We have completed the update at home to AT&T 6MBPS DSL and Internet-based cable.  Aside from getting local channels in high definition that were not included in Time Warner's channel line up, on the digital HD service, the image quality is just incredible.  The PVR is extremely cool, and allows downloading programming extremely easily

Sending out an email tonight to impacted users, however I activated webmail on battlebazaar.com on the secure site there (so that is now an option for mail users).  Should be able to guess what to change.

Didn't get the servers up tonight, will get them up tomorrow.  Sorry for the delay. :-)

Yeah!  You heard me, something is actually coming online. 

Master Accounts

Each account can be either a master account (parent is null) or a secondary account (parent is not null).  Secondary accounts share all contact information with primary accounts.  Secondary accounts are clearly indicated as such.  This is similar to what Turbine and NCSoft do, in that you only have to adjust billing information in one place. 

Characters

Since the character server is also going up, you will be able to create characters under a master or secondary account.  You will be able to specify the character's name and gender.  You will be able to obtain a signature block that can be embedded in most popular forum software for an avatar image, and you will be able to obtain a signature block that can be embedded as a signature.  The signature version will include online/offline status, and will link to a journal about your character.  It is up to you what events are automatically logged to the journal (completion of stories, etc.) and there will be a facility to log short messages to the journal as well (e.g. On vacation until 1/24).  People reading your profile will be able to instant message you in game, and chat with you in game, when those servers are finally up.

People on Jabber or Google will eventually be able to subscribe to presence notifications and also send IM in and out of the game.  I don't intend to support other chat networks at this time, but that is always subject to change.

Player Associations (Clans)

Master accounts will be able to create Player Associations.  These player associations may cross games and servers.  They will be able to create "subordinate" organizations, alliances and enemies.  There will be a membership roster and a guild events log (similar to the log in EQ2).  There will be the capability, as with characters, to add your own messages to the log as well.  The messages will be available as an RSS feed, filterable by game, server and unit. 

Characters applying for membership in a PA will have their character information added to an RSS feed as well.  Someone with add to clan permission will be able to view the feed, and click a link to allow the user to join. 

Services

The first round of externally accessible services will also be made available, surrounding these features.  As with the clan membership notifications, how this works is the remote site requests access to your character data (note: no personal data is available via this service, only character and clan information is available).  You will be allowed to select "allow this site to access my character" or "do not allow this site to access my character" (same with clans).  This is so that clans or fan web sites can pull data.

Game Cards

Support for game cards is also going up.  Staff accounts will be able to generate game codes for the "alpha test" group, and cards that add as-yet unnamed tokens to accounts.  These will be 25 digit alphanumeric codes that do not use the character 1, 0, I or O -- in upper case.  Note: generated codes won't work in master accounts for staff, and eventually this feature will probably be restricted to certain staff groups -- but for now, we don't have a mountain of staff so I won't lock it down. :-)

Profile Cards for Web Sites

In addition to all the above, there's also an option to generate profile cards for use on other web sites.  This is designed to be larger than a signature or profile box, and will eventually show much more information.  For now, it won't do a heck of a lot.  Player associations will be able to generate such cards.

Cardspace Login

Log in using a Windows Card Space or other information card provider will be supported.

You heard it hear first.  Instead of https://battlebazaar.net, you'll have to use https://battlebazaar.net:4343.  This change is so that I can activate https://battlebazaar.com on the server. 

This means the web site for accessing your e-mail will also change.  I'm sending that information out by e-mail in a couple minutes. 

For a long time, I have continued to keep dbacher@battlebazaar.com as a valid mail address.  This was because a significant number of people had the address.

 For the last several years, I have been using a different address.  The battlebazaar.com address gets, on average, between 100 and 120 spam e-mails a day (yes, one account, yes a day).  Most of these are eaten, these days, by the domain black list and the SPF verification.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you aren't using SPF -- turn it on.  If you're sending me statements or w/e, then send them digitally signed.

There is a domain keys module now for the mail server; I may install that, or I may not.  My personal opinion is that domain keys does not really bring anything to the table above SPF, while it does introduce a lot more processing.  The reason I say that is that if I'm not accepting mail from an unauthorized server in the first place, then domain keys buys me very little.  The domain key is stored in the DNS, same as the SPF.  The only thing that Domain Keys brings to the table is an additional check that an authorized server is also sending via an authorized process.  But thats not the issue with the spam I see -- I see the spam being sent via unauthorized computers.  And I see more spam than anyone.

 For now, I've split the dbacher@battlebazaar.com account off as a separate mailbox, instead of delivering messages to my primary mailbox.  Once I've confirmed who still is using the older address, I will disable that account (similar to my john@battlebazzaar.net and john@battlebazaar.com accounts, that just mark mail as spam)

http://blogs.msdn.com/andrewarnottms/archive/2007/10/29/what-do-you-think-of-the-new-wcf-store-and-forward-mail-transport.aspx

I can't speak for the mail transport in WCF, because I've not yet used it, however I've used other mail transports with .NET before.  The nice thing about the mail transports is that it is a technology that crosses firewalls easily.  If you have a client outside the firewall, it is almost never a problem for it to e-mail someone inside the firewall.  It is usually easy to get an e-mail account (regardless of the server software involved).

E-mail transports are also useful because Microsoft Message Queue requires a domain controller for some distributed scenarios, but you are sometimes on leased servers that aren't domain controllers.  In those scenarios, e-mail transport provides most of the same benefits as message queues, but without the need for a PDC.  That is huge for some setups.

The other really nice thing about e-mail transports is that given backup MX service (something that only costs around $20/year from companies like no-ip and the like), servers can go offline -- even for a week or more -- and the messages will recover when it comes back up.

The big drawback to e-mail is that it is very high latency.  The messages might get there in 10 seconds.  The messages might get there in an hour.  The messages might get there in a week.  This usually isn't a problem on internal e-mail, but it is a big problem for system domain boundaries. 

Also, you have to watch for filtering as well.  For example, is the remote system allowed to send mail by the SPF?  I am a huge advocate of SPF -- I have it set up on my servers, I enforce it on inbound mail, and you should too.  SPF blocks more than 300 messages a day on battlebazaar.com, and around twenty to thirty a day on battlebazaar.net, and we don't have a ton of users (but battlebazaar.com was used in several discussion lists and newsgroups, and so the spammers came).

Many anti-spam programs will trigger off of message headers, and off of receiving many similar messages.  You have to be certain whatever anti-spam you have server-side is able to handle the messages reliably also.