Happy Halloween

Now when I was a baby mama named me after the great Civil War hero General Nathan Bedford Forrest. She said we was related to him in some way. And what he did was He started up this club called the Ku Kux Klan. They'ed all dress up in their robes and their bedsheets, And act like a bunch of ghosts or spooks or somethin'. They'ed even put bedsheets on their horses and ride around. And anyway, that's how I got my name: Forrest Gump. My mama said the Forrest part was to remind me that sometimes we all do things that well, just don't make no sense.

Cool Blog: The Prize is Right

The Cool Blog for this week is The Prize is Right.

The Very Best Prizes, Competitions, & Opportunities for Artists, Actors, Musicians, Writers, Filmmakers, Comedians, Archtects & All Creative Professionals

There are some great opportunities on this blog for comedians ($10,000 Seattle International Standup Comedy Competition), funny moms ($50,000 Funniest Mom in America Contest), filmakers (The Aspen Shortfest for Comedic Filmmakers and All Other Filmmakers), models (The Ultimate Global Model Search), and singers (American Idol is Auditioning).

If you can get past the appearance of this blog, you will find that the content is pure gold for those of you wanting to step into the spotlight and demonstrate your talent for the world. There are also lots of resources on where to find other opportunities.

So, blogger, come on down to the The Prize is Right.

Carnival of the Blogging Chicks : Fall Traditions

Carnival of Blogging Chicks is being hosted by PENSIEVE this week.

The theme for this Carnival will be . . . Fall traditions, Halloween, sports, favorite memories (especially of your childhood). Start your Sunday out right this week at PENSIEVE blog.


Tags: Blogging Chicks, Carnival of Blogging Chicks, Fall traditions

Unlikely Juxtapositions

This is an excellent video without sound or with the Pink Floyd soundtrack.





Push arrow above to start video and move slider above to increase sound. I am a member of BAM (bloggers against music). We are against websites and blogs tha automatically play music or videos.

Tags: National Geographic video, BAM (bloggers against music)

Social Networking Big Hit with Teens

From Nielsen/NetRatings:

Over the past three years, teens (12-17) have gravitated toward sites that offer social networking, content such as lyrics, graphics for profiles and tools for profile page design. This is a definite shift from sites offering a free IM buddy icons.

In September 2003, the number one site among teens was Originalicons.com, with teens composing 77.6 percent of its unique audience. At that time, Buddy4u.com and Badass Buddy also made it into the top 10 sites among teens. Blunt Truth, a forum for sharing opinions on movies and music, and Teen People, a celebrity gossip magazine, were also popular with teens.

In September of this year, nine out of the top ten teen sites were social networking sites or sites offering content (graphics, lyrics, page layouts) to enhance profiles for social networking sites. PLyrics.com ranked number one with 68.4 percent of the teen audience. Snapvine, which offers a voice player for social networking sites, ranked number two (67.6 percent), followed by WhateverLife.com (60.6 percent).

Teens also spend more time online then they did in September 2003 (21 hours and 4 minutes per week)to 26 hours and 48 minutes in September of this year, an increase of 27 percent.

Tags: teen social networking, teens online

Cool Blog : One Man Bandwidth Blog

The cool blog of the week is One Man Bandwidth Blog : An American Professor in China. This is one of the blogs I love to read. You never know about what you will be reading when you visit.

Lon shares his thoughts on the Chinese culture with anecdotes and events that will shock, amuse and trouble you. Lon has totally immersed himself into life in China. He has adopted causes, like the Chinese League of Extraordinary Chinese Women, a group of cancer survivors.

He discusses organ selling on the open market, the cost of a wedding in China (roughly a year's salary), bird flu (or not), oddities like the man with no pores and the coma bride. He contrasts and compares Chinese and American students, and the American students lose.

Lon also belongs to the Carnival of Banned Blogs and is often misquoted by Chinese newspapers. Suspend your way of thinking and visit OneManBandwidth. Tell Lon that CyberCelt sent you.

Carnival of the Blogging Chicks

Carnival of Blogging Chicks is being hosted by Dreaming What Ifs blog this week.

The theme for this carnival is mistakes. On Sunday, October 22, visit Dreaming What Ifs ... for the links to all posts for the Carnival of Blogging Chicks. Spend part of your Sunday reading about mistakes, there will be some whoppers I am sure.


