BEACH NOTES

Great Seminar For Parents

2010-06-14T22:26:00.000-07:00

I just heard that my good friend Leslie has launched a great new business: together with two of her long-time colleagues, she created a seminar about all things baby and kids modeling. Parents will learn everything about the in's and out's of the modeling industry and learn and how they can help their children to have a healthy and successful modeling career.

I think this is a great idea and will help to fill the gap for insightful and reliable information about the world of kids and baby modeling. Check out their website if you're interested about this great kids modeling seminar in Los Angeles!

The Spice Girls love L.A.

2007-12-07T15:57:00.000-08:00

Oh crikey. The Spice Girls were in town, and apparently the Staples center was sold out. Do we care, really? No. I am only concerned about David Beckham. Apparently his wife Victoria said: "My husband, when he married me, married all the Spice Girls, and he has to look after us all." I almost can't hold back my tears.

Great blog: Cozyland

2007-11-14T15:04:00.000-08:00

A shout-out to Leslie Patson! She created a great blog with a great idea a couple of months ago. It's called Cozyland, and naturally the topic is "All things cozy", which I think is a fabulous idea. Whether if it's about making your home cozy, creating a yummy, cozy dinner, having a cozy, stylish evening with other book lovers or spending a marvellous, cozy vacaction in beautiful Tuscany - she covers it!

If you haven't discovered her blog yet, you should definitely check it out!

Superstar Cities

2007-04-02T11:25:00.000-07:00

Joel Kotkin, the great author of "The City - A Global History", wrote a very interesting column about the 'myth of superstar cities'. Of course L.A. is also part of this elite club:

What as much as anything distinguishes elite places — what Wharton real-estate professor Joe Gyourko calls "the superstar cities" — are their absurdly high real-estate prices. New York, Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles have long been more expensive than, say, Dallas, Houston or Phoenix — but in recent years the difference in price, he calculates, has increased beyond all reason. San Francisco prices since 1950, for example, have grown at twice the national rate for the 50 largest metropolitan areas.

Now I also understand why finding work has always been challenging:

The non-superstar cities have become the nation's most prodigious centers for job creation. Between 1990 and 2006, job growth in Las Vegas averaged over 6% annually; Phoenix and Riverside well over 3%; Houston, Atlanta, Dallas and Charlotte right around 2%. New York City, L.A., Boston, Chicago and San Francisco all remained well less than 1%.

9/11 Conspiracy Theories Debunked

2007-02-19T10:25:00.000-08:00

The BBC investigated how much truth are really behind all the conspiracy theories around the terrible terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. And their conclusions is: none. Check out their report.

Merry Christmas!

2006-12-26T10:37:00.000-08:00

What a great time I had at John & Vinnie's! Check out the pics.

Happy Thanksgiving

2006-11-23T21:40:00.000-08:00

From the New York Times:

The day after Thanksgiving traditionally kicks off the Christmas shopping season. With that in mind, Kiplinger’s points out that 46 percent of American householders carried a credit card balance in 2004. The average balance: $12,338.
Elsewhere the magazine writes: “In a worldwide survey, 22 percent of U.S. consumers said they have no money left after paying basic living expenses. Only Portugal had more cash-poor respondents with 23 percent.” Conceivably, the situation could be worse.

No further comment necessary. Happy Thanksgiving!

America turns Blue

2006-11-10T08:24:00.000-08:00

The mid-term elections were a real sweep for the Democrats. This excellent map by one of my favorite political blogs, Daily Kos, shows the gains by the Dems state by state. Pretty impressing!

Mid-term Elections

2006-11-10T08:21:00.000-08:00

Sweet victory! In order not to sound too enthusiastic - this is a step into the right direction. We'll see what 2007 will bring. More election results here and here. (Click on the map to enlarge it!)

iPod Breathalyzer hits the market

2006-10-22T00:14:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of strange iPod accessories around these parts but this one is kind of neat. The iBreathe (apparently the iBooze trademark was already spoken for) is a portable alcohol breathalyzer that is powered by your iPod's dock connector. The device, as you might expect, has a tube that you exhale into for a full five seconds and then calculates your breath alcohol concentration level to an accuracy of ±0.01 percent.

How to remember your dreams

2006-09-29T06:08:00.000-07:00

Great tips for remembering your dreams the morning after on the theme site (a.k.a. "lens") of the information sharing site Squidoo:
1. Maintain good, consistent sleep habits. Not getting enough sleep or going to bed 'dog-tired' can dramatically reduce natural dreaming activity.
2. When you go to bed tell yourself that you will remember your dreams. Repeat "I will remember my dreams" to yourself several times as you drift off to sleep. It sounds odd, but this tip has been shown again and again to be one of the most helpful.
3. Try to wake up slowly to remain within the 'mood' of your last dream. Buy an alarm clock with a gentle wake setting (sometimes called a progressive wake). Here is one idea: iHome iPod Alarm Clock Radio - Great if you are an iPod devotee.
4. Awake at least once during the night, many times this will occur around an REM sleep cycle. Set an alarm or drink a lot of water prior to bed to ensure you have to wake up at least once.
5. Think about (but do not dwell upon) your mood/emotions as you drift off to sleep.

Shopzilla cover story

2006-08-29T11:00:00.000-07:00

The founder of my of my current employer, Scripps owned Shopzilla Inc., is on the cover of the "Electronic Retailer" magazine. The lead says:

With 130-percent growth, Shopzilla aims to devour the competition. Founder and Chief Products Officer Farhad Mohit talks about the company's early beginnings, achieving rapid growth and selling the business to E.W. Scripps.

Pretty cool!

50 coolest websites

2006-08-29T08:57:00.000-07:00

Time magazine just published the list with the 50 coolest websites. Check it out!

Beautiful day on the beach

2006-07-29T08:44:00.000-07:00

Do I have to say more?

The Hype Machine

2006-06-26T07:42:00.000-07:00

An interesting website! I just checked out the Hype Machine, a site where you can search music blogs and upcoming concerts. The song listings are automatically gathered from music blogs all over the internet. Cool!

Create your own magazine cover

2006-05-24T07:36:00.000-07:00

That's really a fun tool. On Big Huge Labs you can create your own magazine cover - with your own picture and all the headlines you want.

Newsvine - pioneer for future news

2006-04-18T00:25:00.000-07:00

The future of online news will be a hybrid of personalised, professional content and user contributions, according to the founders of Newsvine, a new Seattle-based news site that launched fully last week.

Girls' night!

2006-03-12T23:51:00.000-08:00

Wow! Girl's night at Weldon! (Almost: the person behind the camera is from Mars..) Yummie food! And lots of fun.... More pics coming up... Plus: Here is the famous rapper video with Natalie Portman we laughed so hard about...

Oscar watchers buzzed by blog blitz

2006-01-22T19:19:00.000-08:00

More blogs than ever cover this year's Oscars Award Show, writes Variety.
Here are a couple of them:
Variety Award Central
And the Oscar Goes To
Carpetbagger (New York Times)
The Envelope (L.A. Times)
Hollywood Elsewhere
The Hot Button
Movie City News
Oscar Watch

Like most spectator sports, the fun part of the Oscar race is watching the game unfold in all its minutiae, from strategies and statistics to proud proclamations and thwarted prognostications. Can't wait!

