News

Friends database corruption

The friends database got corrupted, and that created a lot of problems on the site. First of all, most people's friends got lost in space, and secondly the userinfo pages went weird.

I have restored the friends lists from a backup, but there have probably been a lot of changes since the last backup, so please go through your friends lists and see what's not up to date.

I'm very sorry about it, and I'm trying to find out how it happened, so it doesn't get messed up like that again.

Edit Friends

Server maintenance and moving

Caleida will be down for about a day, while we move the servers to a different location. I'm sorry that we don't have a backup server to run Caleida off, but I promise to do this as fast as possible.

Finally found the problem

I finally found the problem that was slowing down the server, and sometimes stopping it completely.

A range of ip addresses in China, 219.142.78.85 - 219.142.78.246, is bombarding Caleida with requests. They randomly go around the site, asking for about 50 - 100 pages per second, making it almost impossible for others to do anything on the site after a while.

I have no idea why some chinese want to stop Caleida, but anyway, they are shut out now, so the site should be much more stable.

I'm sorry it took me so long to fix it.

Caleida Update

We just updated the code on the site, which resulted in a few errors. One of them was that nobody could update their journals using the web interface for a few hours, I'm sorry about that.

There's some new functionality in the update, the most interesting is the addition of OpenID.

OpenID is used to show who you are across journaling sites. If you want to post a comment in someones journal at Livejournal.com, you can put "username.caleida.com" in the OpenID box on the comment page, and you will be logged in at Livejournal, as a Caleida user.

It also works the other way round, so if you are not a Caleida member, you can still comment using your username from Livejournal.

You have to be logged in on the site you are using as ID server.

If the journal you are commenting on has chosen to screen anonymous comments, your OpenID comments will also be screened.

- Log in on Caleida as a user from another site here, or when you post a comment.

- Change settings for other sites that you have allowed to verify your Caleida identity here

One More Virus Alert

Somebody is sending out large numbers of mails pretending to be from Caleida.
The text of the messsage will look like something important from Caleida, and here are some examples of the subject header:

YOU HAVE SUCCESSFULLY UPDATED YOUR PASSWORD
Warning Message: Your services near to be closed.
MEMBERS SUPPORT
YOUR PASSWORD HAS BEEN UPDATED
Important Notification
You have successfully updated your password
qucjwxjrmtrc (or some other random characters)

Finally, the mail will end with these two lines:

+++ Attachment: No Virus found
+++ Caleida Antivirus - www.caleida.com

The attachement is NOT virus free, it IS a virus. So under no circumstances should you open it.
The mail is NOT from Caleida, we will NEVER send any attachements to you. And there is no such thing as "Caleida Antivirus".

New Community: book_reviews

book_reviews has just started, and is maintained by stuntpilots.

It's for everybody to talk about books, reading, favorite authors, and to share tips about good and bad books.

So if you're a bookworm, wiggle over and join book_reviews!

New Virus

Caleida is getting a lot of mail generated by a virus called "Sober.Q", which means a lot of users computers are probably infected by it.

If you are using Windows, you should run an antivirus program, to check if your machine is infected, and remove the virus if it is. I recommend "Stinger", which can be downloaded free here.

You can also use Microsofts scanning service, here.

Account codes & other news

Account codes for new accounts are not needed anymore, for a while at least. So if you have any friends that you would like to have join Caleida, please let them know.

If the site has been a bit slow at times, it's because we have been swamped with spammer bots trying to post. Even though it isn't possible for them to post, they are still trying, hundreds of times a minute. Just shows how dumb those people are.

The hit counters are working again, I'm sorry that it took so long, but I had a lot of urgent things to do.

AOL is still blocking email from Caleida. If email from Caleida is important for you, either ask AOL to allow email through, or get a free email account somewhere else, and use that.

Small change

You can go directly to somebodys photo album or art gallery by adding a ? and a username to the address, like this: http://photos.caleida.com/?
For example, to go to my photo album: http://photos.caleida.com/?morten

I know it's not a big deal, just wanted to let you know.

