Surfing The Web So You Don't Have To
Interesting article and discussion asking the question: What if some of the world’s best photographers had posted their photos to a photo message board? Would they have been told to crop things out? Would they be told that the color’s wrong?
Link via kottke.
Now these are the kinds of investigative projects I like to see. This is the project given to students and faculty from five major universities in a multi-year effort.
The American military is in the midst of a profound shift in strategy that is reshaping the military’s presence, and in many cases, its mission, around the world. Older, permanent bases are downsizing or being restructured; newer, smaller and more flexible bases, in places new to American troops, are being created. We are looking for ways to tell stories—cultural, economic, political and environmental—about the nearly half million men and women serving the security interests of the United States overseas.
I can’t wait to see how this project comes out.
Thanks BB for the link.
I have an old high school teacher that I still keep in touch with. He’s into retirement now, and he’s been spending most of his time playing Freecell, and he goal is to beat all of the games. Too bad some of them are truly unsolvable, depending on which version of Windows you’re running (later versions include more games).
Why would you do something like this? Because you can.
I don’t know how many times I’ve mooched broadband off unsecured access points. Maybe I should stop…
A Vancouver, Wash. coffee shop tired of seeing a 20-year-old man mooch off their free wireless Internet access called the police, who charged him with “theft of services.”
Brewed Awakenings employees dialed 911 after Alexander Eric Smith of Battle Ground, Wash. piggybacked off the shop’s wireless Internet service for more than three months.
Speaking of free WiFi, the access point I was setting up at my office is now live (it was live last Friday, so it could be up and running before the Pacific Crest Triathlon and sports festival that has taken over Sunriver the last few days). It covers a good chunk of the Southern part of the Village Mall. I took some of what I learned from responses to a previous post and built it into a good functionl access point. Our antenna is up on the top of the mall by the Coldwell Banker office, but there’s a signal at El Pescador, Dave (not a very strong one — I’m working on that). So if any of you are in Sunriver, feel free to hook up to it — I promise not to sue you or have you arrested if you mooch (we have bandwidth and content filter and proxies so bandwidth usage is minimal and it’s on a separate DSL line from our office T1, so we don’t care what you do with it).
If you haven’t seen the video that was referred to on the news tonight, you can see it here. Go ahead. I’ll wait. Anyway…
Disclaimer: I work for companies who are participating members of the BVCB and COVA (Central Oregon Visitor’s Association). I’ve seen damn near every bit of marketing that has come out of this area, and have participated in the decision making that’s shaped some of that marketing. I wasn’t a part of the discussion that approved this video (if there was an approval process, I have no idea), so I can’t vouch for any of that.
There seems to be a lot of folks saying tax dollars shouldn’t be used for this sort of thing. Now, it’s my understanding (and somebody correct me if I’m wrong) that both COVA and BVCB get tax dollars not in the form of it getting pulled from locals, but from room tax revenue, and it’s required to be earmarked for tourism marketing for the area. It’s my understanding that nobody at the BVCB or COVA has to preapprove anything with the city, other than maybe their annual budget or planned use for the money they’re earmarked.
The BVCB, like COVA, also receives money from its member companies, and my guess is that the $35,000 that was spent on this video could’ve easily been covered by membership fees from all the companies that are part of BVCB (which run about $400+/year, if I remember correctly) and might not have ever touched those funds earmarked by the city or county. Nevermind…see below…
Am I wrong here? Somebody please speak up if I am. I’ve already stated my feelings about the video, so we don’t need to go into that again (but my boss hadn’t seen it, and as a board member for a couple of these local organizations, he was a bit shocked that somebody actually approved it). But feel free to comment below.
Update on 6/21 at 11:50: Had a brain fart here. The BVCB is not membership based, like I originally thought. I was getting them confused with the Bend Chamber who, if I remember correctly, used to share a building with them up on the north end of town.
My apologies, but the fact remains that it was room tax that was used to fund this, not local property taxes.
Dave is still waiting for a Craigslist to show up for Central Oregon. Though I can’t find any reports that they’re planning on adding 100 cities (do you have a link, Dave?), the nearest thing we have right now is BendStuff, which started up last week (something I’ve been wanting to start, but just haven’t had the time/domain). Obviously it’s not very populated right now, but the guy running the site seems like a nice enough fella (and he’s a local, unlike some folks who own some local sites). Be sure to check it out until Craig decides to open up shop here. If that ever happens and I were the guy running BendStuff, I’d just shut down then — you just can’t compete with Craig.
Because the ear naturally ages and generally can’t hear higher frequencies as you get older, kids are taking advantage of that and getting ringtones out of their hearing range.
But apparently if you’re over 25, you’re the demographic for this well-done gaming publication 2O2P (Too Old To Play) Magazine. You can download the ad-free (unless you count the old-school Intellivision and Atair ads, which are a nice touch) 80-page PDF version of the magazine here.