System PM's didn't get moved over to the new version, but here's the one everyone got in June. We tried everything we could to make sure everyone got plenty of notice, and even asked MailCentro to also notify people, but somehow I doubt that ever happened.
--------------------------------------------------------
Friday, June 18, 2004 11:00 PM ET
From: SI Admin (Bob)
Very important note about your account:
This message is being sent to *everyone*, not just you.
The first and most important thing I need to bring up is that we very likely do not have your email address and there's a good chance we'll need it soon as we transition over to the new version of the site.
As part of our agreement to acquire Silicon Investor from InfoSpace, all contact information for the site's users was purged from the database, including email addresses.
This has been quite a problem for people who have forgotten their loginID's and passwords. Without email addresses in our database, we haven't been able to confirm that the person writing us asking for the login info is really the account owner.
This is going to be a far worse problem when we move to the new version of the site, which will be happening soon. Even if you've remained logged in here for years because you've never logged out, you will have to log in to the new site manually at least once. Meaning, you're going to need to know your loginID and password, or we'll have to have your email address for verification if you have to ask us for your login info. Being logged in here, even with cookies enabled and the "Keep me logged in" box checked on the login page won't have any bearing on the new site.
Because of this, we need you to enter your email address into the system, even if you've done so previously. If you did so before May 2003, we no longer have that info.
A few caveats and disclaimers are in order:
1. We won't give your email address to anyone unless they subpoena us for it or if you later opt in to receive emails from any future business partners of ours. We have no such partners currently and if we do in the future, you won't be opted in by default. You'd have to opt in yourself.
2. You don't HAVE to give us your email address if you don't want to. We're not going to shut off your account. However, if you choose not to give us your email address, we won't be able to help you if you don't know your loginID and password.
3. If you're certain you know your login info, we don't need your email address at all. Your call.
4. If you're "certain" you know your login info, you should still make sure that our new system "knows" it correctly by going to dev.siliconinvestor.com and logging in. If you're unable to login there, we definitely need your email address. If you can log in there, no worries.
To enter your email address, go to siliconinvestor.com
Important If you enter your email address but you don't want it visible to other users of the site, go to siliconinvestor.com and make sure the first question has "No" selected.
Other things you should be aware of or that I'll just throw in while I'm writing this:
1. Effective 9/1/2004, we will no longer have MailCentro host the @siliconinvestor.com email addresses some people are using. If you are one of these people, you need to prepare for that by finding another email provider, letting your contacts know, and forwarding or otherwise copying any @siliconinvestor.com emails you don't want to lose. We don't plan to offer email hosting services at any point in the future. We're a message board, and we have Private Messaging capability. We don't need to compete with Hotmail and the like.
2. When the new version of the site goes into production, it initially will be "missing" some features you may've gotten used to here. And it'll lose some features with no immediate plans to replace them. All of the core *message board* functionality will be there, but some features like Preview/Spellcheck may not be immediately available, and some won't be immediately available and *might* not ever become available (Portfolios), and some definitely won't be available anymore (the current Quotes/Charts system -- we don't own it and have selected a different provider who we're already using on the development version of the new site).
3. If you haven't already, you should check out the new version of the site at dev.siliconinvestor.com. It already contains many features this version of the site doesn't have. Such as being able to read a board's messages in batches sized to your liking; not just 10 at a time, and a centralized location for changing things like your password, email address, and even your alias.
4. The layout of the new site is a combination of what I think are the best elements of Classic, Heritage (as we call the "new" interface Go2Net developed) and Investors Hub. I've tried to make it very feature-rich, while keeping simplicity of layout a more important goal.
5. Shortly after changing to the new interface, our business model will change to be more like Investors Hub's successful model. The most notable change being that anyone who registers (whether or not they pay for a subscription) will be able to post, but in a very limited manner. We'll move from the current model of "Read all you want, but you have to pay to post" to "You can post a few times a day, but if you want the posting limit lifted, don't want to see ads, and want the cooler features, you'll need to purchase a subscription."
If you check out the new site, please bear in mind that any messages you post on it, private or public, not only won't show up here, they'll be erased the next time we do a data import, which can happen every few hours or might take a few days to happen. So don't make it your new "Silicon Investor Home" yet.
Regards,
Bob Zumbrunnen
President and Resident Programming Geek
Silicon Investor & Investors Hub |
