BESTSALVIA.INFO

ORLANDO, Fla., July 22 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) -- Auditel Inc. today announced that it has been awarded by General Services Administration (GSA) schedule of Telecommunication Audit & Financial Training Services (SIN 520 14)(www.auditelinc.com/GSA_Schedule.aspx). Auditel Inc. can now offer GSA rates to military, federal, state, and local Government agencies to reduce telecom expenses and control telecom budgets through Telecom Expense Management Training (TEM).

Stretching and saving taxpayer dollars when times are tough is a difficult job, and now more than ever before telecom cost recovery and telecom savings is essential. Did you know that many government offices of all sizes are paying more money for telephone and telecom services than necessary because of errors in their telecom bills? Some are paying for disconnected lines, non activated services, double billing, incorrect contract rates, and tariff violations in wired and wireless services.

Auditel, Inc. has been auditing telephone bills for various government agencies and large and small businesses for 16 years, saving most of them 25 to 40 percent on their telecom and telephone bills. Auditel holds a Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) to include telecom audit recovery SIN 520 9 (auditelinc.com/recovery_auditing.html), helping many receive large telecom refunds and telecom recoveries for charges that were paid in error.

Telecom training services include: basic terminology, billing codes, tariff, taxes, and surcharges. Intermediate training provides telecom inventory management, contract compliance, traffic study analysis, invoice assessment and cost reduction analysis. Auditel professional workshops teach the telecom managers how to manage and maintain inventory, monthly billing, and more.

This training will support Government Telecommunication programs and projects to include covering the migration and crossover from FTS2001 to Networx. Auditel Inc. will educate these agencies to analyze their telecom bills, find billing errors, how to obtain refunds and recoveries, ensure their bills are accurately invoiced according to current telecom contracts and tariffs. Auditel will also provide in-depth TEM expertise on telecom bill auditing to support the telecom cost management mission in each agency.

Our government can now learn how to navigate all the different telecom monthly fees, surcharges, and taxes to ensure that every tax dollar spent is for an actual service delivered and that each invoice is accurate.

More information: www.auditelinc.com.

Contact: Rick Clements
Phone: 800-473-5655 x 2, 719-689-5953.

Copyright © 2008 Send2Press® Newswire, a unit of Neotrope®
TAGS: Send2Press Newswire, Auditel telecom training services, GSA schedule of Telecommunication Audit

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Dave Fleet shares some suggestions for online monitoring of your organization's image, or the buzz around it. He says it's important that before you do anything--such as set up a blog, whatever--that you find out how to track what's going on out there. I see his suggestions as part and parcel of establishing your own Global Communications Center for your school or District. Fleet writes:

Before your organization launches a blog, before you start playing with Facebook, before you even think about Twitter, you should be listening to what people are saying about you.

"Google is managing your identity unless you are," as quoted by Dean Shareski in his Going Global, Going Public. "What digital footprints are existing for you right now? It's not an ego search but to find what others are saying about you." This goes for each of us, but also, for organizations like schools. But it's important we go, as Dean and others share, beyond just tracking our digital footprints, but that of others' footprints when they interact with our organizations.

As an edublogger, this is something I learned while setting up my blog and finding ways to connect with others. However, the tools that are available now are much more comprehensive than what were available when I began. A quick look at Dave's suggestions, and I'm astonished that I'm using most of these approaches already. What I doubt is happening, though, is that school districts and schools are doing this...most of our organizations may very well have a less than active interaction with news and other people out there. Simply publishing your own television show isn't enough when most people thrive online, and most content endures online more than in a broadcast.

I love this quote (Christian Grantham as cited in NewAssignment.net) about ending the "passive relationship with local news" in this blog entry. What catches my attention is that the same tribulations and troubles students, teachers and leaders are going through, well, that's what a lot of folks in the news industry are going through. You could tweak this paragraph easily to reflect the angst among educators:

I love working with people who see the importance of the role the net will play in transforming the way the world gets and interacts with information. I also love working with veterans of news, and I will always remember the challenges they face with the changes that are happening. For some, that change is very difficult. But the fact is, we are no more in the television and newspaper business than Wal-Mart is in the trucking business. Our business is no longer the industry that surrounds distribution – the trucks, the printing press, the reams of paper, the broadcast towers, the satellite dishes, the lights, the huge cameras, the buildings, the “live trucks”…

It’s the final product: information. The market in an on-demand world for news and information where people have to wait to receive a highly produced product is steadily shrinking. At the same time, the online audience for news and information is growing significantly. It’s an exciting time to be working in a new medium that is transforming the way we get information.

How has our "business" in education changed? It's no longer about textbooks, that's for sure and canned ideas. It's about creativity, communication, collaboration. Even as the market shrinks in the news world, in the education world, I find this statement to be as true as it's ever been in education (BTW, the link below includes a Clay Shirky moment in video):

If our information was made freely available and became the building blocks through which other work could be done - we would be the foundation upon which the news and information world is built upon.
Source: DigiDave - Journalism is a Process, Not a Product: Changing the Legal Structure for Digital Journalism

That education is still the foundation--albeit being switfly eroding--is because it is firmly entrenched in a "no market" environment.

