Xanga 2.0 is a Go!

http://thexangateam.xanga.com/774812086/xanga-20-is-almost-here/

Here's a summary:

• John released a video showing what Xanga 2.0 looks like.
• All Xanga usernames have been migrated to Xanga 2.0.
• All blog content from current Lifetime/Premium Xangans have been fully migrated (that includes comments on people's pages).
• They are currently importing blogs of those who contributed to the fundraiser.
• They are also migrating every single photo that Xangans have uploaded to the new server.
• John is donating $10K to the fundraiser, therefore, lowering the goal to $50K.
• John convinced their network facilities to extend the lease.
• Fundraiser extended to end of August to allow more non-Premium/Lifetime Xangans to contribute and have their blog migrated.
• Fundraiser still needs to reach $50K by end of August.
• Current count as of 7:04AM Eastern Time today: $47,941. Needs $2059 to reach $50K.

https://xanga.crowdhoster.com/relaunch-xanga

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After John finally released that video of what Xanga 2.0 would be like and some more info on buying additional servers, everything clicked. Xanga 2.0 will not, I repeat, NOT have the same upgrade plans as WordPress.com.

Using the WordPress software, the XangaTeam (since they are not answering) may have enabled Multisite. WordPress.com, itself, is a WordPress Multisite. WordPress Multisite allows you to build your own blogging community. That’s where Xanga 2.0 comes in the picture. Building a new and improved Xanga software would have taken years. So they use the open-source alternative and beautify it. It’s cheaper and faster to build.

We get all the functionality that premium WordPress.com users get for half the price. And, since they are customizing the software for Xanga, they might as well add all the Xanga functions we’ve come to enjoy for years. This fundraiser is really for all the initial migration and start-up costs, upkeep and paying the web developers and network admins.

There are times when you get proven wrong and you slap yourself upside the head. This, for me, is one of those times. Then again, I can’t blame all the dissenters for the past two months. Maybe it’s the fact that I work in the same field that I’m starting to see the full picture, but the Xanga Team badly needed someone to properly convey this info from the get-go.

I’m done.

SHAAAAAUUUN!!! (A Heavy Rain Review)

Quantic Dream released two games prior to Heavy Rain. Their first title was an action-adventure game called Omikron: The Nomad Soul. Little did they know that the gameplay mechanics they explored for their second game, Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy), would be a commercial success. Dubbed "Interactive Drama" by game designer David Cage, Quantic Dream updated the winning formula for the company's third game and first outing for the PS3.

Heavy Rain is probably one of the most ambitious games to be released that blur the lines on what defines any medium as a game or an art. The game has a huge emphasis on story. It's not like the developers made the game and wrapped a pretty little story around it. The story itself is what drives the game.

"How far would you go to save someone you love?"

Tekken Revolution Review

Tekken Revolution? More like Tekkenville.

Tekken is a fighting game franchise created and developed by Namco (now Namco Bandai Games). It was one of the first 3D fighting games to compete with the Street Fighter series, Mortal Kombat, Art of Fighting and other 2D fighting game counterparts. Other 3D fighting games first on the scene were Virtual Fighter and Battle Arena Toshinden. The Tekken franchise has seen more success and continues to wow their fans with this new installment.

Namco Bandai Games released Tekken Revolution for PS3 and Xbox 360 earlier this June. It's a free version of a watered-down Tekken Tag Tournament 2 that allows you to play arcade mode or other players online and level up the available characters. So far there are six hidden players which you can unlock with the amount of gift points you have accumulated while playing. Two more characters will be unlocked at a later update.

Like most Facebook games, there's a counter that increments how many times you can play each mode in the game. For Tekken Revolution, One arcade coin is added after an hour with a maximum of two coins. One premium coin is added every thirty minutes with a maximum of five coins. If you don't want to wait for the counter, you can buy premium tickets and use them to play arcade mode or online mode (ranked and player matches).

Diary of a Gamer #10

I've been dreading to write this post only for the fact that I'll have to follow it up in the next few weeks with dedicated reviews and first impressions of all the games I've played over the last several months. One thing is for sure, though: I'm not making reviews for Candy Crush Saga and Bubble Witch Saga. I'll start with the basics of what's up in the gaming front.

