Author: chris

  • The Curse of Getting a Good Gmail Address

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    Republished from the May 7th 2018 Newsletter. I have the gmail address for my first initial and last name. This is really easy to remember, easy to tell people about, and for some reason every other C Salzman in the world uses it when they sign up for stuff. The latest was getting Clay’s travel…

  • Spaces After Periods

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    Republished from the May 7th 2018 Newsletter. There was a study floating around this past week about how using two periods after spaces was actually correct because they did a Science about it. Unfortunately, the study was about some specific circumstances where it might be true and then the “reporting” morphed that into “Always use…

  • Newsletter May 7, 2018

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    Shorter one today because we spent the weekend out in the sun at Camp Pendalouan celebrating my brother-in-law and sister-in-law’s wedding. We had our wedding there 6 years ago and it was lovely to be back without needing to also do all the extremely fun and draining things one needs to do on their wedding…

  • Who should own a website?

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    Republishing from the April 30th, 2018 newsletter. Everyone. Everyone would do well to have that place on the internet they can put the thing. I’m a broken record, but twitter and facebook are not that place if you want it to exist in perpetuity (for certain values of perpetuity). My favorite parts of the internet…

  • Newsletter April 30, 2018

    Other Newsletters Ed’s Vacuum Newsletter for 2018-W17 – lots on local politics, which these days is basically all about the building (or “not building”) of places for people to live. Also, he talks about how to subscribe to the newsletter and the problems therein. Patti Smith has a newsletter too! Newsletter 4/29/18 – Ann Arbor…

  • Making Sure Someone Sees It

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    Republishing from the April 30th, 2018 newsletter. Two of the other newsletters this week mention a problem that anyone who creates anything runs into: how do you make sure that everyone who should see it actually sees it? Marketing at its best is essentially finding an answer to this. A market for whatever niche content…

  • Newsletter April 23, 2018

    Ed’s Newsletter and the Dramatic Rescue of Archie Ed’s Vacuum/2018-W16.md is another good one (of course!). Read up on the Y lot vote happening this week, which, woof…it’s acrimonious. Ed also recounts the story of a lost dog that was eventually found via NextDoor. A few months ago we helped get a lost dog back…

  • Algorithmic Feeds Trend to Homogeneity

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    Republished from the April 23, 2018 Newsletter. The medium is the message and our mediums are shaping the messages we’re willing to share. The allure of the algorithmic feed is that it shows more relevant information to individual users. However, it maps very poorly with how people WANT the services to act. For example, I…

  • The Passing of CATACA

    Our cat, CATACA, died suddenly yesterday. She was acting normally and seemingly fine and then in the span of an hour she was gone. I found her lying on the ground her stomach heaving. Within a half hour we had her packed up to get to an emergency vet. My wife took her there and…

  • Newsletter April 9, 2018

    Here are the Other Local Newsletters You Should be Reading Ed’s Vacuum newsletter for 2018-W14, Issue 5 (new series) George’s Roundup, April 6 The CivCity Initiative Spring Scrimmage for Local Civics! Reader and RSS Anil Dash tweeted a sentiment that resonated a lot with me: Google’s decision to kill Google Reader was a turning point…