Dave points to 4 steps and I've included links to some with sample searches for "mguhlin" in each:

1. Define your keywords
2. Create your searches...some of the tools Dave shares include:
   -GoogleNews
   -GoogleBlogSearch
   -Technorati
   -TwitterSearch (Dave mentions Summize, recently acquired by Twitter.com, and TweetScan)
   -Blogpulse.com
3. Plug the results into your RSS reader OR
4. Collapse all the results RSS feeds into a service like AideRSS.com (I've included a list of Tools4RSS here)

One additional type of tool that I'd add to Dave's list includes Social Bookmarking sites. The idea comes to me from a presentation Alan November did in China (Learning2.0 Conference) where an audience member suggested using Del.icio.us as another search tool in lieu or addition to regular search engines. 3 skills November says aren't taught in schools include:

1. Teaching students to deal with massive quantities of information (pattern-making, organizing patterns for information)
2. Global Communication skills/global communication, as well as checking sources with people on the ground
3. Self-directed, lifelong learning

What's neat about becoming your own "global communications center" is that you can teach students these skills as you're setting up your classroom web site. Imagine what would have happened if Bob Sprankle and Darren Kuropatwa had set these tools (if they'd been available) BEFORE they started blogging with their students. Wouldn't it have been awesome to capture the feedback flowing in from all over the world, including traditional and participatory reporting?

WHAT ABOUT SOCIAL BOOKMARKING SITES?
It would definitely be fun to know how many folks are bookmarking what you're doing, and you can also subscribe to the RSS feed of results. To accomplish that, you'll probably need to use Page2Rss.com--a tool someone told me about but a week or two ago (speak up if you're out there!). Neither Diigo or Delicious, as far as I can see, support RSS for search results. So, with that caveat in mind, to the list, I'm adding these two:

• Diigo.com - RSS wasn't available via Page2Rss.com since Diigo timed out.
• Del.icio.us - RSS

OTHER TOOLS
A few other tools worth checking out include these:

• IceRocket.com - RSS
• Teoma.com
• Spy ...lacks an RSS feed but you can get one with Page2RSS (not sure yet how well it works). Lets you know what's going on in Twitter, FriendFeed, Blogs, and Google Reader.

Though I had some of these items setup (Technorati, TwitterSearch) I didn't have all of them setup. As a result, I discovered some new blog entries out there--and new blogs I wasn't reading--writing about what I'd written. Nice to be in touch!

GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS CENTER
You know, I hadn't ever thought of myself--or the work the Communications Dept in a school district--does as Global Communications. But, that is exactly what we're doing with Read/Write Web tools. And, that is the challenge facing districts as well as journalists. We are caught up in a "citizen" journalism, teacher communicator.

"Should learning professionals be leading the charge around new work literacies such as social media and informal learning?" Good question. My answer: yes. Because everyone should be. Tucker writes, "my responsibility is to work on my own sphere of influence, starting with our online course development team leading by example for our facilitators." Christy Tucker, Experiencing E-Learning
Source: As commented on and cited by Stephen Downes

How are YOU setting up your Global Communications Center? How are YOU leading the charge? The answer to this question is a lot easier than taking this position:

Al Gore said: "We have to abandon the conceit that isolated personal actions are going to solve this crisis. Our policies have to shift." He was talking about global climate change but he might as well have been talking about our attempts to transition schools into the 21st century…
Source: Our Policies have to Shift, Dr. Scott McLeod, Dangerously Irrelevant

Compare that approach--abandoning the conceit that isolated personal actions are going to solve the crisis in education, or journalism--to this one from Pete Reilly (EdTech Journeys) with his tale of Gandhi's decision to not offer advice unless he was living by it himself.

May 6, 2006 -- There's no need to shave, pluck, wax or endure endless electrolysis ever again If you dream of being fuzz-free this summer without the hassle of...

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I’ll miss my iPhone. I will no longer be using it as my primary communications device. We’ve had really good times together. We’ve had good conversations together, and sent many a great text message. There’s nothing wrong with my iPhone. It’s just not for me anymore. We’ve grown apart, that’s all. I’m breaking up with my iPhone. It’s true. I won’t be using it anymore. Maybe Wicket will want it.

Instead, I’ll be using my iPhone 3G!!! Oh come on. You should have seen that one coming. You’ve been watching me wait for the 3G to get here for how long now? I gotta tell you. I’m happy with the upgrade so far. It’s not a dramatic upgrade, no. My initial impressions are good. For the most part, it’s a good experience. Instabilities abound, many of which have been noted on iPhone and apple-related sites and forums. The hope of the community is that Apple will be releasing a firmware update at some point in the very near future, to clear up some of the hiccups that people are experiencing.

Introducing iPhone 3G. With fast 3G wireless technology, GPS mapping, support for enterprise features like Microsoft Exchange, and the new App Store, iPhone 3G puts even more features at your fingertips. And like the original iPhone, it combines three products in one — a revolutionary phone, a widescreen iPod, and a breakthrough Internet device with rich HTML email and a desktop-class web browser. iPhone 3G. It redefines what a mobile phone can do — again.

Phone Make a call by tapping a name or send a text with the intelligent keyboard.

iPod Enjoy music and video on a widescreen display and shop for music with a tap.

Internet Browse the real web, get HTML email, and find yourself with GPS maps.

What’s new in the iPhone?