I sold my Nintendo DS Lite along with all my DS games. I bought in college, back when it was on sale and many of my college friends were playing them. The last time I played any of my DS games were in 2011. I had 5 games unfinished. I was fine parting ways with it. I received a lot of store credit for the trade, which I used to reserve Beyond: Two Souls back in May. I wasn't sure if I wanted to play The Last of Us. It came out last month in June and many were blown away. I saw the first 20 minutes of game and that was not fun (read as sad). I'll probably get around to playing that game eventually. That and Beyond: Two Souls are the last exclusive PS3 games in 2013, if not ever.

E3 happened last month, as well. Words spoken. Shots fired. Internet exploded. Consoles ignored. Biggest backtracking in gaming history. Bigwig resigning.

Long version: Microsoft fully unveiled their plans for XBONE (Xbox One). Many reviled their DRM plans for physical copies of games and used games. Later that night, Sony fully unveiled their plans for PlayStation 4 and one-upped Microsoft's plans with a more delicious console and gaming infrastructure. The Internet goes wild. Fanboys caused so much mortar damage on gaming sites, some had to retool how they moderate site comments. Meanwhile, Nintendo's Wii U was wildly ignored. Ouya was left out and tried to crash E3. A week after that infamous slugfest, Microsoft backtracked their DRM and used games policies for XBONE. Around two weeks later, XBOX Chief resigns from Microsoft and becomes CEO of Xynga, of Farmville fame (Good to see two-weeks notice is still in practice). Both PS4 and XBONE are set to come out this holiday season. Competition is always good for innovation. Here's to gaming later this year and to the next.

I recently finished inFAMOUS. This brings me to all the games I've completed since my last major gaming post.

• Brutal Legend (PS3)
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 3 (PS3)
• Datura (PS3)
• Final Fantasy All the Bravest (iPhone/iPad)
• flOw (PS3)
• Flower (PS3)
• Heavy Rain (PS3)
• inFAMOUS (PS3)
• Machinarium (PS3)
• The Walking Dead: 400 Days (PS3)

Luckily, inFAMOUS 2 was available for free on PlayStation Network Plus. They offer highly-discounted games and full-games for free. I've downloaded Machinarium, Oddworld: Munch's Odyssey  LittleBigPlanet Karting, and inFAMOUS 2. Other than these, Namco released Tekken Revolution. It's a free version of a watered-down Tekken Tag Tournament 2. I'll get more into that in another review.

I think I'll get around to reviewing most of the games I've completed. As for the free games I recently downloaded I'm not sure if I have time to finish them. inFAMOUS 2 is a definite improvement over the last game, but I'm not that invested with the story of the entire series. It's the same deal with Oddworld: Munch's Odyssey. If the story is not captivating enough for me, gameplay mechanics better be great and worthwhile. inFAMOUS 2 is just the same as the first game. Munch's Odyssey is a cross between Pac-Man and a platformer: you're left collecting green eggs the entire game. The platformer side is not that good. Wonky game mechanics or bad camera angles left up to the player to maneuver is the bane of many games. This managed to have both. I'll probably just play it for the trophies.

I'm done.

Xangan Experiments with WordPress

Acclimation

I'm refreshing my memory with WordPress. I installed the WordPress application to our server at my former job last year to replace the temporary Wix site, which temporarily covered for the accidentally deleted site. There are too many features to be knee-deep in. As a blogging platform, WordPress is jacked. The application is robust enough to power any website at the corporate level. Not sure if it changes with the theme you have activated, but WordPress has most of the general posting formats covered:

• Standard - it's the default format (can be changed) for anyone to blog away. Same thing with Xanga, Blogger, Tumblr and Facebook Notes before everyone realized that people went to Facebook to stop blogging.
• Aside - It's similar to a Facebook status update. A Twitter update. Xanga Pulse.
• Image - Self-explanatory. I think Tumblr is more well-known for it, besides reblogs (which WordPress.com also have)
• Video - Uploaded into the site or from external sources (YouTube, Vimeo, etc).
• Quote - I always found this to be redundant and can be replicated using Standard format. Tumblr has the same format, but it's nice to have.
• Link - Self-explanatory.

