[Cross-posted at Lucire] Regular readers might notice, if they scroll, a few changes to Lucire’s home page.
We’re not Facebook,
so the change is designed to be evolutionary and not upset readers who
have grown accustomed to where things are on the home page. There’s
nothing tricky code-wise behind the scenes.
Recognizing the growing importance of this blog—after all, it forms
the basis of our cellphone edition (and yes, we are hurrying up the
guys who are meant to be fixing the glitches)—a headline from here now
appears there, below a Lucire TV video.
We will feature more from Lucire TV in weeks to come.
Feedback about the nip–tuck is welcome. We actually believe it’s
quicker, despite the additional content, but we’d like to hear from you
about that rather than presume we have a standard set-up (does such a
thing exist?). (We found some errant code on the previous design, so
those of you finding that the home page was quicker after Saturday were
not imagining things.)
Our home page has not really changed much design-wise since 2006,
and the inclusion of these posts is arguably the biggest change since
then.
We may still rework the location of the blog post and the main
story, as this blog changes far more regularly. Keep an eye on
us—things will keep evolving.
23 posts tagged “blogosphere”
The weirdos do come out on blogs, don’t they? Remember the nutter who wrote to my team saying that I was prejudiced against homosexuals? Just had one saying I am racist! Got to love ’em.
It’s as I said to my latest accuser: those who claim others are prejudiced usually harbour some strong prejudices themselves. The first person I refer to above certainly had it in for some people in his or her email because their views were not in accord; the latter, I sense, probably is a closet racist, who took one message in the post (‘I harbour no ill will to Japanese people despite WWII’) and twisted it in his head to read the exact opposite (‘I hate Japanese people because of WWII’).
Either that or Nathan works for Toyota.
Uncensored, since some of the words I didn’t want to share are no longer there, my Vox tag cloud:
Interesting, compared to the earlier one I posted. I assume Vox adjusts the tag cloud for currency. Some remarks about my personal Zeitgeist:
- there were a lot of posts either about 2008, but 2009 seems to be catching up rapidly;
- the US president got more mentions than Sec. Clinton, and the Republican candidates seem to have fallen by the wayside;
- Sam Tyler and Gene Hunt appear neck in neck, but there John Simm’s name does not appear. Jason O’Mara, his American counterpart, has slightly fewer mentions than Philip Glenister, who remains present. ABC, BBC, Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes all appear, but Ashes to Ashes’ lettering is comparatively small;
- still plenty of mentions about Lucire and Lucire TV and Miss Universe and Miss New Zealand pageants;
- New Zealand and USA seem to have a great deal of mentions and are probably close in number, with the UK, India and China following, and New Zealand is also detailed as Aotearoa, its original and still current name;
- New York appears to be the most mentioned city in this blog of late, with Wellington following (in both English and Māori) and Auckland third;
- there are more humour tags than politics’ ones;
- there’s courtship and dating but no romance;
- Mercedes-Benz, Audi and Ford are the only car brands, but GM gets mentioned.
Wow.
That’s all I can say after the Crowne Plaza’s contact with me yesterday.
As some of you know, I wasn’t that complimentary about the Crowne Plaza Today Gurgaon hotel during my time in India. The service was a trifle slow for such a top-rated establishment, and I blogged about it, almost in a throwaway fashion.
Yesterday, two of the staff—Monica, as well as Nitin Sharma, the assistant director of the food and beverage department—called me to apologize. And this morning, I awoke to find a written apology from Mr Sharma, which I have gratefully accepted.
His words: ‘I would like to extend my sincere apologies for the delay in service at the bar.
‘I hope you will accept my apology and give us another opportunity to showcase our hospitality. Once again I am truly sorry for the inconvenience caused.
‘I would request to give us another chance of proving the real hospitality of Crowne Plaza.’
If I wasn’t already enamoured with the high quality of Indian hospitality, I am now.
Of course I will be delighted to return to Gurgaon and check out the Crowne Plaza Today once more.
I’ve also offered to write about this in the online edition of Lucire, because the positive side of this deserves a wider airing. Who knew that the Crowne Plaza would make a customer feel this good after a negative experience?
This is real customer service in the 21st century. It shows (a) consumer power; (b) the fact that brands are now being steered by audiences and that the legal trade mark owner tends to be a steward steering perceptions; (c) that the Crowne Plaza is willing to engage its customers, safeguard its brand, and help steer those perceptions positively.
Thanks to Peter here on Vox, who offered to help me with hacking PHP and MediaWiki on Autocade after we exchanged some comments on the blogosphere, I am very happy to announce that the home page now has a random car entry along with a selection of 15 random articles and a summary of the latest additions to the site (which I had been editing manually). Pete went beyond the call of duty here and I have been totally amazed like a child in a toy store, clicking ‘Refresh’ to see what the computer will pick as the next random entry to appear. And while he is too modest to note this himself, he did spend quite some time refining the code, for which I am very, very grateful.
