Military personnel tell Danger Room that they're unable to get to TroopTube from both domestic and overseas military installations.
My pal Noah has the story.
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Once the documents are scanned, they will be analyzed, catalogued and placed on the Library of
The Library of Virginia, in collaboration with the Virginia Commission on the Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War, plan to take the preservation effort to every county in the state — if funding can be secure.
Read the entire story here.
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Keep updated here.
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Anyone who has ever planned a military wedding knows how difficult it is to round up the parties and have everyone you want at your wedding. So-and-so will be deployed then. So-and-so will be TDY. So-and-so's wife can't make it because her husband is deployed. So-and-so is in
For now, we have two panels as situated as they're likely to get:
Back to Our Roots: Some say the “Golden Age” of milblogging has passed. The age when milbloggers were a small, tight community. Today, there are so many interesting milblogs. We'll meet some milbloggers you may or may not have heard of and get back to the finest tradition of milblogging - celebrating and highlighting the diversity of voices within our community.
Moderator: Matt from Blackfive
Alex Horton
Maggie of Boston Maggie and Castle Argghhh!
Rebekah Sanderlin
****
Beyond MilBlogging: Taking the blog to the next level. From book deals to paid writing assignments, documentaries, speaking engagements, television and radio appearances and much, much more, many milbloggers have been able to branch out beyond the blog. We’ll find out how a few of them did it, and what projects they have in the works.
Moderator: David Stanford from The Sandbox
JD Johannes
Uncle Jimbo
Lily Burana
airforcewife
Craig Stewart
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I had a brief conversation with Greg Schindler one of the awesome folks over at GreatAmericans.com --- a website that allows you to upload and share videos about ordinary Americans, who perform EXTRAORDINARY deeds. GreatAmericans.com is also one of this year’s sponsors of The 2009 Milblog Conference being held next month in the D.C. area.
JP, MILBLOGGING.COM HOST: In addition to sharing videos, you also run a blog on your website? Tell me more...*doing my best Chuck Woolery impression - hands on chin, elbows out*
Greg: The Great Americans blog is mostly a summary of what’s new at Great Americans, including contests, promotions, events, etc. I’ve recently started compiling the blog, and I’m shaping it more into a “Great Americans in the Blogosphere” feature, so we can highlight all the bloggers that incorporate our videos in their posts. Just as our site is apolitical, our blog isn’t likely to contain any edge editorials; it’s just a way to keep our members apprised of what’s on tap. We’re happy to team with Milblogging.com to the fullest extent possible, so we can follow up about whether or not our blog itself it worth adding to your database. I’m confident that most mil bloggers would appreciate our mission and content, but as a video portal, our text-based content likely will be used more to supplement our main attraction (videos) than anything else. That being said, we’re still so young that I’m sure the site, including our blog, will branch out in ways we never imagined.
JP: Is GreatAmericans.com on Twitter?
Greg: Great Americans is on Twitter: http://twitter.com/greatamericans ... I’m not running our Twitter account right now, but it will probably be handed off to me at some point, as it falls under my “social media” umbrella. I only recently transitioned from old media to new (I used to be in the newspaper business), so I’m learning about some of these tools on the run.
JP: Why is telling the story of great Americans so important?
Greg: I think these videos will give you a good understanding of why Matt Daniels (our founder) created Great Americans.
http://www.greatamericans.com/videos/60285eff8b/welcome-to-great-americans-from-monkeyboy360
http://www.greatamericans.com/videos/0616865356/great-americans-launch-on-fox-from-monkeyboy360
JP: Why did GreatAmericans.com choose to be a sponsor of this year’s Milblog Conference?
Greg: We’re very excited to sponsor and attend the MilBlog Conference, and I could go on forever about how much respect I personally have for the mil blog community. But if you don’t mind, I’ll get a quote directly from Matt Daniels’ mouth, seeing as he’s the brains behind our site and makes the financial decisions. I’m happy to communicate with you and facilitate anything I can, but I’m just a lowly behind-the-scenes guy J.
JP: Any big plans for your website you could share with my readers?
