Accept no substitutes

Day: May 5, 2006

Note to Chapel Hill Magazine: It’s Carrboro

Issue Number 1 of Chapel Hill Magazine showed up in the mailbox uninvited but not unappreciated today.

I was immediately confused. The cover is not of Chapel Hill but of Carrboro (“Where it is always 1 degree cooler” says Ron Stutz who is profiled in the magazine). Those who have lived here and those who have only heard “It’s Carrboro” will identify the Weave and the hula hoopers right away.
Flipping to the cover article “15 Ways to Love Your Summer” or “A Summer Place: It’s hot, but it’s cool” — the article is not sure of its own title — the confusion continues. Of the 15 wonders, only 5 and a half are in Chapel Hill. The rest are in Carrboro and in Hillsborough. All of the special days are shared by those two towns — no special summer days are in Chapel Hill it seems.

Note to Chapel Hill Magazine: the Carrboro Poetry Festival has been cancelled this year according to the link you provided and the Festival site.

No wonder people are confused about where they live if even the town magazine isn’t sure what is what. It is possible to have a Chapel Hill mailing address, have kids in Chapel Hill High School, and to live not in Chapel Hill or in Carrboro but in the planning area for Carrboro (meaning you will be annexed by Carrboro one day but for the moment you pay no Chapel Hill or Carrboro taxes).

The Magazine is published in Chapel Hill. Its offices are on Market St in Southern Village where Weaver Street Market, a Carrboro company, has an outpost which we call Market Street Weaver. When Carrboro High opens in 2007, the kids in Southern Village will go there. The Southern Village homeowners are paying Chapel Hill taxes. The tower for WCOM, Carrboro’s community radio station, is there not far from the Magazine’s offices. In fact, you get better reception in Southern Village than in parts of Carrboro. Market Street is just about as close to Carrboro Town Hall (3.4 mi or about 6 mins) as it is to Chapel Hill Town Hall (3.1 mi or about 6 mins) according to Google Maps.

Luckily for the Magazine, confusing Hillsborough is much more difficult.

Israelis twice as geeky as Americans?

Rick Smith sends this report from comscore about world-wide Internet use.

Among the interesting findings is that

[Of] the top 15 countries ranked by average hours spent online per visitor for March 2006, as a measure of engagement[,] Israel led the list, with the average user spending 57.5 hours online during the month — twice as much time compared to the average person in the U.S., which did not rank in the top 15 countries. Rounding out the top 5 were Finland, South Korea, the Netherlands and Taiwan — all countries with high broadband penetration.

Failure to pursue a national policy on broadband access has cost the US much of our lead in world-wide Internet services. A variety of nation policy directions in the top 5 countries (and in China) has created economic and social benefits to their citizens.

On other findings, MSN, Google and Yahoo! lead in both unique access and in page views. MSN being first in accesses. Yahoo! leading in page views. Google is second in both categories. But Wikipedia has shown the greatest growth in both areas.

comscore’s site version of the press release “694 Million People Currently Use the Internet Worldwide According To comScore Networks” is on their site.

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