Successful Blog

Chartreuse Has Picked His New Orleans Team

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Citizen Journalists after Katrina

You might recall that Chartreuse’s Prince Campbell put down his own money, which was added to by the Blogging Times, the Blogging Herald, and KnowMoreMedia, to send a film and interview team to New Orleans. The crew of three who will be going was announced today on a post on Chartreuse (BETA). The team of three includes:
Mishikea Brathwaite: From Los Angeles, Calf., Travis Campbell: A New Orleans native who now lives in San Francisco, California, and Loren Feldman: From New York, New York. They will be helped when they get there by New Orleans resident, Candice Quates, friend and reader of Succesful Blog.

As Prince said about the trip:

The three people will be meeting in New Orleans on Friday August 11.

There is a Thrifty rental car reserved for them at the Airport.

They will be staying at the Avenue Garden Hotel on St.Charles Ave. in the Garden District of the city. (One of the main reasons I chose it is because of Internet Access. High Speed is not available in some of the hotels I checked.)

Though they will be mostly on their own there are already interviews set up with people in a 150 mile range. These are people who supposedly have first hand knowledge of some of the atrocities mentioned in the email I received.(They will have to do some travelling but this isn’t a vacation.)

The point of this trip is to find out the truth. And to give us a first hand view of what’s happening in the city and the outlying areas.

We’ll be keeping an eye on their travels to hear the stories of what is happening to the real people living in the aftermath of Katrina. Bloggers have the power to make things happen in the most tangible fashion.

Never forget the power of blogging. We can make things happen.

ME “Liz” Strauss

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Net Neutrality 8-3-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding these links to the Net Neutrality Page.

Stevens Scrambling for Anti-Net Neutrality Votes

Stevens is still trying to force a vote on his inaptly titled telco give-away bill, the Communications, Consumers’ Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006 (S. 2686). But he’s not having much luck so far. . . .

he article singles out Santorum, DeWine, and Chafee as resisting efforts to push the bill to the floor before the elections. Not only are they hearing from constituents on this issue, they are raking in some serious cash from moneyed interests on both sides of the debate. They really don’t want to have to vote on this before the election. . . .

AT&T’s Whitacre: ‘Nobody Gets a Free Ride’

“This thing is growing at a rate that nobody would imagine,” [AT&T CEO Ed] Whitacre said of the market demand for bandwidth. He said AT&T networks are now handling 5.6 Petabytes of data every day. “There’s more and more content, and you need more and more bandwidth, and somebody’s got to build it.”

“If you build it, you have to make a return on that,” he continued. “Nobody gets a free ride, that’s all.”

This kind of language, of course, leaves open the possibility that AT&T will (or already does) offer some of its customers a better ride across its access networks in exchange for fees. But it doesn’t necessarily mean the provider would block content that it disagreed with, which is a fear that most net neutrality backers discuss the most.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Interview 7.2: Cat Wentworth Becomes a Blogger

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Crusader Cat

Cat Wentworth

If you read the beginning (7.1) of this interview you know that Cat Morley has been a few places and done a few things in her career as a World Designer. If you came to this week’s open comment night, you also know that Cat had a major role in Wizard of OZ written just for her.

Tonight a little more about the many things Cat has had going on in her life.

Cat, how did you end up as a blogger?

I’m a crusader with a hot spirit. When LogoWorks started showcasing logos that were remarkably similar to many, many other designers’ logos, I was swept into blogging along with others. Of course there were some bits that had to be in place first. I just happened to be test driving blogger for a client when it all came about.

Cat tells the story of how she started to blog on Creative Latitude. It’s called Blogs, Podcasts and all that stuff.

Here’s how the story starts . . .

If you asked me a month ago about spending my precious time updating an industry or personal blog, I’d say, “Never!” Sure, I have a business blog (now sadly ignored) which I’ve spent time on, but I’ve always pooh-pooed jumping in and keeping a blog just for the love of it.

Many times on “The About,” (About.com’s graphic design forum) I’ve passed a verbal grin in Chris Gee’s direction when he went on and on about the wonders and power of blogging on his blog thepreparedmind.com. Not for me. I felt I had better things to do with my spare time.

I’m really glad she changed her mind.

Next: wait until you hear about Cat and the Queen of England!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related article
Interview 7.1: Meet Cat Wentworth, World Designer

Digg This! A Post Born in OZ

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Open Mic Night Collaboration

Somewhere around comment 180 last night, the conversation turned to writing a post about bad customer service people. Titles for Doug’s idea were tossed around between quite a few commenters including Brian Clark, Chris Cree, and the Advice Librarian.

Today that post is a reality.

Why not go over to digg.com and digg it?

Who Else Wishes There Were No Moronic Idiots in Customer Service?

Go on. Support Doug, Open Mic Night, and living social media.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Here’s Doug’s original post at Service Untitled:
Who Else Wishes . . .

Net Neutrality 8-2-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

Telcos Keep Castigating the “Free-Riders”

GigaOm’s Katie Fehrenbacher attended today a speech by AT&T Chairman Ed Whitacre before the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners and reports that he’s as hard-line as ever about network neutrality. Here’s what he said:

“Some companies want us to be a big dumb pipe that gets bigger and bigger…No one gets a free ride. The American economy doesn’t work that way…We are not going to build this with no chance for a return. Those that want to use this will pay.”

Comcast, Cox, Time Warner to Start Mobile Voice Tests

The Hollywood Reporter’s Andrew Wallenstein has this extended, excellent piece on the cable-telco battle of the bundles. Buried in the article, however, is something new to me: Comcast, Time Warner and Cox will start this month testing the sale of mobile voice service as part of a new, expanded quadruple-play package.

This potentially killer combination flows from the $200 million dollar-backed consortium formed last year by Comcast, Time Warner, Cox Communications and Advance/Newhouse with Sprint-Nextel. According to the piece, Comcast and Cox will trial a mobile voice service in selected markets including Boston, Austin, Texas, and Portland, OR. . . .

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

We’re All Creative 1: The Bunnies Prove It

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I Drive Myself Crazy Crazier

Creativity at Work

Yesterdays post on 10 Reasons Creative Folks Make Us Crazy — The 10 Dimensions of Creative Complexity got quite a response, particularly on a couple of forums. The most interesting part was that in the comments about the post it seemed that

  1. the folks commenting didn’t seem to have read the entire post, only the list.
  2. they also didn’t know this blog or they would understand that I count myself among the people who drive people crazy.
  3. they didn’t catch my personal belief that everyone is creative.

The fact is I drive myself crazy crazier the more I think. The other fact is business schools need creative thinkers more than ever. The whole world does if we want to get anything to change around here.

With those thoughts in mind, I dug out a piece that explains my thoughts on creativity. I’m posting it because the bunnies prove that we’re all creative types. [Read more…]