Month: January 2006

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UC Extension Blogging Class

Local blog news — Birdhouse user Tom Abate writes:

UC Extension will offer a one-day seminar for aspiring bloggers on Saturday, January 21. Instructors Tom Abate and Tim Bishop will be joined by noted bloggers Lisa Stone and J.D. Lasica. Beginners will get the confidence and basic skills to start a blog or take an existing blog to the next level. The class starts at 9:00 am and will be held at 425 Fremont Street in San Francisco (near Embarcadero Bart station). Visit bloggingclass.com to learn more about the topics and instructors, or enroll at the Extension web site.

Music: Catler Bros :: Hyperspace
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Rainforests of the Sea

Once damaged, coral reefs take well over a century to grow back – and they’re being damaged at an alarming rate, both by natural phenomena such as tsunamis and by humans. Coral reefs (aka “the rainforests of the sea”) worldwide are among the world’s most endangered ecosystems.

The years prior to 1991 saw a lot of bad mojo at work around Bunaken and Manado Tua. For decades, fishermen bombed the reefs with dynamite, or squirted them with sodium cyanide, to net large harvests of fish that surfaced. Low tides forced local boats to anchor amid the fragile corals, and dive boats (not to mention clumsy divers) wrought havoc as well. Storms reduced already weakened corals to rubble.

If the regrowth of natural reefs can’t be accelerated, the ecosystems surrounding them can. Berkeley-based Seacology is installing ceramic EcoReefs reef replacement systems — ceramic “snowflake” modules “that are designed to mimic branching corals.”

Pix here.

Music: Olu Dara :: Rain Shower
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Brown Shoes Don’t Make It

Cringely: Alongside all the other bad news for traditional media, the “brutal honesty” of pay-per-click advertising could make it impossible to reproduce the ad revenue models of the print world — which would in turn make it impossible for print publications to survive online migrations.

There are of course lots of other reasons why print pubs don’t make it online as “shovelware” — going for it without “getting” the web’s unique capabilities spells doom in general. But the fact that focused digital advertising provides a level of transparency that traditional media can’t withstand is something I hadn’t considered.

Shacker’s bold and ruthless prediction for 2006: Two major newspapers will fold entirely.

Thanks Colleen

Cool: MT’s “Post to the future” scheduled posting system works nicely (we used to call this a “drip date” in the CMS we used at ZDNet).

Music: The Jewels :: This Is My Story