Gerald Ford Passes Away At 93

I just saw on the wire services that former president Gerald Ford passed away at the age of 93.

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4 Ways to Remember the Godfather of Soul

I was talking with a friend at work today about James Brown, who died yesterday on Christmas morning. I told him that it was going to be tough, because he was an artist that we all listened to back home in Indiana. The thing that I liked about him is that he had a lot of energy and had a lot of fun doing what he did best. I even tried to imitate his split on stage as a teenager, but the only thing that I did was split my pants. The lyrics to a lot of his songs were interesting too. But, it got me to thinking, how can I keep his memory alive and teach my daughter about his life. I thought of 4 ways that anyone can do this:

1. If you were going to be in the Augusta, Ga. Area this coming Friday and Saturday, you could go to his funeral.
2. Visit websites devoted to him:

• James Brown Home Page
• Profile On Wikipedia
• Profile on IMDB
• Profile on VH1
• Profile on Rolling Stone
• MySpace Profiles:
• http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=60031125
• http://www.myspace.com/soulbrothernumberone
• The Godfather of Soul
• 2006 Induction Into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
• James Brown Page on Soul Patrol.com
• Special Tribute from the Augusta Chronicle , his hometown paper –
• Special Tribute on NPR
• His Most Important Hits
• How James Brown Got on the Good Foot
• Tribute on the Blogs of War blog

3. Listen to and Watch his music:

• NPR Broadcast – 12/26/06
• Performing “Sex Machine” (You Tube)
• Performing "I Feel Good" (You Tube)
• Listen to his music on LastFM
• Watch the American Masters tribune from PBS

4. Buy His Music from Amazon.com

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Five Things that You Did Not Know About The Information Junkie

Paticipation in Darren Rowse’s last group writing project of the year earlier this week was a success in my book. I received a surge of visitors to my blog and most importantly, I received 10 comments on my post, which were all encouraging. Since feedback and relationships are going to have to be an ongoing activity, I wanted to give you five quick facts that you may find interesting from my life:

1. My best friend is an accountant.
2. I played both the clarinet and saxophone in high school.
3. I enjoy watching, discussing, and reading about my favorite team, the Los Angeles Lakers.
4. The Jackson 5 grew up and got their first exposure in Gary, Indiana before they became famous. My grandmother was in charge of security for their first concert back home in Gary. I was there in attendance.
   
5. I graduated 47^th in my high school class at West Side High School in Gary, Indiana.

I want to know more about my fellow commenters and readers as well, so feel free to leave your comments at the end of this post. In the meantime, I will tag my commenters with this meme (Gary Rogers was already tagged somewhere else) :

Jennifer Lynn

Tyler

Ashish Mohta

Tigerfish

MamaDuck

Sarah Lewis

Brad Shorr

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How I Made It Through 2006 As A Newbie Blogger Without Losing The Rest of My Hair

Darren Rowse over at Problogger.net started a group writing project earlier this year that helped me set some very specific goals for this blog so I can commit to putting in the time to take it to the next level of visibility in the blogosphere. It is always good to re-evaluate your goals to see just exactly where you are. The goal that I set for myself was to increase my writing in order to get more than five readers a day viewing my content. In this year-end review, (which is Darren’s final group writing project for the year) I will revisit the specific steps that I tried to use to achieve this goal:

1. Enter more blog carnivals on a weekly basis: I entered blog carnivals a lot when I first started blogging, but it fell off when I got consumed with other family-oriented priorities such as buying a new house and selling my old one.

2. Define the purpose of my blog: I narrowed the purpose of my blog to one that highlights information that an average person would find interesting and perhaps pass it along to a friend or a neighbor who can benefit by using it. The term “junkie” my have a negative connotation, but it certainly wasn’t meant that way. I don’t have an addiction to information, just a passion for seeing it.

3. Post more consistently: I got distracted in the middle of the year, when I was looking for a new house and tried to sell my old one. So my blogging would have huge gaps in them, sometimes going days without posting anything. I need to be more consistent with this in 2007; the good thing is that I am settled into my new house and can contentrate more about posting more frequently.

4. Participate in more forums: Same old story, need more time to be more effective.

5. Invite more feedback from readers: Linkbaiting seems to be effective for most bloggers, I want to understand more of how it works so it can be successful for me in 2007.

The good thing about 2006 was that even though I posted lightly, I was deemed an active member and contributor to the blogosphere by Time Magazine .

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9 Reasons Why The Information Junkie is the Person of the Year

I discovered today through my RSS reader that Time Magazine named the Information Junkie as a person of the year. I am extremely proud of the honor given these facts:

• Since early this year 1,500 people have visited my little blog (An average of 2 per day).
• These people have spent at least 15 seconds reading a post on my blog.
• I have received visitors from as far away as Brazil and Indonesia.
• A reader reads an average of one post a day on my little blog.
• It has cost me nothing to run this blog and update it.
• I have written about anything that I like, whether people agree or disagree with my opinions or not.
• I have shared information with total strangers, friends, and family that may help them solve a problem or gain a new perspective on something that they have read.
• I have reached a wider audience that I wouldn’t ordinarily reach with other traditional means of communication.
• People far and wide can still read your writings in the years to come, even if you get bored with blogging.

I am proud to be a member of the blosphere, which is an interconnected community. There are no barriers to entry, and there are many opportunities to join in on the fun. The key to the Web 2.0 phenomenon is to develop a long-lasting community around something popular. Once you have established it, revenue ideas are abundant.

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Best Blogs of 2006

Fimoculous.com which has been known as the master of the year end list, has a roundup of thirty or so blogs that are worthy of a good read, but may have been overlooked. I am going to go through his list and see if I agree with him.

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