Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Oh Pooh - the poor teddy!!!

Someone's gone to the trouble of making a video of their OMM picture, with music and everything!

posted by Paul Fisher @ 3:58 pm 0 comments

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Favourite pictures of the week

The growth of the OMM has been steady this week. Of the pictures that have been added, these are my favourites:







And the slightly controversial:



To be honest I think this was a bad idea. I love too many of the pictures to list them here - either for the image itself or the meaning behind it. Thanks to everyone who has contributed so far - keep it up guys.

posted by Paul Fisher @ 8:55 pm 0 comments

Sunday, July 23, 2006

Website down due to London datacenter failure

The One Million Masterpiece has been down since around 1pm GMT today because of a massive datacentre failure in London. At the time of writing (7:30 pm GMT) the site is still off-line.

Obviously this is a very serious situation and questions will be raised, however at present the main priority is getting the site back online. This is the latest in a series of third party problems that have affected site since its launch 10 days ago. Luckily this particular problem has coincided with a lull in promotional activity before we step up a gear next week, however we’re still looking at the loss of a large number of sign-ups and donations to charity.


UPDATE

Litterally as I was posting this blog I took a call from Pierce who confirmed that the site was back online at 7:45pm GMT. We're now awaiting the official report from Level3 as to the exact cause of the failure.

posted by Paul Fisher @ 7:47 pm 0 comments

Friday, July 21, 2006

Thank you deviantArt and Tyler

Firstly, deviantArt posted a news item about the project, and sent over a whole load of US traffic last night. They actually highlighted some bugs in the payment gateway that were preventing international sign-ups which was good to spot early.

Secondly, another young entrepreneur who I really respect posted a link on his excellent blog tylercruz.com. Thanks Tyler!

Loads of other bloggers have mentioned the project, and I thank you all too for the support. It’s been a good day traffic wise with a much less of a UK focus. My very close friend Adam even managed to sign up from Bolivia which is a great sign (hi Adam :)

I’ve had reports that there are problems with @millionmasterpiece.com email, and therefore we haven’t received any mail directed to the site addresses. If you have got in touch please bear with us – we will get back to you!!

posted by Paul Fisher @ 7:54 pm 0 comments

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Heart FM Interview, and the train journey from hell

Yesterday I popped down to London for an interview at Heart FM on the hottest July day since 1911 (or something like that). The interview was OK, not bad for a first stab in the studio. I’m definitely not going to listen back to the interview though.

The journey back home was hell however. The announcer kindly told us that the carriage temperature was 47oC, which on a packed rush hour train is NOT GOOD. It was hell, and I’m surprised there were no fatalities. What’s more, the guy sitting next to me was drinking COFFEE. COFFEE? I don’t care why. I don’t care what perverse pleasures some people want to enjoy in the comfort of their 47oC house. The heat of the cup was literally burning the side of my face, and the site of steam almost tipped me into a coma.

To further add to the insult, the train company had decided to put up an advert for an air conditioning company, in an un-air conditioned train, right in front of me. Why would they do this?

posted by Paul Fisher @ 9:34 am 0 comments

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Be my MySpace friend

Surely I have more than 6 friends? If your on MySpace, please add me as a friend! http://www.myspace.com/million_paul

posted by Paul Fisher @ 8:54 pm 0 comments

My first ever radio interview

Yesterday I did my first ever radio inteview for U105 in Belfast. I think it went well. We've also had some good coverage both in print and online. Lee is keeping the site updated on our new Press Archive

Site traffic is slowly increase day-by-day - it's approaching 2,000 uniques per day, 8,000 impressions per day, but we've got a long way to go yet!

posted by Paul Fisher @ 4:51 pm 0 comments

Monday, July 17, 2006


Read about the One Million Masterpiece on ActionAid's website here

posted by Paul Fisher @ 2:58 pm 0 comments

Protecting children on the One Million Masterpiece

A few people have been wondering how we plan to protect children against images of an adult nature, and against unwanted attention from other artists.

We’ve thought long and hard about this, prompted by a conversation with the guys at Save the Children and the fact that we want to get schools involved in the project.

So, the systems we have in place are:

1) Under 18’s cannot receive email messages from other users, and have no access to the instant message system

2) Pictures declared as not suitable for children will be blurred in the picture viewer and on the profile pages. The pictures will be printed on the final canvas in full, however online they will remain obscured

3) Artists who fail to declare adult content can be reported to a moderator by any member of the project

4) If these artists fail to comply with the project rules and keep their image declared will find their account deleted.

This project is for everyone, and we welcome pictures of all varieties, so long as these simple rules are followed!

posted by Paul Fisher @ 2:49 pm 0 comments

Saturday, July 15, 2006

Stray duck forces website to close


Last night the One Million Masterpiece was closed for five hours because a stray duck caused a hijack alert!

