Upland Uncovered

  Welcome back to another addition of Business Spotlight.  I had the good luck to spark up a conversation with Bibing about some future business plans in Upland.  It was a very enlightening conversation to say the least.  We wasted no time diving right into the details.  Man what a trip.  Let's get this party started. So Bibing, tell me is there a story behind the explorer name? Can't remember exactly, but it may be because I liked the word imbibe. Yup, that checks out.  Pretty cool idea, I like it.  So tell me what's the name of your business?  Good Herb Nursery  So....uh....it's a..... Nursery Got it, a nursery.  Cool cool cool.  So how did you end up deciding to start up this nursery? I found 420 Yerba Buena when looking at props on Upland dr on the secondary. Yerba Buena is Spanish for Good Herb @ThankMeLater. Also the bonus of the number 420 being associated with weed culture and herb often slang for weed. It was a ma...

I had the very good fortune to be able to sit down with JimJuice to talk about the up and coming Little Hollywood neighborhood in Upland.  JimJuice is a very busy man with his work preparing to develop the neighborhood, working on his photography, running air travel terminals and all the other things that keep us Uplanders busy.   So let's get into it.  JimJuice, that's an interesting name, what is the backstory on that? It used to be one of my gamer names for 1st person shooters. In Chicago the term "juice" can mean to "off" them, "ice" them, or straight murdalize them. And Jim just paired well with it.     Oh, wow.  Remind me to not get on your bad sad.  Haha.  Actually I gotta let the readers in on a secret, I have had the great pleasure of getting to know JimJuice and he is a genuine and lovely person.  So tell me a little about how you settled on Little Hollywood to be a focus neighborhood for you in Upland? Shape first: it looks li...

  Following up the wildly popular bi-coastal Little Italy community event put on by Uplander TDavis, he is at it again with another Little Italy event.  It's clear why he is the unofficial mayor of Little Italy.  There is obviously a love of the neighborhood that nobody can deny. TDavis was gracious enough to talk with me again about his upcoming event and I got all the details.  This event is focused on the NY crowd and will be for anyone that is a fan of Little Italy.  Taking the metaverse message to heart he is hosting the Feast of San Gennaro, and just like the real life feast he is including the whole neighborhood with a big focus on Mulberry St.   So if you are in NY, get yourself down to Mulberry and get in on the festival.  If you are out of town but are a huge NFT lover, you are going to have to make the tough decision if you are going to make the flight over to pick one up.  Maybe you were going to head to NY soon to do a little sho...

  For Upland Uncovered one of the most exciting things about Upland has been it's intention to blur the lines between the real world and the Upland Metaverse.  Upland wants to create a place where you don't have to exist in one world or another, but where the line between the two become almost indistinguishable.  This presents an exciting opportunity for connection with community through a variety of mediums.  You can connect in the Metaverse, on Discord, on Telegram, through Twitter, Youtube, Hyprr and any other medium that is available. Upland Uncovered has decided to embrace the idea of the metaverse.  Exist and produce work within both the Upland Metaverse and the real world.  The first step to doing this is to pick a location for our offices in Upland.  We are proud to have selected 821 Fillmore Street in Alamo Square for our home office. In addition to having an office location in Upland, we want to engage and support the community in which we...

Hey all you Uplanders, another week and another great community event.  I got the chance to sit down with TDavis and talk about his event which will be a first of it's kind.  A bi-coastal give away that you can participate in from either SF or NYC. Keep reading below to hear all the details. Attenzione, Uplanders! To celebrate the opening of NYC in Upland, and to commemorate this important date in New York history, I will be releasing the first of my Little Italy series NFTs today, Friday, September 11th, 2020. In the spirit of kindness and unity, the "Welcome to Little Italy" gold series NFTs will be gifted to a few lucky recipients via raffle. This is the first NFT of the series and my debut artwork for both the UplandFanArt (UFA) label, and NFTs in general. Each NFT is also backed with 100 WAXP to give it some added intrinsic value.  If NFTs aren't your thing (you're fugazi, getouddahere), I will also be awarding one lucky recipient with the opportu...

  Upland Uncovered is running a giveaway and competition for all categories of Uplanders .  This giveaway is designed to engage as many users as possible, even if you are not yet an Uplander you can join Upland with this link.   In addition to getting a 50% bonus on your first UPX purchase, upon becoming an Uplander you will be eligible to take part in the giveaway, and win, a large collection of prizes including GPK, Blockchain Heroes, Upland property and UPX.  All new players that specifically join with this link and reach Uplander status by the end of the competition automatically win joining bonuses.  Not only the 50% UPX purchase bonus, but also NFT giveaways exclusive to new players.  You will also be eligible for all other prizes if you choose to compete. There are also tons of prizes for Uplanders of all level, with exclusive, Uplander, Pro and Director categories.  There is also a free for all category in which anyone can compete.  As e...

  The inaugural neighborhood in my new series "Neighborhood Spotlight" is none other than the much sought after Alamo Square.  One of the premier Upland neighborhoods Alamo Square has a lot going for it.  I went on the search to find someone passionate about this neighborhood and was lucky enough to get a chance to talk with Choyna about his love affair with the square.  This is what he had to say. So Choyna, that's an interesting name for your block explorer, how did it come about?   I wish I had a really fun or interesting story. But I was just perusing the ecryptionary one day a couple of years ago and came across the word 'choyna' which is an imitation of Donald Trump saying “China". I couldn't get it out of my head so I created an icon for it based on a parody of the Obama logo, it kinda stuck.   Wow, that's interesting, I didn't see that coming!  So how did you come to be so enamored with Alamo Square, was it just something in game or is ...

