Un-"Cork"-ing Empire Avenue (Part 1)

As they say, the fun is not in the destination but in the journey. Certainly a lot of people are following Empire Avenue, not just because they enjoy the concept and the application, but because they are interested in the birth of a new site and company like ours. So let me talk about our releases, and especially our upcoming release, which is dubbed "Cork."

Every project and every company has different naming schemes for its releases and we are no different. In our case, the major releases and milestones are named after cities in Ireland. Being a Canadian company, you might think this somewhat odd. Well, Ireland has played a big part in Empire Avenue, and we hope that will continue into the far future. Not only are two of the founders of Irish heritage, but for all three founders Newfoundland is a home away from home, and that lovely Canadian province has a strong Irish cultural heritage. But the connections to Ireland with Empire Avenue are stronger yet.

The night after the incorporation papers were filed in Edmonton, several of us gathered to celebrate Arthur Guinness' birthday at O'Byrnes Pub on Whyte Avenue in Edmonton, where we were lucky enough to be awarded a trip to Ireland. So off we went to see Ireland soon after the unveiling of Empire Avenue on February 23rd. As it happened, the first major release post-unveiling happened while we were there, so we named it after the Fields of "Athenry." Our second was named "Belfast" (The Big Reset) and our third will be "Cork." So then, all of ye, raise a toast – preferably a good, dark Guinness – to the Emerald Isle!

Un-Corked Feature 1: A perpetual market

So when is Cork being released? The somber, PR answer is always "when it's ready." The happy answer is that we believe Cork will be ready this coming Sunday or Monday! The impending changes make this the biggest release since we launched the new design in Athenry in late March. Because this release is so "game-changing" in some ways, we want to let you know some of the changes before we go live so you know what to expect.

The first change is the move to a perpetual market. From the start we had a two-hour window every day when the "Markets" were "Closed." This artifical market closing was instituted to measure and monitor how our databases were doing in the beta and, indeed, allow us some freedom to do maintenance work. The first set of complaints came from my European friends, who asked why the markets were closed for so long during their waking hours.

Beginning with Cork and as we move closer to moving out of beta, we will move to having no global closing time. Every individual's account will instead be shut down briefly at a particular time in order to run the closing calculations. Accounts which are closed momentarily for the close calculations will not be able to trade or be traded during that time. Eventually we will allow you to choose your market "regions" when the close calculations will be done. Ultimately this should make it easier to keep up on the market, wherever you are in the world!

In the coming days we’ll highlight more of the features set to arrive with Cork… removing the global market close is but a small part of this major update.