1. 3G Speed 3G technology gives iPhone fast access to the Internet and email over cellular networks around the world. iPhone 3G also makes it possible to do more in more places: Surf the web, download email, get directions, and watch video — even while you’re on a call.
2. Maps with GPS Find your location, get directions, and see traffic — all from your phone. Maps on iPhone 3G combines GPS, Wi-Fi, and cell tower location technology with the Multi-Touch interface to create the best mobile map application ever.
3. App Store Tap into the App Store and you’ll find applications in every category, from games to business, education to entertainment, finance to health and fitness, productivity to social networking. These applications have been designed to take advantage of iPhone features such as Multi-Touch, the accelerometer, wireless, and GPS. And some are even free. You can download them wirelessly and start using them right away.

There are so many more things, as well. You can check them all out for yourself on the Apple website, or in any Apple store. I’m telling you. The iPhone is changing the way we communicate, work and play. If you have the 3G already, what are your initial thoughts? If you don’t have one yet… why not?

Want to embed this video on your own site, blog, or forum? Use this code or download the video:

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• iPhone 2.0 Reviews
• Is the iPhone 3G Worth Buying?
• How to Update Software on the iPhone
• What is 3G?
• Who uses Internet Explorer, Anyway?
• 10 More Awesome Free Mac OS X Apps
• Is iPhone 2.0 Worth It?
• What’s in the Next Mac OS X: Snow Leopard?
• Have you Ever Owned any Apple Products?
• Five Ways Vista is better than OS X?

Chris

What do you Think of the iPhone 3G?

Pre-emptive Presidential Pardons Can you be pardoned for a crime before you're ever charged? By Jacob Leibenluft With six months to go before President Bush leaves office, the White House is receiving a flurry of pardon applications. The New York Times reported that "several members of the conservative legal community" are pushing for the White House to grant pre-emptive pardons for officials involved in counterterrorism programs. Wait—can a president really pardon someone who hasn't even been charged with a crime? Yep. In 1866, the Supreme Court ruled in Ex parte Garland that the pardon power "extends to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken, or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment." (In that case, a former Confederate senator successfully petitioned the court to uphold a pardon that prevented him from being disbarred.) Generally speaking, once an act has been committed, the president can issue a pardon at any time—regardless of whether charges have even been filed. As the Explainer has pointed out before, there aren't many limits to the president's pardon power, at least when it comes to criminal prosecutions under federal law. The president's clemency power has its origins in the practices of the English monarchy, and as a result, the Supreme Court has given the president wide leeway under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution. There are some exceptions: The chief executive can't pardon someone for a violation of state law or nullify a civil ruling, and his power doesn't extend to convictions handed down in an impeachment proceeding. (It's also not clear whether the president can pardon himself for future convictions.) While pre-emptive pardons remain very rare, there are a few notable exceptions. Perhaps the most famous presidential pardon of all time occurred before any charges were filed. Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon absolved the former president of "all offenses against the United States which he … has committed or may have committed or taken part in" between the date of his inauguration in 1969 and his resignation in August 1974. In other cases, presidents have pardoned individuals after criminal proceedings have begun but before a judgment has been handed down. In late 1992, less than a month before leaving office, President George H.W. Bush pardoned former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who had been indicted earlier that year on perjury charges surrounding the Iran-Contra affair. (A lawyer for Roger Clemens' former trainer Brian McNamee claimed the pitcher might receive a similar pardon from Bush if he were ever indicted.) In addition, broad presidential amnesties—like the one President Carter issued to those who had avoided the draft during the Vietnam War—are essentially pre-emptive pardons issued to a large group of individuals. If someone hasn't yet been charged with a crime, how does the president know what to pardon them for? As in Nixon's case, President Bush could issue a pardon that applies generally to any crimes that may have been committed within a certain range of dates. More likely, a pardon could apply only to actions surrounding a single policy or place—say, the detention or interrogation of suspected al-Qaida members.

Buddhism isn’t just about meditation and denying self-gratification to attain a higher state of being. When I was bute a chylde, I visited a Buddhist Hell Theme Park in Thailand. Fun for the whole family: sculptures depicting tongues being torn out, lots of spikes and bodies on said spikes, and certainly heaping amounts of simulated fire and brimstone that would make other religions’ demons feel inadequate.

With great joy, my wife and I visited Higashiosaka (click to teleport), the first Buddhist Hell Theme Park in Second Life — the first I’ve ever seen, and likely the first there ever will be. Filled to the prim (pun intended) with scampering souls, corpse-crushing demons, and good ol’ Saṃghāta, that mountain that keeps squashing the sinners.

If it isn’t obvious, we had a rollicking, remarkable time. The quality of the build is superb, surrounded by metropolitan buildings out of a Godzilla movie (several demons stood watch), and centered by a pointy temple protruding out of the earth. Around the temple, sculpted little people with crudely-drawn faces and pubic hair ran around in circles, flailing, feeling ever-so-hopeless. And surprisingly animated. See Ravenelle’s video for an in-motion adventure:

While you can’t hear it in the vid, a pleasant and/or bone-chilling soundtrack of guttural screams surrounded the whole work, while skeletal hands out of an Iron Maiden album cover intermingled with firetongues. Those who aren’t so rapt on their history will also draw comparisons to certain World of Warcraft or Lord of the Rings creatures. Goes to show how creative human imaginations have always been!

