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TGIF because I'll tune in once again to the 12-week Social Media & Marketing Webinar, hosted by DOMUS CONSULTING GROUP, moderated by founders KEVIN BOER and PAT KITANO and supported by Active Rain's BRAD ANDERSOHN. Each week we jump on the web and surf a new wave of instruction and information that is value-packed with a pair of training wheels as we are all processing the surge of web-based applications to use in our marketing. This particular webinar is focused on the marketing side that is applied through Social Media. Tuning in to this forum has given me a place for learning to understand the framework and powerful potential of Twitter---which has totally surprised me...I never would have considered it to be the UNBELIEVEABLE power tool that it is for your marketing efforts! We're also learning to understand RSS (Real Simple Syndication) which Kevin Boer and Pat Kitano refer to as "the glue that holds much of the social media together." AHA! I love these images. They really help me understand the big picture! THE BIG PICTURE that is hopping with excellent brews of easier-to-digest information. I guarantee you'll be buzzed with excitement over all the potential, real, down-to-earth possibilities for your everyday business efforts. Last week we learned to distinguish between PUBlishers and SUBscribers , explained as the two components of RSS (ding! ding!). The Domus guys spelled this 
out, illustrating how THE PUBLISHER is a website that produces content and a SUBSCRIBER is the reader of that content. Tools like FEED READERS (google reader, netvines & tons of others) provide a framework for ordering and organizing all of your subscriptions. This basically allows the media to arrive in your inbox, saving you a lot of time and effort and navigating around. It's all very cool, calm and collected---and did I mention FUN?!
For info on upcoming webinars, check out DOMUS CONSULTING GROUP.
© Copyright 2008 - This posting and the contents written here, except where noted, are the property of Mara Hawks, All Rights Reserved
CLICK CART TO SHOP FOR HOMES IN AUBURN-OPELIKA, ALABAMA 
FIRE.' My eyes wandered to the fireplace in the room that I took for granted all summer... FIRE, burned into my memory, emerged as a 
campfire of images...from birthday candles and roasting marshmallows to the smell of fear & wildfires that charged through mountain regions of places I'd lived---Southern California, South Africa and Colorado... ancient memories, somehow preserved, of black kettles over flames that fed thousands for centuries, sounds of welders and blacksmiths...the images spiraled to the dawn of Creation, flames of fire, forever striking the surface (chronos) of our existence and the depth (kairos) of our being...the firing of Light that sparks Soulfulness...that carries kindling from heart to heart,
Finally! A HAPPY HEADLINE is found in this morning's news, coming out of my hometown of heroes--- CHICAGO! A great town with 2 great baseball teams (although only one of them ever actually wins), a wonderful stock of humanity, excellent leadership (I'm recollecting the decades of Mayor Daley Sr and currently, his son), culturally diverse and architecturally rich, and NOW, today, a sheiff, TOM DART from Albany, IL has taken a historical stand, I believe, as he is refusing to foreclose on 4700 properties, bringing to the forefront the underlying problem of too many rent-paying tenants and their non-mortgage paying landlords. He was quoted as saying "We won't be doing the banks' work for them anymore...we won't surprise tenants with an eviction order intended for their landlord." Well, the banks may have something to do after all, these days, since they don't seem to be in the lending business at the moment. And while they're at it, maybe they can start doing some fundraising to reimburse city governments that have had to respond to discontented neighbors to clean up their neighborhoods, overgrown and 
aesthetically disturbed by empty homes. Seems like it's our tax dollars going out to protect the bank's accumulating assets while they sit on their, well, whatevers. Read 
tree community survive, much less begin to grow again? I just heard about the massive assistance being given to huge banking companies like AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I just heard the news of how banks worldwide are now pumping money back into the economy like a huge wave--- of over 200 billion. Evidently, the fear in the economy is contagious and has now spread throughout the world. But, what about mortgages? What about this infrastructure close to the root system that supports the bigger branches of the economy? Is this a right move in the wrong direction? If HOMEOWNERS can't be helped, how can the system strengthen its roots and restore balance overall? Is this a right answer for the wrong problem?? It seems that, until home sales can begin to turn around, the branches of banks, insurance companies and brokerage firms will not find any leverage or begin to recover. If the root system is weakening and dissolving, how will anything that stems from it remain in place or GROW again? 
Katie Evans from Greenville, NC blogged about musical chairs this morning. Thanks, 
, thankfully, have succeeded in somewhat sorting them out over the years...sifting through all the debris to find the single treasures of those moments, the single pearl of goodness that was knotted into the strand of my childhood journey that, as a kid, we can experience as a choking of the spirit.
REALITY is, sometimes we do lose out, whether it be a hurricane, a job promotion, a date with your biggest crush (will George C. ever call me?), your favorite restaurant being fully booked, even though it's your birthday... the overnight line at the Apple store is cut off after the person in front of you---SOLD OUT! I guess there really are so many times we are playing a musical chairs of sorts. The willingness to let go can be a gift of wisdom. Everyone can't have everything. (Where would you even put it all?) 
SOCIAL NETWORKING. We are LIVING THE PHENOMENON..the manifesto of ‘space expansion' (one of the final concepts that Albert Einstein wrote about in his journal---if he were here today, I'm sure he would have blogged about it.) NO ONE is left standing or without a place. It's music to my ears, so pull up a chair. 
practicing. My brain was wired from a different generation---and then some--- and so I usually seem to have a lot of re-wiring and unscrambling to do. While the brain doesn't necessarily improve with age, the good thing about it, I'm told, is that it can improve with 
converging with the mass media, and beginning to replace a lot of it. This is a huge change in journalism and how we receive information. Kevin and Pat talked about how the whole blogging phenomenon took off around this time, and, with the introduction of MySpace, became mainstream. Then YouTube began generating video.