I’m looking for someone to fill a ‘news editor’ role in line with my desire to bring back the Rockets Daily‘s.  The position would require coordinating the schedule for the current staff and compiling a daily gazette of Rockets related news for the readership.

Please send all applications to rahathuq@www.red94.net with writing sample attached.  Inquiries void of a sample will be taken out of consideration.

The post Contributor wanted: News editor appeared first on Red94 | essays and musings on the nba and houston rockets.

Let me know in the comments, or via email, if things seem faster to you.  If you all are still experiencing the same problems, we may need to look into a completely different route.

Thanks.

The post Red94 back up and running appeared first on Red94 | essays and musings on the nba and houston rockets.

Here’s the link to the chatroom.  You can also participate from your phone.

(Note that you’ll need a forum account to enter.   If you haven’t yet created one, you can do that here.  You can also register via Twitter.)

The post Game chat: 6:30PM CST appeared first on Red94 | essays and musings on the nba and houston rockets.

We’ll be using the new forum software this year to power the chats so that should sidestep many of the limitations from years past.

To participate, go to the forums and click on the chat tab below the banner.  To enter, you’ll need a forum account.  If you haven’t yet created a forum account, you can do that here.  (You can also register via Twitter.)

Thanks.  I’m looking forward to a fun year.  Hopefully this Comcast issue will be resolved soon.

The post Game chat – 6:30PM CST appeared first on Red94 | essays and musings on the nba and houston rockets.

A note: Several of you yesterday expressed a concern that while you were interested in contributing, you did not have CSN.  That’s fine.  I’ll be at every home game, so until this dispute is settled, my on-site recaps will have to suffice.  We’ll just have to do without road game discussion in the meantime.  It’s not ideal, but I don’t see any other way around it.  (Aside from the legality issues surrounding the online feeds, they are just too much of a hassle to ask anyone to deal with.)

The post Red94 is looking for some new contributors appeared first on Red94 | essays and musings on the nba and houston rockets.

Here’s how the challenge works:

All you need to do is click on this link and follow the instructions at DraftDay. You’ll be asked to choose your sport and then will get to choose 5 players to add to your roster for that evening. After setting up your account (which only takes 30 seconds), you’re ready to go! If your team of players scores more fantasy points than your opponents team, you’ll win $5!

Here’s how the drafting page looks:

click to enlarge

When your game starts, you’ll get to watch your live scoring update automatically. Here’s how it looks:

click to enlarge

After you win your $5, you can use it in a variety of games that DraftDay offers. They pay out thousands of dollars per day in real cash prizes.

Click here to take the DraftDay $5 Challenge!

The post The DraftDay $5 Challenge appeared first on Red94 | essays and musings on the nba and houston rockets.

The post Expanded Daily Dime coverage on ESPN.com appeared first on Red94 | essays and musings on the nba and houston rockets.

As an editor, it’s concerning.  We’ve been putting out more content than ever (adding game previews and recaps as opposed to just the daily essays).  Most strange is that traffic has been about the same; you all are still reading, but you’re just not talking.

So in that spirit, I seek your advice.  Is there something we could be doing differently?  Some different form of content you’d like to see?

Also, I wonder, have the various changes to the commenting interface turned you all away?  I pose this hypothesis because just after the switch to Disqus, yesterday, Michael’s feature today has enjoyed more interaction than anything we saw when we had Livefyre.  Was that the cause?

We started out in year 1 with the standard WordPress interface.  Simple with no barriers to entry for guests.

Then I installed Disqus, like you see on the blog now:

With Disqus, we saw a slight drop.  It might not have been immediately intuitive that you could comment anonymously as, unlike WordPress, you had to click to even arrive at the guest screen.  But the drop was worth it as Disqus gave us threaded commenting and some other neat features we didn’t have with WordPress.

Then, this year, I switched to Livefyre and things just fell off completely, drastically, to unprecedented levels.  In terms of interaction, Red94 this season has been dead.

