Entries from March 2008 ↓

20080323 .Sharon and me. day147 Originally uploaded by .simis.

Two sweet ladies meet for the first time. Simis is hosting Nanna J and me in Austin this week. It’s hard to tell who is more excited.  Ha.

Look forward to more pictures of us all over this week. Please click through and show Simis’s pictures some comment love.

My wife and I are alive and well in Austin, Tx.  We had some twists and turns getting here.  Photos to come shortly.

Currently visiting with our host, Simis, from Flickr. She’s both a computer geek and talented photographer.  Please do check out her link.

Yours from Texas,

Todd and Sharon

To the left is the driving map from St. Peters, MO to Austin, Tx with a stop in Texarkana, AR.  Total estimated travel time is 14 hours 20 mins.

Our expectation is to do most of that trip on Saturday, March 22nd, stopping in Texarkana.  This drive should be fairly relaxed as we’ll be taking off before noon and make stops along the way.  Most likely we’ll stop around Memphis and around Little Rock.

My wife and I have never visited Little Rock, so we hope to stop and grab a few pictures there.

We plan to stay in Austin through till Saturday morning.  Plans may change as weather conditions change, and/or other things develop during our stay.

Do feel free to invite us to breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, photography, or whatever.  We are going to staying with a friend, and spending some evenings with her of course.

Some recommendations from friends:

Bob Bullock History Museum

Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

Zilker Park Rose Garden

Threadgill’s

Salt Lick BBQ

Alamo Draft House

Botanical gardens

Stretch of South Congress between the river and E. Oltorf

Guero’s Taco Bar (shrimp fajitas FTW)

Mars Bar

 If you have recommendations for eateries, hangouts, favorite tourist attraction or whatever, please leave a comment here, DM me on Twitter @tojosan, or email me tojosa/gmail.com.  If you want a postcard, email me or DM with note saying POSTCARD and an address.

Thanks so much for the recommendations so far.  Can’t wait to be in Austin, see the sites, visit with friends, take some pictures and eat at some interesting places.

The adventures in blogging continue.  Blogging and aggregation is a hot topic in St. Louis lately.  If you blog, you’ve dealt with the up and downsides of it.  If your blog has RSS, there’s a good chance someone is aggregating it.  Maybe that happens inside an RSS reader, but it can also happen at a blog aggregator site.

What’s the harm? Those sites can be both helpful and harmful. Some aggregators capture the entire content of the RSS feed and redisplay it on the site.  Kinder ones showcase the blog feed with human designed setups.

What can you do to get it right? Create your own aggregator of course!

Some of us bloggers are getting together, forming a project to talk about making a better aggregator.  I can’t give up the site yet. It’s still very bare bones.  Currently a team is being assembled.

It’s stirring up in St. Louis. Here’s a little background for that too.

What are you doing about your blog and aggregation?

In all seriousness there was no ninja in the contest that I know of.  But if he blogged, he’d have had a shot too.

SOBCon is all about the bloggers.  You can read here what last year’s participants had to say.

“Here are 3 key reasons SOBCon08 is going to be even better than SOBCon07:

1. Bigger. More attendees. More planning. More to talk about. More to do. More, more, more, more.

2. BAP. “The SOBCon08 program guarantees to send each attendee home with a Business Action Plan that can be immediately executed for measurable success.”

3. Biz. School, that is. An even stronger focus on business blogging and how to use blogs to boost your business.”

Me? This will be my first time. I’m excited about the opportunities this will present. Not only a chance to mingle but learn.  The sessions will be very focused with the end result a plan I can take forward for blogging as a business.

Currently there are no ads on this site, however that is not for a lack of interest. What I’d like to do is get it right. That applies for social networks as well.  Where can I best spend my time and resources?

What are you doing with your blog and your social networks? Are you merely marking time or are you making progress towards your personal and business goals? Has your online life profited you today?

Check out SOBCon and see if it’s for you.  It might just help you answer those questions.

Tired of those ordinary e-cards? Over dancing squirrels? Had enough of those scary and speedy tunes that blow you out of your chair? Then this e-card site is for you.

Carded.Tv brings a whole new angle to sending e-cards. These e-cards just don’t talk; they have your voice.  No more sending a card that has the person’s name just spelled it; they’ll hear it!

Here’s a handful of the unique cards available.

Oh yeah, “You Texted Me!” is for you and your text happy friends.  The NERDS one is for all of those folks on Facebook that keep inviting me to Pirates, Ninjas, and Robot Monkey applications.

You won’t find your grandma’s greetings here.  These are all original with video from the very short and simple to more involved.  The players in these cards are into it.

You can leave your feedback and let the folks there know what you want to see.

Best part? You can contribute your videos for consideration!

Go, check it out, and send hilarious e-cards. Your friends will laugh, and you’ll be a hit.

Me!

The SOBCon Contest is over and I won. Yes, you can read the details on the SOBCon site, but I’ll give you the short and skinny here.

First things first, because the SOBCon contest is over, I’ve taken down the big cartoon encouraging you to visit the SOBCon site. No more need to do it to help me.  That said, I encourage everyone that’s into blogging and wants to take it up a notch to visit and consider going to the conference.

“The grand prize is a free registration to SOBCon08, plus two hotel nights.”

I’m planning on spending Friday and Saturday nights in the Club Quarters, near the conference center.

“We’d also like to give one more big shoutout to our contest co-sponsor, Plante Moran Financial Advisors.”

Yes, there is a sponsor.  I’ve not used Plante Moran Financial Advisors, but I’ll be sure to give them a look.  Thank you Plante Moran.

 ”Congratulations Todd!!

And thanks to all who participated in the contest - your promotion of this event has been most appreciated.”

Thank you SOBCon Team!  See you there soon.

For others attending, please check out the wiki: http://sobcon.pbwiki.com

Terry Starbucker brings us his take on why SOBCon matters to him and why it should to you and me.  Terry talks about conference planning and how it’s impacted him.  As well, he talks about SOBCon’s cofounder Liz Strauss and working with her.

Terry is convinced about the value of the SOBCon conference. He’s not the only one. I’m convinced as well.  Great bloggers from across the blogosphere will be on hand.  They’ll be leading us through several models or paths that a blogger can pursue.

Beyond just reviewing ways to make our blogs successful will be the networking.  It’ll be me and 249 other bloggers plus the conference presenters working together.  An intensive day of learning, planning and growing along side one another.  A day that will result in not just solid workable take aways, but friends.  The ground work for a success network will be layed that day.

I’ve not attended and yes, I have high hopes, but I want you to question yourself. Is your blog really successful? Can you even tell? Do you even have goals for it? Where will it be a year from now?

For a lot of us that blog those questions are tough to answer.  I believe at this time that the cost of the conference is worth it as investment in myself and the future of my blogging efforts.

What are you willing to invest to move your blog to a full time business?

Please take a minute to check out the SOBCon site and see if this is your conference for the year.