You also get the Zemanta plugin, which scours all of WordPress sites that contains keywords from the content of your post. It serves two things: (1) Exposes you to other blogs and posts that you have the option of relating to the current post you are editing. (2) It exposes your blogs and posts to other readers and potential subscribers. You can also put your posts into categories. On Xanga, I had this custom module which I manually scripted to include links of specific posts I've done. With Categories, if you or a reader wanted to revisit or read an old post, they can just search through the categories. Of course, that's not going to stop you from creating a specific static page with any content of your choosing. That's where Pages come into play.

Pages can be assigned to the top menu of your blog. The feature I always wanted to mimic on Xanga were nested custom menus. Not that I have tons of content to begin with, but I could have used that feature. If I was really serious into doing a full-blown blog and possibly make money off of it (or not), I wouldn't mind paying for premium themes and customize it as much as possible. In the meantime, I'll stick to personal blogging... and comics.

Speaking of comics, I'm liking this Panel theme. I've always wanted to have a comic-based blog even on Xanga. If I had the right CSS template that could be seamlessly integrated to Xanga's new themes, it could have been doable. There's a limit to the width of the comic, but infinite length. The comic I uploaded right now is okay, but it's too large. I'll have to self-mandate a fixed length in future comics, or less (than the soon-to-be mandated fixed length).

In Comparison

There are many, many features to customize your blog with WordPress. This doesn't even include widgets/plugins and the locked functionality that comes with a fee. You can do private posts and invite as many people as you can (10 at a time). You could even add contact forms and polls for readers. Zemanta is a great tool for expanding your viewership. The Panel theme has built-in comic posting. Analytics in WordPress is more in-depth than the one used at Blogger. With all these free features available, I can see why many are turned-off by paying a required $48/yr fee for the purported WordPress powered Xanga 2.0.

On the downside, 3GB of storage is archaic. It's understandable for an open source community-driven site. It doesn't beat Facebook or Tumblr. Tumblr monitor's abuse, but as long as you post reasonable content, there's no limit. Blogger is linked to your Google account, so you get to enjoy the storage perks of that. You can buy different tier levels for additional storage for a yearly fee, though. Fully customizing free themes requires a $30/yr fee. "Because of the way WordPress.com’s technical infrastructure is designed," they are not able to support uploading of custom WordPress themes on their service.[1] That requires another fee. You could customize Blogger with your custom themes or customize the existing themes that they offer. Another downside is that the text editor is not in Rich-text format. I can see why it's not, because the themes themselves already defined the font-size. Still, I would have liked to have large or small letters for emphasis or lack thereof. Daylight Saving Time is not covered on WordPress. Many blogs have this feature built-in, even as to use your IP location to determine your date time. Sadly, you have to manually edit your time zone twice a year during the switch if you live in these time zones.

If I was serious about blogging as a hobby, either to make money or just to do networking and marketing myself to entertain people (i.e. YouTube, blogger, whatever), I can justify paying a premium for all these features and the locked-out functionality that comes with it. As a simple hobby, I have to question the Xanga higher-ups' motive and design for Xanga 2.0. $48 just can't be an arbitrary amount. At the moment, contributors of the fundraiser don't really know what they would be getting. Just looking at the upgrade packages on WordPress that match the features the Xanga Team has announced, I'm looking at no-ads and domain mapping and registration. That's $30 and $13, respectively, + $5 for domain registration. Exactly $48/yr, what the Xanga Team asked of the Xanga community.

When they said we have a choice of the available existing themes, did they mean the free themes? They also said no ads, so I'm guessing that $30 is covered with no exceptions. There's also the problem with importing all the content that contributing Xangans have amassed over the years. I don't think 3GB per person will cover Premium Xanga users with over 3GB of content. I'm sure they have a deal with WordPress on how this works. Maybe it's a combination of other upgrade packages and discounts, but I'm pretty sure you still have to pay for premium themes and the ability to fully customize free themes.

It's all speculation right now. We haven't seen any mock-ups and full-details of what we are getting. The Xanga Team did say that their vision is about simplicity, community and privacy. If the Xanga Team had posted something like this post, except more in-depth and at least up-selling their Xanga 2.0 vision, they might have a shot of pulling it off. As it stands now, they need $14K+ to reach $60K in 2 days. $48 is still a lot of money to consider if we don't know what WordPress upgrades we would be getting. I'll always have Blogger.

I'm done.