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I'm sure many of you are wondering what The disAbility Support Network is, exactly. It's a Facebook style community, but with a whole lot more. What you're reading now is simply a blog for the actual site, a way to post interesting information and to try to entice more people to join the network. The actual network is located here:

http://network.disabilitysupportnetwork.com

I'll give you a run down on the features that you'll find there. It's a new network, so I'm hoping that people will decide to join in and start networking and adding content to the site.

The site is member-driven. What this means is that every member can contribute to the content of this site. Whether your interest here is personal or business related, you are welcome to contribute. If you represent a business or organization, this is the perfect venue for reaching your intended audience. Meet them on their own turf rather than having them go to you. Create a group for your business, add it to the yellow pages, add events to the calendar and reviews for your products. But please respect our members and do not spam them. I'm sure you can guess what will happen to anyone's account, not just a business, if they're found to be abusing this site. That aside...

One very important thing to remember is that this site will evolve over time. The more you tell others about this site, and the more everyone contributes to the content here, the better a resource it will be for everyone. And not much here is set in stone. If you would like to see a new feature, new blog category and so on, please don't hesitate to add your request to the Feature Request Group.
Here you can:

• Read disAbility News through The disAbility Support Network's Twitter account and Google RSS feeds. For your convenience, you can find both of these on the disAbility News page through the Main Menu above.
• Connect with other people! This is one of the main features here. If you are a member of Facebook, you know how easy it is to find others with the same interest as you, or in the same geographical area as you. When you find a member that you wish to connect with, you send a 'friend request' and await their approval. Once approved, they are added to your list of friends. The same holds true here. Whether you are looking for other parents of a child with a particular diagnosis, or other professionals in the same field as you. It can all be done quickly and easily. Just use the Advanced Search search feature.
• Add and subscribe to Events.
• Find and add resources in the Yellow Pages. You can add any resource you like so long as it has something to do with Special Needs. And the unique feature about the Yellow Pages here is that YouTube videos can be embedded into the ad.
• Classified Ads. Free for members to post special needs equipment and supplies for sale or donation. The general public can view them.
• Review your favorite, or least favorite products. One thing I've found is that some things that I buy for our son are awesome, and some are just plain crap. So I thought allowing people to add product reviews would be helpful. If you know that you can find it on Amazon, you can even add the ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number) if you want so others can find it quickly. *
• Tweet to your Twitter account: Yellow Page listings, Classified Ads and Reviews. Your own listings and others that you like.
• Create a list of your favorite Yellow Page, Classified Ad and Review listings.
• Blogging. We have blogs here, too. Categorized and with tag clouds, you can find what you're interested in.
• Helpful Hints: whether you've discovered an easier way of doing something, or hints on getting approved for a service, please share it with everyone else! You could save someone a whole lot of time and aggravation!
• Join and create Groups. You can create a group for a particular diagnosis, profession, or concern. Group founders can post announcements under the Group, invite members and decide if the Group is open to all members or if you need to approve new Group members.
• Share photos.
• Share personal videos. This is my favorite feature. Pictures are great, but videos are even more fun. One thing, video sizes are huge, and they eat up bandwidth (this equals very expensive hosting). Therefore, we need  to utilize third party sites like YouTube or Yahoo! for storing the video. But everyone can browse and watch the videos here, on this site. All you do is upload the video to the third party site, go to our Video area here and add the link. The Video section is organized by Member's Videos & Other Videos, so if you find a public video that you think others will really enjoy, and the video allows embedding, you can add those here as well. Check it out, you'll see what I mean. It is very cool!
• Share other videos that you find. YouTube, Yahoo! and more. They're full of fun and informative videos, and many of them can be pulled into our video section.
• Use the internal messaging system to send and receive messages from people in your list of friends.
• Invite people who are not yet members to become a member here.
• Subscribe to the Newsletter.

Not enough to do? There will be a recipe section soon. Many of us, or those that we care for, have special diets to conform to and this site will be a great way to share your recipes. Suggestions on other site features are always welcome. There's even a group for suggestions!

I sincerely hope that you find this site to be a great resource and a whole lot of fun!