OK now this is crazy. So I thought that robotic exoskeletons were cool? What about robotic pack goats? Think I am kidding? No.

This is so strange, I really couldn’t even make it up. It is kind of like a smaller imperial droid.

It is official!

Actually, it has been official for quite some time now. I mean, after a month and a half of employment you would think that I would get around to writing this little piece and so now I finally am getting around to it.

The company I now work for is called Cision AB officially. It is a conglomerate owned by a Sweedish company that focuses in “media intellegence” which means that we keep tabs on what the media writes about and we keep tabs on the contact info for everyone in the media. So our services range from monitoring media coverage to providing a contact database, both nationally and internationally.

And by everyone, I mean EVERYONE. Cision’s media database is extremely robust because Cision purchased Bacon’s Media Information, which has been keeping tabs on press contacts for about 80 years now. Sure there are some competitors, but really nobody has been around as long as us. So I am not scared. I just have to say that Cision was formerly Bacons so that people don’t think I am some yahoo from a random company.

You can email me work related questions at travis.cannell@cision.com if you have anymore questions or somehow stumble onto this site looking for a media contact database.

It is official- I am currently looking for full time employement in Los Angeles.

I am pursuing a career in Software Sales that can utilize both my degree in Computer Science and my experience in sales. So far it is going great and I have met with some interesting companies. It seems there is plenty of work out there for an Anthony Robbins loving, quota breaking salesman!

I put my resume online in PDF format.

If anyone reading this thinks their company could use someone like me, please get in touch with me at travis.cannell@gmail.com. Feel free to forward my resume as well.

I still can’t believe it, but robotic exoskeletons are here! My friend forwarded me a link to this video:

Pretty cool right? Seeing these kinds of things always makes me feel like I am, indeed, living in the future.

Hey here is a cool little video of my father being interviewed by CBN about vitamin D. Its a nice little summation of what is going on in the battle to get more knowledge out there about Vitamin D.

What’s the Real Story on Vitamin D?

As a few of you may know, I have a side-project website that has been in the works for a little while now. I finally got the website to place where I am comfortable promoting it, but it is still very much an evolving idea.

I have been Type 1 Diabetic for about 10 years now (wow, its a little scary) and being the type of person that I am, I have constantly looked for ways to live my life the way I want and to not let Diabetes effect my health. That is not so easy.

Diabetic Vitamins is a website that will hopefully give the information that Diabetics need to combat the devastating side effects of the disease. I was always surprised that doctors were never willing to tell me about well researched herbs, supplements and vitamins that are beneficial for Diabetics.

My goal with the website is to provide relevant health information based on actual research. I will not make bold claims that are found all over the internet about to sell a product. I will simply and humbly show the factual research that has been done on each substance and let you decide whether it is something worthwhile.

I am pretty sure, if your diabetic, you will find this research well worth the read. Until I get my official list up (I might turn it into an e-book, I don’t know) you can read the Diabetic Vitamin Blog which stays up to date with Diabetic Vitamin research.

As some of you may know, my father Dr John Cannell is a big proponent of adequate levels of vitamin D for all. As we move into cold season this year and as winter sets in, it is a great time to get some Vitamin D supplements to protect yourself from diseases ranging from cancer to autoimmune illnesses. It is absolutely amazing how important this vitamin is for human body function and how few people really know its benefits.

So I decided to put together a top five list of reasons why to supplement with Vitamin D.

1- It decreases the risk of developing cancer by 50% in a recently released study. 50%! If you develop cancer after reading this, just remember you could probably (yea, probably because its %50) have avoided the entire illness with vitamin D. Read the press release from UCSD about the meta-study and learn about the powerful anti-cancerous effects of Vitamin D.

2- Vitamin D lowers mortality across the board by %7. While that doesn’t seem like much, that highlights the fact that Vitamin D really does fight off many different types of diseases. Don’t believe me? Go read the study, then get back to me.

3- Our modern environment has totally decimated our natural ability to produce Vitamin D. Working indoors, behind glass (glass blocks the spectrums of the sun’s rays that produce Vitamin D when they hit skin) and with clothing on, modern man gets little to no Vitamin D naturally. Even with fortified foods, we are woefully deficient because the foods are not nearly fortified enough, which brings me to my next bullet point.

