Pvt. Jamison K. Nelson - An American Soldier

Almighty and eternal God,

those who take refuge in you will be glad

and forever will shout for joy.

Protect this soldier as he discharges his duties.

Protect him with the shield of your strength

and keep him safe from all evil and harm.

May the power of your love enable him to return home

in safety, that with all who love him,

they may ever praise you for your loving care.

We ask this through Christ our Lord. 

AMEN

Flock.com - Web Browser designed for Social Media

Tired of logging into Twitter, Digg, MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Flickr, Youtube and who knows what else and trying to somehow keep up with it all? The social media has turned into such a phenomenon that it now has it's own web browser. Flock.com is a social web browser powered by Mozilla. It's a really awesome app. Take the tour, download it (I know you will...I did) and tell me what you think!

Google Wave explained in 'plain' English...(video)

This video finally explains Google Wave in terms everyone can understand. Hand clap for the fact that it's only a little over a minute long. If Google Wave takes off like most people are expecting it to, what type of impact will this have on other social media sites?

Just A Bunch of Blog Posts

Being proactive is one key element of success. But alas, I'm only human and I've been busy packing and preparing for a long awaited reunion with my son who'll be graduating from Basic Training this weekend in Ft. Sill, Ok.

I didn't prepare any posts in advance so, I've compiled a few of my previous posts that might entertain, inspire or just give that itchy index finger of yours something to click on.

New Drugs for Women

I keep telling you guys how much fun stumbling can be. Today I stumbled a post that would have busted any stitches I might have had. Fortunately I'm anatomically intact but still tickled to the bone. Check out the newest drugs for women. Sorry guys...I certainly hope you can handle it. Thanks Hart. Please visit this site when you have a chance. It's a gem...

* DAMNITOL
Take 2 and the rest of the world can go to hell for up to 8 full hours.

* EMPTYNESTROGEN
Suppository that eliminates melancholy and loneliness by reminding you of how awful they were as teenagers and how you couldn’t wait till they moved out!

The Long and Short of It

Have you found yourself exiting stage left as soon as you come across a long blog post? Blog readers often describe themselves as scanners as opposed to readers. Scanning posts for information that's of interest to them. Bloggers beware. Attempting to condense articles in hopes of keeping the readers attention often leaves valid points and important questions the reader may have unanswered. Doing these 3 things might help you with your longer posts.

Add Video Blogging to Your Blogging Experience

It's amazing to me how much blogging is continuing to evolve everyday. What started out as an avenue to provide family and friends near and far with a weblog of their loved one's day to day activities is now a full fledged media presence - on the verge of collapsing online mainstream news sites, print newspapers and other publications. Can adding video blogging into the mix propel basement bloggers every where into the stratosphere?

The vlog concept isn't new. Many bloggers have been utilizing Vimeo, YouTube and blip.tv (just to name a few) for years.

With lower costs for equipment and software, anyone with a video camera phone could become a video blogger. Technical barriers to video production are getting lower, but the big question is, what makes a good video blog?

If I'm an Expert...You Can Be Too

Well would you lookie here...EzineArticles.com has bestowed one of it's highest honors on yours truly. According to these guys, I'm an expert author. I learned long ago to take compliments any way you can get them. So, I'm not going to moan and groan about how uninformed I am on a number of subjects. I'm not going to gripe about the fact that thousands if not millions of other people are far better writers than I am. I'm not even going to mention that most of my articles are inspired by my utterly boring and uneventful life which leads to hours of insomnia induced written verbage.

Wise Proverbs From a First Graders Perspective

Yesterday I stumbled a webpage that left me "literally" rolling on the floor laughing. At some point in our lives we've all been given advice in the form of a wise proverb. Whether it was "a fool and his money soon part" or "every dog has his day"....we can agree that we're familiar with a few.

A first grade school teacher decided to collect a list of well known proverbs. She gave her class the first half of the proverb and the children had to fill in the last half. Let me warn you....Empty your bladder and finish whatever you're drinking before you continue reading.