There was so much to see and do here, and I really appreciate extra attention to detail like the flaming rocks coming down from the sky, the birds circling the temple’s top, the lightning bolts which (among other things) were reminiscent of the Peacock King trailer I saw the other day (wifey and I have been watching various Wuxia films), etc. They all add up for a cohesive, powerful place well-worth visiting. All in all, terribly rich, and enhanced by custom environment settings.

And now when my not-yet-Resi friends ask, “What can I see in Second Life?” I can point them here, which might be kinda edgy for the Showcase but worth the visit all the same, and it’s especially meaningful if your cultural background is attuned to the relevance of… BUDDHIST HELL! MUHAHAHA.

The only downside? Not knowing who to thank for this experience epic, and why they made it. I didn’t see any advertising, and the main builder’s profile was empty… empty! Seems like they’re of Japanese origin, tho. I’m curious, so if you know, fill me in.

Wikipedia has more info on Naraka and hells in Buddhism, and you can’t go wrong with Flickr pictures either (WARNING: NOT FOR SQUEAMISH).

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Ever since Dean Shareski showed me his Sony GC1 Net-Sharing Cam (along with some other, similarly priced cameras) at NECC 2008 several weeks ago I’ve aspired to add a camera like this to my digital backpack. Yesterday at our local Ultimate Electronics store in Oklahoma City, I found a Sony GC1 display model for sale without a box, manual, cables or charger, for just $50. This was too good of a bargain to pass up.

Much to my delight, I’ve found the GC1 to be a joy to use today, and am only disappointed that this model has been discontinued by Sony and is no longer available for purchase. (Unless you buy one used or happen upon a remaining demo model, as I did yesterday.) I thought I would have to buy an AC charger from Sony or Radio Shack, but it turns out the same standard USB cable which is used to transfer photos and video from the camera can also be used to charge it. Sweet! Since I had a USB cable already, along with a 4 GB Sony memory card I picked up on sale in March at a ridiculously low price, I really don’t need anything else to fully utilize and enjoy the GC1.

Dean wrote the the post “Sony Net-Sharing Camcorder Review” back in January, and more recently (in June right before NECC) the post “Comparing little video cameras.” Generally cameras in this category cost $150 to $200, so picking one up for $50 really was a great deal. In his most recent post, Dean observed “The Sony definitely does not play nice with the Mac,” but this was not my impression. I wasn’t able to use the GC1 as a webcam with QuickTime Pro or Ustream, but it did mount fine on my Macbook’s desktop and allowed me to drag both 5 megapixel images as well as 320×240 MP4 videos right onto my hard drive where I uploaded them readily. This is the first “little video camera” I’ve ever used like this before, however, so my frame of comparison reference is admittedly more limited than Dean’s. If what I’ve experienced today is limited functionality, however, I can’t wait to see what a more fully featured camera will offer!

We recorded some short videos in the “Tinkering Garage” at the Oklahoma City Science museum today. I posted several to Flickr, since videos less than 90 seconds can be posted and shared there, and was very pleased with how fast and relatively painless this process was.

I also attempted to email a video up to a .Mac gallery I setup previously with iPhoto, but apparently that video is still being processed as it hasn’t shown up for me yet in the gallery.

Some of the initial reviews of the Sony GC1 were less than enthusiastic last fall when this pocket camcorder first came out, and perhaps that is the reason Sony has discontinued it. I think the functionality and ease-of-use of this type of digital camera and camcorder is amazing, however, and I look forward to both using it more in the future as well as learning about other camera / pocket camcorder options like this which we may be able to start utilizing as standard equipment in the digital backpacks provided to participants in our Celebrate Oklahoma Voices oral history / digital storytelling project.

Of course, many cell phones now offer photo and video recording functionality which can rival pocket camcorders like the GC1. I do like the fact that the native recording format is MP4, and that I can record in 640×480 video resolution at 30 fps if desired. (The default setting is 320×240 at 30 fps.) Pocket camcorders like these are sure to provide continuing challenges for the ethical and responsible uses of digital technologies in our schools and communities. We need to be talking about digital citizenship much more than we currently are in many schools and classrooms.

Have you had positive or negative experiences with pocket camcorders? Do you have a model you recommend?

Technorati Tags:
video, camcorder, record, pocket, sony, gc1, school, citizenship

July 12, 2007 -- organisationan Ki-moon took over from Kofi Annan as Secretary General of the United Nations arguing that the B needed "to promise less and deliver...

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On Sunday’s Late Edition Rep, Roy Blunt (R-MO), a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee who reliably votes in favor of the Oil & Gas industry and against renewable energy bills and has been rewarded in return, joined the month-long chorus of Republicans including McCain that have been making the demonstrably false claim that there weren’t any major spills caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

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Blunt: If there was ever a test of this system it’s in the one place that we do drill which is the gulf - 4,000 platforms in the gulf - thank God we’ve got them. 238 of them were injured by either Katrina or Rita. There was really no oil loss of any appreciable kind at any of those. Less oil was lost than used to seep up out of the gulf floor.”

In fact, as we continue to note each time a new version of this claim has been made, there were at least 124oil spills as a result of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The website Skytruth.org even has posted satellite images of the spills as seen from space. Blunt added to his false assertion a repeat of what must be the new talking point on this issue that was offered on Thursday by McCain’s policy adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer (an energy lobbyist) after she was called out by MSNBC’s David Schuster after trying to claim that “hurricanes Rita and Katrina and did not spill a drop” of oil, a downplaying of the spills by comparing them to the amount of oil that naturally seeps into the ocean floor.

