Sorted By: Relevance | Date Disneyland Resort Audio Podcast #021 9 Feb 2007 at 5:01am A Disneyland "Dream Job" could be yours. The opportunity is among the million dreams being awarded to guests during "The Year of a Million Dreams" at Disneyland and Walt Disney World. If you've ever wanted to step into the shoes of a Disneyland cast member, the latest Disneyland Resort Podcast is for you. Your host, Michael Geoghegan, reveals how you can apply online for a Disney Dream Job - Jungle Cruise Guide, Princess-in-Training, Parade Performer, Pirate, or Haunted Mansion Butler or Maid. For a further taste of the Dream Job experience, Michael talks to some Disneyland "Cast Members" who do these jobs on a daily basis. The podcast can be heard online or downloaded to your iPod or MP3 portable device. If you enjoy this month's podcast, please tell your friends and leave a review at the Official Disneyland Resort Audio Podcast homepage on the iTunes Directory. Disneyland Resort Audio Podcast #018 7 Feb 2007 at 3:36pm Dreams and, perhaps, nightmares are the stuff of the Official Disneyland Resort Audio Podcast for this festive season - Halloween, of course. The podcast can be heard online or downloaded to your iPod or MP3 portable device. First, Jim Alessandro, Senior Vice President, Marketing, for the Disneyland Resort, will provide an overview of the surprises and rewards in store during the Year of a Million Dreams, from now through December 2007 at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World in Florida. Next up, Michael Williams of Disneyland Entertainment Services describes some of the special experiences now available for younger guests at Disneyland, where kids can undergo hands-on Year of a Million Dreams training as Princesses, Pirates, Jedi or High School Musical stars. Then we turn our attention to haunted Halloween fun with a guided tour - not only behind-the-scenes but bottom-to-top - of the Hollywood Tower Hotel in Disney's California Adventure, aka The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Your guide through the spooky hostelry is David Rivera, a knowledgeable member of the "Hotel" staff, who'll provide a memorable audio exploration of some hidden corners of the attraction which guests never see. If you enjoy this month's podcast, please tell your friends and leave a review at the Official Disneyland Resort Audio Podcast homepage on the iTunes Directory. Guided By Noise 13 Apr 2007 at 6:49pm p* strongGuided By Voices/strong: a href="http://files.ofmirroreye.net/mp3/2007-04-08/gbv-03-chain.mp3" target="_blank"Tractor Rape Chain/a (5.0 mb) | a href="http://files.ofmirroreye.net/mp3/2007-04-08/gbv-04-directory.mp3" target="_blank"The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory/a (2.5 mb) | a href="http://files.ofmirroreye.net/mp3/2007-04-08/gbv-18-scientist.mp3" target="_blank"I Am A Scientist/a (3.5 mb) | a href="http://files.ofmirroreye.net/mp3/2007-04-08/gbv-19-peep-hole.mp3" target="_blank"Peep-Hole/a (2.0 mb) | a href="http://files.ofmirroreye.net/mp3/2007-04-08/gbv-20-airplane.mp3" target="_blank"You#8217;re Not An Airplane/a (1.0 mb)br / From emBee Thousand : a href="http://www.scatrecords.com/" target="_blank"Scat Records/a : Scat35/em/p div align=centerimg src="http://files.ofmirroreye.net/images/2007/gbv.jpg" alt="Guided By Voices" //div pBack in my senior year of high school, I started dabbling more in the indie music realm, started reading smaller music magazines in search of other music and started to try and expand my horizons. I remember reading about this band a href="http://www.gbv.com/" target="_blank"Guided By Voices/a recording this completely amazing album, emBee Thousand/em. So, I decided to check them out at the local record mart (this one allowed free listens). I wish that I could say that I was cool enough to totally appreciate the band on first listen. Unfortunately that wasn#8217;t the case./p pMy first listen to emBee Thousand/em resulted in total and utter confusion. I mean, here were a load of half-finished, barely recorded, nonsensical songs that I just didn#8217;t understand. I guess I just wasn#8217;t ready to grasp the genius that is Guided By Voices. I also wish that I could say that I quickly realized the errors of my ways, but it really wasn#8217;t until a year or so later that I, at the urging of some friends, finally gave it a real listen. And to my surprise, I totally loved it./p blockquotepGuided By Voices got it right back in 1994. Bee Thousand is the band#8217;s definitive moment, the point when the ringing Who-isms of Pollard#8217;s youth#8211; filtered through four-tracks and his own post-punk, X-Men, stream-of-consciousness quirks#8211; finally matured beyond the atonal growing pains of Vampire on Titus and Propeller. The distinction was slight but unmistakable#8211; like learning to harness all the jaw-dropping, stadium-quaking power of Propeller#8217;s triumphant exclamation (#8221;I#8217;m much greater than you think!#8221;) without all the run-up or refining the unworked defiance of #8220;Exit Flagger#8221;. On Bee Thousand, GBV mastered all those fragments of greatness and assembled an entire album from them. (from a href="http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/18240-bee-thousand-the-dire ctors-cut" target="_blank"Eric Carr/a)/p/blockquote pThis is a completely amazing album that#8217;s quite possibly one of the defining artifacts of the lo-fi revolution. The songs, are absolute pop gems that shine with their brilliance./p p#8212;#8211;+#8212;#8211;/p Online Business Podcasting Expo Jan 19-21, 2007 Offers Seminars 15 Jan 2007 at 10:43am table bgcolor="#FFFFFF"td tr td align="left" valign="top" tr td align="left" valign="bottom" fonta href='#' rel="bookmark"span class="h1format" Online Business Podcasting Expo Jan 19-21, 2007 Offers Seminars For Overcoming Challenges for ADHD Entrepreneurs, Quickbook Training, Outlook Tips, Podcasting, and more./span/a/font/td /tr tr td/td /tr tr tdtable width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" tr td align="left" valign="bottom" p align="center" class="text11px" /p p align="center" class="text11px"a href="http://ww1.prweb.com/prfiles/2007/01/13/497336/IPE2006OctoberTestimonial1mixed. mp3" target="_blank"font color="#FF0000"strongListen to what previous Expo Attendees have to say.../strong/font/a/p p class="text11px"fonta href="http://mediaserver.prweb.com/pdfdownload/497336/pr.pdf"img src="http://www.PRWeb.com/images_v4/adobepdf.gif" border="0"/a a href="http://mediaserver.prweb.com/pdfdownload/497336/pr.pdf"Download this press release as an Adobe PDF document./a /font/p/td /tr /table/td /tr tr td align="left" valign="top"/td /tr tr td align="left" valign="top" class="text12px" p p fontiThe Business Podcasting Expo is an Online Audio/Visual Business Conference with seminars including ADHD Challenges for Entrepreneurs, Quickbook Training, Outlook Tips, and Installing WordPress. The BizPodExpo also offers introductory classes on Podcasting, and how to increase your search engine ranking using this audio/video social media. There will be thousands of dollars worth of giveaways and prizes, and a Data DVD of all recorded seminars is included with full Admission. The event is sponsored by Co-Op World and PodcastDirectories4Sale.com/i /font/p pfont (a href='http://www.prweb.com/'PRWEB/a) January 15, 2007 -- The Online Business Podcasting Expo will be held January 19-21, 2007. All that is needed to attend is an internet connection and speakers, and a microphone for verbal interaction. All of the audio/visual seminar classes and networking events are recorded on data DVD for shipment to full admission attendees.BR BR /font fontimg src="http://ww1.prweb.com/prfiles/2007/01/13/497336/BizPodExpo300x300.jpg" align="right" border="0"br br Three seminars will be open to the public, including: br - b"ADD/ADHD - How Entrepreneurs Can Overcome It"/b, by Barry Bettman, Professional Certified Coach specializing in ADD and Autism, br - b"Navigating New Media: What It Is and How It Can Transform Your Business"/b, by John C. Havens, Podcasting Guide for About.com, and br - b"Business Podcasting"/b, by Small Biz Pod's Alex Bellinger. br br Samples of other business seminars include Beginning and Advanced Quickbooks Training, Outlook Training, Getting the Most Out of Your Tax Deductions, WordPress Installation and Usage, Networking, and How to Build a PR Platform.br br Podcasting seminars will include Introduction to Podcasting, Introduction to WavePad and Mixpad, Introduction to Audacity, Why Video Podcast, Beginning Video Podcasting, and Podcasting to Increase Your Search Engine Ranking.br br Every full admission attendee will receive a Website Consultation from the Perspective of the Media from Annie Jennings, Recording/Editing/Mixing Software, Podcatching Software, a multi-media Podcasting Handbook, and a Data DVD of all recorded sessions. Other giveaways include Sharepoint Video Tutorial Bundles from Andrea Kalli, Lifetime Licenses of Pamela Pro for Skype from Dick Schiferli, Books, MP3 Players, Audio Books, a Branded Podcatcher, and more. br br The Expo is sponsored by a href="http://www.PodcastDirectories4Sale.com" target="_blank" title="PodcastDirectories4Sale.com"PodcastDirectories4Sale.com/a, the only Podcast Directory Software created by Podcasters. Several niche market Podcast Directories opening this month include the Business Resources Podcast Directory, Women's Health and Fitness Podcast Directory, Musicians Podcast Directory, Technology Podcast Directory, and Small Business Podcast Directory. The Family Friendly Podcast Directory has moved to a new site to utilize this new Directory Software. All Podcasters are invited to submit their podcasts to the appropriate niche Directory.br br For more information about the Online Business Podcasting Conference, go to a href="http://www.BizPodExpo.com" target="_blank"http://www.BizPodExpo.com/a, or contact Expo Organizer, Penny Haynes.br br ### /p /font hr View the Schedule here:BR img src="http://www.mybusinessbookstore.com/PodcastingExpo/BizPodExpo/Images/BizPodExpo07 .jpg" width="550" height="200"br h3Join us on January 19-21, 2007 at the Online Business Podcasting Expo (BizPodExpo.com)./h3This will be an online Business Conference, with introductory courses about Podcasting. h3All you need to attend is an internet connection and a headset microphone./h3 a href="http://podcasting.global.co-opworld.com/podcastingcommunityexpo.php" target="_blank"img src="http://www.mybusinessbookstore.com/PodcastingExpo/EnterExpoHere.jpg"/aa href="http://www.PodcastingDirectories4Sale.com" target="_blank"img src="http://www.mybusinessbookstore.com/PodcastDirectories4Sale/Images/pd4s.jpg" width="125" height="153"/ahr Scheduled seminar speakers and subjects include: brbr table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="832" tr tdFriday 19tspanh/span/td td colspan="2"ALL EST TIME/td td/td tdSpeaker/td tdTitle/td td/td td/td td/td td/td td/td td/td td/td /tr tr tdRoom 1/td tdStudio LivespanCast/span/td td colspan="2"Room 2 Podcast/td td colspan="9"/td /tr tr tdWomens/td td colspan="12"/td /tr tr td class="xl24" align="right"7:00 PM/td td colspan="2"/td tdGreen Roospanm/span/td td colspan="4"Pre Check Your Audio Equipment/td td colspan="5"/td /tr tr td colspan="13"/td /tr tr td class="xl24" align="right"8:00 PM/td td colspan="2"/td tdStudio LivespanCast/span/td td colspan="3"Official Opening Networking/td td colspan="6"/td /tr tr td/td td colspan="2"8:00 pm FREE/td tdStudio LivespanCast/span/td tdfont color="#FF0000"strongJohn Havespanns/span/strong/font/td td colspan="7"strongfont color="#FF0000"KEYNOTE: Navigating New Media: What It Is and How It Can Transform Your Business (OPEN TO THE PUBLIC)/font/strong/td td/td /tr tr td class="xl24" align="right"9:00 PM/td td colspan="2"/td tdEnter Roospanm 1/span/td tdstrongDavid Kruespanger, MD/span/strong/td td colspan="6"strongfont color="#0000FF"The Three Most Powerful Executive Success Strategies/font/strong/td td colspan="2"/td /tr tr td colspan="2"/td td class="xl24" align="right"9:30 PM/td td colspan="2"Enter Room 2/td td colspan="8"/td /tr tr td class="xl24" align="right"10:00 PM/td td colspan="2"/td tdEnter Roospanm 1/span/td tdstrongAnnie Jenspannings/span/strong/td td colspan="4"font color="#0000FF"strongHow to Create A Powerful Platform/strong/font/td td colspan="4"/td /tr tr td colspan="2"/td td class="xl24" align="right"10:30 PM/td tdEnter Roospanm 2/span/td tdstrongRamon Raspany/span/strong/td td colspan="2"font color="#0000FF"strongEmail marketing: Email. It’s not a four letter word/strong/font/td td colspan="6"font color="#0000FF" /font/td /tr td class="xl24" align="right"11:00 PM/td td colspan="2"/td tdEnter Roospanm 1/span/td tdstrongPenny Haspanynes/span/strong/td td colspan="6"strongfont color="#0000FF"Introduction to Podcasting/font/strong/td td colspan="2"/td /tr tr td class="xl24" align="right"12:00 AM/td