Visual Talking -- Put Images Where Your Mouth Is!

A Visual Talking contest ... $1,500 total ... we want you to win!! Mark Grace, founder of Visual Talking, thanks all dNeero-ites for their suggestions and comments. Because of you, Visual Talking has redesigned their site and added features. They're not done, so please keep those suggestions and comments coming. The main purpose of this convo is build up the inventory of standard sentences - these are sentences that we use often - think of those texting abbreviations like OMG, LOL, CMON, WU?, GAL. We'd like you to create standard sentences ... create as many as you wish. And to encourage you to do that, we are going to run a contest. We'll choose the top 20 standard sentences in each category (Greetings, Questions, Answers, Love, Action), and then run another convo in which you'll choose your favorite sentences. The top five in each category will share a $300 purse ($150, $75, $35, $25, $15) ... and you may win in multiple categories!! How do we choose the top 20? It's up to you ... your answer to question 7 below will help determine the five criteria our judges will use.

Do You Care? dNeero-ites Care!

Looks like dNeero-ites care ... celebrity deaths, international politics and problems, recession, flu, Harry Potter ... my o my ... here are some of the questions we all asked. For your User Question this time, suggest you concentrate on technology (gadgets, phones, TV, PC, whatever).

Health Care Affordability

Strong majorities of Americans across the political spectrum would support diverse approaches to expanding health insurance coverage, including letting uninsured adults participate in Medicare or state public insurance programs, such as Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program, offering tax credits for people to purchase coverage on their own or requiring employers to offer and contribute to the cost of their employees' health insurance coverage.

Do You Care?

Why not? Why? There are so many things that happen, and so many facts ... but really, how much of all this affects you or that you can affect? dNeero is going to add "Do You Care?" conversations to it's already successful "SpitzTunes" series. We'll look at the news from many sources ... if you have a favorite online source, please let us know. We'll always end with the question "What do you care about most right now?"

Endurance Athletes - A Panel

Thanks for the great response to "Endurance Athletes". We have chosen you for our Endurance Athletes Panel. This panel is made up of those that either currently are or have been endurance athletes. You will be receiving invitations to join conversations that revolve around the lifestyle of an endurance athlete ... that means we'll address training and competition, but also music, movies, vacations, politics etc. ... endurance athletes are people too! If you wish to be removed from this panel, please let us know in the last question or send us a message from your account http://www.dneero.com/account/inbox.jsp Let's start the stream of conversations with questions asked by your fellow dNeero-ites.

SpitzTunes -- Ya Gotta Love It!

Driving home from work the other day, Air Supply's "All Out Of Love" came on the radio. Despite the hilariously hokey melody and lyrics, I started thinking...are we in fact all out of love? What has happened to the love song? Has it changed for better or for worse? I guess that's for you to decide.

Endurance Athletes

Endurance training and racing requires quite a commitment from athletes ... the commitment is for time and money ... they put up with pain, they eat for the event and buy supplements that cost a bundle ... their equipment is specialized to their events (shoes, high performance clothing, bikes, skis, wet suit, heart monitor, exercise equipment, etc., etc.) Some of the athletes are in the professional ranks, but most are age-groupers. Why do the age-groupers do it?

SpitzTunes -- Working My Way Back to You!

I've been away for a while .. not because of lack of interest, but because I've been away ... wanted to get this convo going ... in coming convos I'm going to do themes ... for example, politics in music, sports in music, sexuality in music ... if you have any suggestions, please let me know in the last question. And yes, the first question came about because I just did exactly that, with The Best of the Four Seasons!

Hair, Beautiful Hair!

Short, long, high & tight, sculpted, point cut, dread locks, mohawk ... different climates, cultures, locations seem to demand different hair styles. Who leads the way in hairstyling ... Paul Mitchell, Vidal Sasson ... or is it the celebs with their personal stylists ... regardless the media picks it up, judges it, and we adjust.

Memorial Day

In U.S. we remember those that have fought for our freedem ... we don't take freedom lightly, but sometimes we take those defenders of freedom for granted ... jeez, they're there, it's a job, do your thing, let me do my thing ... not quite that easy ... let's not forget that they also fought alongside our friends in many other nations to preserve a peacefully, free way of life for others, worldwide.

