Category Archives: Weblogs

Media General Not Getting It

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One of my favorite blogs over the last couple of years has been bookofjoe.com.  It’s a compendium of interesting items, not the least of which are articles that the blogs owner/author has read in the New York Times or other newspapers and has reproduced on his site with full links and attributions to the source.  The fact that he doesn’t excerpt but instead provides the article in full has caused some consternation with some of the ink-stained wretches lawyers.

Case in point is the Charlottesville Daily Progress‘s (Joe lives in Charlottesville, VA) lawyer Andrew Carington.  He sent a lengthly cease and desist letter to Joe who promptly posted it on his blog for all to see.  Joe points out that he’s pretty sure that the authors of the articles probably wouldn’t agree with the lawyer’s move since getting a placement on his site vastly expands their audience.  I’d have to agree, and I’d go so far as to say that Media General is making a business mistake by going after him (I’m not going to argue the legality of Joe’s practice since I’m no copyright expert).

Here’s my thinking.  The Daily Progress is a local paper owned by the same company that owns my hometown paper The Winston-Salem Journal.  I’d say it’s safe to assume that both newspapers get the majority of their traffic from folks within their region. On the other hand Joe gets a lot of his traffic from all over the internet tubes so by getting a link from his site the newspaper is getting exposure to a much broader audience than they do on their own.  And guess what?  We’re talking major traffic.

BookofjoevsdailyprogressI went to Compete.com and ran a quick comparison between bookofjoe.com and dailyprogress.com. If you look at the screenshot on the left (click on it to see it at full size) you’ll see that while the Daily Progress does have a bit more traffic than Joe it ain’t by much (63,341 visitors vs. 55,262) and you’ll also see that Joe’s traffic is trending up much more quickly than the Daily Progress.  You’d think they’d love the opportunity to get their name and a link to their site out there to such a growing audience.  Heck, Joe’s offering them free syndication.

But I’m sure the honchos at Media General are thinking that Joe’s getting rich off their work…oh wait, he doesn’t take advertising.  So maybe he’s not getting rich off of their work, so maybe it’s the principle of the thing. But I’m a cynic so I’m thinking they’re just ticked because one guy writing in his bathrobe in his condo is pulling almost as much traffic as their newspaper with dozens of employees and they think they can push him around.  Whatever their motivation it’s a dumb move.

Eelymosynary?

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Ed Cone channeled George Will in the comments on one of his own blog posts.  The post yesterday was about John Edwards withdrawing from the Democratic presidential campaign and it attracted Ed’s usual crowd of commentors, a few of whom began questioning Edwards’ championing of the poor (i.e. he’s a rich hypocrite) and others who defended him.  Anyway, here’s an excerpt from Ed’s comment that had me running to my dictionary (okay, looking it up on Dictionary.com):

Poverty itself demands structural approaches, beyond any eelymosynary remedies applied to individuals or small groups. (Emphasis mine)

I don’t know what John Edwards gives to charity. I don’t think he
has to give most of his money away, certainly at this point in his life
and his children’s lives, to be considered charitable or to show
genuine concern.

But his message as a politician is more about addressing poverty and
its structural causes than proclaiming himself the charity champion.

I tried looking up eelymosynary but I think Ed misspelled it because Dictionary.com didn’t find it but did suggest eleemosynary, an adjective which is defined as "of or pertaining to alms, charity, or charitable donations; charitable."  I can’t hold this one against Ed though since I can’t pronounce the word, much less spell it.

Anyone who’s read George Will more than once will recognize the phenomenon of having to keep a dictionary handy in order to wade through the article/editorial.  I always felt this was a weakness of his since the point in his line of work (columnist) is to effectively argue an issue, not show off his vocabulary.  If you require your readers to consult a dictionary you aren’t really communicating are you?  In other words whenever I read the guy I feel like writing him and telling him "We all know you’re that kid who was always the smartest in the class, or at least sounded like the smartest kid in the class, so quit showing off and tell us what you think in terms that more than 2% of the population understands."

