In the very early hours of this morning, PhoneNews.com (and all other MechaWorks sites) were upgraded to WordPress 2.8.5. This is mostly a security release, but we’re always on the prowl for new updates to apply.

After a few delays, all files on the Phone Encyclopedia are available once again. We apologize for the delay, we had a few other projects we were busy on.

Phone Encyclopedia archives are now stored in a manner that will allow us to more easily move them, should we need to do so in the future. The move also should avoid any further downtime in the event of a re-tooling.

Just got a note this morning that someone finally put PhoneNews.com on Wikipedia.

Feel free to read it, reminisce, and edit the page away.

We’re still working on it. Most of the files were migrated to our auxiliary servers… but a virus has spread through our main office like wildfire. So, pardon us while we go cough up another lung… we’ll get to fixing it when we can.

It has been a very late night of software updates for us at MechaWorks. Here’s the stuff for PhoneNews.com.

WordPress 2.8.1 has been deployed network-wide, along with all the other tiny updates that come along with that process.

The Phone Encyclopedia got a few updates, mostly under the hood stuff. Oh, and once again, you do need to register to edit the Encyclopedia.

But, the big event of the night was… at long last… the Forums are now running IP.Board 3.0. This is basically a re-write of the entire Forums! We’re going to be adding some major improvements to the look and feel… well, right now. So, bear with the dust as we unpack the new forums. But, the good news is, they’re open and ready for you to contribute.

And, finally, we’re in the middle of the soft launch of PhoneCashback.net. We’re making some improvements ahead of the Tuesday hard launch. Stay tuned!

We’ve completed the updates to the Phone Encyclopedia, which were taking place alongside the launch of PhoneCashback.net.

Our file migration continues, and we’re planning another more transparent file migration shortly thereafter. We expect to mop up the remaining changes over the next few days… but it could happen sooner.

Finally, we did mention awhile back that the Phone Encyclopedia would require (free) registration, in order to edit. We did delay that, but it is going into effect tonight. This is actually a good thing, as it will allow us to encourage (reward) personal contributions to the Phone Encyclopedia… and that in turn will get more people contributing to the Encyclopedia.

P.S. Forum updates are still being tested… we’re still working on deploying IPB 3.0.

A major forum upgrade is coming to the PhoneNews.com Forums. We’ve been waiting… and waiting… and waiting… for IP.Board 3.0 to ship. And, that has finally happened. We’ll burn some more midnight oil (which we’re doing right now, but that’s for a future blog post), and have it ready to go within the week.

Our goal (emphasis on the word goal) is to get it shipped out during the Independence Day weekend.

IP.Board 3.0 gives us new tools that will greatly enhance how we expand and improve the forums… so even if your excitement about the forums has cooled as of late, we’re ready for a rebound.

We haven’t forgotten about the migration from PhoneNews.com Cashback to PhoneCashback.net. The road to E3 for us was long, and filled with a lot of technical stuff (we’ll be mostly behind-the-scenes at E3, but coverage will be there as well).

So, we are going to wrap up the migration to PhoneCashback.net when we get back from the show. Current timing for that is somewhere between June 5th through the 12th.

And, of course, it’s still working where it is right now.

We will be distributing parts of the Phone Encyclopedia across multiple servers, starting today.

This will result in parts of the Phone Encyclopedia being offline, in rolling phases, over the next week.

As we’ve warned in the past, do not hard link to files on the Phone Encyclopedia. Only link to Phone Encyclopedia articles themselves. Links to firmware downloads directly will break because of this move.

In other words…
Good Links: http://www.phonenews.com/phones/index.php/Sony_Ericsson_T608
Bad Links: http://www.phonenews.com/phones/vzw/motorola/AMP_E816_X_1.40R_PRIhh91578_MONSTER_09.zip

By linking to article pages, you ensure that downloads will popular across our server network, and that makes everyone feel just swell.

Yes, we know people have been pirating our links, bypassing the article pages… but we’re making this transition to improve the performance of the Encyclopedia as a whole. This transition will ensure that popular downloads do not impact page load times (while also improving download speeds for the files themselves).

We don’t like the animosity in the mobile media. Really, we don’t.

But when Phone Scoop’s Eric Lin publicly made a foul-four-letter-word-strewn commentary about PhoneNews.com nabbing the first review of the Palm Pre, we realized animosity was alive and well in the mobile media.

And while it’s true, many don’t like our review style, it’s different… not phony. Other sites can claim they don’t like our review style, but that doesn’t give them the ethics to say they were first to a review of the final Palm Pre.

We don’t write reviews that take into account personal preferences. Hence, the title. That’s not to say we don’t like Walt Mossberg (we do actually), we just find we have a different audience. For example, on the keyboard, half the staff likes it, half the staff doesn’t. Same with many other keyboards on phones. So, we let you decide how you like it. After all, if the staff finds different takes on a device… that means there’s a diverse range of opinion on it.

These are expensive gadgets, and we’re not going to impose our opinions on subjective matters. Others are welcomed to do so, in their editorial styles.

It’s unfortunate that Boy Genius Report has chosen to lie about its claim to the first hand-on review of the final Palm Pre. It’s even more unfortunate that Apple-centric media, like MacNN (also known by its smaller news service, Electronista), and MacRumors have chosen to drink the kool-aid, and sanction Boy Genius Report’s claims.

To the media’s credit, most aren’t drinking the kool-aid. Others have given independent opinions that provide independent analysis (and, yes, we linked to one that didn’t like our review so much… just to be fair and balanced here).

Both MacNN and MacRumors are familiar with PhoneNews.com. They are of course held to the same standard… they may not like our review (or, like Phone Scoop, even dislike us), but that doesn’t give them the right to ignore our reporting.

For most though, the solution to this problem is simple. Park our RSS feed in your feed reader, and see for yourself. We’ve been in the mobile media, since there was a mobile media. We’re only growing from here.

P.S. We’ve posted plenty of photos of the Pre in the past (which loads PhoneNews.com without trouble, as we’ve shown in the past). Feel free to search the news.

Because of abuse, we’ve disabled commentary on this blog posting. Please don’t feed the trolls.