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Category: General (Page 17 of 135)

Jones on Borders on the Block

Janet Babin of Marketplace called this morning to get me to talk for her piece “Borders may be on its final chapter.” I talked. She chose this:

Janet Babin: Borders blames the economic downturn for its challenges. But the company has struggled to define itself — it’s not a deep discounter, and it’s not a well-known hangout scene either.

Paul Jones runs the internet archive Ibiblio.org at the University of North Carolina. He says Borders is also losing out to online competitors like Amazon. They can offer you any book you’re looking for.

Jones says there’s only two ways for brick and mortar stores to compete with that kind of inventory:

Paul Jones: One is to create an incredible atmosphere in which people want to be there, and the other is to have the deepest, deepest possible discounts. And I don’t think Borders took on either one.

Janet Babin: Borders says its largest shareholder, a hedge fund, will loan it money to keep it in business — and may end up buying part of the company.

Should IMs be public records?

Jimbo found out the hard way what happens when private IMs go public. In a few minutes, I’ll be down at UNC General Administration talking about IM and law. I made this table of IM and IM-like services with the help of my Tweet-buddies.

I donno how much of this will be public, but I’m interested in what you think. Should IM conversations amongst state employees be subject to public records law? Should we be required to archive them? Should they be subject to discovery?

Wednesday: David Rumsey presents the OCLC/Frederick G. Kilgour Lecture

Rumsey on Maps
David Rumsey presents the OCLC/Frederick G. Kilgour Lecture
Turning Private Collections into Public Resources Using Digital Technologies and the Internet

When: Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Time: 2:00pm – 4:00pm
Where: Frank Porter Graham Student Union

David Rumsey, an historical map scholar and collector, will share how he turned his private map collection, one of the largest in the U.S., into a public resource at the second annual OCLC/Frederick G. Kilgour Lecture in Information and Library Science on Wednesday, March 19, 2008.

Rumsey, president of Cartography Associates and Chairman of Luna Imaging, Inc., will present, “Turning Private Collections into Public Resources Using Digital Technologies and the Internet” in the Auditorium of the Frank Porter Graham Student Union on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus at 2 p.m. A reception will follow.

Full info including parking and directions here.

Facebook event here.

Poet Jonathan Williams dead at 79

Jonathan Williams. Photo by Roger Manly
Jonathan Williams, the grand monster of Nawth Cackalacky verse, died yesterday. This news comes from Jeffery Beam who writes:

Jonathan Williams died yesterday evening (Sunday) around 9:30 PM.

I wanted to send this to as many people as I could : Feel free to share with others.

I am attaching a copy of the obituary I wrote for the NY Times and other media. Feel free to share it too. It doesn’t list the cause of death since I haven’t heard, as of yet, the official cause. [not online- pj]

You might also wish to read this posting about Jonathan’s work today on poet Ron Silliman’s blog

For those who can – you may also wish to visit Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina before June 7 to view an exhibition of Jonathan’s personal art collection at the Turchin Gallery. It’s a stunning show.

Condolences may be sent to poet Thomas Meyer, Jonathan’s partner and collaborator for forty years:

Thomas Meyer
The Jargon Society
P O Drawer 10
Highlands, NC 28741

Please join me in remembering an extraordinary individual who gave so much, oftentimes being ignored more than he should have been. A true “complete man of letters” as Silliman describes him.

From Jeffery’s obit draft:

Williams’ over one hundred works, published by many of the most important small presses in this country and Britain, exemplified his playful blend of polish and earthiness, and revealed his massive and impressive circle of friends. Williams seems to have known practically everyone of consequence in early and mid-twentieth century American alternative arts. An Ear In Bartram’s Tree (1969, University of North Carolina) and Blues & Roots/Rue & Bluets (1971, Grossman; 1985, Duke University) demonstrate his sensitivity to the nuances of language and the simple charms of Appalachian and White Trash culture. Quote, Unquote (1989, Ten Speed Press) was one of many editions of Williams’ astonishing accumulations of revelatory quotations discovered in his wide reading. A Palpable Elysium: Portraits of Genius and Solitude (2002, David Godine) offers a select view of Williams’ photographs of unique people and places accompanied by pithy, revealing mini-essays. The Magpie’s Bagpipe (1982, North Point) and Blackbird Dust (2000, Turtle Point) collect spicy essays on artists and culture. Jubilant Thicket: New and Selected Poems (2005, Copper Canyon) contains a selection of over 1000 of Williams’ poems.
Williams and his partner of forty years, Poet Thomas Meyer, lived since the early 1970s in a seventeenth century shepherd’s cottage in the English Cumbrian hills in the summer and at the Scaly Mountain home near Highlands in the winter. For the past decade they have resided mostly at Skywinding Farm, in Scaly. Williams is survived by Meyer, their beloved ginger-cat H-B, and numerous devoted friends and supporters. In the Appalachian poem “Epitaphs for Two Neighbors in Macon County No Poet Could Forget” Williams captures Uncle Iv Owens. It seems a fitting epitaph, too, for this remarkable man of American letters, Jonathan Williams:

he done
what he could
when he got round
to it

Esquire: Allen and Son has the best BBQ

That should be the Best BBQ anywhere there Esquire, but for now this is a nice report:

