Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
July 16, 2012
Follow me to Tumblr!
You can still find me, cyberly speaking, at the venues listed here--Heroes and Heartbreakersm Goodreads, Amazon, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.--but I've taken to very short blog snippets on Tumblr. Please follow me there.
May 28, 2012
This blog is going on indefinite hiatus. Very few of you read it, and I'd rather reach a larger audience. If that mean spreading myself across multiple social media platforms, so be it. As a result I've provided handy-dandy buttons within two tables below for all the places you can follow me.
My tweets tend toward the political, and I'm progressive. Most of my library database is on Goodreads, and as it is becoming more and more the readers' social media outlet, I've just begun to post reviews there. Goodreads will more or less replace this blog, at least for now.
| Goodreads | Google+ | Huffington Post | My Jam | |||
My Facebook offers some personal nuggets and funny stuff. I try to keep my political stuff on a FB group I started earlier in the year. Google+ seems to be a more visual sort of social media outlet, so I try to post mostly photos, although when I post a review or a piece of writing somewhere, I'll link to it from g+. I pin at both Pinterest and Loveit, but since the latter is in beta, I didn't create a button. If you are a Loveit beta tester or would like to be, I'll be glad to share an invite and/or my home there. If you have a page on the Huffington Post, feel free to use the button below to link to mine. Finally, I post a weekly song to This Is My Jam. Nobody else uses it, but I try and curate my selections thoughtfully.
Though I've reviewed at Publishers Weekly since the late 1990s, other than a feature article I wrote last year, reviews remain without bylines. But it's a huge part of my work life, so feel free to link to PW, and if you are a subscriber, each week you can access upwards of 80 new reviews.
 Writer |  Blogger |  Member |  Reviewer |
After a substantial injury-related hiatus, I'm back on Heroes & Heartbreakers, with four posts in recent weeks. I've not written anything for some time at NBCC, but it's particularly interesting to those interested in literary fiction. Finally, the green leaf will [eventually] take you to my Amazon profile page, and the hundred plus reviews I've written.
And now I'm off to Goodreads to review Tiffany Reisz's The Siren.
October 1, 2011
Snarked on Net Neutrality
I've written before about Net Neutrality, and probably a quarter of my tweets relate to the issue. The FCC's Net Neutrality rules just went into effect, and Free Press is one of several entities to file suit against the FCC. The rules, you see, don't provide for true Net Neutrality; while they address the issue where land-based computers are concerned, they don't for wireless.
It's hard to get a handle on how much profit Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint make per cellular customer, but enough is never really enough, is it? AT&T recently eliminated the ability to buy a limited number of texts in favor of a $20.00 option for unlimited texts. I believe wireless companies make approximately a 10,000% texting profit. Another example: When I tried to change our existing plan to less than 700 minutes, I learned the 400 minute option—which would have worked for us as our daughter does most of her talking at night and on weekends— had disappeared. Like restaurants charging more for ever-larger plates, cellular providers are closing out less expensive options in favor of larger profits. And as there's so little competition, who's to stop them?
Free Press, a national, nonpartisan group working to reform media, sends out daily emails about media-related news. Many of those news items these days relate to the activities surrounding the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger (different filings made by AT&T as various items have leaked surrounding costs and jobs, lobbying money spent on Congress, unions, and corporations to win their support, and the recent Justice Department's Anti-Trust filing) to the fight for and against Net Neutrality.
I spend a lot of time reading articles linked to by Free Press in newspapers, magazines, online journals, The Huffington Post, etc., because the issue of Net Neutrality is important to me as a writer and former web publisher. You can imagine, then, that I was more than a little perturbed when I read the following headline yesterday on the Techland blog for @Time by @MattPeckham: Net Neutrality Proponents Sued by Net Neutrality Proponents? Though Peckham eventually cuts to the chase, it's not until four paragraphs in that he addresses the issue; until then the suit is made to sound frivolous and nonsensical. Here's the lead-in that follows the headline:
The folks who just officiated over net neutrality Internet regulations, the Federal Communications Commission, are being sued by—yep, the folks who fought to make net neutrality happen. Net neutrality's advocates suing net neutrality's enforcers?
