Entries Tagged 'Web/Tech' ↓

Matt Pulle’s column “Desperately Seeking the News” in the Nashville Scene this week may reek of petty sniping between former colleagues, but if you can wade through all the posturing about how much money each paper earns there is some surprising news located within it. The free daily newspaper in Nashville known as The City Paper is moving to a web-only presence:

Eight years after it first rolled off the presses, the free daily is positioning itself to become an online-only publication in a move that will reduce costs—and maybe threaten the paper’s limited advertiser base.

“In the not-too-distant future, that’s how most readers, particularly the ones that advertisers care about the most, are going to be getting their daily news,” he writes the Scene in an email.

Del Favero, who held the same job with aplomb at the Scene for 15 years, first hinted at his paper’s looming transition in a little-noticed trade press release in November.

“Our readers are more likely to read The City Paper at their desks in the morning. And what we found was that, increasingly, more of them were actually reading the paper online,” he said then. “Because of that online readership growth and the expense of delivering the paper each and every day, we are slowly evolving the paper from a print product to a primarily digital product.”

Aside from the rare astute editorial insight or worthwhile investigative piece, what The City Paper has to offer its readers and its advertisers is that it is free. People pick up The City Paper in coffee shops and restaurants because they want something to occupy their eyeballs while they slurp up caffeine and calories. They do not seek out The City Paper for its high-caliber journalism, fine writing or information unavailable elsewhere.

I used to read The City Paper online as part of my job as a media blogger in Middle Tennessee. It served its purpose as fodder for posts. However, I stopped reading the paper when it moved to the confusing calamity known as the E-Paper, because the new format was ugly, unfriendly to users, if not damn near impossible to navigate. For instance, this page looks great. There are paragraph breaks, relevant imagery and text large enough to read. However, this page is what is commonly called a clusterfuck. Start clicking around to see what I mean.

I have no stats or numbers or traffic reports to illustrate my belief that if the City Paper moves to the web only and does not abandon the e-paper format that they are making arrangements for their own funeral. But I am still confident that that will be the case.

I hope they prove me wrong.

Previously at Sparkwood & 21: E-tarded

The number of people who find this blog by typing my full name into search engines increases exponentially by the day. It’s starting to wig me out.

I removed some things and along with them more posts than I meant to take down. That is why your comment and the post on which you left it is gone. My bad.

I’ll admit it. I never liked the Suicide Girls. I never liked the models or the layout or the way it promoted itself as a woman-friendly porn shop. Now, don’t get me wrong: I don’t have a problem with pin-ups or pornography. Not one bit. But, for whatever reason, I was always leery of the beloved Suicide Girls with their nose piercings and tougher-than-thou fuck me faces. I just got an icky bad vibe from the enterprise, and now I see my girlie sixth sense was tingling for a reason. The Better Business Bureau has given the “girl power” group a rating of F:

We strongly question the company’s reliability for reasons such as that they have failed to respond to complaints, their advertising is grossly misleading, they are not in compliance with the law’s licensing or registration requirements, their complaints contain especially serious allegations, or the company’s industry is known for its fraudulent business practices.

As many as 30 former-SG models have come out to claim that, “[SG’s] embrace of the tattoo and nipple-ring set hides a world of exploitation and male domination.” Now the BBB is piling on, and it looks like the criticism is well deserved.

So guys, if you like your porn pretties pierced, surely you can find an alternative to this punk porn site in this day and age. However, if you subscribed to SG to help empower the young ladies who make up its galleries, then good on you for the best of intentions. Now you can feel free to get any kind of exploitative spank material you wish. I hear some of the non-SG online ladies even have the normal number of holes.

Comcast can suck my butt. I was trying to sign up online for limited basic cable and hi-speed internet access when I was told that those without existing Comcast service cannot choose the self-installation option. Confused, I called Comcast to ask about this (I’ll sign up for t.v. today, then call back tomorrow for internet, if I have to), but was told by a rep that that wasn’t true. I could have self-install. She wanted to know if she could sign me up on the phone. I told her that I wanted the 19.99 per month intro rate offered only online, so no, but she told me she could do that on the phone. I agreed.

Then she transferred me. The machine wanted to know the phone number where I wanted service. We do not have, or want to have, a land line. So, I entered my cell number. This put me in connection with a Nashville-area rep. That rep transferred me to a nationwide rep, so I started all over. Told them about the 19.99/mo. intro rate, and that rep told me she’d transfer me to the internet department, who could offer me that special rate. Transferred a third time, I was put in touch with a woman who told me she couldn’t offer me the intro rate, but because I was “promised” it, that she would make it happen. Wow, thanks. However, I was never signed up for the limited basic cable that I wanted, so once she figured that out, I was put back on hold so she could “make a few changes.” This took about 10 full minutes.