As ThinkProgress notes, “the effects of seeps and spills differ hugely” in their environmental impact. It’s an apples and oranges comparison, as seeps are natural, thus not preventable, and they have very little adverse ecological impact due to the fact that they result in a much lower rate of release over time over a larger area, while the effects of spills on the surface can be devastating.

Rep. Blunt also attacked Speaker Pelosi’s calling for a release of 10% of the oil in the strategic oil reserve and her pointing out many of the same facts I had written about a month ago that the oil industry has yet drilled in just 19 percent of the more than 40 million acres they already can that are not covered by the current ban — 40 million acres that represent 79 percent of America’s technically recoverable offshore oil reserves. Using generous estimates from the latest analysis from Bush’s own Department of Energy, allowing for unlimited drilling both offshore and in ANWR “would lower the price at the pump by less than 6 cents by 2025.”

Despite every claim made by Blunt through his entire interview, Speaker Pelosi was right on all counts:

A Department of Energy analysis determined that opening the OCS to offshore drilling “would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030.”

A much faster, more effective action to reduce oil prices would to sell a half million barrels of oil per day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to increase supply, reduce prices, and burst the “speculative bubble” that leads speculators to buy oil futures based on the assumption that supply will remain fixed and prices will escalate.

Eli Roth Reviews Hitchcock’s The Birds Trailer by Trailers From hell

The Pitch: In the latest edition of Trailers From Hell, Horror director Eli Roth explains why even without showing a single shot from the film, the trailer for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds might be the single best trailer ever created.

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The Powerpoint Presentation from my panel is available here.

The audio is available here.

So, this will be the most self-referential blog post I’ve ever done. I’m here at podcamp Boston 3, giving a presentation on Discovery- how people find blogs, video and podcasts they love and what that means.

After looking through all the panels and presentations available at podcamp this year, I noticed that most were dealing with content creation, and social media marketing at a very high level. But I didn’t see anything tactical. So, I decided to tailor my presentation toward tactical promotional efforts. Things you can actually do to get your stuff in front of people.

Since I am primarily a blogger, I’ll be talking about ways to promote blogs and blog posts first, though much of what I’ll be talking about applies to podcasts and video as well.

Part One: Finding Great Stuff

I’m addicted to finding great new stuff. But all of the things that I’ve found and said “this is the best thing ever” were found when I wasn’t looking for them. I don’t usually say “I’m looking for a funny video of an animatronic band playing an Usher song.” Why? Because I didn’t know that existed.

Instead, finding stuff is somewhat random. But here’s the short list of places I’ve used to find great stuff:

1. Reddit- Reddit is a social news site that’s a lot like digg.com. The content is refreshed constantly, and reddit is consistently a good source for finding topics, posts, videos, etc. that are just starting to take off.

2. Hacker News- While reddit is great for finding items in a wide variety of topics, hacker news is better for finding technology related posts. It’s heavily slanted toward web startups and entrepreneurs.

3. BuzzFeed- BuzzFeed is mostly concerned with pop culture stuff, and it looks for hot topics on the web. It then aggregates the posts about the topic and puts them together. If you’re looking for something new and breaking, buzzfeed is great.

4. Techmeme- This one should be a no-brainer for most. It’s an aggregator that finds hot tech topics and displays the most discussed stories.

5. GetSatisfaction- GetSatisfaction is like a large-scale customer support forum for all web 2.0ish companies. But it’s also a great place to find new stuff.

Part Two: Getting Your Stuff In Front Of An Audience

#1 Super Dope Ill Ninja Secret Trick: Zemanta

Zemanta is a plugin for blogging that reads what you’re writing in real-time, and suggests relevant photos and blog posts. So I’ll give you an example of that right now.

This is interesting in a couple of ways. First, it helps you find other articles to reference and read for more information on your topic. But what’s really cool about it is when you select these other articles to link to, Zemanta automatically sends a trackback to that site. So, if you’ve got a topic that’s covered by, say, mashable and techcrunch, simply linking to them with Zemanta sends a trackback, therefore giving you a link on their page. Badass.

#2 Super Dope Ill Ninja Not-at-all Secret Trick: Twitter

You may think this is obvious, and you’re right. But here’s what I do: I have a personal account and a blog account. So, I’m @nathanwburke and the blog is @blogstring. So, that way, people that are interested in getting updates whenever a new post is up can get notified via twitter from @blogstring. This is one of those subtle psychological tactics. Personally, I don’t like following someone on twitter that is only there to promote their blog posts.

#3 Super Dope Ill Ninja Somewhat Baffling Trick: StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is a blog discovery engine that learns what you like and recommends blogs to you. But instead of using it to find blog posts, I use StumbleUpon to promote my blog posts.

StumbleUpon has a browser toolbar that let’s you share sites you like, rate them, etc.:

So, after posting, stumble your post (and encourage others to do the same), and you’ll get some traffic. Trust me.

#4 Super Dope Ill Ninja Stroke My Ego Trick: Blogged.

Full disclosure: blogged is a partner of my employer, matchmine, but I’ve been using blogged well before the partnership.

Blogged.com is a blog directory that focuses more on blogs than posts. If you’re a blogger, you submit your blog, they have actual human beings review it, and they then give you a score on a 1-10 scale.

