Benton Crane

I voted yesterday. I was nervous there might be things on the ballot that I didn’t know anything about. Fortunately, the only thing on the ballot is the presidential primary.

I was glad I went early for three reasons:

1. There was absolutely no line!
2. I recently moved and had to fill out a change of address form and show proof of my new address. Apparently you can’t make that change on election day.
3. I wasn’t affiliated with any party so in order to vote for Ron Paul* I had to affiliate myself with the Republican party. I guess you can’t do that on election day either.

So if you haven’t voted yet, go! All you need is your driver’s license and a few minutes (if you’ve moved since you registered to vote you will also need a piece of mail with your name and address). For those of you here in Utah County, go to the county building in Provo (Center Street and 100 E.) between 8am and 5pm. Or you can also go to the American Fork Library between 3 and 7pm. You have until Friday February 1st for early voting.

* I chose Ron Paul because ALL of his platforms are based on very simple and true principles: personal liberty and limited government. If you haven’t taken 15 minutes to listen to one of his interviews or read an article, please do. Here is a good article. You will be shocked to find a politician that makes perfect sense and is 100% unapologetic about standing for what’s right.

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After deciding awhile back that I want to go into market research, I started working hard to learn econometrics and make myself qualified and prepared to enter that field. Today an opportunity opened up that I am confident will be a huge stepping stone. Professor Joseph Price hired me as a research assistant to aid him in a study that shows the effects of pornography on marriages.

I am super excited to get on the job training in data collection, interpretation, and analysis. I am even more elated that the job will place me in such an important study.

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Brittany and I got the happy news about a month before Christmas, but because she was threatening miscarriage (I think that was the term the doctor used), we decided to hold off on spreading the news. On Christmas day we gave both her parents and mine some baby clothes and a note announcing the due date of their up and coming grand-child. Because of the somewhat precarious situation of the pregnancy, we asked both families to keep it a secret until things were a little more stable. Both sets of grandparents-to-be, however, couldn’t contain themselves and both extended families knew within days.

The pregnancy has smoothed out and we now have a status of “normal.” Assuming things continue to go well, we will be parents in August. Any suggestions on a name?

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Over two years ago, with the help of my cousins Jeff and Neal, we came up with the idea of keeping a personal diary online. The groundwork to make this possible had already been laid by Neal, who founded FamilyLearn Inc. FamilyLearn is in the business of helping families preserve, search, share, and learn from their own stories. FamilyLearn’s main tool for doing this is MemoryPress.com (it used to be called iMemoryBook.com). MemoryPress is a web-based publishing application that enables families to colaborate in compiling memory books for and about loved ones.

Using the same technology as MemoryPress, we created Pyxlin. The non-sense name was an obvious result of a shortage of good domain names. It was derived from our tag line: “journaling in pixel and print.” Pyxlin was supposed to and did improve my journal keeping in many ways. I could access it from anywhere so I wrote more frequently. I type much faster than I hand-write, so I included much more detail. I inserted digital photos so they would be fused to the stories behind them. And thanks to the foundation laid by MemoryPress.com, Pyxlin even enabled me to publish my journal into a hardbound book.

I was really excited. I told all my friends and family. Despite my enthusiasm for the product, I’m confident I was the least qualified person working at FamilyLearn. Fortunately though, I was surrounded by gifted and helpful people. I studied everything I could about business and marketing. I used class projects as an excuse to do market research for Pyxlin. I made a package to sell Pyxlin in stores and got it into BYU’s bookstore. We ended up selling at multiple different conferences and a few universities too.

Unfortunately, the project encountered a snag, or should I say a series of snags, that took the wind out of my sails. Due to an array of technical road blocks that I don’t pretend to understand, Pyxlin was not in a position to scale and therefore could not be opened up to the public. Our bootstrapped little company was forced to put all of its resources into programming and development. With Pyxlin closed to the public and absolutely no marketing budget, I was forced to wait patiently for the programmers to find and implement their solutions. Being that I know nothing about programming, I helped where I could doing user testing and user-interface design, but the process was painfully slow.

Being a single student, I was able to squeeze by living on the few sales from the bookstore and from the different conferences. Last summer, however, I got married and immediately needed more income. I was obliged to leave FamilyLearn for a more steady income. Since then, I have been almost completely disconnected from FamilyLearn and from Pyxlin.

Today, Jeff contacted me with some very exciting news. Pyxlin is finally open to the public! Now anyone can experience the same improvements in their personal journal keeping as I did!

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