td colspan="2"/td tdEnter Roospanm 1/span/td td colspan="3"Friday Night Close, Networking/td td colspan="6"/td /tr tr td colspan="4"/td td colspan="3"and Visit the Exhibitor Booths/td td colspan="6"/td /tr tr tdSaturday 2span0th/span/td td colspan="2"ALL EST TIME/td td/td tdSpeaker/td tdTitle/td td colspan="7"/td /tr tr tdRoom 1/td tdStudio LivespanCast/span/td td colspan="2"Room 2 Podcast/td td colspan="9"/td /tr tr td7:30am/td td colspan="2"/td tdGreen Roospanm/span/td td colspan="4"Pre Check Your Audio Equipment/td td colspan="5"/td /tr tr td colspan="13"/td /tr tr td/td td class="xl24" align="right"8:00 AM/td td/td tdEnter Roospanm 1/span/td td colspan="3"Saturday Opening, Networking/td td colspan="6"/td /tr tr td colspan="4"/td td colspan="3"and Visit the Exhibitor Booths/td td colspan="6"/td /tr tr td class="xl24" align="right"9:00 AM/td td colspan="2"/td tdEnter Roospanm 1/span/td tdstrongLaura Gonspanzalez/span/strong/td td colspan="6"font color="#0000FF"strongQuickbooks Tips and Tools for the NEW QuickBooks User/strong/font/td td colspan="2"/td /tr tr td colspan="2"/td td class="xl24" align="right"9:30 AM/td tdEnter Roospanm 2/span/td tdstrongAlicia Forespanst/span/strong/td td colspan="8"font color="#0000FF"strongHow to Use Free Teleseminars to Sell More of Your Fee-Based Products and Services/strong/font/td /tr tr td class="xl24" align="right"10:00 AM/td td colspan="2"/td tdEnter Roospanm 1/span/td tdstrongLaura Gonspanzalez/span/strong/td td colspan="6"font color="#0000FF"strongQuickbooks Tips and Tools for the EXISTING QuickBooks User/strong/font/td td colspan="2"/td /tr tr td colspan="2"/td td class="xl24" align="right"10:30 AM/td tdEnter Roospanm 2/span/td tdstrongDonna Lenspandzyk/span/strong/td td colspan="4"font color="#0000FF"strongHow to get more done in less time/strong/font/td td colspan="4"font color="#0000FF" /font/td /tr tr td class="xl24" align="right"11:00 AM/td td colspan="2"/td tdEnter Roospanm 1/span/td tdstrongJerry Franspanklin/span/strong/td td colspan="3"font color="#0000FF"strongIntroduction to Audacity/strong/font/td td colspan="5"font color="#0000FF" /font/td /tr tr td colspan="2"/td td class="xl24" align="right"11:30 AM/td tdEnter Roospanm 2/span/td tdstrongPhil Parker/strong/td td colspan="5"font color="#0000FF"strongFrom A Life of Business to the Business of Life/strong/font/td td colspan="3"font color="#0000FF" /font/td /tr tr td class="xl24" align="right"12:00 PM/td td colspan="2"/td tdEnter Roospanm 1/span/td tdstrongLorraine Cspanohen/span/strong/td td colspan="2"font color="#0000FF"strongPowerful Networking/strong/font/td td colspan="6"font color="#0000FF" /font/td /tr tr td class="xl24" align="right"1:00 PM/td td colspan="2"/td tdEnter Roospanm 1/span/td td colspan="4"strongNetworking for Podcasters - 2 hours/strong/td td colspan="5"font color="#0000FF" /font/td /tr tr td class="xl24" align="right"3:00 PM/td td colspan="2"/td tdEnter Roospanm 1/span/td tdstrongAndrea Kaspanlli/span/strong/td td colspan="3"font color="#0000FF"strongOutlook tips and strategies/strong/font/td td colspan="5"font color="#0000FF" /font/td /tr tr td/td td class="xl24" align="right"3:15 PM/td td/td tdStudio LivespanCast/span/td tdfont color="#FF0000"strongAlex Bellinspanger/span/strong/font/td td colspan="2"font color="#FF0000"strongKEYNOTE: Business Podcasting (OPEN TO THE PUBLIC)/strong/font/td td colspan="6"font color="#0000FF" /font/td /tr tr td/td tdFREE/td td colspan="11"/td /tr tr td class="xl24" align="right"4:00 PM/td td colspan="2"/td tdEnter Roospanm 1/span/td tdstrongBiana Babispannsky/span/strong/td td colspan="5"font color="#0000FF"strongWhy You Should Create Information Products/strong/font/td td colspan="3"font color="#0000FF" /font/td /tr tr td/td td class="xl24" align="right"4:15 PM/td td/td td colspan="2"Studio LiveCast/td td colspan="8"font color="#0000FF" /font/td /tr tr td colspan="2"/td td class="xl24" align="right"4:30 PM/td tdEnter Roospanm 2/span/td tdstrongJames Harspanris/span/strong/td td colspan="3"font color="#0000FF"strongCorporate Podcasting/strong/font/td td colspan="5"font color="#0000FF" /font/td /tr tr td class="xl24" align="right"5:00 PM/td td colspan="2"/td tdEnter Roospanm 1/span/td tdstrongBarry Bettspanman/span/strong/td td colspan="4"font color="#0000FF"strongFrom Creativity to Getting the Job Done./strong/font/td td colspan="4"font color="#0000FF" /font/td /tr tr td/td td class="xl24" align="right"5:15 PM/td td/td td colspan="2"Studio LiveCast/td td colspan="8"/td /tr tr td colspan="2"/td td class="xl24" align="right"5:30 PM/td td colspan="2"Enter Room 2/td td colspan="8"/td /tr tr td class="xl24" align="right"6:30 PM/td td colspan="2"/td tdEnter Roospanm 1/span/td td colspan="4"Business to Business Speed Networking/td td colspan="5"/td /tr tr td/td td class="xl24" align="right"8:00 PM/td td/td td colspan="3"Visit the Exhibitor Booths/td td colspan="7"/td /tr tr td class="xl24" align="right"9:00 PM/td td colspan="2"/td tdEnter Roospanm 1/span/td tdstrongPenny Haspanyne/span/strongspanstrongs/strong/span/td td colspan="4"font color="#0000FF"strongIntroduction to WavePad AND MixPad/strong/font/td td colspan="4"/td /tr tr td/td td class="xl24" align="right"9:15 PM/td td/td td colspan="2"Studio LiveCast/td td colspan="8"font color="#0000FF" /font/td /tr tr td colspan="2"/td td class="xl24" align="right"9:30 PM/td td colspan="2"Enter Room 2/td td colspan="8"font color="#0000FF" /font/td /tr tr td class="xl24" align="right"10:00 PM/td td colspan="2"/td tdEnter Roospanm 1/span/td tdstrongMike Cecospantka/span/strong/td td colspan="3"font color="#0000FF"strongWhy Video Podcasting/strong/font/td td colspan="5"font color="#0000FF" /font/td /tr tr td/td td class="xl24" align="right"10:15 PM/td td/td td colspan="2"Studio LiveCast/td td colspan="8"/td /tr tr td colspan="2"/td td class="xl24" align="right"10:30 PM/td td colspan="2"Enter Room 2/td td colspan="8"/td /tr tr td class="xl24" align="right"11:00 PM/td td colspan="2"/td td colspan="2"Enter Room 1/td td colspan="8"/td /tr tr td class="xl25" align="right"11:30:00/td td colspan="2"/td tdEnter Roospanm 1/span/td td colspan="4"Saturday Night Close, Networking/td td colspan="5"/td /tr tr td colspan="4"/td td colspan="3"and Visit the Exhibitor Booths/td td colspan="6"/td /tr tr tdSunday 21spanst/span/td td colspan="2"ALL EST TIME/td td/td tdSpeaker/td tdTitle/td td colspan="7"/td /tr tr tdRoom 1/td tdStudio LivespanCast/span/td td colspan="2"Room 2 Podcast/td td colspan="9"/td /tr tr td class="xl24" align="right"8:30 AM/td td colspan="2"/td tdGreen Roospanm/span/td td colspan="4"Pre Check Your Audio Equipment/td td colspan="5"/td /tr tr td colspan="13"/td /tr tr td class="xl24" align="right"9:00 AM/td td colspan="2"/td td colspan="2"Enter Room 1/td td colspan="8"/td /tr tr td colspan="2"/td td class="xl24" align="right"9:30 AM/td td colspan="2"Enter Room 2/td td colspan="8"/td /tr tr td class="xl24" align="right"10:00 AM/td td colspan="2"/td tdEnter Roospanm 1/span/td tdstrongSuzette Flspanemming/span/strong/td td colspan="4"font color="#0000FF"strongGet the Most Out of Your Tax Deductions/strong/font/td td colspan="4"/td /tr tr td colspan="2"/td td class="xl24" align="right"10:30 AM/td td colspan="2"Enter Room 2/td td colspan="8"font color="#0000FF" /font/td /tr tr td class="xl24" align="right"11:00 AM/td td colspan="2"/td tdEnter Roospanm 1/span/td tdstrongShelly Colspane/span/strong/td td colspan="3"font color="#0000FF"strongInstalling and Using WordPress/strong/font/td td colspan="5"font color="#0000FF" /font/td /tr tr td colspan="2"/td td class="xl24" align="right"11:30 AM/td td colspan="2"Enter Room 2/td td colspan="8"/td /tr tr td/td td class="xl24" align="right"12:30 PM/td td/td tdStudio LivespanCast/span/td td colspan="4"strongBusiness to Consumer Networking/strong/td td colspan="5"/td /tr tr td/td td colspan="2"2:15 pm FREE/td tdStudio LivespanCast/span/td tdfont color="#FF0000"strongBarry Bettspanman/span/strong/font/td td colspan="4"font color="#FF0000"strongKEYNOTE: ADD/ADHD - How to overcome it. (OPEN TO THE PUBLIC)/strong/font/td td colspan="4"/td /tr tr td/td td class="xl25" align="right"15:15:00/td td/td td colspan="2"Studio LiveCast/td td colspan="8"font color="#0000FF" /font/td /tr tr td/td tdFREE/td td colspan="11"/td /tr tr td colspan="2"/td td class="xl24" align="right"3:30 PM/td tdEnter Roospanm 2/span/td tdstrongMary McDspanonald/span/strong/td td colspan="2"font color="#0000FF"strongProcrastination/strong/font/td td colspan="6"font color="#0000FF" /font/td /tr tr td class="xl24" align="right"4:00 PM/td td colspan="2"/td tdEnter Roospanm 1/span/td tdstrongLesley Scspanott/span/strong/td td colspan="4"font color="#0000FF"strongPodcasting to Reinforce Your Brand/strong/font/td td colspan="4"/td /tr tr td colspan="2"/td td class="xl24" align="right"4:30 PM/td td colspan="2"Enter Room 2/td td colspan="8"font color="#0000FF" /font/td /tr tr td class="xl24" align="right"5:00 PM/td td colspan="2"/td tdEnter Roospanm 1/span/td tdstrongPenny Haspanynes/span/strong/td td colspan="3"font color="#0000FF"strongBusiness in the Next 10 Years/strong/font/td td colspan="5"font color="#0000FF" /font/td /tr tr td/td td colspan="2"5:15 pm FREE/td td colspan="2"Studio LiveCast/td td colspan="8"/td /tr tr td colspan="2"/td td class="xl24" align="right"5:30 PM/td td colspan="2"Enter Room 2 strongRob Anderson/strong/td td colspan="8"strongfont color="#0000FF"Building Your Business with SeminarCasting and LaunchCasting/font/strong/td /tr tr td/td td class="xl24" align="right"6:30 PM/td td/td tdEnter Roospanm 1/span/td td colspan="3"Last Chance Networking/td td colspan="6"/td /tr tr td/td td class="xl24" align="right"7:30 PM/td td/td tdEnter Roospanm 1/span/td td colspan="2"Official Close/td td colspan="7"/td /tr tr td class="xl24" align="right"8:00 PM/td td colspan="12"/td /tr tr td colspan="3"/td td colspan="3"Visit the Exhibitor Booths/td td colspan="7"/td /tr tr td/td td/td td/td td/td td/td td/td td/td td/td td/td td/td td/td td/td td/td /tr /table h3To get your unlimited access ticket PLUS a Data DVD of all recorded events for only $49.95, a href="http://www.co-opworld.com/member/50522/?bizpodcastingexpo" target="_blank" CLICK HERE/A. /h3 Penny Haynes, a href="http://www.1stPodcastPublishing.com" target="_blank"1st Podcast Publishing/a /td/tablea href="http://quikonnex.com/channel/item/25443" [COMMENT]/a Explainer: Is Benedict's Trip to Brazil Really a Pilgrimage? 10 May 2007 at 12:59pm Mobile Pope Is Benedict's trip to Brazil really a pilgrimage? By Christopher Beam Pope Benedict XVI departed for Brazil on Wednesday, embarking on his first trip to Latin America since starting his pontificate. The Vatican is calling it an "apostolic journey," but news reports have been referring to the trip as a "pilgrimage." Is every papal excursion a pilgrimage? In the strict sense of the word, no. Most religious traditions consider a pilgrimage to be a journey to a holy site as an act of piety for personal sanctification. For example, Pope John Paul II's 2000 visit to Jerusalem, where he prayed at the Western Wall, was definitely a pilgrimage. His trips to Italian ski resorts were not. Pope Benedict XVI's itinerary in Brazil includes visits to holy sites, including the Shrine of Aparecida near São Paulo. He will also preside over the canonization of a Brazilian saint. But his main reason for traveling is more business than personal: He will attend a conference of Latin American bishops held every 10 years to discuss strengthening the church's role in the region. Of course, the word pilgrimage has been used to describe any sort of spiritual journey, whether to a recognized holy shrine or to Graceland. However, the Vatican has long referred to trips like Benedict's as "apostolic journeys." For Catholics, the most common pilgrimage destinations are sites where miracles supposedly occurred. For example, 5 million visitors head to Lourdes, France, every year, to visit the river in which a woman said she saw a figure of the Virgin Mary in 1858. (Many believe the river's water cures disease.) Pilgrimage sites don't need special Vatican approval, but the Official Catholic Directory does publish a guide to church-sanctioned pilgrimages. (The most recent edition doesn't include any sites in Brazil.) The church will sometimes intervene when it suspects people are traveling to visit the site of a false miracle. When visitors began to arrive in Clearwater, Fla., to see a Virgin Mary-shaped rainbow design on the side of a building, a local bishop tried to assure them it wasn't real. Popes have always done a fair amount of traveling, though not every trip was a pilgrimage. In the Middle Ages, Pope Urban II went to Clermont, France, to announce the First Crusade. In the 14th century, the pope relocated to Avignon, France, for a 70-year period called the "Babylonian captivity." Papal travel, pilgrimage or otherwise, stopped altogether between 1870 and 1929, when Rome was