After all that she tells me the fee for a technician to come out to set up the modem is $60. I explained to her that THE ENTIRE REASON I CALLED was to get the self-installation package. She informed me that was impossible, because I do not have an existing account. WHICH IS THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF WHAT THE FIRST REP SAID.

Thirty minutes after my initial call I am pissed and ready to get the fuck off the phone. I agree to the $60 fee just to get it over with. Gah! So fucking frustrating. I was told two different things, talked to four different people and ended up back where I started.

Fucking Comcast, I swear. I thought I could escape those bastards.

I spoke with Broadcasting & Cable reporter Mike Malone last week, and today his story was published. None of my quotes made it in, but it is a nice write-up nonetheless:

Brittney Gilbert, formerly the face of the progressive Web strategy at WKRN Nashville, is moving next week to the Bay Area to head up a new blog effort at KPIX. Perhaps the only fully professional local TV blogger in America, Gilbert will scour the San Francisco market’s numerous Web logs, highlight and comment on the more salient posts, and eventually oversee a blog aggregator representing what is typically a wide array of Bay Area passions and interests.

“We were talking internally about how to create content that helps separate us on the Web,” says KPIX Director of Internet Operations Jim Parker. “We were looking for a signature blogger who would make us unique from the other stations in the market.”

Read the rest.

I really love my Tumblr log. I just wanted to say it again. I like that you can one-click other people’s Flickr photos; instantly added to the log. It is just so easy to stream all my streams in one attractive place.

I get smitten often, but I think this one might stick.

UPDATE: Subscribe to my Tumblr feed, fools.

I got myself a Tumblr log. I like it.

I’m not sure who this Penelope Trunk chick thinks she is, but her “advice” is some of the worst I’ve ever read. She seems to be as shallow as a saucer, and I find her columns to be laughable most times. This one is extra shitty. I spoke at BarCamp Nashville just before she went on stage, and I found her to be quite unpleasant. It is an opinion many have formed.

She writes to be provocative, for its own sake, it seems. This woman is all about promoting herself by means of being outrageous. I notice the folks at Yahoo disabled the ability of readers to comment on her drivel because most of the response is so negative. No surprise. She relies heavily on stereotypes, and even encourages women to flirt with their male counterparts in the office. Her message often seems to be: “Sexism and discrimination exist. Deal with it. I did! *wink*” Why anyone takes advice from a failed executive who had to file bankruptcy is beyond me. This is a woman who used to sell advertising on her tits and ass while playing professional volleyball–an accomplishment she is quite proud of, even traveling the globe to tell eager men people all about it. She seems to rely heavily on her appearance to get ahead, since I can’t quite figure out what she’s actually done that warrants her attempt at career adviser. In the past she has viciously called out detractors as fat in a most brutal way, only to later delete said post, I assume out of embarrassment:

“This woman,” Trunk wrote, in a blog post she’s since deleted and replaced with a sorta-kinda apology, “”is walking around telling people you have to have a career while you’re raising kids in order to take care of yourself, and she is obviously not taking care of herself. Look, I wouldn’t be harping on this if she weren’t so fat…”

And this attitude seems to run rampant with her. “Flirt with bosses, don’t be fat and skip hard work in favor of social interactions at the office.” Brilliant! No wonder she failed at business and had to take her sad act on the road.

Thankfully I’ve come to the realization that Penelope Trunk is just doing what Ann Coulter does so well: outrage for the sake of her own career. If you think this woman has any concern whatsoever about your job trajectory, you are mistaken. Katherine Coble sums up best why you should ignore this incredibly superficial, yet widely read, woman:

I consider her to be a narrow-minded opportunist who doesn’t account for differing personalities and the vagaries of situations. Everything I’ve ever read or heard from her seems predicated upon the notion that her experiences are the only valid ones and her diagnosis of situations are therefore the Righteous Truth. It strikes me as odd simply because it’s the point of view one most frequently encounters in children younger than six. Yet she’s been able to parlay her bizarre sense of object impermenence into a series of paid speaking and writing gigs. … Penelope Trunk is a master provacateur. Her entire careeer is built out of marketing herself in any way possible–whether that means selling ads on her bikini, billing herself as a “career expert” or parlaying prejudice into some sick form of abusive advice. Penelope Trunk isn’t interested in helping anyone other than Penelope Trunk.

Amen to that.