New MachiniFeed Flavor: Assets

I am happy to announce that websites which focus on the release of production assets - such as textures or mods - have now been given their own “flavor” at MachiniFeed. What this means, if you’re not down with our lingo, is that there is now a special version of MachiniFeed devoted explicitly to these kinds of sites.

This helps MachiniFeed in two ways: 1) For those who want a more focused news and blog oriented standard feed, this cleans up considerable “noise” caused by the higher frequency of posting at asset sites. 2) For those who are interested in scooping up these production assets, it will now be easier than ever to keep up with them without having to sift through blog posts.

So what do you need to do? Well, if you are a subscriber to the standard MachiniFeed (the default one), you don’t need to do anything, the changes filter to you automatically. Same goes if you are subscribed to the “broad” feed (the one that includes everything) - you’re still going to get everything. If you’re subscribed to a custom version of the feed that you’ve sculpted yourself, you probably won’t have to change anything either.

If you are (like me) interested in keeping up with the releases from sites like Machinimods, getting your hands on Sigmaman’s rights-friendly reference photos and seamless textures, then there’s a new feed you can subscribe to in your reader of choice: http://www.machinifeed.com/feed/?filter=5

I’ve also updated the MachiniFeed home page… you’ll notice a new orange bar near the top of the article listings (just above the Google search box). This convenient bar not only lets you (for the first time) change the home page to show a particular feed flavor, but also provides a link to the RSS version of that feed flavor. This should make it easier than ever for you to get to the articles you want, whether you are an RSS subscriber or a homepage visitor.

Got more ideas? Please let me know in the comments below, via Twitter, or through the forum. Thanks!

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MachiniFeed Updates on Twitter

I’ve begun using Twitter to broadcast ingredient updates on MachiniFeed, I’ll reserve posts at this blog for major updates or other larger-scale topics.

Follow @MachiniFeed on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/machinifeed

If you’re not into the Twitter thing, you can of course always see the most up-to-date ingredients list any time at:

When time permits, I’ll incorporate a Twitter widget into the main site so posts are echoed there as well. But in the mean time, I’d encourage you to give Twitter a try if you haven’t already. There are quite a number of interesting machinima folks already on there, and it is proving to be a great place to exchange information and links with an immediacy that forums and even just e-mail can’t quite capture.

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MachiniFeed Downtime Resolved

Terribly sorry for the inconvenience, but we experienced some major (almost 18 hours) downtime for MachiniFeed as well as all my other sites. It was unexpected, and I was as anxious about it as some of you. Everything appears to be back online now, though. No losses that I know of, was just some server maintenance that proved more complicated than anticipated.

All is well.

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Recent MachiniFeed Additions

It’s been awhile since I’ve updated this list, so I’m going to focus on the more active of the recent submissions. For a full list of the current active ingredients of MachiniFeed, click here:

• Voom Machine - The blog of Second Life filmmaker Lainy Voom.
• Wee Bit Films - Flight sim movies by Russell “Joe90″ Boyd.
• The Celtx Blog - News and events about Celtx, the media production software.
• The Ill Clan - Machinima pioneers, The Ill Clan, currently producing the “Tiny Nation” series. [I’ve had some problems with this blog’s feed updating properly, uncertain of the cause.]
• Machiniplex - The site devoted to quality machinima work has it’s own RSS feed for the films now.
• ZenCub3d Video Blogs - The developers of this software have gone off the grid for the most part to focus on the next incarnation of their unique machinima program, but this blog is still an excellent resource.
• iClone Certified Training - iClone expert James Martin demonstrates advanced design techniques with Reallusion’s machinima software.
• RGrove.com - The personal blog of actor / director / sound guru, Ricky Grove.
• Treadster Media - The blog of Dave Tyner’s machinima team.
• Janus Syndicate - The blog of Xanatos and the JS Clan, machinima production team.
• Dulci’s Blog - The blog of director / voice actress Dulci, a prominent active member at TMUnderground.
• GTA4 Machinima - Claus Dieter-Shulz’s blog devoted to machinima making in Grand Theft Auto IV.
• Sisch’s Blog - The blog of director / voice actress Sisch, another prominent active member over at TMUnderground.
• Digipendence - Tari Akpodiete’s blog devoted to all things new (democratic) media
• PookyMedia Films - PookyMedia Films brings together the talents of Pooky Amsterdam, long establised producer of live online virtual entertainment, and Russell Boyd (Rosco Teardrop), experienced and successful flight sim machinima filmmaker.
• YourMachinima.com - Brand new site showcasing quality machinima works in multiple engines.
• Sigmaman - Brand new blog featuring collections of Creative Commons textures by Mitch Featherston.
• 3DTree 3Bs - Free Moviestorm mods!

Suggestions for more? Tell us here.

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Introducing the MachiniFeed Search Engine

You can now search MachiniFeed’s ingredients! And your results are not limited to the cropped RSS feeds that filter through this site… you’re actually using Google power to search the entire sites of all the MachiniFeed members (including comments!). In the tests I’ve conducted so far, it seems like a very low signal-to-noise ratio in the results, because of the refined focus.

To access the search, simply visit www.machinifeed.com, key in your search terms and press the button. Enjoy!

