know their favorite champions.”

The Tour Chats live series has featured a number of cycling greats, and has been steadily building an audience. All shows are carefully recorded and edited into video podcasts which they share with fans for free.

“We’re committed to providing opportunities for fans to get to know and interact with their favorite bike racers and other cycling personalities, as well as, to connect with the worldwide cycling fan base - both of which the Vokle platform is perfectly suited for!” Pamela explained “While cycling fans may not have many chances to hang out with other fans in their local town—every week we can get together online!”

Tour chats has been producing their weekly video podcasts without funding for the last four months. Production costs are rising, and and it will take time for Tour Chats to attract corporate funding. Until then, they still want to be able to produce the t-shirts and other paraphernalia. “ If we raise more than our minimum goal of $3,000, we’ll put more funds towards production and marketing of the show,” explained Pamela. To donate or read more about the cause, see their Kickstarter page.

Another thing to get excited about: this Sunday they will be hosting an interview with Jonathan Vaughters, an amazing cyclist. They’ll also be announcing giveaways for financial backers, so don’t miss it:

Update: Our winner, Zac O’Hara was voted the God of Flows on Friday. Congrats Zac!

To those of you who hosted shows this weekend and are anxiously awaiting your recording, know that they are safely processing now, and should be available by the afternoon—as usual, you will be notified by email as soon as your recording is available.

We would like to apologize for the delay; we pushed a new bit of code Friday that unintentionally blocked recordings from processing fully. We thank all of you who informed us of the issue, the sooner we can pinpoint a problem the sooner we can rectify it. And as always, thank you for your patience as we work our way through beta.

-The VOKLE Team

Update: We had a series of recording issues throughout the week, but they should be fixed. These issues were due to improvements we made on the platform, which inadvertently affected recording processing in a variety of ways. Thank you very much for your patience, please email us if issues with processing persist.