Farewell, MyBlogLog - Yahoo sets May 24th deadline

EDIT: One True Fan to the rescue!
As I wrote earlier, the feature of MyBlogLog that I will miss the most is the metrics, but help is at hand. One True Fan have announced that they will be replicating the classic MyBlogLog metrics and these will be available to MyBlogLog and One True Fan users. This is great news - thanks to the One True Fan team! They will be publishing more information soon.


Yahoo is finally pulling the plug on MyBlogLog
When I first joined, nearly three years ago, I thought MyBlogLog seemed like a great idea. A way to aggregate your online presence, track blog visitor number and create communities. I joined some communities, set up my blogs and waited for the good times to roll.

Promise never quite delivered
The aggregation always worked well, but once I discovered Friendfeed it became unimportant. The community side of MyBlogLog was never engaging enough to keep my attention. I did like the statistics if provided, though, and I will miss that part of MyBlogLog the most.

Delicious next?
News that MyBlogLog was going to be axed was leaked at the same time that Delicious was slated for removal. The massive outcry about Delicious meant some 'clarification' from Yahoo, then stated that they were merely looking for a buyer.

Sad email
MyBlogLog has no such reprieve, though, and I received my email from Yahoo today confirming that the service will close on May 24th:

It was short and to the point. It directed me to visit Yahoo MyBlogLog help pages to find out more. I did and found this:

I guess Yahoo has already disowned it's unloved service.

RIP MyBlogLog.

The Guild Season 4 DVD - now in good shops everywhere!

Monday - YouTube. Tuesday - Your High Street!

To celebrate the fact that you can now go into your favourite store and buy The Guild Season 4 DVD, there's a new competition over on WatchTheGuild.com. All you need to enter is a picture of you holding a Season 4 DVD and you could win a picture of the cast signed by creator/star Felicia Day.

Get your pics in quick!
The competition ends at midnight PST, Feb 24th so get snapping!

Your Favourite Extra...?
Which extra on the DVD is your favourite? There are lots to choose from, so which one do you think is the best?

The Guild Season 4 on YouTube plus Amazon.ca DVDs are shipping!

It's Here!
After months of waiting, The Guild Season 4 finally hit YouTube today, so let the commenting, liking and sharing begin! Of course, many people have already watched the whole season on MSN and/or Xbox, but a surprising number of people don't watch there. They are in for a treat....! @theguild report that they will be releasing Season 4 episodes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, which means we'll be through the whole season in four weeks. That's great news for fans, but makes me wonder why they have chosen to do this. I'm going to hopefully speculate it's because we'll have something new to see soon enough (like Dragonage: Redemption, for instance?). But that is pure speculation.

Amazon.ca now shipping The Guild S4 DVDs!
And more good news today, in the form of an email from Amazon.ca:

...it's another great week to be a Guildie :)

IAWTV Revote: Necessary and needed, so make it count

IAWTV.org

The Revote Round 1 Ends Tomorrow

It's been another busy week for webseries creators and followers with many new projects announced, seasons ending and shooting schedules agreed. In between that and getting on with the business of making a living it is easy to let things slip through the gaps.

Members Need to Exercise Their Choice

IAWTV members are revoting this week for in the first round of votes for the Board of Directors. I posted a couple of week ago about how important these elections are. The fact that there has been a revote could be seen as an annoyance but I think it shows that the IAWTV takes the future seriously enough to want get things right from the start. I really hope that my fellow members take the time to re-look at the candidates and register their votes.

Just do it!

I voted this morning and it took about 2 minutes, and that included finding the email in a chaotic mailbox.  Voting ends tomorrow, Friday 18th February at 18:00 PST. So just go and vote. Right now*.

*Why are you looking down here? You should be voting!!

First look at Felicia Day's new webseries Dragon Age: Redemption Trailer

Felicia Day on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon Talking about her new Webseries, Dragon Age: Redemption

Here's the first look at Dragon Age: Redemption, the new webseries from Felicia Day:

Jimmy Fallon has come a long way since Felicia Day tried to help him create a World of Warcraft toon, but he tried to hold his own in gamerspeak with Felicia by talking Legend of Zelda. Clearly Felicia needs to tell him about Legend of Neil - there can only be one Link!

Felicia looking as gorgeous as ever, sporting non-staticy hair and some impressive guns!

At the end of the interview is a breathtaking trailer from the Dragon Age: Redemption. It is so action-packed that screengrabs are nearly impossible, but here's an almost-decent one.

