Sacramento Connect

Astute readers may have noticed a toolbar now appearing on the bottom when you read this blog. There is a reason for that: I am proud to announce my blog is now part of Sacramento Connect.

What's that, you ask?

Sacramento Connect is a brand new network, designed and implemented by our local newspaper, that will allow a reader to easily connect to other regional blogs. It will also make it easy for you to share what you find here on facebook or twitter. It's sort of a play on the old webring - you remember those? But, now you can choose where you go and what you see using the toolbar, and share items of interest.

It's an unusual but fascinating idea. While blogs have been connected by topic, interest, and friendship through the cooperation of bloggers for many years, connecting bloggers who have a variety of topics but live in the same community has never been done. I'm early-adopting again, and hope this turns out to be valuable for everybody.

I say early-adopting because my blog was chosen to be one of the first. Considering my topic, it's clear the Bee wants to connect diverse content and not only focus on blogs of interest to one area. If you will look across the partner network, you will see that there are blogs which will relate to a general readership - such as the Weekly Driver, which is car news and reviews, for example. And, there are some that relate to a specific area, such as Cowtown Eats, discount food coupons and restaurant reviews for the Sacramento area.

To use the new toolbar, find any content on Sacramento Connect you want to share. Log in to your accounts using the toolbar, and then you can take any photo, video or text and drag it over to the social networking icons and drop it there to send it out. You will see you can even chat using the toolbar, and so I'll likely try to schedule an online chat at some point and test it out.

Naturally, you are going to want to start all this social networking with my blog. Drop it in to all your friends who have cancer, know somebody with cancer or just might want to read about a person who has cancer - that means everybody - and lets see what happens.

Aside from the toolbar and this post explaining it, my content and topic won't change. I'll still be writing about me, and my life with breast cancer, with a touch of social commentary mixed in.

This network is in "alpha" now, so it's brand new. Feel free to leave any comments about the toolbar below.