Saturday, October 25, 2014

Let the Games Begin! A choose-your-own-blog adventure

If you have NOT registered for Extra Life, go to section 1
If you ARE registered for Extra Life, go to section 3
If you forgot what Extra Life is, check out our first blog post on it.
Want the TL;DR? Head straight to section 6.
Thanks again to /u/EditingAndLayout for some high quality gifs!

Section 1: There’s still time!

Helllllo there non-Extra Lifer! Today, many redditors are playing games for 24 hours straight to raise money for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. It’s not too late for you to join, if you want in on the fun and life-saving festivities! Head over to the team reddit page and sign up! You don’t even have to game today if you already have plans - you can do a “make up session” later in the year.
If you decided to sign up, go to section 3
Otherwise, go to section 2

Section 2: Not gaming? Donate!

Not everyone can commit to doing a 24 hour gaming marathon, but we’ll forgive you. If you can spare a few bucks, though, you should still head over to the team reddit page, pick someone out, and donate to Extra Life in their name. You can spare five bucks, right? Or maybe you'll snag the Extra Life Humble Bundle - it comes with reddit gold!
If you dug into your wallet, go to section 5.
Otherwise, go to section 6.

Section 3: For gamers

You! You’re awesome. Thanks for signing up to raise money. The kids at the Children’s Miracle Network Hospital you chose thank you for your effort. Remember to reach out to your friends and family to ask for a few bucks in donations. Extra Life donations go straight to the hospital, so whether you raise $5 or $5,000, you've helped! And you can keep fundraising through the end of the year, too.
Don’t forget, if you’re on Team reddit and raise at least $300, we’ll send you a limited edition, Team reddit Extra Life 2014 T-shirt.
If you have donated to yourself or someone else, go to section 5.
If not, donate to yourself or someone else and go to section 5.
Not doable? That’s alright, we still like you - head on over to section 6.

Section 4: Encounter

The lambeosaurus eyes you suspiciously. You find yourself wishing you hadn't left the dinosaur repellent with Dr. Oetker. The lambeo begins grunting, it looks like it is about to charge.
If you want to run, turn to section 27
If you want to stand your ground, turn to section 113
If you posses the mystical panpipes of Gulthrakis and wish to play the lambeosaurus a soothing melody, turn to section 89

Section 5: Thanks

On behalf of Team reddit's over 500 members and the kids at Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, THANK YOU! With your help, Team reddit has raised over $55,000 of our $100,000 goal, and we couldn't have done it without you.
Pat yourself on the back and go to section 6.

Section 6: Festivities!

Today’s the day! Over 500 Team reddit members, and thousands more gamers overall, are playing games for 24 hours straight today. To help you keep track, a few of us at the reddit offices are running a reddit live thread to highlight what redditors are up to - keep an eye on it for updates from around Team reddit. If you’re streaming, running a contest, or have an interesting screenshot to share, post about it over on /r/ExtraLife or send us a PM!

Friday, October 17, 2014

Time's Running Out - Extra Life Marathon

Note: For further information regarding the marathon, please see the original blog post.

Game day is coming up faster than death stare Luigi! On October 25th, over 350 redditors will be gaming non-stop to raise money for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. We've already raised over $27k towards our $100,000 goal (that’s better than last year at this time!) but we've still got a way to go. Join us, play games, and heal kids.

If you've already joined, drop by /r/ExtraLife to talk fundraising, streaming, gaming, and strategies for staying awake (cheat code unlocked: caffeine).

Prizes for players!

Raise over $10 million dollars and we'll buy you a Tesla Model S (maybe)
Thank you to our own /u/acidtwist for the design!
If saving lives isn't enough incentive, we've got prizes for fundraisers. If you raise over $100, we’ll give you 2 months of reddit gold free!

Gold isn't enough for you? How about some cool stickers?! Raise over $200 and you’ll get limited edition, one of a kind, Extra-Life-Team-reddit-2014 stickers!

But wait, there’s more - raise over $300 and we’ll send you this AWESOME T-shirt. This shirt isn't for sale - the only way to get it is through fundraising, and only available to the top 100 fundraisers on team reddit raising over $300.


