Author: Ashley

Uncategorized

Voting? Paper or Plastic?

Ashley

So after all the brouhaha about how the elections officials in Santa Clara County were directing their people not to offer paper ballots when there were those oh so reliable electronic voting machines, guess what I was asked when I got to the registration table in Mountain View City Hall? Electronic or Paper?

I picked paper. Then the ladies filling in the paper ledger circled “P” for paper, I signed on the line with a pen and off I went to sit down at a table to make my decision. The way people have been doing it in our country for over 200 years.

And probably a good things seeing as BoingBoing is reporting that another Santa Clara County resident got the voting machine equivalent of the blue screen o’death. Luckily for all of us he was armed with a camera phone to protect his right to vote. Other Santa Clara County voters’ experiencesweren’t as easy as mine. My co-worker voted at the firehall in Mountain View and was asked why she wanted one and given a quilt trip for having asked for a paper ballot. And from what’s written on BoingBoing other people in Santa Clara County are having similar experiences. Um, aren’t we by law entitled to a paper ballot? And isn’t it against the law for polling stations to hinder that request? Hmmm…

As for hindering voting, my friend told me that she did the electronic version and there was no way for her to write in a candidate. Nader is a write in candidate here in California, for those not aware. The guy who’s running for president from jail is on the ballot, but we can’t easily write in a guy that’s trying to get the US to go for a legitimate three party system. That will have to wait until next time I suppose.

During the half hour that I was in line and could actually see the voting area ( I was in line for an hour from 7 to 8 am) there were only a handful of people that chose the paper method. I was talking to a guy in line and was mulling over with him whether or not I was going to go the paper route. He said, “If it was any place other than California, then I’d do paper.” Without getting to intrusive, I could only infer he meant that if he was in a swing state, and he felt that his vote really could make a difference, he would certainly vote paper. I consider it a bit of a social faux pax to ask someone in line who they’re voting for. Following that thought with him would have led me down that route.

But despite the electronic voting system, lines continued to be long. Maybe it’s because Californians have 31 decisionsto make while standing there. Sitting down, I breezed through the paper ballot while other people were left standing to figure out the touch screens.

For those wondering why I chose paper. Electronic voting in the way that it’s implemented right now, does not sit well with me. What happens if someone decides they’re going to let off an EMP and knock out all the machines causing them lose all their data? Or more likely, what happens if votes need to be recounted? Where’s the paper trail? Also, how do I know that the people I voted for are what was recorded in the system? I don’t right now. But I do know if I mark the paper myself. It’s more manual intensive, but I know that I haven’t been disenfranchised by a malfunctioning computer.

Writing

That was Then, This is Now

Ashley

Remember S.E. Hinton? She wrote “The Outsiders”, “That was Then, This is Now”, “Rumble Fish” and “Tex”. Well, it seems she no longer has writers block, and Tor is releasing her new novel, “Hawkes Harbor“. And this one is aimed at us adults who read her books as teenagers!

Yahoo! News has a little story about why it’s taken her so long to put out another novel. She says that she didn’t know what to write, i.e. writers block. But I wonder if it has anything to do with the pressures of having to write another successful novel that could later be turned into a movie. Or perhaps she just got sick of Matt Dillion portraying her characters.

Marketing, RSS

RSS & Marketing

Ashley

I think marketers are beginning to rub their sleepy eyes and are waking up to the potentials of adding RSS to their marketing mix. But what exactly should they be looking for?

This eWeek articlesays LiveMessage based in Redwood City is releasing software that lets users send RSS “messages”. I put it in quotes because describing it that way is not exactly the right terminology for RSS, but the correct terminology for marketing.

From a consumer point of view, I would prefer RSS to email because I can definitely turn off the pipeline when *I* want to. If I see that they’ve allowed another company to use that feed to market to me, well I can just unsubscribe. And I know that they won’t keep on sending me spam emails. The flow of information is finally in my control, and I can cut down on the amount of spam in my inbox.

One thing that will help propel the wide adaptation of RSS by marketers is if more people are using RSS aggregators. I’ve said it before, but I’ll repeat myself. Someone needs to integrate an RSS reader, Outlook and IE. Newsmonster supposedly does something like this. But it uses Mozilla instead of IE, and my machine (I’m on XP) doesn’t seem to like it. And I haven’t tried NewsGator yet. But I can tell you my web browsing has already changed because of RSS. Have there been any studies on how people’s web browsing has changed since the wide acceptance of RSS readers? Maybe ol’ Neilly could get on it, but he’s still doing his Alertbox columnonly as an email and not using RSS. (Has he ever changed his website?)

