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

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!