ruled by the kingdom of Italy. (Pope Pius IX holed himself up in the Vatican in protest.) After 1963, Paul VI revived the papal pilgrimage, becoming the first pope ever to travel outside Europe. More recently, Pope John Paul II became the most jet-setting of all time, visiting 117 countries. How To Create Your Web Radio Station: A Mini-Guide 14 Mar 2007 at 2:56am pstrongIt is easier than ever/strong to create your own Internet radio station and stream your music, thoughts or discussions live over the web. Not so very long ago you would have faced either incredible equipment expenses and music licensing fees, or the continuous threat of having the authorities shut your pirate radio station down, seizing your music collection in for the bargain. /p pimg alt="radio-dj-id723967_size480.jpg" src="http://www.masternewmedia.org/images/radio-dj-id723967_size480.jpg" width="480" height="720" /br / span class="photocredit"Photo credit: a href="http://www.stockxpert.com/browse.phtml?f=profilel=Brosa"Brosa/a/span /p pThat no longer needs to be the case - whether you decide to create a talk-only station, join a network with pre-paid music licensing, or showcase your own or others a href="http://www.creativecommons.org"Creative Commons/a licensed music, there are plentiful opportunities to reach out to a global audience in the world of online radio. /p pstrongWhere traditional radio broadcasting/strong only traveled as far as the radio waves would let it, with your own Internet-based niche radio station you can reach audiences anywhere on the planet. The only possible limit on your popularity is the quality of your content. But how do you get that content out of your home and streaming across the Internet? /p pIn this mini-guide I guide you through several alternative routes you could take, including:ulliDesktop applications that will set you on your way to broadcasting from your bedroom or office/li /p pliExisting networks that will cover all of your music licensing worries, protecting you from potential copyright infringement issues/li /p pliPeer-to-peer solutions that distribute the bandwidth needed to broadcast among your listeners/li/ul /p pbr /br / Furthermore, I give examples of some great sources of copyright-free material for those who want to broadcast music without worrying about royalties to be paid or having to license commercial tracks from the recording industry majors. /p pstrongSo if you want to set the airwaves alight/strong with your charismatic banter, teach the world a thing or two about great taste in music, or engage a global audience in live, no-holds-barred discussion, you came to the right place. /p pHere are the details: !-- FA -- /ppbr /br / h2Online radio networks/h2 /p pThe following networks supply a broadcasting infrastructure for you to make use of and in the case of music-based shows will cover what might otherwise turn out to be huge music licensing fees. As such, these services allow you to play copyrighted music without incurring extra fees, within your online radio shows. /p pOne of the main advantages of creating your radio station through these existing networks is the fact that you are able to use their streaming technologies to reach a large audience, rather than having to rely on your own bandwidth. /p pbr / br /br / ullistrongLive 365/strong /p pimg alt="live365.gif" src="http://www.masternewmedia.org/images/live365.gif" width="201" height="74" / /p pa href="http://www.live365.com/broadcast/"http://www.live365.com/broadcast//a /p pa href="http://www.live365.com"Live365/a is a network of over 10,000 online radio stations, which are free to listen to. Broadcasters pay a monthly fee for the hosting of their mp3 files and use of the Live365 infrastructure, which includes the following features:ullistrongLive streaming capability/strong: Yes (basic account excluded)/li /p plistrongPre-recorded streaming capability/strong: Yes/li /p plistrongEmbed player in own website/strong: Yes, in pro accounts/li /p plistrongDirectory of online radio stations/strong: Yes/li /p plistrongMusic licensing/strong: Yes, a href="http://wiki.live365.com/pmwiki.php?n=Broadcasting.KeepingYourBroadcastLegal"ful l details/a at Live365 website./li /p plistrongMonetization/strong: Yes. Rewards program gives broadcasters a portion of revenues made from users signing up to a preferred membership program. Professional accounts can add advertising to their ad-free broadcasts and keep 100% of the revenues./li /p plistrongPricing/strong: Pricing ranges from $9.95 per month for a basic account, to $84.95 per month for advanced features. A a href="https://store.live365.com/orders/comparison-chart.live"full list of price plans/a is available at the Live365 website./li/ul/li /p pbr / br /br / listrongMercora/strong /p pimg alt="mercoralogo.jpg" src="http://www.masternewmedia.org/images/mercoralogo.jpg" width="158" height="55" / /p pa href="http://www.mercora.com"http://www.mercora.com/a /p pa href="http://www.mercora.com"Mercora/a is an interesting take on online radio broadcasting, given that DJs, and all users, can tune in to the music from one another's hard drives by means of peer-to-peer technology. At any given time, five files from users' mp3 collection are made available for all to listen to, and would-be DJs can create playlists for other users to listen to. /p pWhile this is not a great solution for those with a compelling desire to talk and announce the next record, if you are simply looking to share your music over the Internet with other listeners, Mercora is an interesting solution. Robin Good a href="http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2006/04/13/social_networking_meets_music_lis tening.htm"reviewed the latest in the Mercora line-up, Radio 2.0/a. Features include:ullistrongLive streaming capability/strong: Yes (mp3 tracks only)/li /p plistrongPre-recorded streaming capability/strong: Yes/li /p plistrongEmbed player in own website/strong: No, but has an IM client/li /p plistrongDirectory of online radio stations/strong: Yes/li /p plistrongMusic licensing/strong: Yes/li /p plistrongMonetization/strong: No/li /p plistrongPricing/strong: Mercora is free to use/li/ul/li /p pbr / br /br / listrongTalkshoe/strong /p pimg alt="talkshoe.jpg" src="http://www.masternewmedia.org/images/talkshoe.jpg" width="206" height="51" / /p pa href="http://www.talkshoe.com"http://www.talkshoe.com/a /p pIf you're looking to skip the music and launch yourself as a talk radio host, a href="http://www.talkshoe.com"Talkshoe/a is a viable platform for doing so online. Talkshoe lets you create your own talk show, using your telephone or a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VoIP"VoIP/a client, and invite listeners to join you. With the ability to control and moderate when your listeners speak on the show, and a live text chat accompanying the discussion, you have everything you need to delivery talk radio shows from the comfort of your front room. Features include:ullistrongLive streaming capability/strong: Yes/li /p plistrongPre-recorded streaming capability/strong: Yes - as all shows can be recorded, users can download or stream your show archive/li /p plistrongEmbed player in own website/strong: No/li /p plistrongDirectory of online radio stations/strong: Yes/li /p plistrongMusic licensing/strong: No/li /p plistrongMonetization/strong: Yes, as a host in the a href="http://www.talkshoe.com/se/tscash/"Talkshoe hosting program/a you can make money from your talk show episodes/li /p plistrongPricing/strong: Talkshoe is currently free to use/li/ul/li/ul /p pbr / br /br / br /br / h2Direct streaming/h2 /p pThe following tools allow you to bypass the online radio networks by giving you the tools to stream your content directly to other users. The downside of this approach is in having to use your own bandwidth to serve up content, effectively limiting the amount of listeners you can have at any one time. Furthermore, you cannot emlegally/em play copyrighted music or content without purchasing the relative licenses to do so, which can generally prove to be quite a href="http://www.ascap.com/weblicense/feecalculation.html"costly/a. /p pOn the bright side, there are thousands of copyright-free songs you can use by visiting the sites listed below in the emsourcing copyright-free material/em section of this mini-guide. /p pbr /br / ullistrongSAM Broadcaster/strong /p pimg alt="sambroadcaster.jpg" src="http://www.masternewmedia.org/images/sambroadcaster.jpg" width="129" height="63" / /p pa href="http://www.spacialaudio.com/products/sambroadcaster/"http://www.spacialaudio.co m/products/sambroadcaster//a /p pa href="http://www.spacialaudio.com/products/sambroadcaster/"SAM Broadcaster/a is a popular, feature-rich solution to online radio broadcasting, with advanced features including crossfading, a gap killer, beat matching, volume normalization and a 5-band compressor/limiter. Key among its features are:ulliAdvanced playlist rotation logic and scheduling, so that you can leave your station running and still ensure a great blend of tracks for your listeners/li /p pliAdvanced streaming encoders: including a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding"aacPlusv2/a, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mp3"MP3/a, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mp3pro"mp3PRO/a, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Media"WM9/a and a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogg"Ogg/a - playing on a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinAMP"Winamp/a, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_media_player"Windows Media Player/a, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live365"Live365/a, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musicmatch"MusicMatch/a, and more/li /p pliReal-time statistics that let you know how many listeners are connected to your radio station at any moment/li /p pliSAM interfaces with your website and allows automated song requests. Your audience sees artist, title, album, cover art, and other information on the songs played/li /p plistrongPricing/strong: $279.00/li /p plistrongPlatform/strong: Windows only/li/ul/li /p pbr / br /br / listrongPirate Radio/strong /p pimg alt="pirateradio.jpg" src="http://www.masternewmedia.org/images/pirateradio.jpg" width="195" height="64" / /p pa href="http://www.pirateradio.com/"http://www.pirateradio.com//a /p pa href="http://www.pirateradio.com"Pirate Radio/a is a budget alternative to SAM Broadcaster, offering less features for a considerably lower price. The principle is the same however, giving you an effective way to stream your music and commentary directly from your desktop. Key features include:ulliThe program plays a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mp3"MP3/a, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.wav".wav/a, and a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD_Audio"CD audio/a files/li /p pliIt also supports microphones and external input (line in)/li /p pliThe platform has its own online and player-based station directory /li /p pliFurthermore with the playerless Java-streaming Clipstream format you can embed your station directly into your web page/li /p plistrongPricing/strong: $29.95 + $10.00 shipping and handling/li /p plistrongPlatform/strong: Windows only/li/ul/li /p pbr / br /br / listrongSHOUTcast/strong /p pimg alt="shoutcast.jpg" src="http://www.masternewmedia.org/images/shoutcast.jpg" width="195" height="57" / /p pa href="http://www.shoutcast.com/"http://www.shoutcast.com//a /p pFor those with a little more patience, it is possible to create a simple music streaming solution using the free a href="http://www.shoutcast.com/"SHOUTcast/a platform. This isn't the easiest way of going about getting your radio station online, but if you a href="http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?s=threadid=90040"follow the instructions in the helpful SHOUTcast forum/a, it is relatively painless to get up and running. Features include:ulliThe ability to feature your station in a directory of thousands at a href="http://www.shoutcast.com/"SHOUTcast.com/a/li /p pliStreaming of your playlists from the popular a href="http://www.winamp.com/player/"Winamp media player/a/li /p pliThe ability to choose the bitrate you broadcast at/li /p plistrongPricing/strong: Free/li /p plistrongPlatform/strong: Windows only/li/ul/li/ul /p p /p pbr / br /br / br /br / h2Peer-to-peer solutions/h2 /p pPeer-to-peer solutions solve the bandwidth problem by distributing data among your station listeners, with each one simultaneously sending and receiving information. This gives you the reach of the network solutions with the freedom of the direct streaming alternatives. /p pPossible downsides are the dependence upon others Internet connections to effectively transmit your show - if there is a weak link in the chain, this can effect the overall quality. Furthermore, these