I recently had the opportunity to talk with Rob Ennals, the lead researcher on the Mash Maker product, to get an update on how things were going with the evaluation program. Bottom line for Rob and the team was that they were pleasantly overwhelmed by the response to the evaluation program. To date, nearly 7000 people have registered to participate in the evaluation. Rob attributed this response to two primary factors: Slashdot and IDF.

Rob likes to say that he was Slashdotted. The earlier reference to Mash Maker on this post was picked up here by Slashdot. As a blog editor, I can tell you that that one link was the lead non-search engine referrer to the Intel blogs for all of September. It also generated 180 comments to date on the Slashdot site which I know the team has enjoyed reading.

IDF also generated traffic as well as press for Mash Maker. Although the response was not as swift as that from Slashdot, Rob and team met a lot of interesting and interested people and enjoyed the one on one forum that it provided. You can see an interview with Rob and yours truly on YouTube.

As you probably know, Mash Maker is a pre-beta release which means that not all the issues are worked out of the system. The team is hard at work on resolving these issues and bringing on new users. If you are one of those still waiting to get the software, you have not been forgotten. The good news is that you will benefit from the feedback provided to date.

If you have not yet signed up, visit http://mashmaker.intel.com/ to register for the program.