Livefyre is hands down better than Disqus.  You can view new comments in real-time and see who else is viewing the post, allowing for basically a virtual chatroom.

But I wonder–looking at it now–and with the drop, is it intuitive to you all that you can comment as a guest?  The above is a screenshot of the option to comment anonymously.  If I didn’t know better, I’d think, looking at that, that it was asking me for my Livefyre username.  Is that the impression that you all got too?  I’m wondering if this is what turned people away.

Anyways, your thoughts on any of this would be welcome.  I can see from the numbers that you all have still been reading, so I greatly appreciate that.  Now what can we do to bring interaction back?

If you want, you can shoot me a private email at rahathuq@www.red94.net.  Thanks again.

The post Feedback request appeared first on Red94 | essays and musings on the nba and houston rockets.

Tonight’s contest is free with $150 in prizes, just for Red94 readers.

Click here to sign up.

The post Reminder: Draftstreet freeroll tonight, 7:00PM ET appeared first on Red94 | essays and musings on the nba and houston rockets.

In the meantime, I thought I’d pass along a promotion from Draftstreet.com.  If you haven’t heard yet, there’s a new way to play fantasy basketball that turns the season long grind into quick hitting one night leagues.  And you can win cash every single day.  You draft a team for one night and get paid out as soon as the games end that same night.  DraftStreet.com is at the forefront of this new trend in the fantasy world and is giving us a great promotion to kick off the season: a FREE one-day fantasy league with $150 in prizes exclusively for Red94 readers.

CLICK HERE to sign up for free and register for the Red94 $150 Freeroll.

The post One day free fantasy contest – $150 in cash prizes appeared first on Red94 | essays and musings on the nba and houston rockets.

This is relevant because those of you who have been using the forum have been doing it as a guest.

I could tell you to just please register, but I doubt anyone will and that will kill off all discussion and any chance for a Red94 community.

So what I can do is register for you: if you want an account in the forum, just send me an email at rahathuq@www.red94.net and I’ll set it up and e-mail you the password.  Then you can go back in and change the password.

Regardless of your decision, I’m going to have to turn off guest commenting sometime this week.  Thanks for your patience.

WTF?

The post Spam attack appeared first on Red94 | essays and musings on the nba and houston rockets.

The post Both Red94 fantasy leagues will be drafting tomorrow morning at 11AM CST appeared first on Red94 | essays and musings on the nba and houston rockets.

We now have 16 in each league. We’ve scheduled both drafts for Saturday morning at 11AM CST. If you can’t make it, we will have to use auto-draft as we simply have no other choice at this point.

I realize how late in the game this is right now to be starting this thing up and I sincerely apologize. I should have done a better job organizing this from the start. Thanks to our managers, Keith, Craig, and Adam, we’ve managed to recover and look ready to get underway. Despite the inconvenience of the late start, I hope all of you who have claimed a bit will stick around and participate this year. I’m excited to see how this goes and whether it can be a regular part of Red94.

Again, please claim your invites if you have not yet done so and check the forums for all updates.  We hope to finally get rolling this Saturday morning.

The post A friendly fantasy update appeared first on Red94 | essays and musings on the nba and houston rockets.

The Rockets begin their first season without the giant.  For close to a decade Yao Ming was a pillar of familiarity, the cornerstone of this franchise.  As tribute to the former great, a reader, Daren Guillory, created this artwork.

Daren’s online portfolios can be found here:

http://www.behance.net/darenguillory
http://graphicbio.com/

The post A tribute to Yao appeared first on Red94 | essays and musings on the nba and houston rockets.

If you posted in the thread as wanting to participate, please be sure it regularly so we can have everyone on the same page before the draft.  Also, please go to your settings and make sure you have PM’s enabled so that you can be contacted by the managers.

We now need two managers.  We then need to decide on the rules.  Then we need to hold our draft before opening night.  If you had volunteered to manage, please step forward now and take control.

Red94 fantasy management takes place here.