open source, free alternatives require a greater amount of technical know-how and initial setting up. Luckily there is advice online as to a href="http://www.geocities.com/peercast_listener/how2mp3.htm"how to get set up/a with your own peer-to-peer broadcasting solution. /p pbr /br / ullistrongPeercast/strong /p pimg alt="peeercast.jpg" src="http://www.masternewmedia.org/images/peeercast.jpg" width="195" height="55" / /p pa href="http://www.peercast.org/"http://www.peercast.org//a /p pa href="http://www.peercast.org/"Peercast/a is a peer-to-peer broadcasting solution that will facilitate the online sharing of your radio broadcast without draining your bandwidth. PeerCast offers considerable savings for broadcasters because they do not have to provide bandwidth for all of their listeners. A single 56K modem can be used to broadcast a radio station to the entire network. Features include:ulliIt offers anonymity for broadcasters because there is no easy way to trace back to the original stream, it is even possible to broadcast directly to a single client located in a different country and have that provide the source for the entire network/li /p pliPeerCast can also serve streams directly to any media player. This means that it can be used in place of a Shoutcast/Icecast server to provide both direct and a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer"P2P/a a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streaming_media"streaming/a at the same time/li /p pliIt works in much the same way as other P2P file-sharing clients except that instead of downloading files, the users download streams. These streams are then exchanged in real-time with other users. No data is stored locally on any machine connected to the network/li /p pliSupport for a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3"MP3/a, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogg_theora"OGG Theora/a and a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorbis"Vorbis/a, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Media_Audio"WMA/a, a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wmv"WMV/a and a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nullsoft_Streaming_Video"NSV/a formats/li /p plistrongPricing/strong: Completely free/li /p plistrongPlatforms/strong: Windows, Linux, Mac OSX/li/ul/li /p pbr / br /br / listrongIcecast/strong /p pimg alt="icecast.jpg" src="http://www.masternewmedia.org/images/icecast.jpg" width="195" height="46" / /p pa href="http://www.icecast.org/"http://www.icecast.org//a /p pa href="http://www.icecast.org/"Icecast.org/a is another peer-to-peer broadcasting solution that uses the same fundamental approach to distributing your streaming content as Peercast. As such you can broadcast from a reasonably poor Internet connection and still reach a large audience. If you have the time and patience to get Icecast set up, it is a capable platform and includes the following features:ulliCompatibility with the a href="http://www.shoutcast.com/"SHOUTcast/a platform/li /p pliThe ability to either read audio data from disk, such as from a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorbis"Ogg Vorbis/a files, or sample live audio from a sound card and encode it on the fly/li /p pliExtensive a href="http://www.icecast.org/3rdparty.php"third-party support/a for media players and DJ software/li /p plistrongPlatforms/strong: Linux, Windows/li /p plistrongPricing/strong: Completely free/li/ul/li/ul /p p /p pbr / br /br / br /br / h2Sourcing copyright-safe material/h2 /p pThe following resources provide a great way of finding fresh and inspired music for your radio show, whilst avoiding the issue of having to pay licensing fees. The content available has been licensed under the a href="http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2006/11/24/what_is_creative_commons_licensin g.htm"Creative Commons/a, and as such allows you greater or lesser degrees of freedom to use it. You can find out more about the different licenses used at the a href="http://creativecommons.org/license/"Creative Commons website/a. /p pimg alt="creativecommonslogo.jpg" src="http://www.masternewmedia.org/images/creativecommonslogo.jpg" width="197" height="72" / /p pbr /br / ullia href="http://search.creativecommons.org/"Creative Commons/a website features an extensive cross-media search that can be whittled down to a particular medium. This is a great way of finding audio content for your broadcasts/li /p plia href="http://www.archive.org"Internet Archive/a has a huge collection of a href="http://www.archive.org/details/audio"public domain and Creative Commons licensed audio/a, including the excellent a href="http://www.archive.org/details/netlabels"Net Labels/a, which features hordes of albums from virtual record labels/li /p plia href="http://www.legaltorrents.com/index.htm"Legal Torrents/a has a great selection of music that you can download legally and use in your broadcasts/li /p plia href="http://www.musopen.com/"Musopen/a provides public domain classical recordings provided by volunteers/li /p plia href="http://ccmixter.org/"CCMixter/a is a creative commons remix community, and has hundreds of remixable music works for you to make use of/li /p plia href="http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/"The Freesound project/a is an excellent source of Creative Commons licensed sound effects, should you wish to use some in your broadcast/li /p plia href="http://commoncontent.org/"Common Content/a is a great source of Creative Commons licensed media, including an extensive a href="http://commoncontent.org/catalog/audio/"audio section/a/li/ul /p p /p pbr /br / br /br / h2Additional resources/h2 /p pIf you would like to learn more about creating your own online radio station, you might want to take a look at the following links:ullia href="http://radio.about.com/library/weekly/aa013003c.htm"About: Radio/a article on how to create your own online radio station/li /p plia href="http://radio.about.com/od/softwaretostream/Server_Software_for_Streaming_Audio_ and_Internet_Radio_Broadcasting.htm"Further useful About: Radio links/a on online radio broadcasting/li /p plia href="http://wdvl.internet.com/Multimedia/WebRadio/"WDVL article/a on building an Internet radio station/li /p plia href="http://www.popsci.com/popsci/how20/95378ca927d05010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.htm l"Popular Science guide/a to setting up an Internet radio station/li/ul /p pbr / br /span class="photocredit"Written by Michael Pick for a href="http://www.masternewmedia.org/"Master New Media/a and originally published as: "a href="http://www.masternewmedia.org/audio_music_publishing/internet-radio/how-to-crea te-your-own-web-radio-station-guide-20070314.htm"How To Create Your Web Radio Station: A Mini-Guide/a"/span /p Make Use Of Podcast #4: Making Vista Faster Better Commenting 1 Jun 2008 at 11:30am Listen pimg class="alignnone alignleft" style="float: left;" src="http://www.makeuseof.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/jasonmayoffpodcast.jpg" alt="" /On this week#8217;s Make Use Of podcast I am talking to a href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/author/karl-l-gechlik/"Karl Gechlik/a, a Make Use Of writer and the guy behind a href="http://www.asktheadmin.com"Ask The Admin/a. We managed to cover subjects such as Windows Vista, LocatePC, Google Maps and blog commenting./p pIf you look underneath the show notes on this page, you will see a little media player where you can listen to the podcast right here on the site. Or if you prefer, you can right-click on the “audio MP3″ logo and save the MP3 file to your computer for listening on your MP3 player or iPod./p pWe now have the podcast in iTunes so don’t forget to a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=280546798"subs cribe to the podcast/a if you have an iPod, or in a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/MUO-podcast"another podcatcher/a if you have a different MP3 player./p pAfter listening, please submit your comments below on this page or you can also a href="mailto:%20podcast@makeuseof.com"send me an/a e-mail with a question, comment, criticism or suggestion, and I#8217;ll also be accepting audio comments, so go ahead and send your MP3 to the same address./p ul lia href="http://techcastpodcast.wordpress.com"TechCast podcast/a/li lia href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Er/askTheAdmin/%7E3/225980950/my-vista-machine-is -slow-what-can-i-do.html"My Vista Machine is slow! What can I do? What services can I stop??/a/li lia href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Er/askTheAdmin/%7E3/301261883/windows-xp-little-k now-shortcut-key.html"Windows XP little know shortcut key makes for a good afternoon prank!/a/li lia href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/use-locatepc-to-secure-your-computer-for-free/"Use LocatePC to Secure and Find Stolen PC for Free/a/li lia title="Permanent Link to The Wayback Machine - Browse The Internet Of Yester-Yore" rel="bookmark" href="../tag/the-wayback-machine-lets-you-browse-the-internet-of-yester-yore/"The Wayback Machine - Browse The Internet Of Yester-Yore/a/li lia href="../tag/come-on-baby-lets-get-a-room/" target="_top"Come On Baby, Let’s Get A Room! | MakeUseOf.com/a/li lia title="Permanent Link to Google Maps Rolls Out Spanking New Features" rel="bookmark" href="../tag/google-maps-rolls-out-spanking-new-features/"Google Maps Rolls Out Spanking New Features/a/li lia href="http://tinyurl.com/65pocs"The answer to Life, The Universe and Everything/a/li lia title="Permanent Link to Public Computers Made Safe - Security Tools and Tips" rel="bookmark" href="../tag/public-computers-made-safe-security-tools-and-tips/"Public Computers Made Safe - Security Tools and Tips/a/li lia href="http://www.intensedebate.com/"Intense Debate/a, a href="http://disqus.com/"Disqus/a and a href="http://js-kit.com/"JS-Kit/a/li /ul pMore from MakeUseOf.com #8230; /p p- a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/WebServicesDir"MakeUseOf Directory/a : Read about up-to 5 truly useful web apps on a daily basis.br / - a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/GeekyFun"MakeUseOf #8216;Geeky Fun#8217;/a: - Fun Geeky Pics, Cartoons and Videos./p Tags: a href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/blogging-tools/" title="blogging tools" rel="tag nofollow"blogging tools/a, a href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/google/" title="Google" rel="tag nofollow"Google/a, a href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/podcast/" title="Podcast" rel="tag nofollow"Podcast/a, a href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/security/" title="security" rel="tag nofollow"security/a, a href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/social-networks/" title="social networks" rel="tag nofollow"social networks/a, a href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/vista/" title="Vista" rel="tag nofollow"Vista/a, a href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/windows/" title="Windows" rel="tag nofollow"Windows/abr / h4Related posts/h4 ul class="st-related-posts" lia href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/your-computer-your-world-how-to-keep-out-the-mindl ess/" title="Your Computer, Your World - How to Keep Out the Mindless (May 26, 2008)"Your Computer, Your World - How to Keep Out the Mindless/a (30)/li lia href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/the-cut-out-and-keep-guide-to-essential-software-p rograms/" title="The Cut Out and Keep Guide to Essential Software Programs (November 3, 2007)"The Cut Out and Keep Guide to Essential Software Programs/a (19)/li lia href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/muo-polls-what-firewall-software-do-you-use/" title="MUO Polls : What Firewall Software do you Use ? (May 12, 2008)"MUO Polls : What Firewall Software do you Use ?