4- If you walk into the sun with a significant portion of your skin exposed to summer sun, your body manufactures around 10,000 units maximum in 20 minutes if your fair skinned (it takes longer the darker your skin). That is before your burned. So with enough sun to not even burn you, your body will naturally make 10,000 units of the stuff which is so much that the FDA believes it to be toxic and it is 50X more than the Daily Recommended allowance for an adult of 200 units/day. Is the government wrong? Or did our bodies evolve to be toxic if they are exposed to natural sunlight? I will let you decide.

5- And finally- Its cheap as hell! Goodness people, it costs about 5 bucks for a bottle. Yes- FIVE BUCKS for bottle of 250 1,000 IU tabs from Swansons Vitamins Online. If you get it anywhere else, just make sure that it is cholecalciferol or Vitamin D3.

My dad has a complete website with great information at the Vitamin D Council. If you look on the bottom of the homepage you can see he recommends around 4,000 units a day. Most of those studies used less, around 1,000 units a day, but people please take your Vitamin D. And tell your relatives (especially older ones you know). Getting sick is not fun for anyone.

More about Prosper-

My friend linked this video to me. It is a panel talk with Propser’s top three lenders. They are getting over 25% on their portfolios of $750,000. Is this good? Sounds good to me. That is beating the pants of the stock market.

I really, can’t, for the life of me remember how I found Prosper. But I did. It is a very interesting idea that I liked immediately after I poked around the website for a little bit. Here is how it works.

Prosper connects people who are looking for money with people who have money. If you have money, you are usually looking for a way to get a good return on said money. I mean, you worked hard for that cash and now it is time that it works for you. How about returns of 8-12%? Does that sound like something Daddy would like? Indeed it does. Here is the Prosper creative for people who have money:

Now how does Prosper allow you to get a return like that? How risky is it? What is Prosper smoking? Well what are you smoking?

Now for some answers- Prosper is what you call a peer-to-peer lending establishment. Or at least that is what I am going to call it. The buzzwords are peer to peer lending. Prosper connects investors looking to get a good return on their money with people with varying credit scores who need money.

The key is that Prosper allows an investor to invest micro loans ($50-150) across all of Prosper’s members who are looking to get funded. It is called diversification, and usually is only something that people do with large amounts of money get to do. Prosper has enough people looking for loans for it to work though so it is great.

The investor can look at the person’s loan information ala facebook style to see their picture, their recommendations from other members and their loan history. They can also look at a stripped down credit score of the person looking for a loan, giving them a rating from AA down to E depending on a number of factors. Prosper really does pull credit.

And you guessed it, people with lower credit ratings have to pay higher interest rates, but if you as an investor are willing to gamble, you could get those higher rates in exchange for the risk. It is like a bond market for the masses! Prosper even has automated tools you can use to automate funding small loans with “standing orders”-see Prosper Portfolio Plans.

Prosper has some great historical information on their website and about $98 Million has already gone through the website already. Look at Prosper’s historical charts on their performance page. It is like MySpace meets Chase-Manhattan. Its absolutely brilliant! Now on the other side of the coin, look at Prosper’s creative for people who need a good peer-to-peer loan:

It looks deceptively like an ad for some skeezy credit card refinance sort of sham, no? I thought so! Shame on Prosper! Happy people smiling with APR rates is never a good way to go. Sigh. But you never can have it all. And for most people the rates you are getting are much better than credit card debt. And you can get loans that might not even be possible.

So how does it look as a borrower? You simply put in your personal information, much like getting a regular loan and then create your loan profile where you can describe your financial situation, why you want the loan, what you are going to use it for and why you are able to pay it back. You can put up pictures and really lay on the sort of story that will get a loan funded- family problems, divorce, children with sicknesses, you name it. Then people can bid on your loan and take part in the interest rate that you are offering. Once enough people have placed their little micro-bids on your loan (usually around $50-150) and it is fully funded- bam. The money is wired to your account minus an origination fee (I think its $45) and you are ready to go.

The small business loan possibilities for Prosper are endless. Housing remodels, new business loans, existing business loans and even non-existent business loans. At the end of the day your loan will or will not get funded based on your credit score with the pictures and stories only helping to establish your character. I already put a profile on here to fund a small loan and I will certainly look for Prosper in the future when trying to get some financing for my online business endeavors. I will also look at it as a sound place to get over 10% on small amounts of money as I build wealth.