$10 Million for Sundance movie

2006-01-22T18:52:00.000-08:00

According Huffington Post, Fox Searchlight acquired worldwide rights Saturday to "Little Miss Sunshine" at the Sundance Film Festival, the audacious comedy debut from husband-and-wife rookie filmmakers Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton. Sources placed the deal at north of $10 million, the record set by Miramax Films' purchase of "Happy, Texas" in 1999.

Planet of Slums

2005-12-15T07:49:00.000-08:00

Not brand new, but still worth mentioning. Mike Davis, author of such bestselling looks at urbanism as "City of Quartz", "Ecology of Fear," "Magical Urbanism" and "Dead Cities", is coming out with a book this year that takes a decidedly bleak view of our urban future. It is called "Planet of Slums" and examines the "future history" of megacities. An excerpt from Planet of Slums appears in the latest issue of New Left Review. An excerpt http://www.newleftreview.net/NLR26001.shtml from Planet of Slums appears in the latest issue of New Left Review

"The earth has urbanized even faster than originally predicted by the Club of Rome in its notoriously Malthusian 1972 report, Limits of Growth. In 1950 there were 86 cities in the world with a population over one million; today there are 400, and by 2015, there will be at least 550. 1 Cities, indeed, have absorbed nearly two-thirds of the global population explosion since 1950 and are currently growing by a million
babies and migrants each week.2 The present urban population (3.2 billion) is larger than the total population of the world in 1960. The global country side, meanwhile, has reached its maximum population (3.2 billion) and will begin to shrink after 2020. As a result, cities will account for all future world population growth, which is expected to peak at about 10 billion in 2050."

The Third Man

2005-12-10T20:11:00.000-08:00

One on the best movies of all time was just on TV: "The Third Man". There is even a Wiki dedicated to it.

Most literate U.S. cities

2005-12-08T13:03:00.000-08:00

Seattle is America's most literate city.
Study author John Miller, president of Central Connecticut State University, focused both on how and what people read, which is why he looked at the percentage of a city’s population that reads newspapers, books or goes to the library. Southern Californian cities didn't do that well. Poor Stockton came in dead last, Anaheim fourth from last; Los Angeles and Long Beach were ranked Nos. 60 and 61, respectively - out of 69.

Baudrillard speaks

2005-11-22T00:10:00.000-08:00

One of the greatest contemporary philosphers, Jean Baudrillard, talks with the New York Times about the continental rift and the riots in France. Since I am big fan, I republish most of the interview:

Q: As one of France's most celebrated philosophers, can you give us any insight into the civil discontent that is pitting a generation of young people against the rest of the country?
A: It will get worse and worse and worse. For a long time, it was a relatively friendly coexistence or cohabitation, but the French haven't done much to integrate the Muslims, and there is a split now. Our organic sense of identity as a country has been split.

Perhaps that was inevitable. Many of us here were surprised last year when the French government banned hijabs, head scarves, and other religious emblems from public schools.
Yes, in America there is more of a history of immigration. America is constituted by ethnic communities, and though they may compete with one another, America is still America. Even if there were no Americans living in the United States, there would still be America. France is just a country; America is a concept.

Are you saying that America represents the ideal of democracy?
No, the simulation of power.

At 76, you are still pushing your famous theory about "simulation" and the "simulacrum," which maintains that media images have become more convincing and real than reality.
All of our values are simulated. What is freedom? We have a choice between buying one car or buying another car? It's a simulation of freedom.

So you don't think that the U.S. invaded Iraq to spread freedom?
What we want is to put the rest of the world on the same level of masquerade and parody that we are on, to put the rest of the world into simulation, so all the world becomes total artifice and then we are all-powerful. It's a game.

When you say "we," who are you talking about? In your new book, "The Conspiracy of Art", you are pretty hard on this country.
France is a byproduct of American culture. We are all in this; we are globalized. When Jacques Chirac says, "No!" to Bush about the Iraq war, it's a delusion. It's to insist on the French as an exception, but there is no French exception.

Hardly. France chose not to send soldiers to Iraq, which has real meaning for countless individual soldiers, for their families and for the state.
Ah, yes. We are "against" the war because it is not our war. But in Algeria, it was the same. America didn't send soldiers when we fought the Algerian war. France and America are on the same side. There is only one side.

Isn't that kind of simplistic reasoning why people get so tired of French intellectuals?
There are no more French intellectuals. What you call French intellectuals have been destroyed by the media. They talk on television, they talk to the press and they are no longer talking among themselves.

Do you think there are intellectuals in America?
For us, there was Susan Sontag and Noam Chomsky. But that is French chauvinism. We count ourselves. We don't pay attention to what comes from outside. We accept only what we invented.

Were you a friend of Susan Sontag?
We saw each other from time to time, but the last time, it was terrible. She came to a conference in Toronto and blasted me for having denied that reality exists.

Do you read the work of any American writers?
I read many, many American novelists. Updike, Philip Roth, Truman Capote. I prefer American fiction to French fiction.

Perhaps French literature fell prey to French theory?
Unfortunately, French literature starved itself. It didn't need French theory to die. It died by itself.

Some here feel that the study of the humanities at our universities has been damaged by the incursion of deconstruction and other French theories.
That was the gift of the French. They gave Americans a language they did not need. It was like the Statue of Liberty. Nobody needs French theory.

Plus: This is a great list of links to works about and by the master.

Goddammo!

2005-11-09T07:51:00.000-08:00

Interesting! If you're marriage breakes up and you still wanna have a 'souvenir', then you should go to Goddammo!. They transform your wedding band into a bullet. From the website:

We have processed bullets made from wedding bands and other jewelery made of gold, silver, or platinum. Keep in mind that the bullets have no gunpowder. As of now, you have a choice of two caliber bullets: .223 and 9 mm.

Organized or intuitive

2005-11-01T23:32:00.000-08:00

Right or left brain? An interesting test.

Wrong place

2005-10-26T07:02:00.000-07:00

"One of the greatest gifts is to recognize when you're in the wrong place, or doing the wrong things, then find the courage to stop whatever that is and make a change without guilt or regret." - Adrian Savage's The Coyote Within, 'Quitting Time" (via Crossroads Dispatches)

More Deal details

2005-10-08T00:49:00.000-07:00

A guy does the numbers on the AOL-WeblogsInc. deal. Plus Steve Rubels del.icio.us links.

AOL acquires WeblogsInc.

