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Interesting: Google is investing dollars in geothermal research.
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Jeff Jarvis talks about how to build an ad network.
links for 2008-08-20
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Author Archives: Jon Lowder
Worse Than Not Getting Your School Supply List In Time is…
A little while back I wrote what seems to be becoming an annual feature: the "We didn’t get our school supply list in time for the tax-free weekend" post. Well, I think I discovered something even worse than not getting the list: a store that pretends to have your school’s list and uses it to shill stuff that might even be on the school’s banned list.
According to blogger Kelby Carr her local Wal-Mart provides shoppers with school supply lists that purport to be from the schools and/or teachers themselves. And in the comments to her post you’ll find just a few people with their own, similar stories.
As Kelby points out it’s one thing to provide a "suggested list" and quite another to position your school supply list as being "official" when in fact it’s not. She also makes a great point that many families that shop at Wal-Mart may not have a lot of disposable income, so if they end up buying some unnecessary items it could really hurt them.
Esbee wrote today that she finished up her school supply shopping with relatively little damage to her pocketbook, and she also points to a Letter to the Editor in the Winston-Salem Journal that asks why our public education system isn’t able to provide supplies for children despite all the money we spend on it. Although I think the letter writer was a little too snarky and the letter was written in such a way that he sounds like he’s blaming the poor for their problems (he wrote "needy" children), he has a valid point when he asks why we can spend so much money on education yet not find a way to make sure kids have paper, pencils, protractors, compasses, etc.
I can still remember the kids who showed up on the first day in clothes they were embarrassed to wear because they were old, out of style, torn up, etc. The kids’ families literally didn’t have the money for new jeans so they wore their older brothers’. Those same kids were on assisted lunches and tried to hide the fact. So you can imagine the stress their parents were under when it came time to buy supplies, and I’m sure it made this time of year that much harder on them. I’m also sure that today there are many families feeling that same kind of stress.
So let’s ask our leaders why things are the way they are, but let’s also make sure that our community’s children get what they need for school. It’s only right. Esbee also points to an article about organizations and individuals who are helping kids get what they need. Let’s all do what we can to help.
The Glamor of Coaching
That picture to the left is me trudging out to my daughter’s team’s second game last Saturday. I can’t complain too much since my buddy Mac, the head coach, usually ends up doing the lugging since most of it comes from his car. Still, can you believe we pay for this pleasure?
BTW, our girls went 1-2 in the Twin City Classic tournament. About half of our team is new and we only had four official practices before the tournament so we have a lot of learning to do. Next chance will be this coming weekend in the Furniture City Classic in High Point.
The End of Summer, If I Make It
Now that we’re at the end of summer with only three working days until it comes to a crashing end, I can tell you one thing we as a family won’t be doing: we won’t be going on a last hurrah bike ride in Virginia. Why not? Well, we tried it last year and although it was memorable I can’t say I’d be able to get the family to do it again.
Another reason is that this summer kinda-sorta ended last week. Our oldest is playing football at West Forsyth this year and practice started with a bang in early August, so he’s out of any kind of grand, end of year excursion. Also, our daughter’s soccer team, for which I’m an assistant coach, started official practices last week and we just had our first tournament this past weekend and will be playing in another this coming weekend. So this year we’ll just be trying to survive this schedule for our last week of summer:
- Tuesday
- Back to school shopping
- Doctor’s appointment at noon
- Football practice 4-6:30
- Middle school open house: 6:00-8:00
- Soccer game at WFU
- Wednesday
- Football Practice 8-10:30
- Soccer practice (goalies) 6:15-7:15
- Open house for West Forsyth 6:30-8:30
- Soccer practice for entire team 7:00-8:15
- Thursday
- Soccer practice 7:00-8:45
- No football practice in prep for season opener on Friday
- Friday
- West Forsyth football season opener 7:30-whenever
- Saturday
- Soccer tournament in High Point, Game 1 – 11:20-1:20
- Soccer tournament in High Point, Game 2 – 6:00 – 8:00
- Sunday
- Soccer tournament in High Point, Game 3 – 9:40-11:40
- Church confirmation class 12:00
- Monday
- School starts. 6:00 am wake up to get ready for middle school bus.
Yes, I realize that much of this is self inflicted. No one says our kids have to play sports or that I have to coach, but since this wild ride we call life only goes around once (unless you’re Shirley Maclaine) then I figure we might as well do it right.
I’ve been told that the high school years will flash by and the next thing I’ll know I’ll be eating pureed food through a straw remembering those fine times when I had teeth and my kids actually needed me for something. Well, with weeks like this one the pureed food may come sooner than anyone expects seeing as my eyes have grown bags large enough to pack for a two week European trip and I can’t seem to stop drooling.
