While watching The Devil’s Tomb on Netflix, I picked up my Canon Rebel to see what I could see if I tried to make a photo of someone else’s moving photos. Cinematography by Thomas L. Callaway. Recognize the actor?

Mint.com’s blog put up a post citing all kinds of information that would make you think the business really has some issues with immigration.

One reaction is the Atlantic’s blog post. Another no doubt will be the departure of some Mint users. Then again, perhaps such a stance will, well, attract people of a certain type. Are we going to start seeing agenda-oriented businesses that proudly trumpet their beliefs?

But what interests me most is what’s being demonstrated about Web life: Online, every whisper has the potential to become a roar, and facts can be checked and analyzed like never before due to the accessibility of online data.

Summary: By sharing items in Google Reader, you can publish to your blog and four other outlets, in this order, with one action:

1. Shared Items in Google Reader
2. Buzz
3. Twitter
4. Your blog
5. Facebook

You will need:

1. An independently hosted blog running on WordPress.
2. Of course: Twitter, Facebook and a Google account (with Buzz activated).
3. Wordbook addon for WordPress.
4. Twitter Tools addon for WordPress
5. Advanced Category Excluder addon for WordPress (this is optional, but I use it to avoid cluttering my blog’s home page with poorly formatted blog posts).
6. Recommended Reading addon for WordPress.
7. BuzzCanTweet connected to your Twitter account.

Steps:

1. Set up your Google, Twitter and Facebook accounts.
2. Create a “Shared Items” category for your blog.
3. Activate and set up the Recommended Reading addon.
4. Set up a “Shared Items” static page on your blog. Add the Recommended Reading shortcode of (leftbracket)recreading(rightbracket) (with brackets around it, as indicated). This will cause this page to pull in a list of your shared items on Google Reader.
5. In your Google Buzz settings, make sure the connected sites include Twitter and Google Reader.
6. In the settings tab and Goodies sub tab of your Google Reader page, grab the bookmarklet and drag it into your bookmarks bar. This allows you to easily share any Web page in Google Reader. This is optional, but useful when surfing.
7. For Twitter/Buzz integration to work properly, you need to make your Google profile into a username URL. To do this, go to your profile editing page, and scroll down to the “Profile URL” section. Follow the instructions there. Warning: This can cause your Gmail address to become publicly available. If this is a concern, go ahead (after connecting to BuzzCanTweet) and change it back to a numerical profile URL after you have completed the integration of Buzz Can Tweet with your Twitter account. I don’t know if a username URL’s brief existence will cause privacy problems later. I suppose that’s a risk you’ll have to take.
8. Go ahead and connect your Buzz account to your Twitter account by going to BuzzCanTweet and clicking Get Started.
9. Set up Wordbook in your WordPress blog to publish posts to your wall.
10. Set up Twitter Tools in your WordPress blog. Important: You must enable “Create a blog post from each of your Tweets.” Assign the “Shared Items” category to these tweets by choosing it from the dropdown to the right of “category for tweet posts.” The rest of the options are optional and unrelated to the topic of this post.
11. Set up the Automatic Category Excluder, if you want, to exclude the “Shared Items” category from your home page. I do this because, unfortunately, blog posts created from tweets look horrific. The headlines are cut off, the summaries are truncated…but the link is there, and so is, if you write succinctly, the gist.
12. Important to remember: Your tweets will run entirely off, I think, the notes field in Google Reader, if you fill it in. (If you don’t, it grabs headline, then notes. I posted pictures at bottom of this post of a shared item format, and the result in different outlets.) And your auto-made blog posts run off your tweets. And your Facebook updates run off your auto-generated blog posts.  Result: What you write in the Google Reader summary field is absolutely key to how it appears on Twitter AND your blog AND Facebook. In Buzz and Reader, the shared items appear as you would expect when sharing from Reader. This is why I set aside my Shared Items to a specific page.
13. Start sharing using Google Reader.

So this is the big-picture view of what happens:

1. Share something using Google Reader (either in Google Reader itself, or by using the bookmarklet).
2. That item gets sent to Buzz.
3. Buzz, via BuzzCanTweet, sends the item to Twitter. It pulls info from the notes field for headline and summary, and the link provided goes back to your individual buzz post.
4. The tweet then gets sent to your blog as a blog post, published in the “shared items” category,  using Twitter Tools.
5. Wordbook then publishes that blog post to your Facebook wall.

Warnings:

1. A Buzz/Twitter bug causes your buzzes to be generated twice from your tweets. Happens once per day. Just watch out for it. Seems to occur late at night.
2. The blog posts (and thus, Facebook posts)  and, to some extent, tweets, made from this method look bad.
3. The links in your tweets go back to the buzz individual page, not your blog post.

I somewhat prefer just running everything through my blog and leaving Reader out of it, but sharing is so fast and efficient this way. See the pictures after “read more” to see how the shared item looks in various outlets.

