As the year comes to a close and we enter into the season for giving, remember that making year-end charitable gifts can be beneficial in many ways. They provide much-needed support for your favorite charitable organizations, are personally heartwarming and may produce significant tax savings for you. And does anyone really need that fruitcake you plan on sending? Maybe?

Sites like Networkforgood.org make online giving easier than ever, just create your account, and send in your donation. You can even set up a recurring donation if you so desire. Giving generously doesn’t have to just come in December.

I support Youth & Shelter Services (YSS) for many reasons. For one, their CEO, George Belitsos, took a chance a few years back by hiring me as their public information officer. To say the least, it was a worldview changing experience. I had the opportunity to work with some of the most caring and dedicated individuals I’d ever met.

Two, I had the chance to talk with troubled youths about a variety of topics including homelessness, drug/alcohol abuse, and sexual identity crises. I come from a very steady, stable and secure midwest family. My most vivid experience was visiting the homeless shanty camps located literally blocks from a thriving downtown Des Moines. The stark contrast between the haves and the have-nots was never more apparent.

And three, it set me on my true path in life. I want to use my talents to help non-profits achieve the success they so richly deserve.

So my gift back to YSS, will be just that. I intend to achieve my goals through my professional and personal life. This blog will serve as a means for me to evangelize those social causes in most need of charitable support. It will also serve as a way for me to spread the word on what others are doing to support their own causes.

I challenge every blogger to take up a cause and to start evangelizing that cause. Visit sixdegrees.org or similar sites and create your own charity badge. Then share with me. What’s worked for you? What hasn’t worked? What feedback have you received from the charity, if any?

This holiday season, Amazon.com would like you to set down those dated and stayed relics of the past, books, and pick up their latest electronic device, the Kindle.

Kindle is a 10 oz e-book reader consisting of a b/w screen, keypad, and wireless connectivity. You can use it to download full-length books, newspapers, and even blogs (for a fee). The device can hold up to 200 books using built-in memory, which can be expanded with memory cards to hold over 1,000.

Unlike an iPod, I can’t see where having my entire library of books would come in handy. Can you set the Kindle to shuffle, and read to an eclectic mix of Poe, Shakespeare, and a little Vonnegut?

According to Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com CEO, the book is due for a 21st-century makeover.

“We forget (that the printed book) is a 500-year-old technology, and we sort of forget that it’s even a technology,” Bezos mused. “Gutenberg would still recognize a modern-day book.”

What do you think? Is the Kindle the future of reading?

And, more importantly, is Bezos’ assumption correct about books? Do they need a makeover in the digital age?

Joanna Young over at Confident Writing posed the following questions today:

1. A word or words that you’ve learned, read, noticed, been gifted (through blogging)
2. What it means to you
3. Who you got it from
4. Any conversations or connections that followed

Most recently, it was my first book meme. Its similar to a chain email in that you’re forwarded a list of questions, you answer them, then you tag others to answer the same questions. Unlike the chain emails, you can actually converse about your answers and provide links to further information about each answer. Eric Peterson originally tagged me.

I wound up re-connecting with a high school friend, Troy Rutter, and learned his reading habits have changed a bit since then (shocking!). Troy has always been, and will continue to be, my stereotype of a “Trekker”. This is not meant as a slight, nor do I think Troy is the type who would take offense to this distinction. I myself am somewhat of a trekker, I just haven’t devoted the same hours to pursuing this calling in life as Troy has. It did surprise me that Roddenberry didn’t make his list.

This is Joanna’s first foray into a writing exercise so let’s get the word or words out.