Understanding your writing often goes deeper than peer feedback.

Have ever asked yourself questions such as these?

1. Is my writing too complicated?
2. Am I repetitive?
3. Am I over-reliant on particular words and phrases?
4. How advanced and readable is my writing?

With the new PRO Data feature, Urbis now has the answers to these questions and more.

When you make an item PRO, click on the PRO DATA link after the item title:

You will find the following forms of analysis on your writing:

Lexical Analysis

Analysis at the word level - displaying the shortest word, longest word, number of distinct words and average number of words per paragraph. Urbis also formulates Lexical Density (number of words vs. number of distinct words), which helps the writer understand how difficult their writing is to read.

Textual Analysis

Analysis at the sentence level - displaying number of sentences per paragraph, longest sentence, and shortest sentence. Textual analysis also calculates the readability of the writing based on the three indexes: Gunning-Fog, Coleman-Liau and Automated Readability.

Phrasal Analysis

Analysis at the phrase level - displays the most common two, three, four, and five word phrases used by the writer. Urbis also shows phrases including stop words like I, a, the, and, of, was, what, and for. This data is extremely valuable when evaluating a writing for repetition and originality.

Pro data is most useful for short stories, novels, and other prose. The longer the item, the more conclusive this data becomes.

Some people have no business reviewing your writing. They just don’t match.

Starting now, Urbis is the first and only site that allows you to CHOOSE who reviews your work - using Reviewers’ talent, experience in specific generes, age range, and more.

How it Looks

What it Does

As soon as you choose Reviewers, the top 25 matching members are immediately notified. Within minutes of submitting your item, you will receive reviews from exactly the kind if Reviewer you desire.

How to Use It

1. Submit a new Item. “Request Reviewers” is the second step.

2. Click the “MAKE PRO” link adjacent to your existing items.

Try this new feature now!

We are excited to tell you about some fascinating updates on Urbis!

We have Refined the Review Process…
When you write a review, you will notice this timer:
————————————————————————

————————————————————————
Now, longer items are broken down into pages of 300 words or less. You may click “Next Page” (after 30 seconds to help prevent fraudulent clicking) to continue reading or stop anywhere in the item to write your review.

Before this Feature:

• A Reviewer could read part of an item, yet earn credits as if he read all of it.
• Writers never knew how much of their work Reviewers read before losing interest; or where they stopped reading.
• Writers paid more credits than they should have.

After this Feature:

• Reviewers earn credits as they read each page. They may stop reading anywhere and still write a review.
• Writers know how much of their work is read; and where Reviewers stop reading.
• The credit economy is far more balanced

This new feature makes the reviewing process more flexible for the Reviewer and provides a more realistic payment system for the Writer.

Rate the Reviews You Receive…
We have re-launched this Urbis feature favorite. You may now vote whether or not a Review is of high quality. You may also examine a Reviewers overall Review Quality Rating to learn how the community judges their reviewing skills.

Hide Your Reviews…
We have brought back the Hide Reviews feature. You may again control which reviews are visible on your items. Just click on the “hide review” link on the review toolbar, and your review will disappear from public view. You (and only you) may still see the hidden reviews or “unhide” them by clicking on the “hidden” link in the Sort Reviews menu.

Visit the Updated FAQ Page…
As Urbis continues to improve and launch loads of new features, members may have questions about how things work. We’ve been updating the FAQ page to be sure you have the answers you need. Check it out, you may find something you never knew you didn’t know.

Receive 100’s of Reviews in One Day…
Yes, it is possible. If you give 100’s of reviews you will receive hundreds of reviews - immediately.

Recently Urbis introduced FOUR new ways for you to invite your friends and fans to this wonderful community.

Why?

Urbis Receives Support
It’s easier for your friends and fans to support your work and give you feedback when they’re on Urbis.

Urbis Receives Credits & More Reviews
Urbis gives you credits for Reviews done by invites. More credits allow you to receive more reviews of “Anonymous Homepage Test”.

