Jasmine here (CH staffer). I thought I’d write a post to spread some holiday cheer. After all, we’ve had an awesome year and we owe all of our recent successes to you: the community.

There’s nothing like a trip to the Valley to put us in the holiday spirit. Last week, we sponsored a Churchill Club event featuring Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube and Wall Street Journal columnists Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. Low and behold, many of the event attendees wanted to talk to us!

Why, you ask? They wanted to know more about crowdsourcing and how you (our stellar community members) are involved.

In fact, Megan Smith, Director of Business Development at Google extended an invitation to us to visit them the next day! She was impressed by our Follow the White Laptop campaign (www.followthewhitelaptop.com) and helped hook us up with her colleague Ethan Beard who is also a One Laptop per Child (OLPC) board member (www.laptop.org).

So, there we were at Google on a warm, sunny December day staring in awe at thousands of Googlers dressed in pajamas. Google has theme days, too? Awesome! (I’m not sure if you guys know, but CH has theme Friday: Band T-Shirt Friday, Sequins Friday, Festive Friday…)

Megan and Ethan showed us one of the $100 laptops (we pulled up ch.com and did it ever look good!) and talked with us about our business model. As some of you may know, our hope is to put the White Laptop on the auction block in February to celebrate our one year anniversary and raise funds for OLPC and the Youth for Technology Foundation.

What were some of our other “wins” this year?

Well, we worked with people like Jeff Howe and others to increase awareness about crowdsourcing (check out his blog: www.crowdsourcing.com), attracted some great attention from the media (check out our 2006 media appearances: www.cambrianhouse.com/press-releases/), were invited to Harvard Business School to discuss crowdsourcing (we will be the subjects of a case study in the New Year), and saw thousands of amazing ideas submitted by the community. Some are battling it out in IdeaWarz, others are in market test phase and others are actively being crowdsourced.

Many thanks to all of you for an awesome 2006! Enjoy the holidays and best wishes for the New Year.

Hiya all, In making our TODO list for the New Year, we could really use your help in telling us what you like, and don’t like about the IdeaWarz experience. Many of you regularly tell us where we need to improve (thanks cybercerberus, techguy, Imhotep, motiggidy, orphanfrequently, Doymarn and others) and we would love to hear from the rest of you. So if you need a break of pretending to work, here is your chance. Please complete this survey: The IdeaWarz survey

and help us improve the IdeaWarz experience.

Many Thx,

The IdeaWarz Team (Peter, Jessye, Heiko, JR)

Ok, here we go. Today we wrapped up RND3 of the Purple Cow Tournament.

Here are the results from RND3:

* the numbers in brackets = percentage of votes

Advancing to the Purple Cow Tournament finals are: Real Estate investors   vs   Disruptive Virtual Renderfarm Congratulations BTOWN and scrollinondubs. Great tournament Jams and mswayne. These are all great ideas - definitely worthy of making the Final 4. Voting wraps up next Wednesday at noon so vote NOW because Santa told me he is not bringing any gifts to those who don’t vote in the finals. The winner will be announced January 5th so be sure to check back then to see whether we will be making millions off of real estate or selling CPU cycles. Vote Now May the best Purple Cow win!

Choo choo moo moo – RND2 of the Purple Cow wrapped up today! This weeks battle of the bovines saw 8 solid ideas clash in 4 stellar matchups – here’s the results: Advertise This / youAdvertise (60)   vs   Pandora’s Secrets (40) TenBucks (For Fun) (37)   vs   Real Estate investors (63) BedBuddy - Make money from your house, save … (39)   vs   Disruptive Virtual Renderfarm (61) Teach To Travel (34)   vs   Mentr (66) * the numbers in brackets represent the percentage of votes for each idea in the matchup

So, avoiding the slaughter house for another week, and advancing to RND3 of the tournament are:

Congrats Jams, BTOWN, scrollinondubs, mswayne. You and your ideas have withstood 2 grueling rounds of competition, and are very close to the Purple Cow finals!

Voting for RND3 wraps up next Wednesday Dec-20th, so be sure to cheer your cow onto the finals.

Congratulations again to our final 4.

May the best idea win.

Bonus material: Watch MJ (CEO) and Sarah (co-CBO of Prezzle) discuss which ideas they like and dislike in the tournament.

Hiya all,

The top Purple Cow ideas in the community have been duking it out old school this last week. A week ago it was impossible to tell who would advance, and who would chill on the sidelines. But thanks to modern technology, and some basic mathematics, we are proud to share the results.

Moving onto RND2 of the Purple Cow are:

Congrats you crazy cows! Can’t wait to see who emerges next week as our top Final Four. Keep voting for your favorite and see if they emerge as the tournament champion.

‘Til next week – May the best idea win.

Hiya all,

This morning we pushed a new feature to the IdeaExplorer.

We call it idea Jumble.

When you click on Jumble, you will be presented with 25 randomly selected ideas from the idea pool. The feedback we were getting from community members was that Top section of IdeaExplorer was not really adding any value to the Wisdom of Crowds voting. And what was missing was a means of digging deep in the idea pool, and casting on light on ideas that were not seeing the light of day.

So tell us what you think of Jumble. We are hoping this combined with the tool tip pop-ups when you mouse over ideas will make idea exploring a better experience.

Cheers – JR

Jumble

Hiya all,

Can you believe we are already into our third IdeaWarz Tournament? This month is all about finding the cow - The Purple Cow.

Somewhere in these 16 ideas lies that one idea this is so different, so unique, so compelling, that when viewed against the back drop of normal every day life, it stands out. Like a Purple Cow.

A reminder to our voters. This month new community members can win a $10 gift certificate from iTunes, Amazon, or ThinkGeek. So be sure to tell your friends and family.

All the have to do is sign up here:

http://www.ideawarz.com/spot-the-purple-cow

And pick their champion cow here:

http://www.ideawarz.com/tournament

It couldn’t be easier - just in time for the holidays.

All the best to this month’s contestants.

May the best cow win!