2005-10-05T22:20:00.000-07:00

Darnet. I wish Jason Calacanis' company - according to him the largest blog publisher in the world - would have stayed under the radar a little bit longer. But now Jeannie is out of the bottle and another "hot" internet company went corporate. For the better or for the worse - we'll see. The great news site Paidcontent had the scoop. Founder Rafat Ali (who I interview for the Swiss business weekly Cash) writes:

Among the other companies Weblogs Inc talked to included the usual suspects: News Corp, Yahoo and MSN...
This is a very quick exit: the company was founded about two years ago, and took some money from Mark Cuban a year down the line. For Calacanis, this is his second company being sold in a space of about two years...his original company Rising Tide Studios was first sold to Wicks Business Information, which in itself was bought out by Dow Jones.
The company's blogs have had an exponential trajectory, with sites like Engadget, Autoblog, BloggingBaby, and others. In total, the company has about 130 bloggers, with about 15 full time employees, from what I know.
AOL intends to keep the company/blogs separate from its site, much in the vein of what is happening with other blog and Web 2.0 companies being bought. But this is perhaps the first pure content-related company being bought out in the blog/ Web 2.0 space...or at least of this scale.
For AOL, this is head first into the blog media revolution, so to speak. Calacanis, who was at the We Media conference today where I was, refused comment; I did spot him with an AOL tote bag.
Staci adds: How much will Weblogs Inc. cost AOL? One estimate I heard today was roughly $20 million as an earn-out -- to get it all, Weblogs Inc. would have to meet certain goals. But I've also heard talk of Flickr-like numbers, which would make it closer to $30-35 million range. Certainly to Weblogs' execs advantage to have people thinking towards the higher end. Weblogs Inc. revenues are running at $1 million-plus annually from Google AdSense alone, according to numbers jubilantly released by Calacanis on his own blog; during a panel last week he said the company was bringing in $2 million a year. With that in mind, either of those numbers would be a generous multiple.

More about this story:
Technorati.
Memeorandum.
Reuters.

Consumer tune into blogs

2005-10-05T00:19:00.000-07:00

From Frank Barnako's Internet Daily:
Technology is making it easier to ignore mainstream media advertising. Instead, consumers are using Web logs, mobile messaging, comparison shopping Web sites, and word-of-mouth to make buying decisions, according to Forrester Research Inc. Date released Tuesday by the firm reported 10% of consumers read blogs at least once a week, compared with 5% a year ago. Really Simple Syndication feeds (RSS) are used by 6%, compared to 2% in 2004.
"Technology has given consumers an option to tune businesses out, and tune each other in," said Chris Charron, a Forrester (FORR) vice president, in a statement. "On the flip side, technology has given businesses an opportunity to gain greater customer insights at a lower cost," by monitoring blogs and Web sites and message boards "to uncover consumer insight and accelerate the innovation of products, services, and design," he said.

'My Pet Goat' - The Sequel

2005-09-07T03:00:00.000-07:00

You HAVE to read this.

Katrina chaos

2005-09-03T12:35:00.000-07:00

Interesting article on Reuters regarding Katrina.

Free Wi-Fi from Google?

2005-08-22T20:48:00.000-07:00

Interesting article in Business 2.0 about the expansion rumors around Google. What could be next is a national broadband network "GoogleNet". Nothing seems to be impossible... (the chart shows what else could be in the pipeline of Google)..

Global gas prices

2005-08-19T01:01:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's painful, these gas price increases. Especially in California where the gallon costs $1.73. According to this CNN Money story we have no reason to complain. In Europa the gallon costs between 4 and 6 bucks (Switzerland 4.74).

L..A. most densed city in the U.S.

2005-08-18T20:57:00.000-07:00

If you want some elbow room - don't move to Lala-Land. As Civic Strategies reports Los Angeles is the most densed city in the United States. Some of the surprising facts:
- There are now an average of 7,068 people per square mile in the L.A. metro area, a quarter more on average than in the New York area, according to the Census Bureau's statistics on density.
- 10 of the 15 most densely populated metro areas are in the West — and all of the top three. (Besides L.A., they're San Francisco with 7,004 people per square mile and San Jose with 5,914. New York is fourth, with 5,309.
- L.A.'s density levels have climbed dramatically since 1950, from less than 5,000 people per square mile to more than 7,000.

I miss this guy

2005-08-17T01:06:00.000-07:00

I don't know what it is. The world is kind of empty without him. I still can't forgive myself that I didn't go to the reading of the King of Gonzo at the fabulous bookstore Taschen in Beverly Hills a couple of weeks before he shot himself. At least I have to post this entire article from The Gleaner:

A hand-scrawled note on the refrigerator in Hunter S. Thompson's kitchen says, "Never call 911/Never/This means you/HST." Over the sink, a snapshot shows the famously reckless father of Gonzo journalism nuzzling a tiny kitten. This room, jammed with cooking utensils, writing mementos and a giant TV, is where Thompson wrote some of the acerbic books and articles that made him an American treasure in the late 1960s and early '70s. It was here that he held court with friends and admirers. It is also where he shot himself to death six months ago at age 67. The kitchen remains a center of Thompson's still-swirling universe as family and friends wrap up plans to blast his ashes out of a 150-foot-tall monument behind the house at Owl Farm this Saturday. It's what he wanted.
"No crying, no tears, only celebration," Thompson's widow, Anita, said during a 2 1/2-hour interview with The Associated Press at the home and her makeshift office, providing a rare glimpse into the writer's world. "He wanted people to celebrate," she said. "He envisioned it to be a beautiful party. The most amazing people would be there. His friends would celebrate his life. And he was even specific that there would be clinking of ice and whisky." The monument towers over a field between the home and a tree-covered red rock canyon wall. It is shrouded in gray and blue tarpaulins that ripple in the wind and it will not be unveiled until Saturday. It is modeled after Thompson's Gonzo logo: a clenched fist, made symmetrical with the addition of a second thumb, perched atop a dagger.
Anita Thompson said Saturday will include some reminiscence, readings from Thompson's work and performances by both Lyle Lovett and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. About 250 people were invited, including Thompson's longtime illustrator, Ralph Steadman, and actors Sean Penn and Johnny Depp, close friends of the writer. Depp, who portrayed Thompson in the 1998 movie version of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," is financing much of the send-off, Anita Thompson said. She said she doesn't know the total cost and said others have offered to chip in. "Everybody's bringing what they have to offer," she said.
The event is private and security will be tight. David Meeker of Specialized Protective Services in Aspen would say only that the precautions will be more elaborate than for any similar-sized event he has ever protected. The narrow roads that thread the canyon will remain open, but Pitkin County deputies will bar anyone from stopping to watch from outside the property, Anita Thompson said. Sheriff Bob Braudis, a friend of Thompson, did not return a call. After Saturday, the monument will be taken down. Anita Thompson said it may be put up elsewhere, but she's not sure. Thompson's son, Juan, did not return calls seeking comment.
Thompson's suicide ended a storied career that included landmark works of new journalism such as "Hells Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs," published in 1966, 1971's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream" and "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72."
He built a public persona as a drug-fueled risk-taker, but friends and family say that masked the Kentucky-born writer's true nature - a Southern gentleman and meticulous craftsman who lived and wrote at Owl Farm from the late 1960s until his death. The telephone-answering machine still barks at callers with Thompson's voice, mechanically commanding them to "Please. Leave. A message."
Anita Thompson, 32, who married the writer in April 2003, said she plans to protect and promote her husband's legacy. "I'll be working for Hunter the rest of my life. I know that. I made that commitment, and I'm honored that I can," she said. At least three new books are planned, including the third volume of his letters, a collection of unpublished short stories and an unfinished novel, "Polo is My Life." She is seeking a permanent home for Thompson's archive, which fills some 1,200 boxes now stored in a vault off the property. Plans are in the works for a Hunter Thompson Foundation to help young people his widow describes as unfairly ensnared in the criminal justice system. She also plans what she calls "a small book of wisdom" based on things her husband told her. "'Never think you're the smartest one in the room. And never think you're the dumbest one in the room.' Little things like that," she said.
Leaning against a sun-drenched woodpile at Owl Farm, she lifted a large green gemstone hanging from a small chain around her neck. It used to belong to her husband. "He got this in Saigon. He believed this is why he lived so long," she said. He took it off only a handful of times, when he underwent surgery or to briefly place it around her neck.

