He’s a good friend but I just don’t think he’s going to convince me to start on an Apple at this point. I made my decision to be an “IBM” computer dude when I bought my first Compaq Portable. Thanks anyway Evan. He wrote this note after we announced our giveaway of an Apple Ipod Shuffle.

Here’s something I should have known about. It’s where you ought to go to find out if you’ve been written about on somebody’s blog. Just type in your name, company name or a keyword and it pulls up a list of posts. As of the writing of this post they claim to have listed 11,214,302 blogs! It’s run by Intelliseek and yes they do have their own blog: Blogpulse Highlights

How’s your PMA? That is “Positive Mental Attitude.” Ask that question at a HOBY seminar (that’s Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership) and be prepared for the noise! Tonight I participated in my second HOBY seminar thanks to Jacob Shellebarger. With me on the panel of business people speaking, no, I should say answering questions, was Daryl Oldvader, Farm Credit Services of Missouri and Ed Varnum, CORE Ministries.

I told you we were having a new design done! The transition is taking place and should be completed within a few days. I’ll tell you more about it when complete and we announce it.

I’m a fan of RSS as a web content distribution mechanism and know there’s a lot of interest in using it for things like company newsletters. Imagine how much money you could save if you didn’t print and mail a newsletter and your reader just subscribed to it from an RSS feed (.xml file) on your website? Since RSS doesn’t go through email your reader doesn’t have to be worried about getting spam or infected by a virus.

Last month we asked farm radio reporters to send us feedback about our Talking News Release service. We told them that if they emailed us with their thoughts they’d be entered into a contest to win a digital audio player (Ipod Shuffle). Today we are happy to announce the winner. She’s Leah Guffey, ag director for WFMB-FM in Springfield, IL.

Me, I’m a food enthusiast. I like it in just about any form you can think of. Now, Parke Wilde? He’s a food economist. If there were a profession called “nutrition economics,” he would belong to it. At least that’s what it says on his blog: U. S. Food Policy “U.S. food policy and economics from a public interest perspective.”

The House Ag Committee Democrats get it! Yep, Congressman Colin Peterson kicked it off. They’re blogging! Earlier this week I was contacted by their press secretary by email to discuss blogging and am looking forward to talking about it with her.

Blogging’s not for everyone and especially not for the guy who writes WebWatch for American Farm Bureau Federation. I didn’t come across this myself. It was forwarded to me and provided too good an opportunity to pass up.

An interesting story on Reuters was brought to my attention that shows how much attention blogs are getting from advertisers who understand the niche audience they serve. It says that “as many as 64 percent of marketers are interested in advertising on blogs, according to a Forrester Research study, though their investment would still be a fraction of the $14.7 billion expected to be spent on Internet ads this year.