True story.
Again, Peckham eventually makes Free Press' case, along with the FCC's response, but to me the article's headline, that snarky lead-in, and the lack of context related to the issue frustrated me. What's ultimately at stake is what the creators of the Internet envisioned, not a two-tiered system that cellular providers have already begun to force on customers.
It's clear that corporate interests already have a disproportionate impact on legislation, but articles like Peckham's do nothing to dispel the idea that corporate interests now infect journalism. The media bias I fear comes from corporate America, and that's what I worry filtered through into this particular article. "He said, he said" doesn't provide readers with the information they need to understand what's going on, any more than allowing politicians and their spin-meisters from making lies without being called on their bullshit because we've so perverted the concept of equal time that lies and reality now share the stage.
Yesterday I tweeted my displeasure and early today Matt Peckham answered me in a tweet. And then he snarked me by posting about a #Superficial #Reader" and linking back to his article on the Techland Blog. Ouch!
September 19, 2011
The Mashboard
It's 11:30, the DH is sleeping as he has an early morning, so it's just me listening to Rachael's radio show on KHDX 93.1 at Hendrix. I'm very proud of my very musical daughter and the unique angle she's found to entertain people. Her show is called The Mashboard, and her Monday night playlist features various mash-ups like this one—Norwegian Recycling's No Taylor, No Scar, which includes music from Missy Higgins, Men at Work, Jack Johnson, and Wyclef Jean.
I've enjoyed all of the mashups she's played tonight, even the one that features the altogether annoying Fireflies by Night Owl. If you get a chance next Monday night, you can listen on your computer like I'm doing tonight. I think you'll like it.
It's time to sign off now, and I'll do so as soon as Hulk Mash's mashup of Ke$ha, Taylor Swift, and Maroon 5 comes to a close.
August 15, 2011
A Web-Based Transition
My desktop blew up a couple of weeks ago. It was just about seven years old, and though it was built for power and speed, I put it through the ringer during my years at the helm of AAR. Serviced several times in the last couple of years, I knew it would go at any moment, so when it died, I wasn't altogether surprised.
The biggest pain in the ass associated with its loss was coping with iTunes. It took an entire weekend to make it work properly via my laptop from its backup on an external hard drive, but because my laptop is itself several years old and not in the best condition, until iCloud becomes fully functional this fall and I can move all my music (including non-iTunes music) online, I'm being smart and keeping the library on that external hard drive rather than chancing my music to my laptop.
As of today I've translated my reading database into a Googledocs spreadsheet. I'd initially tried to create a database elsewhere online using a "free" application, but the app charges $240 a year to create backups. Ain't gonna happen. The spreadsheet isn't as detailed or quite as useful, but as I've begun to use my husband's netbook to conserve my laptop for those things I cannot do using web-based applications, it'll have to do.
Because of Google's meltdown a few months ago during which time thousands of user accounts were unavailable, I'm making sure to mail myself copies of certain documents to a web-mail account entirely outside of Google's system...or saving them to a flash drive. After working with computers for so long, I know it's imperitive to have at least one backup of everything.
Making use of cloud computing makes sense if using more than one computer, as many of us already do. I'm not entirely comfortable with it, but apparently it's the coming thing, and I know I must adapt. Doing so requires giving up some control as far as design is concerned, but at this point, accessibility and convenience win out over perfection, particularly as it's perfection only important to me.
At some point I will need to replace my laptop, but refuse to shell out the money to buy one right now. Ever since my days at the City of Dallas, when I scrounged my computer out of the trash of a department with an actual technology budget, I've learned to make do. Although it's been a lifetime since then, it's still my M.O.. When I absolutely need to buy a new computer, I will. Hopefully the prices will have fallen by then. My guess is that that time is coming sooner rather than later, but if I can make the transition to The Cloud between now and then, so much the better.
