Much Good News!

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 11:53:38 -0500 - dho

Before I get to the good news, I want to give a huge thanks to everyone who has been active on the uservoice feedback side of things. This has helped motivate us to get things done, and has certainly been a gigantic boon in helping us prioritize new features. If you haven\'t checked it out, click the feedback link in the navigation menu. You can easily make suggestions and vote on ideas that you like the best.

Good news item number 1: Ad revenues seem to be picking back up. Yesterday our users seemed to find the ads particularly relevant -- if every day were like yesterday, we\'d be able to set up streaming in less than 4 months. I\'m excited about this because that means that not only are our ads finally relevant to our users (after the months and months of junk ads -- we\'re now getting them about technology, gaming, guitars, and even relevant Rock Band products), but it shows an upturn in the economy: advertisers pull revenue in recessions. (I must explicitly state that we cannot encourage you to click ads in any way -- if you do click ads, you must do so because you are genuinely interested in the advertisement).

Good news item number 2: This is good news for all you! I get into work about an hour early on Mondays and spend time doing stuff SG related since I\'m going to be there for the rest of the day anyway. Today\'s efforts were concentrated on the chat widget. Over the weekend, I got the widget working in MSIE 6+; this morning, I fixed the issue of not being able to chat in multiple tabs, and the disappearing nick list. Now you may have multiple chat widgets open in different browser windows (or tabs) and you\'ll be able to chat in all of them simultaneously. Note that we still limit three concurrent connections per IP address, so you can\'t be watching more than three streams at once.

Good news item number 3: dhofest 3 is coming up soon. I guess that\'s really only good news for me, but it might be entertaining for you to watch. Check out my streampage from March 13 - 16, and there will be something wacky going on, guaranteed.

Good news item number 4: We\'re coming out with some subscription-based services starting Sometime Soon. These will include some video broadcasting services, hosting, email, and various other things. If you\'re interested in this kind of stuff, keep your eyes peeled.

That\'s about it. Thanks for using SocialGamer; keep coming back!

New Chat Unveiled

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 18:26:47 -0500 - dho

So, I\'ve decided that even though there are a few bugs in MSIE 6 / 7, I\'m going to release the new chat widget. If you run Firefox, Safari, Opera, or IE 8, the chat widget should work just fine. If you are not using one of these browsers, I suggest you either switch, or upgrade. We will be fixing the issues in IE 6 and 7, but this will take time as I don\'t currently have a system on which I can test (and won\'t until about mid-March).

There are some missing features and known bugs still:

  • You cannot have multiple browser tabs open with chat widgets loaded.
  • Users joining the channel currently messes up the user list
  • Nick changing works, but is not displayed.
  • Closing a window with /p or /part can close the wrong window
  • Again, only works in Firefox/Safari/Opera/IE8

There may be a few other issues, but please let us know if it\'s something not listed here.

Some User Accounts Lost

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 15:15:20 -0500 - dho

In an effort to remove spambots and usernames that haven\'t confirmed their email address yet, I deleted a bunch of users from the database. Unfortunately, my database command was screwed up and some users who had verified were lost. Also, for your convenience, I forgot to switch backups to do the new database and site content. If you can\'t log in, it\'s all my fault; please re-register. I promise I won\'t mess it up again.

Missing Chats Fixed

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 16:10:00 -0500 - ajanata

Users who registered between when beta2 went live and around Monday night didn't have the proper information created for them in the chat database. I believe I have inserted the proper data for these users into the database, so their chats will function properly now. If you are still having issues, please drop by the support channel or send us an email.

New users registering now are not affected.

at&t mail fixed

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 11:29:25 -0500 - dho

The DNSBL entry seems to have been lifted -- at least there are no recent bounces. If you have tried to register with an SBC Global, Bell South, or other AT&T-proprieted account, and haven\'t received your confirmation message, please try registering again.