"You could make a really good-looking movie right now for ten grand."
                             Steven Soderbergh 

The other day I saw Mr. Bill in a commercial and I realized I hadn't seen him in many years. That took me back and I somehow I ended up looking at screenwriters from Louisiana because that's where Mr. Bill's creator Walter Williams is from and now lives. 

The New Orleans native discovered Super-8 film when he was 17 years old. According to the Mr. Bill website he began making comedy films that were shown in local clubs and bars and he ended up with his own UHF TV show. 

In the pre-You Tube days of 1975 Saturday Night Live put out a call for home movies and Mr. Bill debuted on Saturday Night Live in 1976 and ran until 1980. (Williams was eveutually hired by Lorne Michaels as a staff writer.) The years 76-80 were the early golden years of the program with a cast that included Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, Jane Curtin and John Belushi.

Mr. Bill and his supporting cast Mr. Hands and Sluggo were quite an inspiration to me in the years between 76-80 because those we my high school years. One of my first films in Annye Refoe's creative writing class featured my version of Mr. Bill. I don't remember the story line but I do recall the obligatory distruction scene where Mr. Bill is standing in front of the door as the entire class leaves for the day flattening Mr. Bill. "Ohh, nooo!!! (My art teacher mom had to make a few Mr. Bill's for the stunts.)

It was that class that set me on course for film school and a 20 plus career in production. Looking back on the years '76-80 there was an eclectic mix of inspiration for a young creative mind:  Star Wars (77), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (77), David Lynch's Elephant Man (80), Rocky (76), Raging Bull (80), Woody Allen's Annie Hall (77), Saturday Night Fever (77), Grease (78), Animal House (78),  Apocalypse Now (78) Kramer Vs. Kramer (79), Norma Rae (79), ...And Justice for All (79), Breaking Away (79), Halloween (78), Being There (79), The Great Santini (79), Silent Movie (76), Silver Streak (76), Heaven Can Wait (78), Mad Max (79)  along with those movies I probably saw at the now defunct Prairie Lake Drive-In Theater--Smokey and the Bandit (77), Up in Smoke (78) and The Kentucky Fried Movie (77).

So Mr. Bill is in good company as an American icon and it's nice to see he (and Williams) kicking around 28 years later. Williams has not only directed Mr. Bill in spots for Lexus, Burger King and Ramada Inn but in non-profit efforts to help restore the wetlands in New Orleans.

In 1978 there was a 15 year-old over in Baton Rogue, Louisiana who began to make animation and narrative films (perhaps inspired by Mr. Bill's success) who would go to make his mark in 1989 writing and directing and shooting Sex, Lies, and Videotape. Steven Soderbergh went on to win an Oscar for best director for Traffic (2000). (That same year his Erin Brockovich was also nominated for best picture at the Academy Awards. That's called having a great year.)

Soderbergh has done an amazing job of making big budget features with actors as such as George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts, and at then turning around and making a DV feature like Bubble with amateur actors in Ohio and West Virginia (though from what I've read not a favorable overlook on small town America). His next two films (Guerrilla & The Argentine) were shot with the new Red camera which shoots digitally --no film or tape. (Now that I think about it, two films on Che Guevara shot on a camera called the red camera from a guy who made Syriana...interesting.)    

Soderbergh is also unusual in that he is the director of photography on most of his films, and sometimes the editor as well.  I think he and multiple creative hat wearer Robert Rodriguez will be the inspiration and model for filmmakers of the future.   

Anne Rice, novelist and screenwriter of Interview with the Vampire, was born in New Orleans and where many of her stories take place. Novelist and essay writer Walker Percy (The Moviegoer, The Second Coming) spent his last forty plus years in Covington and most of his stories take place in Louisiana.

Ernest J. Gaines  whose A Lesson Before Dying was nominated a Pulitzer Prize and made into a TV movie is a writer-in-residence at the University of Louisiana at Lafaytte. 

Other well-known writers with a Louisiana connection are Lillian Hellman (The Little Foxes), Stephen Ambrose (writer of Band of Brothers and consultant on Saving Private Ryan), and Tennessee Williams (A Streetcar Named Desire).  

John Kennedy Toole after years of publishers rejection won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize  A Confederacy of Dunces over a decade after committing suicide. Truman Capote (Breakfast at Tiffany's, In Cold Blood) was born in New Orleans but belongs more to Alabama where he grew-up.

