Surfing The Web So You Don't Have To
Has anybody ever heard of The Bend Weekly? Simone came across a job posting for them on Craigslist, and it looks like they’re looking for a graphics guy, too (though I don’t know how comfortable I’d be applying if you’re like me and have a family to feed — I don’t know about the longevity or pay). The thing is, despite their claim of “approximate readership is 31,200”, I’ve never once seen their weekly printed edition.
Anybody know anything about this?
If you’d like to make some money off your photos (and I’m considering throwing a few up there as well), a new local stock photo agency might be able to help you sell them (yes, that is Simone‘s new project).
We’re now up to 137 feeds over at Bend Blogs. Many of the ones I added in the last couple days were LiveJournals, a few Blogger.com blogs, and even a few MySpace and MSN Blogs. There’s some very good reading and some well-established blogs that have been added that I didn’t know a thing about, so be sure to check it out.
And for my reference, here are the Google search queries I used to find them (and variations on them for the different cities):
Also of note: I didn’t bother to put any blogs on there that hadn’t been updated in more than 6 months or so, though I did find quite a few of them. I’m pretty sure one of the features they’re working on for Gregarius is a system that automatically depreciates a feed after nothing has been posted to it for six months (which would include several blogs there, I know).
If you notice something I’m missing, please let me know (contact form coming on BendBlogs of these days).
Nearly a year ago when I started BendBlogs, I had grandiose dreams of a great site with timely information, great speed, searchable, RSS feeds, etc…. Unfortunately, that never became much of a reality because of the limitations of working with the software I chose, and really not able to find time to replace it or hack it to make it work how I wanted it to. The site has grown to over 130 blogs from around Central Oregon, and with its growth the limits of the previous software were starting to show.
Then yesterday after thinking about the site, I decided to search around again for solutions, and found a great one. So it gave me a chance to clean up totally dead feeds and rebuild the thing. Obviously it still needs a bit of work (as it’s mostly the stock template with some hacks, and I need to implement a few other features), but here’s the all new Bend Blogs. Among the new features:
Obviously, I still need to do some work on the site, and many features on there are totally messed up in Internet Explorer 6.x (I haven’t tried the 7.x beta, but I know it works fine on a real browser). On my to-do list:
So go check it out, and comment here if you notice anything or have a feature/bug that should be added to my to-do list (or notice any blogs that I’m missing).
Zillow is a very neat looking service to easily compare home valuations, but it’s data for Deschutes County is absolutely useless and dated (and they admit that when you search for information in the area). However, if they somehow get all the information from the County, it’ll be far easier to use and figure out how much your boss’s house is worth with Zillow than with the county’s current solution for property records, the DIAL database.
If you’re a local and looking for a significant other, Mark, a long time reader of this blog, has created a local dating site: BendRomance.com. It looks like a very well-done site, and while I’m not into that sort of thing, I’ve had the idea cross my mind in the past as a site this area needed. If you have any comments about the site, be sure to comment here so Mark can read them and comment as well.
Not only is my wife horribly allergic, but the critter might burn down my house.
Full story here. I’m kind of in the middle on this one. I will admit that I shop there, as it’s cheaper, open later (which came in handy last night as my daughter had a really nasty coughing fit, and we had no medicine). Do I hate what they pay their employees? Yes, but there are lots of companies out there that do the same (and Wal-Mart hires many folks who couldn’t get a job elsewhere). Do I hate that they put smaller companies out of business? Yes, but the smaller companies have started to adapt.
But I do agree that before they build that monster of a store on Bend’s north end that Wal-Mart should have to foot the bill for some of the improvements up there. I just wonder if anybody would be throwing such a fit and requiring as much of the company if this were anybody but Wal-Mart.
Anyway, I’m not really going to debate people on this (don’t have time), but I leave it open to discuss here.
Update: Great discusion here, folks (just remember to keep it civil). And here’s some more reaction locally from Simone and Chris.
Evan over at SportsVision is looking for an ASP programmer to do some work for him — particularly, hacking the shopping cart software from volusion to do what he needs it to do.
Since I don’t know a thing about ASP, nor do I know where to point him, you can e-mail him at evan [at] sportsvisionbend [dot] com or you can comment here if you’re interested.
As we all know, the quality of the content on Bend.com has pretty much gone downhill since Barney left. They went from the leading source of breaking news in the area to nothing but a press release dumping service. And while I looked there a great deal in the past for news, I rarely visit them anymore, as what gets posted is rarely news and when it is actually newsworthy, it’s a straight press release dump from the source, with no additional editing or reporting. I’d rather get the full story from other local media outlets, thank you.
Not only that, but Spencer Dahl, Bend.com’s president/CEO/owner/whatever seems to like to pick fights and instead of using appropriate channels he picks an entry of mine that’s nearly two months old and posts a comment about how my pagerank is zero — like I didn’t already frickin’ know that (why do I have this feeling that he may have had something to do with it?). You can read our exchange in the comments here, and feel free to add to the conversation if you feel the need to (or just comment here).