Last week, Dusty mentioned BrightMix.tv, a new site I’ve been working on lately. It’ll be a live video feed of us here in Brightlymixedland – as well as other Vimeo gems & Flickr goodies. There’s no real business purpose or reasoning – other than novelty and just because we can. We’re doing it for the lolz.

I guess we could put it in marketing-speak-press-release-esque lingo: “Our latest venture is an extension of our brand and corporate personality. It’s a cross section of who we are and the essence of what we do. We believe in transparent business solutions and that is just what this site is. Focus group research has shown that viewing this new site will probably cure malaria. It’s a ‘green’ site with a high miles per gallon. It’s really all about the children.” Yikes, so many buzz words.

The real deal is still in the works, but to help promote it and have fun in the mean time, we launched the ‘coming soon’ site yesterday. I designed it with tongue firmly planted in cheek… designing intentionally ugly is fun. This time it’s a step back 10-12 yrs when the web was but a wee pup. Our sincere apologies to any seizures induced by the graphics. The jackhammer guy is my personal fave, i’ve wasted countless hours just watching his hat keep falling as he works away.

And make sure you check out the favicon – it’s a classic. (Ironically, there were no favicons when that image was around – which makes it even better.) We’ll launch BrightMix.tv in a few weeks or so. Now you know that’s not an empty promise.

We’re excited to announce a project that we’ve been involved with for some time, and have been slowly but surely working towards launching….

Silicon Prairie News is a website and blog covering the tech / startup / entrepreneur scene in Omaha, of which BrightMix is happy to be a part of. A “startup scene” in Omaha you say?!? Yup, crazy as it sounds, there is one, however hidden it may be. Our intention with SPN is to highlight some of the unique and interesting companies and individuals around the city who are doing great things. Shoot videos, do interviews, report news…

By “we”, I should most definitely mention that the whole project is spear-headed by our good friend, Jeff Slobotski. Really he’s the one that’s moving the project forward – blogging, talking to people, etc. We’re simply providing the technology and video camera :-) And, occasionally providing subject matter.

In addition to shooting video interviews of interesting entrepreneurs, and covering local news about startups and the creative class, the hope is to have Silicon Prairie News sponsor and host events… In fact, the first event sponsored by Silicon Prairie News is Thursday, July 31st (today?!)...

Sarah Lacy – Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good

When: Thursday, July 31st 6:30-8:00pm
Where: Nomad Lounge
More Info: Sarah Lacy Event Details

Sarah Lacy is an award winning journalist and has been a reporter in Silicon Valley for nearly a decade, covering everything from the tiniest startups to the largest public companies. She writes a biweekly column for BusinessWeek.com called “Valley Girl” and is co-host of Yahoo! Finance’s Tech Ticker.

Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good is the story of the entrepreneurs who learned their lesson from the bust and in recent years have created groundbreaking new Web companies. The second iteration of the dotcoms—dubbed Web 2.0—is all about bringing people together. Read More…

Everyone’s welcome, please come join us for a night of interesting conversation surrounding startups, entrepreneurship, innovation and everything in between!

We’re so very excited to report, that one of the projects that we’ve been working on for almost 10 months now has finally launched!

Sojern, a client of ours, has partnered with some of the major airline carriers, to provide targeted information and advertisements on boarding passes. This information includes weather, restaurant & event recommendations, fun facts, and other targeted advertisements.

The launch of the boarding pass project brought with it a LOT of press coverage.. Here’s a couple of the highlights…

• Wall Street Journal – Delta Launches Online Boarding-Pass Ads
• USA Today – Airlines turn boarding passes into ad space
• Venture Beat – Sojern gives airlines a new way to make money — your boarding pass
• Mashable – Sojern Turns Your Boarding Pass Into Travel Recommendations
• AdAge – Airlines Stamping Ads Onto Boarding Passes

And hundreds more… Check out Google News…

What exactly was BrightMix’s role in the development? We can’t give out many of the details, but we were heavily involved with the backend processes and systems necessary to get all of the information collected and presented to the end user. It was truly an awesome project to be a part of, in the sense that its not often that you get a chance to launch a product to millions of users from day one. The technical challenges and obstacles were very exciting indeed.

Congrats to the whole Sojern team, and everyone involved in getting this project off the ground. It was truly a great experience, we’re happy to have been a part of it, and we’re excited to continue to help Sojern with their long-term success.

We’re pleased to announce that we recently launched our first major set of public facing sites since becoming an honest to goodness business... A series of sites for the Episcopal Church of America. Designed and spearheaded by our good friends at the Granger Group, this project encompassed a number a sites:

• A parish-level website – A site for the individual churches, where they can list events, upload photos, and connect with their members.
• A diocese-level website – A site for the ECUSA Diocese, where users can search for churches / parishes.
• A “resource center” – A “portal” where the churches can manage their content, learn more about marketing, and get help using their sites.

Under the hood, it’s a complete ASP.NET content management system for churches, so they can manage and update the contents of their websites easily. Beyond simple content management though, the sites are integrated together in a manner that will allow for rich interaction between the various Episcopal Church Parishes. Think social-networking-meets-episcopal-church. We’ve got some exciting ideas planned on this front, and these site launches are just the beginning. This first phase was important to get people using the sites, and to give us a solid platform to move forward on.

This project has been quite some time in the making, and we’re excited to see it go live! Our congrats to the Granger Group on the site launch, we look forward to working with them on future projects and site enhancements!

Resource Center – Visit Site

Sample Parish Site – Visit Site

Sample Diocese Site – Visit Site

For more information about the ECUSA web solution, visit the Granger Group.