Archives by Date: August 2005
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August 29, 2005
Good Luck to the Big Easy
In between packing for my departure to Florence on Tuesday, I've been glued to the television watching the preparations for Hurricane Katrina.
While I wish everyone in the area the best, I wonder what has happened to the new students at Tulane preparing to move in. The storm hasn't made official landfall and Tulane's web servers are apparently already down.
I'm also interested in how New Orleans's local news media (specifically television) is getting by.
· New Orleans braces for monster hurricane [CNN]
· Hurricane Katrina targets New Orleans (good links) [Lost Remote]
· WWL evacuating to Louisiana State University [Lost Remote]
Posted in on August 29, 2005, 01:54 AM | Comments (1) | Permalink
August 21, 2005
New York Times Profiles Today's Rebellious Youth
In today's New York Times Styles section, the rebellious youth of 2005 are profiled:
"We hang out late because there's less people around, so we can do what we want," said Devin McKenna, 17, a high school senior, who was eating cake frosting from a can. He threw the frosting high into the black night sky, letting it splatter white onto the pavement.
"See? You think I could do that in the daytime?" he said. "I'd probably hit a car or a person, and then someone would throw a fit, and we'd be in trouble again."
Uhhhh...
· The Endless Night: Hanging Out in Cars With Boys, and Girls [New York Times]
Posted in on August 21, 2005, 02:00 PM | Permalink
WordPress.com Announced (And a Similar System)
Looks like I missed a great presentation. While I am in San Francisco, unfortunately I wasn't able to make it to the Blog Business Summit and Matt's unveiling (kind of) of WordPress.com.
While details are still sketchy, it seems that it will be a hosted service based off of the Wordpress Multi-User version -- and it will be free! It involves the new version of WordPress (1.6), which among other things, apparently includes a new WYSIWYG editor.
While WordPress.com is currently invite-only (and invites will probably be hard to come by), you can see a similar service at PRBlogs.org. It, too, is based on WordPress Multi-User version "1.6-ALPHA-2-still-dont-use". I played with it, and it looks pretty sweet. Check out PRBlogs.org to see how the service may work if you can't get into WordPress.com.
It could be fun to watch how (apparently free) WordPress.com pairs up against TypePad -- Matt's presentation even got some mainstream press coverage.
· Presentation Feedback [matt.wordpress.com]
· WordPress commercial arm to compete against TypePad [Blog Herald]
Posted in on August 21, 2005, 12:30 AM | Comments (2) | Permalink
August 20, 2005
More Thoughts on San Francisco
"The coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco." -- Mark Twain
Despite San Francisco's suprising chill, I continue to have a good time exploring the west coast. Instead of stopping by the Blog Business Summit, today I played tourist and took a bunch of neat pictures.
In more useful news, WorkHappy.net, self-described "killer resources for entrepreneurs," is an excellent read for all entrepreneurs and wanna-be entrepreneurs.
Posted in on August 20, 2005, 03:05 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
August 18, 2005
Observations: the San Francisco Bay Area
Posted in on August 18, 2005, 06:43 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink
August 11, 2005
ABC's Peter Jennings Tribute
I just finished watching the second half of the 2 hour, commercial-free Peter Jennings: Reporter ABC aired tonight. It was incredible. Even more surreal was hearing some of the people I worked with this past Spring talk about Peter and all he meant to them.
At the end, TV-3 (the World News Tonight/Main Studio) had its lights dimmed. A spotlight was on the anchor chair. A trumpet played the World News Tonight theme song as the camera zoomed in to the empty chair. Trying to describe this using words is such a futile attempt at communication, but it was worth a try. I hope they put parts of what aired tonight online.
I can't imagine how much work it's taken ABC News to put together a 2 hour special in just three days. I only wish I could have been one of the people that helped.
Previously: Rest in Peace, Peter Jennings
· Peter Jennings [ABC News]
· Remembering Peter: "The Most Beautiful Tribute I Have Ever Seen" [TV Newser]
Posted in on August 11, 2005, 01:04 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
August 08, 2005
Cry Me a River
This message arrived to my delight yesterday. Can't say I'm very upset.
I signed up for Columbia House years and years ago and despite my best efforts, I could never get off their mailing list.