June 26, 2011
You've Got Mail
On Thursday my daughter and I went out to lunch, then stopped off at a local B&N before moving on. After being accosted by the Nook salesman, I realized how off-putting my own Nook selling must have been for many of the customers I hawked at. I did enjoy playing with the new B&W touchscreen Nook, but didn't like the salesman's getting a basic Kindle fact wrong in trying to contrast the two. All in all, not a great experience, and one that alerted me to the reality that I no longer enjoy visiting B&N. Since the Borders across the street—there first for years before B&N moved in on their territory with a boutique-like store that remains one of my least favorites—closed a couple of months ago, it's the only game in town, save the big Half Price Books nearby, and as much as I enjoy a bargain, the experiences are not the same.
As I told my daughter over lunch when she launched into Luddite mode about the death of retail (yes, she's only 19), the world changes, and we must change with it. I told her about Lee leaving his job as lead in the Music section because he didn't want to preside over its eventual dismantling. I told her that although I left to earn that abortive MLIS degree, I knew that every Nook I sold would eventually eliminate my job. I understood that the necessary cannibalization of B&N's brick and mortar stores through lower prices at B&N.com would eventually do the same. It just depressed the hell out of me to be in the thick of it.
Is that a bad thing? Well, last Thursday my daughter wanted two older books. They were available at Amazon and I planned to order them until she asked if we could get them at B&N so she could start one immediately. I did that whole text me if you have them thing...and never heard back. Meanwhile, I went ahead and ordered the books from Amazon, and they arrived Friday afternoon, a full day before we expected them. Now, you may not be able to browse at Amazon, or sit in a comfy chair...oh, wait...you can't do the latter at many local B&N's anymore either. The store I worked at never had the great chairs, and at some point the management removed all customer chairs save those in front of the window at tables near the magazines. Another local store removed most of their comfy chairs; the last three times I visited and wanted to sit and read awhile, there was no place to do so, leaving me feeling bait & switched: "You once invited me to spend the afternoon by providing a comfortable place to sit and read, and now, unless I go spend more money at your cafe, you'd really prefer that I leave."
I'm hoping this disaffection with visiting B&N ends, because as a life-long reader, spending time wandering around bookstores has been a favorite activity. Even throughout my two-years as a B&N bookseller I enjoyed visiting various stores throughout the country as a customer, although I forever straightened up display tables and put books away that others had left behind. But because actually buying at a B&N tends to be a costly experience, and because Amazon's prices tend to be lower (sometimes by a little...sometimes by a lot) than B&N.com's prices, I don't expect it to go away any time soon.
Sigh.
BTW, I did take exception to one scene in the movie. When Kathleen Kelly wanders into Fox's books and sits in the Kids section, a customer asks a salesman about a particular book, and he can't help her because he's simply an anonymous clerk who might well have been working at Home Depot. At least at our B&N, we had answers most of the time because those of us who worked there actually, you know, read. At least at our B&N, that woman would have been offered help and/or a recommendation by the time she landed in the Kids section.
August 15, 2010
When a Train Wrecks, People Get Hurt
In early July I mentioned that most of Bare Escentuals' colors are formulated for women with warm skin tones. Suzi McGowen commented about a line of mineral make-up with lots of cool toned choices that I'd never heard of - Aromaleigh. I visited the site and saw it was preparing to shut down. I didn't want to build up an attachment to something soon to disappear, so I stopped looking. Then, when FragranceX, a website that supposedly carries discontinued BE could not fill my order for Heaven blush, I decided to take a second look at Aromaleigh.
Soon I had three brand new blushes, heavily discounted due to the going-out-of-business sale, that were all in my color way, and at that point I thought to myself, "Why is this woman going out of business after twelve years?"
