Reading List October 4, 2005

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  • Important Stock Tip (The Post Money Value) – A venture capitalist thinks the news of desktop applications’ demise is greatly exaggerated.
  • Web 2.0! = A Check (The Post Money Value) – The new-new thing is getting old.
  • It Just Doesn’t Matter (Patrick Eakes) – Patrick doesn’t care about major league baseball anymore (not that he hates it, he’s just indifferent), and I’m with him there.  It was great seeing the Expos turn into the Nationals and see my kids and my friends’ kids really get into it.  But this year’s Nationals were lightning in a bottle because they had to play with kids and re-treads and because Washington had baseball-starved fans in a long-neglected market.  Once the money kicks in and the Nats begin to look like the Mets or the Braves it will be harder to get excited.  From national pastime to irrelevance, what a shame.
  • Blogs and Marketing (The Lex Files) – Lex Alexander points to a report on how well some ads campaigns are doing via blogs, and thinks that it is good news for the Greensboro News & Records "Hometown Hubs" effort.
  • The Road to Greenville (A Little Urbanity) – Greenville, SC offers some great lessons in urban planning.

Bad Information + Nosey Neighbor = Trouble

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Here’s one of those stories that just freaks me out.  According to this article a man in Virginia is suing one of his neighbors and a company that provides access to a database of sex offenders for a fee.

To give you a synopsis of the story, this poor guy was never accused or convicted of a sex crime, but apparently he lived at a house that at one time had been the address of a man convicted of a sex crime.  The state of Virginia relies on the sex offenders to inform it when they change addresses (huh?) and obviously in this case the offender didn’t.  So the Florida-based company, National Alert Registry, Inc., had a classic database problem: garbage in/garbage out.

The company provides access to its database and an email alert service for a fee. A woman named Michelle Myers subscribed to the service and that’s how she came across this guy’s name.  So off she went and broadcast the information to people in the neighborhood, school officials and the homeowners association.

Of course this guy is suing the woman and the company for slander.  The woman’s attorney is using the old "free speech" and "it’s just her opinion" defense, but the man’s attorney rightly states that the courts have consistently found that slander does not constitute free speech.

Now I’m sure that this woman will argue that she was simply going on bad information, but she could have easily verified the information by looking at freely available court records.  This guy may have lived at the address of a registered sex offender, but his name wasn’t associated with it at all.  If you’re going to accuse someone of something this serious you damn well better have your facts checked.

As for the company, I’m sure they’ll argue that they are the victim of faulty state records, but again how hard would it be for them to verify a name against an address?  I have no problem with tracking registered sex offenders, but it is very important that the companies that engage in this activity get it right…or else.

Lastly, what about the state of Virginia?  What the heck are they thinking?  They rely on a convicted criminal to keep them informed of his whereabouts?  What could possibly go wrong?

The point here is that all of our lives have become an open book.  Without much effort we can find information about anyone we want, and vice versa.  For instance, I can tell you from a simple search on the InfoUSA.com
website that Ms Myers, who started this whole mess, lives on a road called Blacksmith Arch, which is
confirmed by the newspaper article, that her phone number is (757)
766-22** (I’m intentionally not using the last two digits), that the average yearly income in her neighborhood is
$61,000-$100,000 and that the average price of homes in her neighborhood is $200,000-$249,900.

For the most part I think that having information freely available and in the public is a good thing, but the trade-off is that we must be very careful in how we use that information.  As anyone who’s been on the wrong side of a rumor can tell you it is very hard to get the right version of the story out since most people only hear the first version.  It is imperative that when someone gets it wrong they pay a heavy price, which is why I hope the company and Ms. Myers get slapped silly.

Reading List October 3, 2005

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  • Geeks and the Technology Feedback Filter (The Post Money Value) – Geeks have a hard time communicating in laymen’s terms, and that’s a problem.
  • The Tower of Babel Has Fallen (Moore’s Lore) – Is the internet about to be broken up into "alternate, regional, and national authorities, replicating the
    stupidity of the old monopoly telecomm system, and preventing all but
    the elites of various nations from reaching one another?" Dana thinks so.
  • Internet War Begins…in the US? (Moore’s Lore) – A private company has established its own DNS root server for a proprietary domain name.  Apparently this is bad, and is a bad omen for the internet in general.  I’m not smart enough to know, but I trust Dana’s judgment on this one.
  • Business Blogging != Executive Blogging (The Long Tail) – If you think business blogging is all about the CEO writing missives then you’ve got it all wrong.