I'm hardly the only one. Apparently, I had to send them a "send a certified, return-receipt-requested letter."
· Consumer Complaints about Columbia House [Consumeraffairs.com]
· Columbiahouse.com
Posted in on August 08, 2005, 07:24 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink
Page Views versus Hits and CNN
One of my biggest pet peeves is confusion regarding hits versus page views. A hit is recorded each time a file is accessed on the web server, whether is be a HTML document, a graphic, etc. Therefore, a page with five graphics will register at least six hits.
A page view is just that -- a page view. Hits are a relatively useless metric. It's page views or unique visits that you should be interested in (not that those metrics don't have their own problems, but that's another story).
I was watching today's premiere of The Situation Room on CNN, and while I'm thrilled to report that Inside the Blogs has been reworked and finally looks decent, the "internet reporters" told Wolf Blitzer that they'll soon have a segment showing how many hits the various blogs have in an effort to tell how many people read them.
D'oh!
· The Situation Room [CNN]
· A Look Inside 'The Situation Room' [Fishbowl DC]
Posted in on August 08, 2005, 05:00 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink
Rest in Peace, Peter Jennings
While I was interning with ABC News this past spring, I had the privilege of watching Peter Jennings anchor World News Tonight from the glass overlooking the studio on the fourth floor.
ABC News President David Weston released a statement to ABC employees:
For four decades, Peter has been our colleague, our friend, and our leader in so many ways. None of us will be the same without him.
As you all know, Peter learned only this spring that the health problem he'd been struggling with was lung cancer. With Kayce, he moved straight into an aggressive chemotherapy treatment. He knew that it was an uphill struggle. But he faced it with realism, courage, and a firm hope that he would be one of the fortunate ones. In the end, he was not.
We will have many opportunities in the coming hours and days to remember Peter for all that he meant to us all. It cannot be overstated or captured in words alone. But for the moment, the finest tribute we can give is to continue to do the work he loved so much and inspired us to do.
I wish I watched more than once.
· Peter Jennings Dies at 67 [ABC News]
· Peter Jennings dies of lung cancer [CNN]
· Peter Jennings - Biography [ABC]
Posted in on August 08, 2005, 12:14 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
August 05, 2005
"Interlinking Various Things on a Webpage of Sorts..."
Some great clips over at DocumentaryBlog.com of the documentary-in-progress on blogs. They describe their film as something to explore "the historical background of blogging."
I just watched both short clips and loved them. There's a man on the street segment where they ask people what blogging is. One person's response:
"Um, something to do with connecting news stories I think and interlinking various things on a webpage of sorts...and then adding content...and writing prefatory statements in regard to those stories."
There's also a great quote from Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) where he describes being a "blog star" as like "being a star professional bowler."
Excellent!
Posted in on August 05, 2005, 07:11 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink
August 04, 2005
Why Can't Starbucks Have Normal Drink Sizes?
For some reason, the Starbucks I visited yesterday (to purchase a delicious Green Tea Lemonade!) was packed with lots of tourists. As I was waiting for my drink, I watched a grandmother and granddaughter trying to remember what they ordered. Was it Tall? Venti? Mocha? Frappuccino? They had no idea, and were awfully confused.
Starbucks gets a lot of attention for wanting to be the "third place" - home and work are the first two "places" - for its customers. It has happy employees (a 82% job satisfaction rate, compared to the usual 50%!)...
But why can't they just call tall, venti, and grade small, medium, and large?
EDIT:
As this guy says:
Tall, grande, venti? "All it means," says Mark Pendergrast, author of "Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How it Transformed Our World," "is small, too much, or way too much. I refuse to speak Italian to order a size." He's not surprised, though, that so many of us do respond (25 million each week, generating $268 million in profits in 2003). "If you feel a bit humbled," he says, "when you approach the great Wizard of Oz Coffee Maker -- 'I'm so scared, can I get through this ordering process correctly?' -- that can be appealing. It's very clever marketing." [emphasis mine]
Perhaps it's clever marketing, perhaps it's the cult of the brand, but it still seems obnoxious to me.
Posted in on August 04, 2005, 09:33 AM | Comments (7) | Permalink
