In the last three weeks, we’ve rolled out a bunch of new features and a major redesign, all of which I’d like to draw attention to.

PORTLAND & DENVER!

We’re finally branching out and covering more cities, starting with Portland and Denver. Seattleites, tell your Portlander and Denverite friends to go nuts! We’re looking to improve our coverage in those areas, so let us know what you’d like to see on our site for Denver and Portland.

ADD AN EVENT

This is a big one and we think that we’ve got a damn good first iteration. Plug your event into our system and not only will your fans be able to track your event with our RSS and iCal feeds, but we’ll make sure that your event is also covered by the following:

• KEXP
• NadaMucho
• Seattle PI
• Seattle Times
• Seattle Weekly
• The Stranger
• Three Imaginary Girls

If you got an event you’d like to promote, give it a try and let us know what you think. We want to be your one-stop-shop to promote your event.

EDIT AN EVENT/VENUE/ARTIST

The nature of events is very fluid. Lineups might change, the start-time will be pushed back, the location might move. Because of this, we’ve added the ability for any user to be able to edit an event, artist, or venue. If something is wrong, make it right.

TELL A FRIEND

We wanted a quick way for folks to be able to tell their friends the details of an event that they’re interested in. We’ve added the ability to use your address book from AOL, Outlook, Yahoo, GMail, Plaxo, and more.

WIDGET

We’ve added the ability to build and place a widget of your events on pretty much any type of page: MySpace, Facebook, Blogger, TypePad, Wordpress, just using straight up html, and many more. Speaking of which…

FACEBOOK APP

Now you can grab your My Events RSS feed and plug it into your Facebook page. You can tell your friends what events you’re interested in attending. Bands, grab your artist RSS feed and your Facebook page will be populated with a list of your events.

USER COMMENTS PAGE

We’ve got a vibrant base of users posting comments on artists, events, and venues. Now if you click on their user name, you can see all their comments. If you see a comment with some good taste, you can see what else that user recommends (or tells you to stay away from). Also, you now can post your beautiful mug for your avatar in your account page.

SITE REFINEMENT

I can’t quite call it a redesign, but we’ve made some major refinements to the design. For those interested in the reasoning behind the changes, Designer Chris Brummel has written more about that here.

So there you go. And we’ve got lots more coming down the pipe. Make sure to let us know what you think of these features and what you’d like to see added.

GUEST BLOGGER: James Kirchmer

This past Tuesday evening (April 8^th) I attended a private launch event for Virgin America’s new Seattle to Los Angeles airline service. Headlining the party, which ran from 8pm to 1am at The Showbox, was Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), who played a surprisingly satisfying acoustic set with his new band. For a spell, his signature electric guitar-driven aesthetic was not at all missed. Nevertheless, I hoped he’d whip out his battered Fender at some point and rip, old-school style, into his timeless back catalog. My wish was fulfilled during a long encore that found Thurston in full-on shaggy-haired head-bangin’ mode, and the Who’s Who crowd edged closer to the stage. Dude’s still got it, big time. It was a blissful conclusion to this fun, free-beer-soaked affair (high praise must go to our fantastically charming woman-about-town Kerri Harrop for organizing the hitch-free soiree!). My only regret was not being able to MacGyver my way into the large VIP section, as a rumor was flying around that Lou Reed was kickin’ it. I never did find out if this was true. Anyone? I doubt it (LOL).

Whatever the case, I was told of this possible rock legend’s presence by Nathan, who was assigned to bartend in the Green Room. And speaking of said color, FYI he’s a longtime resident at Seattle’s infamous “Greenhouse“, one of the many area homes that are booking local and touring bands on a regular DIY basis these days (and my personal favorite). Nathan enthusiastically noted that he’d be hosting an awesome night of wild music come April 19^th. And his smile was spot-on: the lineup could have easily headlined, say, at The Sunset. Full details are HERE.

Let’s just say that it’s not your typically predictable rock show - a few of the musicians have collaborated with guitar hero Bill Frisell, among other world-class luminaries, and can twist their instruments into figures shaped by far more than the usual 3 chords. Anyhow, the day after this corporate shindig, as I nursed my body back to life, I wondered whether big business, while able to infiltrate nearly every type of social happening there is, would ever succeed at effectively conveying its marketing messages within the national house-show circuit. It would not surprise me! Anything is possible in this candy-pushing country of ours. Regardless, the mere thought of some marketing execs brainstorming along these lines cracked me up, and laughter’s a great hangover medicine.

