What with the Maritime Countryfest - a major success during its run from Thursday's free concert right through Saturday night with the Hard Core Troubadours and Prairie Oyster - and working out of town at the provincial heritage fair where dozens of amazing projects from New Brunswick students went on display at the provincial museum on Sunday.

The Heritage Fair 2007 web site - which we worked on with our friends from Maven New Media and designer Mila Jones - goes live this week. And the two-city video and photo shoots couldn't have happened without the support of Atlantic Mediaworks.

Everyone here's tired - and I mean tired - but happy with the results.\

Cheers,
George

From frost on the windshield to nearly 40C in a matter of hours suggests it really is time to pack away the boots and gloves and get out the summer gear.

Our plans for the weekend include more coverage of the Maritime Countryfest at Officer's Square, our usual Saturday market visit, and some photostories from Geary Elementary School. Make you drop by our table at Countryfest to say Hello!

Cheers,

George
http://justFRED.ca">justFRED.ca

Another busy week, thanks in part to the Victoria Day Weekend which cut into the preparation for Maritime Countryfest that opened a three-day run to a full house, or a full tent, along the river side of Officer's Square this evening.

We're going to be shooting video and photos at all of the shows.

And what an amazing change in the weather...from frost on the windshield to near 30C by late afternoon.

Time to retire the 'Signs of Spring' gallery and start thinking about summer. It's less than a month away.

Cheers,
George
http://justFRED.ca/">justFRED.ca

The details are in our http://www.justfred.ca/justfred.forums/showthread.php?t=81">forums.

Cheers,
George

Update: We have two winners, one for a pair of tickets for Friday night and other for a pair of tickets for the Songwriters' Circle on Saturday afternoon.

It was close...nearly didn't make it...but thanks to a sudden surge, we've reached our goal of 2 million pages served in our first six months.

The next hour or two is going to be spent updating the site, but we'll post the details and the winners on Thursday (not sure if that's going to be before or after we shovel out the tulips.

Cheers,
George
justFRED.ca

As of midnight tonight (May 16/2007) justFRED.ca is officially 6 months old. And as you'll read elsewhere, we've already surpassed the 2 mllion page view goal we set for ourselves back in November.

We're grateful to everyone who's helped reach these important milestones - our tiny staff, our colleagues, and especially you, our readers and viewers who are the reason we do this every day of the week.

So what's in store for the next six months? A combination of the old and the new. We'd love to tell you about all of our plans, but our logs (and a couple of little birdies) tell us that the competition is starting to pay attention so we have to be a bit circumspect.

But we can give you some hints: more videos, a special project involving China, more photographs, an interesting twist on providing local news thanks to a ground-breaking agreement, and an increase in our online contests and prize giveaways.

So thank you again for giving us the support and encouragement to get this far - and wish us luck as we head towards our first full year of operation.

Cheers,
George
justFRED.ca

It seems like 1,000 years ago when we were getting ready for launch of justFRED.ca...but it was only six months ago.
A lot has happened in that brief period. We got some things right, and other things very wrong. And we learned a lot on the way.

We learned, for example, that people in the Fredericton area are incredibly friendly. We've posted nearly 10,000 photos...and only had a handful of people decline to be on camera. And most of the folks who declined did so with grace.

We learned that the Internet is a tough sell to a lot of local businesses, despite the fact that it's part of everyday life for many of their customers, especially the younger ones. (One potential client told us she was impressed when she got home from work and her 9 year-old said: Hey, Mom, I saw you on the Internet.)

We don't believe the old saw from the film industry that you should avoid projects involving kids or critters, or as W.C Fields once put it: "Any man who hates children and animals can't be all bad." Some of our most memorable moments have involved both.

The Boyce Farmer's Market is a treasure, samosas or no samosas. And it's been particularly interesting watching the seasons change. Not that we didn't notice before, but we've been paying a lot more attention thanks to our weekly photo excursions.

Cheers,
George

Seems we have a few LOST fanatics at justFRED.ca - and they seem to think they're not alone. So they talked us into a LOST Season Finale Contest.

Details are http://www.justfred.ca/justfred.forums/showthread.php?t=78">here in our new LOST Forum.

Cheers,
George
http://justfred.ca/">justFRED.ca

We're six months old this week - and we're tantalizingly close to having served up 2 MILLION justFRED PAGES.

So we figured we'd better have a contest.

The details are http://www.justfred.ca/justfred.forums/showthread.php?p=421#post421">here.

Cheers,
George
http://justFRED.ca/">justFRED.ca

OK, so it’s an odd way to spend the first day off in months…in a room full of journos and their significant others…anyway, here’s the scoop:

I was there to support my wife, Catherine Harrop, who was awarded a silver medal in the Enterprise Reporting TV category. (You’ll recognize her as the host of Schoolzone on CBC TV’s NB Now. You may not realize she was behind the camera for many of the photo and video shoots featured here on justFRED)

CBC Fredericton picked up a new wall full of awards: Robert Jones for TV Spot News Reporting for ‘Reaching Atlantica’ (”When I saw I was up against orphaned baby seals, I thought I was in for a long night,” Jones said from the podium.), CBC Radio Fredericton for Continuing Radio Coverage of the McFitness story, Radio Feature Writing by Peter Anawati and Shawn Waters for ‘The Two Lives of Denise’ (”I’m loving it…” Waters said during one of his trips to the stage.), and Spot News Photojournalism Television awarded in a tie to CBC TV cameramen Denis Butler (Reaching Atlantica) and Roger Cosman (Blogger Trial).

CTV’s Mike Duffy provided an extemporaneous look into his career that included early slapdowns from powers-that-were advising the larger than life political pundit that his size and lack of golden tones were fatal barriers. Duffy says he overcame the barriers through hard work.

“I noticed that the guy who broke stories got on the air,” he said. And breaking stories, Duffy advised, means asking the key question: Why?

That approach, he said, turned a story about a routine housefire into a expose of the potential danger to thousands of homeowners through improperly installed aluminum wiring.

And he says there’s no cost to being polite, a policy he credits for the hundreds of insider tips the guy known as Mr. Parliament has shared with viewers over the years.

Finally, Fredericton Blogger Charles Leblanc may not have been in the audience, but he did show up on the bank of large screens in the main ballroom of the Halifax waterfront hotel where the award ceremony took place: after the Ninja moves of Saint John police officers, he was seen lying on his back as an officer ripped his digital camera from his hands.

Maybe next year there will even be a category that lets bloggers into the room in person.

Cheers,
George
justFRED.ca