Today's beta release is called "sabre" but Larry likes to pronounce it "SAH-bray". /shrug
All times are in Pacific Standard Time, relative to where our office is located. These times aren't set in stone, by any means, I only write it up here to give everyone some idea of what our typical day looks like for a beta release.
Our next release will be today, February 8th.
Here's a rough schedule of our day:
8:30am, we're all in the office, getting coffee or Diet Dr Pepper, and coordinating our morning events, squishing last-minute bugs. We furiously test our code internally on several operating systems and browsers to see if there are any specific layout/render bugs we need to fix. 9:00am, I generally start tweeting our status, what we're working on, and issues we see. Justin will probably send out several tweets about the release as well, either by re-tweeting me or sending his own notes. 9:00am, I flip a switch on the database to increment the next beta phase, and migrate new users to our mailing list software. Any users signing up after that will have to wait until the NEXT beta release to get an invite code. 11:30am, lunch time. BLT's, anyone? 12:30pm, we reconvene to do a final status check on our code, see how everything looks on our test server, and work furiously to fix last-second problems.
Between 1pm and 5:30pm, we get all of our code checked in, deployed to our production servers, start preparing our newsletter and get ready to queue up any invite codes.
The newsletter will explain more about what we've been working on, what's in the new release, that sort of thing, but does NOT include beta invite codes. Invite codes are always sent in a separate Email to users.
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It's important to note up front that several things will seem "missing" from the site, such as the forums, etc. This is to be expected, because we're rolling out the beta in phases where we add new features every two weeks or so.
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While this is subject to change, our release will include some of the following: - faster search results - bug fixes in the activity stream - bug fixes for Safari users - improvements on the 'recently commented' activity stream - game ratings (you can re-rate games, too) - we may release the "ublic square" activity stream today too, we'll see
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Found a bug? Found something you absolutely love-omg-squee-happybacondance? Please post it on GetSatisfaction for us. The rest of the webdev team is deathly allergic to lurking in the forums, but posting a message on GS will send an Email update to everyone, which usually gets priority over other things we're doing.
do our comments show up on the public square if we have our privacy comments set to "everyone"?
That's the plan.
Will rating games on AG3 still give you the AP for AG2? Will the rating itself even carry over from AG3 to AG2?
No, nothing you do on AG3 migrates back to AG2, and AP/etc aren't being calculated for anything at G3 yet. AG2 will still remember your old rating, but AG3 will show your new rating value.
I think this is the first time the AG team announces a release right on the dot instead of in advance. Not picky or anything, but I love tradition :P
Sorry, been working on some *really* cool stuff lately, I think we're announcing it later this week. That, and preparing for a new baby due in a few weeks, etc., has had me much busier than usual.
Thanks, boy #2, I'm excited. My wife, not so much... she's completely outnumbered.
We're finishing up some code, then some last minute testing. Larry's reviewing my newsletter notes and then we'll get that all queued up and ready to roll. I'll probably tweet more as we go along this afternoon, so forgive my silence in the thread until we finish the launch.
Nice because my computer is already slow and it was taking ages to load a search in beta. By the way, merits are still going to exist or those reputation points will substitute them?
