Whew. It's been a while. Other things going on have taken me away from Wellgram. Seeing how things are shaping up in the economy, and feeling the drive to roll out things to the world, it's time to get things rolling again.

So get ready. We're going to try to push Wellgram again.
Let us know if there's anything you want. We're going to try to build the world's best content.

Let's go...

Telemedicine has been on my mind recently. I saw a patient today who came in with some stomach pain. He seemed really anxious and when I asked him if he was worried about his job, he told me he'd tell me later that day. The guy was really stressed and unfortunately all alone in dealing with this.

Interestingly he had experience in the mobile industry and he spoke about how he would welcome the connection from friends and family and whomever as he was dealing with his anxiety.

I began sending out emails and contacting blogs the other day.
This is the fun part. Spreading the word about a free service that people will dig.
I'm anxious to see how people respond- checking out the stats daily.
How exciting!

I am working on creating a concise, "sell me" statement for Wellgram.

Something to send to people, blogs, companies, etc. to get them excited and involved in the site.

The three selling points? The site is free. It is a perfect tool in this economy to promote support. And, the goal of the site to build a community of users who can, together, create the best messages.

Now, if I could just get the wording right....

On Friday, December 12 2008, I prepared for the second (and final, hopefully) surgery for my leg injury. I initially broke my femur last November in an epic accident while traveling in South America. After the accident, my recovery was slow and quite painful. This recent surgery was not as bad- I was able to walk around within a couple days and am grateful to not have any weight bearing restrictions this time around. However, it still hurts and I have found myself on the couch for almost a week. Now comes the difficult part.

Its good to be back! There has been a lot of great progress so far- the site design looks great, we've gained more users, and the Wellgram.org forum has begun to grow. It is easy to recognize the site's potential and now seems like an ideal time to really get the word out there. In fact, Wellgram.com, for many reasons, could not have come at a better time.

Just got an amazing fortune cookie the other day. It said, "Your life will be prosperous." It sorta made me a little bit happy.

This reminded me of the experience of coding communications software. Sometime when testing an email or text message application I would send myself messages that were funny or silly. Sometimes though, I would send messages that said sweet and encouraging things, like "you're great" or "you're cool" or whatever. When I received those messages, it always felt good.

So try out the prosperity message. It will make you feel good.

It turns out that there's something about Wellgram (com/org) that seems to attract bacteria ads.

Ever since the beginning of the union of Wellgram and Google ads, Goog's been sending me ads for growing and working with bacteria. It's a little weird. I guess it makes some sense that "gram" attracts "gram positive" and "gram negative" ads. The words are relatively rare.

But what's amazing is that there are enough companies and consumers of bacterial media (as opposed to viral media of course) who can support this industry, and even moreso, advertising budgets to support the ads.

The new site is live. Thanks to everyone who has contributed time, energy, money, and support to Wellgram. Though not perfect, it works, it's beautiful, and hopefully it will send support to people all over the world.

Please feel free to drop a line about how you feel about Wellgram.

I checked out the wikipedia entry for Burma-Shave today. It's awesome. They have a very impressive selection of ads up there.

What an ingenius and effective way of advertising. Consecutive signs that all tie together by rhyming. Some of them are not only clever, but serve a double purpose of advertising and safety. Like this one:

Past / Schoolhouses / Take it slow / Let the little / Shavers grow / Burma-Shave

I really like the idea of attracting customers at the same time as watching out for their well-being.