• CoolTools: Fisher Bullet Space Pen
  This is probably a good gift idea for my oldest son who's a pen afficianado. Pens that write anywhere, anyhow (upside down even) and are easily stowable.
  (tags: coolstuff)
• Guerrilla Communication Blog: Melting Away
  Creative idea to communicate a position on climate change: "To bring more attention to the climate change in the arctic regions and the melting ice, the German World Wide Fund for Nature placed 1,000 ice sculptures in the shape of sitting humans on the steps of the German capital at noon."
  (tags: communication marketing)
• Triad Biz Journal: Student-aid increase forces UNC to shift funds
  "The Chapel Hill campus was hit with a 17 percent increase in financial aid applications this year, resulting in a 23 percent jump in the number of students who qualified for aid. By comparison, UNC saw an 8 percent increase in aid applications in the fall of 2008 and a 2 percent increase in those who qualify. The university provided $225 million in scholarships and student aid during the 2007-08 school year, the most recent year for which totals were immediately available.

  'We've never seen this kind of increase,” said Shirley Ort, UNC’s associate provost and director of the Office for Scholarships and Student Aid. “In my lifetime, I've not seen this kind of economy either.'"

  (tags: financialaid education)

• WXII12: College Officials Wary Of Loan Overhaul
  This story about the House's proposed overhaul of the student financial aid system interests me for two reasons: first, I have kids just a couple of years away from going to college and second, because one of my summer internships in college (back in the 80s) was with the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. I seem to remember that the student loan biz had issues back then too.
  (tags: government)

• More Than 1,800 Full Issues Of Life Now On Google Books | paidContent
  "There’s still no substitute for the real thing but unless you have a full collection or a penchant for flea markets, at least you can flip through virtual editions of every Life magazine between 1936 and 1972—courtesy of an expanded partnership between Time Inc. and Google"
  (tags: publishing google)
• Rexblog: That Strange Light you’re seeing is the future of magazines
  Rex Hammock has a fascinating post about something I'll call an "insta-magazine" that was published in Australia: "So, to recap: The dust storm occurred on Wednesday. Photographers — professional and amateur — headed out into the storm and, with no organizing or pre-event planning, captured “a day in the life of a dust storm.” As people with digital tools in their hands are wont to do, photographers and observers began to upload what they were seeing and experiencing and capturing to the web. With the speed and finesse of someone who has an up-close-and-personal understanding of the “community” aspects of photo sharing (trust me on that one) and who helped to innovate much of the processes of web-based “social-media” collaborative magazine publishing, Derek put together a magazine — and has given us just one more glimpse into the potential of the magazine format."
  (tags: publishing magazine photo collaboration web2.0)
• An Alternative to Swag
  I like the idea that the folks at Clinton Global Initiative came up with as an alternative for conference bag swag.
  (tags: conference charity)

• Can You Design an Internal Netflix Prize?
  "I believe that there are many problems in companies that look a lot like the problem Netflix faced — such as insurance underwriting, oil exploration, or evaluating an employee's probable success. As long as the problem has lots of structured data and clear outcome variables (and the company can successfully design a way to keep customer and proprietary data safe) it makes sense to design a competition that uses the market in ideas. Then you just have to decide how much it is worth to you to have a 10% advantage over the competition on a key issue."
  (tags: management)

Another text from the oldest in reply to my text that was a reply to his first text about Sports Illustrated’s Rick Reilly being at West Forsyth today. I told him I thought Reilly was there to tape the “Homecoming” show for ESPN:

“yeah they came to school, and mr. riley told a story about a “butt duster” who saw all the models of sports illustrated swim suit edition naked. and the principles were so mad that he said it”

Anyone want to fill me in on what a “butt duster” is?

Also, I obviously need to explain the difference between “principles” and “principals” to my son.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Just received the following text from my oldest son who’s a junior at West Forsyth: “i met rick riley today”.

Apparently ESPN is in town to tape one of their “Homecoming” shows for Chris Paul who’s a West Forsyth alum. His family still resides in Lewisville.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

The morning commute on 9/24/2009
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

• Senator Carper Says Inside Deal with PhRMA Should Be Honored
  FireDogLake has the story (h/t to Ed Cone for the link): "In a stunning moment during the Senate Finance Committee markup Sen. Tom Carper defended a secret deal that the White House, Baucus, and PhRMA had reached. The White House has long denied the deal. Carper publicly acknowledges that part of the deal was that PhRMA would run millions of dollars worth of campaign ads in support of health care reform.

  According to Carper the “golden rule” in Congress is that secret back room deals in exchange for advertising buys must be honored."

  (tags: pharma congress government politics)

• Commercial Real Estate Auction in Greensboro October 28
  From the press release: "Jason Dolph, Manager of the Chartwell Auctions Charlotte office, stated, "This may be a once in a lifetime opportunity to acquire quality cash flowing commercial real estate in the Greensboro and Charlotte markets at substantially discounted prices." Dolph adds, "Many commercial real estate investors are not finding the bargains they anticipated from bank foreclosures. This auction on October 28th in Greensboro, NC offers an array of office, warehouse, flex, and multi-family real estate with a genuine opportunity to purchase at your own price."

  The auction will be held on Wednesday, October 28, 2009, 1:00 P.M. at the Clarion Hotel Greensboro Airport, 415 Swing Rd., Greensboro, NC 27409. For a free color brochure on the October 28, 2009 Real Estate Auction with terms of sale for all properties you can call Jason Dolph with Chartwell Auctions at 704-831-8983."

  (tags: piedmonttriad commercialrealestate)

• Seth's Blog: Launching Brands in Public
  Interesting idea from Squidoo: "Squidoo has built several hundred pages, each one about a major brand. (Here are some examples). More are on the way. We'll keep going until we have thousands of important brands, each on its own page (and we'll happily add one for you if you like). Each page collects tweets, blog posts, news stories, images, videos and comments about a brand. All of these feeds are algorithmic… the good and the bad show up, all collated and easy to find.

  Of course, these comments and conversations are already going on, all over the web. What we've done is bring them together in one place. And then we've made it easy for the brand to chime in.

  If your brand wants to be in charge of developing this page, it will cost you $400 a month. And once you take the page over, the left hand column belongs to you."

  (tags: web2.0 branding socialmedia business marketing web strategy twitter advertising blogs copyright)

• August Was Definitely the Dog Days for Triad Single Home Sales
  "Single-family home sales in the Triad were down 17.2 percent in August.

  Data from the N.C. Association of Realtors shows that in August, the Triad had 1,034 sales of new and existing homes, compared to 1,249 in August 2008. It was also a 3.7 percent decline from July, when there were 1,074 sales."

  (tags: realestate piedmonttriad)

• Does the Defund ACORN Bill Also Defund the Military Industrial Complex?
  "The congressional legislation intended to defund ACORN, passed with broad bipartisan support, is written so broadly that it applies to "any organization" that has been charged with breaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws, campaign finance laws or filing fraudulent paperwork with any federal or state agency. It also applies to any of the employees, contractors or other folks affiliated with a group charged with any of those things.

  In other words, the bill could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex. Whoops."

  (tags: government governmentwatchdog legislation politics)