Happy Thanksgiving and Black Friday

Hope everyone got a chance to enjoy Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Whether it be eating a lot, watching the football games, hanging out with family, enjoying a good book, or working on your entry into the FreshBrain Button & Icon contest:)

We are down to the last couple of days. The contest ends at midnight on Sunday November 24. Get your entries in!!

Site Design Feedback

We are in the process of designing the next release of freshbrain.org targeted for January.

This will be the first "real" release as it will have all of the capabilities described under About - How it Works. It will support activities and projects that can be completed in a number of different areas including: Web; Graphic Design; Music; Video / Movies; Gaming; Eco/Green; and Developer.

The site will provide a number of collaboration tools to help complete these activities and projects. There will be a community to ask questions of and bounce ideas off. And there will be advisors available if needed to help.

Now back to the real question. Here is a snapshot of the existing site (top) and a very early mock up of the front page of the new site (bottom). Please leave a comment to let us know what you think of the new design.

• What are your first impressions of the site? What do you like and what do you not like?
• Do you like the overall look and feel of this site better or worse than the existing site?
• Are there any things on the page that just don't make sense?
• Are there any things on the page that you think are really cool?
• If you got to design the front page, what would you do differently?

Thanks - all of your feedback will go back into the designers to consider for the next mock up.

Oops - Site Outage!

Some of you may have noticed that the freshbrain.org site was down for quite a while this weekend. More than 12 hours. We are very sorry if you were impacted by this outage.

Let me quickly fill you in on what happened.

The network.com team applied a simple firmware update to a switching system. This update was suppose to have done nothing to the environment. It was not suppose to impact any of the systems within the datacenter.

Well - turns out that it did.

The update caused some of the systems in the datacenter to be unreachable. The challenge the support team faced were twofold. One, they didn't didn't know the update was applied so they didn't think to check there first. And two, some but not all of the systems were unreachable. Therefore they believed the problem was elsewhere.

To make a long story short - this was a great learning experience for us. This is a part of why you do a Preview Release. It is about learning so that you don't have these kinds of problems with the real release.

Again, we are very sorry and will take action to insure that this does not happen again.

Down the Home Stretch

We are heading down the home stretch with the Button & Icon Contest on freshbrain.org. Just over a week to go (contest ends 11/25).

There are some amazing ideas. I love the creativity. It will be a challenge to pick the winners!! But don't let that keep you from entering. It isn't about how perfect the graphic is - it is about how creative but rather how well it will it aligns with the technology areas that will be a part of the site, how appropriate it is to the audience, how creative and unique it is, and so on.

Here are the judging criteria from the rules ...

• Design alignment of the Submission with one or more of the following technology areas: Gaming, Video, Music, Eco/Green Science, Web and Graphics (20%);
• Appropriateness of the Submission for the 13–18 age group (20%);
• Creativity (15%);
• Uniqueness (15%);
• Contemporary style qualities of the Submission (15%);
• Scalability of the Submission for use as an icon or button on a website (10%); and
• Use of the FreshBrain Marks (defined below) subject to the section below titled “Trademark Information” (5%). (Please note: It is not a requirement that a Submission contain the FreshBrain Marks, but doing so is a consideration in the judging.)

So what are you waiting for? Don't know how to edit graphics or pictures ... check out the tools and tutorials we have made available. Not sure what to do, check out the contest entries.

Give it a shot!

Big Jump in Site Traffic

What just happened??? Yesterday we had a huge jump in traffic for freshbrain.org!!!

We have been doing some "advertising" to attract visitors to the site. This advertising has taken the form:

• email to our friends
• Blog postings in related communities
• Forum postings also in related communities
• Facebook flyers
• Press release
  

This has resulted in a nice flow of visitors. Many of them have been new to the site. This is exactly what we have been hoping for.

But yesterday things went a bit wild. We didn't launch any new advertising yet we had TRIPLE the number of visitors - all because the site is being picked up more broadly by consolidator sites.

PRETTY AMAZING!

Social Networking - So Misunderstood

I continue to be surprised by the reaction that some have to new technologies. This reaction comes as a result of either not understanding or just not wanting things to change. It is not new. We have seen it in the past with cars, TVs and computers. Today's is social networking.

Take a look at the article " Social Networks: Plenty of Companies Just Don't Like Em." And compare it to "Now, Social Networking Fridays" (you have to scroll down to find this one).

Is social networking bad. No. Can you use it in the wrong ways or can you spend or waste a lot of time doing it. Sure. But one thing is guaranteed. Change Happens.

We have a choice ...

• Close our eyes, plug our ears and cover mouths.
• Embrace it. Look for ways to use new technology.

That is a big part of what we are trying to do at FreshBrain!!

Socal Networking is on FIRE

What is going on here. Social networking is out of control. The battle is on. Do you think us users will be better off?

Over the last few weeks, there have been a bunch of interesting announcements (and resulting articles and discussions) lately around social networking. Here is what I see as the big ones.

• Microsoft invests in Facebook, gets to sell advertisements.

• Facebook announces "Facebook Ads".

• mySpace announces the "self service advertising service."

• mySpace joins Google's social networking platform.
  

There are two huge battles going on here. One is ... which social network will grow and retain the most users. This in some ways is the battle of the application. Facebook with their applications and now mySpace with their Google wigits.

The other is around revenue generation. With this many users, how can the companies generate the kinds of revenue that Google has managed to generate (and the resulting company valuation) with their advertisements.

But back to my original question. Will we be better off as a result?

I think not.

Thanks!!!

It is great to see the activity, number of submissions and the creativity of those submissions for our Icon and Button Contest. Thanks and please keep them coming!!

freshbrain.org

It's a Contest Weekend

Lets See More Contest Entries!!!

This is the first weekend since we launched the Preview Release of freshbrain.org - and the Button and Icon Contest. We have seen GREAT activity on the site. Lots of people coming to check it out. Lots of registered users.

We have some really nice submissions thus far. Lets see what you can do with a couple of days off. Show us your creativity. Think differently. Submit pictures and animations. Not everything has to use the brain.

Come on ... I know you have some great ideas ... make it hard on us judges!!