Buy your books like music

2005-08-17T00:39:00.000-07:00

VitalSource Bookshelf allows you to do that. Not a big selection yet, though. And the question is: Do I want to read my books on a computer screen?

Blogger for Word

2005-08-17T00:28:00.000-07:00

Could be cool. Now there is the blogger software available within MS Word. The big downside: It's only available for PC's. That sucks.

New Media Order

2005-08-16T23:56:00.000-07:00

From Business Wire:

"Veronis Suhler Stevenson, a leading global media and information private investment firm, today announced the release of the 19th annual Communications Industry Forecast, revealing a "New Media Order" that is forcing fundamental changes across all four communications industry sectors. According to the newly-enhanced 2005 Forecast, technology innovation, the emergence of new media, quickening audience fragmentation, increasing demand for customization and tighter focus on return on investment are collectively causing major shifts in spending patterns and time spent with media. These shifts are expected to drive accelerated growth across all four sectors - advertising, specialty media and marketing services, institutional end-user and consumer end-user - through 2009 ... "

More information on the VSS Communications Industry Forecast 2005 and some select information from individual chapters, on VSS.com.

The Marilyn papers

2005-08-12T00:20:00.000-07:00

The L.A. Times website has a hit on its hands. Last Friday's story about revealing tapes Marilyn Monroe supposedly made for her psychiatrist in the weeks before she died in 1962 has run up some big numbers all weekend and into this week. The Column One by Calendar writer Robert W. Welkos details a transcript made available by a former L.A. County deputy DA who is the only source who can vouch for the tapes. He says the transcripts prove Monroe didn't intend to kill herself; although that's an open question, if real the tapes certainly add to the already-huge body of Monroe lore. In the transcript, Monroe free associates about Freud, the Kennedys and the pleasure she gets from enemas. She thanks her shrink for helping her discover orgasms, says that actress Joan Crawford became 'spiteful' after Monroe spurned a repeat of their one-night sexual fling, and while examining her 36-year-old figure in a mirror Monroe observes that her breasts have begun to sag but calls her ass 'the best there is.' The Times website warns readers that the transcript 'contains explicit language and frank descriptions of sexual and bodily functions.' The deputy DA, John W. Miner, argues that Monroe was killed by a lethal mix of drugs administered by enema. (Via L.A. Observed)

Los Angeles is a book

2005-08-11T23:31:00.000-07:00

September's Vanity Fair has six images from photographer Tim Street-Porter's new entry on the list of books that are titled simply Los Angeles. I don't know about the book, but the images in VF are gorgeous—of the Bradbury Building interior, the old Pan-Pacific Auditorium (burnt down 1989), the streamline Coca-Cola bottling plant downtown and the Herman Sachs ceiling fresco over the auto entrance at Bullock's Wilshire. Rizzoli is charging $195 for the limited edition, which comes with a foreword by Diane Keaton. Vanity Fair also teases to The Tender Bar, the new memoir coming from L.A. Times staff writer J.R. Moehringer, with his picture.

Hidden gems

2005-08-11T23:21:00.000-07:00

More about great architecture in the city of angels.

Skyscrapper boom in L.A. downtown

2005-08-11T23:18:00.000-07:00

Get ready for another downtown skyscraper boom, the L.A. Times reports. The paper notes that 32 new towers are on the drawing boards, with 20 of them considered skyscrapers (climbing more than 240 feet, or about 20 stories). Some excerpts:
The return to tall towers will be a marked change for downtown Los Angeles, whose last new skyscraper was the 750-foot, 52-story Two California Plaza, completed in 1992. At the south end of downtown, two residential towers already under construction near Staples Center will be joined by a 55-story hotel and condominium complex scheduled to break ground later this year. To the north, near Walt Disney Concert Hall, at least five skyscrapers are slated for construction as part of the Grand Avenue project, including a 40- to 50-story building to be designed by architect Frank Gehry and scheduled for completion in 2009. The changing skyline should begin to take shape in the next three years, when the first five buildings that have already won city approval are completed. They include a 33-story loft building at 9th and Flower streets.
But there are lingering concerns that the downtown residential market could suffer the same fate as office space did in the early 1990s, when far more new buildings went up than were needed. Rents plummeted, buildings sat vacant — and it took a decade for downtown to recover.
The paper notes that even after the building boom is finished, around 2010, the 73-story US Bank Tower -- the Skyscraper Formerly Known as the Library Tower, which was the Skyscraper Formerly Known as the First Interstate World Center, which was the Skyscraper Formerly Known as the Library Tower -- will still be L.A.'s biggest. What will change: The gap between the Transamerica building and the rest of downtown will be filled in.

That area, called South Park and near Staples Center, is the hub of most of the initial construction, where cranes and crews are already turning former parking lots into high-rises.
This district has far more open space than other parts of downtown, so residents and city planners expect it to be more dramatically transformed. It is also where many amenities for downtown residents will open in coming years, including a Ralphs supermarket — set to open late next year — and movie theaters.
To the north, downtown will see the completion of Bunker Hill's decades-long transformation from a slightly seedy residential quarter into a zone full of high-rises.

(Via Franklin Avenue)

Extinct in L.A.

2005-08-11T23:16:00.000-07:00

Great L.A. building, extinct.

Note to myself

2005-08-11T23:14:00.000-07:00

Very interesting! Website Cinema Treasures .

Crowded in L.A.

2005-08-11T23:00:00.000-07:00

Big story on the front page of today's Washington Post tries to make sense of the Census Bureau stat that the urban sprawl around Los Angeles is the most densely populated region in the country. Blaine Harden datelines the piece from Signal Hill, where all of the available land is being built on for homes, adding to the density calculation. The three densest regions in the country are in California (L.A.-Long Beach-Orange County, then San Francisco-Oakland and San Jose), while New York City-Newark ranks fourth measured by the number of people per square mile.

Bush indictment rumor

2005-08-11T22:58:00.000-07:00

Many are saying it's a Technorati bombing hoax, but there's a rumor going around the blogosphere that President Bush is going to be indicted in the Valerie Plume case. Here's what's known for sure, right now “bush indictment” is the number one search on Technorati. The claim that Bush and a number of his administration officials had been indicted became #1 search term on the blog indexing service Technorati. (Via Micro Persuasion)

New blogs about the supreme court nomination

2005-07-20T04:44:00.000-07:00

Alea iacta est. Bush made his choice to nominate John Roberts as the new member of the Supreme Court. There are great new blogs exclusivly dedicated to this important topic, such as the The Supreme Court Nomination Blog. But also the site Nomination Nation has great insights about Roberts and otherr judicial appointments. I wish blogs like this would exist in Europe. Plus: Technorati keeps track of the opinions of the blogosphere with a special supreme court tag (with currently over 800 posts).