Tags: Blogging Chicks, Carnival of Blogging Chicks, mistakes

Wanted : Cool Blog

Say goodbye to Pictures From My World, the Cool Blog for last week.

Here are your traffic stats for the last week
314 impressions
173 unique impressions
24 clicks
11 unique clicks

Click here to rent CoolAdzine this week for 50 credits.

What You May Do to Help Stop AIDS in Africa

Meet the iPod nano (PRODUCT) RED Special Edition. Apple will give $10 of its purchase price to the Global Fund to fight AIDS in Africa. Just introduced, the iPod nano (PRODUCT) RED is an Apple Store exclusive and will not be sold through other retailers.



If 50,000 people buy iPod nano RED = $500,000 to fight aids. Spread the word and remember someone special this holiday season.

Sleek, lightweight, and just $199, the 4GB iPod nano (PRODUCT) RED delivers everything your customers expect from the world’s best-selling digital music player. A brilliant, 1.5-inch color display. Up to 24 hours of battery life. Seamless iTunes integration that lets you import CDs and shop for songs, podcasts, and audiobooks on the iTunes Store, then sync them in minutes. All in a durable aluminum enclosure that tells the world you have chosen to join (RED) and to help stamp out AIDS.

Tags: Product RED nano, fight AIDS, not available in stores, iPod nano

Click & Comment Monday

Monday is Click & Comment Day. Do you wish to play? It is easy.

Just click my renter Pictures From My World. Comment on that blog and then click their renter or someone on their blogroll and comment on that blog. Repeat. Try to click and comment on at least 5 blogs if you have time. I guarantee you will find some cool blogs and you will increase your readership if you do this every Monday you are able.

Leave a comment so I know to visit your blog on C&C Mondays!

Tip: To add your site to the official C&C Monday blogroll, please visit Cat, the wonderful blogger who thought up this great idea.


Tags: Click & Comment, click and comment Monday, visit blogs and leave comments

Compulsive Planning Disorder

Did you make a New Year's resolution this past year? How's that coming for you? Post what your resolution was and how you're doing now that we're 3/4 of the way through the year!

Click to Visit the BC Carnival

At one time I was a person who planned their life to the nth degree. I had a Franklin planner full of tasks and to-do lists for the next day and week. I set 6-month, 3 year and 10 year goals to ensure I was fulfilling all the emotional, spiritual, family and job related facets of my life.

Then I stopped planning. After I gave birth and while raising my son as a single parent, I had no aspirations for myself other than to raise him to be a good man. Well, he is almost 17 and will be leaving within the year to begin his life. In celebration of being able to put a big checkmark by the task . . .



Be a Good Mom



. . and in anticipation of my life to come, I will set some resolutions for the next year.

In 2007, I resolve to:

• become debt free
• learn Spanish
• visit my friends in Costa Rica

Okay. there are my resolutions, my to-do list, if you will. Which, I might mention, will become a big ball and chain over the next year. A to-do list means I will have to do all these things because I have CPD (compulsive planning disorder).

OMG! This list will reside here from now until eternity . . . taunting me . . . mocking me . . . crying out for that big blue checkmark! *sob*

* sniff * I hope you are all happy now . . .

Tags: Carnival of Blogging Chicks, New Year's resolutions

Cool Blog : Pictures From My World

Pictures From My World

Please visit the Cool Blog of the Week: Pictures From My World. Bozette, the nickname this blogger has selected for herself, is a derivative of Bozo (as in Bozo the clown). Bozette is a clown and loves it. She dresses up in full costume and brings joy to others. It is a gift.


Bozette also has a gift for photography. She takes pictures of flowers, mushrooms, road signs, loved ones or friends and then writes a brief description that takes you into her life, the world of Bozette. It is a good world. Please visit my guest. Tell her CyberCelt sent you.

My, My, My Generation on MySpace

Last week, the release of visitor demographics for MySpace from comScore found 51+ percent of MySpace visitors in the US to be 35+ years old. Teen visitors dropped from just under 25 percent to less than 12 percent of total unique visitors.

Nielsen//NetRatings found 46 percent of US-based visitors to MySpace in September were ages 35+, up from 38 percent from last year. Visitors in the 12-17 age group slipped from 31.5 percent of the total audience to 20 percent during the same time.

