Archive - 2010
August 9th
Voting is Important, but I Might Not Vote in the Governor’s Race
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 09:37This morning I received a bunch of different messages about the importance of getting out and voting in the Connecticut Primaries tomorrow. The point was driven home with the latest Quinnipiac poll which found the Democratic Gubernatorial Primary too close to call. The poll found 45% supporting Lamont, 42% supporting Malloy and 12% undecided. On top of this, 30% of those supporting Lamont or Malloy said they might change their minds before voting.
I am friends with both Dan and Ned. I believe either one of them would make great governors. Ned is bright and energetic, as his work with the Brookings Institute, Harding High, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and CCSU has illustrated. He is also a good administrator. Dan is also bright and energetic. I lived in Stamford for many years while he was Mayor there, and I believe he did a great job. His policy statements have been on point on issues like the death penalty, shared sick days, and his actions supporting the SEIU 32BJ have illustrated his commitment to important issues.
Nonetheless, both have run what I consider bad campaigns, focusing too much on what is wrong with their opponents and not enough about what is right with their own ideas about how to make Connecticut better.
Because of this, I remain undecided and am becoming more and more likely to not vote for either of them. I am hearing this from more and more voters. One person, who has been very involved in campaigns spoke about this as being a very informed decision. It will be interesting to see what the results turn out to be.
As a final note, both the Malloy and Lamont campaigns have issues statements about the poll:
Malloy Campaign Manager Dan Kelly said:
The poll reflects what we're seeing and hearing every day on the campaign trail: Dan's got the momentum. People increasingly see him as the better qualified candidate, and the person best able to provide the leadership this state desperately needs. People are rejecting Ned's sleazy and untrue attacks on Dan, and they're rejecting Ned's attempt to buy this election.
The Lamont campaign statement said:
"While more than a thousand of our volunteers reached out to voters, Ned and Mary spent the weekend pounding the pavement, asking families to vote for a better future for Connecticut," said Lamont Communications Director Justine Sessions.
"Democrats know that Ned is the only one in this race with a positive vision for our state, the experience to create jobs, and the ability to beat the Republicans in November. When they go to the polls tomorrow, we're confident that they'll choose Ned."
Early Tuesday, I will go to the voting booth. My mind is pretty clear on who I will vote for in every race, except the Governor’s race. I will watch to see what the candidates and their staffs do during the final hours and then decide if either of them really earned my vote. I encourage everyone to get to the polls and make as informed a decision as possible.
August 8th
Playing with Google Friend Connect, Newsletters, Interests, Adsense, Adgitize, EntreCard, Drupal, and Beyond
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 08/08/2010 - 11:16Playing with Google Friend Connect, Newsletters, Interests, Adsense, Adgitize, EntreCard, Drupal, and Beyond
For a project I’m working on, I’ve started looking a little more closely at Google Friend Connect. I had added Google Friend Connect to my website a long time ago and not really made a lot of use of it.
The project I hope to work on is similar to what I’ve done creating a graph of Klout Influencers and other projects. I started reading some of the documentation, but it looks a lot more complicated than I wish to tackle on a Sunday morning.
Also, my ADHD broke through and I started spending time with some of the other features of Google Friend Connect, and so this is what I’ll focus on this morning.
Google Friend Connect Newsletter
As I write this, Google tells me that there are 243 members of this blog on Google Friend Connect. 49 of them have signed up for my newsletter, even though I’ve done nothing with a Google Friend Connect enabled newsletter. So, my first step was to enable the newsletter. I will send out an email to the 49 subscribers when I finish this blog post. I’ve kicked around using a newsletter with my website, but never gotten around to it. Finding that Google Friend Connect has already set up pretty much everything I need, I guess I should start using it. I don’t expect to send a lot of newsletters out, so don’t worry about getting spammed if you sign up, and if you get more emails than you want, you can always unsubscribe.
Google Friend Connect Interests
The next thing I noticed is that I can add ‘interests’ to my Google Friend Connect. The samples are location and gender. I figured I’d add polls to find out which sections of my blog people read, and what gadgets they use. With this, I can send newsletters targeted to specific audiences. For example, if people fill out the polls, I could send an email to just people that use EntreCard, people that are interested in my posts about technology or music, or people from Connecticut. Please consider filling out the polls that I have, as well as providing suggestions for other polls.
