Dancing Chocolate From The Delicious Fannie May

http://www.yourdancingchocolate.com/index.php?DanceID=93d8a3b4850b3671ee15a40cf89119c2&taf=sh

Posted via email from Mark Edwards 3.0

A Glimmer Of Hope For St. Louis Public Transit

For the next few months, you'll be seeing me write about the public transit situation in St. Louis and the need to pass a modest tax increase in order to continue to provide even bare bones service to the area. This is a topic that's critically important to me as I rely on mass transit to get around (due to a visual handicap) but its also one of the key things that will determine how the St. Louis area develops. Without an effective public transit system, the region will atrophy and ultimately lose even more jobs and residents.

I found a piece of what could be great news today in regards to the upcoming ballot issue, thanks to my co-workers at KMOX Radio.

Posted: Wednesday, 02 December 2009 4:25AM

Metro sales tax officially resurrected; message in focus
Michael Calhoun Reporting
mrcalhoun@cbs.com
CLAYTON (KMOX) -- Last spring, Chesterfield opened its wallet to prevent transit cuts in west county. Now, the
town's mayor is heading up efforts to find permanent funding for Metro.

"After what happened this year, people are now very aware public transportation and the cuts and what it meant to the region," John Nations says.

St. Louis County Councilmembers Tuesday officially resurrected that half-cent sales tax to fund Metro and introduced it for consideration. A tentative vote will happen next week.

Nations says there's little federal help and no state funding, so it's all on Saint Louisans.

"A lot of people rely on businesses which rely on public transpiration even though they themselves don't ride it," he says of the message to come ahead of April's election.

The half-cent sales tax would generate about $80-million each
year.

Look at the campaign finance reports, he says, and you'll find
both Republicans and Democrats agreeing on that.

In the face of $45-million deficit, Metro earlier this year slashed service to parts of the region. A state bail-out helped restore some of those routes.
Copyright KMOX Radio

Why is this good news? Four words. JOHN NATIONS GETS IT. In a region where so few politicians and their stooges have no appreciation for mass transit, Mayor Nations has distinguished himself as someone who understands why transit in St. Louis is important, not only to people like me who use it, but to everyone in the region.

After the disastrous campaign to get more money for Metro, the St. Louis transit agency, in November of 2008, a monkey could run a better effort for the upcoming ballot question. The people behind the measure went a quantum leap over that and got one of the region's most visionary leaders to lead the charge and hopefully convince enough people to spring for the half cent tax to fund mass transit in St. Louis.

This isn't a partisan thing, its about what's right for the region as a whole and the patrons of mass transit as well. I hope to share objective information about how the campaign is run, the chances of passing the ballot measure, and call out the creeps should they rear their ugly heads. If you're not from St. Louis, please bear with me as this is an important issue. If you are from St. Louis, watch this space for updates.

Tiger Woods 911 Call

  
Download now or listen on posterous

tiger911.mp3 (931 KB)

Are all 911 calls this confused? 

Posted via email from Mark Edwards 3.0

The Associated Press: Signal fading on radio traffic reports

Signal fading on radio traffic reports

By DAISY NGUYEN (AP) – 1 day ago

CORONA, Calif. — For more than 20 years, Mike Nolan was known to radio listeners as the "eye in the sky." He flew over Southern California freeways in his single-engine plane, reporting on the nation's worst traffic.

These days, he broadcasts about traffic snarls and lurking gridlock without leaving the ground — without even leaving his home in this Los Angeles suburb. Sitting in a chair behind computer monitors and a television, Nolan gathers traffic data and broadcasts live on two radio stations a day.

"What I'm best suited to do is look out the airplane window and tell people what I see," Nolan, 60, said. "When I was grounded, that world changed considerably so I had to reinvent myself."

His return to earth reflects the evolution of the traffic reporting business as a faltering economy forces news operation cutbacks, technology displaces traditional reporters and motorists increasingly rely on cell phones and GPS to monitor live traffic.

Most traffic news is now generated by reporters on the ground monitoring police reports, live highway cameras, data from ground sensors that can detect traffic speed and tips from drivers.

