Taking a rest for an hour…
The main SLPN website is going down temporarily so that we can add on the new features to the website and make sure everything is running fine.
Hopefully this will all work well…
Update - And we are back and everything is seemingly all good 
New Show - Coronaverse
In case you have not noticed, we put a new show on the SLPN network last week called CoronaVerse. What on earth is CoronaVerse?
CoronaVerse simply is a roundtable like podcast from the residents of Corona Cay (which is the sim where the SLPN HQ is located in Second Life). Together the coronaversians talk about all sorts of topics relating the metaverse including the big stories from the past few weeks.
You can find CoronaVerse at http://coronaverse.com/
Updates coming to the SLPN Network.
For the past few weeks I’ve been working on upgrades for the SLPN network websites. The updates are aimed at bringing some new features and site changes into the website
Some of these changes are just slight updates from the last version of the theme that we use (we use Revolution Code Gray blog theme. Unfortunately this is not longer available on the website). We was using the 2.0 version of this and when Wordpress 2.7 was released there was an upgrade to bring newer features into the theme based on that version.
One of these changes that will be coming will be in the form of something called “SLPN Channels” which are basically categories of shows that fit within a certain type. More on this soon when I write up a follow up post about it (later this week).
For now the SLPN Blog will be the only site on this network that will have the new wordpress theme on.
Get yer TERLIT ere!
The RezzedNecks now have a store in Second Life. You the viewers can now get props from the awesome machinima series and do well…whatever you want with them. Just be careful of the Terlit…
Go visit the store over at the Corona Cay Set
The Return of MetaNews…
but now it’s Daily…
That’s right the short lived MetaNews Weekly is coming back as of tomorrow in a new format with Gomem Desoto and Stuart Warf and the occasional guest. The format for this show is now to be released daily and give listeners a daily look on news relating to the Metaverse.
But it’s hard to collate all the news from the day so something that is going to be asked of the audience is to help collate the information via Delicious.com . For those who don’t know what on earth Delicious is, it’s a social bookmarking service catered to tagging internets information. One thing that can be done for this then is the ability to tag certain items. So what we want the audience to do is tag things with the word “MetaNewsDaily” we’ll then be able to find out what the top stories of the day are and the most intresting news items are and be able to mash it all into a show.
We also want special guests on the show to give their insight into the news!
The idea is to keep it short and simple…if possible.
Corona Speedway Series 2009
As you may have heard recently, Podcast Island was sold to Itazura Radio and therefore renamed Corona Cay.
As proud residents of this sim, SLPN in the future will be bringing various and awesome events to the island of Corona Cay, just as we did with Podcast Island.
One of the cool things that we already have planned is the Corona Speedway Series (CSS (its a geek reference)). Which will be kicking off in style on the 24th of January 2009 at 6 PM SLT.
We figured we would kick off the competition is style and offer a juicy prize. The winner of the inaugural race will win a months rent FREE at Corona Cay, if you haven’t seen the sim, go take a look and you’ll see that it is indeed an awesome place to live.
We’ll see you there!
Twitter + Plurk = The Awesome
Thanks to the magic of Ping.FM, SLPN Updates are now back on Twitter and now available via Plurk.
For a while we used to use the Twitter Tools plugin for updating Twitter users of when new podcasts on SLPN were out. The problem with this method was that it created an extra MySQL call and sometimes caused problems with the database. The decision was made to turn off Twitter Tools when it caused some instabilities to the website when a new updated version of the website came out.
I figured at this time that I should give the website, Ping.FM a go. What’s so great about Ping.FM?
It can update multiple locations at once, which means when a new update to SLPN is out, we can use the service to automatically update users who want to check out our content, the moment it is released.
Also, because Ping is always offering more and more ways for updates to be published to, SLPN will be available in more and more places soon.
Advertising Rates on SLPN Returns
Advertising oppurtunities on SLPN have not been available for a number a while now. The reason for this was that when we made the transition from moving hosts, the plugin that we used to power ads on the site came up with some weird mysql call error and so there either had to be a fix or a replacement.
A couple of months later we found that replacement and decided to get some advertisements on via various advertisement networks like Comission Junction while I would rewrite the pricing plans for the website.
Now, there was discussions on how to make the pricing better for a world like Second Life. I came to the realisation that people would like to advertise, but the rates are too high usually for them to make a commitment.
So we now have new pricing plans for advertising on SLPN
Why are we doing this?
Simply put, we believe that cheaper advertising rates are more appealing to virtual world businesses. For similar websites with traffic like ours advertising rates can be double the cost for advertising or even more.
Website Advertising Rates
468 x 60 - L$225 per 1000 impressions
150 x 150 - L$150 per 1000 impressions
Fixing the House Up
SLPN is going currently in a state of inbalance while we fix things up like broken RSS feeds, a new website template and a long awaited sidebar fix
Coming Soon, The Great SLPN Bash 2008
Something cool is coming around the corner. SLPN is in the midst of planning a series of events under the title of “The Great SLPN Bash 2008″. What is the 2008 Bash all about?
It is going to be a series of tournaments/challenges set over 4 weeks taking place in September/October. The schedule is yet to be completed but the plan as of writing is.
Week 1 - Boat Racing
Week 2 - Car Street Racing
Week 3 - Katana Tournament
Week 4 - Fishing Tournament
Nothing is finalized as of yet and additional events may take place like an Airship Race or Giant Snail Races.
If you are intrested in helping out or want to take part in the event, feel free to IM myself, Stuart Warf in Second Life .
