Archives for December 2006
I stumbled across a relevant book recently called Refrigerator Rights: Creating Connections & Restoring Relationships. Drs. Will Miller and Glenn Sparks thesis apparently (I haven’t read the book yet) is that we all need people in our life who we are comfortable with… to the degree that they have refrigerator rights in our home. [...]
Many neighborhoods are using Front Porch Forum to get organized in the face of shared challenges… proposed highways, landfills, convenience stores, etc. Others have gone beyond playing defense to using their neighborhood forum to plan constructive changes… new playgrounds, block parties, strengthening communication with elected officials and more.
Now some of our area’s more innovative [...]
Weekly and monthly community newspapers are sharing neighbor-helping-neighbor stories emanating from Front Porch Forum lately. The Essex Reporter, Charlotte News, Shelburne News and North Avenue News each ran features in December. More coming in January.
So much online space is whacked… strange people doing strange things… wonder around MySpace and soak it up. Even the relatively mainstream sites often sound shrill… spend an hour reading the comments section of some of the political blogs out there. Then there’s the manufactured hipness of most commercial sites.
So what’s a grown up to [...]
I studied engineering in school and therefore never had time for Philosophy 101, so grant me license to roam occasionally…
As most of us chug through our stress-filled days focused on the next several “to do”s on the list, tragedy hangs nearby, waiting to pay a visit. The oncoming car crossing the centerline, the phone [...]
Much of Vermont is rural and therefore not uniformly well served by the bigshots of broadband, such as Verizon and Comcast. Peter Freyne interviewed the Speaker of the Vermont House, Gaye Symington today:
“It’s clear now, that waiting for the private sector to focus on Vermont and hook us all up to broadband is simply [...]
Also from The Local Onliner today, an interesting quote from an outgoing R.H. Donnelly executive, Simon Greenman:
Yellow Pages “[p]ublishers are well-positioned to become local search providers. But they’ll need to become much broader, with classifieds, promotional information and service directories. They’ll need to become more consumer-centric, with social networking, merchant recommendations and other features.”
I’m not [...]
What are the most common categories for what people are looking for in (1) the Yellow Page and (2) local online search? Same things? Apparently not, according to The Local Onliner:
Just this week, Ask released the Top 10 food, music and business search lookups for its revised AskCity service. Here’s how AskCity’s Business [...]
A story about Front Porch Forum will air tomorrow (Dec. 20, 2006) on Vermont Public Radio’s Morning Edition at 7:49 AM. That’s 107.9 FM around Burlington. We’ll have the audio version on our Media page after the fact. Thanks to Mitch Wertlieb and Ben Embry of VPR.
I’ve talked with hundreds of people in casual conversation about Front Porch Forum over the past many months. One of the most common comments goes a little something like this…
“I’m chagrined to admit it, but out of our entire neighborhood I only know the couple next door… and I’ve lived here for TEN years!”
It’s [...]