/a (50)/li lia href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/i-make-use-of-microsoft-live-writer-beta/" title="I Make Use Of: Microsoft Live Writer Beta (August 28, 2007)"I Make Use Of: Microsoft Live Writer Beta/a (11)/li lia href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-securely-retrieve-and-delete-pc-files/" title="How To securely Retrieve and Delete PC files (September 9, 2007)"How To securely Retrieve and Delete PC files/a (2)/li /ul pa href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/Makeuseof?a=V6TlAo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/Makeuseof?i=V6TlAo" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/Makeuseof?a=3wOi5i"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/Makeuseof?i=3wOi5i" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/Makeuseof?a=Gf4GVi"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/Makeuseof?i=Gf4GVi" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/Makeuseof?a=guDOqI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/Makeuseof?i=guDOqI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/Makeuseof?a=eMaJtI"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/Makeuseof?i=eMaJtI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/Makeuseof?a=FYGIgi"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/Makeuseof?i=FYGIgi" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Makeuseof/~4/302408458" height="1" width="1"/ VTech 5.8Ghz Digital Cordless Phone with 4 Handsets and Digital Answering Sys... 7 Mar 2008 at 1:00am Listen a href='http://s3-external-1.amazonaws.com/wootsaleimages/VTech_5.8Ghz_Digital_4_Handse t_Cordless_PhonezcfDetail.jpg'img src='http://s3-external-1.amazonaws.com/wootsaleimages/VTech_5.8Ghz_Digital_4_Handset _Cordless_PhoneuykThumbnail.jpg' class='thumbnail'/apembleeeep/em embleeeep/em/p pIt’s midnight and your children are safe and asleep. But there’s a phone on Woot. /p pembleeeep/em embleeeep/em/p pAnd it’s ringing. Something’s happening in the world of discount electronics./p pembleeeep/em embleeeep/em/p pYour purchase will decide which phone is ringing. Whether it’s one with 5.8GHz Digital Spread Spectrum transmission and color displays on the four handsets, one that’s tested and ready to use in a dangerous world. /p pembleeeep/em embleeeep/em/p pIt’s midnight and your children are safe and asleep. What phone do you want to answer? /p pem“I’m the VTech i6789/6790 5.8Ghz Digital 4-Handset Cordless Phone, and I approved this message.”/em/p pstrongWarranty:/strong 90 Day VTech/p pstrongFeatures:/strong/p ulli5.8 GHz span class="caps"DSS /span(Digital Spread Spectrum) provides superior security, clarity, and range/liliFour color handset system with headset input (2.5mm) speaker phone, and blue backlit keypad, that requires only 1 phone line to make calls/liliHandsets can transfer calls between each other, be used to make conference calls, or be used as a intercom/liliFull color span class="caps"LCD/span in handset, includes wallpaper image presets to personalize your phone./liliFull color span class="caps"LCD/span in handset, includes preset wallpaper images to personalize your phone. Wallpaper images include, Abraham Lincoln, a soccer ball, a tiger, a beach scene, a farm scene, and more./liliSupports caller ID, call waiting, and stores the last 50 calls (Caller ID and call waiting requires a subscription from your local phone company)/liliStores up to 50 names and phone numbers in the phone book directory/liliDigital answering system with 15 minuets of recording time/liliRemote message retrieval, check your messages when you are not at home/liliTrilingual prompts, English, Spanish, or French/liliSelectable ring tones /liliWiFi friendly, won’t interfere with wireless networks/li/ul pstrongIn the box:/strong/p ulli4 Handsets/liliBase Unit/lili3 Charging Units/lili4 span class="caps"AC /spanAdapters/liliTelephone Line Cord/liliWall Mount Bracket/lili4 Belt Clips/liliUser’s Manual/liliQuick Start Guide/li/ul br /diva href="http://www.woot.com/Forums/ViewPost.aspx?PostID=2015775"Discuss this product/a/divbr /divPrice: 39.9900/divdiva href="https://www.woot.com/Member/WantOne.aspx?id=a09e2876-4275-4740-9759-360407a7299 0"I want one!/a/div Movable Type Monday: Poll Position, Photo Galleries and TinyMCE 15 Jul 2008 at 1:12am Listen pThe last couple of weeks has seen a ton of exciting features being developed by the community including a strongpolling plugin,/strong a new plugin and tutorial for creating photo galleries as well as an alternate wysiwyg editor. A short conference call with the MTOS community was also hosted last week with discussion around the development of Movable Type 4.2 - especially highlighting the large role the community has played!/p pWelcome to Movable Type Monday!/p pspan id="more-7402"/span/p h3MTOS Community Updates/h3 pimg src="http://www.eatdrinksleepmovabletype.com/plugins/poll_position/chart.png" align="right" hspace="10" height="200"/p pstrongPoll Position:/strong Late last week, prominent community member a href="http://movabletype.org/members/danwolfgang"Dan Wolfgang/a of a href="http://eatdrinksleepmovabletype.com/"Eat Drink Sleep Movable Type/a and a href="http://uinnovations.com"uiNNovations/a released a href="http://www.eatdrinksleepmovabletype.com/announcements/a_new_plugin_poll_positio n/"Poll Position/a, a brand new plugin that allows you to easily add strongpolls/strong (and soon, strongsurveys/strong!) to your Movable Type blogs. The plugin seamlessly integrates with Movable Type#8217;s interface, allowing you to create an unlimited number of polls and responses, styling them any which way and uses a href="http://code.google.com/apis/chart/"Google Charts/a to display the results beautifully. a href="http://www.eatdrinksleepmovabletype.com/plugins/poll_position/"Poll Position/a is available in a strongfree/strong and licensed version, the latter (named a href="http://www.eatdrinksleepmovabletype.com/plugins/poll_position/"#8220;Poll Position: Champion#8221;/a also offers a strongpoll custom field/strong type allowing you to simply add polls to entries!) A a href="http://eatdrinksleepmovabletype.com/mt4-test/"live demo/a of the plugin in action is also available. Fantastic work Dan!/p pimg src="http://www.grabup.com/uploads/1cc51e17d51379f5818ea13b9b4c9ff0.png" align="left" hspace="10" width="200"/p pstrongAsset Gallery:/strong A a href="http://plugins.movabletype.org/asset-gallery/"new plugin/a by yours truly creates a new custom field type that allows you to create strongcollections/strong of assets (or files) for entries. A great example of this is strongphoto galleries/strong for your entries which are displayed beautifully within the app using a CoverFlow-esque interface. Asset Gallery, however, isn#8217;t limited to just images and supports non-photo uploads too including Word documents, PDFs and video files! A great example of a href="http://plugins.movabletype.org/asset-gallery/"Asset Gallery/a in action is on the Movable Type Plugin Directory itself, a href="http://plugins.movabletype.org/asset-gallery/"Asset Gallery/a powers the a href="http://plugins.movabletype.org/asset-gallery/"screenshot/a a href="http://plugins.movabletype.org/typepad-antispam/"galleries/a you find on plugin profile pages./p pstrongPhoto Galleries with jQuery and Assets:/strong a href="http://www.smartgoat.com/"Billy Mabray/a wrote a a href="http://www.devlounge.net/code/creating-a-photo-gallery-using-jquery-and-the-mt- asset-manager"great article/a on creating a strongslick photo gallery/strong using Movable Type#8217;s powerful built-in asset manager and jQuery - to give you beautiful slide-show like animation and interaction. It looks like a simple, elegant solution and Billy#8217;s tutorial guides you, step-by-step, through the process! Check out the a href="http://smartgoat.com/gallery/"live demo/a for a preview of what a few lines of code can accomplish, great work Billy!/p pstrongGetting Started with Movable Type:/strong Movable Type was recently featured on the front page of the venerable a href="http://webmonkey.com/"Webmonkey/a with a guide to a href="http://www.webmonkey.com/tutorial/Get_Started_With_Movable_Type"Get Started with Movable Type/a. The guide concisely explains the differences between the open source and commercial versions, how to install Movable Type and provides an introduction to Movable Type#8217;s HTML-esque templating language. The guide also recommends some plugins to install, including the popular a href="http://plugins.movabletype.org/action-streams/"Action Streams/a/p pstrongIdenti.ca Update Stream:/strong Last week a href="http://www.movabletype.org/members/jeckman"John Eckman/a released a new a href="http://plugins.movabletype.org/identica-update-stream/"action stream plugin/a that aggregates your content from the a href="http://identi.ca/"Identi.ca/a microblogging service /p pstrongTinyMCE WYSIWYG Editor:/strong One of the great things about Movable Type is its flexibility. For example, the entry editor can easily be replace through a plugin. A host of such plugins exist bringing the popular a href="http://plugins.movabletype.org/fckeditor/"FCKEditor/a and a href="http://plugins.movabletype.org/yui-rich-text-editor/"YUI Rich Text Editor/a to Movable Type. Last week, a href="http://www.movabletype.org/members/alfasado"alfasado/a added a href="http://plugins.movabletype.org/tinymce/"TinyMCE/a to the list of Movable Type compatible editors with his a href="http://plugins.movabletype.org/tinymce/"open source plugin/a. /p h3MTOS Conference Call/h3 pEvery other week, Six Apart hosts a href="http://wiki.movabletype.org/ProNet_Phone_Calls"a conference call/a with the Movable Type community. a href="http://wiki.movabletype.org/ProNet_Notes_07092008"Notes/a and a a href="http://podcast.thebasementventures.com/mp3/0/353177/IA9688_7_9_2008_1091972.mp3 "podcast recording/a of last weeks call are available. It was a shorter call than usual but discussion centered on community involvement with the official Movable Type development process and the community#8217;s involvement with the latest release was highlighted - a prodigious list given the open source project is only six months old!/p pInternational members of the Movable Type community are also a href="http://www.sixapart.com/pipermail/mtos-dev/2008-July/001565.html"brainstorming/ a ways they can participate in the conference calls too which currently is based in the United States due to the conference call provider. If you#8217;d like to dial in for the next call (scheduled for the 23rd), the dial-in information follows, everyone is welcome!/p precode* 1-712-432-3000 * Bridge Number: 353177 /code/pre Boston Blackie - The Broken Clock Murder 26 Jul 2007 at 9:20am img src="http://radiomensa.podOmatic.com/2007-07-26T06_20_46-07_00.jpg" alt="itunes pic" /br /Originally aired January 12, 1949 BOSTON BLACKIE is a rather peculiar character to include in this site as he wasn't a P.I. in his original incarntation at all. It was only later, in film, radio, and eventually television, that he morphed into a private eye. In the original Boston Black story by Jack Boyle, written way back in 1919, Blackie was a hardened criminal serving time in a hellish California prison. Young, handsome, educated as he was; but he definitely wasn't a P.I. As Frank D. Sherry says in Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers, "Stylistically, the story is an interesting example of a hard-boiled tale told before the hard-boiled style was born, and is flawed by a sentimental ending typical of the times." The same year, Blackie made his first screen appearance (Blackie's Redemption, Metro), kicking off a string of silent films (including for various studios, starring various actors, including Bert Lytell (who also played The Lone Wolf, a similiar character with a similiar convoluted history), Lionel Barrymore, David powell, William Russell, Forrest Stanley and Raymond Glenn. In these films, Blackie was a professional thief with a heart of gold. The last silent Blackie appeared in 1927. Starting in 1941, with the release of the film Meet Boston Blackie, Chester Morris starred as a former professional thief now working as a sort of freelance adventurer/detective (although still not calling himself one) for the good guys, although he preferred to not get too involved with the police. There were fourteen films in all, and Morris "brought to the role a delightful offhand manner and sense of humour that kept the films fresh even when the scripts weren't," according to Leonard Maltin's TV Movies and Video Guide. Also along for the ride for most of the series were Richard Lane, as Boston's long-suffering police foil, Inspector Farraday; Charles Wagenheim (later George E. Stone) as Boston's talkative but dim-witted sidekick, The Runt, and Lloyd Corrigan as an irresponsible, irrepresible, adventurous millionaire pal. In 1944, Blackie made his radio debut on NBC, with Morris and Lane reprising their film roles. The next year, a syndicated version, starring Richard Kollmar, made the rounds. And in 1951, a syndicated television series premiered, starring Kent Taylor, which ran until 1953. By this point, Blackie's long, twisted journey and transformation from con to private eye was complete, with him tooling around LA in a snazzy convertible with his best gal, Mary, and his faithful canine companion, Whitey, by his side, cracking cases, always one step ahead of Inspector Farraday, doing that Thin Man vibe, southern California style. The Boston Blackie films, radio and television shows were never really "A" list entertainment, yet as far as "B" stuff went, it was pretty good stuff. Always entertaining, "a certain vitality and sense of humour (compensating) more than adequately for ther normal criteria of expensive production and famous stars," according to The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows. And Boston's proven to have remarkably