802 Online

Finally something interesting from the "we are insiders and you'd never guess" at VT Politics.

They say Guv Douglas will back Dubie in a primary over Rainville. Interesting. I would actually consider voting for Rainville. Maybe she'll rethink her party affiliation.

Read more at scoop central. Wonder if Freyne's got this dirt yet? Can somebody besides me bug him about starting a blog?

The good folks at the Greensboro News & Record got a write up in the LA Times today, though I think you'll have to register on the LAT site to see it.

Anyone interested in how newspapers are adapting to interactive technologies should study the GNR. They're probably the national leader in interactivity. Their editor blogs, as do some of their other writers. Apparently they get some comments and readers, too, which is different from a lot of newspaper blogs.

According to this article, they have a solid core of about 75 bloggers who post comments and advance discussions. That's pretty good, considering that we'd be lucky to field a dozen or two in the whole friggin' state.

The Rutland Herald reports today that Brandon residents will soon be getting access to wireless broadband. The town is one of several VT towns that got federal money to partner with wireless providers to extend broadband access. Residents (and businesses?) will be able to get T-1 quality connections via antennas that they buy and mount.

The story doesn't say anything about public hotspots. Thanks, Morgan, for the tip.

What I like about hopping online at Bunns & Noodle:
• It's the cheapest non-free wi-fi in town — $3.95 for a two-hour connection through SBC/Freedomlink that's fast and user-friendly.
• It opens at 8 am, even on Sunday.
• Cool gas fireplace at one end of the cafe.

What I loathe about hopping online at Bunns & Noodle:
• No power outlets.
• Little plastic advertising stands on every table.
• Creepy paintings of writers above the counter, most of whom would probably never have sat down to write in this mostly sterile corporate environment, and would undoubtedly be mortified that their images were being used to sell coffee and books here. They id writers by last name only: like Joyce, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and "Parker." Dorothy Parker is presumably thrown in for gender balance, although you can just see people saying, "Parker who?"
• Their "food" is all trucked in from out-of-state and rehydrated or heated in an oven prior to serving.
• By sitting here, I'm supporting 2 large corporations (B&N and Starbucks, where they get their coffee) instead of a good local coffeeshop. Of course, if any of our local coffeeshops opened early on Sundays and offered wi-fi, I'd be there instead.

I'd like to give you more information about the wi-fi connection here: how long they've had it (I think about 3 or 4 months), if people are using it, any problems they've had with it, why they finally got it after not having it for years, etc. But I can't. Why can't I? Because no one here will answer my questions. The manager on duty referred me to some PR person in NYC.

So if you have any more questions about the wi-fi connection at B&N in South Burlington, please call Mary Ellen Keating, at 212.633.3323. Not sure if she's ever actually been here, but apparently she's the expert on South Burlington's only wi-fi hotspot. Or at least, she's been approved by the corporate masters at B&N to talk about it.

Please, please, someone open a coffeeshop with wi-fi in Winooski.

The folks at VT Politics have sent me two emails now. They're very anxious for me to link to them, even though they've only been blogging for, um, less than two weeks. And they have yet to say anything really interesting.

But their blog is on the list now. According to the site profile, it's written by "we are insiders and you'd never guess." Looks like they're trying to make up funny nicknames, like "don't Rainville on my parade," but you have to deliver more than just clever nicknames to claim that you have "the inside scoop" on VT Politics. I haven't seen any scoops there yet.

Rachel Severance, author of The Bulldozer Monologues, writes a racy, opinionated, occasionally self-aggrandizing blog that I'm going to start reading more often. It's the kind of frank writing you might expect to find in a bigger city, where no one could possibly trace its author. Rachel doesn't seem to care about cultivating anonymity. She blogs freely about just about everything, including her recent job at a local soap factory.

Here's an excerpt from Golden Townies, a May 14 post that explores much of what I love about urban living in VT. She's talking about the power of association, the way that everybody in Burlington is connected by, like, 2 degrees of separation:

It can show you the Mobil guy, who will in turn only charge you fifty cents for dollar scratch tickets and sell you condoms for the price of the coffee you got for free. It can show you the inside of Muddy Waters, where the hippies behind the counter will always remember that you like your coffee with skim milk, and will only charge you ninety five cents when all you've got is a buck, so you can leave a nickel in their tip jar. It can show you the inner workings of the only good bands, who in turn will give you standing seats on the side of the stage while they play their massive New Years Eve sets in front of hundreds of people...It can show you the rooftop over the Italian restaurant that looks far over the marketplace, the city, and into the neighboring towns as well....

