I absolutely love the topic of news and how it has evolved with the onslaught of social media and the web in general. Hacks have earned the accolade of online news sources. Seasoned news hounds from the stuffy print newspaper newsrooms have been scooped and charge around with chips on their shoulders. Print editors who have allowed stories to slip in favor of allowing someone to slide have been greeted with pink slips. And infotainment editors who charge their way into the Google News feed serve as little more than the day's muckrakers of sensational and sometimes fraudulent headlines who often perform as nothing more than human aggregators or regurgitators. Well, the first link of the lot is not necessarily focused upon the specific subject of muckrackers but is an interesting piece on user-led content and the terms breaking news. Also in the mix is audience targeting when crafting SEO content for your blog or other social media outlet. Conversion rates and followup are also covered. Get your business on.

DVS Shoes is hip. Any association with the action sports shoe manufacturer garners a certain amount of recognition. A mere mention of the name upon any website will earn amiable attention in the form of web traffic.

It seems as if every time an industry convention or some business mixer emerges, my calendar shuns the event and any hope of mixing it up with forum friends and community colleagues. And when it comes to this year's inaugural Open Camp, which takes place this August 27-29 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Addison, Texas, there is no exception, as it conflicts with one of my favorite stateside desert off-road races, the 2010 Best In The Desert (BITD) Vegas To Reno on August 19-21.

I am hereby breaking into the business of making news of someone else's hard work. I toss a quick quip and a sensational array of edgy words. It's artistry and engaging. I don't dictate onto the masses. I embrace them. I call it news aggregation. It's nothing more than a modified blog of slightly more important subject matter. Yet it's news. I am a news aggregator. It's word of mouth marketing. I merely regurgitate what I refer to as news and do unto it like a cow chews cud. The normal method of consumption is chew, swallow, stomach and dump. So goes the old ways of the news world. The newspaper is virtually dead. Now, we mouth off a bit, chew it, swallow it, and combine the final two stages into one, regurgitating facts and opinion amid social media outlets and thereby commence into the abyss of new age reporting until the fad fades into emptiness.

Recently the DIRT FORGE Blog performed a migration from a Wordpress blog on a sub-domain to a JoomlaWorks K2 blog wrapped within the Joomla CMS framework installed upon the root domain. While Wordpress remains one of easiest all-around web development platforms, especially for websites that require the capabilities of a blog or content management system (CMS), it has its limitations, particularly for projects that require or may require a relatively high level of integration with more mission specific software applications, such as e-commerce, photo gallery, file download repository and forum software. This is where the Joomla CMS framework excels.