First Peek

Yesterday, I got a chance to see my first grandbaby for the very first time. I don't want to sound like some wayward grandparent, so let me clear that up by saying I saw her with a 3D ultrasound. She's due to arrive somewhere around March 18 but I welcomed the opportunity to take a sneak peek.

The nurse pointed out all these wonderful and amazing features - nose, fingers, big toe. I couldn't see any of it. Nothing. Everyone else in the room seemed to, or said they did. But I didn't. Oh, I tried. Strained my eyes, squinted, tilted my head, but all in a vain effort to see what they saw.

Soon I discovered that 3D ultrasounds are a lot like those pictures you see on the comics page in the Sunday paper. You have to stare at the meaningless series of images, really concentrate, then Bam! A 3D picture suddenly appears. And my little granddaughter did, too.

She covered her face with her tiny hands for a while, then did a "peek-a-boo" tease, and we finally saw her chubby little cheeks and her beautiful little face. At one point, she even treated us to a very clear, discernible smile.

Now, people will tell you that babies do not smile. They say it's just gas. But when did you ever smile when you had gas? No, my friend, babies are fresh from God. How can they help but smile?

Fluid Mechanics

One thing I like about websites is that they are easily changed and updated as suits the readers and visitors. We've been running a poll on freshare as well as checking which content gets the most reads, what topics get the most attention, even which pages have the highest Google rankings.

From all that information, we are getting a clearer picture of what our readers want, what brings visitors to the site in the first place and what we should be offering.

The next revision of freshare won't be nearly as exhaustive as the last couple were but it will soon be time to update the site and put the emphasis where readers want it to be. I think this is and should be a never-ending process for web sites.

Long Walks in the Woods

I'm sitting here wearing my hiking boots and that made me think about a long hike I took the weekend before Christmas. A nearly three hour trek through the Arkansas hills and woods.

It was a cold day, mist rose from the wet creek bed along the path. I saw several deer, found a cave, uncovered a rock to find a sleepy salamander. Found some old scrapes a buck made the month before, poked around a couple of old house places and finally got to the river. My favorite place.

I drank in the sights, the smells, the sounds of water moving along its trip to the sea. Quenched and renewed. That's what long walks in the woods are for.

2007 Review

We are coming off one of the toughest years I have ever faced as a businessman. We abandoned a dying print publication in late 2006 and replaced it with what is now freshare.net. But the whole process was like launching a brand new business instead of building on an old one.

Our customer base for employmag was much different than the one we'll have to continue to develop for freshare. And, building a regular readership has proven more difficult than anticipated, at least at first. Plus, the actually physical construction of the site was a learning process that was both expensive and time consuming.

Still, we built the web site traffic to a decent rate by year end, and in fact really only did so between our official start date of June 5, 2007 and year-end. That building will be a never-ending process, but we have the tools and knowledge necessary now to carry it further.

There are still tweaks and a few features we have left to develop for the site, most notably the freshare store, but those are in process at year end and into 2008.

From the knowledge gained building, re-building and launching the site, we learned a great deal about web site construction and aesthetics. That knowledge base has already led to a new side business we hope to continue on into 2008.

While 2007 was difficult and finances strained about as far as they could go, there is new hope going into 2008 that we have a solid platform as well as the means to continue building on it.

Here's to looking forward instead of backward!