Related post: 5 steps to get your blog entries on Twitter, Facebook and Google Buzz all at once, using only your WordPress blog

Pictures of how a shared item appears after the link.

This is how I formatted the post in Google Reader.

This is how the shared item appears as a blog entry.

This is how the shared item appears on Facebook.

This is how the shared item looks on Twitter.

This is how the shared item appears on the recommended reading page.

1) Post through the blog;
2) Send that to Twitter using Twitter Tools;
3) Send it to Facebook using WordBook;
4) Manually share it in Google Reader, which sends it to Buzz, too. Or just connect Buzz to Twitter and let Twitter update Buzz.
5) Put up with a little manual-ness and slowness to achieve better result.

For the sake of efficiency, I am back to experimenting with Google Reader Shared Items to point toward interesting items on the Web. The best ways to enjoy this content are:

Powered by Twitter Tools

Rainbow inside the lines.

Dig into the post to see the other two presentations of the same Lower East Side wall.

Textures.

Itch.

The photos were taken with my G1.

Summary: No deed goes unpunished.

Some points:

1. Each article (or content item) has a different economic value, but the cost of a sale remains significant per article.
2. So, in a collective, more profitable content will need to subsidize less profitable content.
3. Pre-paid accounts for customers would be the most efficient way to make microsales, and one-off price articles would need to be in the $2 – $10 range to be “worth the effort.”
4. Newspapers will need to figure out in advance how to price an article (which means more staff) according to its expected value, price it by the cost of producing it, or figure out the average cost of producing all the articles and price according to that. Yep, each method has its problems.
5. And what exactly is in this for the consumer? If they don’t pay for news in print, or online, then what will they be offered to make them consider doing so now? On a per-transaction basis?

I believe the media world is shifting away from creating destination stories that attempt to capture audiences. This is connected to the cultural shifts underway due to our new, Internet-bred ability to acquire in-depth information on just about anything anytime we want it.

We are moving toward becoming a even more largely freelance, information service industry, with various presentations of stories as one product on a spectrum. The core value to be pursued, more than ever before, is original information; additional value is derived from it when it is used to create other information products that provide value to someone else. Endless game of dominoes.

In the past, whenever I thought of diving into any kind of media business, I looked only to offer an audience-capturing experience (a typical story). Now I am required to ask: What other information producers will my information serve and how? Can I sell that? I am a node in a network in addition to being an endpoint.

For example, would I open a shoe store today? Create this giant location, fill it with a variety of shoes, some more valuable then others, and hope enough people show up to exceed my costs?

Probably not. First I would think about what business I’m really in. Protecting people’s feet? Providing a fashionable selection? Giving them the chance to physically handle products?

Because if you think about it, a shoe store is in a lot of businesses:

1. It’s in the storage business (jamming all those shoes into a space);
2. it’s in the opinion business (employees providing feedback on shoes);
3. it’s in the information filtering business (selling some shoes, but not others);
4. it’s in the marketing business (all those shoes advertise their makers);
5. it’s in the distribution business (a store is a node on a manufacturer’s distribution network);
6. it’s in the health business (the wrong shoes can kill your feet);
7. it’s in the fashion business (want to look good for that big meeting?);
8. it’s in just about every business you can imagine, if you get out your magnifying lens.

What the Internet does is potentially separate the value of the “physical-ness” of any business from the intangible, information-only value of that business.

Previously, information was a product enhancer; it is now the product itself, but business models haven’t caught up. Or have they? iTunes? Trade publications?

Another example: movie theaters. What are you paying for when you buy a ticket? For me, it’s a bundle of experiences: a big, dark room, good sound, massive screen, a chance to go out, a story to get lost in. I cannot perfectly replicate these values in my apartment. What a moviemaker has to decide is if she/he is in the business of providing entertainment products that can play a part in certain cultural experiences, or in the business of trying to ensnare an audience. Or both.

Because people just don’t pay for stories, they pay for the experience the story is an important part of. Your story could be valuable in the creation of many experiences, if you make an effort to identify and market to them. But how valuable? I don’t think it will be valuable enough to consistently support monolithic organizations. The value of a story is just not that consistently stable or predictable.

But they’ve gotten worse, he says, and the New Mexico League of United Latin American Citizens wants the U.S. Department of Defense and the Air Force to answer why.

“We’re not asking for special, preferential treatment,” said Martinez, state director of New Mexico LULAC, an organization working for the rights and opportunities of Hispanics in the United States. “We have the position of making sure our city is represented by the demographics (at Kirtland).”

The group wants the base to hire more qualified Hispanics at all levels – especially higher-level management positions – to better reflect the state’s high Hispanic population.

But officials with the base say Martinez’s concerns are unfounded.

