Daily Archives: August 20, 2009

Thoughts.com had a successful Grand Opening of their Winter Garden office on Wednesday, August 19th. Guests including the press, business owners, and local Thoughts.com members arrived as the event started at 10am. The founder and CEO of Thoughts.com Ben Ogden, took the stage at 10:30am and spoke of the company’s first community event:

“Today I am proud to announce that Thoughts.com will be holding our first Job fair on Wednesday, September 9th. By opening up this office we are creating 30 new jobs for the Central Florida community. We’re still actively hiring for Web Developers, Project Managers, Web Designers, Content Writers and Marketing Specialists. We are also creating internships for marketing students at 4 Florida Universities this semester including UCF, UF, FSU and UNF. Next semester we will be adding Universities from across the county to our program and creating a minimum of 20 additional internship opportunities. If you are interested in learning more about working with us please visit thoughts.com/careers. ”

Ogden also spoke of part of the company’s investment plans for the Central Florida community.

“We are absolutely thrilled to be opening up our office today and creating these new jobs, however, this is only the beginning for us,” said Ogden. “We expect to outgrow this space within two years, so Thoughts.com is already researching locations for our next office building. This will be a 20,000 square ft, multi-million dollar investment into a state-of-the-art office complex. By opening that campus, we will be creating even more high paying technology jobs. At the same time we will be helping the local construction industry by building a world-class technology center here in Central Florida.”

Currently Thoughts.com has a growing membership over 200,000 of the internet’s most gifted and talented users.

Governed by their “One Love Philosophy,” the culture at Thoughts is one that strives to ignite positive change in the world, spread awareness and make positive contributions toward helping those in need.

Thoughts.com, owned by Thoughts.com LLC, is one of the fasted growing Web 2.0 blog communities on the internet. Thoughts.com is a 100% free online conversation community. Thoughts.com features include unlimited bandwidth, photos, videos, podcast sharing, community forums, and live discussions. Thoughts.com is located at 4028 Winter Garden Vineland Rd. in Winter Garden, FL.

We are so glad to announce that again this year Bouhammer himself will be a panelist at the biggest blogging conference in the country. It is called Blog World Expo and you can read more about it at http://www.blogworldexpo.com/. Last year the Annual Milblog conference was held in conjunction with the expo, and Bouhammer was afforded the opportunity to be a panelist then. Just to give you an idea on the numbers that attend this conference, in 2008 there were over 280 speakers, over 15,000 in attendance and over 92 million people that watched on the internet.

This year we moved the annual Milblog Conference back to Washington DC, which we held in April. However Blog World Expo wanted to have dedicated milblog track so there are several panels chaired and ran by milbloggers on the first day of the conference.

Bouhammer is honored and flattered to be sitting on a panel called “Getting The Picture: What’s Next for Milblogs?” The description of the panel is below.

“Audience demands and demographics are changing. New technologies are emerging that, according to some, make blogs as much dinosaurs as print technology. What does the future hold for milblogs? Come join a panel of milbloggers and social media gurus as they discuss the future of milblogging.”

Bouhammer is sitting on this panel with some very esteemed bloggers and good friends. With him on this panel is his partner-in-crime on YouServed.com Blog and Radio show, CJ Grisham. Also his very close friend and brother-in-arms, Scott Kesterson who writes several blogs and is the director and film-maker of the acclaimed documentary, At War. The highly respected Scott Henderson from www.mediasauce.com is also sitting on the panel. Last, and certainly not least the panel is being moderated by Bouhammer’s good friend and MilBlog Master, Matt Burden from www.Blackfive.net.

There are many panels over the three days, and I encourage you visit http://www.blogworldexpo.com/ to learn more about the conference and see the entire schedule. Some of the other milblog panels are ; “They Also Serve: Spouse Bloggers”, “Best Milblogs You’ve Never Read”, and “Milblogs: Not Your Standard News Source”. You should check out the breakdown of the other panels and see if your favorite milblogger in going to be on a panel at www.warriorlegacyfoundation.org/?page=BlogWorldExpo

Joining a broad cross-section of more than 1,000 companies, academic institutions, communities, related groups and individuals, The Linux Box is now part of Open Source for America, a unified voice for the promotion of open source in the U.S. Federal government sector. Open Source for America strives to effect change in government to encourage broader support of open source technologies and the open source development community.

“We’ve received great response from companies, organizations and individuals interested in joining together to advocate for greater use of open source software in the U.S. federal government,” said David Thomas, principal at Mehlman Vobel Castagnetti and spokesman for the Open Source for America campaign. “We are very pleased to welcome The Linux Box in joining our cause and look forward to their active involvement in articulating the true value open source delivers to the U.S. government.”

