The Lost Blog

I had to remove several posts from the “Every Man for Himself” thread earlier this morning because they contained spoilers in the form of information from previews/teasers of future episodes.

The reason for removing this information is that I don’t want to spoil future episodes for those who don’t want to know what’s going to happen before the episodes are aired.

Personally I also prefer not to read spoilers since it makes the show more exciting, but if a majority of our readers don’t mind discussing episode previews, I suppose we could change the rules.

Regular spoilers will never be allowed on this site, but how do you feel about the episode previews/teasers? Do you watch them or do you consider them to be spoilers?

Another possibility would be to publish the episode previews in separate posts and only allow discussion of them in those comment threads. Thoughts?

No, this isn’t a post about Frank Miller’s comic book or the upcoming movie with the same name, this is much cooler.

The Lost Blog now features over 300 posts written by myself, Cecilia and a few less regular contributors.

The 300th post was actually the one about the Lost episode “Further Instructions“, which coincidentally is episode 3 in season 3. If we should focus on creepy numbers though, I suppose we should throw a big party when we reach 815 posts. That will probably happen sometime in the middle of the zombie season.

At the time of writing this, you guys have written 4,297 comments, but that’s nothing compared to the spammers who have tried to sneak in well above 6,000 spam comments. It’s fun to see that both you guys and the spammers seem to appreciate the site!

Do you have any ideas or suggestions to make the site even better? What do you like/dislike? Post a comment and I’ll see what I can do!

Do you have a really good Lost theory or analysis that you haven’t shared with the world yet? Then this is your lucky day. Here is your chance to both get your theory published on The Lost Blog and win some awesome prizes!

Your task is to write a really good Lost theory or analysis. Try to be as creative and original as possible while not going completely nuts. You could write a theory on where you think the show is going or try to explain the various mysteries of Lost. Anything goes as long as it’s related to Lost.

The prizes

First Place:

• Finding Lost: The Unofficial Guide, by Nikki Stafford.
  Read our review of the book.
• 2 autographed CDs by Joe Purdy - His latest album “Only Four Seasons and “Julie Blue” featuring the song “Wash Away” which was featured in Lost Season 1.
• An 11×8.5″ glossy print of an exclusive photo taken of the actual fuselage in storage, suitable for framing. Donated by LostVirtualTour.com.
• Apollo Candy Bar - A well-coveted candy souvenir handed out by ABC at limited venues in select cities as promotion and part of “The Lost Experience”.

Second Place:

• 2 autographed CDs by Joe Purdy - His latest album “Only Four Seasons and “Julie Blue” featuring the song “Wash Away” which was featured in Lost Season 1.

Third Place:

• An 11×8.5″ glossy print of an exclusive photo taken of the Mokuleia tree Christian Shephard’s image was seen under in “White Rabbit”, suitable for framing. Donated by LostVirtualTour.com.

The competition is open to everyone but due to shipping costs we are only able to ship prizes to winners in the United States. If a winner does not live in the US, we can still send the prizes, but the winner will have to pay the shipping costs.

How to participate

Write a theory or analysis and send it to competition@lostblog.net

You have to include the following:

• The title of your theory
• The theory/analysis - No longer than 500 words. Please use good formating and language.
• Your name or nickname as you want it to be published with your theory
• Your website, if you have one and it’s related to Lost.
• Your real name and shipping address - needed if you win, we will not publish it on the site or use it for any other purpose.

We are primarily looking for new ideas. If your theory has been published before, you have to update and re-write it to make it new and exciting.

You are not allowed to publish your entry anywhere else until one months after the competition deadline. However, you are allowed to publish a short quote from your entry on other sites and forums with a link to the full theory at The Lost Blog both during and after the one month period.

When submitting your entry, you agree to giving us unlimited and indefinite rights to publish and display the submitted theory/analysis. You will be credited as the author of the entry but will not receive any royalties or monetary compensation. If The Lost Blog should ever change owner, these rights pass on to the new owner.

Deadline

The competition ends October 30, 2006.

After the deadline, we will publish all theories that we find interesting on the site. The three winners will be chosen by Andreas and Cecilia based on plausibility, originality, and writing style, and be announced as soon as possible but no later than November 13. The winners may or may not be among the theories that have been published on the site at the time of the announcement.

