Happy Thanksgiving NW Indiana

Thanksgiving - We have overcome

No pun intended, Happy Thanksgiving. In this time of economic worry, I felt it important this morning to remember that we have overcome many obstacles along the way in our nation's history and we will overcome these as well. Now, before we take ourselves too serious, we've also been blessed by God and it's high time we take those blessings serious. No soapbox today though.

Thanks for our families, for our churches, for our communities. Thanks for the ability to speak freely and gather in whatever groups we choose. Thanks for our government leaders, although we may have voted different, their responsibilities are great and warrant our support. Thanks for Northwest Indiana, the Southshore of beaches and mills of jobs.

As we gather with friends and family today, remember those who are not as fortunate as you ... there are homeless in NW Indiana, there are hungry, there are families still suffering from the floods a few months ago, there are families unemployed or worried about being unemployed soon. Pause a moment, how can you help.

Traffic to Porter County Political Site

http://reasonbellpundit.blogspot.com

Our most successful site this year, for obvious reasons, was our political site here locally. What's been nice has been the traffic levels continuing after the election. Although I'd prefer to see subscribers growing (with 75-85 right now) and daily traffic between 50 and 120.

For December I'd like to set some goals for the site: 1) break 100 subscribers 2) average more than 100 visitors per day for entire month.

clipped from www.sitemeter.com

24 Redemption and Jack Bauer to Obama

An fun question, what would Jack Bauer tell Barack Obama if such a fictional conversation were to take place?

clipped from reasonbellpundit.blogspot.com What would Jack Bauer tell Pres. Barack Obama I asked on twitter, and then was encouraged to start an open thread: What would Jack Bauer tell Pres-elect Barack Obama about the world? (tonite being the 24 Redemption and all)

Next Generation Accounting Firm

I came across this firm while doing some research for one of my clients, a financial consulting company that does work for cities and towns and not-for-profits. Root is going the extra mile to use technology and paperless office strategies to change the way accounting is conducted. Kudos

clipped from www.root.com Search

Too many messages?

With my facebook messages, gmail chats, plaxo and linkedin notes ... the list goes on and on. How does one keep up on all these messages and try to respond to the ones that matter?

Robert Scoble, noted blogging and online expert, suggests:

Fuser is something I took too immediately upon seeing it because it helps me with a new pain: keeping up with Twitter, Facebook, and other social media messaging systems. See, hundreds of people are trying to send me messages on those systems. But they don’t work in old-school email systems like Microsoft’s Outlook. That’s what Fuser is for, it gives you a common UI to handle all your social media inboxes. Here I get a 26-minute look at Fuser with a couple of executives from the company. I’ve been using it ever since and love it.

I haven't tried it yet, if you have leave a comment, worth it? Is scoble just peddling a product that he's got some profits in?

Northwest Indiana Politics - Join the debate

If you are a regular reader, then we'd like to encourage you to add us to your RSS reader. If you aren't but love politics, please stop in often

clipped from reasonbellpundit.blogspot.com Porter County Politics Featuring multiple authors reviewing political events and politicians and issues in Indiana's Porter County. On the Chicago Southshore in the "Region" of Northwest Indiana. Good government a key focus. The views expressed are those of each author, not necessarily the editors. First, let me thank all our regular readers, can't say that I know how many of you there are, but we do now feature close to 100 RSS subscribers. If you read here often, then add our RSS feed to your readers. Here's the RSS link to make it easy. If you need an easy step by step tutorial on how to set up a google reader, go to First time setting up Google Reader. Thanks again for making us the most active political blog in Northern Indiana, and last week's #4 most active blog in the state on Blog Net News!

First time setting up google reader

I know some of you are here from Porter County Politics, where I left a link to this site.

If you aren't using a feed reader of any kind, you're missing a chance to save tons of time and widen your funnel for watching who's saying what. I had a conversation with a professional a couple days ago who related "I don't have time to write blogs and such" Well that may or may not be the case, but everyone has time to check their inbox on email right? If you can check an email inbox even once a day, then you can check your RSS Feed inbox too.

I use Google Reader, there are other RSS readers and organizers, but for this purposes of this post I'll do a walk-thru on Google Reader setup.

1. Go to Google Homepage
2. Choose 'more' just above google logo
3. Choose reader from popup list
4. If you have a gmail account or google account, then enter that email address and password in and skip to #6
5. If you need a gmail-google account choose "create an account" - this will require entering your current email address, a password of your choice (8 characters) entering the squiggly word that you can see but a spam computer can't ... and then "I accept, create my account" ... google will send you an email at your normal email account that you entered. They do this to be sure again that you're not a spammer. Check your email and click that "validation link" then "click here to continue" from account set up
6. There's a video that explains google reader as you enter the site, you may well want to watch that video.
   