Anyway, Ed rarely whips out the Willian phrasing so he’s actually a very effective communicator.  This was a classic though.

Should I Now Be Considered a ‘Professional’ Writer?

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A while back I signed up to be included in Pluck’s Blogburst network and then forgot all about it.  Well it ends up that Reuters ran some of my posts that they found on Blogburst.  Now even though I don’t get one red cent for this I’m wondering if this makes me a "professional" writer or just another kind of "letter to the editor" writer.

BTW, here’s the stories on Reuters with the number of readers Blogburst says each one had:

It Might Be 39 Cents, Give or Take Three Dollars (90)
Upgraded Time Warner (4)
I’ve Been Living in a Cave; Check Out Nickel Creek (2)
And You Thought the Traffic Rap Was Rough (1)
Debbie’s Blog (1)
US State Departments Official Blog (1)
Was Easley’s Plea More Effective Than Praying? (1)

Spelunking with Lenslinger

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Greensboro-based blogger Lenslinger, he that is a photojournalist for Fox 8, or as he calls it el Ocho, was snapping some pics of co-workers from his station when he lost control of his camera and it plunged into the depths of a Greensboro storm cavern.  One of his co-workers, a fellow photog, shot some video of ‘Slinger diving for his lost treasure which you can view below.  Amazingly the ‘Slinger’s camera still works.

Avocado Green Oven and The Good Fork

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I got a great comment on yesterday’s post about North Carolina’s water conservation measures over the last couple of months.  The commenter, Laura Giovanelli, points out why Winston-Salem residents may not be slackers even though our water conservation measures didn’t match up to Greensboro’s.  In a nutshell we have more water available to us thanks to having a better watershed and thanks to some prudent governmental decisions in the past.  Definitely read the whole comment to get the full measure of the information.

As a result of her comment I checked out Laura’s blog Avocado Green Oven and I’m wondering why I didn’t visit it before, and if I did why I didn’t get it into my feed reader.  It’s great, especially if you’re looking for some good recipes and it’s now a part of my daily feeds (bad pun alert).

While reading Laura’s blog I discovered that she recently launched a personal chef business called The Good Fork.  Considering the Christmas holiday’s are fast approaching and time is getting crunchier by the day, I’d think that a gift of a personal chef’s service would be quite nice.  Think about it: home cooked meals that you simply have to slip in the oven when you get home.  No muss, no fuss.

The past couple of weeks Celeste and I have been experimenting with DreamDinners.  Well, I should say that Celeste has been experimenting since my involvement hasn’t extended past heating the food.  From what Celeste told me the way it works is you show up at the store, pick your menus and then package all the food items you need for your meals.  Then you package them (usually in plastic baggies) and you’re provided with labels that contain the instructions for preparation.  After that you bring them home and store them in the freezer or fridge until you’re ready to prepare them.

We’ve been happy with the meals but it still takes Celeste quite a bit of time to do the preparation at the store and you definitely spend more than you would if you bought everything at the grocery store.  The upside is that all the items are laid out for you and you don’t have to create the menu yourself.  Like I said, we’ve been happy with the meals so far but I don’t know how often we’ll use the service since I’m not sure the convenience gain is large enough that we (Celeste) will be continually motivated to return.

After checking out Laura’s site I can see a greater convenience gain, and since she prefers fine foods, a taste gain as well.  Of course that comes at greater expense than something like DreamDinners, but once you have your consultation with Laura and let her know what you want your job is pretty much just turning on the oven and eating.  Like I said before, it’s probably a great gift idea for anyone with a jam-packed life who doesn’t want to face another take-out or microwave meal but doesn’t have the energy at the end of the day to cook.

Blurkey Day 2007

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As we do almost every year Celeste, the kids and I spent Thanksgiving with my in-laws just outside Charleston, SC in Isle of Palms.  Various in-laws own condos down there so they stay in theirs and those of us who don’t own our own condos rent some others.  Every year we end up with 40-50 people there.

