Site news: AddThis, plus more ways to get StLJN

It's been a busy couple of weeks here at StLJN, with a lot of breaking news and relatively high traffic (as well as some nagging computer issues that still aren't totally resolved). While there's a momentary lull in the action, I wanted to take the opportunity to convey a couple of bits of site-related news.

First, you may have noticed that the bottom of each StLJN post now features a button labeled "Bookmark." This button launches a little pop-up window with an app called AddThis, which simplifies the process of recommending/posting a story to Digg, Facebook, MySpace and other social media sites. So, if you're a social media user, please feel free to go town and link to and/or recommend StLJN stories to your heart's content.

(Along similar but less trendy lines, it should be noted that you still can share any StLJN post with a friend or friends via email by clicking on the little envelope icon at the bottom of the post.)

The second comparatively recent development is that StLJN headlines now are appearing on the Jazz St. Louis site, and posts also are now available through the "News" section of AllAboutJazz.com. Both JSL and AAJ asked nicely if it was OK to use StLJN's site feed, and I was happy to have the opportunity to reach more people and get StLJN's content more widely distributed. (And in case you're wondering, there's no money changing hands; the idea is simply that they get some additional content - in AAJ's case, really just a small series of drops in a already very large bucket - and, hopefully, StLJN gets some more readers.)

Of course, you can use that same RSS feed to put StLJN into your newsreader or onto a home page at Google, Yahoo, MSN or elsewhere. The sidebar contains links to the basic feed in RSS and XML versions, as well as a series of buttons that simplify the process of adding StLJN to several popular newsreaders and home page providers. Or if you'd like to get StLJN in e-mail form, you can do that, too; see the same section of the sidebar to sign up for that service, which is provided free of charge by Feedblitz.

Last but not least, please remember that your comments, e-mails, link suggestions, news items, band and venue schedule information, and any other relevant correspondence are always welcome. Comments are enabled on every StLJN post, or you can send an e-mail to stljazznotes AT yahoo DOT com. (Don't forget to close up the spaces and replace the spam-fooling, all-caps words with their symbolic equivalents.)