Louisiana has been aggressive over the years in making movies in the state:
The Apostle
Southern Comfort 
The Big Easy
Dead Man Walking
The Cincinnati Kid
Live and Let Die
King Creole
Tightrope 
All the Kings Men 

Even Shreveport is getting into the action according to an USA Today article last month titled "Hooray for movie locations outside Hollywood." According to writer Alexandyr Kent, Shreveport has attracted "at least 18 projects in 2008, totaling more than $200 million in production budgets, and more than 80% of that will likely be spent in Louisiana."

Shreveport is where Katie Holmes filmed Mad Money and where Josh Brolin was arrested in a bar fight in July while there for filming Oliver Stone's W. 

To learn more about the film industry in Lousiana contact the  Louisiana Film & Television Office of Entertainment Industry Development.

Copyright 2008 Scott W. Smith

Well, you wouldn’t be the only one. As I have been involved with Social Media Marketing for over 4 years, long before it was called Social Media Marketing/Optimization, I have focused very heavily on breaking down its principles into easy to understand concepts and strategies.

The complexity in Social Media Marketing lies in the various forms of communication that can be had through Social Media; The problem is knowing how your customers are already communicating online and how you can become a part of that conversation.

Through blogging, social networks, forums and user groups, your customers are talking. They’re speaking with each other, they’re speaking about your products and your company, what they like and don’t like, what they like and don’t like about your competitors and more. They’re sharing videos, quizzes, contests and are creating buzz all the time.

How can you help the conversation positively in your direction? How do you get your current and future customers to love you and your products?
Understanding how this information can be collected and acted upon to better build long-lasting relationships with your customers will be essential to the rapid growth of current and future companies.

I see some big flaws in this concept.
 
1. The car doesn't make women invisible.
2. The windows can be opened, and this could blow the drivers' headscarves away.
3. The car will come in a range of (feminine) colours. -- Colours?!
4. The idea dangerously suggests that women can drive at all.
 
Time for the Guardian Council to step in and to put an end to this bullshit.

DON'T BLOODY STOP!

Slow down, sure.

Indicate your intention (using the indicator in your car, other drivers can't read your mind).

Glance at your mirrors or - trust me, this is possible - look over your shoulder to see if there is a space free.

If there is, move across.

if there isn't, continue driving, paying attention to the cars in front of you and in the lane you want to go into - chances are, one of them will want to switch to your lane, and you can do a neat little swap.

But I must repeat. DO NOT STOP. Unless you are a learner driver there is simply no excuse for doing this. If no one stopped while intending to change lanes the traffic problems in the town would improve significantly. As would my blood pressure.

Hyderabad is one place where ‘right’ is ‘wrong’ unless you are talking about driving on the right side of the road. That is quite acceptable and even expected out of a Hyderabadi driver many a times. For example: You become the target of angry honks if you are a novice driver in Hyderabad and commit the grave sin of stopping at a red light when there is no police around. Very often the policemen themselves wield their lathis (often giving sivamani a run for his money) on your vehicle if you refuse to break the law and drive on the pavement. You get screamed at for slowing down near zebra crossings. Once a cool dude gave me the finger for slowing down for an old lady who was trying to cross the road. I had just slowed down a bit and the cool dude in question was not even tail gating me. He was on the parallel lane. But he reacted as if I had built a brick wall in the middle of the road.

On second thoughts, if you build a brick wall in the middle of the road, people may not even notice it. Auto rickshaws would scale the vertical surfaces with little or no difficulty. And two wheeler riders would squeeze through the tiny gap between two bricks from where the concrete fell off when a buffalo relieved its itch by rubbing itself against the wall. As for the buses, they would honk at the wall till the sound waves make it collapse.

Night time driving is the cream of the driving in Hyderabad cake. You can strengthen your ESP by regularly driving about 5 kms every day after it gets dark. A Single lane road increases the efficiency. You would be blinded by the head lights of the oncoming traffic and deafened by the honking. You would have to rely heavily on your ESP to find your way. To add to the chaos, you can often find people using the hazard light to indicate that he is heading straight. It looks like my right brain says go left and left brain says go right So I head straight! If you want to learn more innovative ways of using the signal, you should try driving behind the “road Kings”- The dirty open yellow trucks that carry the huge rocks and boulders. they use the right signal to say, “I am keeping left. You should take the right lane”. But don’t think it is that easy. They use the right indicator to say “you Keep left I am turning right” too. So it is a guessing game.  If you dare to act too smart, the road king can just apply a sudden brake and you could very well be stuck under one of those huge boulders.

A rant about the Hyderabad traffic will not be complete  without a mention of the roads. They curve and twist like medusas hair and are often bare and uneven like a half eaten Tandoori kebab. The trick is to choose the smaller of the pot holes to dump your car into. This is the official sport of Hyderabad.

