First off, there are some roster additions coming over the next weeks to TOD. The first you have probably noticed is the addition of Jeff Vail to our staff; please join me in welcoming Jeff to TOD as a contributor.

Second, I hope you are all aware of World without Oil. It's week 14, gas prices are over $7/gal. Things are getting pretty bad over there.

Third, TOD will surpass 5 million unique visits and 12.5 million page views (since our inception a little over two years ago) some time this week--and that doesn't even count those of you who just read us in RSS feeds, which is another 2500/day!). Well done all! My best to all of our staff and to our readership. Thank you all for being a part of this.

Fourth, we have almost reached our goal rank of being in the top 2000 blogs on Technorati, but we need a bit of a link push to get there. I'll be mentioning this over the next couple of weeks off and on.

Fifth, reddit and digg, etc., have not been as kind to us of late. In fact, many of our posts just get killed the moment they are submitted. A lot of that, we think, is due to our success on those sites--and that the same people submit our stuff each time--which means a "blacklisting" of sorts. If you are one of the people who frequents those sites and haven't submitted our links in a while, feel free to push them over there, we all appreciate the help.

I have a funny feeling that this summer will be an important time for our entire community. Let's do all that we can to get people the word.

ed by PG: (and Happy Mother's Day!!)