I used to update this more frequently, but lately I’ve been focusing more attention on actually adding to the site, rather than talking about adding to the site. However, I feel like this is a great time to discuss all the fun stuff going on right now, both old and new. I didn’t necessarily intend for this to become so long, but it turned out to be sort of a “state of TPT address.”

Annie's Abnormal Gym

The first thing I want to bring up was implemented well before our recent “TPT 3.0″ site upgrade and is long overdue for front page recognition—the Pallet Frontier and the Tribune Gym League. These are essentially the revamped version of what we tried to start up back on the old website many moons ago. The Frontier consists of eight gyms, each with its own gym leader. Every gym has a theme and its own special rules. Defeat the gym leader and earn that gym’s badge. Defeat all the gym leaders and you earn a chance to become a gym leader yourself! Since its inception, 23 badges have been awarded and only one member has earned all the badges. Congratulations MeowthMix for this achievement (he is already a gym leader, in case you were wondering). The gyms have had a strong start but I’d like to see even more activity, so go check them out if you haven’t yet!

In the same vein as the gyms, we also have our ongoing battle ladders.  Currently, there are four cups with varying themes and rules. The Ho-oh cup is for our big-league battlers with level 100 Pokémon. The Pallet Cup is for the more casual battler, like myself, with a level 50 requirement.  Then there are the Sippy Cup and the Unown Cup, each with their own unique and fun rules. For all you battlers out there, these cannot be missed! You can earn tokens and other awards for holding the top spots.

Also relevant to battlers, but also non-battlers, is our brand new currency system on the forums. Users are able to earn “Pallets” in various ways. For example, you will earn Pallets for making a post or starting a thread or referring a friend or even just for logging at some point each week. The currency will also be the prize for various events and contests here on TPT.

Pallets can be spent in even more ways. First and foremost, you may spend them in the new Marketplace. Here, you can find a selection of PokéDolls which you can buy for your profile and postbit (that little section under your username when you make a post on the forums). The first of what we hope to be many collections of dolls was designed by staff artist, Rin. There are no specific plans yet, but we will eventually be adding other types of items to the shop.

The weekly lotteries also offer a fun way to spend and, if you’re lucky, gain Pallets. On Wednesdays, the raffle-style drawing takes place in which members buy tickets for ℙ25 and one winner is randomly chosen each week to win the jackpot.  On Fridays, the lotto-style drawing takes place. For this style, participants buy tickets and choose a number. On drawing day, anyone who picked the winning number will get to split the jackpot. If there are no winners (which is actually was the case this week), the jackpot will just be added to the next week’s drawing. So the jackpot will keep going up each week until there is a winner, making things potentially very interesting.

It is also possible to send Pallets to other users on the forums. This opens up tons of possibilities, some of which have already taken shape in the first few days of the currency system. Battlers have wagered Pallets on their matches, artists and other entrepreneurs have set up shops to sell their services, and others have simply given Pallets as gifts to their friends for their birthday. Already there is a noticeable buzz surrounding the currency system and it is really exciting!

A screen cap from the TPT Day Keynote

July 3rd marked The Pallet Tribune’s second anniversary. Dubbed “TPT Day,” it was a huge event we put together to celebrate the site. To mention a few of the many functions: in the early afternoon our staffers held live video shows. In the late afternoon we had Pokémon and Smash Bros. Brawl tournaments. In the evening I gave my TPT 3.0 Keynote, announcing some of the upcoming features.  And at night we all hung out in the chat and listened to the second anniversary podcast as a group. Overall, it really made me feel part of a family and got me really excited for the future of the site. Thanks to everyone who helped put it together.

There was a lot of exciting new stuff added to the site with the TPT 3.0 update.  For example, our new site design added drop down menus, sleek look and improved sort pages. With the new design also came the feed of all our latest video content. Between our own videos and videos from staffers like Annie and Trogdor, WTPT-TV has been better than ever.

Aside from all the new site features, a steady stream of awesome new content has come along with TPT 3.0. BigRedLax’s The Tall Grass comics have been consistently awesome and have probably been the most consistently produced content on the site. For that, I applaud him! Also with the addition of our Features Editor, Ducky-Von-Karma, we’ve had more feature articles posted on the site than ever before. Plus with the work of our illustrators, like Rin, the articles look great too! Congratulations to all three of the aforementioned  individuals for becoming our latest staff members.

