http://matth.org I'm Matt Hampel, a student in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. Tue, 05 Aug 2008 19:03:49 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Continuing the negativity of this blog with a lesson from Berkman: When calling for contributions, guide contributors by sharing the bad examples, not the good, because they show what you don't want but don't tightly constrain creativity. http://matth.org/2008/08/05/give-bad-examples/ Another excellent Breaking News alert from the Snooze, this time field  on national chain Steve & Barry's bankruptcy... but two days after a more informative and more local article was written by the Michigan Daily (!!) http://matth.org/2008/07/09/two-in-one-day/ Another marketroit post from the Snooze, this one for giant multinational Adidas. Mixed with a healthy dash of local retail quotes and Maize-and-Blue for disguise. "When they saw the quality, everyone settled down," Gove said. "It's actually a little cheaper so people warmed up pretty quickly. We just have to get ... http://matth.org/2008/07/09/snooze-watch-let-us-tell-you-about-the-latest-in-consumerism/ Who owns the photos you submit to the Ctools photo contest? Why can't I search within the files in the "resources" area of a ctools site? 90% of professors use Ctools only to upload course materials, so this seems like a crucial feature. http://matth.org/2008/07/02/two-short-ctools-questions/  Someone's spellchecker must have changed Craigslist to Craig's List in this informative news story. Another gem: When contacted by The News via e-mail on Thursday afternoon, a representative of Craig's List asked for a link to the ad and asked that questions be submitted by e-mail. The representative didn't respond to a ... http://matth.org/2008/06/20/snooze-watch-craigs-list/ Threads Adam Holland mentioned today that it's getting harder to write predictive science fiction  because time between invention and adoption has decreased massively in the last 100 years. Dan Levy's copy of the WSJ had an article on tracking migration patterns with cellphones. How many people = one phone? Whack-a-mole: a viable methodology ... http://matth.org/2008/06/10/links-hyperlocal-sci-fi-predictions-whack-a-mole/ The Snooze published an article on three Ann Arbor restaurants dropping bottled water from their menus. Actually, make that two, since Zigerman's never had bottled water anyways. Two issues with the article: They didn't talk to any restaurants that still sell bottled water (here are more than 150, along with contact information) For ... http://matth.org/2008/06/10/snooze-watch-copy-paste-from-a-corporate-website/ Levees.org via Alan http://matth.org/2008/06/06/245/ "We need better ways to track discussion threads from the blogs" sez Dan Gillmor in a 2005 report on Blogging, Journalism, and Credibility. Which is still true. No way people will keep up with everything it's a pull technology. Email updates may help (Alan does it well, for ex., at ... http://matth.org/2008/06/04/citizen-journalism-other-subjects-notes-for-the-day/ Looking to join a buying club this fall, starting 1 September. Know a lot of 3-4 person households who could benefit, too. Photos of a bulk room serving ~20 people: A library of food? It's much easier to eat new things if they're readily at hand, in large quantities. (hm, a bit blurry) http://matth.org/2008/05/26/the-bulk-room/