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[Ether News]
April 22, 2008
  • Updated stats page
    Check out the statistics page for more information and rearranged graphs.
     
    New feature in the works: Polls
    The plan for Ether's new poll system is that registered thinkers can create and post a poll to be added to a massive poll page. Each poll will display the total number of votes for each option, plus the percentage of total thinkers that have voted. If you have thoughts to share about this, shoot me an email or post under the thoughtword "ether".
     
    Tweak
    Oh, and another tweak that's on its way is the elimination of pages-by-color for each thoughtword. Soon, each thoughtword will show a simple chronological listing of each thought posted under it, with pages separated out by something more intuitive, like one page for every ten thoughts.
March 28, 2008
  • Alright, I had a terrible idea the other day that needs some input. EtheRPG. Yep. An Ether roleplaying game. It would be separate, but parallel to this site, would borrow liberally from the mechanics of Urban Dead, and would be mostly focused on a) players developing their own locations, items, economy, etc. to explore, and b) giving players exotic player-created locations to real-time chat in. So Thinkers in this world could spend their time just socializing, or in creating elaborate buildings, outdoor locations, galleries of thoughts, etc.

    WRITING PROMPT: ETHERPG
    Go read these notes and post thoughts under etherpg about this idea.

February 25, 2008
  • I'm happy to see new thinkers, more thoughts, and an overall upward trend in Ether activity. Since development and promotion are on hold for now, there's not going to be much in the way of news. So in lieu of news, here's the first of a series of writing prompts:

    WRITING PROMPT: Our Bodies, Ourselves
    What thoughts are associated with your body as a whole, and all of its infinite parts? Take your pick of themes such as joints, muscles, the five senses and sensory organs, hair, eating and digestion, injury, and sickness.

    Also, I'd like to congratulate Thinker #16711422 for posting "fuck" and breaking our 2000-thoughts high-water mark!

December 5, 2007
  • Recent developments:
  • A more detailed Statsturbation page
  • The Timeline was rotated so it won't force a horizontal scroll
  • Thinkers have been categorized (roughly) by color
  • Ether now randomly inserts profanity and ethnic slurs into every tenth post
  • A random dictionary word has been chosen as the Mystery Word. First user to post to it gets flown out to Ether Headquarters in New Brunswick, NJ for an all-expenses-paid party with actor Wil Wheaton.
July 17, 2007
  • Stuff that's on its way:
    • Editing/deleting comments
    • 'View Recently Commented-on Thoughts'
    • Notification of new comments on your Thoughts
    It seems like Ether needs to better designed for conversation nowadays, so that's one of the things I'm working on. Originally, I figured that giving Ether an architecture that mostly isolates colors from each other would promote individual creativity and cut down on the chance of flame wars and other typical lame behavior that handicaps community websites. But now it seems like people want to be able to carry on conversations publicly, instead of just with private messages. What do you guys think of a message board? How about the option to ignore certain colors? Go fill out the survey and let me know what your ideas are.
June 13, 2007
  • First off, the brief bug that didn't allow people to post comments has been fixed. If you've tried to post a comment in the past day, check and make sure it went through.
     
    To all of those who have been frustrated by the slow loading times on Ether, rest assured that I have slayed that beast with some back-end programming voodoo. Unfortunately, as of this update, Ether no longer tracks what posts you've read, but neither does Facebook or MySpace or Wikipedia or whatever, and I don't hear people complaining about that. To give you an idea of why this was slowing things down and why removing this feature was necessary, the server had to take time to search through (Thoughts * Thinkers = 100,000+) database entries just to figure out whether or not you've already read a post. In hindsight, it was a bad decision on my part that only would have worked out if Ether never grew past the first dozen members. I've implemented a caching system and I'm working on other features too that I'll happily gab about if you're interested in talking shop about web app programming, but I'll keep this brief.
     
    Ether be faster. Go play.
June 8, 2007
  • I'm back from my Transylvanian adventure and ready to start work on the next Ether update. Here are going to be the key points worked on:
  • Reducing loading times of pages
  • Revamping notifications for new thoughts and new comments
  • Bringing back the Thoughtword portal with unread material highlighted
     
    The slow loading times are mostly caused by the very thorough and personalized method that keeps track of what thoughts you've read and what's new. Ether will speed up significantly if this is ditched in favor of another tactic, like just providing a non-personalized list of the last 50 or so Thoughtwords that have been posted to, like how MySpace bulletins are handled. Or I could just win the lottery and buy a faster server.
     
