On November 17, 2003, Operation Gadget was launched. In its first year, a number of really nice things have happened:
- Nearly 650 articles posted.
- Several article categories have substantial regular readership, including:
- Gadget-related:
- Event-related:
- Fund-raising:
- LiveStrong Program,
- Breast Cancer Fund-raising through the Target Pink Breast Cancer Awareness and the Living in Pink programs, and
- 2004 Tour of Hope.
- Photo archive begun for events in which Operation Gadget participates. Look for more interesting photos to be posted before Thanksgiving.
Thanks to everyone who reads and comments on Operation Gadget stories. You are a major reason that this blog continues to grow and prosper. Special thanks to:
- my wife, Kathleen Aiello, for not giving up when times were tough,
- the Aiello and Kuykendall extended families,
- my sponsors in the 2004 Tour of Hope who helped me raise over $2,100 for cancer research,
- Phil Lurie for providing network facilities and connectivity for Operation Gadget when it was starting out,
- Martin O’Donnell for acting as the West Coast Editor,
- John Cloninger for loaning his digital camera for the masthead photo,
- Ramona Morel for her moral support in times of mutual personal difficulty,
- Ed Anuff for tremendous advice, help with networking, and moral support,
- Chris Nolan and Chris McCarthy for being excellent customers and advisors and becoming my friends,
- Doc Searls for plugging Operation Gadget on Day 1,
- Cecil Ledesma for being an excellent riding partner in the 2004 Tour of Hope,
- Dr. Steven Sharpe and Greg Millett for fixing the broken pedal on my bike during the 2004 Tour of Hope,
- Art Iger for his advice on self-employment and successful micropublishing,
- Sesh Rengaswamy for regularly emailing me from India,
- Henry Scheuer for helping me manage my financial affairs and offering advice on a lot of subjects,
- Michelle Milford of the Lance Armstrong Foundation,
- Jackson Jeyanayagam of Waggener Edstrom for building a relationship between Operation Gadget and T-Mobile USA, and
- the folks at Movable Type / Six Apart, MySQL, the Apache Software Foundation, Red Hat, and the Fedora Project for providing the tools that helped build the Operation Gadget infrastructure.
So many people have generously offered advice and support during Operation Gadget’s first year, it’s hard to remember them all in one sitting. I’ll probably add more people to this list as I think of them.
I think regular readers of Operation Gadget will agree that the site has been relentlessly upgraded and its content has been fine-tuned in a number of ways. Look for more of improvements coming up soon.
Operation Gadget depends on feedback from its readers for many article and site enhancement ideas. I’d love to hear from you if you have an idea for a story or a new service that Operation Gadget can provide. Send your story ideas to tips [at] operationgadget.com or email me directly at daiello [at] operationgadget.com.