TPT 3.0 also included an update to our back end. Justin V, who has been essential to the whole process, worked with me to update the software we use for the site. The latest version of Wordpress, the front page blogging software, allowed us to implement nested comments. The latest version of vBulletin, our forum software, opened up new possibilities for the Social Groups. In addition, the updated versions have helped make our experience putting together the site much easier! For example, I personally had to go through all the comments by new posters to weed out automated spam. Now though, I have a system in place that automatically blocks all spam! I’ve gone through over 9000 spam comments in the past several months (Vegeta knows how I feel), so this frees up a lot time for working adding to the site.

Another small update I should mention is the addition of Pokémon-themed emoticons in the chat room. Prior to this, the chat room didn’t really give off any vibe of being part of a Pokémon website. Despite being a very small addition, I think the new emotes have had a pretty substantial impact on making the chat a true part of the site. Thanks to everyone who helped me pick out the Pokémon!

All the main parts of TPT 3.0 are now rolled out. Even after all of this there are still a few new things we are working on for the site. Hopefully we will be seeing some of them soon. With the present being so bright, it’s hard to imagine it getting better! I’d like to thank everyone that helped out with the site and all of you who make The Pallet Tribune an awesome place to be everyday.

Because of waking up so early, though, I was fairly tired most of the day and ended up taking a nap at my friend’s apartment. I didn’t have the time to do much more than some last minute shopping at the convention and I ended up not having the opportunity to say goodbye to Dragoon, Arc and Justin. Let me say it here: I had a lot of fun meeting you guys and I hope we get to hang out again soon!

I hope you all are enjoying the videos I’ve been posting from the convention. There are a few more on the way. Now that all this PAX stuff is almost done, Ill be concentrating on some of the cool things we have planned for the coming month or so. (I’m looking at you, photo contest entries!) Also along those lines, I am crossing my fingers that I will be able to find an alternative to iWeb in the near future. We need to get this site on a platform like Drupal or Wordpress. Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about either platform or programming in general to maintain a site using them. If anyone has abilities in those departments and is willing to help us, please let us know! I may have to commission a friend of mine to help us out with it.

In the meantime though, iWeb will have to do. As many of you know, I have to reupload much of the site every time I want to update it. As we amass more and more content, the upload times increase along with it. Plus, moving the site over will bring new features to the table such as the one’s I’ve described in previous blogs. It will also make life easier in a lot of ways. Blogging, for one, will be much easier. I need to take a few weeks off of work to put all this stuff together. (Too bad that won’t happen any time soon! x_x)

Well then, back on topic now: I hope you all have enjoyed our PAX 2008 coverage. Feedback would be much appreciated. Overall PAX was a very fun experience and it was really cool meeting listeners for the first time. I hope I have that opportunity again soon. I’m not sure exactly when my next blog will be, but I’ll try to make time to update on occasion. Until then, this is Jowy, glitchin’ OUT!

We were also able to get interviews with a few cosplayers and other interesting people at the con. For example, we happened to run into a few people who work for a little company called Pokémon USA. Yep! Justin made quite a catch by talking to a guy with one of the new Dialga and Palkia DS Lites, who happened to have worked for the company. I don’t want to give away too much here, but you will learn more about our experiences with them on the next podcast and in a few videos we recorded. I will start posting that stuff on Tuesday.

Speaking of the next podcast, we recorded it in Arc’s hotel room tonight. It is mostly a random jumble of PAX thoughts and impressions. In addition, we did an interesting impromptu live Blaine’s Gym segment. Overall it was really cool being able to have multiple staff members on the show to record a regular episode. (KC was sorely missed though!)

We were really productive today and I hope we get even more done tomorrow! JoeC is leaving early though, so he said his goodbyes as we left Arc’s room. I am not looking forward to having to say my goodbyes!

Friday has been a day of mostly getting settled. The convention activities didn’t start till 2pm, so the group and I had time to hang out, and get to know each other over some lunch and coffee. We also continued work on our newspaper page ad that we made to promote the site. 200 of them were printed in total and we folded them in half to make them look even more like newspapers.

When we finally made it to the convention, JoeC Dragoon and I accidentally got on the line for the Exhibition Hall, so we were among the first to check out all the industry booths. My favorite booth was probably Nintendo’s because I got to try a handful of games that didn’t come out yet, including Animal Crossing: City Folk, Wii Music and Pokémon Ranger 2: Shadows of Almia. Look for some demo videos on WTPT-TV soon!