    Anyway, I'll be experimenting with a few different ideas and I'll come out with an update for everybody to try out soon.
April 16, 2007
  • Let me know what you think of the new (rough-draft prototype) Flash portal. As always, email me or post to the word "ether".
  • Many thanks to the BSU Daily News for mentioning Ether in a story (again).
  • For all of my fellow math nerds, I'm starting up an Ether Statistics page. Expect more neat stats listed on there in the future.
March 14, 2007
  • Ether v1.5 is up and operational. Changes in this new version:
  • You can post unlimited Thoughts at a Thoughtword
  • Thoughts can now optionally be open to commentary by Thinkers (off by default)
  • The messaging system has been retooled, and you can now delete messages
  • Thought posting, editing, and deleting is now much more straightforward
  • The navigational layout has been rearranged for clarity
  • The FAQ has been updated
  • A contact page has been added
  • Fully refactored back-end and hundreds of little tweaks all over

    There's bound to be a few hiccups as the new system gets put to use, so if you encounter any errors or notice anything strange happening, email me or post to the Thoughtword 'ether'.

March 6, 2007
  • What up, MySpace masses. The Ether has sold out and cashed in on this promotional goldmine and has an account at MySpace.com/TheEther. If you have a MySpace account, feel free to get all friendly with this one and help spread the word about the project.
February 26, 2007
  • Gah! Hours away from the big Ether update and I spill a vodka-coke on my laptop, shorting out the motherboard and making the keys hilariously sticky. While Dell technical support performs their mysterious witchcraft on the compromised hardware, I'm going to enlist the help of some fellow nerds and try to pull what I was working on off of the hard drive so I can get it online in the next couple of days. An updated posting system, retooled messaging, leaving comments, and posting multiple thoughts to any given Thoughtword are all in the very near future.
January 19, 2007
January 10, 2007
  • Updates already out of the way:
  • New URL! From now on, we're accessible via TheEther.info
  • Messaging system has been tweaked and a few bugs worked out
  • Updated FAQ
  • The messages that have been sent between you and another Thinker are now visible when you visit their profile page.
  • Bonus eye candy: Check out this timeline of Ether posts
     
    Updates being worked on:
  • Posting multiple thoughts under a single ThoughtWord
  • Privately assigning nicknames to other Thinkers to help differentiate them
  • A better color-selection tool
  • A mindblowingly amazing sophisticated Flash interface (might take awhile)
  • An option to ignore a selected individual's thoughts or messages
  • Optional email notifications for new thoughts
  • Further development of the messaging system
December 1, 2006
  • Thoughts are now presented in a tabbed view, instead of stacked on top of each other. Now, you click on one of the colored boxes representing a Thinker to view the Thought that they've posted at your current location.
November 6, 2006
  • The messaging system is now operational. Now, you can send messages to other users through their profile pages. Participation in inter-Ether messaging is optional, and through the My Account page, anyone can block the receipt of messages from other users (though by default, messaging is enabled).

    To send a message:
    1. Log in
    2. Click on a colored box denoting a particular Thinker
    3. If the user has enabled receiving messages, you'll find a Communication box to type a message into

    Checking messages:
    1. If you've either sent or received messages, you'll see a link to a My Messages page appear.
    2. From there, you'll see a list of all Thinkers that you've corresponded with, how recently you've received messages from each, and whether or not you have any new messages
    3. You can then review all correspondence (sent and received) with a selected Thinker

    Soon, there will be a formal copyright notice put up that will declare all original content posted to Ether to be public domain. This is going to make attributing quoted content to its original authors more important, but it will also open all content found on Ether to being republished and read in spoken word acts, both of which are possibilities that have been discussed recently.

    159 thoughts and 28 Thinkers. Ether is steadily growing, and you can help it keep growing by telling your friends, family, colleagues, and pets about it. Just tell them to go to TheMuncieScene.com/ether

September 14, 2006
  • The Ball State Daily News has run an online article about Ether. Many thanks to Hurley Goodall for helping to spread the word.
August 28, 2006
  • Registration is now open to the public.
  • Red exclamation marks now denote unread Thoughts. A quick scan over Ether can now show you what's been posted since your last visit.
July 31, 2006