Category Archives: Piedmont-Triad

Greensboro Has Wireless Envy

3 Replies

Over in Greensboro Ed Cone posted an item about Winston-Salem/Forsyth County getting ready to offer municipal wi-fi and lamenting the lack of such an effort in Greensboro.  Much discussion ensued and it’s one of the few times I can remember reading anyone write something re. technology that states Winston-Salem is ahead of Greensboro.

Ed also says that Greensboro’s downtown wireless corridor isn’t the same thing as municipal wi-fi (too limited) and I’d agree; we also have a free wi-fi corridor on Fourth Street in W-S but what they’re talking about doing is a much bigger deal.  Hopefully it works.

WinstonNet is the group behind the wi-fi effort.

**Update: Check out DarkMoon’s analysis of the deal here.

Vernon, Vernon, Vernon

3 Replies

Vernon Robinson is at it again.  His latest ad for his campaign against Brad Miller for the House seat in North Carolina’s 13th District is just flat out over the top. It’s an attack ad…kind of.  He doesn’t call Miller names, but he does say that Miller voted against a bill that would have paid for more body armor for the troops in Iraq and then lists a litany of sex-related bills that Miller voted for.  Actually he cherry picks line items out of larger spending bills, but you can’t miss the point.  Watch the video below and make sure you watch it all the way through;  I swear you will actually hear the words "probes attached to their genitalia".

You may recall that Vernon was the only Winston-Salem leader to take me up on my offer to host their blogs for free (he was a member of the City Council at the time), but the blog never really took off.  If he’d brought even 1/100th of the, uh, creativity of his ads to the blog it would be in the top 10 on Technorati.

I Like the Local Newspapers’ Blogs, but…

5 Replies

I’ve been a big fan of the local newspapers’ blogs for a while.  My hometown paper, the Winston-Salem Journal was late to the party but they’ve been launching blogs at a nice clip lately.  The Greensboro News & Record was very early to the blogging scene and they host quite a few good blogs.  On top of that the N&R has also turned some independent bloggers like Dave Hoggard into regular columnists.

But neither of those fine papers has done what the San Francisco Chronicle has done.  To wit, the Chron has turned "intrepid sexblogger/podcaster/author Violet Blue"(from the Boing Boing piece where I found this) into their newest columnnist.  Her beat, as it were, is sexuality and you can read her first column here. 

No offense to Hogg and the other local columnists, but I’m thinking that Violet Blue’s columns are gonna grab more attention than covering the status of the Ice House ever will and I’m wondering if the Piedmont Triad could boast something comparable.  Sure this is Bible-NASCAR-BBQ country, and it’s a given that Ms. Blue has much more raw material for her column in SF than we have here, but we’ve gotta be able to do something a little more risque than Fathers After 40. How about this: a column that explores the intricacies of flirting two pews over, finding alternate uses for BBQ sauce (hate to say it, but the vinegar style might prove problematic) and how to really enjoy watching a bunch of paunchy white guys drive in circles.  Hey, it’s a start.

Bookmark Plugin for Acrobat

1 Reply

A local computer programmer named John Ford from this area has created a simple plugin for Adobe Acrobat that creates a simple bookmark that opens up a PDF book to the page you were on when you last had the file open.  In other words it works like a regular bookmark in a print book.  So simple it’s amazing it wasn’t incorporated in Acrobat to begin with. (Found via BloggingPoet.com)

Good Reason’s to Attend This Year’s ConvergeSouth

2 Replies

If you weren’t already convinced that this year’s ConvergeSouth (North Carolina’s own blogfest) then here are two new reasons that popped up today:

Need I come up with more reasons?  Well there’s this: it’s free.

On another note: why don’t you sign up to eat at News & Record editor-extraordinaire John Robinson’s dinner?  I think he’d enjoy your company.

Bleepin’ Traffic

Leave a reply

I40atrushhourSee that picture to the left?  That’s a picture of I-40 at Peters Creek Parkway at what is considered rush hour in many cities.  That picture represents a huge reason why Celeste and I moved the family here.  You see, we moved from a place, Northern Virginia, that has essentially one day-long rush hour every day, to a place that has a "moseying along" half our in the morning and another in the evening.  You’d be amazed what a difference it makes in your life when you don’t have to plan around traffic.

