Santa got hit with a lawsuit - and I guess that's why he's doing ads for Apple as part of their Switch campaign. Everyone needs a little extra money at Christmas time.
9:05:58 PM
Trademark searches aren't for amateurs - it isn't expensive to hire someone to do it right. But, for God's sake, don't think you can do this with Google or with a cheapie search firm, as our friend and emminently knowledgeable trademark lawyer Martin reminds us.
Oh, and if you want to know how to pick a good domain name, or business name, and how to trademark it, check out this article by Erik Heels. But, unless you are a trademark awyer, I wouldn't do it yourself.
7:05:46 PM
City Guides - How about New Orleans? - in the post below I mention that John Hiler has a city guide for New York. Here's some serendipity. Today my friend Chris Cloud sent me a comprehensive guide that he had written for New Orleans, which is good because two people have sent me emails asking about what to do and where to go in New Orleans.
He's going to update it and add great restaurants like August (504-299-9777) and some other new tips and recommendations. I would add a restaurant out by Lake Ponchatrain called Rico's of Bucktown (504-219-0770). It's run by George Rico, who used to be the Maitre'D at Commanders' Palace. If you go there tell George you know me (don't say "Ernie the Attorney" because he doesn't know anything about this whole weblog thing; he knows me back from when I was in college and was a waiter a Commanders). Also, order the Crawfish Rolls as an appetizer. They are like egg rolls, except with crawfish. Outstanding. Trust me.
Oh, and don't forget to read my pal Robert Peyton's site. He's a local attorney, but he's also into cooking and fine dining and his blog has some good recommendations on what to order at the local New Orleans eateries.
6:35:36 PM
What I learned from my talk @ Tulane - I don't know what the students learned about weblogs, but I learned that a painstaking description of how to post, and the importance of weblogs, is not good bait with which to lure the attention of a typical college student. I ran into one very nice student as I was leaving the campus who said she liked the lecture, and found weblogs interesting and all, but she "preferred IM'ing people." I guess I learned that "immediacy" and "presence," which are the core features of instant messaging, are more valued by youth than permanence and asynchronous communication.
But that's not all I learned. I also got to see a nice demonstration by one of the students of her idea of an interesting website. (Each student has to give a five minute talk about "a cool website" at some point in the semester). She talked about the Lets Go site, which is based on the famous low cost travel guides that students used back when I was in college (right before electricity was invented and right after the Pyramids were completed). I used a paperback book version of Let's Go Europe when I did the whole Eurail-pass/Youth-hostel gig in 1982. At one point in the presentation the professor asked the students to reflect on whether the publisher of Lets Go might feel reluctant to put free content on the web when it was trying to sell books. I couldn't tell how many students grasped the trenchant point of this question. It's so hard to tell what students are interested in, especially when they are trapped in their seats in the old lecture room.
Maybe I would have been more interesting if I had just talked about neat websites. But then, which one to use? Since there are so many to choose from I would have probably taken the easy way out and just grabbed this gem that seems to be much discussed in the blogosphere today. It's not useful. Frankly, it's not only not useful; it's just weird.
Oh, and one last point for any student from the lecture today who might be reading this. Remember that guy John Hiler whose story on blogs your professor made you read? Well, according to my friend J.D. Lasica (whose site about new media is something you media students might want to check out), Hiler now has a city guides site that he has started for New York. I guess the point I should have made in class was that news aggregators are the best way to discover what's going on in the web, and also the best way to find cool new websites. First, you learn to read and then you learn to write. What was I thinking?
5:46:04 PM
Talking about Weblogs at Tulane University - I am, at this very moment, talking to Professor David Robinson's class on "New Technologies." Today's class is about Mudding and Blogging. I don't know anything about Mudding so I guess I'll stick to discussing weblogs. The assigned reading is John Hiler's article. I have prepared an OPML outline that's available here.
Since I'm doing this demonstration live in class, the students will probably catch me using ActiveWords. I won't spend much time explaining ActiveWords because it is a program that you really need to use yourself to appreciate. So I'll just tell them to click here and download a copy that they can try free for 60 days.
2:15:15 PM
Ghetto Yuppie surfaces - Andy Ruff and I met at PopTech this year, and it appears that now he has a somewhat newly formed blog. He is trying to figure out why he blogs and what his purpose is, at least that's what it looks like to me. Andy is a great guy and I'm glad that his blog has an XML feed so I can subscribe to it and keep up with him. The flip side is that I wouldn't even have known that he had a blog except that he linked to me and I saw some traffic from his site in my referrers log. Ain't the Web grand?