long legs. In 2002, Moonstone Books unveiled a Boston Blackie graphic novel as part of their ambitious "Moonstone Noir" crime comic series. Other titles in the series include The Hat Squad, Johnny Dollar, Bulldog Drummond, Jack Hagee, P.I., The Mysterious Traveler and The Lone Wolf. The Boston Blackie radio series, also starring Morris, began June 23, 1944, on NBC as a summer replacement for The Amos 'n' Andy Show. Sponsored by Rinso, the series continued until September 15 of that year. Unlike the concurrent films, Blackie had a steady romantic interest in the radio show: Lesley Woods appeared as Blackie's girlfriend Mary Wesley. Harlow Wilcox was the show's announcer. On April 11, 1945, Richard Kollmar took over the title role in a radio series syndicated by Frederic W. Ziv to Mutual and other network outlets. Over 200 episodes of this series were produced between 1944 and October 25, 1950. Other sponsors included Lifebuoy Soap, Champagne Velvet beer, and RH beer. While investigating mysteries, Blackie invaribly encountered harebrained Police Inspector Farraday (Maurice Tarplin) and always solved the mystery to Farraday's amazement. Initially, friction surfaced in the relationship between Blackie and Farraday, but as the series continued, Farraday recognized Blackie's talents and requested assistance. Blackie dated Mary Wesley (Jan Miner), and for the first half of the series, his best pal Shorty was always on hand. The humorless Farraday was on the receiving end of Blackie's bad puns and word play. Despre OS, OER si eLearnTS in interviul din Checkpoint eLearning, cu o zi ina... 13 Oct 2007 at 1:52am p img style="width: 390px; height: 250px;" alt="Checkpoint eLearning" src="http://www.timsoft.ro/images/weblog/checkpoint-elearning.jpg"/p p iElena-Andreea Li#355;#259;/i, #351;ef departament #351;tiri la a href="http://www.agora.ro/"Agora Media/a a avut amabilitatea de a-mi adresa cateva intrebari referitoare la utilizarea sistemelor Open Source, a resurselor educationale deschise in invatamantul romanesc si la deschiderea mediului eLearnTS de la Timsoft spre acestea./p pCu o zi inainte de a href="http://www.softwarefreedomday.org"Software Freedom Day/a, interviul a aparut sub titlul a href="http://www.checkpoint-elearning.com/article/4467.html"span style="font-weight: bold;"Open Source in Romanian Education/span/a in sectiunea European Projects - Interviews dinnbsp;a href="http://www.checkpoint-elearning.com"Checkpoint eLearning/a, un cunoscut portal european de eLearning./p pimg src="http://www.checkpoint-elearning.de/pics/Carmen-Holotescu.jpg" title="Carmen Holotescu, Politehnica University of Timisoara and Timsoft" align="left" border="0" hspace="5" width="85"font color="#666666" face="Verdana" size="-2"Timisoara (RO), September 2007 ndash; (iby Elena Lita/i) Open Source, a term proposed in 1998, refers to a set of principles and practices that promote the access to the process of planning and implementing various products and resources. The term is primarily used in relation to software. A wider term is FLOSS (or FOSS) - Free Libre Open Source Software. Carmen Holotescu, an instructor at the Automation and Computer Science Faculty - Politehnica University of Timisoara, the coordinator of the eLearning firm Timsoft, and the author of two eLearning guides speaks about the use of Open Source in Education. br br b1. Why should span class="info" title="Operating System"OS/span be used for educational purposes? /bbr br bspan style="font-style: italic;"Carmen Holotescu:/span /b The main benefits of open source software as concluded by UNESCOrsquo;s International Institute for Educational Planning are adaptable functionality, lower overall costs, vendor independence (increases choice, competition and transparency), adherence to open standards, the softwarersquo;s position as a public good, interoperability, and security. br br The recommendations of the span class="info" title="European Union"EU/span for educational policies are to avoid lifelong vendor lock-in in educational systems by teaching students skills rather than specific applications and by encouraging participation in FLOSS-like communities. This adds value to the skills learnt by students, such as a positive attitude towards information technology that favours the ability to create and actively participate and collaborate rather than just consume. br br In Romania, the interest and the use of open source software by teachers, pupils, and students is very important, but most initiatives are personal. Many Linux and LAMP users are active in user groups, building online communities with online support and discussions forums, but also with periodic face-to-face meetings. Romanian Linux distributions were developed by teams formed by young students. br br A lot of workshops and conferences in which actors from educational system participate take place, such as Linux and Virtual Learning Environments at a href="http://www.uvvg.ro/lvle" target="_blank" class="linK_2" University Vasile Goldis Arad /a (, which has convened five times editions), Linux Open Alternative Days - a href="http://www.load.ro" target="_blank" class="linK_2"LOAD /a, or the International Conference eLiberatica organized by a href="http://www.rosi.ro" target="_blank" class="linK_2" Romanian Open Source Initiative. /abr br b2. Is OER a viable alternative at this moment? /bbr br bspan style="font-style: italic;"Carmen Holotescu:/span /b Open source software is based on and uses open formats, and for this, it is used to create Open Educational Resources (OER). In Europe and worldwide, there many projects have been developed that deal with OER that are the subject of numerous debates, studies, policies, and educational priorities. The term Open Educational Resources was adopted at the UNESCO Forum in 2002, following the analysis of the impact that the Open Courseware projects have had on higher education. br br The Open Educational Resources include materials (content) for teaching and learning: open courseware and open content projects, free courses, learning objects directories, and educational journals. The OER are generally characterised by the following attributes: /font/p ul lifont color="#666666" face="Verdana" size="-2"the access to open materials - open content - is free for educational institutions and individual users; /font/li lifont color="#666666" face="Verdana" size="-2"the content is licensed so that it may be reused or modified during educational activities; to this end, the content observes open standards and formats; /font/li lifont color="#666666" face="Verdana" size="-2"educational applications are open-source - the source is available, and it can be modified or adapted, or interfaces are made available - APIs - that enable the creation of new applications. /font/li /ul pfont color="#666666" face="Verdana" size="-2"Information technologies make it possible for educators to access and exchange online resources. Until a few years ago, most of the materials created were protected, the authentification of the usersrsquo; identities being needed. Nowadays, most of the resources are created and posted freely on the Web using the collaborative systems available via Web 2.0. Just like the FLOSS enables the users to reuse or modify the software, the OER allow users to adapt the materials and systems to self-instructional and other learning environments. br br But ultimately, the OER imply a fundamental change in the educational process, favouring the focus on the student. br br b3. Is there any connection between eLearnTS and the span class="info" title="Operating System"OS/span movement? /b br br bspan style="font-style: italic;"Carmen Holotescu:/span /b The eLearnTS is an online environment developed by Timsoft that can be configured for online courses, for training in companies, for online communities, or as a collaborative platform for distributed teams. In our company, we use it to deliver IT, management, training the eTrainers, online courses for universities, firms, or for individual learners, and as collaborative platforms for our European projects. br br No matter what the subject of a course is, the learning community formed by the participants and the facilitator builds a pool of useful resources for future reflections, too: RSS feeds; blogs of the facilitator, participants, and other practitioners; wikis with topics related to the course; collections using collaborative bookmarking systems; and localization of other open resources. br br The platform is based on open technologies - LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, span class="info" title="PHP: Hypertext Processor"PHP/span), and collaborative exercises realized by the participants frequently use Web 2.0 tools. We consider that each online course, each new learning experience in which somebody takes part, should be integrated into the continuous learning process in which the person is involved. /font/p Grub, Distributed Crawling Will Be Used to Build Wikia; LookSmart Will Power ... 29 Jul 2007 at 1:53am pa href="http://www.grub.com"Grub distributed crawling/a technology is now being tested for use to to build Wikia after being acquired from Looksmart. This a href="http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9751429-7.html"news came via comments/a from Wikia/Wikipedia co-founder, Jimmy Wales on Thursday. /p pDistributed crawling? Well, the concept has been around for web search for more than seven years. After a client is placed on your computer and during down time, you#8217;re computer will be one of many to crawl the web to build the overall database. See also the a href="http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/"SETI@Home project/a. /p pMore on that in a moment. /p pIt#8217;s important to point out that advertising on the Wikia site will be delivered via a white-label ad serving platform from LookSmart. /p pThis announcement a href="http://www.shareholder.com/looksmart/releaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=254525"was made two weeks ago/a. /p pIt will handle both display and text-based ads and Wikia be the first organization to use LookSmart#8217;s technology for the management/serving of display ad units utilizing CMP-based pricing. /p blockquotep#8220;We did a lot of due diligence to find a flexible and intuitive ad serving technology that nets the highest revenue and yield,#8221; said Gil Penchina, CEO of Wikia. #8220;We discovered in the process that LookSmart#8217;s platform and services not only provide dynamic optimization of both our advertisers and backfill networks, but the white label aspect of it fits perfectly with our brand strategy.#8221;/p/blockquote pNow, back to the Grub crawling story. /p pa href="http://web.archive.org/web/20010406154147/www.grub.org/investors.php"Grub technology (the company#8217;s exec summary from 2001)/a was acquired by a href="http://www.shareholder.com/looksmart/EdgarDetail.cfm?CompanyID=LOOK#038;CIK=107 7866#038;FID=1021408-03-4294#038;SID=03-00"Looksmart in January, 2003/a) and is now in early testing for the Wikia project. LookSmart stopped using the technology in 2005 as mentioned in the annual report from a href="http://www.shareholder.com/looksmart/EdgarDetail.cfm?CompanyID=LOOK#038;CIK=107 7866#038;FID=1193125-06-54740#038;SID=06-00"April, 2006:/a/p blockquotep We discontinued the use and support of the Grub distributed crawling technology in 2005 in order to reallocate development and support resources to other revenue-generating initiatives in search technology./p/blockquote pa href="http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9751429-7.html"Via a recent News.com item/a:/p blockquotepIt#8217;s [Grub] meant to operate through open protocol and community collaborative added functions combined with the wiki./p/blockquote p+ a href="http://www.grub.org/"Learn More About Grub/a ||| a href="http://search.wikia.com/wiki/Grub"Monitor the Grub Wiki/a/a/p pstrongHistory/strongbr / a href="http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2177021"#8220;Help Grub Search the Past#8221; by Chris Sherman, April 2003/abr / #038;br / a href="http://news.com.com/2100-1032-993591.html"LookSmart bets on distributed computing by Stefanie Olsen, News.com/abr / See Also: Chris with more on a href="http://searchengineland.com/070727-123006.php "Grub/Wikia in this Search Engine Land item/a posted the other day. /p pstrongBlasts from the Past/strongbr / a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20001209030100/www.grub.org/faq.html"Grub FAQ (12/09/2000)/a. ||| a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20010406154147/www.grub.org/investors.php"Grub executive summary (April 2001)/a/p pstrongGrub Home Pages (Back to 2000)/strongbr / a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20001206121900/http://www.grub.org/"December 6, 2000/a ||| a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20030130015439/http://www.grub.org/"January 