While the rate of older visitors increases, the actual usage of the site remains firmly grasped in the hands of the 12-17 year olds.

Ad Age reported:

The average 12- to 17-year-old spent 260 minutes on MySpace and viewed about 808 pages. By contrast, the average 35-54-year-old spent 179 minutes on the site and took in 560 pages.

In other words, teens consumed 44 percent more content and spent 45 percent more time on MySpace than the 35+ year olds. So, who are the older visitors? Lurkers, parents, pedophiles?

Tags: MySpace, aging of MySpace, 35+ year olds, users or lurkers

Opening for a Cool Blog

Say goodbye to The Watchlist, the Cool Blog for last week.

Traffic stats for the last week
386 impressions
186 unique impressions
26 clicks
18 unique clicks
25 credits

Click here to rent CoolAdzine this week

Who Do You Turn to in a Crisis?

According to LexisNexis U.S., when consumers are faced with major life-changing events, such as a pandemic or a Class 5 hurricane, they trust traditional media--such as newspapers, magazines, television and radio--and not the blogosphere.

• Half of those surveyed said they would turn to network television for immediate news


• 42 percent said radio would provide what they need


• 37 percent of consumers would use daily local newspapers


• 33 percent would turn to cable news or business networks


• 25 percent would rely on Internet sites of print and broadcast media


• Only 6 percent would turn to Internet user groups, blogs and chat rooms

Tags: LexisNexis, trusted news sources, traditional news versus user generated content

Find the Cultural Business Etiquette You Need

Aquent’s Business of Touch website will help you to learn and to become fluent with greeting protocols around the world. From eye contact, or not, to bowing, or not, to shaking hands, or not, to presenting business card, or not. These questions must be answered if we wish to impress and not offend people from other cultures. This dynamic site colorfully illustrates both the sights and sounds of cross-cultural greetings.

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Please visit The Watchlist and add a few items to the grocery list from hell. Tell him CyberCelt sent you.

Wasted Tax Dollars and Homeland Security

Homeland Security Department has given a $2.4 million grant to a consortium of major universities to develop software that would monitor negative opinions of United States or its leaders in newspapers and other publications overseas. Thus allowing the government to conduct sentiment analysis on the foreign press, hopefully to identify potential threats to nation.


I would think that graphic coverage of burning American flags, burning Pope effigies, not to speak of rockets launched at us or roadside bombs destroying our Hummers, might give a clue as to how certain nations view us.


My opinion is very similar to the option of the Media Guy at Advertising Age:

Seriously? A government that couldn't make heads or tails of blunt English like "Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S." and "Any storm rated Category 4 or greater ... will likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching" is now spending millions on an electronic clipping service to find just how much, and in what ways, foreign journalists and their subjects hate us?

Tags: Homeland Security grant, sentiment analyzing software, , wasted tax dollars

Click and Comment Monday

Monday is Click & Comment Day. Do you wish to play? It is easy.

Just click my renter or a link on my blogroll. Comment on that blog and then click their renter or someone on their blogroll and comment on that blog. Repeat. Try to click and comment on at least 5 blogs if you have time. I guarantee you will find some cool blogs and you will increase your readership if you do this every Monday you are able.

Leave a comment so I know to visit your blog on C&C Mondays!

Tip: To add your site to the official C&C Monday blogroll, please visit Cat, the wonderful blogger who thought up this great idea.

Tags: Click & Comment, click and comment Monday, visit blogs and leave comments

Video, Social Networking and You

Social networking and the predominance of user-generated content (UGC), such as videos, have, by default, become accepted strategies of online advertising by Internet marketers and some smaller advertising agencies. The use of these sites by traditional advertisers is limited and can best explained by two questions that remain.

• Will UGC, such as video, ever become an useful venue for branding?


• More importantly, how will advertising fit into the UGC community environment?

The USG video market is just too lucrative for advertisers to ignore. Advertisers need to reach members of the allusive 13-34 demographic sector that use social networks. Social networks have a high percentage of users who log in and, more importantly, complete profiles that offer gender, age, location, occupation, interests, hobbies, favorite music, games, books and movies.

There are several methods of adding the brand to video: ad ticker overlay; end of video still-frame call to action, inviting users to click through to watch a paid ad or visit a website; and a mixture of the two, a brand presence below the video as it plays, a brief still frame ad, followed by a 15-second or 30-second ad spot at end of video.