Greensboro News & Record’s Hometown Hub Launches, Winston-Salem Journal Being Lapped Online

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The Greensboro News & Record launched it’s newest online endeavour, the "Hometown Hub."  The first hub is for the Summerfield community (never been there, but it sounds nice) and here’s how John Robinson, the paper’s editor describes the effort:

Today, we introduce a Web site of news and information about
Summerfield, created by folks who live there. Community news editor
Betsi Robinson describes the mission of "Hometown Hubs: Summerfield" on
the front page of this section.


Hometown Hubs represents another step of turning the model of
newspaper publishing on its head. We will publish the citizen
journalism online first, and then move the most interesting content
into the newspaper.

We have done this with YourNews,
our online citizen journalism site, but Hometown Hubs is our first
effort at building a site around a real community. As Betsi notes, it
is the first of many. It continues our effort to build a virtual town
square, where you can share your news, your stories and your opinions
with others.

I like this idea for many reasons, but the most obvious is that it creates a community dialog with the newspaper.  Or put another way, it keeps the newspaper relevant to its readers, because what’s more relevant to a reader than what’s happening in her own back yard?

Another reason I like the Hometown Hub is that it seems to reinforce my perception that the News & Record has an idea of where it wants to go online.  John repeatedly communicates the newspaper’s goals for its online initiatives via his blog.  In fact in the post from which I got the above quote he also writes this:

"More online." That phrase has become as common in the newspaper as "Today’s forecast."

That’s purposeful. The Internet gives us new opportunities to reach
out to readers. Because it is limitless, we don’t have to worry about
space. Because it is interactive, we can talk with and listen to people
publicly and easily. Because it is not made of paper, we can produce
audio and video. Because it iss free, it is accessible.

Each of these characteristics helps us in our efforts to deliver
news and information, and to build more of a sense of community among
people in both the Triad and the world.

John and his folks "get it," that’s clear.  They are way ahead of most newspapers and small-city newspapers in particular.

In fact this is just another example of the N&R pulling away from my hometown paper, the Winston-Salem Journal, when it comes to the online realm.  The Journal already has a couple of "hometown" editions that it publishes in the newspaper on Thursdays.  One is the Clemmons Journal which also incorporates my town of Lewisville.  As you can see by clicking the link the Journal has a dedicated page on its site for the hometown edition, but it is merely a "re-print" of what appeared in the print edition.  Not real dynamic.

I can tell you for a fact that on Thursdays the first section of the paper I read is the Clemmons Journal.  It’s where I find out what the hot topics are at Town Hall, what’s happening in terms of development, when the new highway will (or won’t) be built.  It isn’t hard to imagine a "Hometown Hub" taking off for Clemmons, Kernersville, Ardmore and other sections of Winston-Salem and the other Western NC communities that the Journal serves.

But why should the Journal care?  They still make most of their money on the print edition: in its latest financial report the Journal’s parent company, Media General, said that the Journal had revenue of $4,078,000 in August and $3,263,000 of that came from advertising.  That’s 80% of the revenue, so it’s easy to say, "Ah well, the online stuff is nice, but it’s just a small piece."

On the other hand the same report shows that the Journal’s web traffic has  grown 32% compared to last August, and the corporation’s interactive media revenue has grown 52% over last August.  Now interactive media still only accounts for about 1.25% of Media General’s overall revenue compared to 50% for publishing, but publishing’s growth was minimal at 1.1%.  So you don’t need to be a real business heavyweight to see things trending towards an increased contribution from their online properties.

And as someone who sells advertising I can tell you that a focused community site would be an easy sell to local retailers, and retail advertising is exactly where newspapers are seeing a decline in their print editions. I wonder if the powers-that-be at the Journal have been paying attention to the recent developments in advertising;  do they realize that online advertising is where the growth is?

And one last point: the News & Record is experimenting at a time when it is cheap to do so.  They do have some start-up online competitors like Greensboro101.com, and the local version of CraigsList, but because they entered the game early they aren’t playing catch up.  They are also making their mistakes while their readership is still relatively small, which means that they will be ready to serve all those new online advertisers as the online readership grows.