Adsense
I’ve had Adsense on my blog for a long time. It is stuck in a lower corner of the blog, and has brought in minimal revenue. I’ve always had mixed feelings and mixed results with Adsense. However, it is possible to link Google Friend Connect with Adsense. This should result in more targeted advertising which might boost revenues. In addition, I believe I can get to the Google Friend Connect Interests data programmatically, so I might be able to adjust other parts of my website, such as my EntreCard or Adgitize widgets based on the interests that people have. Again, what are your thoughts on this sort of approach?
Google Friend Connect and Drupal
If I’m going to start doing programming like this, it would be nice to leverage what is already out there. There is a Google Friend Connect Project for Drupal. It seems focused on people adding comments. Since I use Disqus on this site, it probably doesn’t do much for me. However, I can see it as being useful for some other sites that I run, and I’ll probably kick it around a bit more later. However, it doesn’t seem to provide much of a framework to help with other types of programming, such as associating Google Friend Connect Interests with Drupal Profiles, or other means of making interest data available to Drupal modules.
Recent Visitors
While I’ve been kicking this around, I also added a Google Friend Connect Recent Visitors gadget. I already have lots of ways of tracking recent visitors, so I need to see how this compares with the other ones and whether or not I should keep it. Feedback on the Recent Visitors gadget is also appreciated.
With this, I’ve moved my Google Friend Connect module up a little bit in my blocks on the left. If I see Google Friend Connect and or Adsense starting to provide a better experience for me and for visitors to my blog, I’ll probably move them up even more. With that, I’m including the widgets in this blog post for people to update their Google Friend Connect information, and to see if it makes any of the Adsense ads more appealing.
Thoughts and comments about all of this are greatly appreciated.
August 7th
The Magic of the Midway
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 08/07/2010 - 18:48You don’t get days much better than this for a summer carnival. The sun shone down through the nearly cloudless day without driving the temperatures up too high. My eight year old daughter had her bracelet on which allowed her unlimited rides until 5 PM. Running from one ride to the next, she would meet one set of friends and then another as they took their seats for their next adventure. Beside the rides, parents stood, waiting for the kids and holding various toys, drinks, or food for them.
The older kids who could attend the fair without their parents moved in packs whispering and giggling amongst themselves. Volunteer firemen prepared hot dogs, hamburgers and steak and cheese sandwiches. Over the heat of the grills they snapped at one another if someone took the wrong order.
Around the food tables, the politicians hovered. Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro shook hands with various constituents, and the wife and daughter of Connecticut Gubernatorial candidate Ned Lamont worked the crowd a few days before the primary.
I had had a long meeting in the morning, and was pretty tired, but I gave it my best effort. Now, I am home, resting. Fiona wants to go back at night to see all the rides lit up and perhaps more importantly, to see the fireworks. We will see if I can rally and muster the energy to drive back.
August 6th
#ff @fringenyc
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 08/06/2010 - 14:11@TheLostTheatre @raisinplay @DanishDuck @BAMATheatreCo @Bainbridge2010 @baristasplay @BurninginChina @francaverce @BSTARREVOLUTION @ifeedthemonster @shabanarehman @GEwShakespeare @ProjGirlTheatre @hamletshutup @insimplicities
In 1983, I was living in a third floor walkup on Mott Street in New York’s little Italy with two struggling actors. A few years earlier, I had moved to New York in hopes of being a writer, but the only money I was making came from writing computer programs.
As my contract at Bell Laboratories came up for renewal, I decided instead, to spend time traveling around the States and Europe. These travels landed me in Edinburgh during their annual festival. I had a great time attending many Fringe plays and for the next several years returned every August. I spoke with my roommates about how great it would be if New York had a similar fringe festival.
Eventually that came about, and now, over twenty five years after my travels, I am finally making it to the New York Fringe Festival.
Yesterday, I started reviewing the list of plays. I counted 197. However, I’ll be on Cape Cod the second week of the festival, so that rules out 14 plays that are only showing on the second week. When I used to go to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, I would sometimes take in as many as five plays a day. Looking at the schedule, I’m not sure I could hit more than four plays a day, so the most I could make is probably 28. Realistically, I’ll probably not make it to more than a dozen plays.