Reporters can be hundreds of miles away away from the scene and detail the latest traffic jams to three or four radio stations in the same hour, sometimes using aliases. Rebecca Campbell might report at the top of the hour for the Fox sports station using her own name, then 20 minutes later appear as Toni Jordan on an alternative rock station. For a station popular with Latino listeners, she goes by the name Lena Macias.

Even as traffic reporters have had their wings clipped in recent years, the airwaves ahead appear even more bumpy.

Music stations competing for listeners have been cutting back on disc jockey banter, and some industry veterans believe traffic reports could fade altogether.

"A number of years ago it'd be unheard of to have an FM station in L.A. without traffic reports," said Don Bastida, vice president of operations for Airwatch, one of the nation's largest traffic-reporting services. "Now traffic reports on the music stations become just an interruption that gives the listener an opportunity to hit the button and move on to the next station."

He said traffic reports will remain on the AM dial, but they'll decline to the point that they'll only be offered as part of a news story when a major incident happens.

The region's top-rated pop station, KISS-FM, recently dropped afternoon traffic reports after AMP-FM, a new Top 40 station received higher ratings without traffic updates.

Metro Traffic, a division of Westwood One Inc., began consolidating its 60 traffic reporting operations around the nation last year to just 13. As a result, reporters in the Washington D.C. hub also cover traffic news for Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. Some plane and helicopter reporting flights were cut as part of cost reductions that will amount to $55 million to $63 million annually.

Airwatch, a subsidiary of radio giant Clear Channel Communications Inc., has 60 reporters and producers working around the clock to provide traffic updates to more than 40 Southern California stations. They sit side by side in a small studio overlooking an Orange County freeway, staring at computer monitors and TV screens as they speak into the microphones, sometimes talking over each other as they file live reports.

Airwatch's revenue grew each year for nearly 10 years. But in late 2007, seven reporters lost their jobs when Clear Channel downsized the operation.

Nolan was one of them. He took a substantial pay cut to work from the ground. He chose to work from home rather than commute 40 miles roundtrip to the Airwatch studio in Santa Ana.

He now takes a few steps from his bedroom to his study to start his split shifts, from 5 to 9 a.m. then 3 to 7 p.m. He puts on a headset, turns on the stopwatch application on his iPhone, and pulls up a half-dozen Web pages to gather traffic information.

When it's his turn to come on at the top of the hour, 20 minutes past and bottom of the hour on KFI-AM and twice per hour on KOST-FM, Nolan rattles off a list of congested freeways in 40 second to one minute bursts.

Growing up in the San Fernando Valley in the early 1960s, Nolan saw freeways expand deeper into suburbs. Flying over Southern California day in and day out gave him an understanding of traffic patterns that enhance his reports from the ground.

When he reads traffic maps on the computer, he can picture every tunnel, hill and curve and knows when drivers should be slowing down. He can suggest alternate routes and knows what type of incident is likely to cause more misery.

He said that kind of knowledge can't be replaced by GPS-equipped gadgets.

"The radio reporter is going to tell you what's going on where you're going to be in addition to where you are," Nolan said.

Bastida at Airwatch predicts that in a few years, motorists will steer further away from the radio as carmakers add even more navigation systems and Internet-access equipment to vehicles. Airwatch has a growing service providing traffic updates directly to navigational units in vehicles.

"There will be jobs for people gathering and inputting the traffic data, but jobs for broadcasters will be going away," Bastida said.

Not everyone has a bleak outlook.

John Frawley, executive vice president of broadcast operations for Metro Traffic, said traffic news remains a big draw on news and talk stations. He says a device may tell drivers where the traffic jams are and how far the backup is, but it doesn't explain the cause.

"When our people come on, people pay attention," Frawley said. "They're interested that somebody else is suffering in traffic, too."

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

via google.com

While I program two radio stations with traffic reports, its kind of hard to argue with the facts in the story. If you haven't seen the live traffic on Google Maps, especially on a mobile device, you'll see why traffic reporting is about to become a personal choice as opposed to something that's pushed via radio or TV.

Posted via web from Mark Edwards 3.0

As God As My Witness, I Thought Turkeys Could Fly

I miss WKRP in Cincinnati.

I miss radio the way it used to be.  I miss Jennifer Marlowe. 

But every Thanksgiving, I'm reminded of the great show Hugh Wilson and Bill Dial wrote about an old school radio stunt gone bad.  If you haven't seen it, take the 21 minutes and enjoy.

