This is a rather important post, so if you are a regular at my blog then please take a second and read this.

I have added a Chat Room again this season. It is a little different than last season and should be easier to use. There are two options to chat in the chat room and the link is above and in the navigation at the top of the blog.

1) enter a username and click chat (ignore the password and anyone can use this name once you exit)
2) click the register link on the chat window and register your name (only you can use it). Now to chat you need to enter you name and password and then click chat.
**Once you click chat the room will open in a new browser window**

I will be in the chat any night the show is on. Feel free to pass the link along to all your friends and use the room whenever you want. There isn’t an American Idol Chat Room anywhere that I can find. This may be the first one other than forums, so lets spread the word and make this chat huge.

I am putting out this challenge – Lets make this chat so big that I have to upgrade my hosting plan.

The poll is back up on the sidebar. I will change the poll weekly and eventually will post all archived polls somewhere. So check back every week for the new poll and leave your vote.

There is a lot of talk about the downloading of American Idol Episodes. I have seen a letter from the lawyers of American Idol and they are serious about the piracy of their show. They fear that unauthorized blogs are hurting the image of the show. I disagree completely. I think the internet (blogs, forums) have helped to make the show what it is. I have always said that the contestants of AI should be allowed to blog their experience on the internet. The ability to communicate with the people that will be buying his or her records is vital. But AI is to scared that show secrets will get out and instead ban any forms of posting on the net. Rumor is the contestants are able to read forum and blog postings but are unable to respond. With that said I may be forced to take down the episodes page. I urge you to download the episodes as soon as they are posted as the page may go down without any notice.

I am closing all previous entries to comments and trackbacks with the exception of this one and the two previous to it. Spammers have forced me to do this, plus I get tired of moving comments to the correct posts. There is no easy way to do it in Movable Type.

Thats it for tonight. Thanks a lot to all my old friends that have returned and to the new friends that we all will be making here this season. Last week alone this blog had 5,608 visitors and 17,434 pageviews. Thanks alot. We are on our way to a record breaking season.