Goooooooooogle - History Behind The Name

Talk about feeling prehistoric - try explaining to a tech savvy first grader the fact that the word Google has only been a verb a little over a decade! I'm sure Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the two Stanford University students that developed the search engine power house, never dreamed their brainchild would become popular enough to earn a place in almost every dictionary in the world. Yes, a new word was created  or was it.

The Ultimate Blogger Cheat Sheet

Go on and admit it...as bloggers we're always scowering the internet, magazines, ebooks and yes, other blogs looking for content. Before you start your adamant protest, I'm not accusing anyone of stealing. As bloggers, we often borrow or tweak ideas we've seen somewhere else and make them our own.

It's all part of the learning process. Learning and improving our craft from the best of the best. Well, with that in mind I recently I came across a site that has an awesome cheat sheet - a guide to some of the best copywriting tips on the web.

So, what do you think of Grok.com’s cheat sheet? Where do you go to find inspiration on the web?

11 Great Sources for Blog Post Ideas

Rule of thumb when is comes to writing is making sure it's something the reader can relate to, is interested in, can learn something from or finds thoroughly entertaining. You can write until your fingertips curl up like the legs on the witch who met her untimely end after being crushed by Dorothy's flying house in  the Wizard of Oz but unless your story resonates with the reader - your content is dead in the water.

Struggling to find ideas for great content is one of the most difficult tasks a writer working on a deadline faces. And as a blogger, if you don't think you're working on a deadline - try going a few days without publishing a post and watch your subscription numbers and readers drop like the Time Square New Year's Eve Ball - slowly but most assuredly!

The key to keeping the proverbial "juices flowing" isn't as difficult as you might think. 

Ways To Make Your Twitter Time More Productive

The Twitter 140 micro-blogging phenomenon is growing like a wildfire. You hear people online, at school, in church, at work and tons of other places I failed to mention talking about Twitter and it's tweets. People utilizing Twitter often complain that taking the time to engage others on Twitter will be a major time investment. If you leverage your time by applying a few strategies, it doesn't have to be. 

Buying Network Marketing Leads

When I tell you I'm a jack of all trades believe me. A few years back I joined a network marketing company. I attended all the meetings, participated in the hour long weekly conference calls and bought all the products! I sold to everybody in my family and even adopted a few orphans to parade around at meetings I hosted to show "prospects" how great this company's children's products were. Okay, I'm kidding but I was really into this program...hook, line and sinker! And boy did I almost sink...

Just Another Blog Title

Did the title confuse you? Forget for a moment that this is just another blog. Clear your mind of the idea that you'll find something here today that's going to change the way you do anything in life. Let all your expectations of me and my ability to teach, inspire, entertain, or amuse fly out the window......Now that you expect nothing and have no hopes of finding anything meaningful out of this post....Let's talk candidly...shall we?

Thousands of blog authors spend hours telling you all their secrets to achieving success. Great headlines this. Keyword optimization that. If you attempt to process and apply everything you read regarding blogs, blogging, how to blog, how not to blog....you'll end up pulling your hair out - one strand at a time. I've listened to the pros, formulated some of my own techniques, and even flown by the seat of my pants when it comes to this phenomenon called blogging. Spending countless hours with my laptop tethered to my finger tips has taught me just a few things about blogging and achieving success along the way.

I'm A Geek and Proud of It!

I was talking to one of my RL (real life) friends the other day about my love of blogging. I casually mentioned words like blogosphere, bloggy friends and other bloggy talk. She began to laugh hysterically and said through her uncontrollable giggling "You're turning into a geek!". That didn't really bother me so much. Instead it gave me an idea for this post! Inspiration in the oddest places...

