Drum roll please....Thank You!

Get out the celebratory bottles, PerBlue is one year old! Woop! It has been quite a year to get here and to celebrate we are starting the scroll hunt to launch the third age of Parallel Kingdom: The Age of Emergence. (feature list)

The scrolls will be out tomorrow and in the mean time Justin, the guy who got all of this started, would like to take some time to thank everyone for what they've done. I'll pass you over to him...

Hey everyone! So tomorrow, October 31st, is our one year anniversary! Can you believe it? It has been an amazing year getting here, with lots of ups and downs, but I'm extremely happy to be where we are. I have been wanting to do this for a long time and I am only sorry that I didn't take the time to do this sooner, but I want to thank everyone that has made this whole thing possible. There are a lot of people that lent a hand in this and I'm sure I'm forgetting someone but here is a brief little intro and thank you to the team behind this adventure. I'll make sure Jamie starts working some posts to explain exactly what everyone does and who they are, we are all in this and I think it's time that YOU met the team... (by the way, I'm not even going to try to put this in any order, I'm just hoping my rambling makes sense and I forget as few as possible)

To start off, Andrew Hanson, he has been a great co-founder and even better friend (and roommate for that matter). I'm still not sure who else would be crazy enough to start something like this with me, but I'm so glad I found Andrew my partner on this enterprise.

Next, our tech and development team. These guys make sure that the games, products, websites, servers and everything else run smoothly without blowing up when I start dipping my hand in it to do some coding (long story). Here they are:
Jon Steinich a lot of you PK players probably know him better as Brick, oh and sorry for overtaking your room with all of my boxes
Forrest Woolworth he was our point person on GeoBuzz and Operator Sue and he has made the cool new things on the PK site
Jason Malinowski he has put up with me for over 8 years, through high school and college (don't ask me how or why he)
Nate Glasser he and I have been working on our longtime addiction game, Tempest Chess
Colin Juillard Android clients
Jesse Benson iPhone clients and Grunt
Shane Schaefer Windows Mobile and J2ME
Benjamin Fortin iPhone clients
Bill Pulec you may not like him because he made those monsters so hard to beat, but he does a lot for us

Our creative and art team has made a HUGE difference, I don't know how they do it. Somehow they can handle my weird descriptions of what I want and turn it into something that looks amazing!
Tim Collins he has made all those pretty web designs, splash screens and trailers
Nathan McCoic he has thought up all of those awesome in-game creatures and concepts
Alayna Lemmer she has made those awesome buildings and dungeons
Jon Ruland he came up with the original artwork and some of the 3D images

I don't know how to classify this next group, they do a lot of things that I can't do and just make everything run 100 times better.
Kendra Melinowski my personal assistant... just kidding! Somehow she managed to keep me organized
Hans Wegmueller he has worked on the game design and gets to respond to all of your emails, be nice to him because he is all powerful
Gene Shiau he actually helped me write the original business plan for PerBlue
Chris Meyer he can make location-based gaming sound prettier than a sunset, he also played a big part in figuring out what PerBlue should actually do
Andy Gilbertson he has been responsible for all the PK marketing madness, could sell ice to an eskimo
Jamie Holzhuter he has worked on the marketing for a lot of the PerBlue projects, but don't be nice to him because he tends to make fun of me

Our PK testers! They put countless hours in to make sure that everything makes sense and they give us great feedback that has made a huge difference in how PK turns out. There have been a lot over the past year, this group helped us with Age of Emergence:
hitesh
dziki
merytrin
kepesk
urdtrain
xuzzette
thewoollybully
venoba
lancelotlink
firereaction
mimerneos
moneytoo
creighton
peacemaker
terabyte
dolio
infiniteexodus
banshee
cbkbamf
JasonM
kamlyn
triaz
jc2001
caern
rhagrok
techette

Huge thanks to our family and friends that came on as investors with both monetary and emotional support, the money makes a big difference but they have helped a lot in keeping us going mentally.

Also, I would never be where I am today without these phenomenal mentors and advisors.
Dan Morrill from Google Android
Pete Johnson a Madison Entrepreneur
Malcolm Thorne marketing strategy professor
Steve Davis he has been with us from the beginning and has been our legal guardian angel
Deven McGlenn coached me in the early times
Teresa Esser for the great inspiration and lessons from her class
Dan Stuntebeck "Stunt" he was the one that got me into this whole starting-companies thing
Lance Rudolph some how he saw potential in me and spent two years polishing me up and making me into something
Keith Beck my Dad he has enabled my dreams and has always supported me in any way he could
Dorothy Beck my Mom she taught me ambition, excitement, and passion for life and that is the fuel that keeps everything going

And let's see here, who am I forgetting... oh, YOU!! All of you out there that have been interested in PerBlue and our projects, thanks for backing us up. When we started this we weren't sure what peoples' reactions would be so we are definitely glad to have you.

So to all of you on this list (and a special thank and apology to anyone that I forgot): THANK YOU. PerBlue would not be anywhere near where it is if it weren't for you, every bit of effort has helped us and I want to make sure that you really understand how much I appreciate all of it. Thanks again.

Alright, enough of the serious stuff (I think we all know that's not our strength). Let's celebrate, we have a lot to be proud of and a lot to look forward to!

Praise God from whom all blessings flow!
Justin
CEO PerBlue

How some people try to get ahead

So did you hear about the Northwest pilots that accidentally overshot their destination airport by 150 miles? Here's a little video on it:




Michael Roberts at the Westword News blog in Denver came up with a few ideas on what they might have been doing, but we know exactly what they were doing.