All said and done I still like driving in Hyderabad. It is better than any roller coaster ride and a lot less cheaper (if you conveniently forget the cost of petrol burned in driving in first gear most of the time, The car maintenance expense to straighten out the dents that mysteriously appear when you park your car next to an auto rickshaw, the bribe you pay the traffic police to exempt you from wearing the seat belt and a few more). Rock on Hyderabad

A brilliant letter to the editor in this week's TFT.

The traffic situation in Lahore is alarming. Almost every main road is jammed and measures need to be taken quickly before the situation gets out of hand. We always hear people blaming the Government for not doing enough to counter the situation. Phrases like “not enough roads,” “useless traffic wardens” and “careless planning” can be heard almost everywhere one goes. I believe that it is not a problem of a lack of roads or careless wardens, but a problem of too many cars on our streets. If we want to relieve ourselves from the stress caused by long traffic jams, we need to find ways through which we can reduce the number of cars on the road.

Schools should start offering bus services. For every bus that carries about 40 children there will be at least 20 less cars on the roads. Furthermore, carpooling, which is very popular in most developed countries, should also be adopted by people in Pakistan. It not only reduces travelling costs, but, more importantly, it leads to fewer cars on the road and hence less traffic jams.

Members of the upper-middle and upper class, who own most of the cars, should stop being so status conscious and start using public transport. It is worth noting that while most of these people hesitate to use public transport in Pakistan, they freely use public transport when in other, developed countries. Although the public transport systems in developed countries are undoubtedly better, it is hard to deny the fact that “status” is an issue for upper-middle and upper class people when using such modes of transportation.

Lastly, people should walk or use bicycles if they have to go somewhere close. This not only saves them from having to bear the traffic but is also good for their health. It is not very unusual for people in this country to go to the market, which is usually walking distance away, in a car and then waste a large amount of time looking for a parking space.

These are just a few of the many steps that can be taken to trim down the ever increasing number of cars on the roads. Although the Government is, to a large extent, responsible for not providing proper transportation infrastructure, the people of this nation should also take responsibility for the part they play in the problem.

Ammar Naveed,

Lahore.

Is it really a possibility that Obama might be days away from an indictment? When it happens, just remember you read it here...second. I'm still trying to digest exactly what it is PUMA is talking about. I don't know most of these thugs and if the time line isn't set up in particular rows on paper, it's hard for me to grasp. So while you read that (and don't forget the comment) I'm going to engage in some escapism and recall a time when my biggest worry was how someone with such an awesome voice could wear such a horrid shirt.

If you've already read it, feel free to watch above, and I wouldn't mind an explanation and reassurance that Rezko can sing half as good.

Being the routinely creature that I am, one would think that I would get really stressed about this kind of thing, and dwell on it for a long time. But, I didn't! :) I'm surprised myself. I only spent about an hour writing all the details down and researching the traffic laws. After that, I went on with my day as I had intended. I'm working on a small GUI application for my team and I've been really into it. So, thanks to my super enjoyable work today, I was able to forget about the traffic ticket.

Tonight I wasn't sure if Joseph was going to call me to hang out. I doubted it though, since he didn't mention it. Kanako and I had a cooked dinner and wine and watched some tv. I'm cooking to save money now! The economy isn't pretty, and I need to save some more money for Japan, so... COOKING. :) Tonight's dinner plus tomorrow's lunch costed $3.19. It was cheap because the ingredients were cheap: tofu, sweet bell peppers, green onions, and mushrooms. I just threw them all in a pan and stir-fried the heck out of them. :) I threw some soy sauce on and it tasted good and looked good too (colors: green, brown, tofu-beige ;P, orange, and red). After dinner, we decided to watch a move and I suggested a Korean movie called "My Sassy Girl". My co-worker (and ultimate frisbee organizer! ^_^) lent it to me and I really liked it. Kanako liked it too.

Overall, I had a great day despite the bad start.

It's midnight, and I'm really sleeeeeepy now. Goodnight!~

The description of the book might explain why the wait list is so long, as well as why I find his blog so fascinating:

Would you be surprised that road rage can be good for society? Or that most crashes happen on sunny, dry days? That our minds can trick us into thinking the next lane is moving faster? Or that you can gauge a nation’s driving behavior by its levels of corruption? These are only a few of the remarkable dynamics that Tom Vanderbilt explores in this fascinating tour through the mysteries of the road.