As you can see, my blog, blogstring.com has been rated 9.0 out of 10. Not bad. So, I proudly display that on my blog’s sidebar. Blogged is now moving away from just focusing on blogs, and is now also indexing and presenting individual posts. I get some fairly strong traffic from blogged.

#5 Common Sense You Already Know Trick: Write For Other People

This is a no-brainer, but it works. Write in other places. For example, I write on my company’s blog, this blog, I’m starting to cross-post to nathanwburke.com, and I also write for media bullseye once in a while. Each post links back to blogstring to increase the link love. The more incoming links, the better, and the fact that each blog has a new audience gives me a chance to get an intro to people that don’t already read my stuff. Out of all of these, this is by far the best for many reasons.

Podcasts

So, when I came to podcamp last year, I’d never listened to a podcast before. Now I’m doing a live one every day called object:location. We talk about the newest shiny beta thing, and then data portability. So I get to play around with new stuff, then my co-host gets to talk about the really cool cutting-edge hardcore tech stuff. I like to think of us as a geek version of love line, except I’m not funny and we don’t talk about sex.

Anyway, we use BlogTalkRadio to record our podcast. It’s insanely easy to use. You just call a phone number, it records the podcast, and gives you code to display on your blog as well as an mp3 file. So here’s what I do:

1. I set up the segment on blogtalkradio and get the embed code.

2. I then go to objectlocation.com and embed the code, and then write what we’ll be talking about.

3. I do the same thing on this blog.

4. I announce the show on twitter on my account and the blogstring account along with the phone number

What About You?

So, what do you use?

The Powerpoint Presentation from my panel is available here.

The audio is available here.

April 28, 2008 -- DEERFIELD, Ill. -- Pharmacy sales continue to escalate at Walgreens, driven by patients' increased reliance on third-party programs and the Medicare...

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Fallon Will Start Late Night on the Web (NYT)
With a new round of shake-ups in late-night television set to begin next year, Lorne Michaels has decided to try to get a jump on things by starting NBC's next edition of Late Night, with its new host Jimmy Fallon, as a nightly entry on the Internet. Fallon has been named as the replacement for Conan O'Brien when O'Brien takes over the Tonight show from Jay Leno next year. TV Week: Leno's NBC run to end in late May or early June of next year.

NBC Sells 90% of Olympic Ads (Hollywood Reporter)
With less than three weeks to the start of the Beijing Games, NBC Universal is poised to announce Monday that it has sold 90% of its Olympics ad inventory. The network reiterated that it was on track to break a record with more than $1 billion in ad sales. The network said the pace of advertising has picked up in recent weeks, thanks to its coverage of Olympics trials during weekend primetime. NYT: With the Games only 19 days away, many at NBC are concerned about how they will be permitted to cover any unscheduled events, like political protests or government crackdowns -- or whether the Chinese government will allow them to cover such things at all.

Sulzberger Navigates Between Past, Present at the Once Old Gray Lady (AdAge)
Arthur Sulzberger Jr. remains on the hook for some things you can just feel -- especially if you just survived the newsroom's first-ever layoffs, a response to declining ad revenue, or you own company stock, which hit its lowest price since 1995 last week. The biggest is a brewing battle royal among international news brands.

continued...

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media

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Stephen Colbert looks at the media maelstrom surrounding Barack Obama’s trip to the Middle East and how there is one particular media outlet who doesn’t seem to be involved.   Hmmm….which one could it be?

COLBERT:  You see, in recent months, McCain boxed Obama into a corner by saying it was important that Obama visit Iraq. Checkmate. No way out of that one. But now Obama is cheating, by visiting Iraq. The good news is there’s so much media attention, there’s always a possibility of a huge gaffe doing irreparable damage to his campaign. [..]
Now I was not invited on this trip. But, that’s fine. But I am not the only one who was snubbed.

[video of FOX & Friends]
DOOCY: Why are you not on Barack Obama’s airplane heading to the Middle East right now?
WALLACE: Well, I called the Obama campaign several weeks ago and said that I’d like to go and my invitation has apparently been lost in the mail.
[end video]

COLBERT:  Well, maybe that’s what this is. Here you go. [holds up envelope] Oh my God, it’s Chris Wallace’s invitation to the Obama trip! They sent it to me by accident. This could be my ticket to cover Barack Obama’s historic trip! All I have to do is…oh…and then people might think I was Chris Wallace. [shudders] Just not worth the risk.

Kind of makes the whole narrative that Obama is playing to FOX News Channel viewership in the general election a lie, doesn’t it?   I think that anytime we see Democrats treating FNC rightfully as the propaganda arm of the GOP–as Netroots Nation did last week–they deserve a little pat on their back.  

Please send Obama a note of congratulations for his FOX snub here.  That’s not weak on defense, Colbert, that’s a strong offense and one all Democrats should be emulating. 

transcripts below the fold

COLBERT:  Welcome to the Report, good to have you with us.  Well, nation, you’ve all heard the news: Jesus has returned to Earth on a spaceship, cured cancer and won the British Open.  Did no one hear about that?  Oh maybe because Barack Obama decided to go backpacking overseas with a couple of his friends.

You probably know his friends by their professional name, the entire media. Yes, they’ve all taken the next ten days to “find themselves” on Barack Obama’s Elitist Summer Abroad.