In case you think I’m exaggerating let me just compare the traffic cameras available online in Winston-Salem via the Winston-Salem Journal’s site and in NoVa via the Washington Post’s site. By my count there are 25 traffic cameras in all of Winston-Salem, but in NoVa there’s that many between the beltway and the southern edge of the I-95 corridor alone.  I was going to count all the camera’s in Northern Virginia, but I just don’t have the time.

I swear getting out of everyday NoVa traffic has dropped my blood pressure by ten points, even though all the barbeque here has added about 15 pounds of pudge to my not-so-svelte frame.  Life is good!

Dell’s Blog is Pretty Darn Good

Leave a reply

Okay, I’ll admit that I jumped on the "Jeff Jarvis Dell Hell" bandwagon and I was fairly critical of the incentives package that Forsyth County (not to mention North Carolina) forked over to Dell to get them to build their plant here.  So I’ve watched their nascent efforts at blogging with interest and I have to say that I’m impressed.

They have multiple contributors to the blog and they are using it to deal with hot button issues  like exploding batteries and fairly mundane customer service issues like the accents of their customer service reps.  They’re also using video posts to good effect and from what I can tell they’re avoiding the trap of making it one big PR/marketing excercise.  To me the best sign that they have the right idea is that they accept both positive and negative comments, and in fact monitor them.  For instance the video post I pointed to has a comment from one user having problems loading the video and then another comment from a Dell person with a tip on how to download the video and a mention that they are trying to make the viewing process a little easier.  They even responded to comments that their original blog name, one2one, was also the name of a porn site and changed the name to Direct2Dell.

I’m liking what I’m seeing.

Bloggin’ in Winston-Salem; Blogger Needs Some of That “Carolina Neighbor Code”

Leave a reply

The Winston-Salem Journal ran a front page story on people blogging in Winston-Salem.  I was interviewed as was a woman named Lucy Cash who writes a great blog called Life in Forsyth.  It’s kind of cool to make the paper in any form, but the front page is really cool!

On a sad note, I emailed Lucy to introduce myself and she replied this morning saying that she’d reply in length later but that her father had died this morning.  So what should be an exciting day for her has unfortunately turned very somber.  Anyone who has read her blog knows that her dad has been sick, so I’m guessing she’ll get a lot of what she calls the "Carolina Neighbor Code" which will include home cooked meals and a bunch of hugs and offers of support.  That’s one of the great things about living here.

Forget PTI. Let’s Talk About Smith-Reynolds Airport

Leave a reply

There’s a lot of teeth-gnashing in these parts about the struggling Piedmont Triad International Airport  (PTI), which is losing passengers and flights to Charlotte and Raleigh airports.  Flying out of PTI has gotten bad enough that I’d rather drive the 5 hours to DC and I’m fine driving to Charlotte for flights to more distant destinations, whereas just a year ago I was ecstatic with the cost and convenience of flying out of PTI.

When I was a kid the Smith-Reynolds Airport here in Winston-Salem was still a functioning commercial airport, but now it’s used for general aviation and an air show.  Still it’s runways are large enough to handle any but the largest jets and it is very close to downtown Winston-Salem which is why I think it would be the perfect candidate for an air taxi service.  The FAA just gave the first provisional approval for a VLJ or "very light jet" and there are entrepreneurs getting ready to take receipt of the first VLJs and start their business-oriented air taxi services.  Interestingly two of these companies are based in not-too-far-away Greenville, SC.

Because the VLJs are less than half the cost of the cheapest business jets currently available they are apparently going to allow entrepreneurs to provide air taxi services that are slightly costlier (one company is estimating $1,000 for a 500 mile round trip) than flying commercial but with greater convenience.  Here’s a good article that provides an overview of the likely challenges that the air-taxis will face and how they can overcome them.

If these air taxi services do indeed come to fruition this could be a boon for Smith-Reynolds.  The terminal facilities already exist but there are no commercial airlines to compete with so it wouldn’t take a whole lot to turn the airport into the premier business travel gateway for the Triad.  Add that to the growing bio-tech sector here and I think you have two rather nice spices to add to Winston-Salem’s business development stew.