How do you invite people, Urbis?
There are now four easy ways to include everyone you’d like to invite, simply and quickly:
1. Enter your URL anywhere and everywhere. When ANYONE clicks on it and signs up, you are marked as referring them!
2. Log into your e-mail address book and choose anyone to invite. It takes less than a minute to invite all your friends.
3. Import your off-line address book.
4. Enter e-mail addresses manually.

Have you seen Urbis lately? We’ve launched a new design and some excellent features.

Faster Servers
We’ve upgraded our servers and now Urbis is running smoother, snappier and better than ever. Fantastic.

New Categories
We’ve added categories for Humor, Flash Fiction, Senryu, Horror and Satire. Want more categories? Share your ideas in the Urbis Forums here: http://forum.urbis.com/

Skip Feature
This new feature allows you to “skip” writings you don’t want to review, giving you more control over your review queue.

Rating & Ranking Criteria
We’ve removed Goals and added Rating & Ranking Criteria. Now you may receive ratings for your writing using ANY criterion you choose. Do you want specific ratings on your grammar, language, proper use of bathroom humor, or anything else under the sun? Urbis will automatically rank writings from highest to lowest for each criterion.

See Ratings & Rankings here: http://urbis.com/rankings

Hide Reviews
You may now hide reviews of your writings from public view. This is great for those moments that someone tells you that you suck and you really don’t.

More…
There are many more wonderful changes on Urbis like version control, indicators of new activity, seeing who your fans are, easier navigation and much more. Most of the changes came from your input — and we think that’s just super.

Urbis launched many new features and design elements. It was a bummpy transition and we thank all our members for helping us work through the kinks.

Forums
We now have forums up at http://forum.urbis.com. This is a good place to do regular forum stuff like chatting with other members, request new features, and vent about any bugs you see in Urbis.

Design and Layout
The overall design of Urbis has changed for the better. The profile pages contain a more complete collection of a member’s work including their items (now searchable by category) reviews, and stats. A member’s profile page also allows other members to view their favorites, friends and fans. The Dashboard layout is now easier to navigate and view all your account activity —access to your items, reviews, friends, goals, credits, invites, fans, favorites, and stats are all on one page.

Items/Versions
All of your items and each version are on the main Dashboard page now, along with all the stats and goals right below the item title for easy viewing. When you click on “Edit Item” you can manage all aspects of your item easily, including turning reviews on or off, deleting or adding goals, adding a new version or deleting the item. When you add a new version of an item, all the item’s goals will be automatically added to the new version. You can also easily delete one version without affecting the others.

Reviews received
When a new review is received on that item, a pink indicator will appear as (1 new!) to show you which item has the new review. You can click on the pink indicator or the item title to get to that review. The reviews can also be sorted in various ways to suit each member: newest reviews, newest comments, oldest reviews, highest quality, hidden.

Hide Reviews
You may now hide reviews from public view.

Reviews submitted
All of the reviews you have submitted are easily viewed and accessed from the main dashboard page. This new view shows you which reviews have been unlocked and whether the creator is currently a “friend” or “stranger”. We have also added the “Personal Comments” notice which appears on the items you have commented on. This indicator helps you keep track of your “Workshop Participation”.

People
Now you can see who your fans are, which are located on the “Fans” tab under “People”. Fans are people who have added you or your items to their favorites. You can also keep track of those you invited to join Urbis and receive credit for by clicking on the “Invites” tab. There are more tab options after clicking on ”See more/edit” such as “Pending” for those members who requested you to be their friend and “Requested” for those members you have requested as a friend.

Submitting Items
Submitting a new item or new version is now a simpler three-step process: 1. Uploading work. 2. Add goals. 3. Finish. All newly submitted items automatically add the goal “Best Of” and in step two you can easily add other goals. The “Best Of” goal or any others can be deleted here or later in “Edit Items”.