Greg: The MilBlog Conference is one of our exciting plans on the horizon, and we’ve got several other potential partnerships in the works. Again, Matt would know much more about this than I would, and he said he’d be happy to chat with you any time. We are launching a Great Americans account on Facebook in the near future, and we know social media is a great way to interact with our target audience and expose our site to as many people as possible. Networking within the mil blogger community is a huge priority for us, because we know the same patriotic people who are interested in reading about our amazing women and men in uniform are likely to also enjoy videos about these people.
JP: Back in 2 and 2. And if you’d like to learn more, pay GreatAmericans.com a visit or email Greg gs@greatamericans.com
Note, After scouring their website for hours I didn’t find any Chuck Norris videos. Zip. Oh boy! I immediately emailed Greg and informed this is a *must have* site requirement.
At the time of this story appearing online (and nearly 8 hours since I alerted Greg), still no Chuck Norris videos. Which leads me to believe Chuck Norris delivered a roundhouse-kick to Greg’s face. *preferred method of execution in 16 states.*
*Fact* Chuck Norris is the only person in the world that can actually email a roundhouse kick.
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Back in 2004 when I started writing a military blog from Afghanistan, I was lucky enough to stumble upon the URL milblogging.com. After several months of blogging I became part of an online community and wanted to stay involved even though I was no longer writing from Afghanistan. So I came up with an idea --- I wanted an easier way to find military blogs online. I figured the best way to do it was to create a searchable index, but I needed a memorable name. All the other top keyword names that were relevant to the subject matter like MilitaryBlog.com were registered. Fortunately, Milblogging.com wasn’t. In the Spring of 2005, I went ahead and registered the name and several months later launched this website.
If you’ve invested in building your own brand like Mudville Gazette or Bouhammer – even if your brand is your actual name – you probably wanna think about registering your brand on other social media websites like YouTube and Twitter.
Why spend all your time building a brand, only to let someone else register the username and benefit from it. Social media sites like Twitter have a Search feature, so if you search for milblogging my Twitter profile is the top result. There are other sites where you probably want to register your brand like YouTube, particularly if you share videos and plan to set up a channel. Even Facebook allows you to setup a page for your Website Brand here http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php
Registering your brand around the internet is free, easy, and only takes a few minutes at each site. Even if you don’t use a particular website like MySpace, it’s a good idea to defensively register your brand. In case you wanna learn more, here’s an informative article I found on the topic.
Note, I'll finally be able to sleep at night now knowing I registered myspace.com/milblogging
Although I'm not a fan...because most of the time when I visit a MySpace page it looks like it was designed by a kindergartner. I know Milblogging.com can take some time to load (because of all the awesomeness going on behind the scenes), but if you wanna see your computer screen literally take a dump --- I totally recommend visiting MySpace.
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Nearly half of all Air Force personnel are less than 30 years old -- and tweeting, blogging and social networking are the ways they want to receive their information, said Capt. Dave Faggard, the chief of emerging technology at the Air Force Public Affairs Agency at the Pentagon, who is also an Alabama native.
"Social media is nothing new, it's just communicating in different ways to people that were always there," Faggard said. "But it may be now that they and I have the ability to interact directly with each other and I don't necessarily have to use mainstream media as my megaphone.”
Read the entire story here.
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The story was carried over at The Captain’s Journal right here, http://www.captainsjournal.com/2009/03/08/the-captains-journal-blocked-in-afghanistan/
According to Registan.net any site with the word “blog” in it is supposed to be blocked, hence the surprise that blog.bouhammer.com is allowed through to military members in Afghanistan. You can read that article here, http://www.registan.net/index.php/2009/03/07/dispatches-from-fobistan-the-armys-woeful-it-policies-poison-the-war-effort/.
Needless to say I am very glad that Bouhammer.com it is allowed through and somewhat disturbed that the military is filtering and blocking great sites like www.blackfive.net.
Read the entire story here.
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The movie is a documentary filmed by Jake Rademacher, who wants to learn more about his younger brothers’ service in the military. Jake seeks to understand what his brothers go through on the frontlines and much of the film actually takes place on the homefront.