The post If you signed up for our fantasy league, please read this appeared first on Red94 | essays and musings on the nba and houston rockets.

Please register so we can get a total head-count.  Then we’ll divide up the leagues evenly and get to setting the rules.  Spread the word if you have friends who would like to participate.  We’d like to close it off pretty soon and get underway.

Thanks!

Please click here, register, and post, so that we can tally up the total.

The post Red94 fantasy basketball – part 2 appeared first on Red94 | essays and musings on the nba and houston rockets.

Please respond in the comments or shoot me an email if you’re interested.  I also will need someone to manage the whole thing, so let me know if you’d like to do that, as well.

We’ll kick things off before opening night, so spread the word, and I’ll retweet this accordingly.  Thanks.

The post Red94 fantasy basketball appeared first on Red94 | essays and musings on the nba and houston rockets.

With so much speculation league-wide we won’t have the capacity to write about everything.  With that said, you are more than welcome to open discussion amongst yourselves in the forums.  Where will Brandon Roy land after the Blazers inevitably ‘amnesty’ him?  Can the Rockets land Nene?  Perhaps most interestingly, who wins the CP3 sweepstakes?

Shoot me a line at rahathuq@www.red94.net with your comments and suggestions.

Join the discussion.

The post Trades and free agency discussion in the Ninetyfourums appeared first on Red94 | essays and musings on the nba and houston rockets.

The post A note on yesterday’s published works appeared first on Red94 | essays and musings on the nba and houston rockets.

Thanks!

The post Contributor wanted appeared first on Red94 | essays and musings on the nba and houston rockets.

The Ninetyfourums

The post Ninetyfourums v3.0 appeared first on Red94 | essays and musings on the nba and houston rockets.

The post Feedback request appeared first on Red94 | essays and musings on the nba and houston rockets.

While we revamp the custom forum, there needs to be space for discussion with the Adelman firing, the playoffs, and the upcoming draft.  Thus, we’ve installed a new forum, out-of-the-box, for that purpose.  This one’s a bit more intuitive and more in-line with what you are probably used to using.

You can access the forums by navigating to http://www.red94.net/bbpress/ or by clicking ‘forums’ on the banner.  (We’ve also removed the animation from the banner due to complaints of load-time.)  Take 2: hopefully this will be a bit more amenable to your needs.

The post Ninetyfourums relaunch appeared first on Red94 | essays and musings on the nba and houston rockets.

The point is, in my eyes, the new interface is not inhibitive of discussion so I’m curious to hear from the group.  What is lacking and what can we add to make you feel comfortable once again?

The post Friends, air your grievances appeared first on Red94 | essays and musings on the nba and houston rockets.

1. Please take a moment to visit ESPN TrueHoop’s official Golden State Warriors affiliate, WarriorsWorld.net.  Many of you have asked me what the holdup has been on launching and my response is that we’re not just installing pre-existing forum software.  Johannes Erdfelt and Jim Del Favero custom-built this to integrate with the native WordPress platform.  This allows me to seamlessly interweave the blog itself (the main page) and the forums so that they aren’t independent entities.  I can now push blog posts into the forums so that they can be viewed/commented upon from both locations – this was important to me.
2. Consider what is up there now to be a starting point: After delaying for so long, I felt it important to just get this running while some season actually remained.  There are still many more features/functions to be worked out/implemented as we progress.  For example, I’d like to add facebook-style live update functionality so that new replies can be seen without refreshing and replies can be posted directly via the same screen.  And of course, the overall aesthetic could use work.  Please leave any suggestions you may have in the Feedback forum.  But for now, bear with us and consider this a starting point to get discussion started.
3. We’ve divided the forums into four sub-forums, so please post accordingly.  Also follow general forum guidelines. We have two moderators who I will be introducing shortly.
4. To post, you will need to register a username.  This name will also be used for blog comments.

I hope you guys enjoy and I hope this can grow into a spot for intelligent discussion.

The post Introducing the ninetyfourums appeared first on Red94 | essays and musings on the nba and houston rockets.