Reading Material

The Bulletin Reports 34% Circulation Gain By Fudging The Numbers A Bit

The latest ABC numbers are out, and the Bulletin’s numbers grew 34%, which is an astonishing number, considering newspaper circulation is down or flat pretty much every where else. So how’d they do it? By counting their e-edition subscribers, something that ABC is allowing them to do. So basically, they’re counting the same person twice in many cases.

I know a bunch of people over at the Bulletin, some I’d consider friends. and if this news helps folks there keep their jobs and brings in more money so they don’t have to be forced to take days off every month, than all the better. But I’d fully expect The Source to rip into this the first chance they get.

Apparently “The Liberal Agenda” Is The Cause For All Problems

The American Spectator is asking its subscribers to pony up some $26,000 in donations to help it offset increased printing costs. Their reasoning? The shortfall was “created by the perverse incentives of the liberal agenda.” Um…OK…

According to the conservatives, the liberals are to blame for everything, including rising costs of paper. Apparently costs for paper weren’t rising at all over the last decade, just during the last two years.

This is why I avoid political discussion, as this kind of crap is so prevalent on both sides of things.

Bend’s A Thriving iPad Market, Apparently

Quoting Fortune/CNN: According to Net Application’s May 1 report, the five U.S. market areas with the largest concentration of iPads — measured by its clients’ browser data — are as follows:

  1. San Francisco, Calif. (0.25% Internet share)
  2. Grand Junction, Colo. (0.23%)
  3. Santa Barbara, Calif. (0.19%)
  4. Honolulu, Hawaii (0.19%)
  5. Bend, Ore. (0.19%)

The author obviously knows nothing about the area and apparently forgot that you could get the iPad at places other than an Apple Store. They have the Internet over here in the sticks.

As Robert points out, however, the margin of error on the ±0.9%, which is nearly half of our percentage which is nearly five times our percentage (I mis-read the decimal point), so I wouldn’t take those numbers too seriously.

However, the best part of reading it is the comments. Many folks from the area have obviously found the story and are commenting on it (I saw it when it was posted, thanks to Barney, but didn’t have a chance to post/comment), and smacking the author around a bit for thinking we’re completely isolated morons out here. Robert and I share a favorite:

One came down on an ox cart from the Cascades with the Indian traders. i defrosted it by the campfire. i use it to kill rock chucks so there is food for dinner.

Let’s Party Like It’s 1996

The Geocities-izer will make any site “look like It was made by a 13 year-old In 1996.” I’m thinking about redesigning this site based on its suggestions (be sure to turn up the volume for full effect).

WTF, CNN?

I’m not a huge fan of CNN, FoxNews, MSNBC or many news sites any more. While I used to be a CNN guy, I am finding better reporting and better news on other sites. WTFCNN really breaks down the reasons why it’s sometimes better to shop around for news.

Time Killer For The Evening

What if you could play the classic Super Mario Bros. not as Mario but as a different classic Nintendo character? Easily one of the most well-done games I’ve played in a while.

Awesome Reaction To Unpaid Bill

Client doesn’t give a crap about paying you? Give back the crap.

Personally, if I worked with gigantic amounts of poop on a daily basis, I’d probably have the same reaction, and would probably do the same thing.

Steve Job Rips Up Flash

Rarely does the Apple founder come out and write something like this, but his open letter against Flash is well worth a read, and he makes a lot of valid points. I’d like to see Adobe’s response to this.

Personally, I see both sides of the argument, and while I typically don’t agree much with Jobs, I kind of have to on this. Flash is a resource hog in many cases, and holes in it (along with Acrobat Reader) have been the cause of many malware infections I’ve had to deal with. I can see why Apple doesn’t want it running on their phone.

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