Coming up: Nerd TV

2005-07-19T21:09:00.000-07:00

I know the news is a couple of days old, but I still would like to mention it. Beginning September 6, PBS will make available - exclusively over the Internet - broadcast television's first entirely downloadable series, featuring PBS technology columnist and industry insider Robert X. Cringely's interviews with personalities from the ever-changing world of technology. NerdTV will be available for download from here.
Plus: Chris Anderson praises Chringley a 'longtailer'.

Napa traffic

2005-07-19T14:54:00.000-07:00

A new study claims carloads of wine-seeking tourists have made Napa Valley the eighth most congested rural vacation spot in the country. The report, financed in part by the American Automobile Association - with nearly 2.1 million summer trips on the mostly two-lane stretch of Highway 29 between Napa and St. Helena -now shares space on the same top 10 list of car-clogged getaways as Cape Cod and the country music halls of Branson, Mo.
Wow! Now I have to think twice before I travel to one of my most favorite get-aways...

Shutters on the Beach

2005-07-18T08:02:00.000-07:00

What can i say. I think "Shutters on the Beach" in Santa Monica is one of the most beautiful hotels in California. I can't afford a room there, but I enjoyed the cozy lobby, the great restaurant with the great view to the pacific several times. Fashiontribes.com offers a star-studded style-MP3 file and gives us the top 10 reasons you stay there.

Web editors

2005-07-17T13:27:00.000-07:00

A great, extended list with wed editors (the programs, not the people).

NYT's blog guide

2005-07-16T02:16:00.000-07:00

The New York Times published a great categorized list of recommendable blogs and tools. Among others some of my favorite daily reads on the web, Buzzmachine, BoingBoing, Crooks and Liars - and the fabulous gastronomy blog Food Section.

Great tool

2005-07-15T07:20:00.000-07:00

Via YouSendIt one can email large files quickly, securely, and easily!. I tried it - it works!

The right vehicle

2005-07-08T19:32:00.000-07:00

I mean: In order to really enjoy nature, we had to rent the proper car...

Weekend get-away goal: do nothing

2005-07-08T19:29:00.000-07:00

It had to be. After busy and crazy days, we decided to treat ourselves and go for this get-away in the desert. A cozy hotel in Desert Hot Springs (near Palm Springs), with lot of heat, cool beverages, and relaxing (shallow) pools. Aaaah! To do nothing, that's our goals. We might re-visit some of the great retro buildings designed by one of my favorite architects, Albert Frey (also Swiss origin). We might go for a hike in the amazing Joshua Tree National Park. We might check-out some bargains at the Desert Hills outlet. Or find a new place in the heart of Palm Springs for wining and dining. Otherwise we really plan to do nothing.

Personalized ratings for travellers

2005-07-04T15:17:00.000-07:00

Why should a professional travel journalist be more trustworthy than the travelleres themselves? One of my favorite ressources for "hot" places to go and great hotels to stay is I go to Travelpost - the "independent source for personalized ratings" for places to stay. And they also have Travel Journals, kind of a Flickr for travelers, It allows people to upload photos, journal entries, iteneraries, and build travel maps that can be shared with other people.

Brand USA still powerful

2005-07-02T21:49:00.000-07:00

Interesting. President Bush may be suffering his worst approval ratings since he took office, but the United States of America is the top brand in America in both red states and blue, beating out Coca-Cola, Disney and Hallmark, according to Young & Rubicam Brands' BrandAsset Valuator. (Via Businessweek)

New blog about comic books

2005-06-22T07:03:00.000-07:00

The comics publisher Fantagraphics - whose roster of cartoonists reads like a who's who of the field's greatest talents (Charles M. Schulz, Robert Crumb, Daniel Clowes, etc.) - has a new website up and running. (via Comics Reporter- an excellent source of comics-related stuff)

Google includes Swiss minority language

2005-06-21T05:43:00.000-07:00

An interesting story about a Swiss "phenomena" making headlines in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Not many people have heard of Romansch. But in the future, those looking for Web sites in Switzerland may find themselves trying to decipher this Latin-linked language. That's because Mountain View, Calif.-based Google Inc., the Internet's leading search engine provider, is now offering its service in Romansch, a language spoken by just 35,000 people in the mountains of southeastern Switzerland, the company said Wednesday. The Swiss government has passed laws to protect the minority Romansch language, such as requiring its use in schools and on bank notes, but speakers will now have the opportunity to "tschertgar il web" — or search the Web — in their native language. Though the interface is in Romansch, results aren't limited to the language. Nonetheless, the initiative has been welcomed by Romansch groups, who have been seeking ways to keep their dwindling language alive. Romansch, a direct descendant of Latin and one of Switzerland's four official languages, has struggled to cope with encroachment of German.

I think it's great that the "minority language" Romansch has been acknowledged by internet giant Google.

Homeland security knife

2005-06-16T01:54:00.000-07:00

Great "urban camo"

These apparently are dangerous times. Terrorists can be living next door... that's why gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson has on its online store an entire section with "homeland security accessories": all kind of knives, camouflage caps and "shooter shirts". I especially liked this homeland security knife "with urban camo serrated blade. Only 35 bucks - and you're ready for a fight with any Al Queda member...

In the headlines

2005-06-14T08:57:00.000-07:00

This is what caught my attention from the news. A random selection:

- Google lists 42,800 articles about the acquittal of Michael Jackson. Forbes has some interesting facts regarding the trial. For exemple: In the entire state of California in 2002 (the last year for which statistics are available), there were 236,471 felony charge dispositions and just 766 acquittals - about three-tenths of 1% of all cases.
- More than 1,700 American forces have now been killed in Iraq, in President 'Bush's "Happy Thoughts" Death Trap.' Plus: "The body counts are back." (via Cursor.org)
- Showdown in the capital of France: Rival planemakers Boeing and Airbus have both unveiled big orders for their new planes as the pair square up to each other at the Paris Air Show, the Airbus A380 (detailed information here and here - the world's largest airliner -, and the Boeing 777.
- An earth-like planet has found outside our solar system.
- O my. Destiny's Child will be history soon.
- News.com reports that thrillionaires are the new space capitalists. Microsoft co-found Paul Allen is responsible for SpaceShipOne, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin, British entrepreneur Richard Branson created Virgin Galactic. And Elon Musk, the founder of PayPal, created the rocket company SpaceX, among others.
- After Paris proposed to Paris - can the world survive without the Hilton heiress?
- The weather is the Californian desert is beautiful, the weather in Europe sucks.
- Can European politicians ever agree on something?
- Update: Michael Jackson's website just posted a note trumpeting his courtroom vindication, linking it with such historic events as the birth of Martin Luther King Jr., while his lawyer vowed his client wouldn't be sharing his bed with boys anymore.

