Category: Local

The iPad Is Here

Personally, I think the iPad is “meh” at best and if I was going to get a tablet, I’d get something else. That being said, there were folks lined up at Best Buy this weekend to get one (thanks Michael at StandAloneCode for the vid):

Best Buy apparently started with 10 units of each of the models: 16, 32, and 64 GB. Then UPS dropped off another 20 of each. So by the time they opened, they had 90 to work worth. Any idea if they sold out?

They still don’t support multi-tasking, but there’s a reason for it.

Robert played with the iPad for a bit and posted a quick review on it, based on one he saw over at Connecting Point.

And 24 hours after it was released, the iPad has already been Jailbroken.

In other local Apple news, this was also the same weekend that the iPhone was officially available. I was over at the Mountain View Mall Cascade Village Shopping Center the day it opened on a completely unrelated matter, and the new AT&T store was absolutely packed. Did anybody here pick up one? Personally I’m waiting for my contract with my phone to run out before I decide what I’m doing, but it probably won’t be an iPhone, because AT&T’s plans are ludicrously expensive compared to Sprint’s.

April 4, 2010

Bend Cable Purchases KBNZ

I have a feeling this is some sort of April Fools Joke, just like Topeka.

Central Oregon Cable Advertising announced it has purchased Bend CBS affiliate KBNZ from New Vision Television in a deal effective today.

COCA is owned by Bend Cable and is a sister company to BendBroadband, Central Oregon’s primary cable and high-speed internet provider. New Vision owns Portland CBS affiliate KOIN, which provides KBNZ with its program feed, as well as 11 other stations nationwide.

There is nothing to be found on New Vision’s site, or BBB’s site, nor on KBNZ‘s. I heard this on the radio this morning, and it looks like B&C picked it up. I heard it not on KBND, but on KICE, who doesn’t have nearly the news team KBND has. Nothing on KTVZ or The Bulletin, either (not that I would expect a TV station to cover other local TV station news).

In other words, take everything you read in the news today with a grain of salt. ’tis Internet Jackass Day after all. I seriously doubt this turns out to be true (and one of these days I’ll pull a great April Fools joke on this site, I just never have time to get it all implemented).

Update: It’s no joke. Full release after the jump (Thanks, Barney!).

(more…)

April 1, 2010

Bend Blogs is Now On Facebook

So I’ve gone through the effort of creating a quick and dirty Bend Blogs fan page. My goal is to have it pulling the content from Bend Blogs, posting it into the wall of the Fan page, and potentially bring more traffic to the folks who list themselves on Bend Blogs. It’s very much in its infant stages, but if you’re wanting to become a fan, feel free (primarily so I can get enough fans to get a username).

Any suggestions on how to fully utilize the page are welcome. Really, the Bend Blogs site needs a redesign to take better advantage of the various social networking opportunities I’m working on setting up. @bendblogs will be coming soon, @utterlyboring is already here, @jakeortman will never happen. I’ve come to realize that fewer and fewer folks are reading RSS feeds anymore, getting their content via Facebook and Twitter. Thankfully, there are many apps and services out there to automatically dump RSS feeds to both of these services, so while my original feelings about twitter haven’t changed much, I obviously need to let people know when new content has been written to keep some sort of ad revenue coming in so I can pay for my server fees.

If you run a Web site, and want Bend Blogs content on your own site, I do have banners and widgets for that, and remember there is a mobile version as well.

If you’re wondering why I suddenly am getting into this more, it’s because I’m working on setting up and customizing Discover Sunriver’s Facebook and Twitter profiles and pages, so I’m also using my various experiments to figure out how to do things properly before I implement them on the Discover Sunriver pages.

Update an Hour Later: Woohoo! We have the required 25 fans for a username! You can now find Bend Blogs on Facebook at facebook.com/bendblogs

March 30, 2010

Sunriver Would Like To Be A Google Fiber Town

Last month, Google announced plans to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. While the official list of cities and communities that applied hasn’t been released yet, looking at the map on Google’s site, there were obviously several communities in Oregon that applied or sent in a response. Sunriver was one of them.

The Sunriver Owner’s Association sent a release about why they’re doing it, created a site to keep the community updated, and created a video for their RFI response. They’ve also setup a twitter presence, for those of you who are into that sort of them (I’m not).