I gave the instruction to close the site at 7pm, and it wasn’t until 12am that I could safely reopen the registration gateway.

Read the full story here

posted by Paul Fisher @ 1:29 pm 0 comments

Friday, July 14, 2006

Demonic Java Daemons

At around 8pm we closed the site to upgrade some bits and pieces. It’s now 11pm and the pressure has been on. Thirty minutes ago I thought the site was in meltdown, with people deleting each others images and accounts being completely wiped. However with a clear head we have identified each problem and are slowly realising that all is not lost!

This isn’t the kind of thing you want to be doing just hours before a major national newspaper run a story about your new website! This is a good lesson however. Never go out and celebrate before the fat lady sings.

Last job for the night is to remove the holding page and were away. The official launch of The One Million Masterpiece is here, 35 minutes early ;)

Don’t forget your copy of the Times tomorrow…

posted by Paul Fisher @ 11:25 pm 0 comments

Website traffic


Pierce, our fantastic server guy over at Net Solutions UK just sent me a traffic update. The minute I activated a link on the holding page at around 11:30 the site went balistic. We're now having a rethink about tomorrow, which could potentially be much much busier.

posted by Paul Fisher @ 2:38 pm 0 comments

Sneak preview

A few media sources were a little early with their coverage, so I’ve just made the decision to open the site early. My only concern is the drawing software, which hasn’t been upgraded to the excellent new version. Never mind, that upgrade will still take place over night tonight.

Following a morning piece in the Metro, the site has just hit BBC Online http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5179568.stm and sign-ups have gone through the roof. Remember guys that all this money is going to charity, so keep giving guys!!

posted by Paul Fisher @ 12:57 pm 0 comments

Thursday, July 13, 2006

And the winner of the MP challenge is…

..Brian Binley MP (Conservative) for Northampton South. Well actually it isn’t much of a win at all. The nearest appointment I can make to talk with him is October!!

This is just ridiculous, so I’m going to find another way to get hold of him. Perhaps I’ll find out where he’s going to be over the next few weeks and gate crash.

Come on Sally, you can do better than that?

posted by Paul Fisher @ 8:12 pm 0 comments

Every last second

There’s just over 24 hours until the site goes live and we’ve got some frantic work ahead of us. The drawing software continues to be the biggest problem, and it’ll be a race against time to get the new version ready. There’s also a load of other small features that need to be enabled, and I still have a massive list of bugs to go through.

On top of that I’ve just heard that our payment gateway provider Nochex have scheduled a maintenance blackout between 11am and 12pm on Sunday. I’ve appealed to them to postpone but they are adamant that the upgrade needs to go ahead. I’m going to try and get hold of their CEO Martin tomorrow, although I think he’s on holiday!

posted by Paul Fisher @ 8:07 pm 0 comments

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Public launch :15 July 2006

After a series of great technology and PR meetings today we’ve decided on Saturday 15 July as the official project launch date. So far the beta testing period has seen just over 50 sign-ups and a ton of bugs come to the surface, plus some interesting celebrity contributors

posted by Paul Fisher @ 7:16 pm 0 comments

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

The MP challenge – Binley v’s Keeble

I’ve contacted two of my local MP’s to request a meeting about the charity project. I want to explain the concept to them in the hope that they’ll spread the word in Westminster and get some high profile contributors.

So, on Tuesday 4th I put in a request for a meeting with Brian Binley for Northampton South (Conservative) and Sally Keeble for Northampton North (Labour). So far, neither have got back to me.

In my eyes this is now a challenge. I’m literally on the road which divides their two constituencies, so in my mind these guys both represent me and they are both fighting for my vote. Who’s going to contact me first?

Winner to be announced shortly…

posted by Paul Fisher @ 6:15 pm 0 comments

Monday, July 03, 2006

MySpace BackTrack

First time round I just didn’t get MySpace, but now I’m starting to warm to it. I think the problem was that I was trying to use it solely to blog. Blogger is definitely better for blogging – and so it should – but MySpace is a social network. Without any MySpace friends I couldn’t see the appeal, but now I'm starting to realised the potential.

It started when I added Cleo from Golden Goose PR. Looking though her list of friends, I clicked on the Radio1 DJ’s JK and Joel. Then I noticed that they had my brothers Girlfriend Jade listed, and from her account I found my brother and a whole load of other people I recognised.

Now I’m starting to want to find more friends for my list, and to do that I’m thinking about how to make MyParticularSpace more attractive with some custom HTML. Hey presto, and addiction is forming.

posted by Paul Fisher @ 11:49 am 0 comments