Pennsylvania tourism hires bloggers

2005-06-13T01:46:00.000-07:00

Rather than rely on travel writers to tout the best Pennsylvania destinations, the state's tourism office is relying on six bloggers to document their travels throughout the state. The authors of the blogs are "real people" who record their visits to prime Pennsylvania locations over the summer in exchange for their expenses paid. "We want to speak to consumers in a voice that they want to identify with," said spokeswoman Carrie Fischer. - This is an interesting move to bypass travel writers completely.

Ask the web - hot or not

2005-06-12T00:32:00.000-07:00

There is a web site on the internet that says more about the laws of attraction than a degree in psychology ever can. Called "Hot or Not?" it is based on a devastatingly simple concept. Visitors to the site are invited to post a picture of themselves, which is then rated (out of 10) by other visitors. Next to each submitted picture is the average rating so far, showing with stunning predictability that we are not born equal when it comes to looks and that the more you reveal the greater the admiration you receive. This somewhat tongue-in-cheek site is just another example of how the internet has created powerful new ways of aggregating information for a few pennies and is causing managers to rethink age-old practices of market research and group decision-making. Ken Young from IT Week asks: Why spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on traditional market research when it is increasingly possible to do the corporate equivalent of "Am I Hot or Not?" by scouring internet chatter?
In June the Financial Times reported that several leading pharmaceutical groups are considering such services to find out what weblog authors are saying about their products. The services can also scan newsgroups and forums to look for exchanges of information between patients.
A new book, The Wisdom of Crowds, by James Surowieki (and hotly tipped by Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point) focuses on just this point: that large groups can often make better decisions than individuals and small groups.

New books in the buzz

2005-06-09T02:58:00.000-07:00

Since people are shuffling shoulder to shoulder through the packed aisles of Book Expo America, trying to get through more than 2,000 exhibitors in three days, it’s not hard to find out what names are on people’s lips. According tho the Book Standard these are the books everyone is buzzing about:

Fiction:
Wickett’s Remedy, by Myla Goldberg (Doubleday)
Christ the Lord, by Anne Rice (Knopf)
Lunar Park, by Bret Easton Ellis (Knopf)
In Perfect Light, by Benjamin Alire Salenz (HarperCollins)
Everyone Worth Knowing, by Lauren Weisberger (Simon and Schuster)
Third Girl from the Left, by Martha Southgate (Houghton Mifflin)
Ordinary Heroes, by Scott Turow (FSG)
Faulkner Box set (Knopf)
Consent to Kill, by Vince Flynn (Atria Books)
Lipstick Jungle, by Candace Bushnell (Hyperion)
The Diviners, by Rick Moody (Little, Brown)
700 Sundays, by Billy Crystal (Warner Books)
The Zahir, by Paulo Coelho (HarperCollins)
A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies, by Ellen Cooney (Pantheon)
The Last Days of Dogtown, by Anita Diamant (Scribner)
Memories of My Melancholy Whores, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Knopf)
The Washington Story, by Adam Langer (Riverhead)
Shalimar the Clown, by Salman Rushdie (Random House)
Son of a Witch, by Gregory Maguire (ReganBooks)
On Beauty, by Zadie Smith (Penguin Press)
The Painted Drum, by Louise Erdrich (HarperCollins)
A Wedding in December, by Anita Shreve (Little, Brown)

Debut Fiction:
The Dream Life of Sukhanov, by Olga Grushin (Putnam)
Waterloo, by Karen Olsson (FSG)
Rust and Bone, by Craig Davidson (W.W. Norton)
The Widow of the South, by Robert Hicks (Time Warner Book Group)
The Town that Forgot How to Breathe, by Kenneth J. Harvey (St. Martin's)

General nonfiction:
Spook, by Mary Roach (W.W. Norton)
Bait and Switch, by Barbara Ehrenreich (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt)
Mark Twain: A Life, by Ron Powers (Free Press)
It’s Called a Breakup because it’s Broken: The Smart Girl’s Breakup Buddy, by Greg Behrendt and Amira Ruotola-Behrendt (Random House/Broadway Books)
Are Men Necessary?, by Maureen Dowd (Penguin)
Incendiary, by Chris Cleave (Knopf)
Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion (Knopf)
A Time to Run, by Barbara Boxer (Chronicle)
The Heart of the Home (tentative title), by Robin McGraw, Dr. Phil’s wife (Thomas Nelson)
Al Franken’s new book (as yet untitled) (Penguin)
Rereading, by Anne Fadiman (FSG)
The Assassin’s Gate, by George Packer (FSG)
Politics the Wellstone Way: How to Elect Progressive Candidates and Win on Issues (University of Minnesota Press)
The Leadership Secrets of Billy Graham, by Billy Graham (Zondervan)
Teacher Man, by Frank McCourt (Scribner)
The Tender Bar, by J.R. Moehringer (Hyperion)
Julie & Julia, by Julie Powell (Little, Brown)
Our Endangered Values, by Jimmy Carter (Simon & Schuster)
The Smart Money, by Anonymous (so far) (Simon & Schuster)
The Bob Dylan Scrapbook, 1956-1966 (Simon & Schuster)
Generation Rx, by Greg Crister (Houghton Mifflin)
The Osama Bin Laden I Know, by Peter Bergen (Free Press)

The greatest philosopher

2005-06-09T02:53:00.000-07:00

On the website of BBC Radio you can vote for the greatest philosopher. One can only groan at its attempt at seriousness and then groan some more at the "light-hearted" replies (Eric Cantona, Steve Irwin, Karl Popper).

Another blog network

2005-06-09T00:11:00.000-07:00

Entrepreneur and author John Battelle plans to launch an advertising network for blogs later this fall. The network, dubbed FM Publishing (with FM standing for Federated Media), will launch with between 10 and 20 technology-related blogs, including Boing Boing, as well as Battelle's own SearchBlog. Battelle said he also is considering including blogs that cover culture for the network. Battelle, who co-founded Wired magazine and also founded The Industry Standard, said he is only inviting "high-quality, high-authority" blogs into the network. (Via Mediapost)

The endangered man

2005-06-08T06:56:00.000-07:00

Thanks god there is a petition to save him.

11 million job applicants' psych tests

2005-06-07T06:35:00.000-07:00

I just went through several psychology test during a job interview. It's comforting to know that I'm not alone:

Over the past few years, personality assessment tests have moved from the realm of experiment to standard practice at many of the nation's largest companies, including the Albertson's grocery chain and retailers such as Neiman Marcus and Target. A recent survey found that about 30 percent of all companies use personality tests in hiring. To many companies, the tests are as important, if not more important, than an applicant's education, experience and recommendations. [...] Annie Murphy Paul, author of "The Cult of Personality", which is about the testing industry, said there is a real danger of stigmatizing people who fail certain components of tests. "If we are labeling people liars and thieves even before they have seen any propensity for them to do these things, it is a real injustice," she said.
Among the giants in the employment-testing industry is Unicru Inc.. Last year, the Beaverton, Ore., company assessed 11 million applicants, which resulted in 550,000 hires by retailers, grocers, trucking companies and others. Christopher Reed, director of marketing for Unicru, compares the firm's mission to that of a dating site. "Just like they are trying to match up potential mates, we are basically making a prediction of whether someone is a good fit or not for a job," he said. The firm said its tests have been validated time and again by their success at companies.