Based on exhaustive research and interviews with driving experts and traffic officials around the globe, Traffic gets under the hood of the everyday activity of driving to uncover the surprisingly complex web of physical, psychological, and technical factors that explain how traffic works, why we drive the way we do, and what our driving says about us. Vanderbilt examines the perceptual limits and cognitive underpinnings that make us worse drivers than we think we are. He demonstrates why plans to protect pedestrians from cars often lead to more accidents. He shows how roundabouts, which can feel dangerous and chaotic, actually make roads safer—and reduce traffic in the bargain. He uncovers who is more likely to honk at whom, and why. He explains why traffic jams form, outlines the unintended consequences of our quest for safety, and even identifies the most common mistake drivers make in parking lots.

The car has long been a central part of American life; whether we see it as a symbol of freedom or a symptom of sprawl, we define ourselves by what and how we drive. As Vanderbilt shows, driving is a provocatively revealing prism for examining how our minds work and the ways in which we interact with one another. Ultimately, Traffic is about more than driving: it’s about human nature. This book will change the way we see ourselves and the world around us. And who knows? It may even make us better drivers.

He explores the topic from many directions, and he doesn't let himself be limited by the "conventional wisdom" that is generally also the "unsupported-by-any-actual-facts-or-research wisdom".

Like, the ideas we have on traffic lights. What if there were none? We immediately start talking about how it would be dangerous and chaos would ensue, but is that true? Why do we think that? And if that is true, why has traffic improved and accidents decreased in some towns in europe that have done away with traffic lights in select places?

I find it fascinating, at least partially because Tom does such a good job in presenting the topic in interesting ways.

For anyone who drives, as well as everyone else, I highly recommend checking out Tom's blog.

Our last product update was a while ago, but that certainly doesn't mean we haven't been doing anything. Quite the contrary in fact, we're so busy we often forget to go home! Our last update went over our Business Amenities feature, which has been very well received by our customers. Since then we've been pretty quiet on the blog, but we've kept ourselves busy behind the scenes with a few changes to the front-end of the website that you may have noticed browsing around, and lots of changes to the back-end to support our increasing traffic.

First, the front end; we've updated our product information page to give businesses a better idea of what we do and what we're about. Along with that we've upgraded the process for adding your own business information. You'll see a call-to-action to add your business in the top right of the product page, or check it out here. You do have to be logged in to add your business so if you don't yet have an account at CitySquares.com now is a great time to get signed up. We were getting a lot of duplicate entries and we realized people needed an easy way to search for their business before they added it. So our new 'add business' form integrates a live search as you type - so if you're already on our site your listing will appear and you can just edit the existing information!

Along with the new add business process we have added a new eCommerce system so you can find and purchase your business listing all online! Currently your only option is to upgrade to a deluxe listing, but we're hoping to expand that to include other options in the future. I encourage you to sign up and see if your business is already listed for free and of course check out our awesome upgrade options!

You may also have noticed that our banner ads have changed slightly - you can see those throughout the site. We made the move to IAB standard size ads in early September along with our ad management system overhaul. We are now using Google AdManager to serve up all the ads you see across the site, which allows us to easily serve up Google AdSense in locations that we have unsold inventory or choose to display them. As of now we have set it up so our paying local advertisers will always trump AdSense in priority so we maintain our hyper-local focus. We have also worked in a pretty neat system where we're able to provide banner advertising site-wide all the way down to a specific neighborhood and anywhere in between. You could even exclusively buy select neighborhoods if you chose to target your ads.

Otherwise we've been pretty quiet on the front end, but we've got some big changes coming soon. I can't show you everything yet, but I can provide a couple sneak peeks.

Besides the usual bug fixes, that's pretty much everything on the front end. On the back end, we have moved our infrastructure onto Amazon Web Services EC2/S3 using RightScale to manage our instances. Justin is blogging our experience over at his blog. I'd recommend going there to get more details on what we've done, there's way too much information for just one post.

Outside of the infrastructure changes, we've been going through all of our database queries and optimizing as much as possible, tweaking and removing where necessary, and trying to get every bit of performance our of our current system as possible.

So we've been pretty busy as of late, with much more to come as we expand the site to new areas. Keep an eye out for changes and we'll do our best to keep you updated here.

As always, we love to hear from you so, if you have any thoughts, please leave us a note in the comments!

-- Michael

Image009.jpg

Originally uploaded by simonsnokia

I've signed up for a new mobile phone this week, a Nokia 6500 with 3.2mp camera and the ability to upload pics directly to flickr.com (along with lots of other bells and whistles). The 6500 isn't the latest from Nokia, so that means it was very cheap on a plan from Virgin.

Anyway, I was playing around with the new phone while stuck in heavy traffic on the Monash Freeway when I spotted this weird motorbike with three wheels. I don't mean like a trike, what I'm talking about has two small front wheels. The suspension is very different too, when the rider leans over to weave between cars in heavy traffic, the front wheels stay upright while the rest of the bike leans into the turn.