Many of their points make good sense, but considering the sheer number of folks who have applied (more than 1,100 communities responded, according to Google), and all the crazy tactics — one mayor promises a tattoo and other cities will rename themselves — it’s going to be a tough pitch. But considering the flat-out lack of really decent, reliable, high speed internet access out here (while I like the Cable company’s service and the people there, 100% reliable it is not), it might put them up the list over places that already have good service and a large quantity of fiber already underground.

March 28, 2010

Last Chance To Sign Up For The Pick ’em

We’re now up to 43 competitors in the free bracket pick ’em. I emphasized “free” because people think you have to pay for it. You don’t. It’s free and for fun. I don’t make a dime of this. However, a lot of local businesses (and some not-so-local) businesses have thrown in some great prizes (I just added one today). These businesses deserve your support, and I’d encourage you to click on their ads that are appearing over to the right of this post or the list below, visit their sites, buy their stuff/services, but most of all thank them for participating in this bit of fun.

Entries and brackets have to be filled in by the crack of dawn tomorrow morning. We already have a record prize haul, and record number of competitors (we had 30 last year), I’d like to see us get up over 50 people before game time tomorrow. So if you haven’t signed up, or your friends haven’t signed up, tell everybody you know and potentially win some great prizes.

Thanks again to some of our the prize providers (some of our prizes were provided by me or by folks who didn’t want credit):

Baker City Vacation Rentals

Paizano’s Pizza

SUPERAntiSpyware

Mug Revolution

Jake’s Diner

Dave Woodland at Signet Mortgage

Bend Oregon Restaurants blog.

March 17, 2010

Local High School Grad Now Owns World Track and Field Record

While it was impressive that the Oregon women won the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships (and the men placed second), the most impressive performance of the weekend was Mountain View HS graduate Ashton Eaton breaking the world record in the heptathlon, with a score that would have won him the world championships (which also occurred this weekend). If he would’ve competed just by himself as an individual, he would’ve scored in a bunch of events as well, and probably would have won a few indoor meets this year single-handedly.

In short, the guy is a stud.

March 14, 2010

KOHD Is Still Broadcasting News — Sort Of

HackBend, BendTech and this site all posted stories about KOHD ceasing their news broadcasts. Well, apparently they’re not ceasing them entirely, just making them much shorter with little blips through the day in between and during other shows. They’re no longer doing a full newscasts, from what I can see. Over at KOHD they’ve updated their news schedule for the various times they’ll be on TV with news updates.

I still stand by my original point that I’m not a TV news watcher (I’m rarely in front of my TV, and if I am I’m hardly ever on KOHD/ABC). I also agree a lot with Jeff over at BendTech that the problem isn’t with KTVZ or KOHD, but with Nielsen. Having been a Nielsen family on a couple of occasions, I can see how easily the system could be ripe with fraud, skewed or useless data.

March 11, 2010

KOHD News Is No More

This news broke last week on Oregon Media Central, but KOHD made it official: KTVZ will be the only game in town for local TV news broadcasts, as KOHD is going to be rebroadcasting KEZI news out of Eugene, with a few packages created by a few Bend-based reporters. KOHD will still exist as a station, but they won’t have a local news broadcast. This comment sums it all up nicely.

Honestly, I liked the look/feel of the KOHD broadcast, and felt they did have some good people, but their Web site absolutely sucked. While KTVZ’s is full of ads (they have to pay the bills), at least there is useful content and conversation there. For those of us who aren’t able to be in front of a TV when the news actually is broadcast on TV, online local news is important to me. Thanks to Barney’s inability to ever stop working (I don’t think that dude sleeps), KTVZ has the best online local news content. (The Bulletin’s might be good, too, but it’s mostly hidden behind a paywall.) KOHDs site was usually riddled with typos, layout errors, and ugly grammatical errors, and I never considered it a useful place for online news.

That being said, competition in a market is always good. But it appears KTVZ doesn’t have any now, since KOHD and KBNZ are both just broadcasting sister-station content (and KTVZ-parent company NPG also owns the local Fox affiliate, so that eliminates the other major network).

Update: Forgot to even check, but Jon at HackBend is all over this, too. I knew about the news a few days ago as well, but with Band concerts and other family functions and work projects, this is the first I’ve been able to post anything.

March 8, 2010

Cascade Winds Concert Coming Fast

One last plug: Our concert is in a couple hours, and I hope to see some of you there!

March 7, 2010

How Will This Change Stress Levels At The DMV?

Some Oregon DMV offices are killing their Muzak subscription, as the elevator-music versions of Celine Dion and Aerosmith are driving the workers nuts.

March 4, 2010