30, 2003/a ||| a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20040614012405/http://grub.org/"June 14, 2004/a/p pstrongSee Also: A Few Other Open Source Crawling Tools/strong/p p+ a href="http://www.nutch.org"Nutch/abr / Nutch is a href="http://wiki.apache.org/nutch/PublicServers"used several places/a including the massive a href="http://www.webharvest.gov"U.S government web harvests/a containing terabytes of data. Another example is at a href="http://www.utilitysearch.info"UtilitySearch.info/a./p p+ a href="http://crawler.archive.org/"Heritrix/a/p blockquotepHeritrix is the Internet Archive#8217;s open-source, extensible, web-scale, archival-quality web crawler./p/blockquote p+ a href="http://www.searchtools.com/tools/tools-opensource.html"Avi Rappaport#8217;s essential SearchTools.com/a site lists many other open source crawlers and search engines./p pstrongReading/strongbr / Numerous projects are or have been tackling web search by building distributed and P2P toolsbr / + a href="http://homer.informatics.indiana.edu/~nan/6S/paper/6S_P2PIR06.pdf"Emerging Semantic Communities in Peer Web Search/a/p p+ a href="http://grids.ucs.indiana.edu/ptliupages/publications/p2pDDBS.pdf"Scalable Hybrid Search on Distributed Databasesbr / /abr / + a href="http://www.dcc.uchile.cl/~ccastill/papers/baeza_2007_challenges_distributed_inf ormation_retrieval.pdf"#8220;Challenges in Distributed Information Retrieval#8221; (PDF), From Yahoo Research/a/p p+ a href="http://www.vldb2005.org/program/paper/demo/p1263-bender.pdf"MINERVA: Collaborative P2P Search/a/p p+ a href="http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~grant/papers/Chora.html"Chora: Expert-based P2P Web Search/a/p p+ a href="http://www.poly.edu/cis/research/reports/archive/tr-cis-2003-01.php"ODISSEA: A Peer-to-Peer Architecture for Scalable Web Search and Information Retrieval/a/p p+ a href="http://repos.insttech.washington.edu/~kanani/tcss455/assignments/distributed_co mputing/jxta_distributed_search.pdf"Distributed Search in P2P Networks - Internet Computing, IEEE (PDF)/a/p p+ a href="http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~lewu/6S06.pdf"Evaluation of Peer Based Web Search/a/p p+ Webcast: a href="http://www.slis.indiana.edu/media/net_sci_2007/ncs_02_05.mp3"Social Web Search (Part 2)/a ||| Slidesbr / Held at Indiana University/p blockquotepAbstract: This talk will present two research projects under way in the Network and agents Network (NaN), which study ways of leveraging online social behavior for better Web search. GiveALink.org is a social bookmarking site where users donate their personal bookmarks. A search and recommendation engine is built from a similarity network derived from the hierarchical structure of bookmarks, aggregated across users. 6S is a distributed Web search engine based on an ad adaptive peer network. By learning about each other, peers can route queries through the network to efficiently reach knowledgeable nodes. The resulting peer network structures itself as a small world that uncovers semantic communities and outperforms centralized search engines./p/blockquote pSee Also: a href="http://homer.informatics.indiana.edu/~nan/6S/"Learn More and Demo Here/a /p WordPress Wednesday News: Your Own Song in the Plugin Competition, WordPress ... 25 Jun 2008 at 1:35pm Listen pWant your own song? Win the Weblog Tools Collection WordPress Plugin Competition! WordPress 2.6 Beta released for testing. First looks at the new features coming in WordPress 2.6. WordCamp UK changes locations. Batcache strikes. Plugin menus on the Administration Panels discussed. Is your WordPress Theme naked without a print stylesheet? We#8217;ve got WordPress tips, WordPress news, and more WordPress than ever!/p h2WordPress News/h2 pa href="http://www.wordpress.org/" title="WordPress" rel="tag"img src="http://faq.wordpress.com/files/2006/05/wp-2.0-button.gif" alt="WordPress Logo" align="right" //astrongWordPress 2.6 Beta Released:/strong For the WordPress beta testers, a href="http://boren.nu/archives/2008/06/23/wordpress-26-beta-1/" title="WordPress 2.6 Beta 1"br / Ryan Boren announced the release of WordPress 2.6 Beta 1/a for testing. The release is slated for July 7 with a July 14 possibility, depending upon how testing and fixes go, which is a month earlier than has been reported. I#8217;ve reported on many of the new features in past a href="http://www.blogherald.com/?s=wordpress+wednesday" title="Blog Herald WordPress Wednesday News" rel="tag"WordPress Wednesday News/a on the a href="http://www.blogherald.com/" title="Blog Herald" rel="tag"Blog Herald/a. Here are some of the first reports coming in:/p ul lia href="http://www.shoemoney.com/2008/06/24/wordpress-26-new-under-the-hood-features/" title="Wordpress 2.6 New Under The Hood Features"Shoemoney likes Post Revision/a, the new feature that allows you to compare the same post in multiple windows, excellent for Internet glitches and multiple authors./li lia href="http://dougal.gunters.org/?p=983" title="WordPress 2.6 Beta 1"Dougal Campbell is also jazzed/a about Post Revisions and Google Gears support, and describes some of the other new features in greater detail including support for the XML-RPC and Atom client APIs being turned off by default for security protection, improved SSL access to Administration Panels, a new version of the #8220;Press This#8221; (formerly Press-It) bookmarklet, avatar options, improved WordPress Plugin management, and more./li lia href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BlogSecurity/~3/318026186/" title="WordPress 2.6 Security Improvements?"Blog Security explores the security improvements in WordPress 2.6/a and reports that a number of XMLRPC features will be deactivated by default, adding more protection, along with improved password and cookie security improvements in past versions. They say it#8217;s on the right track for strong security standards./li lia href="http://westi.wordpress.com/2008/06/20/making-the-default-install-more-secure/" title="making the default install more secure"Peter Westwood is excited about/a the improvements in the security of WordPress 2.6 including support for SSL and disabling remote publishing protocols by default./li lia href="http://lesterchan.net/wordpress/2008/06/25/my-plugins-with-wordpress-26-beta/" title="My Plugins With WordPress 2.6 Beta"Lester Chan/a, popular WordPress Plugin author, is excited about the new features including the new link in the top menu called #8220;Speed Up#8221; which connects with Google Gears, the new Dashboard Panel feature #8220;Right Now#8221; which gives a breakdown of your blog#8217;s activity in the moment, the new Word Count feature, and Theme Previews. However, with the some recent changes in WordPress versions which impact WordPress Plugins, a href="http://lesterchan.net/wordpress/2008/06/24/wordpress-26-beta-1/" title="WordPress 2.6 Beta 1"Chan is debating whether or not to maintain WordPress 2.5 compatibility/a for the next wave of WordPress Plugins, especially those impacted by the new features that allow codewp-config.php/code to move up one level from the WordPress root and allowing the codewp-content/code directory to be in a custom location./li liMany are reporting their excitement about the new a href="http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/5560" title="WordPress Auto-Upgrade"WordPress Auto-Upgrade/a feature which will make upgrading WordPress easier./li /ul pstrongWordPress Plugin Competition:/strong a href="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/06/24/uber-unique-prize-for-plug in-competition/" title="Uber unique Prize for Plugin Competition"Weblog Tools Collections announces/a that a href="http://www.kymhuynh.com/" title="Kym Huynh"Kym Huynh/a, a songwriter, has just donated a new prize to the growing collection, a song written for the winning recipient and professionally recorded. The a href="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/04/30/announcing-wordpress-plugi n-competition-25/" title="Announcing WordPress Plugin Competition 2.5"Weblog Tools Collection#8217;s WordPress Plugin Competition/a for WordPress 2.5+ continues to grow with new prizes and Plugins. Here are the Plugin entries listed on the a href="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/pluginblog/" title="Plugin Competition Blog"Plugin Competition Blog/a so far:/p ul lia href="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/pluginblog/2008/06/19/automatic-timezone/" title="Automatic Timezone Plugin"Automatic Timezone Plugin/a/li lia href="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/pluginblog/2008/06/20/content-by-country/" title="Content By Country"Content By Country/a/li lia href="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/pluginblog/2008/06/20/dl-menu-tab-generation-a nd-dynamic-colorschemes/" title="DL-MENU Tab generation and dynamic colorschemes"DL-MENU Tab generation and dynamic colorschemes/a/li lia href="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/pluginblog/2008/06/22/adminimize/" title="Adminimize"Adminimize/a/li lia href="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/pluginblog/2008/06/22/seo-smart-links/" title="SEO Smart Links"SEO Smart Links/a/li lia href="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/pluginblog/2008/06/22/wpmu-plugin-commander/" title="WPMU Plugin Commander"WPMU Plugin Commander/a/li lia href="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/pluginblog/2008/06/24/great-real-estate/" title="Great Real Estate"Great Real Estate/a/li lia href="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/pluginblog/2008/06/24/mailpress/" title="MailPress"MailPress/a/li lia href="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/pluginblog/2008/06/24/post-tabs/" title="Post Tabs"Post Tabs/a/li lia href="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/pluginblog/2008/06/24/zdmultilang/" title="ZdMultilang"ZdMultilang/a/li lia href="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/pluginblog/2008/06/18/simple-flash-video-plugi n/" title="Simple Flash Video Plugin"Simple Flash Video WordPress Plugin/a/li lia href="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/pluginblog/2008/06/12/sermon-management-plug-i n-for-churches/" title="Sermon management plug-in for churches"Sermon management WordPress Plugin for churches/a/li lia href="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/pluginblog/2008/06/10/reflex-automatic-blogrol l/" title="Reflex Automatic Blogroll"Reflex Automatic Blogroll WordPress Plugin/a/li lia href="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/pluginblog/2008/06/09/fun-with-in-context-comm ents/" title="Fun with In-Context Comments"Fun with In-Context Comments WordPress Plugin/a/li lia href="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/pluginblog/2008/05/30/wp-comment-remix/" title="WP Comment Remix"WP Comment Remix WordPress Plugin/a/li lia href="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/pluginblog/2008/06/09/fun-with-in-context-comm ents/" title="Fun with In-Context Comments"Fun with In-Context Comments WordPress Plugin/a/li lia href="http://weblogtoolscollection.com/pluginblog/2008/06/10/reflex-automatic-blogrol l/" title="Reflex Automatic Blogroll"Reflex Automatic Blogroll WordPress Plugin/a/li lia href="http://www.flisterz.com/2008/06/02/wordpress-display-comments-on-main-page/" title="Display comments on main page"WordPress: Display Comments On Main Page WordPress Plugin/a/li /ul pstrongWordPress and Google Summer of Code Update:/strong a href="http://foolswisdom.com/wordpress-gsoc-week-4-and-importmt-atomphp/" title="WordPress GSoC Week 4 and import/mt-atom.php"Lloyd Budd reports/a on a href="http://code.google.com/soc/2008/wordpress/about.html" title="WordPress Google Summer of Code"WordPress Google Summer of Code/a and how the team is improving WordPress to make it faster, better, and adding new features including new importing features, improved code, code documentation, and more./p pstrongBlogSecurity#8217;s Next Generation Security Tester:/strong a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BlogSecurity/~3/318134806/" title="BlogSecurify Service Launched!"BlogSecurify announces/a the launch of a href="http://blogsecurity.net/wpscan-ngx"Launch BlogSecurify Next Generation!#8221;gt;BlogSecurify Next Generation/a, the new modular, expanded version of the a href="http://blogsecurity.net/wpscan" title="wp-scanner"WP-scanner WordPress Plugin/a which tests your blog for security issues and vulnerabilities./p pstrongWordPress Blogs Hacked:/strong If you have not a href="http://wordpress.org/development/2008/04/wordpress-251/" title="WordPress 2.5.1"updated your WordPress blog/a, your blog maybe at risk from hackers due to security vulnerabilities in older versions of WordPress. a href="//www.wordpress.org/download/" title="Download WordPress"Update now/a. Here are more articles dealing with WordPress security issues:/p ul lia href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/HolyShmoly/~3/307319279/" title="Did your WordPress site get hacked?"Donncha - Did Your WordPress Site Get Hacked?