Dictionaricks

2005-06-07T02:18:00.000-07:00

Great idea! An English dictionary in limerick form.

California's gloomy future

2005-06-03T16:00:00.000-07:00

According to a report by the Public Policy Institute of California, the state soon will face serious challenges in providing sufficient resources for education and transportation, and those needs are compounded by a lack of public awareness and a paucity of political leadership, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. 8 million to 10 million more people will live here by 2025. And the state doesn't produce enough college graduates to fuel its own economy, nor is it preparing its roads, water resources or once-celebrated school system for the future. The toughest challenge will be in transportation, where spending has not kept pace and - if current trends continue - commute times could increase by almost 50 percent by 2025. "The voters, who will have a major say in what type of future we have, are very disengaged and very distrustful," said Mark Baldassare, director of research. "The public is not particularly aware and not impressed with the ability of state and local government to plan for the future."
Indeed, only 5 percent of Californians know the size of the state's current population (36 million), and only 13 percent put the 2025 population in the 40 million to 49 million range, according to the report, "California 2025: Taking on the Future".

Coming up: A "blogumentary"

2005-06-03T04:22:00.000-07:00

John Hart, a former Hollywood executive, is trying to produce a "blogumentary" film about 59 bloggers who, in his view, represent the blogosphere. He has posted a list of bloggers who have already agreed to appear.

Where are they now?

2005-06-03T03:48:00.000-07:00

Moving on to his new job "blog daddy" Jeff Darvis is cleaning out his office and finds tons of business cards of companies that were to determined to take over the world - and apparently acted like it in meetings. He asks: Where are they now. Among others: @Home, MCI, Netmarket, Netscape, CompuServe, Infinet, Go Network and CueCat. BTW: I can't mention enough the excellent story in the Washington Post about Jarvis.

$100.000 for a blogging job

2005-06-03T03:21:00.000-07:00

CNN Money reports that Country Music Television has signed Chris Nelson to a one-year $100,000 deal to watch reruns of "The Dukes of Hazzard" on the cable channel and write blog postings for the network's Web site. Nelson applied for the job along with almost 2,000 others in late February, shortly after an ad for the position was placed in several industry publications. You can find the job application on Country Music Television's website. (via Micro Persuasion)

Launch of the Weblog Empire

2005-06-03T02:58:00.000-07:00

Australian blogger Duncan Riley, author of the excellent blogblog Blog Herald, launched his weblog network Weblog Empire today, including weblogs weblogempire.com about gadgets, mortgage refinancing, PVR and search engine news. Congratulations!

Majority of U.S. households have highspeed in 2010

2005-06-03T02:32:00.000-07:00

Increasing competition among the telcom companies makes the web surfer wanna cher. This is what MediaPost had to report:

In an effort to forestall the proliferation of rival Internet providers, SBC Communications Wednesday said it would cut the rate of its already cut-rate broadband service by 25 percent. As the second-largest U.S. telecommunications company, SBC's decision to provide monthly broadband service for $14.95 - down from $19.95 - will accelerate nationwide high-speed adoption, according to industry observers.
For customers who want faster Internet service, the SBC Yahoo! DSL Pro service is also available for $24.99 per month for 12 months if ordered online.
If the cost of broadband continues to slide, up to 69 million households - 78 percent of U.S. online homes - will have high-speed access by 2010, a recent Jupiter Research reported estimated. The report, "Broadband Forecast, 2005 to 2010," found that 8.2 million new households subscribed to broadband last year, bringing to 31.9 million the total number of U.S. households with broadband - a 35 percent increase from 2003. Joe Laszlo, Jupiter Research analyst and lead author of the report, estimated that while cable companies still hold about 59 percent of the U.S. broadband market--thanks to an early start in launching high-speed Internet services--telecoms like SBC are aggressively closing in.

And, as reported, fiber is also coming to the U.S. households....

Nipples - the latest taboo

2005-06-02T00:39:00.000-07:00

The Ottawa Citizen reports about a(nother) strange thing about the Americans:

Sixteen months after the Super Bowl's tempest in a C-cup, war has been declared on women's breasts. From Desperate Housewives' deployment of digital nipple-erasers to Victoria's Secret's nipple-negating bras, a campaign is under way to conceal one of the natural features of the female breast. The producers of TV's Desperate Housewives have reportedly spent thousands of dollars digitally removing the nipples from on-screen images of actresses Teri Hatcher and Nicolette Sheridan. In discussing the show's "nipple problem," series creator Marc Cherry tells the Philadelphia Daily News: "Certain actresses really don't like to wear bras. And we try to accommodate them as much as humanly possible. ... So we've done a lot of blurring."

Great! Is this going to be an emerging job market? I want to apply immediately..

Trust via chemistry? Study says it's possible

2005-06-02T00:17:00.000-07:00

USA today report some exiting scientific news from my home country:

Better deception through chemistry may be making its way to a nose near you, reports a team of neurochemists. Oxytocin, a hormone used to stimulate contractions during labor, also appears to be a trust-builder when inhaled, says the team led by Michael Kosfeld of Switzerland's University of Zurich. "It seems to reduce anxiety about interacting with strangers," says study co-author Paul Zak, director of the Center for Neuroeconomic Studies at Claremont Graduate University in California. "But it's not some sort of evil mind-control drug — spraying it in the environment won't affect anybody."

Wow! Imagine what would happen if we all would inhale it in a public place and we actually really would start to trust each other!! Armaggedon, armaggedon! (But seriously, we're can I get this stuff?..I'll pay cash..)

Bush & Blair love duet

2005-06-01T15:08:00.000-07:00

Are you tired of hearing politicians talk? Well, hear them sing instead. Listen to Saddam Hussein singing Imagine. Or to the love duet featuring Bush and Blair. Check it out on the website of the independent film- and TV production Atmo.

A hamburger today in L.A.

2005-06-01T04:29:00.000-07:00

A Hamburger Today reviews a couple of fast food joints in Los Angeles. Yummmie!

Truth test for online dater

2005-05-31T17:17:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post reports about a interesting business idea:

One of the sites creating the biggest buzz is Truedater.com, which launched in January and claims, says co-founder Mark Geller, 'tens of thousands' of users so far. On Truedater, visitors can input online identities from four dating sites - market leaders Match.com, American Singles and Yahoo Personals, plus the more nichey Jewish site JDate - and search for reviews that'll tell them if, say, Lovinit62 isn't quite the six feet he claimed, or if Cutedoctor14 seems longer in the tooth than 32.

A dating sites factchecker?? Is that how far we came?