That said, here’s a select list of Emerald City house venues, and their corresponding web pages. Some post events, while others will only alert folks who become their Myspace friends (among other underground-leaning protocols). Keeping things low-key and fully grass-rooted, so to speak, is a key to survival. Consequently, I’ll leave it at that. Explore the sites and keep an eye out for new spots, as active houses are naturally always in flux. This post may be of little use come 2009. Lastly, check back - as I’ll be guest blogging about the EMP Pop Conference’s highlights and lowlights. The anticipated yearly event, which just kicked off, runs until Sunday and is once again FREE to the public. Kudos to the sponsors that made “free” possible this year: Zune and Rhapsody.

Some of Seattle’s house-show locales:

• 414 House: http://www.myspace.com/the414house/
• Cat House: http://www.myspace.com/cathouse_/
• Dancylvania: http://www.myspace.com/dancylvaniahouse/
• Dearborn on Woodland: http://www.myspace.com/dearbornhouse/
• Dog City: http://webuiltdogcity.blogspot.com/
• Fire Breathing Kangaroo: http://www.geocities.com/grandpa_jumpy/fbkangaroo.html
• Firefly Concert Series: http://www.fireflyconcertseries.com
• Greenhouse: http://www.myspace.com/thegreenhizzy/
• Healthy Times Fun Club: http://www.myspace.com/healthytimesfunclub/
• House Concert Seattle: http://www.myspace.com/houseconcertseattle/
• Haslund Concerts:http://www.ourhousejazz.com/haslundconcerts.htm
• Plague House:http://www.plaguehouse.com/
• Polka Dot House: http://www.myspace.com/polkadothouse/
• Punkin House:http://www.seattlediy.com/punkinhouse/
• Swamp House: http://www.myspace.com/swamphouseseattle/
• The Ark: http://www.myspace.com/thearkseattle/
• The Dog Park: http://www.myspace.com/ledogpark/
• The Office of Doctor Glorious: http://www.myspace.com/theofficeofdoctorglorious/
• Wizard House: http://www.myspace.com/wizardhouse/

The development team is showing some more love for you all.

Yesterday they put “Iteration 10″ live which brings goodness in the form of:

With our private beta coming online, it’s time to give a quick heads-up on our philosophy about releasing. About a week ago I came across this post which does a great job of summarizing two choices for going to market: Big Bang vs. Darwinian Evolution.

There’s no need to repeat it all, but suffice it to say, we’re not doing the late ’90’s dot com approach of trying to build version 5.0 and launch with a colossal party (fun as that might be). We’re committed to the other path: release early and often. The value of getting our product in the hands of users, and then listening and acting on that feedback, can’t be overstated. This approach was one of our keys to success at Serials Solutions. Our release cycles were shorter than our competitors, we were more serious about listening to our users, and we responded faster. As a result, we were able to win in product lines where competitors had multi-year head-starts on us. We’re taking it up a notch here, with a serious commitment to agile development.

We’ll be reaching out to more people over the upcoming weeks, inviting them to check out the service and provide feedback. Yes, you will find some big bugs, missing functionality, and strange use cases. The servers will probably bonk out as well. But we’ve got a great team in place, we’re squashing the bugs, and growing the application fast.

Best of all, the earliest users will be able to say “I saw it when…”

Hey all, the boys in the lab fixed the bug that prevented the simple iTunes recommendations from running… we’re still working on the Netflix recommendations.

The boys in the tank yard are patching the private beta tonight.

This patch address issues with the (tightly controlled) invite system, speediness of the application, and a minor edge condition with iTunes and Netflix uploading.

Please forgive momentary downtime.

In dire need of an a name for our soon to be released event site our team is prepared to take desperate measures.

Enter Drunkgle. A simple mash-up of Boggle and Drunkardry!

We’ll let you know how successful our efforts are in posts to come, but for now I’ll share with you the rules.

Drunkgle Rulez (v0.5):
Normal boggle rules apply for any english word.

The following Drunkgle rules are as follows for any other word.

Word Validation:
If a majority of players agree a Drunkgle word is a plausible domain name the word will be awarded a score. Tie votes do not award points.

Word Score:
3-4 Character words are worth 1 point.
5-6 Character words are worth 5 points
7-9 Character words are worth 1 point
10+ Character words: drink.

Word Score Multipliers:
1. The total word score is multiplied by the number of people that have also recorded a drunkgle word.
2. If a drunkgle word is unregistered as a .com or .us the domain is multiplied by 10 points.

Drinking Rules:
Each round the point winner and loser each get to impose a drink on any player at the table.