Allen & Son barbecue restaurant in Chapel Hill has been cited by Esquire magazine in its March 2008 issue as offering the best chopped-pork sandwich in the United States. The restaurant, which has been open since 1970, was cited in a 14-page special feature of the magazine entitled “Encyclopedia of Sandwiches: The Best Sandwiches in America” (page 146). Allen & Son is located on NC Highway 86, about a mile north of Interstate 40, at Millhouse Road just below the railroad track. It’s open Tuesday and Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Thursday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Links of friends

Elumenati and old buddy David McConville gets great Wired Blog attention at SXSW with the Elumenati Dome.

Napoleon Byars, my J-School colleague and former Air Force officer, has an opinion piece in The News & Observer today on the federal government’s effort to further restrict access to information called “Point of View: A move to seal up more information.”

Fred Stutzman
will be speaking at David Silver‘s Davies Forum: Digital Literacy at the University of San Francisco this Thursday March 13.

No sooner than I publish a little seven line poem about my friends the Seven Deadly Sins, than that Vatican names Seven New Ones! All this time, I thought Elvis Costello was right to sing “There’s no such thing as an original sin.” [list from our friends a Boing Boing]

Friends at the North Carolina Writers’ Network announce their new Joomla-powered website which is mucho more beautious and mucho more interactive. Nicki Leone did a bang up job on it from start to finish.

Friends from a distance, Will It Blend and Seth Godin, unite to make meaty and vegan Meatball Sundaes in honor of Seth’s new book.

Paul Wolfowitz tried to stick a friend of friend Dave.OfMassDistruction’s with his breakfast tab in Rwanda. Dave later got booked on the same flight home as Wolfie.

ibiblio, Eldritch Press, Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Salem Witches get some press love in “Salem Witch Judge and The Puritan Mind”

Some Links from Web Wise 08

I promised @arsepoetica that I would repost my twitter entries that included links and the like from Web Wise 2008 this past week. Here goes:

More extensive notes at the National Trust Historic Sites blog by Max van Balgooy

Wise to the Web in Miami

I’m off tomorrow to Miami for the Web Wise 08 conference put on by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (funders of Folkstreams.net amongst other projects). I’ll be speaking on Thursday in the “Power of the Users” section going through 12 slides in 15 minutes. Almost fast enough to qualify as an animation. One of the treats will be a reception at the Wolfsonian Museum right down the street from where I’ll be staying on South Beach.

Why do people publish in Open Access journals?

I’m asking you.

Just talked to a job candidate, who must remain nameless for now, whose work is involved in looking into who publishes in Open Access journals and who doesn’t and why? This got me to thinking of the various factors that academics weigh when deciding where to publish an article (also part of his work) and what kinds of things can be done to influence those choices.

Ideas?

How to pay for music (Crowdfunding)

CNet notices that Peter Spellman of Berklee blogging for KnowTheMusicBiz.com has some good ideas on how bands and musicians might get paid through Crowdfunding/Crowdsourcing. Peter names names of services that can help fans pay bands and then comes to this conclusion, which is straight out of the ClueTrain Manifesto (if you ask me):

Today’s consumers are no longer passive recipients of brand messages. They’ve become active participants in co-creating the brands (and bands) they love. One more reason why you need to build community around your own product and service experience at your site. It’s a worthwhile investment toward building customers, er, believers, who will be there for life.

EuroSong: Dustin the Irish Turkey – odder than Lordi

Dustin the Turkey (Buzzard)
Most of us, in the USA, can understand Lordi — Finnish heavy metalists who are also heavy on costume and makeup in a monsterly way. And a song like “Hard Rock Hallelujah” sounds somewhat familiar. So when Lordi won the EuroSong contest, we were relieved that there was something there more that mind deadening Euro-pop.

But now the Irish have upped the ante but offering a sock puppet named Dustin the Turkey singing “Irelande Douze Pointe”. Oddly I think that Dustin is onto the essence of EuroSong!

As a side note, I’d say that Dustin is not a turkey as we in the USA know turkeys, but more properly — if the word proper can be used in connection with Dustin — he is a turkey buzzard.Neither birds are native to Europe, which might make Dustin the first bird of American ancestry to represent Ireland at the Eurovision Song Contest

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