You see, in recent months, McCain boxed Obama into a corner by saying it was important that Obama visit Iraq.  Checkmate.  No way out of that one.  But now Obama is cheating, by visiting Iraq.

The good news is there’s so much media attention, there’s always a possibility of a huge gaffe doing irreparable damage to his campaign.  And boy, did Obama deliver.  Look what happened yesterday, right in front of our troops. [video of Obama making 3 point basketball shot]

Oh. Huh.  A three pointer. No man to man coverage?  No boxing out?  No pushing your man out of the low post?  All this proves is that Obama’s weak on defense.

Now I was not invited on this trip.  But, that’s fine.  But I am not the only one who was snubbed. 

[video of FOX & Friends]

DOOCY:  Why are you not on Barack Obama’s airplane heading to the Middle East right now?

WALLACE:  Well, I called the Obama campaign several weeks ago and said that I’d like to go and my invitation has apparently been lost in the mail.

[end video]

COLBERT:  Well, maybe that’s what this is.  Here you go. [holds up envelope]  Oh my God, it’s Chris Wallace’s invitation to the Obama trip!  They sent it to me by accident.  This could be my ticket to cover Barack Obama’s historic trip!  All I have to do is…oh…and then people might think I was Chris Wallace. [shudders] Just not worth the risk.

Anyway, it’s clear what this snub is really about.

[video of FOX & Friends]

DOOCY:  The big three: Brian Williams, Katie Couric and Charles Gibson, will all be in attendance.  Talk about media bias. 

[end video]

COLBERT:  And the Doucheman knows about media bias.  He keeps it fair and balanced.

[video clips of Steve Doocy saying “Barack Hussein Obama”]

COLBERT:  So let the mainstream media fawn all over Obama. Big deal.  Maybe some of us have better things to do. More exciting candidates to cover. McCain, McCain does have a fantastic story.  All McCain needs is a little attention from his supporters in the media.  Really dyed in the wool conservatives like me and former Bush speechwriter David Frum.

[video]

FRUM:  Here you have one of the oldest…the oldest man ever to run for President. [..] When you look at the polls, you can see there’s much less enthusiasm for his candidacy.  That’s a pretty exciting story.

[end video]

COLBERT:  Exactly.  And it is time the media started trumpeting McCain’s exciting story:  He is old and no one likes him.  Exciting.

February 5, 2008 -- As home prices continue to slide nationwide, the value of farmland is setting records.Demand for grain for food, fuel and export, along with low...

We saw a great post by John Grohol at PsychCentral called Distracted While Driving. He really caught our attention with one thought. We allow ourselves to be distracted while we drive because we think we’re playing a race against time. In reality, we’re playing against the odds.

A study by Virginia Tech Transportation Institute and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that about 80 percent of all crashes and 65 percent of all near-crashes involved someone who was distracted within three seconds of the event. 

. 

.

I plead guilty as charged. I have to admit to using my car as a roaming second office. I store up phone messages and return calls while I’m on the road. .

.

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I’m in the car on a busy, busy day with all these things rolling through my mind. That’s one of the distractions that we often don’t take into account. I zone out … I don’t really pay attention like I should. I’m in my own world. .

.

Psychologists have identified four types of distractions, according to Grohol’s article.

• Visual … checking out an accident or looking at a billboard

• Audible … cell phone calls, the radio, or another person talking

• Physical … eating, flipping the dial, shuffling your iPod, or putting on make-up

• Cognitive … daydreaming, thinking about other things in your life

Of course, a lot of distractions are multi-faceted. For example, talking on your cell phone includes three of these – audible, physical, and cognitive.

.

I really do think it saves time. We have a friend who consults with us. He talks to us when he’s on his hour-and-a-half commute home. I can understand why you would use your phone when you have that long drive.

.

I won’t dispute that at all, but I now realize more than ever that I have to recognize the odds of something happening and take measures to try to minimize the distractions.

.
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Changes we plan to make

• Leave earlier. When we have a lengthy trip, we usually don’t give ourselves the time to stop and eat. We gas, grab, and go … eating on the road. Leaving earlier will allow us time to stop and eat. We’ll probably eat healthier, too!

• Ignore the phone. Granted, that’s a hard thing to do. So we’re going to turn our ringers off when we’re only going to be in the car for a short time.

• Change our greetings. If we’re expecting an important call, we’ll change the greeting to let them know when we will be checking our messages.

• Pull over (if we can). For those rare situations where we have to take the call, we’ll stop driving momentarily.

What's your biggest distraction while driving? 

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(Image by krilm)

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We’ve long since documented the desperate lengths that John McCain is willing to go to win the office of the Presidency, even to the point of hiring the same people responsible for those whisper campaigns in 2000 that he might be a little off his rocker from his years as a POW and that he fathered an illegitimate black baby.  Chris Matthews seems a little surprised that John McCain is actually seeking to win the election.  Not sure what Chris thinks McCain’s been doing for the last 18 months, but it’s Howard Fineman who gives the real answer to the $64,000 question.  The White House wants McCain to win because they know there would be no accountability for all their criminal acts with another Republican in office.

FINEMAN: If you’re in this White House, you want another Republican administration to follow. You don’t want a Democratic administration coming in there while the evidence is still fresh, so to speak. To look at it the way…

MATTHEWS: With the subpoena power…

FINEMAN: With the subpoena power and looking through all the records and looking at all the decisions that were made. You want to cover over your two terms with a third term the way Ronald Reagan did with George HW Bush.

