LBX Platform Update and Status
Hi folks, sorry for the silence. To paraphrase Clemens, assumptions of our demise would be erroneous.
It’s difficult to give all the details as to why the LongBox Stage went “dark” for a while, as it involves attorneys doing the kind of pre-court moves, obscene gesticulations, and verbal puffery that accompanies the filings of the legal game of “chicken” (see also, lawsuits.) It’s even more difficult to express the 100,000-years-of-frustrations-crammed-into-two-months that has made up our company life for the last 60 days without sounding like we are training to be Charlie Sheen’s understudy in the Travelling Roadshow of Madness.
So then, at a bare bones, Joe Friday, Just-the-facts-ma’am level, here’s the last two months in a nutshell:
Mid-January, our hosting facility, which had been purchased by a larger company in October of 2010, went “mental”. (That honestly is the nicest word we can put on it). This included making demands and threats that were illogical and insensible, culminating in CEO Rantz Hoseley receiving a voicemail message that, unless we acceded to said demands by 5pm CST, all of the LongBox databases and content would be purged. This message was received at 7pm. PST.
What followed was a week of “discussions” with said host, in which it became apparent that said hosting facility misrepresented capabilities and/or services, claiming that they had no backups or access to our databases, content, or infrastructure. (This despite paying a… non trivial… amount of money to ensure that they always did have this information and data).
Luckily, the time we spent on LongBox Digital’s infrastructure ensured that this was not “fatal” to the system. A pain? Yes. Requiring us to spend time we hadn’t wished to on reconstructing databases and user records? Yes. A wee bit frustrating? Slight understatement, that.
If we had taken the ‘shortcuts’ others took, or looked at the “short term territory” as being the most important thing in this business, it can be said with 100% assurance that it would have killed LongBox Digital. Instead, it was an unplanned hassle, and a hard reality confirmation that… yes, we took the right path in doing it “this way”
(And to answer questions, yes the LongBox/Adam partnership is still “on”. The server issues delayed the completion testing of the Adam-specific version of the LBX app… and it is VERY Adam-specific… the generic Android version is quite different. The LBX Adam app will be integrated as part of a downloadable OS update.)
We’ve partnered with a new hosting company who are both a.) Sane and b.) Better suited for the needs of the LongBox Digital Platform (both in terms of immediate, and the multiple deployment phases upcoming over 2011-2012.), and we’re currently crosschecking the reconstructed database. We expect it to be “customer ready” by the end of the month.
As part of this, v1.2 will be a required upgrade. If you created your account anytime after November 27th, 2010, you will have to use the “reset password” option the first time you sign on using the new version of the client application. V1.2 has some major upgrades in terms of the user experience as well, so it’s well worth the upgrade. As soon as the upgrade is available for release, we’ll be notifying everyone via the website, Twitter, Facebook, and email lists.
The LBX Forum is being reconfigured and relaunched, and should be available in the next two weeks. This is part of a larger, ongoing series of developments which will be revealed in the upcoming months.
Thank you to everyone for you patience, we’ve been very busy, and have some pretty stellar announcements upcoming over the next six months. Stay tuned!