Goals and Ratings
All the “Overall” Ratings have now become “Best Of” Goals. Why? 1. Because some people don’t want ratings at all so now they can delete those goals. Before, it wasn’t possible to delete overall ratings. 2. The “Best Of” goal is more specific than “Overall.” 3. We now showcase the highest rated items in all goals—including “Best Of.”

Reviewing
We now require that reviewers write a minimum number of words for longer items.

Stay tuned for many more new features rolling out over the next few weeks.
-Urbis

On October 10th, Urbis sponsored a social event that brought together two groups: The Young to Publishing Group and Overtime. The Event was held at White Rabbit in NYC.

View pics from the event!

Matt Martz (St. Martin’s Press), Lauren Spiegel (Touchstone/Fireside), and Lauren Hodge (St. Martin’s Press)

Jeff Beardsey (Vintage) and Nathan Hood (Random House)

Overtime Director Noa Walsky and Katherine Tiernan of HarperCollins.

Kate Ritchey (Grosset & Dunlap), Christine Bynres (Sterling Publishing), Brooke Dworkin (Sterling Publishing), Kristin Ostby (Sterling Publishing), and Christina Quintero (St. Martin’s Press)

Overtime Director Jessica Pavlas (Publishers Group West) and Steve Spurgat (Urbis.com)

Mike Del Rosario, Cecilia de la Campa, Caroline Abbey, Siobhan Wallace, Cara Bedick, David Jimenez, Ghenez Powell, and Alyson Heller (hiding) of Simon and Shuster

Mike Del Rosario, Cecilia de la Campa, Caroline Abbey, Siobhan Wallace, Cara Bedick, David Jimenez, Ghenez Powell, and Alyson Heller (not hiding) of Simon and Shuster

Stephanie Hale (Avenue A-Razorfish), Maureen Karb (Simon and Shuster), and Steve Spurgat (Urbis.com)

Josh Poole (Random House), Lindsey Benoit (Random House), and Nik Perleros (Art-Rash)

Kimberly Bayley (Scholastic), Erin Walsh (Sixth and Spring Books), Connie Hsn (Little, Brown Young Readers), Lily Kim (Writers House), and Jill Dembowski (Little, Brown Young Readers)

YPG Director Jack Sallay with Kelly Spam, both of St. Martin’s Press

Patrick Mulligan and Jessica Sindler of Gotham

Morgan Friedman (Overheardinny.com), Neil Gordon (Dutton), David Courage (HarperCollins)

Brooke Dworking( Sterling), Kate Ritchey (Sterling Publishing), Kristin Otsby (Sterling Publishing), Christine Byrnes (Sterling Publishing), Christina Quintero (Sterling Publishing), and Eve Adler (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)

Andrea Dunlop (Random House) and Colleen Lawrie (Bantam/Dell)

Nathan Hood and Sabrina Singh (Random House)

On June 6, 2006 Urbis and Overtime held a book launch party for Harper Collins book “But Enough About Me” by Jancee Dunn.

Click on “continue reading” to hear audio of Jancee’s reading and see pictures from the event…

Click play to hear Jancee read from her book

powered by ODEO
Editor Jill Schwartzman (Harper Collins) with Jancee Dunn and publicist Clare McMahon (Harper Collins)

Jill Schwartzman (Harper Collins), Steve Spurgat (Urbis), “But Enough About Me” author Jance Dunn, and Matt Jankowski (Urbis)

Rupa Bhattacharya, a writer for the Food network, with professor Jeff Gatfrall

Catherine Ghim (Harper Collins) with Noa Walsky (Overtime director)

Song writer and poet Sadhbh Hartel with Danielle Bridie of HayMarket Media

Model Sora Chung

Urbis advisor and man about town Joe Sutherland

Casey Ebro and Tessa Aye of Arcade Publishing

Laura Bonner and Tanisha Christie of Warner Books

Alicia Mertz of Michael Kors, Kat Herring of Harper Collins, Elly Weisenber of Warner Books, and Meghan Keenan of Random House

