Friday, November 19, 2004

Going to play some bad golf with Elijah and his grandfather and uncle and cousin Benjie...the more formal bar mitzvah activities commence this evening, with dinner at another cousin's home and then a service at Temple Emanuel...and the big show tomorrow morning. Elijah eschewed a big party and asked that instead of giving him presents people make donations to the Greensboro Urban Ministry. Did I mention that I'm proud of my boy? 12:40:38 PM    comment []

Dave Slusher is sounding serious about the Myrtle Beach blogger shindig. Good tunes, too. 10:41:34 AM    comment []

John Robinson was part of a media panel for Leadership Greensboro. "Interestingly, three of the first four questions concerned blogs, their threat to traditional media and their accuracy. For the record, I said they aren't a threat; they're a complement and a competitor." My question: had either of his fellow panelists ever heard of blogs, or read one? 10:39:00 AM    comment []

"Suddenly we were running in slow motion, trying to cross the path of a fifteen thousand pound truck as it hurled toward us at forty miles an hour." Lenslinger had an exciting day at work, just trying to "record the marginally newsworthy image of a large truck smashing into a metal net." 10:18:22 AM    comment []

Jeff Jarvis on Howard Stern, Letterman, and free speech. 10:14:55 AM    comment []

Monkeytime: "What the hell's behind the need for rank and file Republicans to drastically exaggerate their recent win, if not insecurity about the relatively small margin of victory?" He uses one of those great Michigan maps to make his point. 10:01:28 AM    comment []

Matthew Sheffield on the late Reed Irvine: "Whether you agreed with his critique or not, Reed Irvine was an American original who truly changed the course our country's history. 9:57:30 AM    comment []

Did you read Backwards City today? You should read Backwards City every day. 9:28:08 AM    comment []

The egg came first. Before the chicken. Elijah and I decided that this morning. A chicken can only come from a chicken egg. But a non-chicken (proto-chicken) could produce a chicken egg. Glad we worked that out. Next question? 9:23:02 AM    comment []

25 Reasons why Greensboro is a far better place for Bloggercon than Atlanta could ever be, by Billy the Blogging Poet. #7: Our strip clubs are cheaper, the lines are shorter, and the drinks cheaper. Who needs the Carter Center? 9:01:00 AM    comment []

A couple of techish blogs on the local scene -- Lux et Umbra, and John Mark Brown's My Weblog, which must be the most inventive name for  a blog since, um, EdCone.com. (via local bloghunter supreme, Greensboro is Talking). 8:52:39 AM    comment []

I've been thinking about building a local-blog aggregator page, or really about you building it. A page that shows recent updates in headline form for local blogs. A live central directory. It would be a core element of the emerging regional alternative media. I floated the idea to some folks. Everyone gets it, some have been thinking along those lines already. One said, but who gets the ad revenue such a page might generate? My answer: the person or people who build the page. If you don't like your site being used thusly, kill your feed, and build your own page that adds more value. Even in a collective and cooperative media, some sites will be more popular than others. More local traffic for a few sites will generate more traffic for other local sites, but there will still be disparities. Some sites will sell more ads than others, at a higher rate, at first and then when a local blog ad market emerges. Trying to manage this blog media to closely seems like an idea that is doomed to fail. Let it happen. Create good work. See where it goes. 7:45:11 AM    comment []