The new camera-phone came in very handy, as I snapped this shot of the three wheel motorbike.

I've started a new flickr account, just for mobile phone pics uploaded directly from the phone - www.flickr.com/photos/simonsnokia

My existing flickr site is www.flickr.com/photos/smjb which has mostly family photos.

For those of you who don't already know, I live on a rock, basically. My home is on the crest of a ridge at the top of a shale hill. My driveway is 3 tenths of a mile and is an average grade of 7 to 9 percent. In other words, long and steep.

This also means that when we get a hard or steady rain, my driveway takes on many of the attributes of a waterfall. And it washes gullies, not good. So, to eliminate the gully washing, I have to cut trenches across the driveway about every 50 feet or so to redirect the water over the hillside rather than down the driveway.

So, in just over 2 hours, I've cleaned out 5 trenches that I had already cut and cut 2 more. These trenches are about 5 inches wide by 5 inches deep by 8 to 10 feet long. Remember, I live on a rock and I do this by hand with a mattic and shovel.

Let's face it, I'm lazy. If you have been over to my Facebook page at http://profile.to/JimBerry/, it says so right there.

That's why I have an online business. So I can do this for fun and exercise, rather than having to do it to buy groceries. By now, you are probably wondering what all this has to do with building your online business. Well, let's break it down.

Initially, we began to dig in the brown shale. It's consistency usually ranges from silt and small rock to clay. This would be our initial market research, examining keywords that would pertain to our perspective market. This is where a lot of people skip a very important step. They have an idea for a product that everybody needs, create the product and try to sell it, before they even know if there is a market for the product. The greatest product in the world is no good if nobody wants to buy it.

So, we dig around in keywords, in a broad market at first, then we dig a little deeper to identify a niche or niches. This will start to give us a picture of our prospective market. Then we dig a little more going to blogs and forums and groups where people hang out to see what questions they ask, what there concerns are, what problems they are having. What their goals, hopes, dreams and fears are. But, no marketing just yet. This is rather a “fly on the wall” sort of research.

Digging a little more, we find who is providing solutions to this group and what these solutions are. Study their websites and products to see what they offer. Does it answer the markets questions, provide solutions to problems, and is the product even helpful. Then decide what you can do better. How might you improve on these existing products? And remember this, it is not the product, it is never the product that your customer buys, it is what the product can do for the customer.

Now, I know you are thinking, “These guys will be my competition!” Well, sure, competition is good! Would you buy something that nobody else wants? These guys already have the customers that you want. What you must do is find a product or combination of products that provides better solutions to your market than your competition, or create your own. Then you dominate the niche.

Now, look what an excellent little trench you have going there. Oh, that is nice. That is so nice. And suddenly you swing your mattic and all that is returned is a loud thud. Not the smooth, quiet progress we have been making. This is the blue or purple shale, as it is called. This stuff is so hard that to try to dig directly into it will break a tooth from a backhoe. This is the point where a lot of people have the most trouble.

The techy part. Selecting a domain, choosing a web hosting company and setting up your website. But, without a website or blog, nobody knows you are there. Your customers have no place to go to view your products and buy from you.

But, you see, the blue shale, although very hard, is also very brittle. If you strike it from an angle, it chips right away. So approach your website the same way, do a little at a time and before you know it your trench will be dug. You can begin your advertising and soon you will have a steady stream of customers redirected to you website, rather than running down the hill to your competitors.

You then have a business, not just an online hobby.

Now, digging trenches in the driveway with shovel and mattic works ok, but, these tools are not terribly effective for building a business. For that you need something a bit less invasive. You need a system. A proven system that can take you, step by step, through the entire process, that fully explains each step and guides you to the next.

The system I use is Mark Hendricks' Internet Success System. It comes complete with recordings, transcripts, worksheets, teleconferences, tools(some free, some not) and a forum of members, that will soon be friends, to help you along the way and help answer your questions. But, best of all, it comes with Mark Hendricks!

Now, see how much fun digging trenches can be?

By now, you are probably wondering how I got all this from digging trenches in my driveway. Well, when you have been marketing for a while, you begin to see things a bit differently than you probably do now. Actually, it is all around you. But, it is not a change in your eyes that happens, it is a change in your vision. “What is it?”, you ask? Well, it is a story for another time.

But, right now, go to Internet Success System and let's get started digging your trenches. Yeah, I'll be looking for you.

I hope you have found this useful.