The definition provided by Wikipedia definitely was the catalyst that gave me what I'd like to call "geek pride"! According to their definition a geek is:

•  someone who "gets it done"
•  a person who has chosen concentration rather than conformity
•  a person with a devotion to something that places him or her outside the mainstream

The Age Project -

While stumbling some sites recently I came across The Age Project. It's free to join. All you need is a username, password and email address. During registration, you're asked to upload a photo (pick a good one please). You're all done. Now just wait on visitors to the site to guess your age. I've always been amazed at how people lie about how old they think you are. Maybe it's to avoid hurt feelings or to boost your ego. Either way I think the truth is always best. I'm anxious to see what my average age will be based on what visitor's think.

Writing With Passion Leads to Success

People often say they can feel the personality of certain writers bursting off their blog pages. That's passion and in the end, passion equals success! To ever become a presence in the blogosphere, successful writers have to truly love what they're doing!

Passionate Writers are Successful Writers

No matter how hard authors or publishers try to fake or finagle their way through, if they don't genuinely care about their subject matter, people are going to wise up in the long run. Ever wonder why some writers are highly successful while others just meander around the watering trough waiting for their 15 minutes of fame? Those left waiting at the trough are followers - spending their day waiting on some bright idea to slap them in the face. The leaders already have in mind just what route to take. Why? Because it's already there.They develop their own ideas.

Icon Finder Search Engine

Tired of searching all over the web for that perfect icon. Check out IconFinder.net. This site has over 100,000 of the coolest icons for every category you can imagine. Tonight was a great night for finding cool stuff!

Color Palettes for Your Blog

Every now and then I like to change by blog's template....(inside joke!). And sometimes it's difficult to find the html code for certain colors. Nothing irks me worse than color schemes that don't really jive. Tonight I was trying to add a few items to this layout and I needed the correct color codes. I stumbled across a really neat website. (I've added it to my daily reads so I won't forget it). It's ColorCombos.com .

Visit the site, type in your website or blogs URL and PRESTO - it gives you every color code (html and sample of color) that exists on your site's template. Absolute lifesaver. Just wanted to share.

Is Your Blog in The Channel Surfing Category

Why is it that when the remote control is swallowed by the big bad couch monster or the boogey man underneath the bed....we spend a crazy amount of time trying to find it...instead of just getting up to change the channel by hand. We'll walk past the TV set for 20 to 30 minutes "looking" for the remote!

A recent article I read at Copyblogger described our over use of the remote control as a psychobiological (whew...big word!) urge to switch to something different whenever we grow bored with what's in front of us. The author was basically using the analogy to describe how blog readers and other internet traffickers use that same instinctual drive to hop from one website or blog to another. She offered ideas to help keep your readers from using the remote mouse to click away.

What a Class Clown Can Teach You About Blogging

I'll admit it. My high school years were some of the best years of my life - excluding the peer pressure, pimples, wild hairdos and Boy George. Classes were usually always fun or at least interesting. And on the occasion that I was subjected to a class that was "like" totally boring, the class clown always managed to save the day. These guys knew what their audience wanted and just how to provide it.

Building Backlinks Through Commenting

Taking nothing for granted let's define what backlinks are. Backlinks, (sometimes called inbound links), are incoming links to a web page or the entire website or...in English. Websites or blogs that have your site's URL address listed on any of their pages is a backlink.

These links are the single MOST important piece in determining a blogs popularity. Google's page ranking system is a link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page (co-founder of Google) that measures the value or importance of a web page. This value which is represented by the little green Google pagerank is the result of that algorithm.

Custom Domain for Your Blogspot

Several blogspots have been extremely successful without their own custom domain name. I like the idea of my own domain name for an extremely petty reason - LESS TYPING! Once I found out how easy it was to obtain your own personal (inexpensive) domain name I couldn't resist. It was right under my nose.

Blogaholics Anonymous - 12 Step Healing Program

Visiting other blogs is something I love doing during my "blog down time". I recently stumbled one of the funniest posts I've read in a long time. Too Many Mornings did a post recently about the perils of blogging. He warns that blogging can be as addictive as heroine, cocaine and Krispy Kreme doughnuts COMBINED. This 'Saint' has blessed all bloggers who feel all hope is lost with a 12-Step Healing Program. Please read the list carefully.

