Live Music Ahoy! Newport Festival Saturday
July 29, 2009
The Newport Folk Festival celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. We’ll be there on Saturday, August 1. Here’s a playlist featuring some of the acts I expect to see (and led me to favor Saturday over Sunday, despite the fact that Neko Case is playing on Sunday).
Point and Shoot: The Next Generation
July 26, 2009
Two and a half years ago, I posted about a new digital camera, a Canon PowerShot A540 6MP, and remarked on how much camera you can get for a couple of hundred dollars. History repeats itself: this new Canon PowerShot SD1200IS 10 MP Digital Camera cost a couple of hundred bucks.
I ordered it from RitzCamera, since they take PayPal. (The link in the previous paragraph goes to Amazon, not only because I am an affiliate, but also because their price was lower). They ran out of my preferred color (Orange). A real human being called to tell me that they had Grey, but that I’d have to place a new order. For some apparently PayPal-related reason, I couldn’t just change the order to substitute a different color of the same camera at the same price.
The camera arrived a few days later. The package was waiting on the front porch. The front door bore a tag from FedEx stating that the package was round the back.
My favorite shots with the camera so far include this one (featured at Universal Hub) and this one.
The SD1200IS, as you can see from the picture, is about the size of a credit card in length and width. The depth is proportional. I went for another point-and-shoot, rather than trading up to a DSLR, because I usually go with automatic settings anyway, and explored only a very small subset of the A540′s settings. But if, two and a half years from now, DSLRs are getting down toward the $200 price-point…
New England Aquarium Media
July 23, 2009
We recently received the summer edition of blue, the magazine that the New England Aquarium sends to its members once a quarter. It includes an “on the web” sidebar, which draws attention to the aquarium’s blogs.
The above echoes my recent post about Zoo New England and social media. But where ZNE’s dead trees provided directions to multiple social media sites, NEAQ’s emphasized its blogs. NEAQ does use other sites; for example, I’ve just become a fan of NEAQ on Facebook.
There’s a lot to like about the NEAQ blogs:
- There are multiple blogs, such as: Giant Ocean Tank Divers; Marine Mammal Trainers; and Bahamas Expedition.
- For each blog there’s a clear subject, and a set of individual bloggers who are enthusiastic and knowledgeable about that subject. For example, the Tank Divers blog has a list of regulars, each with a profile. It also includes contributions from others; in fact, the above photo is from a post by an intern, Linda (the ray is anonymous).
- It seems that NEAQ regards its blogs as an important part of its website. At the risk of being a greedy advocate for social media, I’d like to see the blogs become more prominent, and I’d like to see a link to Facebook and to other social media channels on the blogs, etc. page.
I’ll summarize by saying that NEAQ uses blogs well to provide frequent updates from expert individuals. I emphasize that last word because, although organizations can enable and encourage blogging, good blogging comes from people who know and care about what they’re writing about.
Three Meme Post
July 23, 2009
It’s time to catch up with Threadless and their wondrous wearables. It’s also time to catch up with internet memes.
The image adorns a new Threadless shirt, Three Keyboard Cat Moon, that combines the Three Wolf Moon and Keyboard Cat memes.
That leaves me one meme short of a full post, or at least, one meme short of the promise in the title. Let’s go with Rickrolling, but let’s bring it up to date by mashing it up.
Zoo New England in Media Old and New
July 14, 2009
Zoo New England is the private, non-profit organization that operates Franklin Park Zoo in Boston and Stone Zoo in Stoneham, Massachusetts. We have a family membership: a good deal, since we probably average a visit a month to the FPZ, which is only about 20 minutes drive from our house.
I’ve intended for a while to do a series on the use of social media by some of the Boston museums and similar. As well as ZNE, this might include MFA, NEAQ, Childrens Museum, etc. Zoos in particular seem to be good candidates for blogging, with posts about animals, events, staff, etc. But I never saw a link to a blog, or other form of social media, from the ZNE web site.
ZNE has been in media old and new of late, following a remark that state funding cuts might mean that end for the zoos and for some of the animals. The Globe article might count as both old and new media, since its online and is followed by reader comments. Universal Adam documented some of the Gorilla marketing backlash from Boston area bloggers.
Then, in today’s snail mail, we received ZNE’s membership newsletter. In the middle of this old media, there’s a little panel: Join us online! It details four new media destinations:
- The ZNE blog, which is hosted by WordPress. It stated in January of this year. The content is along the lines I’d expect, although I’d like to see more of it. I’d also like to see more systematic use of categories, and use of tags.
- Twitter.
- Facebook, where the FPZ and the Stone Zoo have separate accounts.
- A ZNE Flickr group. I’ve just become the 9th member, and have added some photos, including the lion in winter shot included in this post.
My reactions to ZNE’s social media efforts so far include:
- Better late than never.
- Zoo New England doesn’t have name recognition, and is unlikely to develop it. I approve of having a separate Facebook identity for each zoo, since people are far more likely to recognize, search for, and feel affiliated with FPZ (or the Stone Zoo) than with ZNE.
- That said, I’m not against the idea of a single blog for ZNE. But I’d have a separate category for each zoo, so that someone looking for stuff on FPZ can more easily find it.
- ZNE’s main web sites should have prominent links to its social media sites.
- ZNE should get word out to bloggers (and other social media content creators) about its social media activities. Then it will get more links, more prominence in search results, etc. Of course, this post is in part an attempt to help with this effort of getting the link out.
Baseball, After 20 Years in Boston
July 7, 2009
I came to the USA in 1989, expecting to stay for 3 years and then return to Europe. For the next three years, I lived in Cambridge, and came to like baseball, and especially the Boston Red Sox.
The first game I went to at Fenway was a pitching duel between Clemens, then of the Sox, and Saberhagen, then of the KC Royals. It was on April 18, 1991. I know because I just found the box score. The names (e.g., Boggs, Burks, Greenwell, Reardon) show how long ago that was.
Another indicator of how long ago that was: Tim Wakefield wasn’t with the Sox. I saw the most recent of his many Sox starts on Friday. It was a lot of fun, even though the Sox lost. They did so in extra innings, so it’s just as well the game was briskly played. Wakefield works quickly, even though his pitches don’t move quickly. His fastball is 70-something mph. That’s quite a contrast, though, with his trademark 60-something knuckleball. It’s also a contrast with every other pitcher we saw. The Sox relievers, and the Mariners pitchers, threw hard, with changeups going over 90.
It wasn’t Wake’s best start, and can’t have improved his chances of making the All-Star roster. But make it he did: Tim Wakefield is an American League All-Star. He’s the pitcher in the picture. I think that the hitter is Griffey.