So, I’m scanning through the list, highlighting the ones that are most interesting, noting the webpages, as well as Facebook Fan pages and Twitter accounts of various plays. All of this leads to this week’s Follow Friday blog post.
@fringeNYC is the Twitter account for the New York Fringe Festival. @TheLostTheatre @raisinplay @DanishDuck @BAMATheatreCo @Bainbridge2010 @baristasplay @BurninginChina @francaverce @BSTARREVOLUTION @ifeedthemonster @shabanarehman @GEwShakespeare @ProjGirlTheatre @hamletshutup and @insimplicities are some of the Twitter accounts for the plays or the companies following them. They are all worth looking into.
If you have details about any of the plays in this year’s New York Fringe Festival that you think I should see, leave a comment or drop me a note. I’m still trying to decide which ones to attend
August 5th
Eating With The Enemy, and Pitching the Blogger
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 08/05/2010 - 19:47Well, it has been a while since I reviewed a book here at Orient Lodge. With all the different emails, blog posts and social media messages to read, I rarely find or make time for reading books, though I do find time to read plenty of pitches for books that some publicist really thinks I should review here.
Most of the pitches get filed away in my PR folder without a response, however every once in a while a pitch comes along that sounds interesting. Often they are for books about technology or social media that are written by friends of mine. It isn’t very often that I review books about guys in New Jersey who run BBQ shacks and engage in diplomacy with the North Koreans.
Some of that is because there just aren’t many books out there like that. In fact, as best as I can tell, Eating with the Enemy is one of a kind. It has been an enjoyable read by the side of the pool during my few free moments. Not only is the story well written and compelling, but there are some important words of wisdom hidden in the text, particularly for those interested in social media.
Bobby Egan, who runs a BBQ shack in Hackensack NJ, talks about growing up in a mob controlled neighborhood. When you wanted something, you didn’t just sit down with someone and get right to business. You spent time. You got to know the person you wanted to do business with. You chatted about how things were going, about their family, maybe about how the Giants or Nets were playing. If you developed a sense of trust with the person, you might get around to broaching the business issue eventually.
Bobby talks about the same thing in terms of dealing with the North Koreans. You don’t just sit down at the table and start talking about nuclear weapons. Instead, you have a steak. You go catch a Nets game. You try to explain American idioms. Slowly you develop a trusted relationship and can start talking about more serious issues.
Some of the social media experts out there might learn a lesson from Bobby. For that matter, so might a lot of the publicists pitching books that I don’t expect I’ll ever read.
With that, let me digress. Tony Viardo is the publicist that sent me the pitch for Eating with the Enemy. His pitch started off “My Name is Tony Viardo and I’m heading up public awareness for a new memoir entitled ‘Eating with the Enemy’ by Bobby Egan. I’d like to offer you a free copy for your review, in order to perhaps post your opinions about it on your site; I believe it would interest your unique audience.”
Okay, Tony probably got down to business much more quickly than Bobby would have, but there is a difference between emails from publicists and steaks in Hackensack. Yet Tony is clear about what he wants. He wants people talking about Bobby’s book. He tries to appeal to people that have a special feeling for their audience. Yeah, that’s me. I’ve got a unique audience. They’re a great group. There are mommy bloggers from the Philippines. There are political bloggers from around the United States and there are all kinds of bloggers searching to get their story out and/or perhaps make a little money on the side. It is a great bunch and I value the interaction I have with my audience.
So, I don’t want to steer my readers wrong. I’m not going to review some book that I’m not excited about and tell people it is good. Instead, I’m going to spend time reading the book and thinking about how much I enjoyed it and whether or not I think my readers will. I think a lot of my readers would really like this book. For that matter, as I’ve read parts of it by the pool, I’ve described sections to my wife and we’ve talked about other people that we think would enjoy the book.
So, if you’re looking for a good book, check out Eating with the Enemy. If you’re looking for a good publicist, spend a little time getting to know Tony to see if maybe he is a good fit for you, and if you’re looking for me to review a book or a product, spend a little time getting to know me and my audience and then let’s talk.