Technorati Fave Your Favorites

You read hundreds of blogs a week. Some you enjoy tremendously. Others you pay a visit out of curiosity or necessity. Then there are a few you drop in on just out of common courtesy because they've visited you.

Stop for a moment and try to remember the last time you faved one of your favorite blogs to Technorati. I know I'm guilty of not faving blogs I enjoy. And then I have the nerve to complain! Complain about what you're asking. Well I'll tell you exactly what I complain about.

Entrecard Let's You Decide

Well isn't that nice. Entrecard is providing it's faithful members with the option of choosing which "bot" they want displayed on their site. Do you want what's behind Curtain #1 or Curtain #2? Monty Hall eat your heart out! If you'd rather not have the bots on your site at all, there is a Curtain #3. That'll cost you $50 for 12 months or $5 monthly. I'm not interested in paying one red cent.

Using The Stumbleupon Toolbar

Do you use the Stumbleupon feature to tag certain blogs, posts or articles you find interesting? From time to time I'll stumble one of my stellar posts (ha ha) or material from other sites that I've found informative, funny or useful in some way. It's a great way to give good posts the attention and traffic they deserve. If utilized fully, Stumbleupon can be a great resource for you in more important ways.

Battling Blogger's Block

Have most of you heard of Problogger.net? If you have, I'm sure you'll agree that it's an awesome site filled with tips, tools. advice and an assortment of other goodies to help you along your blogging journey. One post I found while rummaging through Darren's archives (yes, I rummage!) was one titled Battling Blogger's Block. After reading it, the only thing I could think of was how simple all the points were that he outlined. Things that we all know to do but just need a little help realizing. One portion of the post that I thought deserved a bit of recognition was the part that detailed 20 common types of blog posts. Knowing where you fit in may help unlock a plethora of blogging ideas.

Utilizing Your Saved Blogger Drafts

We all know the Blogger platform has the ability to schedule posts for later publication. But Blogger also saves your post in draft mode as you're typing them.

How many times have you started a post and been unable to finish it because you lost interest, had an interruption, or been stopped cold by the wretched unexpected computer crash.

Adding 3-column Footer Section to Blogger

I love my new template! I think it's finally something I'm going to be able to work with for a very long time (famous last words!). The only thing I didn't really like about the template was the fact that it didn't have the 3-column section in the footer.

Post to Blogger With Google Sidewiki

Another great find. From Blogger Buzz:

Last week, Google Sidewiki launched to the world as an entirely new way to share information across the web. This new Google Toolbar feature allows you to contribute your own insight to any webpage, as well as read information shared by others right in your browser's sidebar.

Google's New Barcode Logo

Talk about being slow to catch on. I kept wondering what in the world could be wrong with Google....there logo has been replaced by this barcode looking thingy!...Duh...According to the search engine giant, today is the 57th anniversary of the first patent on the bar code.

How Will The New FTC Guidelines Affect Bloggers

The basement blogger is chopped off at the knees once again. Recently the (FTC) - Federal Trade Commission revised it's guidelines on testimonials and endorsements. The revision now includes bloggers. The FTC will require that writers on the Web clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products. The commission also said advertisers featuring testimonials that claim dramatic results cannot hide behind disclaimers that the results aren't typical. Violations carry a fine of $11,000! The new guidelines are scheduled to begin December 1st of this year.

5 Ways to Utilize Your Blogging Down Time

You've chosen the perfect template.  The quality of your content is superb. You can finally breathe a sigh of relief. Your blog is an official bonafide presence in the blogosphere. Now it's time to bring on the visitors! So, you wait...and wait...and wait....and wait. Nothing! Don't be discouraged. Here's a few things you can do with your time that will keep you from suffering the same fate as ^^ this poor guy!