Jennifer Fragleasso of Harper Collins with Claire Fellini of the UN

Jessica Sindler of Gotham Books

Ellie Weisenberg of Warner Books with John Williams of Harper Collins

Writer Carlene Baner with Tavia Kowalchuk of Harper Collins

Artist Peter Schein with Catherine Ghim of Harper Collins

Sarah Thai of Harper Collins

Jason Singleton of MTV with Loryn Hatch

Writers Steve Prigge and Jann Yogman

Molly Brouillette of Penguin with Tim Herzog of Paradise

Jancee’s agents: David McCormick and Gillian Linden of McCormick, Williams

Kate Adler of Shakespeare and Company

Eric Lovaas of Harper Collins

Michael Skidmore and Susan Robinson

Writer Suzanne Lee with Chi Tsana of Lehman Brothers

Kyle Godfrey of Social Life Magazine

Liz Barrett and Ryan Doherty of Harper Collins, Julia Stroup of J. Crew

Jada Esterly of Endeavor Marketing

Marie Estrada, Catherine Ghim and Lisa Garrett of Harper Collins with Myles Doyle

Hello urbis users…

Have you see Urbis lately? The site is…

looking better and getting faster, but we’re not done yet. Urbis is almost out of beta—which means that all the site features and the improved design will be in place very very soon.

Sure…but what’s new today?

Design and interface changes

The first thing you’ll notice is that the site looks different. The design changes aren’t all there yet, but we’ve optimized many of the site views and generally cleaned things up.

Goals and Goal Rating

So you write stuff, but why? What goals do you have with your work? How likely is it that you’ll achieve those goals?

The new “Goal Rating” allows you to attach goals to your work, and receive ratings from the community reflecting the likelihood you will achieve those goals. Goals may be anything from making your mother happy on mothers day with a sweet poem to winning the Pulitzer Prize. When members rate the likelihood your goal can be achieved, they receive bonus credits for being closest to the average of all ratings.

http://urbis.com/goals
http://urbis.com/about/goals

Friends

Urbis now has friend networks! The Urbis friend network isn’t just for socializing—its a new way to understand the kind of reviews and ratings you receive. All ratings are now divided between “in network” (your friends) and “out of network” (strangers). Your friends area also tracks which friends are reviewing you and which friends you are reviewing. Add some friends and see how it works!

http://urbis.com/network
http://urbis.com/about/network

Reviews

Take a look at your reviews—don’t they look different? You are now able to comment directly on individual reviews. This feature is based on feedback from site users and we believe that it will increase discussion participation and keep the focus of discussions on the work and on the reviews of the work.

User Avatars

You can now upload a pic to show everyone how cool you look. Or how hot you are. Or whatever.

Other changes

The way that your “helpful rating” is calculated has changed, and now reflects your standing as compared to other site members. Your “followup rating” uses this method as well.

What next?

In the coming week, we’ll announce even more features, an interesting partnership, and even more design changes. Stay tuned with the latest news by checking our (new!) blog…

http://weblog.urbis.com/

Thanks,
-Team Urbis

The world voted, and Urbis made the cut.

Writer’s Digest just published their annual report: The 101 Best Websites for Writers…

You’re not looking for a date—just tips on writing, jobs for writers or perhaps writers with whom you can commiserate and celebrate. Finding these writing resources can be just as frustrating as looking for Mr. or Ms. Right. So we’ve weeded through the options and found some great writing sites worth your time and attention. Here’s our eighth annual listing of the 101 best Web sites for writers. We examined more than 1,400 votes and chose the most valuable.

We’re proud to have urbis listed in the Writing Sites Category, and we like the approval they give us in the description of urbis:

Not all critiques are created equal. This site allows you to review not only manuscripts but also the person giving the review.

On behalf of us and our members, thanks to Writer’s Digest for building the list in the first place, and double thanks for including us.