Felicia Day as Tallis in Dragon Age: Redemption, from the trailer aired on the Jimmy Fallon show

The trailer look fabulous and sets the bar really high. I can't wait to see more of Tallis and her daggers!

Felicia Day's #mysteryproject revealed - Dragon Age: Redemption, webseries!

Felicia Day as 'Tallis' from her new webseries Dragon Age: Redemption (picture from USA Today)

EDIT: as hoped, more information on Felicia Day and Dragon Age: Redemption - an extended profile in USA Today.

AND: Felicia has blogged, too!

Plus: Great interview in io9 with exclusive picture

Gamers and Guildies Rejoice!

After weeks (months!) of speculation the dragon is out of the bag. When Felicia Day had mentioned that her new webseries was very much an action series speculation abounded about what that mean. Last year she starred in the well-received Syfy movie "Red: Werewolf Hunter". That shoot involved lots of action, weapons and stunts, something that she had wanted to more of since her stint on Dollhouse. 

USA Today broke the news last night

After a day working hard on "Mind My Brains, Darling!" I got on to Twitter late to find a link to the USA Today article. After eagerly reading it I passed on my congratulation to Felicia and the team, not realising that the news was supposed to be officially announced today. Ah well. A quick detour to The Guild Chatroom revealed that other people had also seen the link. An early morning Google check shows a whole raft of articles about it, so let the speculation and celebrations begin!

Webseries take a big leap forward

Using much-loved games as a basis for a webseries is not new. Legend of Neil, from Sandeep Parikh and Tony Jenning, is based around Legend of Zelda, and finished its final, triumphant season last year. Whether Nintendo could be said to approve of the hilarious (and definitely NSFW) antics of Neil and his friends is open to debate. The Guild itself is based on a game that is similar-yet-legally-distinct from World of Warcraft (WOW). Although Blizzard, the makers of WOW, have been very friendly towards The Guild and have welcomed the cast to Blizzcon, there is no endorsement from them because of the legalities involved.

'Dragon Age: Redemption' is different. From the outset Bioware, the creators of Dragon Age, have been on board. From the USA Today article:

..That dedication is what convinced the developers at Dragon Age studio BioWare that Day was the right person for the project.
"We are really, really excited to work with people like her who have a passion and appreciation for the content and a really good history of quality," says BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk. "That's who we want to work with."..

There is no doubt about Felicia Day's love of the game, either, as this excited tweet from 2009 shows:

Also in production at the moment is Elfquest, a new webseries from veteran creators Stephanie Thorpe and Paula Rhodes. After a successful funding run on IndieGoGo they are now shooting and expectations are high for this new series. The creators of Elfquest, Wendy and Richard Pini, have given their blessing to the project.

More news to come!
There will be more announcements soon and hopefully a blog post from Felicia herself, so I'll keep updating.  What a great time to be a webseries fan :)

Keeping the Fans (and sponsors) Happy: The Guild Season 5 is GO!

And There Was Much Rejoicing!
News, hot off Twitter, is that The Guild has confirmed they are funded for Season 5! If you remember, Felicia Day held off and rejected many offers for the smash-hit webseries back in 2008, and eventually accepted funding by Microsoft from Xbox Live and Zune and from Sprint. Those funding offers had the magic ingredients for Felicia - she retains the rights to her series AND there is no editorial influence on the work she does. NewTeeVee has the details.

Congratulations and Speculations!
Felicia has been typically vague about what Season 5 might entail. The end of Season 4 was a cliff-hanger that left all sorts of possibilities open, but who knows where they might lead? It was the Knights of The Guild 2nd Anniversary last weekend Ustream celebration and although there were questions about it, no one expected Felicia to let anything go. you can see the whole, wonderful KOTG anniversary broadcast here (password: KOTG):




One more mystery...
Never one to take a break, Ms Day has also been working on other, non-Guild projects. She has been tweeting about shoots over the last few weeks, leading to lots of guesses about what she is up to. One thing she did say during the KOTG broadcast was that we would find out 'within two weeks' more about the #mysteryproject. And Wil Wheaton made a reference to it this week, saying:

"...Felicia is working on a Secret Project™ that I'm lucky enough to know about ... holy frakking shit balls on fire, you guys. When you know what it is, your mind will be blown right out of your skull so hard it will bounce off the wall and land on the ground next to your socks, which were also knocked right off your feet and through your shoes...."

Well then....!