Both before and after my vacation last month, I alternated between investigating and ordering eye shadows, which were even more heavily discounted in the last two weeks. Tonight at midnight the website turns off its lights for good, and I am strangely bereft. Not because I'll need mineral makeup any time in the near future, but because of what I learned...and what I still do not know.
Did site owner Kristen Bell use unapproved ingredients in some eyeshadows? One group - whose members set up a forum ostensibly to provide a forum for all mineral make-up users to rant even though their intention, allegedly (and there is evidence of this), was to rant against Aromaleigh - says yes. Kristen Bell's defenders say they were told by FDA employees that the site was victim of a witch hunt.
Did Aromaleigh's owner fuck up with an overly complex point program, some iffy customer service, and erratic personal blogging? It looks like the answer to all three is yes. Staffing issues, a death in the family, and a divorce...in all likelihood these matters contributed to some Bad Behavior, but compounding these personal problems were some women who decided they needed proof of her suffering, and by doing so, caused more suffering, and probably more erratic choices.
In the end all I know is this: I placed five orders in the last two months, during a period when Aromaleigh's owner was trying to get rid of inventory by using ingredients to mix probably a hundred and fifty shades of eyeshadows and forty shades of foundation in three formulations, and experienced terrific and personalized service, and near-immediate delivery. There's a whole lot involved in running a business that ships internationally, and hordes of the site's international and/or institutional customers, worried about order fulfillment, began filing premature claims with Paypal, resulting in thousands of dollars taken from the business account and presumably held in escrow in the interim. I don't envy Kristen Bell's life over the last two months, and in some way feel a kinship with her as a person who made some mistakes and suffered some very public consequences.
All that said, had I been a customer made to feel guilt over the mention of poor service, if I felt blown off after questioning the safety of a product, no doubt I'd feel somewhat differently. After all, look at how publicly I've announced my anger toward Penguin books, but Penguin is a large corporate entity and not a small business. Then too, I'm not out to close Penguin down...I just want them to treat their ebook customers as they treat their print customers.
So it's not quite an apples to apples thing.
As midnight approaches on the East Coast - it's slightly less than an hour away - my thoughts are with Aromaleigh and its owner, and some disgruntled customers who apparently played a part in its closing down. I'm reminded of some instances in my own online past and some individuals who caused me personal pain as a result of my public position. I didn't lose my livelihood as a result and therefore cannot truly know how Kristen Bell feels, but I do wish her luck in the future and hope she finds a creative outlet for her talent.
June 22, 2010
Business as Usual?
In another sign that our nation is veering headlong into corporate facism, both the FCC and Congress are engaging in closed-door meetings with ISP's to re-write telecom law, most likely to limit effects of Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality, for those of you who have heard the term but are uncertain as to its meaning, is precisely what it says: that there be no restrictions used by those who provide the "pipes" for the Internet. In other words, An ISP must be neutral in allowing content through its pipes and cannot slow down access to or prevent users from access to online content.
Let me give you some personal, historical perspective. Years ago when AOL was still preeminent, AAR was not available to all of AOL's users. There was nothing as a content provider I could do about it. Indeed, I remember being stunned after speaking with somebody at AOL who told me, "We are not required to provide access to all websites online." Several years later, when a router in the Mid-West broke, AAR became unavailable for a good chunk of the country and the company that provided that router was not required to fix the break. Instead I was forced to pay AAR's host to create a fix around the break, and in the interim weeks, we lost untold thousands of users temporarily...and the number of users who simply thought we'd gone offline permanently remains unknown.
Let's jump to the future now, where Time/Warner exists and NBC and Comcast may be merging. Without Net Neutrality, when owners of the pipes that bring us content also own companies that generate large amounts of content, they can, quite legally, either slow down or stop the competition. In a case brought by Comcast against the FCC earlier this year, a federal appeals court stated that the FCC lacked the authority to require Net Neutrality, leading both the FCC and Congress scrambling to create some level of authority by regulation or law.
Where's the sunshine?
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