Tuesday, September 12, 2006

X Prize Foundation web site update

I don't how recently it was updated (I've been busy at work and school and home), but the X Prize Foundation has a new look. Here is how to get involved. If that doesn't suit you, just go to the X Prize Cup and have blast! There is also new information on some of their planned new prizes. I have to admit I was getting worried they might become a "one hit wonder" (aside from managing the NASA-funded Lunar-Lander prize) since I figured if they were really going to kick something off they would have done it in the afterglow of the (well-deserved) hype around the X Prize win. "Kick 'em while they're down", or something like that (maybe the opposite). However, I also figured with all of the post-X Prize suborbital activity, Diamandis's Heinlein Prize win, and people like Google's Larry Page lending a hand, surely some of the new prizes would be seeing the light. Let's hope that they do as well with these prizes as they did with the X Prize. I hope they don't get complacent and let their first success go to their heads. They need to select good challenges with appropriately sized prizes, manage the rules, contestants, media, legal issues, and so on, get the public interested and involved in the contests, and have fun the whole time.