Founded in 1999, The Ann Arbor-based company is a bespoke software development consultancy that customizes open source projects for clients across a variety of sectors. The Linux Box provides professional services for organizations looking to gain competitive advantage, reduce IT costs and increase the control they have over their open source technologies.

“As part of the Infrastructure Subcommittee, The Linux Box will be calling on over a decade of integration and project management experience in the open source space,” said Elizabeth Ziph, CEO and co-founder of The Linux Box. “In this tough economic climate, both private and public companies are leveraging open source technologies to solve business and IT challenges. The U.S. government, however, has not been as quick to leverage the collaborative power of open source software. As a member of OSA, we will do our best to promote the freedoms that open source software and open technology solutions can provide – an open, transparent and cost-effective option – for government agencies.”

As a member of Open Source for America, The Linux Box has pledged to support the organization’s mission and its founding principles. This includes the belief that the U.S. federal government can and should become more transparent, participatory, secure and efficient by leveraging the advantages of open source software; the open source community can drive collaborative innovation for government; and the decision to use software should be driven solely by the requirements of the user.

To learn more about Open Source for America, please visit http://www.opensourceforamerica.org.

About The Linux Box
The Linux Box (www.linuxbox.com) is a professional services organization specializing in open source technology and the Linux platform in the server, cluster and desktop environments. It provides software development and customization services to a broad range of clients in industries ranging from energy and financial services to government, life sciences and the utilities.

About Open Source for America
Open Source for America is a coalition of industry leaders, non-government groups and academic/research institutions organized to serve as a centralized advocate, to encourage broader U.S. Federal Government support of and participation in free and open source software. Membership in Open Source for America is open to any individual or entity signing the campaign’s mission pledge. Learn more at http://www.opensourceforamerica.org. You can also follow Open Source for America on Twitter at https://twitter.com/OpenSourceGov

Michael Newman, an audio industry veteran who has helped companies such as Mackie, Digidesign, Gibson and Cerwin-Vega, has launched a blog dedicated to helping musical instrument manufacturers, professional audio companies and resellers with creating successful social media marketing strategies.

“I want to provide a central location where we can share ideas and communicate about this constantly evolving area of internet marketing,” Newman states.

“I am encouraging participation so I can adjust the topics accordingly. If I can help companies with social media marketing, then manufacturers, musicians, sound companies and dealers all benefit.”
To check out Newman’s blog please visit: http://michaelnewmanconsulting.com/blog/.

For more company information visit the web site at: www.michaelnewmanconsulting.com.

Hiztoria.com, the latest Web 2.0 project from young entrepreneur Matt Callegari, has today unveiled the new and improved version of its website to a select group of Beta testers ahead of its long-awaited launch at the end of August. The original version however, is still available for the general public to use.

The much-hyped social network, which allows users to rate, review discuss and exchange comments on websites and online services of all shapes and sizes has introduced a raft of new features which look set to provide users with an even broader functionality, and to make the site even more appealing to the Web 2.0 masses.
The version overhaul which will see Hiztoria ‘2.0’ come into being, includes a substantial overhaul of existing graphics, including a new identity for the Hiztoria brand, along with features Founder and CEO Matt Callegari believes will set it apart from the crowd.

“The latest version of the Hiztoria website has been a long time in the making, and I’m excited to be this close to unveiling it for the world at large. We’ve been receiving excellent feedback from our testing community, and my team and I have been working day and night to get things together ahead of our launch in late August.”

“The new features we’ve incorporated in the latest version of the website are too many in number to list. We’ve taken on board the suggestions of our early Beta testers to come up with something we think is a much more refined model, and we’re convinced our users will find our new functionality pretty cool.”

The latest version includes a whole range of new features and improvements, including a redesign of site navigation, over 1,000 website profiles to rate, review, share and discuss, a new notification system, a more streamlined and intuitive process for adding site profiles, and advanced forum features to enable members to communicate more openly about Hiztoria and the websites it covers.

Additionally, users will benefit from a range of how-to videos, scheduled to be uploaded to the Hiztoria site through September to help users make the most of the new functionality incorporated by the Hiztoria team.

The network, currently in the final phase of Beta testing, is preparing to launch its radically overhauled site concept at the end of August 2009, with a view to accepting its first advertising clients from the fall of this year.

About:

Hiztoria (www.hiztoria.com) is an online website review community, allowing users to share comments, and review and rate the web. Covering websites big and small, Hiztoria is a new concept in social networking, connecting web users from across the globe through one central repository where members can meet and interact around their favorite websites.