Over the last 10 years I have met a handful of people in person after I met them online—some of the blokes on the old New Zealand group on Yahoo! Groups many years ago; Stefan Engeseth, who has become one of my closest and dearest friends; and many colleagues in the industries that I work in. But I haven’t met too many bloggers after I began participating regularly on the ’sphere, so when I do, it is a bloggable situation.
Anyway, after performing with Tamara Buckland and her other students at a small recital today where yours truly played a blond Caucasian Nazi less than half my age picking up a 16-year-old girl (Rolf from The Sound of Music was almost a nonce) for one song (‘You Are Sixteen Going on Seventeen’), I decided to head down to St John’s Bar to say hi to Christy from Minneapolis, a Voxer whose travels I followed just prior to her arriving to New Zealand.
We had a chat and it didn’t seem too strange. I guess the whole idea of meeting people in person after reading their blog posts is perfectly normal in 2008. I kind of expected the ‘Wow, I can’t believe you are here in person!’ feeling that I got a bit from meeting some of the Yahoo! guys, or even with Stefan, but we chatted socially and pleasantly, including reiterating a few of the things we had blogged about. Even this time last year, there was still some novelty of updating one’s Facebook status to reflect what was going on in one’s real life—as I did at the wedding of two friends of mine.
This is the world in 2008—online and offline aren’t that different any more, and those who look at these as existing separately had better think again!
I am sometimes fascinated by my Vox tags:
I could have spent half an hour doing something more productive but them’s the breaks as a ratepayer.
Attn.: Transport Group, Wellington City Council
via email
Ladies and Gentlemen:
We’re very happy that WCC has contracted Fulton Hogan to reseal Mamari Street, Rongotai. The road was in need of repair and it was done with very little fuss or annoyance to the residents. The road workers were extremely courteous and made sure that we could carry on with our business without delay.
But—and there’s always a but—the entry to the street is more compromised than before, certainly more so than it was after the last repair.
The design of the entrance from Coutts Street is akin to that of a driveway now, rather than a street, which normally I would not have a problem about. In fact, for security, it makes the street look more private and out-of-bounds than it really is.
I know that the Council and Fulton Hogan would have seen this as an improvement and I thank you for that consideration.
There are some road safety issues as a result of the improvement, which you would not have been aware of without being a resident of Mamari Street.
That corner (outside Leo’s and 163 Coutts Street) has traditionally collected a lot of water. Now, because of the way the entrance is designed, more water collects in the new gutter, making it hard for motorists, especially those unfamiliar with the street, to see that it’s not a regular turn from Coutts Street, but more like a driveway. I see potential for accidents as a result of this; at the least damage to suspensions at the carriageway edge and gutter. This has become apparent with the extra rain we've been getting since the road works.
Secondly, the corner on Coutts Street between Salek and Mamari Streets is notorious for tailgating. Again, this would be something you wouldn’t have known. Some motorists will tailgate more on that corner, unaware of the pedestrian crossing there, or that the car in front has slowed to turn into Mamari Street, despite indicating. In the past one could make a hasty but safe retreat into Mamari Street if tailgated. Today, I am not so sure as the driver of the first car would have to slow down considerably more and tailgaters might not be able to react in time.
Thirdly, exiting Mamari Street is now more difficult, especially with front-wheel-drive cars which, as you know, form the majority of modern cars unless you go to neighbourhoods with BMWs and Mercedes. The gutter and carriageway crossfall from Mamari to Coutts now make it hard for these cars to get traction and on a wet day, wheelspins aren't uncommon.
With the increased traffic to and from the Warehouse in Lyall Bay, this intersection has become far busier and wheelspins, while a motorist is trying to join the main road, are potentially dangerous.
It’s another thing you would not have known without living here: with the greater number of SUVs and minivans, it is not always easy to see out of Mamari Street. We often have to come out into Coutts more than we safely should to see what is approaching from the southern end. A motorist coming out of Mamari Street risks getting T-boned as some drivers from Coutts coming from the northwestern side are not always prepared to slow down for the pedestrian crossing or for motorists exiting from the smaller street—sadly, we New Zealanders can be mean-spirited drivers. But to avoid wheelspins motorists may have to come out into the crossfall or risk the front wheels going back into the gutter.
Fourthly—and this is one that maybe affects me and one other neighbour more than other residents—the verge from Mamari Street to Coutts Street is at a more severe angle than I would like even though it is probably within your guidelines as being acceptable. My car is not a low car, but one neighbour has a Corolla with a spoiler. Even on mine I hear the tiny front spoiler (it is not a large boy-racer one, but a simple plastic air dam) scrape as I exit Mamari Street and enter the Coutts Street carriageway. I hate to think what it would do to her car which does have a larger, after-market front spoiler.
If it was just one issue I’d have been happy to put up and shut up, but faced with several potential hazards, especially the ones that are now becoming apparent with the rain, I hope you can look into this.
I am not sure what the best solution is, but the faux brick paving of Salek Street may be a solution for Mamari Street if the aim is to slow entering motorists. Whatever the case, I believe the entrance to the street should resemble that of a street, rather than a driveway, for safety reasons, even if I personally like the idea of living on a secluded, private-looking street.
