Katrin has a blog! She’s writing about Toronto:
Welcome to the Mukodu Blog: a whimsical exploration of Toronto’s random nooks and crannies, its many unique neighbourhoods, and the lives of its citizens. Mukodu is about culture, places, people, and goings-on around the city. It aims to be a quirky, opinionated and honest sampling of what makes this city great.
Check it out, especially if you’re a Toronto-dweller.
Backfence.com, a “social media” site that billed itself as “Do it yourself local news”, is shutting down operations. Mark Potts, one of the co-founders, posted his learnings a few days ago. Very interesting, particularly on the business model challenges.
One bit in particular from Potts struck me: “Partner with a media company or some other distribution source. Because of the critical need to market to and engage the community, it’s better to piggyback on a print or broadcast partner’s existing community relationships and marketing power.”
Backfence actually didn’t partner in this way, and I find it strange that Potts would recommend this as a strategy. Relying on old media to jumpstart an online community seems wrongheaded to me. Look at Toronto Star’s OurFaves, for example, launched May 2, 2007. It’s a promising notion — “amplify local opinion on what’s great in the city” — but after playing with it briefly I find it empty and unappealing. Part of that is the look and feel: it’s slick, polished… surely passed muster with Star execs, but too stark and corporate to attract the customers they’re seeking. More importantly though, the content seems to come from a very small number of people (forgivable for a while; you’ve gotta start somewhere), appears to be editorialized, and focuses on city-wide popularity as the key vector for discovery. Add that all up and it’s hard to trust as a source for recommendations. They missed the mark.
Partnering with an already-trusted social network like Facebook — the way iLike.com did — is a much better recipe for success.
P.S. I found Potts’ post through Greg Sterling, who often writes about local search and related trends. This morning Sterling put up a post on local and social media. It includes a long-yet-not-exhaustive list of sites in this space. Worth reading.
Thanks everyone who recommended laptop models to consider. After much debate and hunting around I bagged an Asus W3V. So far, so good: it’s plenty fast, compact, easy on the eyes, and has all the ports and connectivity I wanted.
Cons: at 5.5 pounds this notebook is a wee bit heavy for my taste (although I must say it’s hard to find a lighter config in widescreen models); the super-fast CD/DVD drive is also super-noisy; the Ctrl, Function and Delete keys are in slightly wonky non-standard places; and the default touchpad configuration has a bit of a learning curve to it. In other words, there’s not much to complain about.
See specs here. I got the 1GB RAM config. At $1800 CAD before tax it’s pretty good bang for the buck.
Asus has long made white-label PC components for many PC OEMs. Apparently they also manufacture iBooks and PowerBooks for Apple. This helps explain why their own laptops have such interesting aesthetics; they are clearly experimenting in industrial design, and having spent time looking at many models the past few weeks I’d assert they are one of the leaders. (Hey, it’s a PC… you don’t have to do much innovation to take pole position on aesthetics.)
The range of laptop products they offer is bewildering. They would do much better only offering 5 choices instead of the 20 they have today on their site. Less is more.
You can also buy barebones machines and configure them as you like.
If you are buying in the Toronto area, your best bet is to check out the stores clustered at Spadina and Bloor. I bought from PC-Metro for $1800 CAD. I saw prices as high as $2200 CAD. I also shopped online but there just aren’t that many online sellers who ship within Canada.
The W3V will be replaced soon by a new model — W3J, I believe, with a Duo Core processor and a much more hefty pricetag — so inventory is starting to drop. If you are not a fan of widescreen form factors, check out the Asus V6V.
I also considered other Asus notebooks, IBM ThinkPads (T43, z60m) and Apple’s luscious new MacBook Pro which runs on the Intel Core Duo. I must admit I was tempted by the MacBook, but that price tag and some gossip about heat problems turned me off. I’ll wait for v3. :-)
I’ve managed to last 7 months without a laptop. I’m sure this has helped me build character, and fend off carpal tunnel, and decrease my chances of being reincarnated as a piece of beige office furniture. But now the call of the wild has become too strong for me to resist, and it’s time to re-equip.
Does anyone have recommendations or anti-recs to share on recent laptop purchases?
Blogging for me is a hobby. I’ve only been doing it a short while, and it’s not my day job or something I try to promote. I’m pretty sure most of my readers are friends and family who humor me by visiting on occasion. So this morning, on seeing my blog traffic running at 10x its normal level, my initial reaction was fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Read the rest of this entry »
Check out this article about James Frey, the author of the book “A Million Little Pieces” that I recommended a few weeks ago.
For shame.
Steve Eisner emailed me the article, and he says: “I haven’t read [the book] yet but I’m sure it’s still just as good when filed under fiction… just funny to see the things people do to build a persona :)“. Well, I think he’s right: it’s still a good read, albeit tinged for me by some sheepishness and mild buyer’s remorse. Thanks for the link Steve.
“A Million Little Pieces” is the other book I read while travelling last week. In this autobiographical novel James Frey describes his time in rehab attempting to recover from ten years as an alcoholic and three as a crack addict. It’s a powerful, raw piece of writing that will give you insight — more than you ever wanted — into the mind and soul of an addict. Not for the faint of heart.
Along with “The Wisdom of Crowds”, I’ve added this to my Really Good Stuff list.
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