Blog Action Day is SO GOOD! Poverty is such a big deal and while I haven’t traveled to third world nations that are experiencing mass hunger, I do get to see it on a weekly basis around Los Angeles. When I think of poverty I immediately think of the homeless. In LA we’ve got almost 90,000 homeless and whether you’re on skid row in the heart of downtown or you’re in my neighborhood in Pasadena, the homeless issue is everywhere. There are a lot of reasons for homelessness and such extreme poverty - from chemical imbalances and drug addiction but according to Andy Bales, CEO of The Union Rescue Mission, the big cause is the lack of close family. Check out his recent video talking about it.

The average age of the homeless in America is 9 - NINE!! Sam Slovick’s collaboration with GOOD Magazine’s look at downtown is horrifying and heartbreaking - I recommend you check out all 5 parts.

So how is poverty going to change or even just decreasing the number of homeless in LA? Sure, I could say a collaborative effort, increased police presence, cracking down on drugs, and politicians working to give aid where it’s needed. BUT all of those things are passing the buck. What am I going to do? I can rail against governments and organizations all I want but people are at the core of all of that. People make those decisions, people influence their corporations.

Tim Sanders, in his recent book, Saving the World at Work, illustrates time and time again that a single person at any level of an organization has HUGE power. So I think that the power to stop poverty starts with you and with me. I’ve been very fortunate to rub shoulders with both Andy Bales and Tim Sanders in the last 6 months - both are amazing guys and are the kind of person I aspire to be. I recommend checking out the book.

Some quick action items:
1. Donate to your favorite cause - If you need one I recommend the Union Rescue Mission (They were recently featured on ESPN - See it here)

2. Talk with your business about helping your community - many companies are starting to encourage this kind of ethos in a brand.

3. Let the candidates know that you care about poverty and that it should be addressed. With the election this year, you’ve got more power than normal to influence the world.

The Secret Location is a great, corect that, phenomenal interaction with the user - check it out.
The Future of The Web Experience with Video

The guys at 37 signals share their knowledge and how to make money online - the funny part is that it really isn’t that different than making money in any business. Warning - it’s PG.

The Secret to Making Money Online

About a month ago we made a significant switch on THE DROP website. The adjustment came as a way to incorporate the multitude of ways that users would interact with the website. We had been using a social plug-in and it really started out working amazing. Last month I was introduced to ShareThis and I found that the plug-in was easy to use and that it actually gave the user more options to pass around the info and would be crucial in the interaction of social media to the site. The user would then be able to add or share the posts via their Myspace or Facebook but could also email them to friends if they so chose. A little while back The Drop was featured on the ShareThis site. We got sandwiched between infertility and obscure movies - I don’t think it’s a bad start.

I also had a chance to join their Publishers Group on Facebook. What I loved about this was that I then could put faces with the code writers and other bloggers/new media types who were employing the same pieces and any additional strategy that they may have. ShareThis has just been named one of the Top 20 plugins to have on Wordpress and I highly recommend it.

Social Media guru, Chris Brogan, weighs in on the relation of social media with marketing.Social Media Does Not Replace Marketing Strategy

Firefox 3 releases with 15,000 Improvements

New York Times Best selling author and every Human Resource managers ace up the sleeve, Tim Sanders launches the Dirty Dozen Rules to Email Etiquette. As Chief Solutions Officer at Yahoo, Tim dealt with a lot of email and in this offering Sanders walks through the best steps for managing your companies “mood factor”. For this project The Portnoy Media Group had a chance to work with Rapture Studio in Pasadena, CA to integrate a database driven blog to support all the content on the best practices of email over the next couple of years. Integrating powerful tools like having blog posts actually get emailed as soon as they post is a fun feature to connect HR Managers and other business leaders with reminders about email best practices. Check out Email AtoZ.com and don’t forget to subscribe to the blog.

Director of Photography and general cinematic wizard, Marc Ritzema launched his brand new site today. With the help of The Portnoy Media Group we were able to focus on some key features for Marc’s site. We moved Marc from a standard flash based site to a more indexed database driven site (more…)

The first full length feature film releases to Youtube this week - It’s a milestoneCult of Sincerity Launches

Dear Hollywood Studios: Let My Video Go

David Byrne’s Take on the Music Industry as featured in Wired Magazine

Check out Pfriends on Pfilm

Check Out Seth Godins latest post