After the Exhibition Hall, we went to check out Friday’s Pokémon meet up in one of the Portable Lounges. The first thing I noticed was the lack of tables at this lounge; in fact all it had were a bunch of huge pillow-bean bag things strewn across a corner of the convention center. This made it impossible to go around and see what people were playing. Unfortunately the turn out to this particular Pokémon meet up was low so we didn’t hand out as many of our ads as we would have liked.

Later on, after some dinner, we went back to Arcanator’s hotel room. For some reason they offered him a bigger room for less money when he checked in to the hotel. He accepted of course and so we had a pretty awesome room to hang out at night, complete with a kitchen, big dining room table, and a sweet couch. We sat around the table and had philosophical pokémon discussions and worked on some website content for the remainder of the night.

Overall it was a pretty fun day, but I’m super excited about tomorrow. It should be the busiest day of the convention. Tomorrow night we will likely record a WTPT episode, possibly some more video content and, of course, I will write another blog. Talk to you then!

I decided to come across the country to Seattle a little bit early to visit some of my college friends who live out here. I arrived here Wednesday night after about 9 long hours of traveling (including the 2 trains to get to the airport, and my stopover in Chicago) and I haven’t stopped eating since! On Thursday, my friends took me around to all the landmark eateries in the area. I snapped a few photos on the way. Take a look!

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Okay folks! I’m off to go meet up with JoeC. You will hear from me again tonight.

Next, I will be meeting up with a number of friends from the WTPT community including Arcanator, JoeC and JustinV! If you plan on being at PAX, please send me an e-mail so we can meet up too. This will be my first time meeting any listeners or staff members in person and I’m quite excited.

Also, we are planning on creating a lot of content for the site while at the convention. I would like to record an on-the-road episode sometime during the weekend. In addition, we plan on making videos, writing articles and posting blogs, as I mentioned earlier. Even if you aren’t at the conference there should be a lot to look forward to!

Our page on YouTube will be a great new outlet as well. In addition to our own videos, we will be adding lot of other people’s videos to the page.

One of the videos that inspired the update to WTPT-TV was made by a member of the Times community. Annie dubbed new audio into the first Pokémon episode and made it all about The Pokémon Times. In fact, Ash’s character is now called Jowy and is trying to put together the best Pokémon podcast ever!

You guys surprise me all the time. Every time I feel like we are reaching our limits, you guys seem to come up with even more we can do; a way we can take this even further. Whether it is a quiz show, news articles, a live show or now, videos.

Let’s not stop here! Our potential is limitless. Please continue to e-mail us if you have ideas for the site or videos you would like to see on the new TV page.

Übercaster: We recorded the most recent WTPT episode on it and I was less than impressed. It is a bit glitchy. Even still, I think we will be giving it another shot in the near future.

Gyms: This is getting really interesting. I have starting appointing the first eight founding members for each of two gyms and there is already a pretty strong buzz about it.

When we fill both groups, the founders will decide on a name for their gym, a badge name/design, battle rules and special conditions, methods for initiating new members and methods of deciding upon a gym leader. These discussions should be held some time this coming Friday night (EST). I will try to get the gym rooms up around Wednesday.

Contests: We are looking to make some ads to promote the show on PIRN and other podcasts. I figured it would be best to have you guys talk about what you like about the show rather than me and KC trying to sell ourselves. So, I am asking you all to send us voicemails about what you like about the show and why. Keep in mind you will be addressing potential new listeners, not me and KC. I am not sure that there will be any prize for this pseudo-contest. If you are looking for a way to help us out, this is a perfect opportunity.

Just to remind you, February 29th is the last day we will be accepting entries for the myth contest. Get those in asap! This contest will have a prize!

Skype Calls: Not much else to talk about here except to reiterate how interesting this is. People come into the conferences that don’t even have mics, just to listen in on the conversations.

Meet Up IRL: I looks like there will be more people coming from the Pokémon Times staff than I originally imagined. Arcanator will be in town, as well as Justin V. for the Smash Brothers Brawl release party in New York City. Stay tuned for more specific details about this.

Newsletter: As I mentioned on the latest podcast, we have a Google group for mass e-mailing our listeners. If you would like to join and receive updates from us instantly, please click here.

Pokémon Tabletop RPG: I didn’t mention this in the blog either, but it was mentioned in the podcast. This would be a cool project to work on in the future. *Adds one to the To-Do list.*

I think that just about covers everything. It has been a wonderful week. I am extremely happy that I had an opportunity to spend some serious time with you all on the chat room and working on the site. I will try to keep up with this blog as much as possible even when I’m not relaxing in the Orange Islands.