]]> http://joyerickson.wordpress.com/?p=2547 Fri, 10 Oct 2008 03:56:29 +0000 Joy http://joyerickson.ro.wordpress.com/2008/10/10/question-of-the-day-153/ What's something that people do in traffic that really bothers you?

Police motorcyclists were on hand to marshal them through a lane cordoned off with witches hats, while directing traffic into one lane. All went smooth and there were no problems that could have been associated with 200 bikies arriving at a hotel on major city arterial.

But that's not how the Herald Sun saw the police's work. According to today's front page the Bandodos were getting a "free ride" and "VIP escort" through town while the rest of us remain stuck in traffic.

The Police Association even complained about its members being tied up this way.

So what should the police have done? Allowed 200 bikies to just roll into town when and where they please with no measures taken to ensure there is no gridlock or public unrest?

Also, as Sly of the Underworld (The Age crime journalist John Sylvester) said this morning on 3AW, the bikies hate police escorts -  riding into town with through designated lanes with police telling where and where not to go is hardly Easyrider.

So, the question comes up more than once…

“What’s different about the changes that occurred in the 60’s and 70’s from the changes we are experiencing during our current crisis?”

There are not many parallels between the two times because they are as different as the 50 years apart that separates them. ALL the context is different. How could they possibly be similar?

First of all, we are just started the reaction and the responses to the last seven years and the 31 years leading up to this. It has just begun. You didn’t think it was some Palooka on Wall Street or in corporate America that made this happen, did you?

There are a lot of things that came together in the 60s and 70s that made them what they were and there are a lot of things that are converging now to make this what it will be. That is where the similarities probably end.

The 60s and 70s was the push back against repression, control, delayed gratification and isolation. The early 60s was a set of things in opposition to the status quo.... then other things came together, not by plan but by their own path and the confluence went POW!

Music was the medium like the Internet is today... But, no one had any idea what they were experiencing and it wasn’t because of the drugs or music.  Caesar didn’t realize what was going on either. It was just what was happening.

There were waves of change between the surfers-dudes and the button-down guys represented on the one hand by parents, Pat Boone, The Kingston Trio and, on the other, the Beach Boys, Bob Dylan and the Birds or Jefferson Airplane.

• Drugs, sex and rock and roll
• The pill
• The war – the draft – the secrecy
• The car
• Woman’s liberation
• The idealists

The “pill” represented freedoms never imagined as did the car. Both were escapes from mom and dad's world... In a similar but opposing ways, Britney Spears music is devoid of any content relating to the world today as the Zits cartoon series is today.  The 60s and 70s had irreverent tunes and MAD magazine... Both ‘anti-now’.

But where is the VOICE of today? I don’t mean the Village Voice, which morphed into respectability and successfully collects ad revenue to support circulation of its coffee house rebels. I mean the “VOICE” of someone calling the ball on what has happened in America. That means accounting for losses as well as our mis-gotten “gains”. Whose voice is going to ring out to address America’s privatized profit but socializes risk, isolation from allies, might-makes-right arrogance and the branding of ‘Democracy’ through colonization?

We have untold messages yelling at us about losing allies, losing hope, losing dialogue, losing respect, losing trust and openness that is displaced with secrecy, fear and loathing of anyone different from us including our government and the other boss in the corner office.

What are you willing to give up? Cassias Clay was willing to lose everything. Martin Luther King Jr. did. Freedom riders, lunch counter activists and everything in between including those who were caught when the world changed on them like it has today for us.   You know who I am talking about; the cops that thought they were doing the right things, the governors, the FBI, the soldiers, the parents… they were All doing what they were told was right even if it was the opposite from what those they were repressing had been told.

If you have no answers, the next 12 years aren’t going to be a good time for you in America or Europe, or Japan or... You will end up sour and ailing because today you are witnessing the tree of entitlements being cut down. It will take years to grow another. What is the expression in business? “He is a dead man just looking for a place to lie down!”

So, where is the lightening rod for change from all this doom and gloom?   Where is that person going to come from? Come on; use that teraflop of processing power and your angry brain to generate something you like.

• Is it the blogs?
• The social communities?
• The recipient paparazzi replacing investigative reporting?

With all the complexity, technology, information, misinformation and confusion...what we’ve done in the past isn’t going to be what we do in the future.    Some prognostications:

1. More suffering as the financial stuff sinks in and new things will rise out of the ashes.

Hard times are going to drive a new of barter or “in-kind” exchange. Will it be a cottage industry economy? Will it be a network community sensitive to exchange and barter... a Woot.com for product and services grow up? I am guessing it will be those types of things.

That will result in the middle man being taken out of the formula for commence more and more.  That is unemployment and that leads to some heart ache but change.  If it didn't we'd be using buggy whips today...