And there seems to be a problem adding and deleting userpics. I'm busy fixing it, so please don't open any support requests about it.

[Edit]
Userpics are working fine now, fixed the error

Anonymous comments enabled again

Anonymous comments have now been enabled again. So if you have anonymous comments enabled in your settings, anonymous visitors can comment in your journal.

There is now a system in place, that requires anonymous users to prove that they are human, if they post too many times within a certain amount of time. Hopefully that takes care of the spammers. However, if you do notice any spam comments, please delete them, and choose the option to report them as spam.

To disable anonymous comments, go to http://www.caleida.com/editinfo.bml and under "Who can reply to your entries?" choose "Registered Users".

Spam comments #2

I have deleted several thousand spam comments from journals. If you still find any, please let me know where it is (the URL), or the subject line of the comment. Alternatively, you can choose to delete it, and in the deleting options, choose "report as spam", so I can review it.

And if anybody was interested in how to get rid of all their debt while having a permanent erection, I'm sorry, you will have to look for the information elsewhere.

Disabled Anonymous Comments

I have had to disable anonymous comments for a while, since somebody is using it to spam peoples journals. When the anonymous comments are posted, the original poster gets sent a spam email, which has gotten us blocked from sending mail to AOL users again...

I just hate spam!!!... Already I am getting a few hundred spam mails a day, but now spammers have figured out a way to use Caleida to send out their pitiful ads for stuff nobody wants. If any of you ever meets any spammers, just kick them hard from me. thanks.

Account Codes

In order to avoid the site getting completely overloaded, we have reintroduced account codes. Please see the FAQ at http://www.caleida.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=111 to learn more about account codes, and http://www.caleida.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=110 about how you create them.

We don't use account codes because we want to make life difficult for new users, but because there are currently too many users on Caleida, and not enough paid users to cover the cost of the servers and bandwidth.

If you would like to support Caleida, and make it possible for us to upgrade the service, I recommend getting a paid account. New users who don't have an account creation code can also get a code by buying a paid account. Once the paid time expires, the account will revert to a free account.

Official Caleida Communities

A group of very dedicated Caleida users have taken the initiative to run a few outstanding communities. More are on the way, but here is a short description of some of the communities:

suppression
Do you ever have something going on in your life that plays on your mind, happy or sad, and you just need to talk to someone, anyone about it? Then you realise there is no-one you trust enough to share your true feelings with? Don't lock it away, that's what this community is for.
Are you one of those people who find it hard to tell anyone how you're feeling about a certain something or situation? How do you cope with it? Do you try to make it easier for others to talk to you as a way around thinking about your own things. Discuss these topics here.
All posts are moderated because this is a serious community and people who are only here to mess about won't be taken seriously. All posts will also be friends only, so only members of the community can see and respond to your entries. You don't even have to have comments enabled, you can just post your thoughts, so you can get it out.

comm_reviews
Caleida is growing in size every day. Not only are new users signing up, communities are gaining popularity too. Sometimes it's hard to decide which communities to join, or which are more suited to you. Or perhaps you're a moderator and would like some feedback on how to improve your community at the same time as receiving some great publicity.
Caleida is now offering an official community review journal to help you improve your community as well as informing users of the kinds of communities that exist here on Caleida.
Run by a number of dedicated Caleida users, comm_reviews provides a fair and even-handed insight into what makes a good community.
Whether you are just looking for a community to join or want your community reviewed, hop on over to Caleida's official comm_reviews.

current_events is an open forum to talk about the happenings of the world. Issues such as decriminilizing marijuana to healthcare can be discussed at leisure. Everyone's opinion matters, so why not speak yours?

loveandsex is a safe, secure community where you can discuss love, sex, dating, and relationships. If you have a question, don't be afraid to ask. The community is understanding, and very interactive, with polls and surveys. Please be advised that since it is a community about sex and other mature things, you should be able to handle that kind of content.

