Americans become interested in "green" cars

According to ComScore Networks online consumers in the U.S. conducted more than 1.5 million searches for terms such as gas prices, hybrid cars, Toyota Prius and gas mileage in March, an increase of 112% over February 2005. More than 300,000 US consumers searched for hybrids in March. Interesting: Hybrid searchers were 35% more likely than average to live in the Pacific region, while SUV searchers were more evenly distributed across the nation. Aah, the Californians, always one step ahead on their time...

Blog T-Shirt mania

Funny! I found this great Blog T-Shirt at this online store. It says on the design: "She wanted to stop reading it - but she had nothing better to do! Produced by average people who seem to think their lives are interesting. Filmed in thrilling HTML-O-Scope with exciting new fonts!" BTW: The same design is also available as coffee mug, baseball cap and mousepad...

Woman calls 911 with pizza complaint

What an odd story. Associated Press reports that an 86-year-old woman was jailed after police said she called 911 dispatchers 20 times (!!!) in a little more than a half-hour - all to complain that a pizza parlor wouldn't deliver.

B. B. King to get a museum

Blues legend B. B. King who turns 80 on September 16, will get an early gift when groundbreaking begins June 10 on the museum dedicated to his life and career in Indianola in the southern state of Mississippi - near his birthplace. Well deserved! He is one of the best contempary musicians. We saw him at the Hollywood Bowl last year and it was one of the best concerts I've been to - ever...

How old media can survive in a new world

A great article in the free section of the Wall Street Journal discusses how the digital revolution "threatens to push the traditional newspaper, television, radio, music and advertising industries into the dustbin of history". I was especially interested in the paragraph regarding the newspapers. A brief excerpt:

The headlines for the newspaper industry have been somber for some time. The Internet and other electronic-media platforms are drawing ad dollars away, and daily U.S. newspaper circulation recently took its biggest tumble in nearly a decade, falling 1.9% in the six-month period ended March 31, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. With younger readers gleaning their news elsewhere - whether "The Daily Show" or Google's news website - newspapers have strong competition that can offer even fresher information in an easier-to-use format. Our experts advise newspapers to experiment with their Web sites and other high-tech ventures as a way to snag this new digital audience.
Thin more about news, less about paper. When Andrew Swinand, a senior vice president and group client director at Publicis Groupe SA's Starcom Worldwide, visits with newspaper executives, he says he hears too much focus on circulation, and not enough talk about creating more ideas and venues for news content. For instance, Mr. Swinand says papers shouldn't just use their online sites to post the same stories readers can see in print. Some reporters should be allowed to craft blogs about their topic of expertise. Readers should be able to add comments and reaction to a story in an online community.
Let readers customize their own newspaper. "The newspaper of the future is going to be a coalition of niche products," says S.W. "Sammy" Papert III, chairman and CEO of Belden Associates, a Dallas newspaper-industry consultant. That means, for instance, that newspapers should offer online readers - who are used to hunting for narrowly focused information that interests them - an opportunity to create a specialized newspaper according to their areas of interest. So, for example, newspapers might allow their readers to click a few buttons and see all of a paper's coverage about local politics, excluding everything else. Or readers might opt for a page devoted to sports or cultural news.
Follow readers around. Ad executives think a crucial element of newspapers' future will be alerts: periodic news updates sent to Web-surfing cellphones and pocket-pinging BlackBerries. The ability to deliver information that's relevant to a consumer can help a publisher form an invaluable link with that person.

Got it, publishers?