Watch this space....for now here's the screengrabs I took of the whole crew during the KOTG broadcast:

Blogaversary: 396 posts later - Doing the Dance of Joy!

The last geek bus home is 3 today!
Yes, it was a surprise to me, too. I remembered last week and then got swept up in projects again that I failed to plan a proper birthday post. If I had I would certainly have talked about how unexpected this blogging thing continues to be and how grateful I am that people bother to pop here to read. That what I blog about has changed over time and yet has stayed the same. And how I wish I had more time to spend writing here because there is a metric buttload of stuff I've seen that I want to share. So instead let's make do with some geekbusbythenumbers:

• 396 -  posts published (including this one)
• 11 - draft posts (stuff I started but haven't finished. Yet.)
• 586 - comments (published - a gazillion spam ones deleted)
• 138 - Felicia Day labels for blog posts

Another old favourite: how you find this blog
Over the years there have been many times when I've glanced at search terms that have given me pause for thought. I mean - what kind of people are you?!? Here are just a few of the select ones:

webisodes battlestar nudity
"found object stew"
"michele boyd" drunk
404 page geek
2 horse 1 speedo
a geek catches a sexy fairy comic
avatar xxx vdo
bad pink girl
boypants
bus geek sex
corsetbuster 

And what of Felicia in that-thing-not-to-be-named?
The most popular off-topic search is this (there are more than 25, this is just the top 25)

This is much more popular than any search for 'higlet':

But then, even 'Becker' is pretty popular:

What's next?

There are so many things happening at the moment I don't even have time to think about them, never mind tell you. 'Mind My Brains, Darling!' is coming on fantastically - shooting has started and we've got our first scenes wrapped, which is cool! I have a new business launching soon, and more on that coming up, and there is also....well, I'm not allowed to talk about that yet :)

Thank you for you eyes and patience and support and laughs over the last 3 years. It's been amazing. YOU are amazing. 

Here's to the next 3 years! CHEERS!

Knights of The Guild 2nd Anniversary Party - we are all invited!

UPDATE: There is still time to send your questions in to the cast and crew ready for the party tomorrow - send them to Knightsoftheguild@gmail.com


Saturday February 5th at 6:00 PM PST - BE THERE!
How time flies! It only seems like a few weeks ago since the Kenny hosted the KOTG 1st Anniversary party at his new house. What a blast that was as Kenny and Jenni served up a delicious show full of fun, laughter and tons of special guests - live from the KOTG studio! Streaming it live via Ustream meant that everyone could take part and Guildies from all over the globe joined in the fun.

Celebrate this great podcast!
KOTG give Guild fans so much. They are the #1 resource for ALL the news on The Guild and a sure way to cope with Guild Deficiency Syndrome. With on-set interviews, the special guests they have on each show and reports from Cons, book signings and more, even the most obsessive fans will find out more about how The Guild is made and the people behind it by listening. So I hope you will be raising a glass to Kenny and Jenni tomorrow because they deserve it. WE LOVE YOU GUYS!!!

And don't forget that you can keep up with KOTG all over the 'Net:

The Podcast: http://knightsoftheguild.podbean.com/
The Blog: http://knightsoftheguildpodcast.blogspot.com/
The Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/knightsofguild
The Kenny: http://twitter.com/#!/geekyfanboy
The Jenni: http://twitter.com/#!/jennipowell
The Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=68587228491&ref=ts
The WatchTheGuild.com: http://community.watchtheguild.com/group/knightsoftheguildpodcast
The Ustream: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/knights-of-the-guild (Password: KOTG)

Special Guests Galore
Kenny has posted all the details for the live streaming on WatchTheGuild.com forums. There will be whole host of cast and crew attending including Felicia Day, Sandeep Parikh, Vince Caso, Teal Sherer and Sean Becker. And speaking of Sean Becker, looked what popped up in a search that I don't have set up:

Frontpage of the new seanbecker.com (not shown: a wiener) 

What is this all about?? I've requested further information from Sean but so far he has refused to answer, so we can only SPECULATE IN A SCIENTIFIC MANNER.

Urkel + 2(chicken sammich) + wiener + hollow boasting* =  THE BECKPOCALYPSE!

*Sean has put "Best. In Town" at the bottom of the page. And the page title is "Director and other stuff". So Sean is boasting that he is the best "Director and other stuff" in town. Do you think Felicia is going to take that kind of smack talking lying down? She's fired him once, what will she do to him this time? WE'LL FIND OUT TOMORROW LIVE ON USTREAM!!