Not playing? Donate!

To donate simply choose a player from the team roster and click "Support Me!". Each member gets to choose which hospital to raise money for, so if you are interested in a particular hospital, you can probably find someone who has selected it. Donations are tax deductible and all proceeds go directly towards the treatment of kids at the hospitals. Time’s Running Out, so donate soon!

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

The Alien Has Landed

We are pleased to announce that the most popular iOS client for reddit, Alien Blue, is now an official reddit app.

It’s the exact same Alien Blue app you know and love, plus some bug fixes and an updated icon.

You can download the new Alien Blue from the iOS store here. Note: it may take a while to show up in the App Store in your area; please be patient and keep trying.

To celebrate and ease the move to reddit, everyone can get the Alien Blue Pro upgrade free for one week. The iPad app will also be free until we integrate it with the iPhone app and the two become one universal app.

We have a few ideas for features to add in the near future and it will only get better. Enjoy, and please share feedback!

We’re also happy to say that its lead developer, Jase Morrissey, has joined us as our first Aussie. We have been working closely with Jase for the past several years and are thrilled to officially welcome him to our team.

Jase Morrissey (/u/jase), mobile software engineer

G'day folks! I'm Jase, and I'm absolutely thrilled to be joining the very talented reddit crew. I'm the developer of Alien Blue and have been working closely with reddit for many years now. I'm an iOS developer by profession, but I adore building software on any device or machine that I can get my hands on. I'm almost always lurking on /r/PCGaming, /r/Games and of course, /r/AlienBlue. Now that I'm an official member of the team, I'm hoping to spend even more time doing what I love - building fun and powerful software for all of you.

We’re also continuing to work with other third-party app developers and will continue to do so, because we believe our communities are interested in multiple ways to experience reddit. In the past six months, we’ve improved our API, added OAuth for apps, and added gold features to help build our mobile developer ecosystem.

Alien Blue will join the official reddit AMA app in the App Store, along with all the awesome third-party apps for reddit. Thank you for all your support!

Note for Current Alien Blue users:

This is a brand new download, so current users, be sure to get it and then transfer your settings before you remove the old app.

You can transfer many of your customized settings to the new version (including subreddit groups, filters, and Imgur uploads) if you:

  • Launch the older version of Alien Blue and tap “Settings” > ”Advanced Settings” > “Privacy Settings” > “Export Settings to Clipboard”
  • In the new Alien Blue app, tap “Settings” > “Advanced Settings” > “Privacy Settings” > “Import Settings from Clipboard”

Current Pro users, please make sure to get the new Pro upgrade now (free for one week). Unfortunately, due to the limits of the app transfer system, we have no other way to verify, credit, or transfer your old Pro account.

Thursday, October 02, 2014

Welcome John-William, Chris, Adam, Ryan, Jennifer, Nina, Melissa, Justin, James!!!!

We're excited to welcome nine extremely talented people to our growing team. As is the tradition at reddit, we asked each of the new admins to introduce themselves in their own words:

John-William Trenholm (/u/notenoughcharacters9), systems administrator
Hello! I'm the new operations admin. I have been focusing on random backend services making them more fault tolerant. I'm really interested learning how to manage a system at reddit scale(webcale + 2.) I recently moved to San Francisco from /r/austin to pursue my dream job. Its awesome to work for a company that shares the same values that I do. I love spending time in different cities' subreddits. I also love reading in /r/startups and /r/entrepreneur . I also lurk on various food subreddits( /r/slowcooking/r/food) learning to hone my skills. /r/lego is cool too.

Chris Stephens (/u/thorarakis), full stack engineer
Hello. My name is Chris, and I like long walks through code and making the web run faster. I love abusing parentheses and finding small ways to get big performance improvements (stop resizing images with css people!). I come to reddit by way of several states and companies but still identify as a Seattle local. When on reddit I'll be cruising /r/earthporn, lurking on /r/fantasyfootball or staring at pictures of snow on /r/skiing and /r/backcountry. When not on reddit you'll find me brewing/drinking beer, commuting to work via mountain bike trails (suck it NY), climbing mountains and then usually skiing down the other side of them.

