Santa Standards Gives Parents Safe Outlets for Santa Online
SantaStandards.com has launched today in advance of the 2011 holiday season to give parents a guide for providing a safe experience for children with Santa Claus online. The site links and ranks Santa websites against established child safety standards and grades their performance. The purpose of Santa Standards.com is to advocate child safety practices on Santa venues online and to promote the education of the historical Santa with this generation’s children.
All sites are judged by five separate criteria. First is Child Safety. The Children Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, is a minimal standard for Santa websites. Those standards ensure parental consent in acquiring and using child information such as email. SantaStandards.com does not believe any Santa website needs to require, use or maintain ANY child’s personal information when seek Santa online. Wishlists, questions for Santa or other features can easily be designed in such a way that email information need not be disclosed. The highest rated sites at SantaStandards.com comply with that requirement.
Internet crimes against children is the fastest growing method of child exploitation and victimization today. SantaStandards.com’s mission is to ensure that NO Santa venue is used in this fashion.
Some Santa sites have issues with advertising images that are not family friendly. These are generally ads of a contextual variety that use information culled from the site content or information already stored in a computer browser to serve up ads that are seen. Many Santa websites using these ad revenue programs do not filter them for family friendly viewing so that a child could see an ad for a dating site or even a risque image for sexual enhancement products. SantaStandards.com condemns any site unable to keep family friendly control over their site pages.
A post privacy policy on any website is now a common practice in the Internet industry and many Santa websites do not have them. Information is the currency of the Internet and even passively collected information can be profitable for a website that gathers it. Every site needs to disclose all methods of information gathering and what that information is used for. That is the purpose of a privacy policy. Every Santa site should have one.
Some Santa-related venues are charging for access to Santa Claus. This is also against standards set forth by SantaStandards.com. Every child should have free and unfettered access to Santa Claus.
And finally, the historical character of St. Nicholas and even the charming basis of the modern Santa has taken a beating in Hollywood productions, music, and on the Internet and an effort must be made to restore the honor, dignity and respect of Santa Claus. SantaStandards.com works to ensure that continual education and restoration of the character of Santa Claus as a role model is promoted through the sites reviewed and catalogued at SantaStandards.com.
Shauna Burns Releases “A Winter Gathering” CD
One of the most dynamic and critically acclaimed multi-talents on today’s indie music scene, singer songwriter Shauna Burns continues on a spiritually driven musical adventure that blossomed on her breakthrough 2008 recording The Moon and The Fire Circle and continued on 2009’s Anamnesis EP.
Inviting longtime fans and newcomers alike to celebrate the holiday season, Burns describes her latest musical venture, the Celtic flavored A Winter Gathering, as a new journey for her—a collection of newfangled carols and original songs performed by her with her husband, drummer James Clark (who also co-produces) and guest performers Caroline Kemper (Celtic harp), Rick Kemper (Uilleann pipes & pennywhistle), Lindsey Springer (cello), Ryan Whyte Maloney (guitar, backing vocals) and a five piece vocal choir.
Bringing unique new elements and sounds to her trademark style, Burns offers new twists to classic songs like “Carol of the Bells,” “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” and “Silent Night” and includes three short original “breath point” pieces she calls “Songscapes.” She includes “White Christmas” as a tribute to her mother Joyce (who always played and sang it at holiday times when Burns was growing up) and also a compelling rendition of Clark’s favorite song “What A Wonderful World.”
The singer describes the concept this way: “Winter Star,” the first “songscape,” is the star in the East that the shepherds see in “The First Noel”; Burns sings Gaelic words that speak about this bright new presence. The star travels through the other songs starting with “Carol of the Bells,” descends to earth in “White Christmas” through fire and “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” through desert. “Luma,” the second songscape, is loosely based on “Ave Maria” and represents the “light” breath. Silent Night” holds the grounding axis of the album with its everlasting melody and frequency. “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” holds the place of the strong anchor.
“The Gathering,” the third songscape, “gathers” the songs, family and friends near and leads the listener into “What a Wonderful World,” the resolution. Speaking whimsically, Burns considers the instrumental versions of “Carol of the Bells” and “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” as the end as “little cherries on top.”
The Las Vegas based singer’s blend of ethereal vocals and sweeping piano and percussion driven atmospheres launched her early singles “Pink Girl” and “Petunia” to major success in the Triple AAA radio format. “Pink Girl” was also chosen as the #1 indie single from the MAACP Radio show. Burns’ debut album Every Thought, which Smother.net declared “a newfangled fusion that will ignite a spark that will be hard to replicate,” was also selected as one of the Top CDs of 2005 by Collected Sounds, a popular taste making website celebrating independent musicians. It was chosen for “Best of the Batch” from the Music Industry News Network and featured on TowerPod.com, Indie-Music.com, Billboard, VH1, Artist Direct, AOL Music and Fox TV, among other outlets.