Invite your friends

The greatest prize in this competition isn’t the the prizes the winners will receive, but the great theories we will all get to read. Please invite your friends to participate and feel free to link to the competition on your website. The more theories, the better!

If you have any questions, ask in the comments and we will answer as soon as possible!

Update: The competition has ended and the winners have been announced.

As some of you will probably notice, the site looks a bit different today.

I have redesigned the site and added some neat functions. It might take a day or two to get used to, but I hope you will all like the changes.

Besides an upgraded look with higher contrast, new features include the ability to edit your comments if you discover a spelling error or just want to change a phrase, Gravatars to enhance the identity of community members, better RSS integration and a bunch of minor changes.

Gravatars are really nice. They are avatars/pictures connected to your e-mail so whenever you post a comment on a site that has Gravatars enabled your picture will be displayed. There’s no need to register at every single site that uses them, just get one at Gravatar.com. It appears they have disabled registration at the moment though so those of you who don’t already have a Gravatar will have to wait.

There might still be a few bugs in the code so post a comment if you find something that looks strange.

What do you like about the new look, what do you dislike?

Yesterday I made some minor changes to the way we handle RSS Feeds. I know that many of you have requested a feed with full content, and your wish is my law.

The former main rss feed now contains full content and is ad supported. If you preferred the old feed with partial content and no ads, just change to our partial feed.

Also, don’t forget about our comment feed, which is the fastest way to stay up to speed with what’s being discussed by our visitors.

Hi everyone!

I just wanted to let you know that I’m back from my vacation and will start writing news and updating the site shortly. Even though my possibilities to connect to the Internet have been few, I have checked in on the site a few times during the summer and from what I’ve been able to read, Cecilia has been doing a great job taking care of the site.

I’m glad to see that many of you are still visiting even though there are no new episodes of Lost. We are averaging about 500 daily visitors at the moment and I see a couple of regulars taking part in the comments and discussions.

The fact that I’ve been on vacation doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten about Lost. While I’ve been away I have rewatched every single Lost episode in the first and second season and have written down a long list of questions and mysteries which I believe have not yet been answered. I will be discussing these in future posts while we await season 3.

As I’ve previously written, I also intend to redesign parts of the site and improve or add functionality to create the best possible experience for our little community. Keep your eyes open for a few changes in the upcoming weeks.

I would also like to apologize to those who have been waiting for replies to their e-mails while I’ve been away. I have already started to work on this so you should all receive a reply to your questions or inquiries shortly.

That’s it for now I guess. Take care and have fun everyone!

Namaste,
Andreas

Just letting everyone know that starting this week, Andreas is going to be out of town, and probably not going to have internet access for a while. He will be gone until August, so during these two months, may not be reachable by email for questions. If the questions are pressing, try to post them in the comments section, and I or one of the other writers (who will still be around) will try to answer. Thanks for being patient during the summer hiatus!

During the summer I will be tweaking, redesigning and adding content to The Lost Blog to make the site look and feel even better when season 3 starts. This is your chance to change things.

What features are you missing on The Lost Blog? Do you have a great idea for how the site could be improved?
Write down your ideas in the comments and if I see something I like, I might implement your ideas on the site.

This is not to say that we will take a break from reporting on all things Lost just because we are waiting for next season. The Lost Experience is still going strong and we are not even near finished discussing the Lost season 2 finale, so keep checking in, we’re here all week!

This is the 100th post on The Lost Blog!

I would just like to take some time to thank the all contributing writers, both staff and commenters for making this site one of the best places to get Lost out there. I would also like to thank Cecilia for filling in for me when needed, writing great posts, and simply being a great friend.

As you might have seen, some small changes have been made to the layout during the last few days and more are to come. It is my goal to provide the best user experience possible, so please let me know if you have any tips or ideas on how The Lost Blog can improve.

Andreas

Did you know that you can subscribe to a feed of the comments made on The LOST Blog?

Just like you can subscribe to our posts via RSS to get notified when we update with new theories, ideas and speculations, you can now subscribe to the comments made by our visitors.

All right, to be fair, you have been able to subscribe to the comments on individual posts for some time now, but today you are able to subscribe to a feed containing every single comment posted on this site.

This is a great feature which I personally use and love. By subscribing to the comments feed I get instant notification and never miss any of the insightful and entertaining comments. This is a great way to be part of the LOST discussion.

Give it a try!