7. Let's enter our first subscription. If you open another tab in your browser and go to Porter County Politics.
8. On the immediate right is an orange button, the universal logo for RSS feeds, whenever you see that button you will find the RSS code for the site you're on. Right click on that orange button, and choose "copy link location" or "copy shortcut" so you can grab the web address associated with that link button.
   
9. Go back to your reader tab ... choose "add subscription" and an empty box will pop up, right click that empty box and choose paste to put that code from the Politics site into the box. Then "add"
10. It's that easy, you just chose your first subscription, I would guess 10 posts will load into your reader, and you'll find lots of ways to organize these posts by topic or tag. You can read the entire post as you skim, or just the headlines. I feed just under 1,000 sites to my reader, so I just skim the headlines and then click the posts that I find interesting.
    
11. In a future post here we'll talk about sharing on google reader. But for now go grab your favorite site's RSS feed and start building your subscriptions. Remember that the RSS feed is the orange logo box, which almost every site has, hint look at toolbar in Internet Explorer if you can't find RSS, sometimes it won't be on the actual site, but will be available in the toolbar and the logo will be bright orange there. In Firefox the logo is in the address pane.
    

More later. Let me know if it works for you.

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Do you Squidoo? Northwest Indiana

I set this one up many months ago, do you squidoo? I'd like to hear from people who have had some success

clipped from www.squidoo.com Welcome to Northwest Indiana I've tried to list as many helpful links and resources as possible, starting of course with our master list of close to 100 local bloggers Bloggers in Northwest Indiana Spotlight  Northwest Indiana Stuff (by 1 person)   Your rating:

Social Media Conservative 101

I just posted a list of links at Where is the Conservative Online Movement?

Sites where conservative writers and theorists and even politicians are sizing up the challenges for the next couple years. Head there to review and subscribe to those blogs and sites on the list.

I mentioned there that I would list here social media and networking sites that are also being used by conservatives (and the rest of the world) to get the word out. You've all heard of the sites, and maybe have a profile on one or two, here's my list of places that web conservatives need to be involved:

• Facebook (MySpace is really dying out for being too teenage)
• Twitter
• FriendFeed
• Plaxo
• Linkedin
• Active Rain (mainly for real estate and mortgage pros)
• Digg
• R-igg (conservative version of Digg)

I'm in a few more, and always trying to social sites. The key to these sites is to follow or friend people in the conservative movements, then engage in the debates, and reach out to even more people. Now you ask the follow-up question "how do I find all these conservative social media types?"

The easiest way is to follow or friend me and then once we're connected look through my connections to find others that appear to be in the movement. That's how I've done it, there's no master list of all the conservatives online trust me!

Here are my profiles:
Twitter
Just click follow once you've signed up
Facebook
Once we're connected I'll introduce you to conservative groups on facebook, there's a bunch
Linkedin
This site is like your resume online, actually get some good consulting prospects there for our business
FriendFeed
You'll find this site pretty awesome once you're on a bunch of the other social media sites, I'd join it after you're on the other three above

Affiliate Marketing with local businesses

I've been wanting to try my hand at this right here in NW Indiana, better dig in and read the whole thing. If you're interested leave me a comment

clipped from www.shoemoney.com Making Money Online With Local Affiliate Programs Everyday people ask me how they can make money online.  In the past whenever I have found something lucrative, I have written a step-by-step guide on how to make money with it. The down side to having a massive reach, however, is that as soon as I write about something it becomes massively saturated. Right now, companies are tightening up their budgets.  Some of you may be out of work right now and trying to make ends meet.  Look on the bright side. Performance-based marketing thrives in this economy and right now, this is a great opportunity for you to take advantage of it. This following guide will show you how to setup local affiliate marketing, or commission sales deals. I’ll also give you real-life examples so you can see exactly how it works. You can just direct people to call a special number. Setup a special code that receptionists will ask for in order to take advantage of the deals. You can collect all the data yourself.

150 Social Media Feeds

One of our readers, found this feed from the social networker and asked how to download the full OPML file to greader:

I saw the link today for a list compiled of the top 150 Social Media Blogs. I liked it but was disappointed to see that it was not in OPML. It was far easier to add the feeds and then whittle them down if I didn't like them. So I went ahead and did it myself as a gift to all of you

Here is the OPML file, just download it and import into your favorite feed reader! And once again, if you are not sharing links with me on Google Reader, get at me! add IdoNotes gmail com on google chat and get to sharing!

Downloadable OPML file

Right Click "downloadable OPML File above" and choose save link to. Then go to your greader, choose manage subscriptions at the bottom, choose import/export tab ... choose browse and find that file you saved called Top 150 Social Media and import. The entire list will automatically import to your greader into a folder.

Hope that's easy enough, if you see an error in my directions please leave a comment.