There are some decent RSS marketing feeds out there. Amazon obviously knows good tech when they see it. They have Amazon Syndicated Contentfor a variety of categories. Also, I would have thought eBay would have implemented an RSS search functionality, but why bother when someone else has done it for free. You can get your own customized eBay Search RSS via freebiddingtools.com .

Of course there are some nay-sayers against RSS marketing. Chris Pirillo lists the arguments against RSS marketinghe’s gotten. Obviously he doesn’t agree if you read his last sentence. And eNewsletter Journal is conservative about adding RSS to your marketing mix, because they say the metrics won’t be as complete. However there is a way to do it well and have just as good metrics. Just tweak your content management system. You can assign users an unique RSS ID to each feed. For example, I’m an online travel company, and I know that Ashley Richards is looking for cheap flights From SFO to JFK and YVR. She can create a customized page, á la my.yahoo.com, that has its own RSS feed. If the price for anything on that page changes, the RSS feed is updated. She sees in her aggregator a synopsis, and she then comes to the site. We have her in our database with identifying information such as her: IP address, home airport, frequency of feed checking, click-throughs to the site, and if we ask her to fill out a form to get the feed we can find out other demographic information.

If you need more convincing that you should add RSS to your marketing mix, read Alex Barnnet’s Email v RSS, Email Marketer v Customer Matrix. You’ll see when and where you should use it.

One place that is indisputably a good place to have an RSS feed is on anything that could be considered PR for your company. Business Weekreports Sun’s president and COO Jonathan Schwartz’ blog is proof positive that you can successfully use blogging for PR. In the article, they say Sun’s competitors are checking out what he has to say. What could be better than having someone in your company seen as an authority on a topic and share their knowledge with your clients, competitors, and interested parties. Also if you’re a company like say, Google, who has a cult-like following, you can benefit from a Google blogabout what’s going on inside your hallowed halls. It can give your followers (and investors) the feeling that they’re a part of your company.

Even though there has been a bit written on the subject, more serious attention needs to be given to using RSS for marketing. I think we’re seeing the baby stages of what marketers can do with RSS, and how consumer can finally feel in control again over the messages they recieve.

Writing

Not Listed on Google?

Ashley

Last week I got a phone call from a small businessman in a rather niche market. Seems his site was no longer listed in Google. Without giving away his identity I thought I’d share what he was going through and some advice as I understand the frustration when your site completely drops off Google.

Let’s say that this man sells Acme Widgets. He used to be in the top 10 when you searched for “Acme Widgets” on Google. Now he’s not even in the top 200. What went wrong? Google changed its algorithm this past winter. This happened to many sites after the Google shake-up that happened when they changed the way they rank pages. Site that are “spammy” are no longer weighted as highly as they were before, and the information that you provide on your site (visable to the reader) seems to be more imporatant. Most likely people who have “dropped off Google” for specific key phrases do not have enough key-phrase-rich copy on their sites. So I’m offering some advise to people out there that are still dealing with this.

Good news was that Google did have his site in their system and he was NOT blacklisted. You can figure this out yourself simply by putting in a whole swack of text from your site or entering the site’s url. If your site comes up, then you’re not blacklisted. You’re still in their system.

After looking at the Acme Widgets’ site my suspicion that he just didn’t have enough copy/words on his pages seemed to be correct. The general consensus amongst SEO copywriters is that you need at least 250 words on each page and it must be key-phrase-rich. So put your key phrase in there as many times as you can without it sounding repetitive and spammy. Look at your competitors. They probably have much more words/information on their pages. In this case Acme Widgets only had 100 words per page. One of his competitors had 450 words of information on each page. Another had 3000 words! That’s too much for one page. Best to keep it easy to read and short enough so that you only have to scroll 2 times.

Another thing that seemed to have changed is that any links that Acme Widgets had prior to the Google shake-up are no long seen as important by the Googlebot, so it seems. Here’s what I think happened. Like I said before Google changed the way they weight links from certain sites. The reason they did that is because some shadey SEO firms, unfortunately, just list a link to your site on other sites that Google considers “spammy”. They’re considered spammy because their sole purpose is to be a link farm that just lists links rather than give helpful information on a topic. So once Google revamped their algorithm (how they weigh links), the Googlebot no longer considers the link farm sites as a valuable link. You wouldn’t go to someone who was not an authority on Acme Widgets for advice on what sites are best for Acme Widgets information, so why should the Googlebot? Therefore you lose any benefit from being listed on the link farm sites. I don’t believe that they’re harming you (I could be wrong), but they don’t help you at all now.

