Desert Bus is a lot of work. But it’s not just a lot of work on our end to raise cash and give away prizes. There’s a lot of bandwidth going out to broadcast a high quality stream on YouStream, keep the blog updated, upload photos and pictures and then not to have everything slow down to a terrible crawl (as has happened in previous years).

This year, we’re going to be better, faster (and stronger) than ever thanks to our Technical Sponsors – Servint, Shaw Cable and Sharp’s Audio Visual.

Servint were our first sponsor for Desert Bus 4, and they are the reason you’re able to read this blog post at all. They are donating all the hosting for this year, providing unlimited uploads and an enterprise level service package to keep the Desert Bus site on the air. With Servint’s help, the slowdowns and bandwidth grinding that have plagued us in previous years will be a thing of the past.

Of course, we need to upload information as well, and Shaw Cable really stepped up this year and donated their fastest tier of internet service to us for the week – the appropriately sexily named “Nitro Internet”. We’ve really noticed how much faster it’s making our work, and the faster we can work, the more we can do, the more money we can raise, and the more we’ll suffer! Booray!

Finally, our last technical sponsor is Sharp’s Audio Visual. Sharp’s has generously donated us a 52” TV for the week. As you might know, we interact with the Desert Bus chat by running it through an enormous TV that we can read from anywhere in the broadcast area. With a 52” TV, even the most exhausted Desert Bus volunteer will have no problem reading our chat.

So there you have it – the three companies responsible for technical wizardry behind this year’s Desert Bus for Hope. There’s no way we could do it without them. Please visit our sponsors page to learn more about them and visit their websites!

Guys, this is incredible: our friends over at MarioMarathon have made something amazing.

Head over to MarioMarathon.com/DB to check out their fantastic hub-site. Not only can you watch the drivercam and participate in the chat, you can also play Desert Bus yourself and be ranked against other viewers around the world. Frankly, I am astonished, and have no idea what we can possibly do to to repay them in kind, but mark my word, we will think of something!

United in arms for the children, the Child’s Play Superfriends are geared up to go!

Tonight marks the Desert Bus 2010 technical mishap test–where we make sure all mishaps are accounted for and happy so that they won’t visit us during the actual run. Sure enough, things have been pretty janky, complete with lag, broken audio and other various issues. However, things are more-or-less working now, so if you’re reading this and want to drop by to help us test out our tech, you can find us here:

We’ll be trying out our new challenge solicitation system, silent auctions and more, so tune in for a taste of things to come.

So Bill showed up late, spilled drinks and crashed the bus, all in under two hours. Wow.

We totally passed nine points on Desert Bus a couple hours ago, but in the excitement of auctions, dancing and so on, we completely didn’t mention it. Next up: 10!! Bus hard, team.

If you live in BC, or just like listening to Canadian radio, you can hear our the Desert Bus being interviewed for On The Coast, one of Kathleen’s favourite radio programs! Listen in Vancouver at 88.1 FM, or go to www.cbc.ca to listen online anywhere – 4:10 pm PST.

We will also be on All Points West at 3:45 pm PST. Listen in Victoria on 90.5 Fm, or listen online anywhere at http://www.cbc.ca/allpointswest/