Watch Out, Here Comes The Jury!!

Madonna's done it, Steve Carrell's done it, Brad Pitt's done it, J. Lo's done it, Harrison Ford's done it ... do you do it? The protection of rights and liberties of litigants in courts is largely achieved through the teamwork of judge and jury. That's us - The Jury.

buzzTrendz ... Bringing Twitter and YouTube together!

buzzTrendz combines the latest tweets with like-subject matter YouTube videos to give you "what's hot now" ... as I'm writing this the most recent trends are Mewcastle, Miss California, Shuttle Atlantis ... wait a few minutes and there will be others ... and don't ignore the "random trends" ... everytime you refresh, a new set of the hottest keywords used on the internet show you both the tweets and the YouTube videos that are making the keyword hot. Oh yeah, go to buzzTrendz.com.

Tattoos ... Unsavory or Main Stream?

Emerging from their often unsavoury reputation of the recent past, tattoos have gained increasing prominence in the past decade. Life magazine estimated in 1936 that 10 million Americans, or approximately 6% of the population had at least one tattoo. A Harris Poll, done in 2003, nearly triples those numbers and estimates that 16% of Americans now have one or more tattoos. According to a 2006 survey by the Pew Research Center, thirty-six percent of those ages 18 to 25, and 40 percent of those ages 26 to 40, have at least one tattoo.

Science Museums - Fun, Education, Volunteering, Giving - Recession!?

Interactivity in museums ... in years past you would go to a science museum and look at the marvels that man had made or discovered ... informative, interesting, but something was lacking ... then came the idea of interactivity ... touch, feel, explore, experience ... and amazingly, we learn! Yet, we have this thing called a recession ... maybe it's global ... and "Only 16 percent of the nonprofits expect to cover their operating expenses this year, while 52 percent anticipate the recession will have a long-term or permanent negative effect on their organizations.

Oprah, Hugh, Twitter and Entainment Stuff!

Some celebs are really into tweeting - Oprah appears to be one, but she's very new to it, so let's see how long she remains really active. WhoCelebsTweet.com is following bunches of celebs ... if you'd like some others, just make a suggestion.

whoCelebsTweet.com - Celebrities on Twitter

Twitter is all the rage these days. WhoCelsbsTweet.com allows you to see what celebs are saying and who they're saying it about.

SpitzTunes -- Boyle-n' Over!

Let's suspend all those User Questions about 'what's your favorite genre', 'who's your favorite singer', 'do you like the xyz group' 'can you live without music' ... instead, please get into the conversation, understand it, feel it, think about it, and ask a question that applies to your life, your network. Here are some examples of what I consider a really good User Questions from our most recent SpitzTunes: "Do you think powerful concert mania equates to great singers?" "Do you enjoy outdoor summer concerts or do you find them packed and crazy?" "How much would you pay for a ticket to see Michael Jackson in concert?" "When does mania go over the top?"

Cuba -- Is It Time?

Are diplomatic and economic ties with Cuba the right thing for the U.S.? Obama and supporters say "Yes"; some Cuban-Americans say "No". Broad economic sanctions against Cuba have been in place since 1962, with the original goal being to bring down Fidel Castro's Marxist regime. Has that goal been met? Is it time to change?

SpitzTunes -- Concert Mania!

Mania- what is it? "excitement manifested by mental and physical hyperactivity, disorganization of behavior, and elevation of mood" ... you know when you see it, feel it, participate in it ... live performances generate the heat ... not all of them ... but concert mania happens when artsts like the Beatles, Cream, Rolling Stone, Michael Jackson, U2, Metallica, and even Miley Cyrus take the stage ... let's talk about the kind of mania that makes us feel really good!

Obama ... dNeero ... Twitter ... You!

dNeero is now igniting conversations inside of Twitter ... we try to choose topical questions, and it seems that over the last couple of weeks it's been the Obama Tweet for dNeero. So, we thought we'd bring those dNeero/Twitter questions and answers here, to a dNeero convo. Some of you may already follow us on Twitter. For those that don't yet do that, it's pretty simple: get a Twitter account, follow dNeero on Twitter, and add your Twitter username to you dNeero profile (in Account Settings).