Blogging becomes a corporate job

2005-05-31T16:51:00.000-07:00

Very interesting article in the free section of the Wall Street Journal about how blogging becomes a corporate job:

A small but growing number of businesses are hiring people to write blogs, or frequently updated online journals. Companies are looking for candidates who can write in a conversational style about timely topics that would appeal to customers, clients and potential recruits. Last year, Christine Halvorson was hired as chief blogger at Stonyfield Farm Inc., a Londonderry, N.H., organic yogurt company owned by Groupe Danone. She applied for the job after responding to an ad posted at Monster.com. A former freelance writer and Web content editor, Ms. Halvorson now writes four blogs for Stonyfield, including a blog about the company, the Daily Scoop, and http://www.stonyfield.com/weblog/CreatingHealthyKids/index.html, about healthy foods in schools. Her job entails researching, linking to news and providing personal insight. She earns an annual salary in the mid-$40,000s, she says.
Flycell Inc., New York, an 18-month-old provider of mobile-phone content such as games and ringtones, posted an ad on the technology-job site Dice.com in April for a "blogger/copywriter/editorial-content producer." The ad includes the following description: "Create, maintain and promote a blog that covers and reports about mobile-phone content and the marketplace ... Must have experience creating and updating blogs, including creating links to other topical blogs ... Blog savvy is a must." The annual salary ranges from $50,000 and $70,000. (...)
Blogging as a job has emerged as companies of all stripes increasingly see the Web as an important communications venue. Blogs allow firms to assume a natural tone rather than the public-relations speak typical of some static Web pages, and readers are often invited to post comments. While some companies are hiring full-time bloggers, others are adding blogging duties to existing marketing or Web-editing positions.
Currently only 4% of major U.S. corporations have blogs available to the public, according to a recent survey by eMarketer, a New York research company. But ads for blogging jobs are popping up on online job boards in recent months. "Blogging jobs are growing in popularity," says Jennifer Sullivan, spokeswoman for CareerBuilder.com.

Wow. The salaries are not too bad, considering the fact that is a new profession.

Book hits bestseller lists due to blogs

2005-05-31T16:49:00.000-07:00

A new book has made the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and Amazon.com bestseller lists without advertising, national bookstore distribution, a major publishing house, radio interviews, television interviews, or print interviews but through the power of blogs. The bestseller, “Call To Action: Secret Formulas to Improve Online Results”, may be the first book to become a national bestseller without nationwide bookstore distribution. Amazing. Another proof: the (underestimated) power of blogs.

Jeff Jarvis, On the Inside Blogging Out

2005-05-31T16:36:00.000-07:00

Great article in the Washington Post about one of my favorite writers in the blogosphere, "Blog Daddy" Jeff Darvis who just signed up for a new daytime job. An excerpt from the story:

He has denounced shoddy journalism, defended whipped-cream-covered strippers on television, discussed the pope on MSNBC, called in to Howard Stern, exchanged erudite letters with the editor of the New York Times, and championed the idea that any citizen can be "a Wolf Blitzer in sheep's clothing." In the process, he says, he has "rebranded" himself as Blog Boy. Jeff Jarvis, a former critic for People and TV Guide and a founding editor of Entertainment Weekly, has moved from writing for millions to blogging for thousands, slinging opinions on subjects ranging from the war on terror to car stereos. "God knows how many bits and bytes I've wasted on my blathering," he says.

Baby boomers: work after retirement

2005-05-31T16:25:00.000-07:00

A report by the JWT Mature Market Group and ThirdAge finds that personal fulfillment across all demographic groups is a very important factor in the decision to work in retirement. The report says that Baby Boomers and Aging Mid-lifers are working for more than pay. 42% of these groups say that plan to fully retire, but of those, 70% plan to work. And I guess if social security become privatized, retired people will even have more reasons why the have to continue to work...

The fastest way to browse

2005-05-31T16:24:00.000-07:00

Browster claims to offer the fastest way to search the Web. Here's how it works: By holding your cursor over an icon next to the search results, you can get an instant preview of the Web page the link is leading to. Actually quite helpful.

Ask God - from your cell phone

2005-05-31T16:18:00.000-07:00

No joke. "Ask God" - that's the name of a new service due to launch this June and targeting cell phone users. You can simply call a toll-free number, and a live Angel (I am not making this up, this really is how the service calls its reps) will perform the Web search for you, then text-message the results to your cell phone or even e-mail them to you. The idea is for you to avoid squinting at your small mobile screen. On its website, the company promises that it "will you with every answer imaginable, twenty-four hours a day. Furthermore, our service does not rest on the Sabbath." Haha.

7.5 million millionaire households in the U.S.

2005-05-30T09:35:00.001-07:00

O thanks god. Everything is fine in Bush country. The number of US households with a net worth of $1 million or more rose 21% in 2004, according to Spectrem Group. It is the largest increase since 1998. There now are 7.5 million millionaire households in the U.S., breaking the record set in 1999 of 7.1 million. The study excluded the value of primary residences, but included second homes and other real estate. - Let's also give them a huuge tax-break...

Fiber-to-the-home up 83% in 2005

2005-05-30T09:35:00.000-07:00

According to Telecommunications Industry Association, fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) installations have grown 83% since October 2004, now reaching 398 communities in 43 states. Wow, the super-fast internet is finally here...(and Verizon tries to get its customer hooked up)..

Americans become interested in "green" cars

2005-05-26T04:11:00.000-07:00

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

2005-05-25T11:54:00.000-07:00

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

2005-05-25T11:17:00.000-07:00

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

2005-05-25T10:53:00.000-07:00

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

2005-05-23T08:12:00.000-07:00

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?

Sinatra and sex

2005-05-16T04:15:00.000-07:00

The British Sunday Times reviews a new interesting biography about Frankie boy called "Sinatra: The Life" by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan who scrutinize his reputation as a voracious womaniser. This quote by Sinatra's ex-wife and Hollywood beauty Ava Gardner especially caught my attention: “There’s only ten pounds of Frank, but there’s 110 pounds of cock.”

Philly is the most depressed city in the U.S.

2005-05-11T03:46:00.000-07:00

Yes, the City of Brotherly Love beat out Detroit, St. Petersburg and St. Louis for the title. Men's Health magazine conducted the poll, which considered information on antidepressant sales, suicide rates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and data from the CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. Los Angeles ist ranked 83th. The least depressed city in the U.S. was... Laredo, Texas. (Via bookofjoe)

Great music blog

2005-05-10T14:41:00.000-07:00

Check out Hellhounds and Holyghosts - the name makes it already worth reading it.

Chicken ticketed for crossing the road

2005-05-09T06:01:00.000-07:00

I loove this story - it's too unbelievable to be true:

The Kern County Sheriff’s Department issued a ticket for jaywalking to Linc and Helena Moore because one of their two chickens fouled up traffic in in Johannesburg, a rural mining community near Ridgecrest, some 220 miles northeast of Los Angeles. Authorities say because chickens have been such a problem for the some in the community of fifty residents, they didn’t think a simple warning would resolve the issue. The Moores were in Superior Court on Friday to plead not guilty. A trial was scheduled for May 16.

Happy birthday, Leslie!

2005-05-07T08:34:00.000-07:00

The day comes with two of you favorites: cats and cupcakes! (The rest is in the mail..)

A new way.....

2005-05-06T05:39:00.000-07:00

... to look at internet search: Grokker. (That's what they say..)