Newsletter for December 24th - Codename "Here Comes Your NANY"

1. Newsletter Editorial

Season's Greetings.  I hope you are enjoying a well deserved end of year break and looking forward to ringing in the New Year with friends and family.  DonationCoder, on the other hand, never sleeps and is packed with nerds and geeks who enjoy nothing better than celebrating the holidays up all night typing in the glow of their liquid crystal displays.  To prove that point, we've got one of our biggest newsletters ever today.  If you absolutely must engage in a "real life away from the computer" please be careful out there and make sure to buckle up.

If you're celebrating a holiday with kids this month, regardless of which one, chances are the kids have convinced you to let them open at least one present a little early (otherwise their brains might explode from the anticipation).  Well I sympathize so I made available a brand new program as an early release for supporting members of the site.  It's called "Point Motivator" and it was born out of discussions on the forum about creating a general program that can motivate you to do things you want to get done.  Basically it lets you create a set of activities that earn you various points and then track your progress over time.  As I said, it's available now as an early download present for all supporting members of the site, but will be made public in January for our NANY 2008 Challenge.  It comes with a sample set of items but I hope people will share their item definition files on the forum with each other, and I'd love to hear if you find the program useful.  Thanks to everyone on the forum for helping me come up with the program name.

-Mouser, your host for this week's newsletter

• Read about and download the preview release of mouser's Point Motivator - supporting members only
• Read about the upcoming N.A.N.Y. 2008 Challenge

...