I compared Acme Widgets’ Google and Yahoo results and this seems to be the case for him. To do this just put in your URL on Yahoo. On Yahoo I could see that his site is listed on certain pages. Using my Google Toolbar, I could see that Google was not counting the link that I saw on Yahoo as a backward link, so it must consider it an non-authorative site. The only link it is counting is from another eCommerce site, which seems to be a valid consumer site and therefore a “good” link. How’d his site get listed on a spammy site? He used a shady SEO company rather than a good SEO company. I’m sure there were other sites that the other SEO company submitted his site to. Before the Google shake-up I’m sure those links on “spammy” sites bolstered his ranking. Without the benefits of those links, his ranking went down, and now unfortunately his ranking is not in the top 200.

If this sounds like your site, good news is that you can work on getting your site back on the first page. Here’s what you should do:

  1. Add More Words – Like I said before you should have at least 250 key-phrase-rich words on each page. And make sure it reads well to the person visiting your site. Don’t just cram as many key phrases in there as you can because if it sounds “spammy”. It’s the equivalent of a sales person pestering you. In “real life” you would walk away from them in the store. Online, your customer will go on to another site.
  2. Choose Only 1 or 2 Key Phrases – You should focus on having only 1 or 2 key phrases per page. More than that and you wind up diluting the strength of your copy on the search engine robot. The easiest way to do this is to divide your site into sections by topic. Focus the content on the page on the section and the key phrase associated with it.
  3. Title Tags – Make sure that for each page the title that appears in the browser’s title bar describes what’s on the page and uses your most important key phrase for that page. Do not jam pack it with key phrases. It dilutes its effectiveness and could be considered spam.
  4. Image Alt Tags – Check to see if your images have mouseover alt tags. Here’s a definition for them if you do not know what they are: http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/alt_tag/ . If your images contain text key phrases, so should your alt tags on these images. Search engine robots read this text, so it gives you the perfect chance to add another key phrase on your page. Do not stuff key phrases in here, because it’s considered spam. The alt tag should describe the image.
  5. Reduce Code – I’ve noticed that people tend to put a number of Meta tags in the html code that do not need to be in there. Take it out. And see if your JavaScript can be moved to a separate file. The reason to reduce extraneous code on the page is to make it easier for the search engine robots to read your content as they crawl through your site. If the robots see too much code at the beginning of the page they will think there’s no content on the page and go on to the next one. If all your pages are like this, well then they might think there is no content on the site. Reducing unnecessary code can never hurt.
  6. Get Valued Links – You may want to start a reciprocal links page and see if you can get your site listed on pages that are not spammy, but do have something to do with the products you’re selling. Also try to find an appropriate category on http://dmoz.org/ where you can submit your site. DMOZ is run by volunteers and it may take a while to get listed in a category. I believe I’m still waiting to be listed.
  7. Check if Site has been Down – Talk to whomever is hosting your site and make sure the site hasn’t been experiencing any downtime. If the site is down and a bot comes by, then the search engines can’t see it or log it.

    8. Once you do these changes it can take anywhere from 1 to 3 months to see results. The reason is that it depends on how often the Googlebot comes to your site and when Google does its next in-depth crawl of the web. Hopefully it will be sooner rather than later. You can submit your site to Google, but rumor is that they don’t even consider it anymore. It just goes into a blackhole. http://www.google.com/addurl.html

    In the mean time I highly suggest starting a Google Adwords Campaign, so that you aren’t completely off the radar when people search for your key phrases. It probably won’t cost too much money unless you’re in a highly competitive category. You should check out to https://adwords.google.com/select/ .

    Also you should familiarize yourself with the SEO world and check out http://www.highrankings.com/archives.htm . This site is run by Jill Whelan who is considered one of the foremost SEO experts. I read her newsletter every week and have gotten most of my SEO knowledge from it

    If you need more content/information/copy for your site and don’t know what to add look at what your competitors have on their site. You might also want to add a news section where you add press releases, industry news, and things that you or the company is doing. The more you update your site the more the Googlebot will visit it. It will consider it an active site and therefore worth visiting more often. That is a good thing. If you’re talking about what is going on within your realm, people may start to see you as an authority on the topic and link to you. These links will be valuable and probably weighted more by Google. Also in addition to having a news page you might want to have a synopsis of the latest news on your homepage so that page is frequently updated as well. One way to easily enable a news section would be to add a blog using software such as MoveableType.