The culprit in this disaster by way of distraction: Parallel Kingdom.

The pilots gave the excuse that they were working on their laptop computers and thus loss track of time. "Laptop computer" is obviously code for smartphone, we believe one had an iPhone and the other had a G1. (Speaking of which, who's excited about the upcoming Droid release? We are!)

Anyway, so it is pretty clear that the pilots were simply trying to snatch up territory in anticipation of the upcoming release of the Age of Emergence.



This should come as no surprise, they have been doing this for years. Why do you think they always tell you to turn off your mobile devices during the flight? You probably thought it was to reduce interference with radio communications, but really it is so that the pilots are the only ones that can take advantage of the opportunity. Turns out, pilots are pretty competitive when it comes to PK.

This is not the first airline conspiracy theory, there are others, but we are going avoid them for now. They might be watching us...

A day in the life... (part 2)

So it's getting close to lunch time here at HQ, how about we take you on a tour of this interesting daily experience.

Some days are more organized than others, a lot of what happens depends on who's here. Today the crew is bit light because a lot of people had discussions for classes in the morning. Jon, some of you PK players might know him as Brick, just got back from one in fact.

Andy, the force behind the marketing for PK, usually brings a lot of food. He doesn't eat it all at once, obviously, but he will have several medium size meals throughout the day. That is the new type of recommended eating scheme after all. He likes couscous and other things, the food always smells good.

Forrest, he's developed on projects like Operator Sue and is responsible for all the cool new changes on the PK site, always has sandwiches that look really good. He is recently married (congratulations again!) and so there are some theories that his wife does all the lunch packing. Forrest is usually the driving force for going out to lunch, but right now he is on a lunch date with his girl so that probably won't be happening today.

The rest of us have some interesting lunch habits too and the conversations are always entertaining, but we'll save those for another post. Got to keep you coming back for more, right? Plus, I'm hungry so it's time to eat (leftovers, in case you are interested).

Since it is Friday though, I'll leave you with this link to a music blog. It might not be your favorite type of music (truth be told we all have different tastes here) and, but it's Friday and it's been a cold, rainy few days in Madison so I'm feeling a bit selfish.

Have a good weekend, folks.

P.S. Everyone insists that I'm not allowed to be anonymous if their names are being put out there too, coups like this always happen on Fridays. So my name is Jamie, I write these things, nice to meet you.

Our plan for World Peace

So last week, in case you didn't hear, Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize.

This got us thinking: we could create world peace through Parallel Kingdom! Now stay with us here, the idea is to turn anthems from this to something adorable like this.

There are groups of people that have been fighting for longer than they can remember, a lot like siblings. These fights are often over issues that cannot be understood, other than by the fact that it has been that way for so long. Worst of all, other people get caught in the middle through no fault of their own, like this kid getting caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

How can this be fixed? We propose Parallel Kingdom as a much healthier outlet for such wars. Groups can fight all they want and battle over territory and no one has to get hurt in real life! So maybe it vaguely takes the Matrix and Surrogate movie ideas but it makes it a bit more possible and positive. You don't need a bunch of robots or some sort of all knowing A.I., you only need an Android device, iPhone, or iPod touch!

We could find plenty of people to partner up with for this: Google and Apple would love it, mobile carriers would be raking in even more money. People will be hired to build more smartphones and more telecommunications infrastructure, this will send the world economy back into the stratosphere. Which will be useful because people are predicting that the recent rebound is not as stable as it might appear. Also, if people stay in sterile environments when they play, it could help combat illness during the flu season.

Are you getting this? So many problems, all solved by PK in a convenient and realistic way.

Ok, so there you go world. We'll get right on solving all the other problems next: like world hunger... Oh, and you're welcome.

It's Friday night, and I feel alright...

Ok, so it's not the same as the classic Montell Jordan song, This is how we do it, but we are celebrating a bit here. We got the new website up for Parallel Kingdom and results have been good. We are going through and tweaking things still but it is exciting to see everyone's work go up. And here's your teaser: there will be more to come, if only we had a rumor's site so you kids could debate what that will involve...

Anyway, speaking of parties, it's time for part one in a series of Lessons from the Couch. The couch being referred to is the beloved orange couch that we have at HQ. The goal of this is to share some of the lessons that we have learned from our startup experience, ranting could be involved so hopefully it will be fun.

The first lesson: launching a product.

Launching a product is much like hosting a party. You get everything ready beforehand: you get the beverages, you prepare the food, you spend hours making the perfect playlist, and maybe you have a deck of cards or a party game on hand just in case the conversation gets awkward. In the product analogy, this is development. Then, you wait.

You wait for the first people to come, usually your close friends. They are willing to take a bullet for you because they know that they are going to be the first ones there and things probably aren't going to be fully set up, in fact they will probably help to run and get the ice that you forgot. They are there for you, conversation is easy so no worries about awkwardness. These are your early adopters, they love new things and when they are interested they end up making a huge difference in how the product turns out.

Next is when things start to get rolling, the second tier of friends shows up. You know them fairly well but much more casually or maybe your friends called them to help pick up the tempo, this is the critical point of the party. If this transition goes well, then you are golden much like when the early adopters start telling their friends and you start to develop a significant following.

The last group includes the people that come just because something is going on. They heard about the party from a friend of a friend or maybe heard the noise while walking by. Now the party or the product is in full steam and you have something pretty fun on your hands.

If things fail, it's usually at the transition from your close friends/early adopters. Then what do you do? Be happy you don't have huge mess to clean up, thank everyone for coming, and maybe let Lesley Gore sing you to sleep. Then try again next weekend.