As you may well know, Pres­i­dent Obama gave a tele­vised speech to America’s school chil­dren yes­ter­day.  The speech was deemed con­tro­ver­sial by some, and con­cerns that polit­i­cal agenda would be included in what should only be a “stay in school” style speech were voiced by many.  I was one of the many.

Before the White House released “Remarks by the Pres­i­dent in a National Address to America’s School­child­ren,” I was not sure what to expect from the speech.  In today’s polit­i­cally charged envi­ron­ment, I could not help but won­der how much agenda would make its way into the speech.  I was happy to have the oppor­tu­nity to read the speech before it was aired, and while my ini­tial con­cerns were quelled, a cou­ple of new ones took their place. (more…)

The time for the Mak­ing Strides Against Breast Can­cer event in Boston is right around the cor­ner.  On Octo­ber 4th I will be join­ing my wife and chil­dren to walk along the Charles River in sup­port of the women and men (yes, men can get breast can­cer too) who live with, or have died from, breast can­cer.  This will be my sec­ond Mak­ing Strides walk, and I am really look­ing for­ward to participating.

Mak­ing Strides Against Breast Can­cer is your oppor­tu­nity to honor breast can­cer sur­vivors, remem­ber peo­ple we have lost, and raise funds and aware­ness to help end this dis­ease. Mak­ing Strides is not a race; it is a cel­e­bra­tion of sur­vivor­ship, an occa­sion to express hope, and a shared goal to end a dis­ease that threat­ens the lives of so many peo­ple we love.

- Mak­ing Strides event info page

My wife is lead­ing a team of fundrais­ers with a goal of rais­ing US $2,000 for the Amer­i­can Can­cer Society’s efforts to edu­cate about, and erad­i­cate, breast can­cer.  I will be email every­one on my con­tact list soon ask­ing for dona­tions for this wor­thy cause.  Please visit my Mak­ing Strides pro­file page and make a dona­tion.  It doesn’t mat­ter how much or how lit­tle, every dol­lar raised is one step closer to find­ing a cure.

I finally got around to renam­ing the blog to some­thing which bet­ter matches the domain upon which it resides.  “The Burn­ing Blog” is now known as “The Burn­man Expe­ri­ence.”  When I first named the blog, I thought incor­po­rat­ing my name with a bit of bib­li­cal word­play would be fun.  In truth, I would most likely have kept the blog’s old name had it not been for the BDSM porn site which chose the same name AND pur­chased the match­ing domain name.  Nobody wants their site con­fused with another one (unless they are try­ing to scam peo­ple), but I was espe­cially unhappy with being mixed up with that par­tic­u­lar site.

And while I will miss the blog’s old name, I must admit that “The Burn­man Expe­ri­ence” bet­ter suits the place.  I sup­pose refer­ring to my blog as some­thing akin to God speak­ing through the burn­ing bush may have been a bit con­ceited any­way. 

While I per­son­ally pre­fer to use a desk­top client to access my Twit­ter account, I do some­times find myself uti­liz­ing Twitter’s web­site to post Tweets to my time­line.  I am not the biggest fan of Twitter’s web inter­face, as it is lim­ited in func­tion­al­ity com­pared to desk­top clients such as Seesmic, Twhirl, and Tweet­Deck.  For­tu­nately, there is alter­na­tive. (more…)

Tweet­Deck is arguably one of the most pop­u­lar desk­top Twit­ter clients cur­rently avail­able.  With the num­ber of fea­tures avail­able in Tweet­Deck, there is a lit­tle bit of some­thing for everyone.

Per­haps that is the prob­lem. In my opin­ion, TweetDeck’s user-interface appears to be a work-in-progress wait­ing to progress as new fea­tures are devel­oped instead.  Recent updates haven’t done much to improve the inter­face, and it cer­tainly could use some love.  The tiny but­tons which are the key to most of TweetDeck’s fea­tures look a bit out of place, and the default color scheme is as dark and gloomy as the Tweet­Deck web­site.  While you can change the color scheme in the set­tings win­dow, the default col­ors are not my idea of a good first impres­sion. (more…)

The Asso­ci­ated Press recently announced that the Fed­eral Trade Commission’s “Guide Con­cern­ing the Use of Endorse­ments and Tes­ti­mo­ni­als” will be revised soon.  All week, arti­cles have been pop­ping up across the Inter­net report­ing that these changes will intro­duce reg­u­la­tion of blogs and blog­gers by the FTC.

What they fail to report, is that FTC reg­u­la­tions already apply to blog­gers and their blogs.  In fact, these reg­u­la­tions apply to use of email, Twit­ter, Face­book, MySpace, just to name a few.

Blogs and dis­cus­sion boards are both dis­cussed in the FTC’s “Guide­lines Con­cern­ing the Use of Endorse­ments and Tes­ti­mo­ni­als in Adver­tis­ing, Notice of pro­posed changes,” but not as newly reg­u­lated media.  The pend­ing changes to the guide intro­duce new exam­ple sce­nar­ios intended to illus­trate how FTC reg­u­la­tion may apply in some sit­u­a­tions.  The guide is not the def­i­n­i­tion of the law, nor does it encom­pass every pos­si­ble sce­nario in which the FTC can take action.  The sole pur­pose for the guide is to act as, well, a guide. (more…)