I am excited to announce the launch of the premier choice in the Upland Real Estate market.  Join me in welcoming Upland Property Trading Limited (UPT Ltd.) to the Upland real estate market.  I was lucky enough to get a chance to sit down with Flow09 and talk about his plans for UPT.  He had a lot to say about the newest and most exciting development in digital property trading and I am sure you are just as excited to hear about it as I am to tell you.  So let's get into it and see why UPT is your first choice in Upland Realty. So what are the plans for UPT, will you be operating just in San Francisco or will you be working out of NY as well? Of course I will operate in SF and NY.   That's great, will you be heading to NY soon? Will try to be there when the first bubble opens.   That's really exciting, so you will be a conduit for people to get exposure to NY without having to fly out.  That's great.  Do you know how you are going to h...

  I wanted to lay out a roadmap for new players on how to get into the game for free. Upland is very much a game where you can choose your own path, there is no one right way to play Upland.  For some people they will be more than happy to just have a property or two and participate in community events.  As the NFT integration improves that might be all you need to enjoy all the features.  Others will want much more than that, and that's cool too. There are however some good tips for starting out on the right foot regardless of your intended path. This is an article for free play, but I will say this very briefly. If you are looking to spend money on the game the best option is to find a referral link, like this one , and use it to get your 50% bonus on your first UPX purchase. A few tips, sign up on the web, and use the web interface to buy it's a little cheaper and you have many more buy in options. Also you only get one shot at the bonus, so if you are going to u...

One of the most often missed details from players new to Upland is how neighborhoods and collections work in Upland.  The basics are straightforward enough, you put properties in collections to get increased income.  But how many Uplanders have bought a property thinking it was in a collection and being shocked to find out they screwed up, mistook a neighborhood boundary or didn't understand what does or doesn't count towards a collection.  If you ask a veteran Uplander and they say they never made that mistake, they are either a god among men, or have a tenuous relationship with the truth. So, how do you as a newer Uplander avoid this terrible fate?  Well, you use the tools available to you both in the game and outside of it.  I assume you have already read the in-game tutorials.  It would also help if you head over to the Upland 101 on Upland.guru or maybe listened to the Upland Property Experts podcast?  If you haven't checked these out, they a...

Today  Upland  rolled out a big update.  They have put in place the  Daiquiri 2  update.  This update has a number of back end work that will enable all the described features to come out.  What it also does is add a few other unexpected fun things, including the beginning of construction of City Hall.  As in the real world, construction will happen over time, so for now only the the frame is visible.   (Click here for tweet) This is very exciting as it shows the next major evolution in the game is ready to roll out.  So what does all this mean?  Well lets take each point really quickly. Prep for NYC opening, Air Travel, and "Heist" This is a pretty big deal an encompasses a number of things.  The NYC opening is more than just NYC.  It will formalize and deploy the mechanics for air travel.  It will set up "the heist" the winners of which will win the first flights in Upland and be given the opportunity to have the ge...

The short answer is NO, absolutely it was not.  An individual used emails and passwords found on the internet and used a brute force attack to log into peoples accounts that have used the same emails and passwords for multiple online services.  Though none of Uplands servers were compromised the event has given the Upland team an opportunity to evaluate ways they can help protect users who may re-use passwords.  Please see the announcement made on the Upland Official Discord Server today.   Compromised accounts via scripted access using publicly available account database , Jul 21st 2020 What happened: On July 21st, an Upland player has committed a malicious abuse of Upland’s authentication API. This method involved taking publicly available combinations of emails and passwords from accounts (outside of Upland) who have been compromised in the past and trying to log into Upland with those combinations. Out of millions of attempts made, the perpetrator seems to have...

It's clear by now that my interests in Upland are driven heavily by the utilization of blockchain in the game.  It's also driven by the fact that they have been able to do that integration in a way that is pretty seamless to the average user.  You can read more about that in this article that I previously wrote.  The beauty of the blockchain is that it's simply put, data.  For those that know how to use it, data is power.  Blockchain is not only data, but it's a distributed ledger that is widely a available, censorship resistant, and immutable .  What this means in simple terms is it's data that is available to everyone and cannot be easily blocked, obfuscated or hoarded by a central authority.  To be fair, that data when stored on the blockchain is very techy, it's stored in computer code and languages that do need a special set of skills to manipulate.  That's exactly why people build interfaces that present the data in human readable form th...

If you have read any of my other writing you should know by now that I am a believer in blockchain and it's ability to level the playing field.  From banking the unbanked, to providing paths of ownership without red tape, to privacy on the blockchain if you desire, censorship resistance, all the way up to breaking the deathgrip of the rich and powerful over the less fortunate masses.  I believe strongly in the power of an open, public, immutable ledger.  I also believe very strongly in the old crypto moniker of 'not your keys, not your coins'.  I think that Upland can play a pivotal role in the world in this regard, hence my immense interest. I wrote a fairly lengthy piece on how Upland can provide a path to mass adoption . The way to do this is by making the path to crypto as friction-less as possible.  To do this you often have to make some concessions on the technical and security aspects.  Upland is trying to do the right thing here but is dealing wit...