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Posted via web from Mark Edwards 3.0

Glenn Beck-Political Organizer. Wait, Didn't That Obama Guy Do Something Like That?

Glenn Beck is coming to your neighborhood to teach you how to be a "political force". Here's his theme song! http://ping.fm/GJSO9

Details are in the New York Times

November 22, 2009

Glenn Beck Stakes Out a More Activist Role in Politics

 

By BRIAN STELTER

 

Glenn Beck, the popular and outspoken Fox News host, says he wants to go beyond broadcasting his opinions and start rallying his political base — formerly known as his audience — to take action.

To do so, Mr. Beck is styling himself as a political organizer. In an interview, he said he would promote voter registration drives and sponsor a series of seven conventions across the country featuring what he described as libertarian speakers.

On Saturday he held a festive campaign-style rally in The Villages in Florida, north of Orlando, in which he promoted his recently released book, “Arguing With Idiots,” and announced another book to come next August filled with right-leaning policy proposals gathered from the conventions.

Mr. Beck provided few details about his plans for the tour, making it unclear if he truly intends to prod his audience of millions into political action or merely burnish his media brand ahead of a book release.

Mr. Beck did say the conventions would resemble educational seminars, and he emphasized that while candidates may align themselves with the values and principles that he espouses, he would not take the next step to endorse them.

In describing the conventions, he told the crowd on Saturday: “You’re going to learn about finance. You’re going to learn about community organizing. You’re going to learn everything we need to know if you want to be a politician.”

His staff would not say whether particular candidates for office in the 2010 midterm elections would be invited to speak at the conventions or the August rally.

As for the question of Mr. Beck’s intentions, “He might just be trying to sell books, but there are much simpler ways to sell books,” said Ari Rabin-Havt, a vice president at Media Matters, the liberal media monitoring group. He said Mr. Beck sounded more like a presidential candidate than a pundit.

Mr. Beck, having used his television and radio pulpit to lay out his list of the country’s impending problems — deficit spending, health care legislation that will “destroy” the economy, a dearth of “personal responsibility” — says he now wants to also provide solutions.

In the interview, Mr. Beck, a frequent critic of President Obama, chose his words carefully but made clear that he intended to help elect politicians aligned with his limited-government world view. “We’ll be looking for ways to get people involved in politics,” he said.

Mr. Beck is not the only media firebrand trying to mobilize Americans disaffected with a Democratic-controlled government. The radio host Laura Ingraham is inviting candidates to sign a 10-point pledge on her Web site. Sean Hannity, on his afternoon radio show and prime-time Fox News program, is promoting “Conservative Victory 2010,” his name for the map on his site that will spell out questions for candidates.

And the former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who has a show on Fox News, has steered viewers to his Web site, where they can contribute money to his political action committee in support of conservative candidates.

Pundits have used their media stages to encourage political action before, but people like Mr. Beck and Mr. Hannity are taking on outsize roles now, political experts and conservative commentators say. One reason, they say, is the weakened state of the Republican Party.

The media figures’ roles may exacerbate the ideological feuds that are already roiling the party. For the diffuse tea party movement that taps into anti-government sentiments, “the media guys are the closest things we even have to a leader,” said Adam Brandon, the vice president for communications at FreedomWorks, a conservative advocacy group.

These efforts are reminiscent of the Contract With America pledge made by conservatives during the 1994 elections, though some Republicans who are uncomfortable with media personalities taking on new political roles note that that effort originated with lawmakers.

When asked about Mr. Beck at a conference last month, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said: “Here’s what I worry about. How many people in my business are going to be controlled by what’s said on the radio or in a TV commercial?”

It was not lost on Mr. Beck’s fans that the Saturday rally and book signing were held in Florida, where the Republican governor, Charlie Crist, has been sharply criticized by conservatives as he runs for an open seat in the United States Senate. Mr. Crist’s challenger, Marco Rubio, has already signed the pledge on Ms. Ingraham’s Web site, as have a smattering of other conservative candidates.

Already, Mr. Beck’s page on FoxNews.com features what it calls “In or Out 2010,” a “simple challenge” for lawmakers. It includes a pledge to back a freeze in government spending; oppose all tax increases “until our economy has rebounded”; and support stricter immigration enforcement.