writing_reviews is a community where one may go and post writing of any kind (i.e. poetry, short stories, essays, articles) and ask for a review. Any member can comment and criticize the work. This is a great place to start as a beginner and it's also a great place to get more professional and thorough reviews. Any work is bound to be improved greatly.

photoshop is a place for tips and tricks for photoshop users. There will also be a few articles about digital cameras and photography in general. So if you are into photography, and have any tips to share, come on over to photoshop

Update from your mobile phone

Our mobile phone updating feature is ready, and you can now update your journal from your phone, wherever you are.

If you can send messages from your mobile phone (SMS or MMS, including photos you have taken with a camera phone) to an email address, you can send a message to Caleida, and it will appear instantly in your journal.

To be able to use this feature, you will have to provide some information at http://www.caleida.com/phone/, where there is a more detailed explanation about the feature.
You can also read more about it in the FAQ How do I update from my mobile phone?

Since this is a new feature, it is possible that our system does not recognize messages from your mobile provider yet. If messages don't get through, or weird stuff appears in your message, please let us know by sending email to bugs@caleida.com with information about your username, and which provider you are using.

But please do try it out, and let us know what you think.

Special thanks for help with this feature go to our mobile debugging team, panicpryncess and commodity

New Schemes

Please check out the new site schemes. "Muddy" has been updated, and there's a new blue scheme called "Drop Dead".

Let me know if you have problems with the new menu bar. I like it because it gives more space to the content. Many people have had problems with the pictures on the front page covering the 'recently updated' list, that should not be so much of a problem with these new schemes.

Go to http://www.caleida.com/manage/siteopts.bml to change scheme

Beta testers needed

We need some people who would be interested in beta testing some new features.

Specifically, we need people with MMS capable mobile phones, and phones with built-in camera, to try out our new phone posting feature. Using this feature, you can update your journal from anywhere you are, and attach images taken with your phone.

If you would like to try out the new feature, and help us make it work with all mobile providers, please send a mail to beta@caleida.com

Best Caleida Journal Competition

Since we are going to change the front page soon, we are going to implement some changes to it.
One of the things we are going to place on the front page is the latest update from the best Caleida journal. But we need your help in selecting the journal to feature on the front page.

So please help by taking part in the competition to find the official "Best Caleida Journal".

The journal will have special "Best Caleida Journal" status for a year, will become a permanent account with all that comes with it, and will be promoted widely on the site.

You can not nominate other peoples journals, only your own. That is because not everybody wants this kind of exposure to their journal, and you are the one who knows your journal best, after all.

So please put down at least 50 words about why your journal is the best on Caleida, and you stand the chance to win the top spot on the front page for a year, permanenet account status, and, depending on the quality of your entry, a few other surprise gifts.

We will only allow entries to be submitted for a very limited period, since there's a lot of manual work involved in selecting the best entry.

So click here to fill out the form right now!

[edit] Sorry, the contest was just an April Fool's prank, and we are not going to have an official "best journal" here. I would like to thank the people who entered anyway, it's great to see that so many people believe that they are the best. Your self confidence is high!

Photo Contest

The photo contest jury has finally chosen the winners of the contest "Your Town". The winners are:

First Prize:

white_rabbit
For the great series of photos from Sydney. It's nice that there's a little story attached to them all, and they give a good impression of what Sydney is like.
http://www.caleida.com/community/photos/1502.html
http://www.caleida.com/community/photos/2130.html
http://www.caleida.com/community/photos/4397.html
http://www.caleida.com/community/photos/4923.html
http://www.caleida.com/community/photos/5300.html

Second Prize (the jury couldn't decide, so there are two of them):

sunshine:
For the tree in the middle of town, and the snow photos.
http://www.caleida.com/community/photos/3088.html
http://www.caleida.com/community/photos/6476.html

aeris:
For the nice aerial view of San Antonio
http://www.caleida.com/community/photos/7166.html

All other participating users will get a prize of two months paid time, because you took part in the contest, and because there were many nice photos:

plain_onigiri
roguechick
carebeargirl86
boysinlipstick
velvet_dreams
tulpehockenjew
genkichan
_pheebs
testamonyeyelid
miseryloves
hematic
deceleration
latenightcrush
foo
neat
jnnk
katze
mune_no_kodou
ashlynn

We will start a new contest soon, any suggestions for an interesting subject?