“The diversity of Kirtland’s workforce is a top priority for both the host wing and our many associate units,” Col. Robert Suminsby Jr., commander of the 377th Air Base Wing, said in a news release.

He noted that the base has switched to using private companies to perform some of its functions. That has pulled some workers off the government employment rolls, which means comparing employment data from different time periods “can be misleading,” he said.

The base’s hiring practices also affect an analysis of its work force demographics, Suminsby said.

“Many higher-grade positions are filled using a nationwide labor pool, so comparisons to local demographics are not a valid measure of hiring practices,” he said.

“Furthermore, all federal employees must be U.S. citizens, and most positions require at least a high school diploma in order to make a candidate competitive.”

LULAC and base officials met in 1984 to discuss Hispanic employment, and the group came away expecting improvement, Martinez said.

“I would never have thought that it would have gone from bad to worse,” he said in a news release. “Kirtland Air Force Base should be the nation’s leader, considering that the Latino population in New Mexico is the first and only Hispano majority state in the country.”

Martinez offered no specifics on the number of Hispanics holding jobs at the base. But he estimated that that some departments went from having a staff that was 10 percent Hispanic in 1984 down to 5 percent today. Hispanics aren’t employed at all in some departments, he said.

As evidence of a work environment unfriendly to Hispanics, Martinez pointed to an appeal filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

In it, base employee Ralph Arellanes claimed a high-level employee made offensive remarks about undocumented Mexican immigrants at a group meeting.

The allegations originally were made in a complaint to the agency employing Arellanes, but the agency dismissed them, according to the appeal.

However, the appeal states the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sent the complaint back to the agency for further investigation.

LULAC’s national president, Rosa Rosales, who was in Albuquerque this week, said she supports Martinez’s efforts to bring Kirtland’s employee demographics to the attention of senior military officials.

“The best work force is a diversified work force,” she said.
]]> http://flyingflashlight.com/2006/12/09/article-in-the-albuquerque-tribune-enough-hispanics-on-base/feed/ 0 http://flyingflashlight.com/2006/11/02/article-in-the-albuquerque-tribune-community-objects-to-gravel-mines-expansion-plans/ http://flyingflashlight.com/2006/11/02/article-in-the-albuquerque-tribune-community-objects-to-gravel-mines-expansion-plans/#comments Thu, 02 Nov 2006 15:14:57 +0000 flyingflashlight http://flyingflashlight.com/?p=1196 Continue reading →]]> The running joke in Las Placitas is that windshields last less than a year, but a new turn in the story behind those cracks has people in the community far from laughing.

“We’re really saying that gravel mining and residential neighborhoods are highly incompatible,” says Judith Hendry, vice president of Las Placitas Association. “Another mine really would be a hardship for us out here.”

Hendry and other residents recently came together to protest a proposed expansion of a gravel mine in Las Placitas that is run by Lafarge Southwest Inc.

Though the government agency managing the land eyed by Lafarge says any expansion will wait until 2009, the idea has once again pitted a rapidly growing community against a company supplying construction materials that many in New Mexico need.

Hendry fears more mining would bring more gravel-delivery trucks, and with them, more of the windshield-cracking rocks and a worsening of traffic that has her waiting for four changes of the traffic light at N.M. 165 and I-25.

There are days, she says, when dust from the earth-cutting operations rises up like a curtain, obscuring the desert vista that draws many to the rural outpost of around 6,000 people – nearly double what it was six years ago.

She decries the noise, the crunching of large rocks into small ones, the metallic grumble of earth riding a conveyor belt, the beep-beep-beep of tractors in reverse as they prepare to dig into the sides of hills like forks into cake.

She worries about the view those tractors leave behind: hills sliced to reveal layers of rich earth containing the just-right rocks that fill civilization’s hunger for concrete, for roads, for roofs.

“We’re having to deal every day with the effects of these mines,” Hendry says. “It goes well beyond just a not-in-my-backyard response.”

Lafarge wants to move into 170 acres belonging to the Bureau of Land Management because the current mine will run out eventually, explains M.L. Tucker, regional manager of public and governmental affairs with the company.

“As the resource becomes more depleted, then we look to where there are additional resources nearby,” she says.

And it’s not just any resources; the rock needs to be a certain type to go into asphalt and concrete. It’s the type found on the BLM land, she says.

“Our business has a very unique challenge, which is we can only be located where the product geologically is found,” she says. “There are many people who are well-educated who think all you do is move the dirt away at any given location and there’s the same rock wherever you go. That just is not the case.”

Citing concerns with the competition, she declined to say how long the current 430-acre operation would last. She wouldn’t say how many tons of material move through the site for the same reason.

She did say that Lafarge employs about 36 people at its current operation and has worked with community members to address their concerns.

She says the company sprays water on the roads and equipment to cut down on the dust. Measures have been taken to capture emissions from the processing plant, she says.

