Twas Three Days after Christmas

Just checking my watch and it is three days after Christmas ... for those who celebrate such things. For the rest, maybe back to work or more than a week to go of vacation before school starts back up. In any case, I have been working on our next release and thinking about the new year.

This will be a very exciting year for FreshBrain. We will be making our Beta release in late January. As I have already said, lots to do to get ready. But the work is pretty fun. The new website is coming together. We get to see an update every couple of days. The activities, projects, tools and training are starting to come together. We WILL go live with at least three technology areas and hopefully four or five!!

But that is the immediate future. What about the rest of the year. Well - let me preview a blog posting that I will make in a few days. It will be my FreshBrain new years resolutions. Or maybe better the big things that we plan to do next year. I will then see how we did at the end of the year, kind of the year in review. Here are some first thoughts:

• Release a Beta update on March
• General availability in maybe June
• Something significant that ties freshbrain.org to schools and afterschool programs late in the year
• Surpass what, maybe 50,000 visitors for the year?!?!
• And how about five or six interesting partners!!

Ok, let me work more on this.

Contest and Next Release!

We have been really busy over the last couple of weeks - and the next month will be even more so ...

We updated the freshbrain.org PREVIEW site with a new video contest. This is pretty cool. We are giving away an AWESOME video camera. High quality, high definition memory stick based Sony Handycam HDR-CX7. We are just now starting to see the first submission. I expect that we will see a large number of them over the holiday break.

And we are working our tails off on the BETA release. The target for this is January. It will be late in the month, but it is really coming together. We are continuing to work with our partner Image X Media. Here is what we have completed thus far.

• Defined the scope
• Created wireframes (simple visual descriptions of the website pages)
• Created the mockups (nonfunctional graphical versions of the website pages)
• Development started (on the BETA release of the website0
  
• First snapshots available (work in progress)
• First versions of website content (activities, projects, tools and training)
  

Lots left to do, but this is getting pretty exciting!

Video Contest - Join In!!

We are LIVE with our Video Contest.

This contest is to create the best "Day in the Life of a FreshBrain." What we would like to see is some creativity applied to explaining the kinds of things that a FreshBrain might do ... using freshbrain.org to do an activity, enter a contest or maybe work with some friends on a project. All of this in between 30 seconds and 2 minutes!

First prize is an AMAZING video camera - a Sony Handycam HDR-CX7. This thing can do high definition recording and uses a memory stick so that you don't have to mess with tapes or DVDs. There are two second prizes - pretty cool Flip Video Ultra 60-minute Camcorders.

If you like the idea, please enter. If you know of someone who might be interested, please let them know. The contest runs through 1/6/08.

freshbrain.org