Once again, I'd just like to remind each of you about the Christmas Rehearsals on Tuesday evenings at 6:30 pm.  Our next rehearsal is this Tuesday, October 24, 2011 at New Hope Baptist Church.  The address is 333 Price Street, Anchorage, AK.  They're going really well, and I'd really like for you to join us.  I promise you will have fun.  If you're thinking about it, just come to one rehearsal.  I know you will love it.  Musicians are more than welcome to come and participate as well.  The music is beautiful and fun.

Don't want to sing, but enjoy acting?  I have six roles available....2 women, 2 men, and 2 children (boy and girl around the ages of 8 - 10). Please contact me if you are interested at 561-2294. 

Thank you so much for your support.  I look forward to seeing you on Tuesday.

Please feel free to pass this message on to others.  Blessing to you and yours.

In His Service,

--
Xavien Phillips

I hope you had a chance to check out some of the background information on QR Codes.
As an Ad man, this should be very interesting to you. I'm starting with QR Codes because I can see mobile apps creating QR Codes down the line.

Right now you want to promote a project so you use print, radio and video in a number of ways.
It used to be that with a good newspaper and radio campaign would get you a great number of sales.

Now-a-days people can't remember the last time they have seen a newspaper and many new buyers to the market rely on their phones like it's a part of their body!

So to me the smartphone is the target for ads in 2009 and beyond.

I used to get pissed when I would create thousands of flyers, both color printing and black print on colored paper and find most of them on the ground after the event or after blanketing clubs all over town.

Now, taking a page from OfficeMax and GCI Communication here in Anchorage, QR Code make marketing easy when marketing to smartphone owners.

Since everyone isn't born with a smartphone, you have to consider what your smartphone market share is, but it's big enough to me to make the extra effort.

I worked for OfficeMax at a time in my life and I remember that we would give the old sales papers to the homeless so they could sell the paper and make a few dollars. We had this campaign where you came into the store and got a big brown paper bag that said 20% off of everything in the bag.

Now with a smartphone, you can scan a code on the product display and basically do the same thing without the cost of the brown bags.

Right now with QR Codes, you can share information accurately and allow potential clients to capture that info with the click of their smartphone camera.

QR Codes are made to do one thing at a time, so you have the choice to create a code that takes you to a website, give you directions to your store and more. Below is a list of the types of QR Codes that can be created. QR codes cannot do multiple things. For example you can create a QR Code to link to a website but not to a website and send a text message.

The list below will show what one QR Code can be and the number of fields of data (or lines of text) it will contain:

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
A group of freedmen are pictured in “Freedman’s Village,“ the black community built on land confiscated from Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: April 25, 2010

 
 ARLINGTON Charter buses roll up to Arlington National Cemetery every day, depositing tourists who scramble uphill to see the eternal flame on President John F. Kennedy's grave. People stream in all directions, toward the Tomb of the Unknowns or to remember at tombstones of loved ones lost to war. 

    Few, however, head downhill to a quiet corner near the Iwo Jima Memorial.
Down here, there are no memorials to ancient battles, no ornate headstones honoring long-dead dignitaries. There are only rows of small unassuming white tombstones, many engraved with names like George, Toby and Rose. 

They are the only visible reminders that part of the nation's most storied burial ground sits atop what used to be a thriving black town -- "Freedman's Village," built on land confiscated from Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.  Milton Rowe recently made his way slowly around the famous grounds with Wayne Parks. There's nothing here now to tell visitors that freed slaves once lived here, but the two men say they feel a connection with this land because they can both trace their ancestors to Freedman's Village. 

Parks said he remembers his grandfather repeatedly bringing him to the cemetery as a child to explain the bond. Parks' great-grandfather, James Parks, lived in Freedman's Village and other locations around the cemetery after being freed from servitude to the Lee family.  "I was sitting on this wall gazing out over the cemetery, and all of a sudden, I got it," Parks said. "Our DNA is intrinsically intertwined in this property, integrated in this property. The spirits of my ancestors continue to exist here in this property, so I find like my grandfather, I now come here for strength, I come here to commune with them."
    
Arlington National Cemetery was established on land confiscated from Lee and his family in 1861 after the general took command of the Confederate forces. 
The Civil War leaders of the Union buried soldiers' bodies on the property in hopes that Lee would never want to return, and Parks' ancestor dug the very first grave near the Freedman's Village burial site. 

The federal government turned some land about a half-mile north of Lee's mansion into a town specifically for freed slaves who had nowhere to go.  At its height, more than 1,100 former slaves lived in a collection of 50 1½-story duplexes surrounding a central pond.  Although the town was supposed to be temporary, the freed slaves put up churches, stores, a hospital, mess hall, a school, an "old people's home" and a laundry -- to make a life for themselves.  
   

"I think it would have very much resembled a town anywhere in America today with that population. They had the same needs as anywhere, and they sustained themselves by working," said Thomas Sherlock, historian at Arlington National Cemetery .  Eventually, the village site, with a spectacular view of the nation's capital and the Potomac River , became desirable for development. Despite impassioned protests from the freed slaves, the federal government paid the residents $75,000 for the buildings and property, and tore down the town in 1900.  
   

Saving the city would have been a "gift to the American people to remember the struggles which seem like was a long time ago, but 150 years is not that long ago," Sherlock said.
The only trace of Freedman's Village left on the grounds are the lonely graves in Section 27 near the Iwo Jima Memorial.  One Lord, One faith, One baptism - Ephesians 4:5

Enjoy these pictures sent to me by Deverette Williams of Your Blessing Travel. And if you would like to see a video slideshow of these pictures, click here for Video Slideshow. View Africa Photo Gallery