/a/li lia href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PlanetWordPress/~3/313023994/" title="Holy Shmoly! » WordPress: Catch website file changes with AIDE"Donncha - WordPress: Catch website file changes with AIDE/a/li lia href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PlanetWordPress/~3/308443890/" title="Peter's Useful Crap » WordPress: File Change Notifications For Your WordPress blog on Linux"Peter#8217;s Useful Crap » WordPress: File Change Notifications For Your WordPress blog on Linux/a/li lia href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2008/04/28/wordpress-security-prevention-reactions -and-scares/" title="WordPress Security Prevention, Reactions, and Scares"WordPress Security Prevention, Reactions, and Scares/a/li /ul pstrongWordPress Podcast:/strong a href="http://wp-community.org/2008/06/08/episode-42/" title="Our favorite plugins, Ask Matt, WordPress Theme Design"Episode 42: Our favorite Plugins, Ask Matt, WordPress Theme Design/a is out from the WordPress Podcast and features a new segment by Matt Mullenweg answering questions about WordPress news and issues, discussion of new WordPress Plugins in the Weblog Tools Collection Plugin Competition, WordPress Themes, and more on their favorite WordPress Plugins. They are also seeing your a href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2008/06/10/wordpress-podcast-wants-your-favorite-w ordpress-plugins/" title="WordPress Podcast Wants Your Favorite WordPress Plugins"top ten favorite WordPress Plugins/a for an upcoming episode./p pstrongWP Weekly Podcast:/strong a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Jeffro2pt0/~3/316631343/episode-21-cancelled" title="Episode 21 Canceled"Episode 21 of the WP Weekly Podcast was canceled/a due to technical difficulties, but hopefully it will be back up and running next week./p pstrongWordCast Podcast:/strong a href="http://bitwire.tv/wc" title="WordCast"WordCast/a started a while ago, and eventually found their stride to becoming a bit of an irreverent but fun look at the news from the WordPress Community. Podcast hosts Beth Skinner, Kym Huynh and Dave Moyer have interviewed a variety of WordPress experts and pros and feature a variety of interesting WordPress news and tips each week. Recent episodes include:/p ul lia href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wordcastshow/~3/318945456/WC-018.mp3" title="Sucky Stats"WordCast 18: Sucky Stats/a/li lia href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wordcastshow/~3/315155608/WC-017.mp3" title="Head-eating Cartoons"WordCast 17: Head-eating Cartoons/a/li lia href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wordcastshow/~3/308962451/WC-016.mp3" title="Serenade the Developers"WordCast 16: Serenade the Developers/a/li lia href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wordcastshow/~3/304219740/WC-015.mp3" title="Stalking the Monks"WordCast 15: Stalking the Monks/a/li lia href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wordcastshow/~3/304104901/WC-008.mp3" title="Tweet My Thingie"WordCast 8: Tweet My Thingie/a/li lia href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wordcastshow/~3/304104899/WC-010.mp3" title="The WordPress Widget Mafia"WordCast 10: The WordPress Widget Mafia/a/li lia href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wordcastshow/~3/304104898/WC-011.mp3" title="Bodily function control"WordCast 11: Bodily function control/a/li lia href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wordcastshow/~3/304104897/WC-012.mp3" title="Mother of a WordPress"WordCast 12: Mother of a WordPress/a/li lia href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wordcastshow/~3/304104896/WC-013.mp3" title="WPancake"WordCast 13: WPancake/a/li lia href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wordcastshow/~3/304104895/WC-014.mp3" title="Blog’s Anatomy"WordCast 14: Blog’s Anatomy/a/li /ul pstrongWordPress News and Tips from Canada:/strong If you haven#8217;t found the new a href="http://www.planetwp.ca/" title="Planet WordPress Canada"Planet WordPress Canada/a aggregator, you are missing out on some interesting WordPress tips and information coming from the north. Here are some recent highlights:/p ul lia href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PlanetWordPressCanada/~3/294638406/wplogin-front -page" title="[Peter's Useful Crap] Redirect users to the WordPress front page after logging in"[Peter#8217;s Useful Crap] Redirect users to the WordPress front page after logging in/a/li lia href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PlanetWordPressCanada/~3/295890239/question-will -wordpress-bring-traffic" title="[Kulpreet Singh] Question: Will WordPress Bring Me Traffic?"[Kulpreet Singh] Question: Will WordPress Bring Me Traffic?/a/li lia href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PlanetWordPressCanada/~3/308543328/file-change-n otifications" title="[Peter's Useful Crap] File change notifications for your WordPress blog on Linux"[Peter#8217;s Useful Crap] File change notifications for your WordPress blog on Linux/a/li lia href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PlanetWordPressCanada/~3/309095771/" title="[BlueFur.com Web Hosting] Wordpress Wednesdays: Related Posts"[BlueFur.com Web Hosting] Related Posts/a/li lia href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PlanetWordPressCanada/~3/309095772/" title="[BlueFur.com Web Hosting] Wordpress Wednesdays: Clean Archives Reloaded"[BlueFur.com Web Hosting] Clean Archives Reloaded/a/li lia href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PlanetWordPressCanada/~3/309095773/" title="[BlueFur.com Web Hosting] Wordpress Wednesdays: Category Selector Sidebar"[BlueFur.com Web Hosting] Category Selector Sidebar/a/li lia href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PlanetWordPressCanada/~3/309902122/" title="[BlueFur.com Web Hosting] Wordpress Wednesdays: KeywordLuv Plugin"[BlueFur.com Web Hosting] KeywordLuv Plugin/a/li /ul pstrongLast Week#8217;s WordPress Wednesday News:/strong Can#8217;t get enough WordPress news and tips? There is so much news coming out about the latest version, so you can catch up with the past news in last week#8217;s a href="http://www.blogherald.com/2008/06/19/wordpress-wednesday-new-planet-wordpress-c anada-wordpress-plugins-contest-crazyhorse-buddypress-default-theme-blog-hacked-sitem aps-and-more/" title="Planet WordPress Canada, WordPress Plugins Contest, Crazyhorse, BuddyPress Default Theme, Blog Hacked, Sitemaps, and More"WordPress Wednesday New: Planet WordPress Canada, WordPress Plugins Contest, Crazyhorse, BuddyPress Default Theme, Blog Hacked, Sitemaps, and More/a./p h2WordPress on Your Calendar/h2 pimg src='http://www.blogherald.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/wpevents.png' alt='WordPress Events Calendar' align='right' /strongWordCamp UK Changes Locations:/strong Only a few weeks away, WordCamp UK has had a last minute a href="http://zed1.com/journalized/archives/2008/06/24/wordcamp-uk-change-of-venue/" title="Wordcamp UK - Change of Venue"change of venue to The Studio in Birmingham/a. Check out a href="http://uk.wordcamp.org/" title="Jul 19, 2008: WordCamp UK"WordCamp UK/a for more details and maps./p pstrongWordPress Meetup or WordCamp Near You?/strong If you are putting together a WordPress event, please a href="mailto:#x6c;#111;#114;#x65;#x6c;#108;#101;#x6f;#x6e;#119;#111;#114;#100;#112;#x 72;#101;#x73;#x73;#64;#103;#109;#x61;#x69;#x6c;#46;#x63;#111;#x6d;"email/a me so I can publicize it here. If there is a WordCamp near you, go. If you are interested in setting up a WordCamp, stay tuned for news and information on to bring a WordCamp event near you./p pHere are some WordPress-related dates and events to put on your calendar as found on the a href="http://trac.wordpress.org/roadmap" title="WordPress roadmap"WordPress Roadmap/a and the a href="http://wordpress.meetup.com/" title="WordPress Meetup List"WordPress Meetup Group Listings/a (subject to change)./p ul lia href="http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/788024/" title="Jun 28, 2008: Huntsville WordPress Meetup at Panera Bread"Huntsville WordPress Meetup, Alabama - June 28, 2008/a/li lia href="http://wordpress.meetup.com/177/calendar/8005387/" title="The Nashville WordPress June Meeting"Nashville WordPress Meetup - June 28, 2008/a/li lia href="http://wordpress.meetup.com/178/calendar/8005389/" title="The Dallas/Ft. Worth Area WordPress June Meeting"Dallas/Ft. Worth Area WordPress Meetup - June 28, 2008/a/li lia href="http://wordpress.meetup.com/169/calendar/8187215/" title="The New York City WordPress July Meetup"The New York City WordPress - July 19, 2008/a/li lia href="http://uk.wordcamp.org/" title="Jul 19, 2008: WordCamp UK"WordCamp UK - July 19-20, 2008, Birmingham, UK/a strongVENUE CHANGE/strong/li lia href="http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/543154/" title="Aug 16, 2008: WordCamp San Francisco, 2008 at Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSF"WordCamp San Francisco 2008 at Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSF - Aug 16, 2008/a/li liWordPress 2.6 - July 7, 2008/li lia href="http://philippines.wordcamp.org/" title="Sep 6, 2008: WordCamp Philippines 2008 at College of St. Benilde"WordCamp Philippines - September 6, 2008/a/li lia href="http://www.blogworldexpo.com/" title="Blog World Expo"Blog World Expo, Vegas - September 20-21, 2008/a/li lia href="http://southbydeepsouth.com/2008/04/18/its-a-date/" title="South by Deep South WordCamp"South by Deep South WordCamp - September 26-28 - Birmingham, Alabama/a/li lia href="http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/761020/" title="Sep 27, 2008: WordCamp Portland at TBA"WordCamp Portland, Oregon - September 27, 2008/a/li lia href="http://wordcamptoronto.eventbrite.com/" title="WordCamp Toronto will be October 4th"WordCamp Toronto - October 4th, 2008/a/li lia href="http://wiki.thingelstad.com/MinneWordCamp" title="MinneWordCamp"MinneWordCamp - Minneapolis - November 15, 2008/a/li /ul pstrongWordCamp San Francisco August 16:/strong August 16, 2008 is the next a href="http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/543154/" title="Aug 16, 2008: WordCamp San Francisco, 2008 at Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSF"WordCamp San Francisco/a, considered by many to be the premier WordCamp event. This year, it appears it will be only one day instead of two, but details are still coming. It will be at the a href="http://www.ahl-missionbay.com/" title="Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSF ..."Mission Bay Conference Center/a this year./p pstrongWordCamps and WordPress Meetups Everywhere:/strong A WordPress Meetup is a frequent meeting of WordPress fans. A WordCamp is a day or two long event with sponsors and dozens if not hundreds of WordPress fans gathering annually. If you would like to sponsor or host a WordCamp, check out the new official site for tracking WordCamps is a href="http://central.wordcamp.org/" title="WordCamp Central"WordCamp Central/a, which includes instructions and a href="http://central.wordcamp.org/guidelines/" title="run your own WordCamp"guidelines for running a WordCamp/a. If you would like to start a WordPress Meetup group, find a meeting place and announce it among your friends, and add a listing to the a href="http://upcoming.yahoo.com/search/?type=Eventsamp;q=wordpress" title="Event search for wordpress"Yahoo Upcoming events for WordPress/a, as many track WordPress event announcements there. /p h2WordPress Plugins and Themes News/h2 pa href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/" title="WordPress Plugins Extends"img src="http://www.blogherald.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/wppluginsextend1.gif" alt="WordPress Plugins Database" align="right" //aa href="http://andy.wordpress.com/2008/06/22/batcache-for-wordpress/" title="Batcache for WordPress"Andy Skelton has announced #8220;Batcache#8221; for WordPress/a, a competitor, so to speak, to a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/" title="Donncha’s WP-Super-Cache"Super-Cache WordPress Plugin/a. While Super Cache works well on typical servers, the a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/batcache/" title="Batcache"Batcache WordPress Plugin/a works with #8220;enterprises with multiple servers that don#8217;t share disk space,#8221; and those who won#8217;t or can#8217;t use file-based caching. Andy says that Batcache creates a simple caching model to protect your database and servers from traffic spikes by caching a requested document when it is clear the document has been accessed several times within a specific period of time and tempor