Adam Winn (/u/curioussavage01), junior front end developer
Hello reddit! As the front end padawan I will be working with the other front end devs to build the UI for redditgifts and other reddit projects! It makes me feel proud to work for a company that supports the fight for net neutrality and the fight against mass surveillance. I love anything Computer sciency, especially programming in JavaScript, and playing with Cryptocurrency. I am a native Utahn and avid cat lover. When I'm not on my computer I am dreaming of how I can convince my lovely wife to let me buy another motorcycle. My favorite subreddits are: /r/bitcoin, /r/programming, /r/cats

Ryan Merket (/u/ryanmerket), product manager
Hey everyone! I'm Ryan, but a lot of people just call me by my last name, ‘Merket'. I'm going to be building tools that help people run ads on reddit. When I'm not on reddit, I'm usually hanging out with my family (amazing wife and son) in Oakland (/r/oakland), or hitting one of the amazing trails in Northern California. When I'm not /r/outside, I love to watch football (/r/cfb and /r/nfl) and baseball (/r/sfgiants). Before reddit I worked at Facebook and also founded a few /r/startups.

Jennifer Morrow (/u/DoNotLickToaster), user experience designer
Hi! I'm Jennifer, and I'm going to be working on reddit's user experience design. So, user, how's your experience? If it's any short of breathless, enraptured euphoria, that's my bad from now on. I've been designing Firefox for the last few years, and before that I was at NASA and VMware. Favorite subreddits are /r/fifthworldproblems, /r/outside, and /r/burningman. When not redditing, I'm hang gliding or homebrewing beer.

Nina Tekwani (/u/ninatekwani), marketing manager
Hi, I'm Nina (pronounced like 9a), and I work on the redditgifts marketing team. I'm a St. Louis native and a big fan of the /r/Cardinals. My life tends to be centered around social media but when I'm not online, you'll either find me hanging out with my dog Sophie, on a road trip, or behind the camera shooting lifestyle photography. My favorite subreddits are /r/photography, /r/photoshopbattles, and /r/aww.

Melissa Cole (/u/MiamiZ), software engineer
Hi, reddit! I'm a software engineer that recently seized the opportunity to work on my favorite site. I hope to create some awesome new features for you guys, so I'll be perusing /r/ideasfortheadmins often (submit your ideas!). When I'm not redditing, you can find me scuba diving, snowboarding, cooking, or playing games. I'm coming from Tennessee (go Vols!) where I worked for a really great programming firm and grew up in Miami. In both cities, I spent my time hiking, camping, boating, snorkelling, and caving. When I'm not cranking out code, I definitely plan to take advantage of all that California has to offer. I look forward to helping make reddit better (if that's even possible)!

Justin Bassett (/u/Drunken_Economist), data analyst
I figure out things with numbers. Previously, I was figuring out things with numbers and clean energy at Bloomberg in NYC, then I was figuring out things with numbers and internet in Chicago. I moved out to Salt Lake City with my wife Emily and my dog Toby. On reddit, you can find me on the sports subreddits - between the Bills, Red Bulls, Vols, and Sabres, I haven't been properly happy in years. Off reddit, you can find me at the nearest pub or dog park.

James Pearson (/u/xiongchiamiov), software engineer
Hi there! I'm just zis guy who'll be trying to grow reddit to be bigger, awesomer, and generally more enjoyable for everyone to use. I come via way of San Luis Obispo, where I worked with an excellent team at iFixit (a reddit Gold partner, wink wink) making sure everything kept running smoothly. On reddit, you'll primarily find me on /r/netsec, /r/cscareerquestions, various other programming-related subreddits, and lurking on /r/elint; offline I play drums in a cover band, collect far too many books, and occasionally fail at tap-dancing.

We're still hiring! If you would like to join the reddit team check out /r/redditjobs for the latest job postings at reddit. If you are just looking for a job in general here is recent blog post we did highlighting helpful subreddits for finding work. We have also put together an applying best practice based on resumes we have received in the past, which would be useful for job seekers to review even if they are not applying to reddit.