Anyways- check out Prosper. I double dog dare you too.

Now why would I want to Roll with the SEO Rockstars you ask? Well, Shoemoney.com is having an SEO Rockstar Competition and becoming an SEO Rockstar would give me an all inclusive trip to the shining city of Las Vegas for another exciting and always entertaining round of Travis VS Las Vegas! It would also allow me to hang with the best and the brightest of search for three days of fun fueled conferencing.

As we all remember from Travis VS Las Vegas round 1, I managed to party into the wee morning hours at the infamous “Rainman Suite” at the marvelous Caesar’s Palace Hotel for a late night after party with CEOs, porn stars and even a blogger, Jack Colton, the infamous Las Vegas webmaster who turned jackcolton.com into a referral empire. But I digress.

Perhaps we should look at some photographic and historical evidence to understand why I want to be an SEO Rockstar. First, there was kindergarten.

When asked by my teacher “what do you want to be when you grow up?” all I could shout is - SEO Rockstar! before they passed out the graham crackers and milk. So from an early age I have been vying for SEO stardom, and have patiently waited for the time to seize the title. And that time in now!

They say a picture speaks a thousand words right? And so, I am going to give each judge a photo gift exemplifying all the reasons you should propel me into SEO stardom.

Dax! My brotha from anotha mutha! Nice stripes on those shorts. I have a pair similar, but they are a little tighter on the boys. Not like 70’s running shorts tight, but they just provide a little more huggin if ya know what I mean. Support.

You might appreciate this picture of me in Montana, attempting to become a Rockstar. That is me, you can tell because I have an arm full of girl and it appears that my back is on fire. This is what we do in Montana to pass the time when we get sick of bowling and watching television.

The last time someone stuffed $200 in my pocket and told me to have a good time in Vegas it was gone in about an hour. We will see how long that $500 lasts.

For Rebecca- It appears that you are in a costume in your picture. I like to play dress up too! In perhaps my most creative costume spur ever, in college one year I did decide to make this marvelous excuse for a costume. I really don’t know if it counts as a costume per se, but I did wear it around the University of California, Santa Barbara festivities for Halloween during my stint as an undergrad. What one can do with paper mache’ and chicken wire is endless and I wanted to explore the possibilities.

I also want you to know that I can, in fact, cash in on the clever. If you look closely at my profile picture, you will notice that my mind bullets are nuclear. Want to unleash 5 to 10 megatons of damage on unsuspecting SEO folk at parties? Quip stinging remarks without letting people dish out comebacks? Let’s bring on the snark.

For Neil- You seem like someone who would appreciate some good office kicks. Here is a picture of the time we covered one of our beloved employees desk and everything on it with tinfoil. Enjoy.

Neil is that a beer bong in your hands? I like pictures of you with black Am-Ex cards a little more, but beer bongs are still pretty damn awesome. That picture gave me a full on belly laugh, complete with rolling jiggles. It appears you know how to get down, although the width of that beer bong could use some improvement, it looks like a garden hose. We want to see you with something more like a fire hose.

For Greg- Yes look, I can party! What is better than loading a 16 gallon keg, ladies and your buddies onto a 25 foot sailboat and setting sail onto the pristine waters of Flathead Lake in Montana? Probably nothing! Nothing yet that is. I am thinking that rolling with the SEO Rockstars in Las Vegas might compare.

And don’t worry. Texas Holdem’ is legal in the great state of Montana where I am from, so we can slow roll some aces till the weee hours of the morning.

For Dave- I can roll with the best of them and still get up in the morning in time for photo ops with booth babes. No worries necessary, no need to leave me behind. I was born and raised in Montana, where most bars only serve water with whiskey. I once saw a girl order a glass of wine and was served something so old, it tasted like vinegar.

So lets party! And then in the meantime we can come up with creative ideas on how to get top rankings for viagra and penis enlargement kits, because we all know that the world needs more of those. Who knows, perhaps we could hatch a couple of plans on some napkins late at night that could become the next super affiliate website.

Yes, YES! I am ready to roll with the exclusive, ultra-hip SEO Rockstar Crowd.

I am ready to talk some shop as well. I want to absorb knowledge like a sponge as well as have so many laughs that I get an ab workout. I want the conference to give me a couple of gems for some of the niches that I am setting out to conquer while letting us all create the kinds of memories that only appear in your camera in the morning.