Welcome the new ScriptLance mascot: a friendly little blue-haired hedgehog. He will soon appear in various forms to help give the service a personalized, yet professional, public face, that will distinguish ScriptLance from the competition.

The mascot was designed by our very own freelancer creativeservice as part of a mascot competition launched less than 3 weeks ago using our brand new contest crowdsourcing feature. That’s right. Although ScriptLance is primarily a service for outsourcing programming projects (and will remain that way), this shows that we have great designers too, among the many different expertise offered by our freelancers. Congratulations to creativeservice on winning the $500 USD prize!

There were many great submissions to the mascot contest, and I’d like to thank all who participated. But this hedgehog was clearly superior, as it fit our description perfectly, in art work as well as message. This mascot perfectly represents ScriptLance and its members: small, but resilient; efficient and affordable; friendly, yet still professional; fast and hard working; smart and innovative; confident and proud.

The next question may be: what should we call our new mascot? I don’t think it’s necessary to run another contest to find a name, since it seems like “Lance” should be an obvious choice for his name. Lance the Hedgehog. What do you think?

Feedback is welcome. Thank you.

We have a new flow chart diagram explaining ScriptLance’s project escrow feature (which allows buyers to set aside funds for contest and project winners). Another good and simple design by ScriptLance freelancer erithonia.

We have launched an ambitious new project type called ScriptLance contests, and posted several of our own contests for freelancers today.

This will allow buyers to run contests and select winners based on submitted results, especially for creative tasks. The unique aspect of ScriptLance contests is that they are not just for graphic design (like the other contest websites out there) such as logo creation, but can be used to get feedback on several tasks, including: finding a business name, slogan, ad text, doing research, as well as answering questions. The possibilities are limitless.

ScriptLance contests must be posted with Pre-Paid or Featured status. Prize money can also be set by moving funds into Project Escrow, another new feature that complements contests. This assures freelancers that the buyer has the money to pay the winners.

The other unique aspect of ScriptLance contests are that they allow, and encourage, freelancers to interact with the crowd: by replying to each other and voting on submissions. ScriptLance will track contributions made (and police abuses) and award $100 every month to the top contributors. This means that freelancers can earn extra money, without even submitting their own contest entries. And it means buyers get a brainstorming session with every contest they post. If contests are a success we hope to increase the monthly prizes.

All these features are laid out in a modern comment board that makes it easy to visualize and distinguish contest entries, replies and comments by the buyer.

You can see the new features by viewing and participating in one of the several contests ScriptLance has posted today:

• Contest: Suggest the best tooltip code for ScriptLance
• Contest: Think of a new slogan for ScriptLance
• Contest: E-Mail Newsletter design for ScriptLance
• Contest: Create a Mascot for ScriptLance

Tip: get notified of new projects and contests posted by ScriptLance by subscribing to our buyer RSS feed.

Feedback is welcome. Thank you.

-Rene Trescases

Owner, ScriptLance.com

I found the website Domai.nr, a great little tool to search for available domain names.

The cool thing is that it suggests domain hacks for the word you enter. Type “strangely” and it suggests strange.ly, str.an/gely, along with the usual strangely.com/net/org.

Check it out for domain name ideas.

http://domai.nr

Got any other similar tools to share? Leave a comment.

It’s now possible to view all dates/times on ScriptLance in your local time instead of the default Eastern Standard Time. The EST time is still available for your reference when you hover your mouse cursor over any local time. Set your time zone in your account settings to begin using this feature.

I’m happy to announce that this is the first feature implemented thanks to a popular idea on our new feedback site!

Subscribe to the ScriptLance Blog RSS and the Feedback RSS, if you haven’t already.

Feedback is welcome. Thank you.

As I’m again more active with development of ScriptLance, I sometimes come across interesting sites and tools that could be useful to other web developers or businesses. So I will post such finds in this new category of the blog. Hopefully it will be useful to others.

My first post is about http://www.postbin.org

It’s a great tool for debugging form posts in your scripts. Sure, it’s not hard for me to program my script to display or log form posts, but PostBin is a neat little tool that will save me time. Plus they display your history of posts in a pleasant way.

Maybe I’m out of touch and everyone already knew about this, but it’s worth mentioning to those who don’t.

Got any other similar tools to share? Leave a comment.

We have launched a feedback site (powered by UserEcho) to collect ideas from everyone and help improve ScriptLance better and faster. Visit feedback.scriptlance.com and subscribe to the RSS feed to get notified and vote on newly submitted ideas.

As you can see by the feedback tab on the right side of your screen, the system includes an easy to use widget. Start typing your idea and existing ideas by others will be shown. If your idea matches exactly you can simply contribute by voting on it, and/or submitting comments. If your idea is unique, you can quickly submit it and let other people vote on it. ScriptLance staff will interact with people on the feedback system and work on implementing popular ideas.

So if you have any ideas or suggestions that would improve your experience on ScriptLance, please feel free to visit the ScriptLance feedback site.

The feedback site replaces the feedback section of the ScriptLance forum.

Why UserEcho.com? While shopping around for feedback services I found them to be the best, based on prices and features. UserVoice is very nice too, but their prices are too high, charging ridiculously higher prices for adding extra moderators/staff and forums. UserEcho, on the other hand, includes several forums and staff accounts with their plans, making them a better choice for small businesses. I also like their independent, very active and responsive tech team that constantly adds features, much like ScriptLance.

As always, feedback is welcome, this time on feedback.scriptlance.com (except for comments about this blog post, which are still welcome as comments below)

This is a list of announcements posted in the ScriptLance forum since 2008, before the blog was launched.

• Brainbench is outsourcing on ScriptLance 11/16/2011 at 15:25 EST
  We don’t normally make announcements about projects posted on ScriptLance, but this one is special….
• Shared File Attachments Improved 10/26/2011 at 15:18 EST
  An upgrade has been done to the project attachment and shared file system on ScriptLance. More p…
• Charity Project Success 10/21/2011 at 15:54 EST
  The charity project we ran has ended with success! $1033.11 was raised by ScriptLance members, more …
• ScriptLance Community for Charity 10/9/2011 at 20:45 EST
  We are raising money for a small charity that needs computer desks for their skills training center …
• Project Invites Improved 10/3/2011 at 1:01 EST
  The project submission page has been improved and an (AJAX powered) invite feature has been added. B…

In an effort to better communicate with our customers we have launched the official ScriptLance blog!

This replaces the announcements section of the ScriptLance forum (which will remain as a forum for lively discussions). The blog will be used for official announcements, tutorials, tips, stories and other articles related to freelance programming and outsourcing that people may find helpful. The posts may come from a variety of authors.

While ScriptLance greatly speeds up its growth with new features and improved services, the blog will serve as a more efficient archive and delivery method for all updates. Making it easy for members to stay up to date.

Among the many updates you can expect from us in the near future:

• API for developers and affiliates
• Improved affiliate program
• Better support, including live chat and phone
• user feedback system, to better manage requests and ideas
• Better FAQ
• More earning opportunities for freelancers
• A new way to outsource

As always, feedback is welcome and appreciated.

Thank you
-Rene Trescases
Owner, ScriptLance.com