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Editor's note: Jennifer Hoffman gives us an update on her semester abroad in Spain.

Hello everyone! This time I'm writing to you from Madrid. I came for a long weekend and I'm pretty sure it will take about a week for my feet to recover from all the walking. I understand now why Europeans need good shoes.

Editor's note: S&T's own Jennifer Hoffman gives us an update on her semester abroad in Spain.

Well, I've officially been here over a month and I find that pretty hard to believe. I never had the freaked out moment I thought I would during this time where I thought I'd never be able to pick up my Spanish again. I guess my teachers all did a good job...and you guys know I'm not sucking up to you because I already got my grades. :)

Editor's note: Three Missouri S&T students are on a semester abroad in Spain. Jennifer Hoffman gives us an update.

Alright, so I finally finished my first week at the Spanish Intensive Course in Gandia, Spain, for students to brush up on their Spanish before the actual semester starts. Monday was really hard because our teacher spoke so fast and had such a big accent, but we can all pretty much understand her now so I guess it's working. She's been teaching a lot right out of the book and it gets really boring, but she's finally started doing activities like writing ads and songs with different groups. I really like that stuff, because we get to work with everyone in the class from different countries (we do try to speak Spanish all the time, but everyone there speaks English better no matter where they're from).

Since today is Blog Action Day 2008 and this year's theme is poverty, we thought it would be a good time to remind readers about how Missouri S&T students and researchers are doing their part to improve living conditions around the globe. From students traveling abroad to build latrines, design sewer systems and rebuild hurricane-stricken areas to researchers developing alternative energy sources to alumni developing innovative and inexpensive ways to thresh grain in impoverished areas, Missouri S&T's people are helping to make the world a better place.

Somehow over the past couple of weeks, we Visions bloggers got so busy that we missed an important milestone in this blog's short, sweet life. Visions turned one year old on Feb. 9, 2007. (Visions was an online "zine" back in the day, but on Feb. 9, 2006, it morphed into a blog.)

We apparently got all caught up in talking about architecture that we didn't even notice. Perhaps we should pause to reflect back on how it all started before we get too far into our terrible twos. For those who missed it the first time around, here is the very first Visions entry, posted by Lance Feyh, who has become one of our most prolific bloggers.

A see-thru look at UMR research stuff

The authors and producers of visions are from the UMR communications department, which promotes Missouri’s premier technological university by producing marketing materials -- various publications, news releases, websites, videos, development efforts and whatnot. Hey, we don’t just sit around blogging all day. Anyway, we’d like to take a minute to talk about ourselves -- the vast majority of posts here will be about real techie science stuff and big shot researchers, we promise.

Representatives from our shop recently attended a regional conference for the advancement of higher education in St. Louis, where, among other things, we learned that drinking beer may be good for you. Really. In addition to a bunch of free beers for our health and general well-being, we also got a lot of awards at the conference for our marketing efforts in the past year. UMR video productions manager Tom Shipley -- of “One Toke over the Line" fame -- even took home a grand gold award, which is way better than a gold award, for his “Paradise Found" DVD about student research in biological sciences.

Maybe the most important thing we brought home from the conference was confirmation that modern PR shouldn’t be too phoney, that message control is a myth, that the spirit of Holden Caulfield is alive and well, and that blogs are all the rage.

We hope you've enjoyed the first year or so as much as we have. And we hope you'll join us in celebrating our first year in the blogosphere.

Happy Birthday, us!

Visions gets a mention in the latest issue of University Business magazine. UB columnist Karine Joly (who also blogs at CollegeWebEditor.com) writes in her latest column, PR on the Web 101, that blogs like this one can be important components of a university's public relations strategy.

Joly also quotes Angie Weidinger, a TV reporter at KOLR-10 in Springfield, Mo., who refers to Visions as a source for information. "I generally check several universities' websites and blogs if they have them," Weidinger says. "UMR's research blog is very helpful because it often has stories on it that highlight some of the students' or professors' unusual research projects. It's a great place to go for story ideas."

"Media reporters," Joly writes, "not only visit institutional websites, but they also read the available blogs or RSS feeds."

For those of you interested in the latest developments on UMR's name change discussion, we offer you the name change conversations blog. It's a blog designed to offer the big UMR community -- not just students, faculty, staff and alumni, but the wide-open frontier of blogworld -- a chance to discuss the issues surrounding the name change. It's also the source for all the latest information about the name change discussion. So drop by, add it to your RSS feed, and become part of the conversation.

Mindy, Mark and Kevin wowed 'em (or maybe flipped 'em is the better phrase) with their presentation at the CASE District VI Conference on Monday. Today, we're all on the road again, heading back to Rolla. We return with a slew of awards in hand, renewed energy, and a renewed sense that we're on the right track with this blogging thing and some of our other social networking endeavors (such as online video). We welcome our new readers and new acquaintances from CASE and hope you'll enter this grand, interconnected conversation with us. We hate talking to ourselves. (Most of the time.)

On Monday, Visions' very own Mindy Limback hits the lecture circuit, along with two of her compadres from UMR's electronic marketing communications staff (techno-whiz Mark Remer and our resident usability expert, Kevin Tharp). The three will talk about this blog -- and make a case for other colleges and universities to follow our example -- at the District VI meeting of CASE (the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education) in Kansas City, Mo. Many lucrative speaking opportunities will no doubt follow.

(Cartoon courtesy of gapingvoid, under these terms.)

A better way to keep track of our books, CDs, DVDs and video games, that is.

GuruLib.com is the brainchild of Rana Basheer, a UMR graduate (2003 MS in computer engineering) who recently returned to get his Ph.D. and conduct research in wireless networking. This website allows users to organize their personal libraries by retrieving information about their books, CDs, DVDs, video games or software from some 530 public and university libraries around the world as well as six Amazon.com servers. All you have to do is type in the name of your book, CD, DVD, etc. -- or use a UPC scanner if you have one handy -- and voila!, the Internet fetches all the info you need to know about it, including ISBN, used and new pricing information, author/performer, copyright information, etc. I spent the icy weekend cataloging my music and book libraries for insurance purposes. GuruLib has now become my latest online obsession.

Read more about how GuruLib.com works on our research news site.