Sometimes, The Best Things In Life Are Free

That’s certainly the case with MozBackup, the simply fantastic software utility designed to backup of Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird profiles (if you don’t use Firefox, you should – IE7 and Safari don’t compare). According to their website, MozBackup “allows you to backup and restore bookmarks, mail, contacts, history, extensions, cache etc.” However, the unmentioned value of this app is that it is the easiest to use and most reliable tool around …

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Strength In Numbers

Lisa Hirsch over at The Iron Tongue Of Midnight posted an intriguing article on 7/4/2008 which examines a curious piece by music critic Martin Bernheimer which appeared in the 7/5/2008 edition of the Financial Times. In his article, Bernheimer blames the decline of regularly employed traditional music critics on the proliferation of bloggers. I call Bernheimer’s article curious because this discussion has been chewed over so many times, there’s simply no more flavor so it is a mystery why he decided to engage these issues, especially after the positive outlook on blogging at several of June’s NPAC sessions. Furthermore, Bernheimer is a well respected and established journalist and to read some of the unsupported accusations against bloggers makes him appear like the stereotypical cranky old man standing on his front lawn yelling at the kids to stay off his lawn. Fortunately, out of the dozens of professional music critics I know and respect, I can count on one hand, including Bernheimer, the numbers who share his views. Folks old and new to the blogosphere have come to realize the common knowledge that culture blogging doesn’t hurt traditional music criticism, it enhances it…

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Powerful New Development Tools

The 6/28/2008 edition of HuffingtonPost.com featured an article by Julia Moulden which focused on BringLight.com, an online service that makes it easy for donors to contribute to 501(c)3 charitable organizations. I’ve been meaning to write a series of articles about Bring Light for half a year now and there simply isn’t a good excuse as to why that series isn’t done. Regardless, publishing something the wake of Julia’s excellent article will …

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He Would Have Been One Hell Of A Blogger

If he was born during the time of Generation-X he almost certainly would have been at the forefront of the blogging revolution. Instead, George Carlin preceded the age of unfiltered digital communication and had more than his share of experience dealing with the impact of words people didn’t want to hear and interpreting spin. One of the best examples of how Carlin chipped away at this phenomenon was his ever-evolving bit …

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Institutional Blogging

The more I look back at the National Performing Arts Convention (NPAC) session on blogging, the more gratifying the experience becomes. The mix of panelists was ideal and if there was any one point attendees could take away from the event it is this: blogging is not only good for performing arts organizations, but increasingly necessary. The good news is compared to traditional outreach methods, maintaining a first-class blog costs pennies on the dollar. At the same time, it is entirely unrealistic to expect maximum results by merely signing up for a free blogging account and publishing a few scattered posts. Unfortunately, that’s precisely what too many organizations do and watching one group after another fall victim to this bear trap has served as the inspiration behind creating a new service to help performing arts organizations, chamber ensembles, and soloists effectively join the new media revolution. Success is as straightforward as having a helping hand…

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