2.   Having a black President is a lightening rod! Having a President with a vision will draw the volts    and colts as needed.

Now the insurgents in our own country will be running for the caves. And when they come out we, the people, have to meet them. We have to find our cohones and get them in the game.  You don't need to change them; just participate.  After the election we're going to hear and see some nasty stuff. If anything happens to the President there are going to be riots for all sorts of reasons and it won't be only if our black president is gone.

This all sucks you know… it sucks because it is not COMPLEX. It sucks because we have to experience it to grow.

All the money and power falls apart at our feet without the slightest bit of introspection. We’ve had no introspection and we all are the greedy ones living outside our means.

For them and for us, it’s all about the race, the chase, the game for positions and status. Trouble is, once you’ve arrived, where are you? We are rudderless now.  Our experiences will put us on a course with a world view rather than a mirror view.

It is as reported to be for us and for our government?   Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Brand your blog to world wind.

http://blog-dna.blogspot.com/

See advertising idea from pics.

http://advertising-pics-idea.blogspot.com/

Thanks.

 Make money, save time.
You're probably a lot like me - the more keyword research you do, the more you crave a research tool that's faster, easier and doesn't require homework to operate. I know I'd much rather be making money than wasting time. Wouldn't you?

Keyword Magic Professional is a tool that anyone can use straight out of the box - no training manuals necessary. It's not a fully-featured, expert-only keyword research tool; it's an everyday keyword tool for every day keyword researching.

So if you need immediate SEO or PPC keyword data, the 3 minute purchase process to get the tool is the longest you'll ever have to wait again.

Fast and Friendly Research
This is how easy Keyword Magic Professional makes finding new niches and exploring PPC avenues. You start the program, type in your keyword, and (just like magic?) keyword research data appears right before your eyes, including:

• Search volume data
• Competition data for Google, Yahoo and MSN
• Number of active Google ads for your keyword
• R/S data

 

 

The keyword search is fast and friendly, returning up to 100 results per keyword. I enter our trusty test keyword "fly fishing", and 5 seconds later I have a big, long list of keywords sorted by search volume.

 

 

 

From here you can dig deeper for any keyword with a simple "right click" of your mouse (which is a feature I really love). In fact, there's right-mouse functionality everywhere in this tool. So yes, it's a Windows only program.

 

 Equally impressively is the browser-like "tab" system that Keyword Magic Professional uses. It gives you total freedom to dig and search away without losing your previous search data. All the modern Internet browsers understand the importance of these multi-tab work-spaces, so it's great to see a keyword research tool creating the same work-friendly environment.

To dig deeper on any keyword all I need to do is:

o        Right-click my mouse

o        Select "Search Current Keyword"

My new search for "fly fishing equipment" is opened in a new tab. This means my precious "fly fishing" data is still open in the background, never more than a mouse click away.

I can keep digging as deep as I want, with every new search opening a new tab. So if you're sick of saving your research every time you want to dig deeper or run a new keyword, you'll ogle every time you use this tool.

Customize Keywords to Suit Your Needs
Keyword research can be laborious. So every key stroke saved is a good one. Keyword Magic Professional has some great custom options that allow you to take real keyword data and instantly customize it to suit your own PPC or SEO needs. Two of the best features are:

o        Negative keywords

o        Prefix and Suffix tools

The negative keyword feature is super simple and super effective. I'm targeting "freshwater" fly fishing, but "saltwater" has appeared in a few of my results. Because it's useless to me, I simply type "saltwater, salt" into the negative keyword box and all instances of these terms are stripped from my data.

And taking this one step further, I'll now use the Prefix function to add "fresh water" to every keyword. This means I'm now targeting my niche with super accuracy, which will save me both time and money.

 

Really Reliable Data
Keyword Magic Professional is unquestionably reliable. This is a big statement I know, and I'm sure you're asking "How is a brand new keyword tool unquestionably reliable"? But the answer is simple - it uses the WordTracker database for its keyword data.

If you don't know, WordTracker is one of the most respected keyword research tools in the industry. Many an expert swears by it as "the" keyword research tool due to its data accuracy. But its price also matches its reputation (a $59 per month subscription).

Keyword Magic Professional capitalizes on WordTracker's accuracy with a subscription-free offer. So you always have access to the latest keyword data without any monthly fees.

 

Everything You Need, and Nothing That You Don't.
When I first entered the keyword research world, I used to think I needed a single tool with every conceivable, optional and possible feature - just in case I one day might need to use them.

 

 

 

You can Get Your Keyword Magic HERE  and be profiting from the latest keyword data in less than 3 minutes.

