The other day I went on G4's X-Play to discuss game reviews, in particular why the 1UP Network recently switched to an A - F grading scale instead of the 1 - 10 number scale we've employed for so many years, so I figured I'd bring it to your attention:
At the end of the interview Adam asked me about the news of Ziff Davis Media (1UP's parent company) being in Chapter 11. While I couldn't really comment on the situation, I did mention that this really doesn't affect us day to day, and that's the key point I'd want to stress to you guys here. I'd strongly suggest checking out Simon's recent blog post and our CEO Jason Young's interview with Folio for some better background on the whole thing -- I think you'll realize why those of us in the group remain very optimistic about the whole situation.
I also made an appearance on this week's 1UP Yours podcast, if you're interested in giving it a listen. Here was the pre-show:
I hopped in on the show since one of our regulars, Bryan Intihar, recently moved on to Insomniac to help get him closer to his dreams of actually making games. Bryan leaving was a real bummer -- he was such a great member of the team, not to mention one of the best guys I know -- but I am pretty thrilled for him (I always had a suspicion he'd end up at Insomniac). It was also a major bummer to recently see another great guy, Patrick Klepek, move on to MTV, even though that too was a big dream for him, and I couldn't have been more happy for the guy. Patrick had been a writer for 1UP since the early days of the site (he's one of the guys who really helped get it to where it is today), and he'd been writing for me on my first site since he was like 14. I'm certain we'll work together again in the future. In the meantime, though, Jason made a pretend Patrick to cheer us up. Still, it's not quite the same.
That said, whenever people some move on to other opportunities it allows us to find new talent, and I'm happy to say that Philip Kollar will be joining us in the office soon as our new News Editor for 1UP. Patrick had been training Philip the last year or so, and I think he's going to make a fantastic new member of the team. You'll really like him.
By the way, two or so weeks ago I posted a news story about the major site and server upgrades we had for 1UP, and I think you'll agree that things are loading faster than ever. However, ever since the upgrade the 1up tech team has been working really hard to fix the bugs that came about as part of the project. Just as another reminder, if you have any problems using the site, please send a note to feedback@1up.com and let us know. We've got an entire team working as hard as possible to make this the best site for you. Note: the top issue being addressed at the moment is one that occasionally causes your browser cookie to get corrupted, resulting in certain 1up pages not loading at all. If you're running into problems where pages just don't appear, try deleting your 1up cookie and then see if things improve. Either way, this should be addressed any day now -- it's admittedly pretty annoying.
In the arena that night, the whole last minute was drowned out by cheers — and then when the soaring music swelled, the confetti rained down as the harbinger of balloons and the hopeful first family took the stage, forget about it — it was a perfect end to a convention that last Monday, no one even knew if it would happen. But it did, and I'm so glad to have been there.
Reuters - Hurricane Ike barreled toward Cuba as an
extremely dangerous Category 4 storm on Sunday and was forecast
to sweep into the central Gulf of Mexico as a large and
powerful storm echoing Hurricane Gustav.
