Things are getting into full gear now on the site. I've been working with the skillful and talented guys at Bryght like Richard to get the functionality working the way I'd like. Soon, it'll be time to do some testing with real-live people.

The visual/graphic design is in process too. There are two studios that have provided bids and the decision will be made by the end of this week about who will do the design. It looks like the initial design shouldbe done in September.

For the last few days I've been at Gnomedex, which is a geek conference. One of the cool things about GnomeDex is the people the reach they have in the blog world. I left the conference feeling really good about all the new connections I made.

As TwinF is made public, I hope that it will attract some people in the blog world and they will link to it. My hope is that the connections I've made at things like GnomeDex will help the word travel fast. I think it will.

We've made a change in the way we are looking at trip planning. Instead of trying to look too far out, we will not make plans after we reach Beijing. This is because once we reach Beijing, we will be overland for months, until we get to Turkey. Prior to Beijing, we will be flying from Japan, S. Korea, etc. Flying means less flexibility in some cases.

This adds some more adventure to the trip. We think we'll be in Beijing late in Spring or early summer. Without hardwired plans, the rest of the trip will emerge in some ways.

We both falling in love with this plan. One reason is less planning before we leave and more than that, a sence of freedom in schedule.

We've set a dealine of July 5th for the first roll-out of the site. It won't be anywhere close to final by then, but it will hopefully be capable of testing with our friends.

For July 5th, we hope to have some of the custom work done so that the first people to use the site will be using it in the intended format. The first round of customizations should be easy to accomplish for someone with a little knowledge.

I created a visual design spec today too. We'll use this to talk to graphic designers. We're wanting a vintage travel design, with some of the iconography relating to the stickers people put on their bags when they would travel.

OK,
I've been advised to use the "story" node for blog entries by Sachi and I. Then, we'll use the "blog" node for contributions by members.

Right now, the contribution node is working well. We have a "contribute now" form that is hooked into the personal blog. Each member who contributes now will have hteir entry displayed on the "your contrbutions" page, the category archive page and (later) the front page.

The Stories are a bit different. Since all blog entries are automatically aggregated on one page, it's easy to have a page with all contributions and call the page "your contributions".

Well, this is a good example of living with the site. I'm about to start blogging here more and spent some time recently cutting back the features to the essentials.

Of course, a blog post is essential. Across the site, I've set up two controlled vocabularies that act as categories. The thing is, I don't want these categories for this blog. I only want them for the contributions, which aren't even set up yet. Something to figure out I suppose.

I may try to add another blog that acts as a country page, with contributions.