Ah well.
links for 2008-08-19
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A nice breakdown of who the players are in the battle for online advertising.
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Some not-surprising yet still sobering trends in news consumption. Numbers from The Pew Research Center. Newspaper readers 1993: 58% 2008: 34%. Local TV News: 1993: 77% 2008: 52%. Nightly network news: 1993: 60% 2008: 29%
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Story re. local content. Following is quote from post:
"First, Tolles does some rough math:
'There are about 1,400 daily newspapers and 7,000 television and radio stations in the U.S., and back-of-the-envelope math shows that they each produce about three to six stories per day, or about 22,000 local stories for the entire U.S.'
If you ask me, heâs severely underestimating the number of local stories. Nevertheless, he says thereâs a âvacuumâ of local news. Which, if you look at it at a neighborhood level, you could argue heâs right."
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Synopsis of a review of a book about the building of Washington, DC. Interesting even for a DC bred boy like me.
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Bellows Falls, Vermont sounds like my kind of town based on this story. Instead of allowing the town to fade into the sunset the residents are exhibiting a boot strap entrepreneurial streak.
links for 2008-08-18
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Interesting discussion on UrbanPlanet about the direction of the Triad economy. Some think that going after the "aerotropolis" idea via the Heart of the Triad project, the FedEx hub, etc. is most promising. Others discuss the Piedmont Triad Research Park and think Winston-Salem's future in particular is closely tied to that, and others think the best bet is kind of "all of the above." Some concerns about the burgeoning interstate network as well. Good, even-handed, online discussion with no snark. I like it.
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This page has a nice graph showing mainstream media sites' linking habits. Seems there's a correlation between outbound links and inbound links. In other words if you show the link love it's returned.
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Lest we think that Google just rolls out of bed and launches a product without much thought, we see through these series of screenshots the evolution of the Gmail design before it was launched. It really is true that designing something that's simple for the user is very hard.
links for 2008-08-17
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Profile of the guy who called the economic downturn.
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Sports Illustrated has the photo finish of Michael Phelps 100m butterfly win that gave him his seventh gold medal at the 08 Olympics in Beijing. Click on the forward and back buttons to see the sequence. Found via Ed Cone's blog.
Netflix Customer Service Message
I logged into Netflix today and this is the message I found at the top of our personal home page:
Our Shipping Centers Are Mailing DVDs
Delayed DVD Shipments Are Being Sent Today (Friday)
We’re
happy to report that all of our shipping centers are resuming normal
operations (after 3 days of issues). If you should have been shipped a
disc Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, it will ship today (Friday).We
apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. To all of you whose
shipments have been delayed, we’ll be automatically applying a 15%
credit to your next billing statement. Or, if you are new to Netflix
and your first shipments have been delayed, we recognize that this is
not a good way to begin your Netflix membership and we’ll automatically
extend your free trial by a week.Again, we apologize for the delay and thank you for your understanding.
The Netflix Team
Netflix had some well publicized issues with their distribution system this week, but since we haven’t had a chance to watch any DVDs since our vacation it didn’t really affect us. Still, I like how they handled this.
links for 2008-08-15
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2Q08 local TV advertising is down 4% from a year ago. Local broadcast TV was down 6.1%, network TV was down 4.8% and syndicated TV was up 9.1%. Gotta love Oprah and Dr. Phil.
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Local, suburban papers only lost 2.4% of ad rev last quarter vs. 9% for newspapers overall.
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Ad Age's 100 leading media companies, with listings going back into the 90s.
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100 leading media companies as listed by Ad Age.
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URL shortener (thjnk TinyURL) that integrates with your Google account. Gonna test drive.
My Brain Virus
Phone rings:
Me: Hello?
Mom: Do you have some kind of brain virus?
Me: Uh, wadda you mean?
Mom: A puppy?
Me: Oh, yeah. Well, uh, you know, Celeste and the kids have been wanting a puppy for a while and this just seemed like the right time and situation, you know?
Mom: I guess. Bert read your post about the puppy and said some people just insist on erecting a cross and nailing themselves to it.
Me: Well, she seems to be a good puppy so far so I’m not feeling crucified yet. Give me a few days, though, and that may change. And you know we thought that now would be a good time because Arthur (note: our six year old black lab) will be able to kind of lead by example and so far it seems to be working. We’re hoping that’ll keep the level of trouble down.
Mom, laughing: I’m trying to picture Grandpa Arthur with the little whipper snapper. Does he like her?
Me: Well he’s accepted her, but “like” would be a little strong. She tries to play with him and if she gets a little too frisky he gives her a growl and she instantly flops on her back and submits. So I guess you could say they get along.
Mom: Well that’s good. Now, I have a question about my wireless service…
Really, so far puppy Mia has been a pleasure to have around. Here she is with Grandpa Arthur:
Befuddled 