Friday 29 October 2010

Your Voice, Your Choice

Your voice matters, so lets hear it!
 
As most of you know, The Phoenix Viewer team has begun working on a second viewer called Firestorm. This will be our customized version of the V2 LL viewer. We always listen to our users and we want to know what features from Phoenix you most want in Firestorm, and what you hate most about the LL Viewer 2. We want you to send us an email at jessica.lyon@phoenixviewer.com and tell us what you think.

Please format your email in this order…

Email to jessica.lyon@phoenixviewer.com
Subject: Firestorm poll

1st paragraph… Provide a list of your 10 most used/cannot live without features that are currently in Phoenix Viewer, that you would want in our Firestorm viewer.

2nd Paragraph… Provide your 10 most hated aspects of the LL Viewer 2 you would want changed or simply cannot live with. There are some things that are obvious and need not listing, like the side bar.

Optional 3rd paragraph… Add your own thoughts, issues and whatever else you like here.

We will be putting the results from everyone together and use that to help formulate an action plan and roadmap.

Thank you all for your time and efforts in helping us bring you a better user experience!
Jessica Lyon

Monday 25 October 2010

Phoenix Halloween Party!

Phoenix will be hosting a Halloween dance/party on Saturday, Oct 30th starting at 2pm SLT. Alexmac Braveheart will be our live DJ spinning the tunes for this event. The region has been very highly decorated for the festivities and we hope to see as many of you as the sim can hold! We will be setting a max agent count of 60, so try and get there a bit early if you can! Special thanks to the folks at Wailele Moku for the use of their sim and all the work they've put into getting this event ready for our users! Don't forget your costumes! To get to the event, open map and search Sim name Wailele Moku. 


Friday 22 October 2010

Donations Requested!

It's that time again! While the Phoenix Viewer Developers continue to develop the Phoenix viewer for our users with no financial gain to ourselves, we do have to cover our server costs. It's this time that we turn to our generous users and ask for your help. Below is a Chipin widget which will let you donate to our paypal account OR as requested, we have created an in world avatar you can pay with Lindens. The account name is "PhoenixViewerDonations Memo". We thank you all so very much for your continued support of the Phoenix Viewer and it's development.
You can see our financial statements here.
 
GOAL REACHED! Chipin Widget removed. 
Thank you all for your very kind and generous donations!

Also! For those of you who were unable to be part of our Phoenix Office Hour Tuesday, the recording is up online now to watch. http://rezzed.tv/

Jessica Lyon
Phoenix Viewer


Monday 18 October 2010

Blocking of two early releases.

We will be blocking two of our releases Tuesday Oct 19th around 3pm SLT. The releases effected will be 1.5.0.0 and 1.5.0.1. If you are currently using one of these viewers we strongly encourage you to update prior to the block so you don't have any interruptions in your SL experience.

We have made many HUGE improvements in our most recent releases of 1.5.1.225 and especially 1.5.1.373. Because of these improvements, and compared to the significant amount of bugs, crashes and multiple other issues in the old releases, we feel this block will be beneficial to everyone.

To give you some numbers in the form of crash rates provided to us by Linden Lab...
Percentage of sessions that end in crash.
1.5.0.1 = 16.96%
1.5.0.0 = 14.40%
1.5.1.225 = 12.90%
1.5.1.373 = 12.69%

We hope those of you effected can understand the reasoning behind this decision. Our support teams will be standing by during this time to help you with any issues you may have.

Thank You
Jessica Lyon
Phoenix Viewer

Sunday 17 October 2010

Our First BIG blog announcements.

Starting with the most obvious..

We have a new website!

Please look around, if you find any issues feel free to report them on our jira. Special thank you to Alexis Stapovic of digitalgraffiti.ca for dedicating so much of her time to building this site for us!

The Phoenix Viewer Project Inc. (TPVP)

Yes, you saw Inc. The Phoenix Viewer Project is now Incorporated as a Non-Profit Organization! Being incorporated means that the project exists separately from the people that make it up. It will help ensure that Phoenix will outlast any of the developer's participation in it. The project can own things itself. It is tax-exempt, meaning that it will not pay taxes on its own income. Finally, it will have a formal governance structure, so that the ways that people can make decisions and act in the name of the project as a whole are defined and easily understood by new members and the community at large.

Phoenix Viewer on Twitter!

We have an official Twitter account now! If you're a twitter user please feel free to follow us to stay up to date with announcements! Our account is PhoenixViewerSL

New Forum!

One of the things people keep asking us for is a forum. Officially the answer is no and the reason is that we simply don't have time to moderate a forum. However! One of our support folks, Selene Gregoire has taken it upon herself to create a forum and manage it on her own for our users. So this forum is the Official Unofficial forum for Phoenix Viewer! FORUM Although some developers may be members in the forum, we won't be watching it all the time. If you need to reach a developer you can do so in world, through email (available on the website), or in IRC here IRC Link.

BIG Release in the works!

We have a big release in the works right now with some great new features many have been asking for! You can find out more at our next Office Hour Meeting... Speaking of that....

The Phoenix Hour!

Tuesday Oct, 19th at 2pm SLT, we will have our second (bi-weekly) Televised office hour hosted by Rezzed.tv. Please try to make it if you can, we have a lot to announce and discuss! The purpose of our office hour is to keep you up to date with things we are working on as well as provide you the chance to ask us direct questions about issues that concern you. If you get there early, you can participate in the studio audience here: SLURL LINK. The Region fills up fast though, so if you can't make it in person you can watch it on the web here http://phoenix.rezzed.tv and ask your questions in the provided chat room OR on twitter using the hashtags mentioned on that page. OR you can watch it on your sl tv's by tuning into http://streams.rezzed.tv/rezzed.mov. This is all part of our continuing effort to reach more and more of our users and providing a means for more of our users to reach us. We have a big list of announcements to make this week, this is your chance to find out first! hope to see you all there!

We're blocking an old version (1.5.0.1)

A few days ago we discovered a bug in our first release viewer ver 1.5.0.1 which sends the avatars first and last name to our server on login. This information is not used in any way and this bug does not exist in any of our other releases. We have sent a request to Linden Lab to block this version for the above reason AND because that version was FULL of bugs. We will also be blocking 1.5.0.0 Linux because of bugs as well. We have had many great updates and improvements since then and would like any users still running that build to upgrade.

Phoenix Halloween Dance/Party!

On October 30th The Phoenix Team will be hosting a Halloween Dance for our users! You may come in costume (or not), it's entirely up to you, but we plan on showing up in costume ;). We will announce more information on that as we get closer to the event. Stay tuned to this blog or our twitter account for news and announcements!

Jessica Lyon

Phoenix Viewer

Thursday 14 October 2010

New Website, and an Intro

Why hello there!! It is I, Alexis, the Magical Website Fairy! I have come from a land far far away, to bring you a shiny new website, filled with colourful words and things to click on!

Just kidding.

But seriously, my name is Alexis Stapovic and I've recently joined the Phoenix Developer team as their resident website ninja. I'm sorry it took me so long to get you a shiny new site, I was all sick and stuff. I'm sporadically on in-world or you can contact me via email if you have any comments or suggestions regarding the site.

Just thought I'd write a little bit about me, for those of you who are wondering who this new addition is. I've been in Second Life for over four years now, and I've dabbled in everything from building full sims to fashion blogging, from scripting to skin and eye creation. I prefer to spend my time in SL building, but I'm always happy to go out and spend far too much money on things I dont need, or to lend a helping hand to a newbie.

<3 Alexis

p.s. Keep your eye out for some new awesome features on the horizon for Phoenix.