See the update below

A heads-up for the addicts among us: we’re going to take the Squidservers down for an hour tonight, sometime between midnight and five am EST.

Just regular maintenance to further engooden the site. Join the SquidU forum thread for the latest updates.

Thanks for your patience!

Update 2:15am EST: Our maintenance work is now complete. We appreciate you hanging in there!

We just got a surprise care package from rock star lensmaster Chef Keem. Specially wrapped chocolate bars and cookies and Agasweet agave nectar, oh my!

Even better than the goodies, though, are all the inspiring lenses Chef Keem has been making for the Superhero project. Check this one out.

Sweet as sugar.

Thanks, Chef.

P.S. The Superhero Charity Project is closing tomorrow. So hurry up and send in your entries!

P.P.S. Because pics are always fun, here’s one of the Keem Candy Bar, and one of our Charity Cheerleader Anne Reidy holding up some goodies.

Today’s the day. June 30th is the last day to get your 50 awesome lenses in for Giant Squid status.

Time to put the finishing touches on those lenses and send ‘em in. If you’ve got your 50 lenses, if you’re proud of them, so proud you’d show your mother, then e-mail us at giants @ squidoo.com and let us know.

The Giant Squid Organizers are standing by…

What are you doing this weekend?

Update 1 hour later: Everything’s fixed. Thanks for hanging in.

Looks like it’s a buggy day. Squidoo’s got a little case of the sniffles.

We got reports overnight about trouble with account confirmation as well as lenses showing up blank after publishing.

If you’ve submitted a bug report, thanks! Gil and Blake, the Rescue Squad, are looking into it.

If you run into either of these problems today, please send us a report to let us know.

Congrats to our 2 winners of the impossible-to-pick-just-one 10 Day Squidoo eBay Challenge.

Bela’s Boutique and Kim Giancaterino each approached the contest from a different angle.

Bela’s Boutique as an eBay powerseller with a story to tell (and stuff to sell!). Her winning lens was on Scott Barnes Cosmetics. Find out more about how we picked it.

Kim, on the other hand, wasn’t an eBay seller at all. What she did was organize eBay around her topic, and act as a human editor or tour guide for other fans and potential buyers. Her winning lens was The Monkees Merchandise, profiled over here.

Both winners got Lens of the Day, adorable little ipods, and even cooler, mention in Seth’s talk at eBay Live yesterday.

Way to go!

Katiyana, Giant Squid superstar and the organizer of our Squidoo-eBay 10 Day Challenge, writes in to remind everyone that you’ve got 24 hours left to get famous.

“Hey everybody, you’ve got 1 day left to email your list of Squidoo-eBay Challenge lenses to ebayaward@squidoo.com, to get a chance at our fabulous prizes (iPod, LotD, and a mention in Seth’s talk at eBay Live later this week). A reminder about the contest and the rules are available for viewing here.

Submissions must be in by 10pm EST tomorrow night (Tuesday, June 17th 2008), where I will then review all of the submitted lenses and pick my 10 favorite among the group to submit to our panel of Squidjudges, for them to pick the ultimate winner! We’ve gotten some really amazing submissions, on everything from The Best Shipping Scales for eBay Sellersto TOOKS hats and fun old school Flintstones stuff. Get a sneak peek of more great submissions here.

I want to personally thank all of the lensmasters who have participated in this challenge, and wish our finalists, whoever they may be, good luck!”

Only 15 days to go before the Giant Squid admissions deadline.

Stand up, shake out your legs, eat some peanuts, and get ready for some exciting final innings.

Here are a few hints for making the grade:

1. Focus on quality first. Really. That may sound counterintuitive for a program with a 50 lens cost of admission, but it’s true. Because it’s not just 50 lenses… it’s 50 GREAT lenses. The more great lenses you make, the easier (and more addicting) the rest will become. Instead of spreading yourself too thin, focus on making lenses you’re proud of, lenses that are useful to your readers and worth engaging with and sharing. Sure, getting the Giant Squid recognition and perks sooner than later are more than worth the extra cup of coffee and the late night cram session, but hey, there’s always September.

