I feel judgmental, and talkative, which means it must be time for: Reviews of restaurants and movies—Brit’s, El Cholo’s, “Master and Commander” and “Triplets of Belleville”.
You’ll notice that my “Overheard” Web log, which keeps an accounting of small interesting quotes and snippets I come across, has been featuring a number of movie pitch lines taken from this year’s Variety-published guide to movies being sold at MIFED. I did find one trend that was worth gathering together into one big post: That of Reese Peanut Butter Cup-like amalgams of ideas that really don’t go so well together. Allow me to present…. These Don’t Go Together
Here are the blogs I’ve found that talk about the Online News Association conference; if you know of others, please let me know and I’ll (of course) blog them on my site.
In fact, I didn’t get the chance to do anything except learn and learn and meet and re-meet, and get energized and excited about online journalism and the many, many potential benefits and changes that it has yet to go through on its way to becoming the most powerful medium in the world.
I’m off to Chicago for the weekend (plus two days) for this conference. If you have any suggestions for what I should do in Chicago, let me know. A full report while I’m there and/or when I return.
Susie and I had sushi tonight with Jae and Karin. It was at a brand new restaurant in San Dimas called Big Sky Sushi. It was really quite good; everything we ordered was yummy, and we way way overordered, so I can assure you that we sampled a good portion of the menu.
So, Susie and I have this new deal. Every Saturday by noon, we each have to put 10 items on the dining room table. The ten items are things we’re ready to get rid of. Some of my items this week were books, and I took them to Cliff’s Used Book Store in Pasadena.
“I’m not bitter about what happened to me as a child, and my mother was instrumental in keeping me from being so. ... She taught me to be grateful for my life regardless of what that entailed, and that’s directly related to the image of Christ on the cross and the example of sacrifice that he gave us. What she taught me is that the deliverance God offers you from pain is not no pain—it’s that the pain is actually a gift. What’s the option? God doesn’t really give you another choice.”
After over a decade of user testing, it is clear that the way we search the web is similar to the way we would search our home for valuables as it was burning to the ground. Frantically.
“We must shift the focus of companies back to the customer and away from shareholder value ... The shift necessitates a fundamental change in our prevailing theory of the firm… The current theory holds that the singular goal of the corporation should be shareholder value maximization. Instead, companies should place customers at the center of the firm and focus on delighting them, while earning an acceptable return for shareholders.”
You can scroll right easily by holding down the SHIFT key and using your scroll wheel. (Firefox users trying this will end up jumping to old Web pages until a) Firefox releases a fix, b) they change their settings like so.)