"Building Community Within you website"

The notion of customer experience in e-commerce refers to targeting a customer’s perception & interpretation of all the stimuli encountered while interacting with a firm. There are 7 C’s to effectively building and maintaining a customer experience: context, content, community, customization, communication, connection and commerce. Here we will focus on community and explore some underlying methods of building community within your website.

Community refers to how sites build relationships between users. Strong community encourages stickiness and loyalty. Some examples of the way firms can build communities in their websites are: support forums, discussion/message boards or forums, member areas and blogs. Basically, building community is a way for users of your site to connect and communicate with each other. We will now look explore some of the tools used to build community in particularly discussion/message boards and blogs.

One article about discussion/message boards  examines the several advantages of a message board over an email list or instant chatting.  One of the advantages that stood out in the piece was the fact that past and present messages on a message board are readily viewable. This means that evidence of quality participation and a large group of participants is necessary to encourage more visitors to contribute.  The task then here is developing topics that drive traffic to the conversation.

Blogs can be a great way to encourage users to participate in your website and remain engaged with your websites content. However, professional blogger for Viral Garden, Mark Collier, has a some very interesting points and suggestions made in his article about blogging. He suggests that there is a big difference between blogging and expecting people to participate, and actually creating a viral community within your website. Some of the few blogs he links to include: Jack Yan’s “The Persuader Blog”, Clyde Smith’s “Hip-Hop Marketing”, and Toby Bloomberg’s “The Diva Marketing Blog”.

Priya Shah, a partner at a search engine marketing firm, in her article “How to build Traffic to your Blog”, states that “Write and they will come” isn’t exactly a magic formula to bring in traffic by the boatload. In her article she has 8 points of consideration for anyone wishing to build community through a blog.

1. Write posts that People will Want to read
2. Optimize your Post for Search Engines
3. Submit your blog and RSS feed to directories
4. Ping the Blog Service
5. Build Links to Your blog
6. Edit Your Blog Posts into Articles
7. Create buzz about your blog
8. Capture Subscribers by Email

Alot of things must be taken into consideration when implementing tools to build community and keeping that community together. Justilien Gaspard, at SerachEngineWatch.com discusses various aspects about building community in his article. He states that that a viral marketing campaign, whether it be blogging, forums, or discussion boards, or any combination of tools, has a greater likelihood of success by having specific objectives and targeting communities. There are no guarantees with viral marketing, he admits. Finally, he states that if it doesn’t succeed, explore what you can improve on, what you’ve learned and put that new knowledge into another campaign. He says at the very least you developed some relationships with people to promote your next vial marketing initiative. Building viral communities in your website is a good way to bring a group of people (your customers) together that share common interest(s), who can generate content to your website, and feel that they are an important and integral part of what you are offering. 

By Joel Goldenberg, The Suburban 2008-06-18

Côte St. Luc’s public security personnel are too overzealous in giving tickets to parents dropping off their children at a daycare facility on Wavell Road, in the former Jewish Peoples and Peretz Schools building, says mother Tali Sibony.

“There is parking for 10 minutes in the area, and every morning Côte St. Luc public security, at the 11-minute mark, starts giving tickets,” she said. “This is ridiculous. This is a daycare, sometimes their kids are crying and they have to stay there for 11 minutes. Give a ticket after a half-hour or 20 minutes. This is squeezing parents’ money, and I find it ridiculous. One morning, my daughter was crying, and I went to my car after 13 minutes and had a ticket written and waiting for me.

“I will probably pay the ticket but I wanted to send out a message on this.”

Councillor Glenn Nashen, in charge of the public security dossier on council, said police and public security have “prioritized traffic safety where children are concerned, throughout this school year.

“We have asked public security to be vigilant in school zones and around parks. Public security makes daily rounds of schools during morning drop off and afternoon pick up. They are speaking with parents and advising them how we keep their children safe in these areas. I have personally visited every school zone with public security to ensure the safety of the children.

“After months of education, public security is enforcing and ticketing the most serious infractions, namely parking on a crosswalk and double parking. They have been quite lenient in those areas where there is only drop off or no parking and have allowed 10 minutes, when three minutes is normally the maximum.

“Having heard complaints from parents about the need for more drop off time and spaces I have recommended that the city standardize the signage in front of every school, increase the number of spots and the length of time permitted. This is being done over the summer in time for next school year beginning the end of August.

Nashen said public security and police “have been doing an excellent job for which I’ve received positive feedback from the majority of parents who obey the provincial Highway Code and municipal bylaws and teach their children how to cross the road safely. Safety is everyone’s responsibility.”