All of which is undoubtedly true, and one can only hope that there might be a depressingly rare accountability moment coming from a Democratic White House (although nothing about the current Democratic majority would lead us to believe they have the fortitude to pursue it).  But the thing that chaps my hide is the tacit admission by Fineman that the Bush administration would have stuff to hide.  Not that they don’t…we’ve been saying so since the beginning of C&L, but that after years and years of having Fineman and Co. make excuses for the Bush administration and be content to regurgitate their talking points (just as Kelly O’Donnell unapologetically does in this clip), NOW Fineman admits it as if it’s been common knowledge all along. 

Transcripts below the fold

MATTHEWS: As we’ve said, President Bush and John McCain have had a chilly relationship at best. Things turned arctic after that brutal primary fight back in 2000 and while they warmed up a bit in recent years, few people believe Bush and McCain are close friends. But the president and some of his former staffers are working hard to get their former rival elected. No surprise there. Getting another Republican in there would be Bush’s best hope to carry on, even bulk up his legacy. Here’s Bush back in March when he made it plain that he wants McCain there to continue his foreign policy.
[video]

BUSH: John McCain will find out when he takes the oath of office his most important responsibility is to protect the American people from harm. And there’s still an enemy that lurks. An enemy that wants to strike us. And this country better have somebody in that Oval Office who understands the stakes. And John McCain understands those stakes.

[end video]
MATTHEWS: So Kelly, they’re not ready to turn the ball over to the other side, see how well they can play it, huh?

O’DONNELL: Well the President would certainly like to continue that idea of offense as a part of foreign diplomacy, which is something that John McCain talks about a lot. Where McCain does differ is he is more open to some of the diplomatic negotiations that you hear so much from Barack Obama. Different than Obama, but I think McCain does have a slightly different view on foreign policy than the President.

MATTHEWS: Again, Karl Rove is hovering over this campaign. Steve Schmidt, one of his former people… associates is in there running the campaign now. Now it looks to me like they want to win.

RATHER: They want to win and John McCain wants to win. Because he has bought in to the Rovian strategy for this next election and why wouldn’t he? Karl Rove ran two brilliant campaigns for president. However, that could cost him on the other side, because on the one hand he’s trying to say, ‘you know, what…I’m not Bush III’ on the other hand, he’s having Bush’s operatives run the campaign for him.

O’DONNELL: Obviously top Republican operatives have worked for the Bush/Cheney era. But Schmidt would be the first to tell you he’s an Arnold Schwarzenegger man. He ran his re-election campaign, helped him to win coming back from a big deficit. So even this new guy whose sort of running this organization is not as tied to President Bush and Vice President Cheney as you might think.

MATTHEWS: I’m looking at Rove here, over this whole campaign, not just Schmidt, but Rove. I wonder if the polarizing, partisan way that the Bush campaign put his whole operation together the last two terms isn’t going to invade and perhaps hurt the McCain effort. ‘

TUCKER: Well, remember Rove worries about his legacy too. Just a little while ago, he was thought of one of the most brilliant political strategists of a generation. But more recently he’s been looking like the guy who has diminished the Republican brand.

MATTHEWS: Yeah.

TUCKER: So he wants McCain to win not just for Bush’s sake, but for Rove’s sake as well.

MATTHEWS: Yeah, he’s was five feet ahead of the Special Prosecuter, let’s not forget that, in the leak case.

FINEMAN: Yeah. That’s part of it too. First of all, belief matters here. Bush and McCain agree on Iraq…

MATTHEWS: Right.

FINEMAN: …Which is a big deal. One of the biggest, most consequential decisions any president ever made. So there’s belief. There’s also fear. If you’re in this White House, you want another Republican administration to follow. You don’t want a Democratic administration coming in there while the evidence is still fresh, so to speak. To look at it the way…

MATTHEWS: With the subpoena power…

FINEMAN: With the subpoena power and looking through all the records and looking at all the decisions that were made. You want to cover over your two terms with a third term the way Ronald Reagan did with George HW Bush.

MATTHEWS: Yeah…

Welcome to the new format for Orange Lounge Radio where Parts A & B of our live show are now combined! This also means you get new descriptions! Anyhow in tonights episode, it is expo mania! Our spirits are high having just booked our trip to PAX for August. After a review of the California Extreme show that DarkSakura attended, we wrap up the show we DID NOT attend this year: E3. We recap the press conferences from the big 3 companies. Will the announcement of Final Fantasy XIII on XBOX 360 mean that Rob will never buy a Playstation 3? The crew has some very different opinions on the announcement of Wii Music. The list of announcements goes on and on and on until we get to our Classic game of the week. After the break, we touch on some other news such as this Dead Rising Wii game we had never ever heard of before E3. We have a cry over E3 no longer being for the core gamers (According to Miyamoto, anyway). Then we have a discussion on the return of Red Pyramid (aka Pyramid Head) to the Silent Hill series, which causes us to declare a new OLR Holiday: Pyramid Head Rape Appreciation Day! (Subject to change due to political correctness). All this and your phone calls, the mailbag, live chatroom comments and more on Orange Lounge Radio: The place where every gamer has a voice.

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