What's Up With the Twitter Mafia

Is there anyone out there who doesn't think The Godfather was one of the greatest movies ever? I've been meaning to add The Godfather Trilogy to my home DVD arsenal since forever. I just keep forgetting to pick it up when I'm out shopping for toilet tissue, spaghetti sauce, ziplock bags and air fresheners! However, there's a fine line between enjoying a good gangster movie and being bombarded by irritating tweets asking you to join some mob family.

Circle of Friends Award

The only thing that sucks about blogging is knowing you'll probably never physically meet some of the great fellow bloggers you get to know online. We share stories about our lives, our jobs, our insecurities, our accomplishments. We lay ourselves bare for the world to see. I've met so many wonderful people and I wanted to find a way to introduce some of them to you.

What is a Blog Ping?

The blog ping was developed to give bloggers a way to notify blog indexing services about new posts. The searchbots (Google and others) are constantly looking for fresh content to index. Having your content available more quickly through the ping process may determine how fast your pages are indexed and listed on some of the top search engines. There are many ping service websites online. If you're already signed up with  Technorati, they have a pinging option. Here are a few others.

Ping-o-matic - automatic Ping Site
Yahoo Publisher - RSS submission to Yahoo Directory
Pingler - submit to over 90 sites including Google blogsearch and Technorati
Pingoat - pings over 50 services and RSS feeders
Google Blogsearch - if your site isn't listed in Google Blog search, do it now

Problogger Community Forum is Live!

It's takes a village to raise a blog. This old African proverb (that I've tweaked ever so slightly) can be applied to the wonderful things happening on the recently opened Problogger.com Community. ProBlogger.com is an opportunity for bloggers to come together to collaborate, learn and network in a private forum. I joined Thursday morning after discovering the forum was finally up and running. Since then I've received great advice on a number of issues I had some concerns about.

When Being Too Healthy Makes You Sick

Recently Therese Borchard over at HuffPo wrote an article on how being too healthy runs the risk of making you sick. I could just see all the "health freaks" going berserk in an attempt to discredit what she was saying which was the honest truth. Things like over-exercising, staying out of the sun, antibacterial soaps (big pet peeve), air conditioning, sleeping and organic foods. Check out the article for details about any of the six. I'm only going to address one.

Increase Your Blog Traffic through Social Bookmarking Sites

According to Hollywood legend, there was one actor who's features and presentation on screen were so perfect he was nicknamed 'The Great Profile'. John Barrymore's profile is almost more famous than any movie role he ever did. Keeping a great profile in mind can gain your blog killer traffic from social bookmarking sites. Here's how...

Thank You EC Dropper Buddies!

After writing a pretty seething post about all that's wrong with Entrecard, the site still has given me a whole new group of folks I can call friends. It's only fitting to show my appreciation to those who dropped by and dropped by pretty consistently the last 30 days...Thanks guys! For those in the group that leave comments...a special high five...(slap!)...For those of you who don't, start saying hello...Thanks again! Now heeeerrreee's the list...

31 Days to Build a Better Blog

One thing I've learned in my almost four decades here on Earth - take good advice and run with it. In the world of blogging, there isn't anyone cooler or more knowledgeable than Darren Rowse @ProBlogger.net when it comes to all things blogging.

Although quite a bit of his advice is centered around making money online (which he seems to have done extremely well), he has some of the best blogging tips about articles, SEO, increasing traffic, building your readership....the list goes on and on.

Darren's gift is the fact that most of his suggestions are things we all know to do...we just haven't taken the time or as blogging newbies don't have the experience to put it into practice.

Building a Blog to be Proud Of

Today I'm going to provide you with all the answers to having a successful blog.....Wait for it.....wait.....time's up and I'm sure just as you suspected I don't have all the answers. I spend a great deal of time posting about successful blogging, ways to improve your writing, resources to increase your blog traffic. I've even thrown in a few of my super duper parenting tips along the way! Am I successful? Yes. Why? Because I'm doing something I love and having a ball doing it!  Granted, my blog may not be the most successful in the blogosphere. Still, there are practices I've implemented or read about that have been extremely helpful to me. So, without further delay...let's find out how we all can have a blog to be proud of!