The Moon and the Fire Circle, a richly thematic and ultimately healing work that offered an emotional bridge between darkness and light, met with similar success. Its first single “Around You” reached #7 on the FMQB AC Chart, was one of WCH Radio’s “Top Songs for 2008” and hit #1 on “Song Vault Radio.” The collection was selected “Best of 2008” by Collected Sounds and The Promise Live. Radio Crystal Blue also chose Burns as one of the “Top Recording Artists of the Year 2008.” Conceived as an extension of the music on The Moon and the Fire Circle, Burns’ follow-up five track EP Anamnesis included songs that relate in some way to each of the five senses (including “Smell”).
Over the past few years, Burns has enchanted audiences at clubs and Borders Stores across the U.S. and in the U.K. (where she toured early in 2007) with songs from her debut and its follow-up five song EP Desert Tune, which featured songs that overflowed from the first album’s sessions. Her first tour in support of her debut was 40 dates and she embarked on a subsequent jaunt of 20 dates from coast to coast during the summer and fall of 2007. The success of The Moon and the Fire Circle—and its vibe of folk rock with Celtic influences–opened up exciting new opportunities on the festival circuit. She has performed at Renaissance Fairs in Utah and Texas; the Phoenix Faerie Festival; Green Girl Music and Arts Festival in Las Vegas; Celtic Festival in Texas; and Medieval Mayhem in Show Low, Arizona.
Shauna Burns on the web:
Official Artist Website: http://www.shaunaburns.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/shaunaburnsmusic
Twitter: http://twitter.com/shaunaburns
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/shaunaburns
For more information on Shauna Burns, contact:
Chip Schutzman – Miles High Productions:
chip@mileshighproductions.com
323-806-0400.
Sojourn Music Releases Holiday Inspired Songs “A Child Is Born” Set for Release November 22nd
Christmas at Sojourn has always been a unique thing. From the first year in the life of the church, Sojourn have been fascinated by the more gritty side of the Christmas story. The church fathers chose the darkest time of the year to celebrate the dawning of the Light of Lights in the birth of Christ, the entrance of hope into darkness.
The Christmas story itself is one of contrasts – God as a baby. A king in a manger. His birth was welcomed not by crowds and royalty, but by outcasts and foreigners. Because the Christmas story is ultimately a story of hope for the hopeless, healing for the broken, and light in the darkness.
Sojourn Church has sought for many years to capture that emotion in their Christmas music. There’s a place for joy, a necessary and central place for celebration, but that joy and celebration has its most weight when seen in the context of the suffering and longing from which it emerges. So Christmas music at Sojourn has always had a dark edge, a sense of tension and angst, which points us to the darkness of our own hearts that longs for the light of Christ.
This new CD recording, titled “A Child Is Born,” is birthed almost directly out of Sojourn Church’s Christmas worship services. The members of Sojourn recorded this new list of tracks at home, so to speak, at the 930 Arts Center (our Midtown campus) and at Eddy Morris’s, Sojourn’s Production Director and at Ear Candy studios, where Sojourn also recorded the albums, “Before the Throne” and “These Things I Remember.” Sojourn’s own pastor, Mike Cosper, states, “It’s an indie rock record, recorded the indie rock way, piecing together what we could to give fans and music lovers this homemade gift. It’s not perfect, but most home-made things aren’t.”
Sojourn Church also reached out to some friends and borrowed their songs for the making of “A Child Is Born,” including Bifrost Arts’ “Joy Joy,” a song based on a very old melody that perfectly captures that tense, advent joy. They also recorded Bill Mallonee’s “Knocking at Your Door”, a song we sing every Advent season whose gritty and earthy words bring the season home. In addition is Sandra McCracken’s “This is the Christ” a text McCracken reworked from Martin Luther, and was an instant favorite for Sojourn during last year’s holiday sermons.
In addition, Sojourn Church has a number of originals and traditional songs, including a punk-rock inspired “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” the grittiest version of “Go Tell it On the Mountain,” anyone will ever hear and ambient pop versions of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” and “Silent Night,” a John Newton text reworked by Brooks Ritter (“Oh Glorious Hour”) and an ancient anonymous text reworked by Jamie Barnes (“A Voice is Sounding”).
“A Child Is Born” is now available on Sojourn Music’s Bandcamp page and also available on Itunes and CD Baby.
For more information on Sojourn Church, please contact Chip Schutzman at Miles High Productions: chip@mileshighproductions.com or 323-806-0400.