Very truly yours,
Jack Yan
13 Mamari Street
(04) ***-****
cc for Councillor Leonie Gill, Eastern Ward
As I pasted this in, I thought: in the old days you might back this up with a letter to the editor of a local newspaper, or send it to someone higher up than the person you were addressing it to, to get extra attention. Now we just turn them into open letters and stick them on our blogs. Power to the people?
[Cross-posted] Sometimes I surprise myself on what comes up in blog comments. In a thread about the Iraq war and the short memories of nations over on Vox, I wrote the following. And as I wrote, I believed this to be a possible truth.
To go forth in the future we need to discover our past, a hard thing in an age of short memories as you say. … Leadership might not come from size but from those nations that have steadfastly refused to give in to the prevailing decline in so many places. Switzerland, for all its refusal to join the EU, has managed to maintain one of the greatest gun ownership rates in the world yet not have a single gun-related murder attributable to its own in most years; Singapore, retaining its Confucian philosophies, manages a city-state with limited natural resources.
Their example needs to be communicated to the world, as well as the positive aspects of certain parts of the US or China—they exist, but they are hidden.
This is one reason to like blogs because they can cut through the shield of the MSM and government propaganda. I do not think that we have reached any critical mass among netizens, networking citizens together in a form of moral leadership. … [T]here are pockets of good people everywhere as you and I have witnessed, just that we are not necessarily visible.
But that critical mass can come—and if warfare now is at a terrorist, guerrilla level in so many places, I suspect moral leadership itself will come from a grass-roots base.
The system needs idealists like us, reminding people of their short memories, and maybe change will be effected not through top–down governmental, propagandist methods or the MSM, but through one-on-few communications from each of us.
I would rather hope that the next superpower, therefore, is not a nation or even an ideology, but a collective of humankind cutting through the BS and revealing the truth. Who says the ’net cannot be a force for good once more? If it can propagate hate and porn, it can just as easily propagate hope and truth.
I get reminded of this every now and then by others who feel the same way: Chris, at the Edutainment & Convergence blog, wrote to me privately and inspired me. And when I think back to books like Beyond Branding and Typography & Branding, I think there was a great deal of post-9-11 optimism and the desire to build a better, more understanding world. I find passages of my Typography & Branding inspiring, if an author is allowed to be inspired by his own work, and I can’t have been this cynical back then.
It’s a good zone to be in and I haven’t felt this hopeful about the potential of the ’net in about a year.
Last year, I was bemoaning the decline of the blogosphere as it began looking more and more like the darker parts of society, with gossipmongers and rude, anonymous commenters finding their way on to it. Where were, I asked, the globally minded idealists of the 1990s?
On the other hand, their entry into this world surely puts them closer to the hands of the idealists who can now shape agenda, creating more hopeful sites and messages.
And maybe channelling or finding the above message from my subconscious helped me put things into perspective more. If indeed the state nation is less relevant and change is better effected by people helping people directly, because technology has now made that possible, then the moral vacuum caused by various changes in society can be filled.
All it needs are willing participants prepared to get together to make the world a better place, regardless of their political, cultural or religious stripes.
That’s really why I got into media.
If we agree on this target, then the rest must follow.
Just got this in from Mike Corso at Cool Site of the Day.
A recent Brazilian YouTube sex scandal threatened to close down every WordPress blog around the world.
Did you hear about it? It's already called “YouTube Gate”—apparently a spicy sex scene was posted on YouTube and someone discussed it on a WordPress-hosted blog.
The problem is the Brazillian courts placed a ban on viewing the IP address of the entire WordPress website …
… And that means potentially thousands of bloggers can't have their content shown in their country.
Even worse, this isn't the first time a violation like this closed down an entire network of blogs.
But the bottom line is this should be a wakeup call for those who rely on hosted blogs (like WordPress) to tweak their strategy and avoid getting their own blogs banned.
The good news is the fix is simple … just host WordPress on your own server (rather than hosting it on the WordPress site).
Getting WordPress installed on your own site is now a snap … just take advantage of John Saya's FREE WordPress autoinstaller.
http://www.cnotes.com/r/wordpress.html
Any questions, shoot me an e-mail.
Mike Corso
Cool Site of the Day
This is a bit disturbing. Global Voices has more info. One of the quotations indicates a million Brazilian bloggers will be affected.
I am not sure if a Brazilian judgement should have an effect on blogs like this, penalizing those in Brazil who are using wordpress.com. Those who didn’t feature the home-made porn on their blogs—as in the overwhelming majority of Wordpress users—should not pay the price for the handful that did. (And surely non-Wordpress blogs are affected, too?)
Surely a simple deletion of the offending URLs would suffice?
And this desire to post someone’s home sex video on to their own blogs—well, it ain’t my scene. Stick it on to YouPorn and let the perverts all go to the same place, and keep it off the blogosphere!
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