News

On October 25th, Battlefield 3's social web platform Battlelog launched for a world wide audience - reaching millions of users within just a week of operations. After 18 months of working with the project, were of course very proud of what weve released. Battlelog has shown a phenomenal uptime, performance and stability, especially compared to other, similar services on the market.

In the upcoming months, we'll be working together with the EA DICE team to release Battlelog updates based on the feedback from the Battlefield players.

We're very happy for all the kind words and articles about our ESN technology and Battlelog. The response from gamers, game developers and web developers has been overwhelmingly positive. Armin Ronacher wrote a detailed blog post on Battlelog from a technical perspective.

On top of that, the ESN team is working on a bunch of other really interesting gaming projects. More on that later.

We have been working with the Battlelog web for the last 18 months. Now it's finally time for the Open Beta and we are really proud of it. It's gonna be an awesome experience making it more fun and easy to play Battlefield 3 with friends. Here is more info on Battlelog and our part in the Battlefield 3 project.

This weekend half of the ESN team is leaving Uppsala for sunny California, Los Angeles and E3. We have a über cool gaming project we've been working on the last 2 years, that'll be announced this summer. Check this section for exclusive info in July.

A while back we launched the official Planet Framework website. At planetframework.com you'll find example projects, documentation and downloads for our Python based real-time web framework.

Check it out and apply for an invite today.

The ESN team is on tour this summer! A couple of weeks ago we returned from EuroPython in Birmingham where Håkan held a 40 minute session on Planet, real-time magic and our development environment. We had a great stay, enjoyed some interesting talks and got the chance to met up with the guys from the gevent project and JetBrains.



Next week we'll be heading for Germany and the Game Developer Conference in Cologne. If you're there, come visit us at booth 136!

What a blast! Our 24 hour Hackathon ended Friday after a thrilling voting procedure including 25 participants and 8 teams. Teams built real-time websites based on ESN's real-time web framework Planet, ranging from canvas based space ships and real-time commenting systems for YouTube to virtual shopping carts and SSH browsers. Browse our public Facebook photo album to find out more.

Here's a breakdown of the projects created:

















Stay tuned for the official announcement of the 6th Hackathon, scheduled sometime September - October.

Yet again we are putting together another popular ESN Hackathon. In the past 16 months we've seen some really interesting sites built with Planet technology at different get-togethers. This time we're preparing for the launch of Planet 1.8, our real-time web framework. Focus will therefore be on building truly awesome web sites with this new version of Planet.

In short, teams consisting of 3-4 members will be competing in creating the best, most useful website during 24 hours.

Winners will be determined by voting just after the competition finishes. Great prices are at stake!

The event will be held at ESN's development office in downtown Uppsala. Complimentary pizza and snacks will be served throughout the day. Team line-up is full of talented people from DICE, Voddler, Expansive Worlds, onGOLF and ESN. There are some seats left. Are you up for it?

Head over to the sign-up page for more (practical) details.

The ESN Tech Talks seats were filled last Wednesday with over 30 attendees from Uppsala University, Spotify, Bwin, Go Interactive, Interactive Solutions and ESN. Oskar presented HTML5, while Markus talked about Python optimization techniques. The whole event was a great success, and we're looking forward to the upcoming talks during the year.

At the bottom of this post you'll find both presentations, powered by cloud based presentation software SlideRocket. Videos from the talks will also be available at a later date.

Next week, Wednesday February 17th, it's time for ESN Tech Talk #2. Marcus will be covering deployment with Red Hat, and Jonatan will talk about the NoSQL database MongoDB. Only 10 more seats available! Don't forget to signup!

In addition to our quarterly ESN Hackathons - 24 hour ESN Planet development sprints - we're now adding a new ingredient to the ESN Soup: ESN Tech Talks.

Starting February 3rd, ESN will be hosting 2 x 30 minute technology talks focusing on the social web, real-time and other kick-ass technologies. It'll be an informal meet-and-greet of other interesting people in the industry. The talks will take place at ESN's offices in Uppsala, Sweden. We're located in central Uppsala, a trip from Stockholm Centralstation is only 40 minutes. Complimentary snacks and beer will be served and after the talks we'll probably head out and grab something to eat.

We kick off with a full coverage of the future of the browser with Oskar diving into HTML5, and follow that up with the first chapter of The Python Holy Grail with Markus. Slots are open for anyone to join but they are limited, so sign up now! Find out more details at the ESN Tech Talks section.

Today is a big day. For the first time ever we'll be showing ESN Planet to a selected number of partners. We've spent the last 12 months distilling our five years of real-time web experiences into a final product. There's been ups and downs and it's been a tough journey but ultimately what we've achieved is a game changing web framework.

So without further ado, we present the Invite Beta Program for ESN Planet. Starting right now, invites are sent to our partners, including Interactive Solutions and Connecta. While the number of launch testers are limited, our goal is to expand this program as soon as possible.

The website has also gone through a serious overhaul. Our vision about the social real-time has been captured in a video and three showcases from our customers has been added. Curious people can also have a peek at what everyday life is at ESN is like.

In addition to this, ESN Developer Zone is launching. Our community for ESN Planet developers where documentation, guides and API references are intuitively available. We believe in engaging experiences not only with end-users but with our customers as well. Reducing communication overhead where possible is part of our agile development flow.

Interested in joining the ESN Planet Invite Beta Program? Drop us a mail through the contact form!

Last weekend the office set sail to Finland with a big, white cruise ship. We try to get away from the office once in a while with the team. It's usually very refreshing!

Anyway, rumour had it that Kicki Danielsson was onboard. And boy, were we excited or what? This was going to be the best boat trip ever! As soon as we got onboard we found our cabins quite quickly. A few prank calls later with the internal phones, we went wining and dining in the aft.

The nervousness was spreading a bit since the World Cup qualifer was on tonight and we didn't have a TV. Luckily, after some words about keelhauling, the game was on.

To raise the stakes a bit, Oskar had earlier promised beer and eternal sunshine on everyone if Zlatan scored in the game. However, things didn't work out as planned. We ended up center ship with our football shirts on and beer in hand, cheering Zlatan for what would be a disastrous defeat :'(

In agony, we comforted ourselves in the tax-free. Preparing for a night-long party on upper deck that would last 'til dawn. All in all, the trip was huge fun. I'm sure the pics tell you the same, we put them up on Flickr. Arrr!