She knows of the concerns about traffic but no order has been made to send gravel-delivery trucks to a different I-25 on-ramp in out-of-the-way Algodones.

“Any time we would send them in an entirely opposite direction, or a direction that’s farther, it takes away our competitiveness if we have to charge extra for them to go out of their way,” she says. “It takes longer to deliver the product, and it also increases the price.”

Much of the tension is due to the new homes coming with Las Placitas’ rocketing population.

In 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau put the population 3,452. It’s now more than 6,000, according to a news release from Las Placitas Association.

As the community grows, more cars share the road with gravel trucks. Houses approach the mining areas, of which there are three, according to Hendry.

The first Lafarge mine permitted on BLM land came in 1998, a move that was protested by local residents, the city of Albuquerque and Las Placitas Association, according to a news release from the association.

There were many reasons why the mine was opposed, one of them being Sandoval County’s plan for the area. It permits agricultural and residential development.

However, the 20-year-old document used by BLM to make decisions about land use – called a resource management plan – allows gravel mines.

The mine went up.

The proposed expansion will have to wait, according to Edwin Singleton, district manager of the BLM’s Albuquerque District Office.

That’s because he wants an update to the resource management plan that will reflect the area’s growth.

“It’s not rural as it was when the plan was written,” he says. “The area has changed.”

So, he says, until the plan is updated, no application for an expansion will be looked at.

Carol Parker says she’ll believe it when sees it.

She’s a former president of Las Placitas Association and a resident in the community since 1992.

Her doubt arises from her experience with previous announcements that a change to the resource management plan was on the way.

There were attempts to get money for an update in 1999 and 2000, according to an association news release. Another attempt in 2001 showed some promise in 2002, but that fell through, too.

“At what point do you go, `No thanks, I’ve heard that story before?’ ” Parker says.

Singleton explains it’s tough to get money – $1.5 million to $2 million is needed – for the plan update because BLM divisions around the country vie for a limited amount of funds from the federal government.

He has heard suggestions that the plan be specifically amended to change mining allowances in Placitas.

Due to the challenge of getting funds, he says it’s better to do the entire BLM area – which covers about 1 million acres – at once.

That’s just what is happening now, he says.

In fall of next year, he expects the BLM to hold public meetings on how the plan needs to change. By 2008, a draft should be ready. By 2009, a final version should be good to go.

Tucker with Lafarge says waiting for the update doesn’t change the company’s stance.

“We’ll still work the current site, and we’re still interested in the BLM land,” she says.

In the meantime, Hendry, Parker and other Placitas residents watch, wait and organize.

“I don’t really think it’s just a Lafarge problem,” Parker says. “It’s a mining problem. It’s hard to do mining in a way that’s compatible with residential development.”

Tribune Managing Editor Kate Nelson is president of Las Placitas Association and recused herself from involvement in this story.

But that’s just what would happen if drought-driven restrictions on water use were chucked, argues Alan Armijo, chairman of the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority.

In spite of the recent heavy rains and strides made in conserving water, the utility authority agreed Wednesday to maintain the water restrictions in place since July 1.

The board will revisit the issue at its next meeting, Sept. 20, to allow more time for analysis.

The restrictions – which Armijo said make city residents more aware and respectful of the resource’s scarcity in the desert – limit the days people can water their lawns and plants, and set fines for excessive water use.

Board member and City Councilor Martin Heinrich suggested reducing the amount of some of the fines.

But many officials and meeting attendees opposed dropping any portion of the restrictions.

Armijo called for the water restrictions to become permanent.

“We’re trying to get a mind-set change in place,” he said. “Saving water has to be . . . a long-term, automatic thing.”

Though this month has been one of the wettest on record for New Mexico, the rainfall has had little effect on the state’s drought, said Kelly Redmond, regional climatologist with Western Regional Climate Center in Reno, Nev.

“I guess I’d call it short-term relief,” he said. “The basic situation . . . is not going to be made up by one summer’s worth of even pretty good precipitation.”

A National Weather Service study shows statewide drought conditions have lessened following six weeks of heavy rains, but much of the state remains dry.

Not Albuquerque, however. Rainfall at the Albuquerque Sunport from June 26 to Aug. 13 was almost three times higher than normal.

FACT BOX

Water restrictions remain in place, at least through Sept. 20, the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority agreed Wednesday night.

Restrictions include:

• Fines for wasting water starting at $40.

• Sprinklers cannot be used from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Even-numbered addresses can water Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Odd-numbered addresses can water Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.

• No watering on Fridays.

• Extra charges for customers who exceed 400 percent of their average winter use.

• More info: 768-3655 or Water resources

Source: Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority
]]> http://flyingflashlight.com/2006/08/17/article-in-the-albuquerque-tribune-despite-rain-water-restrictions-remain/feed/ 0