It's been almost a year—eight months to be exact—since I last posted to The New Media Collective. This extended hiatus can be attributed to a few things—though mostly a gross lack of time management skills. :-)

When The NMC was first conceived, the primary goal was to feature people of color from different areas of the blogosphere, letting the world know who we were, and that what we were doing was relevant and consistent. I also wanted to help educate those who were new to the worlds of blogging, videoblogging, podcasting, and photoblogging, facilitating in the smallest way, the closing of the digital divide. Little did I know, the person to be educated most would be me. With each person I interviewed for the OUR VOICES or MEDIA MINDS segments, and every HOW-TO entry I posted, I realized just how little I knew about the tech world, and how intimidating it can be for a wannabe geek like me. However daunting, this learning process became the beauty of the project. Not only did I get to create a site that was informative and educational, I got to learn from the people I interviewed and from the research I did. I guess the saying is correct that "he who teaches, learns."

In addition to the site being a teaching vehicle, the goal was also to create a community where people would connect with and learn from each other. Initially, the response was good. The word was slowly getting out about what The NMC was doing and people were supportive. I even had the opportunity to present at the 2006 BlogHer Conference in July on a panel about starting a community-based site. It was great meeting new people, some of whom I'd only known (or known about) through their work online.

Initially, I had a lot of ideas and plans for The NMC, but life took a slightly different turn and I was unable to follow through with them. This year, I'm looking forward to starting over with a renewed vision and a resolve to fulfill my original dream, and to recruit as many people as I can to help, because as my mother never failed to remind me growing up, "no man is an island."

Thanks to everyone who gave any kind of support to me and this project while it was on hiatus, even if it was just a kind word of encouragement.

Peace & love for 2007,

I received this email the other day from political education and advocacy site, Moveon.org, and I shuddered. For the first time in human history, most people who want to develop a large audience to promote a particular point of view can publish and communicate worldwide.

So, this law would keep the role of corporate media of what I consider to be a consciousness poison called propaganda. As we can communicate, we have the power to change the world around us to be a positive existence instead of the class locked power struggle that is current reality.

Encourage a free and fair internet and encourage human progress. Send the letter below.

If you would like to call your Senators and Representatives directly, look them up at Congressmerge.com.

Congress is now pushing through a law that would give control of the Internet to giant companies who want to charge big bucks for things that are currently free or low-cost—everything from posting a webpage to being able to use audio, video, and photos online.

This would ruin the Internet for nearly everyone: nonprofits, online activists, Google users, ipod listeners, small businesses, economic innovators, and others.

Politicians don't think we are paying attention to this issue. Many of them take campaign checks from big telecom companies and are on the verge of letting companies like AT&T and Verizon destroy the Internet for the little guy.

We need to act now. Can you sign this petition to your member of Congress asking him or her not to ruin the Internet?

Click here to sign.

A great article on this is located here.

Priscilla Grim is many things—today I am a blogger. Check me out at Red Statement: All Things Grim, Womyn and Revolutionary.

Know what's happening before it happens with NMC's new EVENTS CALENDER. Keep up with the many conferences and other media events occuring in the blogosphere throughout the year, including NMC's own projects. Although new events seem to pop up everyday, we'll try to stay on top of them and keep you posted about the where and when of it all.

To stay in the loop, just click on the button in the sidebar (or above) to view the calender, or subscribe to our feed for monthly event reminders. (If there's an event you know about that's not on the calender, send me an email and I'll see about getting it up there.)

How To Navigate the Calender:
In the left sidebar you'll see a box called LABELS under which is listed different event categories (called "Appointments"). Each category (Label) is color-coded for easy viewing in the main calender.

Above the main calender are links to Month, Week, Day, and Upcoming views. In the right sidebar, there's a scrollable mini me of the main calender. On the nav bar on top of the screen, you can toggle on or off the gray "Help" boxes in the sidebars, or remove the sidebars altogether giving you a full screen view of the calender.

FYI: After researching a few free online calenders, I decided to use Kiko. The interface is nice, and most importantly for the public view, you can see and integrate with an actual calender instead of just getting a feed, or a pop-up view of a single event.

Note: As good as Kiko is, however, it ain't perfect. Although NMC would love to be at all the listed events, it's just not possible, so when you see us listed under "Attendees," please ignore. So until they fix that little bugaboo over at Kiko (if they even believe it needs fixing), I'll let you know what's what.

BTW, the calender is best viewed in Firefox, Internet Explorer or Mozilla's new Camino browser for Mac.

To make life easier, you'll need copyright-free, or "podsafe," music. This music is legal to download, share, and use in your videos and podcasts. To get you started, here's a list of 10 sites that provide legal music. It'll still take some digging to get what you need, since not all the music on these sites is copyright-free, but it's a start. Happy hunting!

(BTW, they're also listed on our Resources page.)

FYI: You can also find podsafe music from the artists themselves, so if you know some musicians, maybe they'll hook you up with some copyright-free tracks.