Great News Story–You Forgot Something

Silence pointed out a story in the Tennessean this morning about political bloggers in Tennessee. Newscoma points out something too.

Not a bad story but it amazes me that they didn’t link the bloggers they were talking about.

Come on ‘Coma…what part of “they don’t get it yet” don’t you understand?  Giving credit where it is due, the KNS is great about pointing out local bloggers when they mention them, and they have been for a long time.

I think that’s a pretty good strategy. Use your assets to become the center of the blogging community, and try not to alienate it.

Straight Outta Knoxville

Thanks to the guys at Knoxify and Rootclip, I’m wearing a shirt today…my new Rootclip T-shirt that I won via Knoxify’s giveaway.

Eastcoast? Westcoast? Nope. This is all about Ebenezer and Westland–aka The Westland Ghetto. Entry to Knoxify’s contest was open to anyone discussing their ‘hood in the comments, so I figured I’d represent my block here.

And here’s a better look at the high quality T-shirt. Thanks again for helping save on my clothing budget, and check out Knoxify and Rootclip if you get a chance…both are examples of high quality interneting.

I’m a Big Winner

Just wanted to say thanks to the guys over at Knoxify for rigging their random number generator so that I could win their contest.  Look for me around town wearing a shiny new RootClip t-shirt.  Hopefully by the end of the summer it won’t look like it’s two sizes too small.

I’ll be repesentin’ the Westland Ghetto in style.

Forget Education, Someone Has a Better Idea for Schools

From the NYT

“Imagine schools that are open all day and offer after-school and evening recreational activities, child care and preschool, tutoring and homework assistance,” the speech reads. “Schools that include dental, medical and counseling clinics.”

I’ll get around to imagining that just as soon as I’m finished imagining schools that do what they’re supposed to actually do–educate.  Right now, I’m not able to do much beyond imagining.

Going to the Mat has similar thoughts.

Since the mid-60s we have asked more and more of our schools to help close some socially worrisome gap, that the schools have forgotten how to do their basic mission–educating kids. Adding more “social missions” to the schools is not going to improve schools.


WordPress 2.6 Nice

WordPress 2.6 has been released, and there are some really nice features in this version.  The biggest new feature to me is the revision history, which allows you to compare every revision of a post and also gives you the option to revert back to previous versions.   Other really cool features are a live word count, ability to reorder images in a gallery you’ve uploaded, captions for images, and a “Press This” button for your browser that let’s you post right out of an article you’re reading.  Does that mean I have no excuse for the light blogging I’ve been doing lately?  Now I have to pop in a post from EVERYTHING I find interesting?  We shall see.

On the admin side, plugin management has been changed to make things much easier (multiple activation is now enabled) and theme preview is now available without installing a plugin.  I’m sure I’ll write a post later complaining about all of the things that are broken, but I’m pretty happy with this update so far.  These features make WordPress even better for use as a full fledged CMS.

MSM Strategy

AP vs Bloggers, Couch-gate, and _____ coming soon to an outraged corner of the blogosphere some time next week.

If a marketer were smart, she’d use this surefire formula to duplicate these incidents.  It’s really a simple process, and it creates buzz and a ton of web traffic.

  1. Announce or release something that is sure to piss off bloggers.
  2. Wait for the eventual meltdown to occur in the blogosphere.  You won’t have to wait long–people falling all over themselves to talk about you.
  3. Clarify what you originally announced or released just as the buzz starts to die down, reviving the discussion.  Make sure everyone knows it was all just a misunderstanding.

Excuse me while I plot a way to generate traffic for myself instead of someone else.

Carnival of Local Political Gaffes #1

Welcome to the June 16, 2008 edition of carnival of local political gaffes. This is the first edition of the carnival, and there wasn’t much notice for submission, so contributions were light overall, but there is plenty of great stuff here, at least if you live in Tennessee.

Christian Grantham presents:

Mt. Pleasant Commissioner charged in brawl at City Hall–“Now calm down, Bobby! Calm down.”

Another drunk Tennessee politician puts lives in danger–“If you’re under federal investigation for perscription fraud, don’t show up drunk down to the FedEx hootin’ and a hollering over a lost package of pharmacueticals.”

Rep. Rob Briley threatens and blames the media–“He clearly hasn’t even gotten past the first step in his 12 steps out of the drunken hell he’s inflicted on the rest of us.”

TN House Majority Leader Gary Odom to get hitched–“He’s older than her parents, and she’s younger than his children, but at least the 56 year old House Majority Leader waited for the Capitol Hill intern and beauty queen to turn 24 before marrying her.”

SVD presents Arnett pays overdue taxes : posted at Hayes Hickman–“Is being the CLERK really that difficult…Before you run for the office that collects taxes…make sure yours are paid.”

So next week should be a little more extensive with submissions outside of TN as well. Submit your blog article to the next edition of carnival of local political gaffes. To submit an article just click here. Submissions are due by Sunday.

Local Web Wars

Jack Lail comments on the Golden Age of Web News:

The community will certainly win through more intense and competition-honed news coverage and some damn good local news Web sites.

For those of us on the outside looking in, this is the most encouraging result of competition.  The news organization that can bring us the one fact or caveat to a story that the other doesn’t will gain an advantage, if only for 20 minutes or so until they are trumped by the other guys.

Then again, no one is really completely on the “outside” anymore.  Now it’s more like we all have at least a right leg or left leg in the mix somewhere.  The blogosphere has made news coverage one big hokey-pokey.

Found–Another Good WordPress Resource

I’ve been spending the last few days working on a couple of new projects that I plan on launching later this week or early next week. On Monday I put my first WordPress plugin out for the world to, uh, bash. Just kidding (not really).

I’ve been lucky enough to find a few people who are willing to run it through the wringer and show me the problems and what can be improved. The unexpected bonus is that these guys have great resources on their own websites, and I may not have discovered them otherwise. For example, I was checking out Leland’s site, themelab.com, and ran across a really good article on improving on existing WordPress themes which instantly solved a problem I’ve been having on one of my new projects.

It’s really encouraging to find people who are willing to help out and make these projects go more smoothly, and it’s really cool when you find a resource like themelab.com that you can refer to again and again down the road!

RSS Awareness Day

RSS Awareness Day May 1st has been declared RSS Awareness Day by, uh, some folks who want to raise awareness about RSS. I was actually surprised to learn that only 5.4% of internet users are currently using RSS. I’m pretty vigilant about watching my subscriber numbers, so I would LOVE to increase RSS usage to somewhere closer to 15%…that would theoretically triple my readership.

So for those of you who read this blog regularly and don’t use an RSS reader, let me again emphasize how cool of a technology it is, and how it will change the way you read on the web. For instance, using RSS, one could gain the ability to subscribe to and read a site from work which has been blocked by their company’s IT department, if one were so inclined.

And for those of you who are bloggers and/or webmasters yourself, help spread the word by promoting RSS Awareness Day on your own site. I truly believe that together we can make a difference in the way people surf while looking super-smart in their eyes at the same time. 😛