The problem is how to be sure the advertising is received in a context that is conducive to the brand yet will not alienate the viewers. There are different cues to behavior on a UGC site than on a traditional website. Network behavior includes commenting, rating systems, tracking how often a video is linked, forwarded or posted to another site.

For a more detailed discussion of this topic, please visit the Behavioral Insider Blog to view Catching The VIBE: Targeting The User-Generated Video Space.

Tags: consumer-generated content, social networks, video, online advertising

Cool Blog : The Watchlist

The Cool Blog of the Week is The Grocery List from Hell.

The Grocery List From Hell is combines social commentary, rant and eBay auctions, including information on at least one featured auction per day. Eclectic? Yes!! the blog embraces an extremely wacky way to look at the world. Maybe that is why I like it so much.

These are just a few of my favorite posts. Read about the better mousetrap, death by gun control, husband exterminators and natural male enhancement or find your own.

Leave a comment and tell him CyberCelt sent you.

The Great Firewall of China

Chinese governmental agencies employ thousands of Web censors, Internet cafe police and computers that constantly screen traffic for forbidden content. All bloggers in China are required to register and may be jailed for violating the rules. Recently China even coerced some US Internet companies to limit the content of search results returned to users based in China.

In response to this crackdown, as well as to bypass the many restrictions in many Middle Eastern countries, a small army has been mustered to defeat them . . .

Hackers to the rescue.

• Freegate, a tiny software program connects computers inside of China to servers in the free world.
• Circumventor connects volunteers in the free world with Web users in China and the Middle East who then use the volunteer personal computers to read forbidden sites.
• Tor, a modified version of a US Naval Research Laboratory project, disguises the identities of Chinese Web surfers by sending messages through several layers of hosts to obscure their path

While applauding the creativity of circumventing governmental restrictions on a free Internet, should we be worried about providing another channel for spending SPAM? Think about it. Let me know your thoughts.

Tags: China internet censorship, Tor, Circumventor, Freegate, Internet freedom, free SPAM,

Having some trouble with template

Howdy!

Seems like my Mr. Linky made my blog go wacko! Blog rolls are off for right now.

Please stay tuned.

What in the World is eXlinks?

eXlinks is a social link network.

The basis of how it all fits together will become clear when we go Beta, but essentially we are going to go out and build small networks of friends, referrals, bloggers, website owners and basically anyone with an online interest who wants any of the following:

• Readers
• Visitors
• Traffic
• Better search engine ranking

When is eXlinks launching?

When we have a large enough network of people to start off with a BANG, we will launch. We have set a predetermined target and when we hit that target, we'll let rip.

You can sign up for eXlinks service by visiting this link.

Best advice for anyone who is serious about wanting serious kickbacks in the form of traffic, readers and attention from search engines would be to sign up and start referring your friends.

Tags: eXlinks, eXponential site eXpansion,traffic builder, BlogMad, Blogetiq

Bloggers bare all for breast cancer research!

click the banner to visit site

October 1, 2006 --Boobies. Although they come in all shapes and sizes (large, small, saggy and perky), they have one thing in common: The ability to develop cancer.

Even though there is no cure yet, the fifth annual Blogger Boobie-Thon is doing its part to make cancer a thing of the past.

From October 1-7, bloggers from across the globe can submit pictures of bare and covered breasts to raise money for breast cancer causes.

Founded in 2002 by Florida blogger Robyn Pollman, the Boobie-Thon has grown into a well-known event, raising over $26,000 for breast cancer and blogger-charity causes, with over 1500 people contributing pictures. The event raised $9240 between October 1-8, 2005, with $1355 going to a secondary charity: The American Red Cross Hurricane Katrina Fund. The rest of the donations were donated to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

Featured in Self Magazine’s Body Confidence Awards in 2004, both founders and participants are hoping to generate exposure and donations for a worthy cause. This year donors can choose to donate to either Children's Hospital Boston or the Komen Foundation.

Both male and female bloggers can submit pictures of their breasts. The covered boobies are featured on the free area of the site. The price of viewing the bare breasts is $50, made payable to Children's Hospital Boston or The Komen Foundation. A copy of an e-receipt is needed in order to gain the password to the Not Safe for Work portion of the site.

Tags: Boobie-Thon 2006, bloggers bare all, support cancer research