Scam Mail

Somebody is sending out mail to people, looking as if they are coming from Caleida. The contents of the mail look like this:

"Dear user, the management of Caleida.com mailing system wants to let you know that,
Your e-mail account has been temporary disabled because of unauthorized access.
For further details see the attach."

There are other variations of the text, such as:

"Dear user of Caleida.com gateway e-mail server,
We warn you about some attacks on your e-mail account. Your computer may
contain viruses, in order to keep your computer and e-mail account safe,
please, follow the instructions.
Pay attention on attached file."

This is a scam mail, and is not sent by us. And do not open the attachment, it is a virus/worm file!
The purpose of the mail is to make you open the attachment, and spread the worm further.
Actually, if you use windows, you should never open any attachments at all, unless you are very sure about the contents, and trust it 100%.

The headers of the email are forged, to make it look like the mail is coming from Caleida. This is possible, because Internet email was not designed to be secure from the start.

New Site Scheme

I have added a new scheme to the site. You can try it out by going to http://www.caleida.com/manage/siteopts.bml and choosing it instead of the default. It's for people who don't like bright colours :)
It might become the new default scheme for the site, let me know what you think of it.

There's also a new Photo Album feature. You can find it in the navigation bar, under "Other Stuff".
Everybody has some space to use, but it's limited, so it's a big advantage to use high compression settings when you save your images as jpeg files. Depending on the software you use, choose "high compression" or "low/medium quality" or whatever... If you do that, there's room for more photos.
Paid users have lots of space for photos.
I'm still tweaking the album feature quite a bit, so it's considered a test version, and there's no warranty for anything. But hopefully it can stand the load of everybody using it.
The photo albums use the new darker colour scheme.

[Edit] The photo album is for your own photos, not other peoples photos. Uploads that are obviously not owned by the poster will be deleted.
Pictures that are indecent, racist, or otherwise not fit for public consumption will also be deleted, and the poster probably banned from using the album.

Photography Contest

We are having a little photo competition, for Caleida members.
Read about it here: http://www.caleida.com/community/photos/646.html

You are welcome to ask any questions about it here, if there is something I left out in my explanation

New Paid User Feature

We have implemented hit counters, so paid users can keep track of how many visitors come to their journals.
Visits are divided by type, so you can see how many pages are seen by your friends, logged in users, anonymous users, and yourself.
They are also divided by type of view, so you can see how many times your calendar page is seen, for example, or see how many times your friends click on individual entries to read comments.

The total amount of hits can be shown in your user info, if you wish.

For the moment I have enabled the hit counters for everybody, so you can all keep track of visits to your journal. After a while it will go back to be a paid only feature, since it requires some extra processing power to handle counters for everybody.

Your counters are here: http://www.caleida.com/counters.bml

Happy valentines day!

Finally some news

It's been a while with no news, but finally there are some new things going on here :)

I just updated all the code on the site, and made a few changes, so if you find anything that's not working as it should, please leave a comment here, or in bugs.

I have added two new S2 layouts, but one of them is only available to paid account users, since we need more incentives to get a paid account. Check out the new layouts in the customize section.

I hope everybody had a good start to the new year, and that you will all have a romantic valentines day!

Site problems fixed

Many users have experienced problems when viewing journals, where nothing would show up apart from an error message. I am very sorry for the delay in fixing it, I was on a long flight and didn't have any idea there was a problem.