2. BUT–do yourself a favor, and don’t be a perfectionist. On the web, being a perfectionist can mean you never publish. And never get found. And never discover your tribe of interested followers. Don’t wait. Start. Make a lens about something you’re interested in, and publish it. Little by little every day. Go ahead and tell people when a section of it is still under construction, in chrysalis, half-baked. That’s okay. You’re human. They are too.

3. Feel free to ask your friends for help. What do they like about your lenses? What would they add? Believe me, it helps.

4. Remember, it all adds up. Faster than you might think.

5. You’ve got your own personal cheerleader in Bonnie Diczhazy (lensmaster BDKZ). She rounded up a whole gaggle of ideas for helping you get to 50 lenses by June 30th. And is even offering some direct one-on-one mentoring help. Check it out.

Over the last few years of talking with people about their Squidoo lenses (and blogs and book proposals and nonprofit efforts and more), it has become clear that there a 2 types of people in the world. There are those with imagination, and those without.

Imaginative people can look at examples, at tools, at opportunities, and run with them. Imaginative people can see that if they have a page earning $4 a month, they could make 100 more pages, and watch that add up to thousands of dollars a year. Imaginative people don’t copy or plagiarize or worry about what other people are doing… they focus on making their own stuff great. Because they have a vision. They can see it.

Literal people, on the flip side, want more hand holding. They want instruction manuals and tours and take a while to make a decision. They tend not to start fast, and they’re usually itchy about competition. Literal people wait to see what everyone else is up to, then they run to follow it.

It’s no surprise to me that imaginatives are the core people on Squidoo — the cleverest, the most successful, and the most generous. They have no trouble coming up with new ideas and ways to use lenses, and they can see how those pages can help them achieve their goals, both immediately and over time. Literalminded people, on the other hand, get frustrated quickly, and often go away after making just 1 lens that didn’t work for them.

But wait! It sounds like I’m about to say that Squidoo is a just place for imaginatives, and if you don’t have it, take a hike. Not at all.

I love literal minds. I love seeing a huge group of people who can look at a hammer and a nail, but need help figuring out how to build something with it. Because that means we have an opportunity to help them learn. To establish a relationship with them. To mentor them.

One of the best ways to help the literalminded is to give them what they want. Handbooks. Guides. Rollover tooltips. Blogs. Ebooks. Newsletters. FAQs. Our community has done an incredible job organizing a lot of helpful how-to content, and I’ve been focusing a lot lately on how to get that education in front of new users.

The next best way is to find a few of your most talented imaginatives and put them in charge. Put them smack dab in the middle of a pool of people who trend toward being literal. I once worked on a book called “Contagious Success” — the book itself wasn’t super, but the theory (evident in the title) was true enough.

The point here is that imagination is learnable, and addicting. Once you can teach a new user how to imagine your site working for her, you both win. Once you learn how to say “what if?” you’re well on your way to moving out of the big circle, and making a name for yourself in the little one.

P.S. You’re imaginative. Of course you are. But I bet you can think of 5 “literal-minded” people you know who just don’t get it, whatever your “it” of the moment may be. How would you teach them about what’s important to you? How would you infect them with your enthusiasm? How would you lead them into your imaginative world?

9 out of 10 experts agree! Squidoo is the best place to talk about your interests, to teach and organize and promote and connect.

It’s also a fun way to do your part for the economy (and for charity) — just by selling and shopping. We’ve got people from Etsy, eBay and CafePress all making virtual store fronts about their bestselling items, their artistic inspiration, shipping policies, customer testimonials and more. They get more traffic to their stores that way, and most importantly, they establish themselves as credible, trustworthy, likable people worth buying from.

The latest batch of web savvy sellers are from Shopit.com. In addition to Shopit’s well-known celebrity stores [Wyclef, 50 Cent and Hayden Panettiere (”save the cheerleader, save the world!”) all have storefronts], they’ve made it easy for you to build one too. You can even import your eBay and Yahoo listings.

And of course, you can now automatically feature your Shopit store on Squidoo.

Check it out.

Squidoo makes it really really (really!) easy to share your favorite stuff online, discover great recommendations, earn a little dough and even give to charity. All for free. What's your passion (insert: hobby, job, favorite music, holiday wishlist, pet stories, marketing tips, sports heroes, and so on)? Don't get addicted, we dare you.