Israellycool

Get some discussion going in the comments while I take some deep breaths.

As part of my continuing efforts to improve the sense of community on this site, I have added a chat room called The Cooler.

To access it, click on The Cooler button underneath the banner.

And if any of you are graphically gifted and would like to contribute to this site, I invite you to submit a button graphic which I will place on the sidebar as a more visible way to access The Cooler. If I get more than one submission, I will post all the entries and ask you to help me decide on a winner.

And here are the final results, based on your votes..

Just a quick post to assure you I am still alive and well. Just very busy, making posting rather difficult.

Or, to put it another way, this is how I am feeling at the moment about my blogging:

Wishing Israellycool readers a 2008 filled with health and happiness for you all.

Just a quick reminder that although this is still very much my blog, I am not the only contributor. Elder of Ziyon has been contributing regularly to this site, with the very occasional appearance from Brian of London. You can see who authored a post by the large Avatar and author label under the post title.

Yeah, I know, it sounds obvious, but some of you have been missing the distinction, judging by the number of times I have seen one of Elder of Ziyon’s great posts falsely attributed to “Aussie Dave.”

Being the fair taskmaster blog patron that I am, I won’t stand for this injustice any longer!

So please pay careful attention in future.

As you were.

It’s been a while since I asked for contributions, but given that the need has not diminished, and this is now the season of giving, now seems as good a time as any.

There are a number of ways you can help out.

1. Advertise your business/blog/website here.

2. Visit my sponsors. This does not mean gratuitously clicking on the ads, but rather visiting the advertised sites that genuinely interest you.

3. Buying some Israellycool merchandise here.

4. The best way is to donate via the Chipin or Blogpatron widgets in the far right sidebar. But I’ll reproduce them below for your convenience.

And remember. A contribution to Israellycool is a contribution to the betterment of mankind.

Some of you may have noticed that I added the “I Recommend” widget to the sidebar on the right (under the WebAds pane). In it, I have included the books which I highly recommend for anyone wanting to better understand the Arab-Israeli conflict. By clicking on one or more of these books, you can then directly purchase it from Amazon, and provide me with a referral fee. Sweet!

I will be adding to the selection as time goes on. But for now, I want to encourage any of you who have not yet read Joan Peter’s From Time Immemorial to do so. It is an outstanding book containing painstaking research, and what I consider to be the best book on the Arab-Israeli conflict I have read to date.

It has already been over a week since I invited Elder to contribute to this site, and I am sure you will all agree he has posted some very well thought out and interesting posts.

Now it is important to me to get your feedback on whether or not you like this new multi-blogger format. From my perspective, it helps alleviate some of the pressure, and adds some new viewpoints to the site.

All constructive comments are welcome.

No, my wife did not just give birth to yet another child. Rather, we have a new contributor to this site - Elder of Ziyon.

I asked Elder to contribute to this site as part of my effort to recruit some blogging talent to make Israellycool bigger and better. I simply am unable to devote more time or effort to this site at the moment, and do see some value to the multi-blogger format. All the cool kids are doing it, and it will add some variety and diversity of knowledge to this joint.

Note that I am not asking anyone to contribute, but am rather asking those bloggers with whom I am familiar, and who I feel can help maintain the standard of this site in terms of being informative and entertaining. There are a plethora of bloggers who can do one or the other; what I’m looking for are those that do both. Elder certainly can.

So please give him a warm Israellycool welcome and come back to see more of what he has to say.

Gravatars, people, Gravatars.

And no. I am not making money from it. I just want to enhance the community experience on this site.

Grab a Gravatar and leave a comment here to check it out.

Update: For some reason, the Gravatars take a little longer to show up in the comments than they do in the Recent Comments section.