Can't Stop The Music

Hungry

In these challenging economic times, Seth Godin published a “deep” blog posting. I recommend reading it. I was made aware of it as I read Shaun Groves’ “Schlog” blog – “It’s a crisis. Oh, look, an iPhone!” I recommend them both.   

Twitter Tips

Several people commented online and offline on the Twitter article last week. To those “veteran” Twitter users, the question has been raised, “Where do I go to get advanced ideas regarding Twitter?”  Michael Hyatt sent out a link in his Twitter feed this weekend that led me to a winner… TwiTip. Edited by ProBlogger’s Darren Rowse, TwiTip is a wealth of ideas and software tools for Twitter aficionados. I reviewed several suggestions that have appeared here and found TwiTip to be a great inspiration. Check it out.

Darren is a writer with ProBlogger. For those of you looking for professional blogging tips, you will find ProBlogger to be one of many great resources.

If you have other great sites for Twitter tips of professional blogging tips, please leave a comment below.

Attack of the killer lady bugs

Since moving to Franklin, Tennessee we have had many guests come to visit from all over North America. Susan has an incredible gift of hospitality and we do love to have friends and family over. Our home has even more room now that our children are off to college and beyond. Yet one guest, until recently, was a surprise visitor and came with all her friends every year… the lady bug.

When we first moved in, we were welcomed by hundreds of lady bugs. They were all over the house and even came inside through any possible entry point. Susan and I alway thought them to be beautiful and friendly. Until this week. We learned that one must carefully distinguish one’s friends from wolves in sheeps’ clothing.

As we had our regular pest control treatment to ensure the warm Tennessee summer had not bloomed any bugs inside the nooks and crannies of our home and that the wood remained pest free, we received a startling education: all Lady Bugs are not kind. It seems that the bright red lady bugs are, as we expected, aphid eaters and fun to have around during their brief visitation period each year. However the orange lady bugs are bees in disguise. Or at least their bite would have you think you were stung by a bee. (They are actually Japanese Beetles in Lady Bug disguises.) Yes, the orange ones also like aphids. Just don’t assume they wouldn’t also like a piece of you!

All those times we’d gently held them as they landed on us and we gave them flight and freedom outside our home… and we simply thought of their color differences as interesting. No more. Close inspection is required. Now the annual migration of lady bugs to our home feels more like “Attack of the Killer Lady Bugs” than a scene from a pure and delightful children’s video. I posted our surprise finding in a Twitter update and found that others had experienced the same surprise. Yet, feeling no one would believe them, they kept the orange lady bug’s nasty side a well kept secret. No more! We will brave this killer. And keep our doors and windows closed during their next visit. Consider yourself warned. Choose your friends carefully.

Back to Blogging. Continuing to Tweet.

I have been experimenting with Twitter and other social networking tools for some time now. And I have not been a frequent blogger for many months. In fact, Twitter serves as a “micro-blogging” tool, so I suppose I have been blogging… just nothing more than 140 characters at a time. Yet some thoughts require more than this, so here I am again.

With Facebook and MySpace and Plaxo and other social networking tools linked to my Twitter feeds, true “one stop” micro-blogging makes an update from my cell phone available moments later. At first I had a hard time getting my head around why one “tweets”. To those who feel the same I have one suggestion: use Twitter for one month and commit to tweet updates at least once a day. You’ll then be able to best decide for yourself if tweeting is for you or not. I am a convert.

To those wanting to know more about the experience, I recommend Michael Hyatt’s guide to Twitter. Michael is CEO of Thomas Nelson. He is also an active blogger.

When Michael started Twittering he highlighted four reasons to do so:

1. It allows family, friends, and others to follow your activity throughout the day and keep up with your life. You can even get these updates via your cell phone, as a text message. It's kind of like the Truman Show meets instant messaging.

2. It allows you to meet new friends, who tend to be on the cutting edge of technology. I am following several people that I would have never met otherwise. These are relationships-or potential relationships-that may prove very fruitful for the future. We'll see.

3. It allows me to experience first-hand a new technology that almost 1 million people are using. It may be a complete waste of time but it is free and the investment of time is miniscule.

4. It allows me to think consciously about my life. What am I doing now? What kind of story is my life telling? Is this really what I want to be doing? Could I-should I-be choosing something different?

Reason #1 has helped me keep in close touch with our children and with Susan when I travel and even throughout the day. I feel connected with our children even though we are often thousands of miles apart. This is especially true of late as Susan and I became empty nesters this past month. Jenn and Amanda are living in the Seattle area now. Sarah is studying in Australia. And Jonathon is at MTSU.

Reason #1 has also applied to our extended family and friends. I have been able to catch up and keep up with family and friends better than ever before. It’s a blast seeing photos more rapidly and more often than ever before as families and friends share their life journey.

And I personally like reason #4. It is a worthwhile question to ask… “What story is my life telling?”

If you want to "follow me," you can do do my joining Twitter.com and officially following me. You can follow Michael on Twitter here. It’s time to micro-blog!