Note that the search engine for this blog is not the same as the search engine for MachiniFeed. If you conduct a search from this page using the box on the right, you will search this blog only. To make use of the MachiniFeed-wide Google-powered search engine, go to www.machinifeed.com.

FYI, this new search feature is provided by Google AdSense, so some contextual ads will appear on the results page. MachiniFeed.com participates in this ad revenue. There are NO plans to include ads in the feed itself, or on any other pages of the site other than the search results page. This seemed like a relatively non-obnoxious way to defray some of the cost of hosting and maintaining this site, without degrading the quality of existing service.

Thanks for your continued support! More new features are coming this summer, so stay tuned and keep spreading the word!

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Recent Additions to MachiniFeed

The following are the most recently added ingredients list at MachiniFeed:

• Pineapple Chunks - The blog of Pineapple Pictures, a machinima / anymation movie company co-founded by Michael R Joyce and Kate Fosk
• Woolly Boolly - An Electric Sheep Company blog: machinima and beyond
• Metaverse TV - An internet television channel based in the Metaverse (Second Life), featuring weekly machinima content
• Machinimad - Machinima from a new perspective
• How2Machinima - Ian Beckman’s instructive blog, focused primarily on the how-to of World of Warcraft machinima
• BBlokes IL2 Movie Database - A huge collection of IL2 Forgotten Battles Movies. From fictional to historical. Drama to documentary. Training to tutorials. Find them listed and catalogued for your pleasure
• Antics Blog - Tell your story - 3D animation for all

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MachiniFeed Stats - What They Mean

Some of you might wonder how the Stats line at the top of the MachiniFeed homepage is calculated. Here’s the skinny:

Each time the feed is accessed, be it by web browser, an RSS reader, or a widget on another website, information about where that query is coming from is logged. From those logs, a list of unique subscribers is formulated, including information about the last time they pulled the feed, and a running average of how often they do so.

The Stats displayed on the home page are a count of the subscribers (individuals and website widgets) who have pulled the feed at least once in the past 60 days… thus the term Active Subscribers. And the Average Update Mins is, from those Active Subscribers, the running average of how long they wait in between each download of the feed.

So, for example, at the time of this writing, MachiniFeed has a little over 1000 Active Subscribers, who download a fresh copy of the feed an average of once every 6 to 7 hours.

It’s been interesting to watch this number grow and fluctuate over the past year. Keep spreading the word! Need help adding a MachiniFeed widget to your website or blog? We’d be glad to assist over at the new forum.

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Itty Bitty Tweak

MachiniFeed has an adjustable length of the description field in the RSS (by default it’s at 100 characters). I’d been a bit sloppy the first time around, simply performing a hard cut at the character limit. I’ve just applied a little tweak which makes sure a word isn’t cut in two, which should yield slightly cleaner-looking results - especially relevant for those of you who syndicate the feed on your own site. You don’t have to change anything on your end, the feed will update automatically the next time you poll it.

To illustrate, a recent post from Lit Fuse used to look like this:

Usually I don’t write about about non-team topics, but today I think it’s exception time. The great folks over at smooth few films have just released episode 11 of their series “Th […]

Now it will look like this:

Usually I don’t write about about non-team topics, but today I think it’s exception time. The great folks over at smooth few films have just released episode 11 of their series […]

This cleaner truncation will work on any of the variable description lengths you might customize as well.

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Discuss New MachiniFeed Features

At the implied suggestion of one of our readers, I’ve set up a forum specifically for MachiniFeed discussion, which you can enter by clicking here or by choosing the appropriate menu item on the right. I’ll be adding links to the MachiniFeed front page as well. We’d love to have you join in the discussion. Registering there gets you access to the new Z-Studios and The Overcast forums all in one.

And to kick things off, I wanted to get your input on a couple new features I’ve been considering for a few months now. The first is a new (and separate) iteration of MachiniFeed which would aggregate the Comments RSS feeds of those Ingredients which have them. That means with one RSS entry in your reader of choice, you could track all blog discussion which spawns from posts in the feed. There are some issues to consider, and your input would be extremely valuable in weighing the merit of the idea as well as thinking about how to overcome some potential problems I can foresee. (forum thread here)

The second idea is a more versatile customization engine, with regard to which ingredients you want in your version of the feed. Allowing Ingredient cherry-picking, if you will. Is it a good idea? And which is the best way to implement it? (forum thread here)

And there are more ideas to come… the best of which are very likely yet to be proposed - by you, the readers who make MachiniFeed worthwhile.

I look forward to hearing from you there.

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Domain Transfer In Progress

Phase 2 of the MachiniFeed migration is underway: transfer of the domain name itself.  While I respect the confirmation process as necessary for theft prevention, I think it’s a tad ridiculous how slow that process can be.  I don’t have a technical leg to stand on here, it just seems like it should be faster.

In any case, the transfer is underway, and there is the possibility that the feed will be temporarily interrupted, because I can’t set nameservers or TTL at the destination registrar until the transfer is completed.  I’ll do my best to keep on top of this so I can set them as soon as possible, but a hiccup seems possible if not likely.

Thanks for your ongoing support of MachiniFeed!  Tell your friends!

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