I recently heard about a group called Nonviolent Peaceforce. They are a group of people committed to peace who are trained to save children from youth armies, to mediate conflicts before wars start, and to protect humanitarian workers in remote areas. Since they have to travel to far-flung regions to settle disputes, they need reliable transportation. A few of the groups don’t have transportation right now. For $1500 we can buy them a motorbike that will allow one of their groups to take their work to many more communities. So we’re doin’ it! I’m sending the check today. I like this cause in particular because it is concrete. We know what they need, and we know that our relatively small donation will really make a difference.

Thanks to all of you guys who keep ordering.

I wrote a stress and acne page, a tell a friend page, a diet and acne page and updated the women and acne page with Brandy. Thanks Brandy! Let us know what you think.

Our old search was pretty lame, so I asked Joel to make us a better one, which he did. You can see it on most of the Acne.org pages. I think it’s much improved. It indexes all of the Acne.org pages aside from the messageboard which has its own search. This blog also has a separate search which you can see right up there to the right, but the search that Joel made does index the blog as well.

Thanks Joel!

New site going live soon: Paul (Real Maverick), Joel, and I have been working on a new Acne.org. It should be easier to navigate and less overwhelming for new visitors. It’ll also be more beautiful and up to date with more videos and such. After the new design goes live, we’ll start working hard on making the site more interactive so everyone can participate in developing content. I’ve been speaking with dermatologists as well. I’d like to do some interviews from prominent dermatologists who specialize in acne and put them up on Acne.org for viewing or for podcasting.

body buddy rating page: I added a page for those of you who have tried the body buddy to rate it. I’m sure you won’t be shy

Little did we know that we had a Web expert in our midst for the past few years. I have been in contact with Paul, known as Real Maverick on the message boards, but we never spoke specifically about how we might work together. I finally had a chat with him over Skype and he volunteered his expertise in helping update our web site. He’s also going to help spearhead our Wiki revolution! I can’t wait to get started. Anyway, much love goes out to Paul for his help.

Finished reading Wikinomics: This book blew my mind from beginning to end. It may as well be titled “How Acne.org should move into the future”. I have what I think is a cool idea to start. Wouldn’t it be great to not have to read all of the pages on Acne.org, especially the Regimen pages that are so long? I’m thinking of having people videotape/webcam themselves reading pages of Acne.org. Then we can vote for our favorite. Whichever video gets the most votes will get posted and I’ll send the person in the video free supplies or…whatever else they want. These videos could even change every month or so just to keep it fresh around here. Then as visitors surf around Acne.org they can simply click on a video link on each page and they can watch and listen to different people explain about that page instead of having to read. I mean, c’mon, after all, reading online is so 2005 :-). Not only do I think this kind of entrance into community video will move us into the burgeoning video Web further, I also think it’ll highlight our community feel. What do you think? Does anybody else have the chutzpa to videotape themselves like I did!?

Since people often ask what I personally use on a daily basis, I made a fun new page to explain it. I put the stuff I use on my dining room table and took a picture of it, printed out the picture, and then traced the picture with a sharpie. Then Joel helped me with a roll-over javascript thing so that you can just roll over each product for an explanation. I had fun doing it.

Click here for the link.

For some reason I can’t stop changing the homepage But I think it keeps getting better. I know you probably don’t care, but humor me and let me know what you think of it this way if you get a chance. I moved the Mission Statement up to the top, changed it from yellow to blue, and put a shadow behind it. Then I moved the Community up and moved the Regimen down. I also coupled the products with the Regimen in the same box. When I say “I”, I of course mean “Joel and I” since Joel makes it all happen.

I just got my latest check from drugstore.com and it was $569 over what I need for bandwidth this month. I don’t know why people have been clicking through to drugstore.com and ordering more stuff, but this rocks. I needed the extra money to pay for past months where I had to cover some of the bandwidth myself, but with another couple months like this one and I’ll be caught up. Y’all rock! Thanks.