It’s beginning to look like the best way to portray war and for people to get a better understanding of what really goes on, is through the actual eyes of those serving – as a documentary. I served in
In 2007, I contacted Deborah Scranton (of The War Tapes) and working with her and Toby Nunn (my Platoon Sergeant), my Platoon and I made a documentary film called Bad Voodoo’s War that aired nationwide on PBS Frontline.
It was the only way for me to tell my story - as a documentary. And after watching it, my family and friends had a much better idea of what I was doing on tour. What made it harder for them is that the film aired while we were still running missions throughout
Jake did a great job of telling his brothers’ stories, and in the end, Jake achieved what he set out to do --- which was to understand his brothers’ service. This was his first time making a film and he put in all of the work himself. Although the film is Rated R, there is only one violent scene towards the end of the film – and much of the film tells the story of both of his brothers back home, which I thought was important since deployments impact families, too.
If you’d like to learn more about the film, visit the official website. The film is opening in theaters around the country this month.
Note, I'm not a very articulate writer and this happens to be one of my first movie reviews. I did twitter the event which was my first time tweeting from my Blackberry. If I had to guess, I'm pretty sure the group sitting at my table thought I was texting my wife or playing Tetris. I didn't bother explaining what I was doing, but halfway through the screening no one had punched me in the face, so I decided to keep tweeting.
Although when I came back from the restroom, my lunch plate wasn't in the same place. Also, I'm pretty sure my sandwich didn't have shoeprint on it before I stepped away. Just saying...below is a preview of the film.
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Let me clarify that he has encouraged posting, to include myself in the discussion there, but the settings for blogger he currently uses and my own technological capabilities clash in a manner that set up a challenge to me commenting there. This is an issue on my end, not his, as far as I can ascertain, so please don't go flaming the good Major for squelching my speech. He's practically begging us to weigh in.
His discussions are important and we should weigh in, particularly Milbloggers, and particularly those bloggers still in the Military. I can't call his blog exciting, but it is important. The Majors of today are the Generals of tomorrow, well, some of them are.
I find it particularly interesting that his blog began as a directive of the Air Command and Staff College. This means to me that someone above gets it on some level, they understand that milblogging is here and that it is important. Or as I was told on the range once: "You've got it, now you just have to figure out what to do with it." Now that they've realized the importance of MilBlogs and its effectiveness, they have to figure out how to use it.
There's much more to read on this story from my online pal WOTN. Read it in it's entirety here.
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I immediately copied the article into an e-mail and sent it on its way, but only later did the importance what Joshua said dawn on me. Pressing him for more data and information, Josh responded with an article of his own. The results of his little investigation are striking.
Blackfive is blocked, as is Abu Muqawama, Global Guerrillas, and our very own The Captain’s Journal. This list is not comprehensive. Allowed are Small Wars Journal, The Long War Journal, and rather interestingly, Bouhammer, whose URL has the word ‘blog’ in it. I use Wordpress to create articles, but I am not associated with Wordpress and the Army would have no way of knowing what software I use.
The Captain’s Journal hasn’t been swept up in some doltish group block such as with Twitter.
Read the entire story here.
Thanks to Herschel for the tip.
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(Villainous Company) We are in week two of recipe submissions for the Milbloggers' Cookbook to benefit Honor Their Service activities such as Operation Fresh Air.
Recipes are more than just a list of ingredients and cooking methods. They evoke memories of friends. They remind one of particular events.
When I cook a friend's recipe, I feel just a little bit closer to them no matter if they are next door or on the other side of the world.
Here are the details:
Send your recipes (and any questions you might have) to HTScookbook@yahoo.com.
We are accepting recipes from today until March 9th.
Read the entire story here.
Here's a link to my first story about the cookbook. My wife still gives me the *evil eye* when I talk about her beef taquito recipe. Pfft.
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The incredible thing about Twitter is the ability to get breaking information and news out quickly in real-time.
I’m still trying to figure out the do's and don'ts of Twitter. Like recently, I found out that the ratio of Following-to-Followers has to be more proportional once you've started Following 2,000 people. Otherwise Twitter won't allow you to Follow any one new until more people follow you. Because I was following 2,000 people, but only had 1,000 people following me, I was forced to remove hundreds of people from my Twitter account who weren't following me back – like Britney Spears and the Olsen Twins.
