The Fifth Annual Book 'Em Event will be held in Waynesboro, Virginia on Saturday, October 18, 2008 from 9:30AM to 4:30 PM. Book 'Em is a joint operation between authors, book lovers and police.

Other Book 'Em events are scheduled in Charleston, South Carolina and Lebanon, New Hampshire.

Carroll County, Virginia poet, Dari Carroll has been invited to attend the Waynesboro, Virginia event for the second time. Last year over 65 authors were in attendance. New York Times Best Selling authors, Ellen Hopkins, Catherine Coulter and Cathy Maxwell will be in attendance along with Cara Atkins and Alan Krugel,

For more info check out the Book 'Em website.

My friend, Lee Tyler Post has gotten several mentions on this blog over the course of the last few years but he's certainly scored big this time as he's appearing this weekend at the Bistro 150 in Oak Ridge, North Carolina with none other than Ms Ruby James.

That the Bistro 150 located in the shopping center on NC 150 and NC 68 in Oak Ridge, North Carolina this Saturday night beginning at 8 PM until closing. This is the show you'll not want to miss.


Be sure to tell 'em you read about it on Blogsboro.com.

A few weeks ago I told you about my friend, Chris and his business, Salvage America, a local recycling company located on Holt's Chapel Road in Greensboro, North Carolina. Well now Chris is recycling the Blogosphere.

I'm helping Chris out with the Salvage America Greensboro blog and will be doing part of the posting there as Chris has lots of great deals in things you need for your home and business.

Remember, one man's trash is another man's treasure.

Eccentriq Love is a new book of poetry by Chicago's south side resident, Eccentriq. Good luck to this first time author.

My friend Janet recently installed the World Class Poetry Toolbar rather than our own Blogsboro Toolbar and I'm happy she did because when you download Allen's World Class Poetry Toolbar you also get the Blogsboro Toolbar. And for those of you who install the Blogsboro Toolbar you also get the World Class Poetry Toolbar at the same time.

You see, Allen and I wanted our toolbar users to get the most they could from our toolbars so we networked both of them together to allow our readers (Many of whom are the same) to give all of you a better toolbar experience. To see all the features we offer one only needs switch from one to the other simply by clicking on the plus link at the far left end of whichever toolbar you happen to be using so no matter if you're downloading the Blogsboro Toolbar or the World Class Poetry Toolbar you can be sure we're doing our best to make it the best it can be.

Windy Lampson is graduate of East Carolina University and lives about fifteen miles to my east in Whittset, North Carolina. Wendy is a North Carolina native and teaches art to children and adults in nearby Burlington. The painting below is titled, The Third Wheel and can be bought by visiting Wendy's blog.

Wendy also posts her works at the Daily Painter's Gallery and owns WindyLampson.com. If you know Wendy please tell her to submit her RSS feed to We101.com and NCblogs.com so that others may enjoy her works.

And for those of you who don't live in North Carolina I recommend you visit my list of Local Blog Aggregators from around the world as it it the most complete listing of local blog aggregators in the world.

It's fun to use websites like GetYourselfFired.com, The site is designed to go "viral" in that its sole use is to post your face to an incriminating photo that you e-mail to your friends via the Tell A Friend feature and while they do have advertisements, the only other pages on the site are GetFiredTips and WorkStressTips so there's little content on which to base an opinion.

There is advertising there for a site called ItzBig.com, an anonymous job search site that appears to be an online head hunter.

So I did a little research and learned that GetYourselfFired.com is the work of Mark Scholes and Third Rail Creative, an advertising company based in Austin, Texas which is also the home of itzBig, Inc., a very successful head hunter.

Is GetYourselfFired.com a creative form of advertising? Very much so. Is it legit? I'd bet it is. But I can't help but worry about what GetYourselfFired.com does with all those e-mail addresses given to them by users.

I'll be attending ConvergeSouth this year just as I've attended ConvergeSouth every year to date. I might even attend Blogher on Sunday and while I wouldn't miss the Friday night barbecue for anything in the world I'll not be attending the Saturday night dinners in downtown Greensboro as the venues chosen are always too costly for my meager means.

Instead, I'll be dining in my backyard that night and anyone who attends ConvergeSouth is invited to come dine with me. I can't afford to feed all of you but if you'd like to share my backyard with my chickens, earthworms and I then all you need to do is pitch-in on the cost of hamburgers, hot dogs and other foods cooked on the grill. I promise the tomatoes will be fresh from the garden.

My home is easy to find (the only house in town with a biplane in the front yard) and only about 3 miles (5-10 minutes) from A&T University where the weekend's events will be taking place. Send an e-mail to idleblogs (AT) yahoo.com if you're interested.

Back in 2006 when the idea of getting paid to post to one's own blog was first becoming widespread I decided to give it a try in hopes of earning a living.

Of the five or six companies that I signed-up to write paid reviews for two of them, PayPerPost.com and ReviewMe.com seemed the most promising even though the concept both pitched wasn't quite what they pitched. You see, a review reflects having actually tried a product or service but both of these companies (like all the others) expected you to write reviews based on your perception of a product or service based on the customer's website and nothing more.

In the beginning the pay was good with lots of high paying offers from PayPerPost.com and ReviewMe.com offering me $100.oo (or was it $200.oo?) per review. I wasn't 100% comfortable with the idea but as I was able to pick and choose what products and services I wanted to write about I gave it a shot. But after less than 6 months I found myself sick to my stomach even thinking about doing paid reviews.

It wasn't that the price had gone down (even though it had) but the fact that the advertisers continued to get closer and closer to the bottom of the barrel that caused me concern. I was no longer being asked to participate in product branding (the only noble form of advertising) but was relegated to being a pitch man for products and services that I simply could not trust. And while both companies imply that all reviews are to be honest and forthright they have both developed systems that allow advertisers to rate the bloggers who pitch their products so there's little doubt a negative review will result in fewer offers at lower rates of pay.

I haven't written a paid review in almost one and one half years but I retained my logins and still get updates from ReviewMe.com and PayPerPost.com. Why just tonight I got an e-mail from ReviewMe to write a "review" of a coupon site for the grand total of five whole dollars. That's right, what once guaranteed $100.oo now pays only $5.oo.

So why do I still keep my PPP and ReviewMe accounts active? Because that's where I search for new Web 2.0 websites I love to trash and expose for the scum they are.

On another note: I'm not sure of the exact time and date but in roughly 2 weeks my Canadian and possibly Filipino readers will be able to catch me on Discovery Channel Canada. As soon as I know exact dates and times I'll be sure to pass then along.

For the second year in a row, Blogsboro.com and Songbear.com are teaming up with others to be announced to bring you the Reidsville Lake Music Festival.

On September 27th., musicians from Rockingham, Guilford, other North Carolina counties and beyond will all gather to give you a full day of free music from almost every musical genre at the beautiful Reidsville Lake Park in Reidsville, North Carolina.

Watch for updates at Blogsboro Network sites and at RLMF.org.