Brazil beckons for junior surfers

Surfing America and the USA Surf Team will hold a special selection event that will determine the travel squad for the 2006 Quiksilver ISA World Junior Surfing Championships to be held Maresias, Brazil from May 6 to 14.

Surfing America annually selects the Official USA Surf Team in conjunction with the Surfing America USA Championships every July, but a special selection is required before May’s Brazil event because many of the Under-16 Boys team members graduated to the Under-18 division.

Building upon silver and bronze medals in the program’s first two years, Surfing America is looking to its member organizations to provide new talent to fill the spots. The trial will take place March 23 to 26 in Huntington Beach for the 30-nation contest.

“We’re obviously looking to take the best team possible to Brazil,” said Coach P.T. Townend.

All of the surfers who make up this roster must still requalify in July through the USA Championships and USA Surf Team Selection if they plan on being eligible to compete in the 2006 ISA World Surfing Games hosted by Surfing America in Huntington Beach this October.

After the traveling squad is selected, the 18 athletes will have just over five weeks to prepare for the Junior World Championships. The event, which is hosted by the Confederacao Brasileira de Surf, kicks off on May 6 in Maresias, Brazil, with a Parade of Nations and the Sands of the World ceremony. The competition days run from May 7 until May 14.

Surf City software firm enjoys launch success

A Huntington Beach technology firm has successfully launched its free software download Foldera and is hoping to reach 1 million users in its first month.

The program ? designed to organize workflow ? combines Web-based e-mail, instant messaging, a document manager, a task manager, a calendar, a contact manager and sharable folders into a unified productivity suite, and is accessible from any Web browser. Foldera also has the ability to instantly sort and file e-mail, instant message transcripts, documents, tasks, and events into folders on a project-by-project basis, chronologically and in real-time.

During the past week, Foldera has received requests from businesses for an additional 250,000 downloads for their employees, bringing the total requests to 650,000 since the website was launched three weeks ago

“To put this in perspective,” Foldera’s Founder and CEO Richard Lusk said in a recent news release, “other rapidly adopted technologies such as the original free e-mail application, Hotmail, took over a year to accumulate more than a million subscribers.”

Lusk cautioned that, “these are expressions of interest and not yet active users on the system because we are still in beta testing and we are not putting on additional users at this time.”

Children’s awards seeks worthy nominees

The Children’s Needs Task Force is seeking nominees for the Annual Youth Character Awards. Nominees must be in grades kindergarten to 12 and reside in the city of Huntington Beach to be eligible. Anyone with knowledge of a deserving candidate can serve as a nominator.

The American Youth Character Awards are the only national awards given to young people solely for strength of character. They are not to be given for isolated acts of heroism or generosity, although such acts may rightly call attention to a nominee. They are also not to be given simply for high grades, selection for leadership posts, excellence in athletics or the arts.

Rather, the American Youth Character Awards are designed to honor young people ? regardless of their family background, race, culture, financial status, I.Q., or physical condition ? whose lives and achievements demonstrate an enduring commitment to qualities associated with good character. Nomination forms are available in the Community Services Department and are due no later than 4 p.m. on April 14.