I did keep a few people on my list though; I am following the real SantaClaus, but for some reason he won't follow me back...
Sheesh, bake Cookies one time with ex-lax in 'em as a prank on Christmas morning for the guy, and you’re always on his "naughty" list.
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“Registration for the 2009 MilBlog Conference is now open. Seating is limited and it's first-come, first-served. The agenda can be found here.
All events (party, breakfast, conference) are taking place at The Westin Arlington Gateway. Click here to book your room under our reserved block.
All announcements pertaining to the MilBlog Conference will be posted here and at milblogging.com. We've been holding off on posting news, speaker announcements and other items until the registration system was up and running. You can expect to see a flurry of announcements in the coming days/weeks.”
Keep updated here.
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Some very awesome people are putting a cookbook together to assist Honor Their Service, inc., which is the home of such great projects as Operation Fresh Air and Operation Santa at our military hospitals.
They need submissions from milbloggers and commenters alike in all catagories (appetizers, sides, salads, soups, main dishes, desserts, drinks, etc.). My Blackfive Turkey recipe should not be included, but Mrs. Blackfive has agreed to let one or two of her patented, trade-marked, copyrighted, and LoJacked recipes to be included.
Read the entire story here.
Update, My wife has never been much of a cook, but I'm planning to submit her homemade recipe for Beef Taquitos. They're delish!
Update, It turns out the Beef Taquitos are store bought. And apparently they're not actually taquitos, but hot dogs that she some times forgets to throw away after after the expiration date. Awesome, next thing my wife's gonna tell me is this delicious yogurt I pour out of a 2-gallon jug every night isn't actually yogurt, but milk.
God help me, I think my dessert just moved..
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The folks at Military.com have been growing the number of blogs within their News Network for years now, filling niches within the military community. I remember back in 2004 (while deployed to
I’m posting this story because I think it’s great to see all the new bloggers at Military.com that have joined over the years. As evident by the great group of blogs listed below, it got me thinking that there is one final niche to be addressed: A Ninja-type military blog.
I’ve sent my suggestion to the Military.com Editor. *still waiting though*.
But what’s important is that I got the idea on paper and officially submitted it. I usually don’t follow through with good ideas like this.
Make sure to check out the list below of Military.com’s Blogs:
Kit Up
http://kitup.military.com
Defense Tech
http://www.defensetech.org
DoD Buzz
http://www.dodbuzz.com
SpouseBUZZ
http://www.spousebuzz.com
Ask June!
http://askjune.military.com
OPFOR
http://op-for.com
Military Fitness Blog
http://military-fitness.military.com
Military Education Blog
http://military-education.military.com
The Paycheck Chronicles
http://paycheck-chronicles.military.com
Real Military Transition Stories
http://transitionstories.military.com
Military Blog
http://militaryblog.com
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JP: Do you identify yourself as a blogger when you get together with friends? Does everyone know what you're talking about when you mention you're a blogger?
Solomon: I may have casually referred to my Blog in the passing conversation and occasionally dropped a word in reference to Computer talk ...The exposure in the newspaper changed that. I tried to inspire my Senior friends with the technology available to them to better their lives. To the acquaintances who were much younger I pressed them to visit my Blog to show them that the time, after The Big Four "O", was not a wasteland.
JP: Have you inspired others to blog? Have readers/users contacted you and said you inspired them?
Solomon: My most wonderful experience from blogging has been my reader and user comments by Readers,regarding their inspiration to "look into it", and the blessings and thanks for my Service to our country. The Users find compliments and excellent suggestions to give me .. I appreciate them all as my recognized efforts, to be who I am.
JP: What is the biggest challenge you have found with blogging.
Solomon: The biggest challenge is that as soon as I learn some new blogging gimmick there are 2 new ones published that I have to Master.
JP: Do you plan to open a Twitter account or start posting videos on YouTube?
Solomon: I have never heard of Twitter and as far as posting Videos, I first need to learn how to put Hyperlinks and photographs on my Blog. Those are a couple of new Technologic advances for me.
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