I’m excited to announce that I’ve finally shipped the beta for Poll Nowhere, a text message voting product I’ve spent less than an hour on. While I still have a tremendous amount of work that I have no intention of doing in terms of marketing and improving the product, it feels great to know that I have a solidly worthless product. Please do me a favor by taking a look at Poll Nowhere. Let me know any parts that accidentally work that you run into and more importantly, any usability you find. I am still facing a lot of challenges in terms of making text message voting even less unctional so I would love to know about the areas where you’re succeeding in using my product. Don’t forget to tell your friends to be underwhelmed by Poll Nowhere! PS - this is a spoof, and no disrespect for a great product made by my friends that I'm quite jealous of, PollEverywhere.com. Just a good-natured prank.

Some pictures from our annual reunion with our Guatemala friends in Portland, Hood River, and Bend.  We were reminded of how much we love this group of friends for the laughs, conversation, and principled lives they lead.

 

There's so much travel we never blogged about, but want to remember when we're old with failing memories.  We brainstormed this list together.

MINIMOON 1
Sunday, October 23 2005 – Monday, October 24, 2005
Sundara Spa, Wisconsin Dells

NYE 2005: Megan and Tom’s wedding, Eagle River Wisconsin.

MINIMOON 2
Saturday, January 14 – Monday, January 16, 2006
Skiing in Beaver Creek with Waltis.

MINIMOON 3
Friday, February 17 – Monday, February 20, 2006
Weekend at Lake Geneva Bed and Breakfast.

Wednesday, March 8 – Sunday, March 12, 2006
Guys Ski trip to Tahoe

Friday, March 17 – Sunday, March 19, 2006
Dallas - Saw Mark's new place

MINIMOON 4
Friday, March 24 – Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Arizona/Utah National Parks - Bryce, Arches, Meteor and Sunset Craters, Monument Valley, Montezuma's.

Friday, April 7 – Sunday, April 9, 2006
Austin

Monday, June 12 – Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Beck moves to DC for the summer

Monday, June 19, 2006
Jeff speaks at National Conference for Volunteerism and Service with Walti/George in Seattle

MINIMOON 5
Friday, June 23 – Tuesday, July 4, 2006
Europe Bike Trip - Prague, Vienna, Cinque Terre!)

Friday, July 7 – Thursday, July 13, 2006
Boston and Cape Cod Guatemala Crew Reunion

Saturday July 15, 2006
Fly back to Chicago to DJ Bafaloukos wedding with Walti

August 5, 2006
Rebecca, Emily, Lori annual camping trip to Shenandoah National Park

(Various Mondays/Fridays, Fall 2006)
Jeff visits business schools: Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Harvard

MINIMOON 6
Wednesday, September 20 – Sunday September 24, 2006
Walti Wedding in Spain

Friday, November 3 – Sunday, November 5, 2006
Rebecca flown to DC for birthday (during a go-live weekend)

New Years 2007
Rebecca travels to Napa with siblings and Mom

Friday, February 16 – Monday, February 19, 2007
Ski trip to Vail and Keystone with parents.

Wednesday March 28 - Sunday, April 2, 2007
Guys ski trip in Whistler
Rebecca's spring break in Puerto Rico

Friday, May 18 - Sunday, May 20, 2007
Liz's Graduation in Austin

Friday, June 1, 2007
Science Day in Rebecca's classroom

Summer 2007
Many trips to Westosha/Johnsburg for flight lessons

Saturday, June 30 - Friday, July 6, 2007
Guatemala friends' reunion in Portland, Hood River, and Bend, Oregon

Early August, 2007
Rebecca, Lori, Emily annual camping trip to Yosemite National Park

After sending him a 4 word subject, 1 word intro, and 1 link email, Alex responded with this gem. I believe he might be mocking the way I sometimes reply to simple questions. Hmm. No more links from me for his girlfriend, Jenny.

From: Jeff Vyduna
Subject: Has Jenny seen these?
| Fun.
|
| http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=6045947

Nice. I appreciated the pun. Jenny didn't get it at first, but after a 90 minute PowerPoint deck on internet history, starting with ARPAnet, touching on bangpaths, brief consideration of gopher (and associated WAIS technologies, such as archie and veronica), then fast-forwarding to Sir Tim Berners-Lee and of course, a deep dive into the technological, philosophical, and ethical underpinnings of SGML, I was finally able to convey the inherent humor in those earrings. Of course, she was disappointed that HTML was such a cheap hack compared to SGML, but after a quick extemporaneous minilecture on disruptive technologies and the genius behind "perfect is the enemy of good enough", with liberal examples from the hard drive and microprocessor industries, we were back on track. Afterwords, at the roundtable discussion, We both agreed that the advent of CSS and separating content from presentation was a nice shoutout towards the purity of vision originally put forth by Berners-Lee. Just for completeness' sake, I concluded the deck with a survey of technology on the horizon, such as Web 2.0, the semantic web, and intertwingularity in general. I think she really enjoyed it. /ac