DefinitiveInk

ConsumerSearch finds new life

About.com buys ConsumerSearch.com for 33 million.  Wow! The site had only 25 million page views in the first quarter of the year, with 3 million unique monthly visitors according to the press release. So that would be 8.3 million pvs a month  and 2.7 pages per visit. If it had great data wouldn't those be higher. A friend of mine designed the site six years ago and it hasn't changed since then. Periodically I stopped in and really thought they were not publishing. While it is a small relative amount to the deals that seem to come out daily it seems like a hefty sum for what it is.

Josh Bell busks the Washington Metro

Early in April the Washington Post had Josh Bell, play incognito in the Washington Metro.  No one stopped. The Post blames the audience but SawLady, a NYC busker has a different perspective. She thinks that Bell simply failed to play to the crowd. 

Brooklyn Blogfest May 10th Old Stone House

Considering that I live two blocks from the Old Stone House, and that the event features many blogs I like, and last of all is free, it would be a bit pathetic if I missed it. So I'm planning to attend and  give some support to outside.in, brownstoner, and more.

Send, just don't reply all

Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home: Books: David Shipley,Will Schwalbe has gotten some great reviews but why is it 256 pages long when The Elements of Style is 105? It central thesis is, “Think before you send” and “Send e-mail you would like to receive.” Dave Barry wrote the review for the NYT.

Nice story about Beliefnet (need Times Select)

Keeping Faith in a Venture Built on Faith - New York Times is an interesting essay about beliefnet and how it has survived boom and bust to acheive moderate success.

I'm thinking of declaring e-mail bankruptcy. (via Kottke.org)

Why do are bars that masquerade as speakeasies appeal when liquor is legal? Why do pseudo-punks on St. Marks wear the clothes of my high school years? Isn't there a new vocabulary for both?

Digg DVD hack controversy

Jason Chervokas rounds up the Digg HD-DVD controversy in which someone posted code to hack into a HD-DVD, Digg pulled it, was bombarded by more Diggs, reposted it, etc. 

New must read - Bill Moyer's Blog

A great map of social network geography

(via Kottke.org)

Knowing when a medium is dead

Was in a meeting yesterday with someone who also had the pleasure of making some CD-ROMs for museums years ago. I say pleasure as it was a lot of fun to run through archives, make films, pull documents, and take photos of rare artifacts but that was the problem. My colleague ran a small company then (has a really well known one now) and shared with me an epiphany he had at the time.  He told me that one day, in the middle of the big and only project they were creating for a large museum, he looked around the table at the 12 employees he had working on it that realized that not one of them had bought a CD-ROM in the past six months. It was then he said that he realized the medium was doomed. He was right.