Amy Green contributed reporting.

 

My favorite quote is on Newser.com I have begun meeting with some of the best minds in the country that believe in limited government, maximum freedom and the values of our Founders. I am developing a 100-year plan.- Glenn Beck

I have to go read the First Amendment now to remind myself that the whole free speech thing is actually good, and not evil.  And I have to go watch the epic film "Network".  I do believe Howard Beale is coming to life and he wants to be President. 

And should you not know the work of Mr. Beck, please enjoy this snippet from his Fox News show, wontcha...

Posted via web from Mark Edwards 3.0

Email Signature Etiquette | MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer

This week on Digital Life I did a segment about Email Signature Etiquette. It generated a bit of buzz, so I thought I’d share it with you.

Almost every email program lets you automatically add a signature to the emails you send. I’m sure you seen all kinds of interesting ones: flowery ones, very dense ones, and the horrifying and aesthetically offensive ones. What should yours look like? Here are a few simple guidelines:

First, every single email you send should have a signature. It should be plain text, so that it will look the same no matter what device or software is used to read it. When I say plain text, I mean just type (for geeks, ASCII text), no pictures, no logos, no html code, nothing but text.

Why? More than half the corporate world uses BlackBerrys to communicate. Depending on the vintage, they handle HTML over a wide range from, very poorly to marginally poorly. The operating word here is “poorly,” so why set up a signature that’s guaranteed to torture a large number of corporate users. Overly ornate signatures will produce highly unexpected, and possibly unreadable, results on a BlackBerry. This is also true for the body copy of the email. Tabs, bullets, any kind of alignment is all thrown out the window and HTML looks like jumbled computer code when it is displayed as text.

Another, and possibly more important, reason to use plain text is the wide range of spam filters that are currently deployed. Many of these filters look at the ratio of text to graphics as a test. If you’re email is already in HTML format, a logo or a combination of logo and your picture may kick your email into the corporate trash.

Like I said, signatures should be simple, complete and in plain text.

What should you include in your email signature? If it’s your personal signature: your name, email and the phone number(s) that are most relevant to your average recipients. Yes, your email address is in the “from” field at the top of the email. And, yes, they can reply to you by simply clicking “reply.” But what if they want to copy your information into a document or the notes field of a database or an address book program? The goal is to make contacting you and storing your information convenient.

If you have a business account, your signature should include all of your contact data. Name, title, company, office address, your email, your phone numbers and the company website. All text and all neatly stacked flush left.

Why include everything? How many times have you wanted to call someone about an email they sent and, because their phone number wasn’t in the email, you had to stop what you were doing to go look it up. Putting all your contact info into your email communication shows a world of respect for the one thing that everyone needs and has way too little of, their time.

One last thing, it is completely OK to leave the line, “Sent from my blackberry” or “Sent from my iPhone” at the bottom of a mobile email. It lets the recipient know that you are answering their email from your mobile device and that may get you a pass on some small typos and spelling errors. However, do everyone a favor and lose the, “Typing with my thumbs” line. It’s the 21st century; everyone types with their thumbs.

Set up some plain text email signatures and use them. It’s the right thing to do. For more help with your digital life, come visit me at shellypalmer.com

Shelly Palmer is the host of "Digital Life with Shelly Palmer," a weekly half-hour television show about living and working in a digital world which can be seen on WNBC-TV’s NY Nonstop Tuesdays at 10p Eastern and online, and the host of "MediaBytes," a daily news show that features insightful commentary and a unique insiders take on the biggest stories in technology, media, and entertainment. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group, LLC an industry-leading advisory and business development firm and the President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy® Awards). Mr. Palmer is the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2008, York House Press) and the upcoming, Get Digital: Reinventing Yourself and Your Career for the 21st Century Economy (2009, Lake House Press). You can join the MediaBytes mailing list here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.net For information visit www.shellypalmer.com

ShareThis

via shellypalmermedia.com

A tip o' the hat to the great Shelly Palmer for some common sense advice on e mail signatures. I'm cleaning mine up now, say goodbye to the cute little pictures that look like typos on a Blackberry.

Posted via web from Mark Edwards 3.0