ANYwebcam.com Update

Nov 23, 2009

Hello All

I apologise it's been so long since I've given you all an update on the happenings at ANYwebcam.com

It's been an incredibly busy time here the last few months to say the least. The business has gone through some of the toughest times and he biggest changes in our nearly 10 year history. We've had to adapt to a huge drop in the market, very tight revenue and major staff changes. This has seen us all spinning our wheels in meetings, administration work and other distractions trying to do our best to keep the site and business running.

The good news is I believe all the business restructuring is in hand, and while things are still really tough here we have a plan forward and are starting to get time back to be able to focus on new developments.

The first bit of good news is the new site software development. We decided a few months back the current platform and our reduced Development staff has made new work on the site very difficult. We set about researching new platforms on which to base ANYwebcam.com with an eye to realising the vision for what has been called V5. I'm very pleased to announce we've found our new site software and are currently working through customisation, design and data migration to bring you all a Beta release as soon as possible.

This new platform gives us so many of the features we've wanted to enable the community with, right out'a the box. I'm very excited for you all to see it soon. It has all the features you've been asking for (and more importantly the bug fixes) and immediately gives us a unified solution unlike the mixed v4 / v5 site and design that's currently live. Andrew's already completed the Account data migration and is working on the Media migration now. Michael's both involved in setting up the servers required for the new software and kicking in with optimising the PHP & SQL to get the site running as fast and as stable as possible for you.

At the same time we've been researching and trying to get the new Webcam & Chat development happening. This has been a very frustrating exercise, as over the last two plus months, we've gone through three solutions and developers that promise big things but ultimately haven't delivered. We're currently deep into the spec and planning with a new solution provider, who I'm not going to go into detail about just yet, but I'm very confident they can deliver a very exciting new Webcam & Chat solution for us all to enjoy.

And finally, bringing you up to date with new developments, today Ed has just installed 5 new servers (bringing us to 39 now). These will give us added flexibility when it comes to helping us transition to the new site. Pics of the AWC servers.

On a personal note, one of the saddest results of this tumultuous time has been the loss to the business and community of Liam and Betsy. Many of you know the tremendous work Betsy did in managing the Customer Support, helping literally thousands of you with the site, billing and much more. Liam has been the Office Manager for over ten years now and IMHO the Heart of the company with everything he's done above and beyond the call over the years. Both have decided it's time to move on to new challenges and will be deeply missed. Jess and I will be picking up from where they left off so be gentle with us while we try and keep up the high standard they set.

Part of the reason for me going into all this is to make sure you know your concerns are our concerns. I know recently there's been some well deserved criticism of our perceived lack of keeping you all abreast of the work going on behind the scenes. I hope the above goes some way towards fixing that. Please know that every day we're here working through the challenges of this tough economy and trying to support the best community on the web. No one is more critical of our current situation then I, but I'm determined to make fundamental changes to turn the business and the site around.

- David (synapse)