On Turkey Day we reserve the conference room on the first floor of one of the condo buildings.  It has a kitchen attached to it and at about 8:30 in the morning Celeste’s Uncle Johnny fires up the stove and starts fixing pancakes and bacon.  That’s also the time that two exterminated turkeys are shoved in the oven to begin cooking so that we can kick off the big meal at mid-afternoon.  After the pancakes are wolfed down all of us retire to our respective condos to fix the side dish we’ve been assigned.  The past couple of years Celeste and I have been assigned the sweet potatoes while her brother and sister-in-law have been tasked with the macaroni and cheese using their Grandmother’s heart-clogging recipe that includes prodigious amounts of both American and Velveeta cheeses.  Of course others bring the stuffing, some others bring a corn casserole and there’s the ever-present can-shaped cranberry sauce.

I mention all of this only because I want to fit in with my fellow Piedmont Triad bloggers who shared their Turkey Day culinary escapades. Esbee, recovering from a bout of pneumonia, convinced her husband to grill out on Thanksgiving.  Ed Cone writes about his contribution of wine to the fried turkey dinner his family enjoyed.  He’s questioned about his choice of wines in the comments and rightly ponders if there’s really a proper wine to pair with fried turkey.  Personally, I wonder how so many people actually know what a Meursault-Genevrières and a Margaux actually are.  Of course despite taking a couple of wine tasting classes at Salem College I still base my wine purchase decisions on whether I think the labels are cool and by utilizing my fine grasp of economic theory which states that any wine under $5 a bottle is probably gross and any over $10 is likely overpriced.  And then there’s swine-o-phile Fec who’s ideal woman would have a head made of ham.  As a group I think we had a splendid Blurkey Day.

Our kids were so busy traipsing around the beach and playing the Wii in one of Celeste’s cousin’s condo that I don’t think they gained a pound, but we adults certainly packed a few unneeded pounds on our waistlines.  Time for the guilt-trip to the Y.

If You’re in Junior High You’ll Love My Blog

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Junior_high
This will not surprise my wife.  According to the Readability Index my blog is readable for anyone with a Junior High level education.  Thankfully the readers of my business blog are getting Genius Level stuff, or does that mean that I’m talking over their heads?  Out of curiosity I looked at some of the other blogs that I follow and here are the results:

Hat tip to Lex Alexander, a fellow Junior High level blogger, who pointed me to the index.

Wait, how do the websites for some of our Presidential candidates fare?

The Democrats, in their current place in the polls (11/5/07), followed by the % of votes they would get:

The Republicans, in their current place in the polls (11/5/07), followed by the % of votes they would get:

Obviously if you’re a Democrat you want to speak to your base as if they’re a bunch of fourth graders.  Republicans seem not to be put off by candidates using words with multiple syllables, but given Thompson’s late entry in the race and subsequent rocketing up the charts we might see that members of both political bases need to be fed their pablum in monosyllabic addresses.  In case you haven’t guessed this last paragraph is my attempt to move this blog up to the relatively austere heights of high school discourse.  What-e-v-e-r.

Not Converging

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The annual ConvergeSouth to-do is kicking off tomorrow in Greensboro and once again I won’t be able to make it.  My problem is that they continually schedule these things when I have other work-related things I can’t get out of which leads me to ask, "Have they no consideration?"  Do they continually have to schedule this thing when it’s convenient for them and not for me?  Sheesh.

Anyway, I wish I could be there but I’ll be helping run the 2007 Competitive Intelligence European Summit in Germany so I won’t be able to do the Converge thing.  (Yeah, I know it sounds cool running a show in Germany, but when you consider that I don’t speak a lick of German, that I’ll be confined to a conference hall for seven days, AND I’ll miss my daughter’s birthday it gets considerably less cool sounding).  I’m sure ConvergeSouth will be great and I’m fairly certain I’ll get over my disappointment by this time next year at which point I’ll probably be disappointed again.  So if you’re anywhere near NC A&T tomorrow you should definitely check it out.  They want people to pre-register so they can feed them, but if you’re willing to not eat I’m sure they’ll let you in.  And tell ’em I said "hi."