The Journal?  They’re sitting on the sidelines and are ripe for a start-up to shake them up.  Things will only get harder and more expensive with time, and they’re missing a golden opportunity to really exploit their local news monopoly.  Of course they still have time, but if they wait much longer they could end up playing an expensive game of catch-up.

 

Lewisville Politicians Face the Public October 20

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The Lewisville Civic Club is hosting a Candidate’s Forum on October 20, 2005 from 7:30 – 10:00 p.m. at the Lewisville Elementary School auditorium.

Click here to see the candidate bios (PDF) and informational flyer about the event.

Lewisville is a great little town to live in and although we’ve only lived here for 16 months we are very interested in helping it stay that way. As with most communities Lewisville is facing significant changes in the coming years and the leaders we select now will have a large impact on the direction that change takes.

On Saturday Celeste and I attended a dinner hosted by the Mayor for the town’s volunteer community (members of various boards and committees) and we definitely had the sense that the town has a lot of people who have lived here most of their lives and have seen it grow from a rural, agricultural community into a bedroom community for Winston-Salem.  Now they are faced with the inevitable development of becoming a full-fledged suburb of the city.

Having grown up in the Northern Virginia area Celeste and I saw first hand what happens when areas grow in a haphazard and uncontrolled fashion.  Sprawl, traffic and a general degradation of quality of life.  That’s one of the things that prompted us to move to Lewisville and that’s why we don’t want the same thing to happen here.

But change happens and the only thing we can do is decide how change happens.  As much as some people might like to keep everything as-is, it just doesn’t work that way.  If I’m in town on the 20th I plan on attending the meeting to find out which candidates understand controlled growth and how to build a sustainable community and those are the folks I plan on voting for.

Specifically I think we need to concentrate on developing a mixed-use town square, with green space, shopping areas that can be easily accessed on foot and homes on smaller lots (cluster homes maybe).  Mixed use will broaden the towns tax base, give residents an option for shopping without having to hop in their cars, and build on the activities being held in Shallowford Square.

Quick aside: Events like the free Friday night movies in Shallowford Square (next one is School of Rock on October, 15), and the free theater productions put on in the square are a great family activity.  Definitely a jewel in the town’s crown…here’s a schedule of events.

Something else I’d like to see is for us to embrace the bicycling community.  We literally have dozens (maybe even hundreds) of visitors from outside the town who drive in, park their cars and then ride the bike routes on roads throughout Lewisville.  Why not capture some of that energy by hosting special events to attract them and perhaps even contribute a few dollars to Lewisville’s coffers?

Okay, I could go on and on, but I won’t.  What I will do is get more involved, starting on the 20th.

Reading List September 30, 2005

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Reading List September 28, 2005

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  • I Am a Broadband Liberal (A VC) – Fred Wilson is a liberal and proud of it.  Any bets on how many comments he gets on this post?
  • Wikimania (A VC) – Fred’s really liking his JotSpot wiki as an organizational tool.
  • Apple Veep Responds to Blogger Outcry (MicroPersuasion) – An Apple VP responded to the criticism of the Nano in the blogosphere and main-stream media.  Jeff just wishes Dell would learn from Apple.
  • NYC Mayor Bloomberg Rewrites Opponent’s Blog (MicroPersuasion) – Mayor Bloomberg’s staff caught an error on his opponent’s blog and cried foul.  Just goes to show that it’s not enough to blog, you must blog well.
  • Seeing the Forest for the Flood (Jeff Jarvis) – An examination of the Katrina "story" and the exaggerations, corrections and perceptions that came with it.
  • The Chrystal Meth/"Purpose-Driven Life" Coefficient (Freakonomics) – Did you know that the woman who was held hostage by an escaped murderer in Atlanta gave him her stash of chrystal meth after reading passages of "The Purpose-Driven Life" to him?  Now that’s a strange trip.

About Time

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If you are among the group of people that thing think the average politician is a slime ball (I am one of those people), then you’ll probably have the same reaction to the news that Tom Delay has been indicted by a Texas grand jury for what the New York Times (via Political Wire) reported as "conspiracy in a campaign finance scheme."

My reaction is, "It’s about damn time."

If you want to see a copy of the indictment go here (Find Law).

Reading List September 27, 2005

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