Her conclusion? "We are the greatest fucking townies of our generation."

Robert from Richmond writes at Beginner's Mind about a recent nighttime visitor:

So here I was, reading e-mail and minding my own business when I heard a crash.
Karen was already in bed. "Karen, did you just make something go boom?"
"No."
"Did you hear something go boom?"
"No."
I went into the kitchen and turned on the outside lights...

One of my friends told me recently that she likes my blog, but sometimes when she reads it, she feels like there's too much "inside baseball." But that's kinda what this blog is about. I'm not writing a general, hey-look-at-how-cool-7D-is-for-having-a-blog blog. At least, that's not my intention, because that would be boring. As my partner is fond of saying, "the tool that does everything does nothing."

The "beat" I have in mind is fairly specific — I'm writing for and about VT bloggers and people who are interested in connecting to the VT blogosphere. I'm writing to keep people informed about how VTers are using the internet, and how it's changing (or not changing) our lives here. And I'm providing a forum for VT-specific discussion about these changes.

Also, I aim to introduce readers to interesting and provocative writing that Vermonters are putting on the web, by linking to and posting about VT bloggers. For years, 7D has been supporting the local music community by reviewing local CDs. I want to do the same thing for local bloggers.

Why be VT-specific? Because we don't live online. No matter how much time we spend in front of our computers, we live in the real world, the meatspace. To fully realize the internet's potential for community-building and civic engagement — not to mention its potential as a supplement to the mainstream media — we need to connect what we see online to our offline lives.

That's why it's important to show people that their neighbors are having these online conversations. Eventually, they want to join in. Or at least listen in. An increase in readers and writers will eventually improve local blog content, because new, capable writers will join the conversation, pushing the existing writers to do what they do better. That's how you build the blogosphere.

Er, I think.

In that spirit, here's a post from Sonny Cloward, at Vermont Nonprofit CommunIT that aggregates some of the current thinking about the usefulness of blogs. Sonny is Communication and Information Director of the Craft Emergency Relief Fund. His blog offers "Tools, Resources, Observations, and Best Practices for the Nonprofit Community."

Last week, the Rutland Herald/Times-Argus won a bunch of awards from the New England Associated Press News Executives Association for their websites. OK, they're not Pulitzers, but it's interesting to see what kind of web work this media organization considers award-worthy.

Congratulations to RH/TA New Media director Ernesto Burden, whose personal blog is linked in the list on the right. Burden and his crew competed in the circ. under 40,000 category. They won Best Overall Site, and awards for reader engagement, sports presentation, public service, and special section. They were the only VT paper to win anything. Were they the only ones entered? Not sure.

Here's what one judge had to say about the Best Overall Site distinction: ... the Rutland Herald/Times Argus site made the strongest attempt to build a relationship with its readers beyond the printed word. I was impressed with its Vermont Press Bureau section, with information about the legislature. The section features a weblog that encourages users to participate and an engine for users to figure out who represents them. The overall site was easy to navigate. And news was well organized according to where a person lived. I can't believe no one brought this to my attention, not even Ernesto, who commented in the RSS thread below.

I wonder if the Vermont Press Association will have any web categories this year. Heck, they don't even have a real website!

And I can't believe that until yesterday, I hadn't heard about Get Real, RH/TA writer Heather Aja's Reality TV blog. It's listed (in very tiny print) right on the site. Are they trying to keep it a secret? What's up, Ernesto?

What a great name.

And fyi, the Burlington Free Press posted this ad earlier this month for a new Online Editor. Not sure if they found somebody yet. According to their website, they've got 4 people on their web team, one of whom is an ad sales rep. Ernesto's RH/TA New Media team has 3, sans ad rep. And that doesn't include Hall Monitor author Darren Allen.

This is a shameless plug for my technophobic partner Ann-Elise's blog, My Winooski Garden. We just updated it. I help with the tech stuff — she grows all the plants.