I've added a few updates to the site that you might find useful.
1. News links
In the bottom of the left-hand column you'll see that I've added a number of links to good news sources, both foreign and domestic. These include political cartoonists and columnists, in addition to newspapers, magazines, and the like.2. GLBT RSS Feeds
In addition to our standard RSS feed, which includes every post we write on AMERICAblog, I've also set up, on a trial basis, a GLBT RSS Feed which only streams the gay and lesbian content. I'm just trying this as a test to see if issue-specific RSS Feeds might interest folks.
As for what the heck an RSS feed is, it's basically a way to have the new content on a Web site (or blog) sent to you, so you don't have to come to it.
For example, I have a "My Yahoo" page set up, basically a home page on which I can put lots of stuff that interests me, tailored to my interests - including the weather in various cities, air fares for certain destinations, my retirement portfolio, and the latest news and blog updates from various sources which I've chosen to put on the page. The latest news and blog updates come from the RSS Feeds of those news sites and blogs that I've selected to include (and for all I know, the other content I have on the page, weather etc., may also come from RSS). I've taken a screen capture of the news and blog updates that I receive, here it is:
(click image to see larger version)
RSS feeds are a really nice to way to keep up to speed with the content on various blogs/sites, without having to jump around all day on those sites. You can have all of your favorite sites on the same page, and then when you see a blog post you like you can click to read that specific post.3. CafePress ads
If you have a question about how this works, post it in the comments, I suspect someone will help you understand this better than I can explain.
You may have noticed some odd-looking graphics in the right hand column and at the bottom of the page, including political puns, etc. They're actually ads for political products over at CafePress. Most of the products should be "liberal" in nature, but sometimes an occasional conservative one pops in (it's the software, it's a bit buggy). If you click on the ads and buy any of the merchandise, AMERICAblog gets a cut.4. Political donations for 2008
I've set up a page on ActBlue where you can safely and securely donate money to your favorite 2008 presidential candidate.5. AMERICAblog on facebook
I've set up an AMERICAblog community on the popular social networking site "facebook." We already have over 300 people who have joined the group (but those bastards at ThinkProgress have a larger group, help us beat them :-). Feel free to check it out here.6. SpamArrest
I've had the link up for a while, but will reiterate - it's the spam filtering service I've been using for a few years now. It rocks. I highly recommend it. And if you buy the service via this link, we get a cut. (FYI, I'm paying for the service myself, I just happen to love it.)7. Classified text ads
Remember, we offer one-week classified text ads, located towards the bottom of the left-column below the news links, to small poor bloggers and/or small organizations or small small small businesses (and I'm mean SMALL, we're talking a person running a hobby from their living room small) for 75 bucks a pop. You can only buy the ad for one week - they're so cheap, I don't want someone monopolizing the space by buying a month or two. And yes, the placement isn't prime, but that's what you get for 75 bucks on a site that often gets 100,000 visitors a day (in the past, the number of click throughs has not been bad at all). You can order them here, and be aware that we'll probably only run 3 to 5 ads at a time, so if you're ad number six to come in, you'll have to wait until the first group of ads finishes, so we don't have 50 ads up at once.8. Flash and RSS Ads
And finally, we're now offering both RSS and Flash ads in our blogads space in the left-hand column of the blog. You can see an example of a flash ad in the John Kerry ad we just posted today. This ad is pretty cool, and it shows the kind of innovative things a smart advertiser can do - in the case of Kerry's ad, you can enter all of your data IN THE AD, and the click submit, AND you can see real-time how many people have already joined his effort. It's pretty cool.
