Update:I wanted to give everyone an update and formally introduce a structure for news releases and updates.
Firstly, the Board is nearing the final stages of completion; we still have a few more people to speak with before the final makeup of the board is carved out. Please remain patient, it was never going to be a process where applicants submit and we determine the board immediately. We still need to do some research on a few remaining applicants and some potential discussions with the candidates we have identified. For the few I have contacted, you know who you are and probably now understand this is a process. Like them, please remain patient, I cannot stress this enough.
Secondly, the repeated requests for updates. As I said two days ago, we are focused on the tasks at hand and nothing is going to waver from that front. There will never be daily Q & A sessions, and I wish everyone could understand why this is. If we spent all of our time addressing the legitimate (and frequent illegitimate posts), no concrete, structured, easy to understand and read, information could be released. It would fall further into a mash of posts, news and not news worthy contributions. However, I am, and always have been, on freenode #ActiveMining for up to 8 hours each day. If you have questions or concerns that you would like answers to I will answer them as best I can. These threads for Active Mining on Bitcointalk have descended into back and forth off topic discussions and distractions. It is hard to sift through what is legitimate and what is just banter, also there are questions that just cannot be legally answered at this time. When the cloud is lifted around our partnerships, more news can be released with regularity, as I mentioned before. At that point, I will be doing weekly updates, whether there is ground breaking news or not. My aim is to keep everyone informed as best as humanly possible.
Third, functioning in a PR role for ActiveMining is not just a few minutes per day of answering questions and releasing news, it has morphed into full time. Believe me I am not complaining, I just want to paint the picture for you; I would like to note, I am not being paid for my services. Ken and I have an agreement, nothing more, and no compensation is changing hands. I took on this role in an attempt to quell fears, uncertainty and doubt, but also to assist in steering the PR facing side of ActiveMining in the right direction. There is still a lot of work to be done. I meet or speak with Ken on almost a daily basis, help formulate an opinion held by the majority of shareholders and communication, assist in the board formation, and take on a further role outside of just being a PR mouth for ActiveMining. It is not simply just a few minutes a day job. All of the information I receive is from the CEO, and whatever he can release to me or allows to be released is passed along.
Prototypes:These are still in the testing phase. The image I have received since the initial pictures of the Engineers working on the boards was late last night. The screenshot can be seen below of cgminer and one of the prototypes hashing at 66% capacity. There was a problem with the UART, but it has too been resolved. The Engineers are operating on the design specifications released by Avalon and are making progress. The goals for the prototypes are still the same as when we first set out for them to be built. This image, and the ones posted earlier, is all that I can publish thus far. I expect to see more as we come closer to completion.
http://i42.tinypic.com/15mb9y1.jpg
