hub.metblogs.com

Feel free to look around, post stuff, check out things other people have posted, join a group or create your own, link up to other folks, or whatever else you figure out that you can do with it. We’ll be linking it from all the cities very soon, so in the mean time this is kind of early adopter news. Enjoy!

On a lighter note, this is kinda pushing our hand a bit and we’re letting this cat out of the bag early. Check out our new section hub.metblogs.com where you can do all kinds of time wasting things. Enjoy!

UPDATE: Everything seems to be back online at the moment. Let it be known that Jason DeFillippo is my hero.

We’re super excited to launch our newest faux-city Metblog. LA blogger/writer Jay Bushman (and his Loose Fish project) is behind the keyboard of this modern adaptation of the 1915 poetry serial Spoon River Anthology, by Edgar Lee Masters. That right, this is a novel being written in blog format. This is a whole new twist on what we’ve done with sites like Azeroth and Soviet Unterzoegersdorf and we think it’s going to be amazing. Check out the site now, or see Jay’s announcement on the Loose Fish site for more details and background.

Seattle!

(this super amazing shot taken by wesa)

Vancouver!!

(Not sure who took this shot, it’s in Jeffery Simpson’s flickr stream, but he’s in the shot so…?)

Portland!!!

Unless noted, all pics by me. I think it’s kind of cool to put faces with the people writing the sites so if you have a metblogs meetup in your city, please tag the photos with “metblogs” so we can find them and maybe we’ll post some here. Now, I gotta find my way back to Los Angeles…

- The page width is reduced and the header graphics are cropped to the right size
- Now using JPG’s instead of transparent PNG headers
- Added rollover to the nav “about authors more”
- Tweaked the search box
- Tweaked the views nav
- Tweaked the comments bubble
- Made the body text bigger and darker
- Tweaked the footer
- Made the blockquote darker
- Site is now centered on larger monitors
- Page weight reduced by over 150k

A lot of these were some of our inital problems with the new design, and many of them were pointed out by readers right away so we’re extremely happy to get this revision live. More coming soon, we promise!

Se we launched this new design for the sites and stuff. We’ve been working on it in one form or another for, well, for a long time. It got to the point where we realized that there would always be “one more thing” we needed to do before it was ready to launch, and since we’d already pushed it back months and months we decided to throw caution to the wind and just get it up, and then fix things as they came up. Which they did. A bunch of them. Some we expected, some we didn’t. The short version of this story is as you can see the new sites are up and not everything is running 100% the way we’d like it to, but more of it is working then we expected it to be. We’re aware of the issues, and working pretty nonstop to fix them AFAHP (as fast as humanly possible). If you want the longer story, keep reading.

So yeah, we’re working on it. Let me jump back a moment and point something out real quick. We know that Metblogs is probably the coolest thing you’ve ever seen on the web and this will be really hard to believe, but there’s just 4 of us working on all of this. Just Jason DeFillippo, Richard Ault, Mack Reed and Me. We’ve also got some rockstars over The Groop who are helping out with some of the front end issues, but basically we have no army of coders to attend to every possible issue. So, given that, we’re tackling issues as fast and as throughly as we can, but we probably can’t fix every single thing that comes up in the next 5 minutes. That doesn’t mean we aren’t trying. We are, and our local coffee retailers are really happy about that.

Anyway, here’s a couple of the really major issues that are currently sitting directly on our plates:

OMG! Sites are too wide! - Yep. They totally are. The problem here is that some of the design elements that were supposed to be background images were moved to foreground images in one of our last minute pre-launch tweeks while trying to solve a different issue. Turns out when you’ve been staring at a design 24 hours a day for months you don’t pick up on subtle changes like that, luckily we had a bazillion readers to let us know about the problem. This will be fixed along with the next issue..

OMG! The fonts are too small/light! - Yep. They totally are. We suck. Sorry. But you are right and we need to fix this one right away. Our crack team of specialists over at The Groop who did the amazing design for the new sites are on top of both this and the width issue and should have them both corrected very shortly. In the meantime we bumped the font up 1 point across the board but we’re pretty sure The Groop will get this all in order faster than you can say lickitysplit. OK maybe not that fast, but soon anyway.

OMG! Some old links & images are broken! - Yep. The totally are. You know what is awesome? Lolcats. You know what isn’t awesome? Exporting one of the largest MoveableType installations into WordPressMU. You know what’s even less awesome? Not having a full team of hackers, coders, and bartenders on staff to make the transition seamless. We knew some things would break and we’d be scrambling to fix them, which we are, and which is even less fun than we thought it would be. Point is we know this stuff is broke, it’s not going to stay that way, and it’s the primary thing we’re working on in house here. And by “in house” I do mean actually in our houses. I’m writing this from my bedroom which I haven’t left in about 24 hours. Sweet!

OMG! The site isn’t updating even though my RSS feed shows there are new updates! - This is a weird on that we’re currently blaming on some wacky caching issue. Some people are seeing the sites up to date, some people are seeing the version from yesterday. It’s weird. Anyway, we’re trialing and erroring to find what is causing this and the second we do we’ll fix it. Which should be soon.

That’s not the end of the list by a long shot, but it’s the super majorist things we’re focusing on right this second. It’s also the things people keep telling us thinking we don’t know about yet. With any luck, all of these will be fixed before I hit ‘publish’ on this post. With the luck we actually really end up having it might be a few more days on some of them. We want to thank everyone for all the kind words so far, it’s much appreciated. We also want to thank some people for the not so kind ones. Mostly because they made us laugh a bit which we needed at this point.

So yeah, we’re on it, and thanks for bearing with us a bit longer, things will keep getting better. Cross my heart.

In addition to the shiny new face on the sites, we’ve got buckets full of new features which we’ll be telling you about in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!

Also feel free to sign up for our new MBNN mailing list for breaking news or big network announcements.

From Metroblogging Karachi:

Karachi appears to be in a grip of unprecedented panic right now. There is obvious panic and everyone is shocked. As the offices get closed down, people are rushing to their homes in anticipation of protests.

Metroblogging Lahore urges residents to stay at home:

Or just stay wherever you are. The situation may get worse outside with people burning anything they come up with.

Metroblogging Islamabad is also covering the tragedy and its aftermath.

(Thanks to Markland in LA for this roundup.)

Further updates after the jump:

12:15 PST : Just in from Karachi:

“We are all safe here in Karachi. All news channels are blocked & so [are] all news sites like cnn.com. Local calls are also blocked. I have heard from relatives abroad that it is being reported that traffic in karachi is bleak & Martial Law has been enforced. I want to clarify that there is nothing like that. Yes the traffic is a bit less but only because the president is to address the nation anytime. Also there is no Martial Law announced yet!”

I’m currently talking with a few of our bloggers via IM and things seem calm though they are confirming the news/phone block however the net it still up and running so far. More soon.

Just in from Lahore a brief summary of exactly what “Emergency Rule” means:

~ Constitutional safeguards on life and liberty curtailed
~ Police get wide powers of arrest
~ Suspects can be denied access to lawyers
~ Freedom of movement restricted
~ Private TV stations taken off air [International stations taken off as well]
~ New rules curtail media coverage of suicide bombings or militant activity
~ Chief justice replaced, others made to swear oath of loyalty
~ Supreme Court banned from rescinding emergency order