kim: September 2008 Archives

September 24, 2008

Downtown Dallas is one of the growing numbers of once neglected mid-western downtown areas that is trying to rebuild itself. People are investing here and living here, and in this economy, it's exciting to see lots of construction cranes and either new buildings or great oldies that are being renovated. My husband and I live in a fab loft that once was a train station, and have been checking out other places in the area to actually invest in rather than just rent.

We found a great place to think about -- a condo community built to encourage green living. They have a rainwater collection system to irrigate the native landscaping, use wind powered energy, and they even throw a moped in with any home purchase. On top of that, the design is very nice. I love this example of the possibilities, even in the middle of a concrete jungle, for eco-friendly living.

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September 17, 2008

Artist Geoffrey Raymond stood outside of the Lehman Brothers' building with his painting of CEO Richard Fuld, asking passers-by, including Lehman Brothers' employees, to sign (theirs are in green). The messages range from "see you at the soup kitchen" to "I still will be a Lehman loyalist" -- the final product is interesting.

I would love to be able to do some sort of online project that is similar, that would illustrate various takes on a particular situation -- I think it very nicely captures the turmoil that's going on right now.

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September 14, 2008

The Moment has a great piece on CERN's Hadron Collider, calling it "sexiest piece of technology since NASA launched Apollo 9 in 1969." Considering the way that the space-age design from the 50's - 70's has been cool again in the last decade and even recently in web design, I'm curious to see how it will evolve with a modern twist.

This photo featured in The Moment reminded me a bit of a Kandinsky work:

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September 9, 2008

Apparently this photo has been around for a while, but a co-worker in Houston sent it to me, and it's starting to look like she might need to get a pair:

If I was into ocean-y, scuba kind of stuff, I would buy the blue ones in a heartbeat!

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September 3, 2008

I know it's no big revelation that news blogs are popular. They have been for a while and their popularity keeps growing. For some reason, though, I just never thought that a blog coming from a more traditional news outlet would be in the same league as a blog that stands on its own, like The Huffington Post.

I guess that when the TV and Newspapers started blogs, I sort of saw it as a ploy to get to the hipper, younger crowd in the same way that the Gap ends up adding stores to every corner in parts of town that were once cool for being a little rough around the edges. I didn't think they would carry that much weight, but like the Gap, they do.

My company's websites have been adding blogs like crazy...blogs covering news, sports, weather, celebs, wedding planning, weird news, and lots more. These blogs have been gaining such a huge audience that we've had to add servers twice this year, so far, just to handle the traffic.

After the last rash of crashes, I received an email from an editor telling me how important it is to make sure our blogs stay up, since they are "the lifeblood of what we do..."

As dramatic as that sounds, it seems to be moving in that direction as news providers see that the less formal style is what people are looking for, even when looking for serious news. Also, during huge stories like hurricanes or political stories, where content is being updated minute-by-minute, blogging software can be much easier to use, since the majority of CMS's tend to be much slower and more convoluted. We are finding that by putting blog headlines in place of the "normal" ones during breaking news stories, the information can be presented much faster and can be more up to the minute.

The less formal tone as a reason for the increasing popularity of news blogs is interesting though, as Ed Pilkington from the Guardian points out in this article. He is primarily writing about a nasty comment that McCain made several years ago that wasn't reported by the media, but he made an interesting point in the difference between British and American media and the popularity of blogs:

"Such coyness has long been ingrained in the US media, which has an annoying tendency to regard its readers as wayward children in need of moral protection. That's one important reason, incidentally, that blogs are doing so well in the US - they have no such scruples and behave in ways more akin to the British than the mainstream American media."

Aside from the ability to get news that is more current through news blogs, is it maybe even more relevant that people are tired of receiving sanitized, over-edited news? Or at least it is becoming more important to people to balance the sanitized news with the messiness of blog reporting. That and the ability to interact is becoming more important to people as well, and even though more news providers are adding the ability to comment on traditional articles, the community that develops from the less formal blogs seems to bring people back.

It's really cool to see a technology like that blossoming at an alarming rate and to see it become less of a geeky thing and more of an expected thing.

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