    Hopefully by following this advice it puts you in the right direction on getting your site back onto Google. I cannot make any guarantees when it comes to rankings as it is not an exact science. If only we knew exactly what the Googlebot was looking for! But if we did, then the spammers would win.

Uncategorized

News Readers: Bad UI or Bad Docs?

Ashley

On Wednesday evening I went to a little pre-Supernova 2004dinner. Joichi Ito suggested the dinner, however he was not in attendance as he was in Japan or somewhere. But 110 people showed up anyway. Talk about the power of suggestion. (Or the power of a blog.)

Since Supernova had a session entitled “Syndication Nation: Is This What Comes After the Web?”, I was able to get some solutions to the issues in my previous post. And better yet, the solutions came from the mouths of the guys creating the software for this stuff. (I say guys as there were a total of 5 women in the room that evening, including myself.)

Ultimately what I learned on Wednesday night was that a lot of my frustration came from not knowing how to properly use the tools that I already have on my computer. I’d like to think that it’s not because I’m a stupid user, but more because I’m an ill-informed user. Since many of these newsreaders developed as side projects, there’s a lack of technical documentation. And I’m sure they’ll all acknowledge that and say “But we don’t have money for it.” My suggestion, find it. Or find friends that are willing to help you out. The reason I say that is because you won’t be able to rise to the top without it. Just check out the reviews of some the newsreaders that are out there. I can tell you that the negative comments for SharpReader result from the fact that the user doesn’t fully understand how to use it. Actually before you write the user guide, do some user testing. You’ll see what greatly needs to be improved immediately.

Newsgroup issue solved!
While eating some yummy Indian appetizers, Mark Fletcher of Bloglines sat down at my table. Little did he know he chose to sit near a “stupid user”, well, more like ill-informed user. I told Mark that I wanted feeds of my Phish newsgroup. He nicely informed me that Google Groupsjust introduced xml feeds for all of their newsgroups. So I came home, and low and behold, after googling the Google site for it I found it. Buried in Google Labs. So I can now subscribe via the Google Groups 2 beta. Thanks Mark for pointing me in the right direction! Although I could have avoided looking like a newbie to the newsgroup rss if a) I wasted time to dig a little deeper to find it and b) Google had a link to their Google Groups 2 Beta off the Google Groups page. Bad UI? Or do they just not want me finding it?

Next on my list – Calendars.
Although I was privy to a heated discussion on foaf a few weeks back, I didn’t realize that the conversation over dim sum was a potential answer to the calendaring and friends question. Jonathan Moore told me that Mosuki is the answer. It combines social networking and an events calendar. I’ve tried it. It’s cool, but it need user documentation. So I’ve agreed to write it. I’ll let you know what it can do later once I’ve learned more about it.

Newsreader TiVo
Supposedly, NewsMonster can tell me what other sites I might like based on what I’m already subscribed to. Well, that’s what Kevin Burtonsaid, and I have yet to find out. NewsMonster doesn’t seem to work with my Windows operating system at the moment, but Kevin said that within the next month he’d send me a copy that will. I’m holding him to it! Oh and for those who read the Wired article on Kevin, he’s not creepy like it makes him out to be.

There’s an Orkut in my newsreader?
Well this one seems to be a bit far off. First, all the friendsters, orkuts, and other social networking systems would have to be able to talk to each other. Marc Canter is a great one to debate with on this topic. He’s working on getting them all to at least play nice with each other. Just don’t start with security issues. Once that’s sorted out perhaps they’ll then implement something with RSS.

Websites without RSS?
Seems that there are sites/people out there that are developing feeds for sites that are not embracing RSS. However, sometimes they get into trouble from the website owners. I don’t see why you wouldn’t create RSS files for your site. Loss of revenue, maybe. But if you only serve out a portion of the article or a brief synopsis of what’s been updated, then people will have to go to the site anyway. I thought of a great use for RSS in direct marketing, including building a list database and how it discourages list selling. But I’ll tell you about it later.

Stuff

News Junkie Gone Mad

Ashley

I tried to cut myself off. It lasted a day. I can’t take it anymore! I need a the ultimate information manager. Does it even exist?

Give me something that will do all of these thing: be an rss reader, manage my email, a newsreader for my rec.music.phish newsgroup, tell me if my favorite websites are updated, update me on threads in my Orkut communities and let me post to it, tell me if my friends’ calendars have changed for Friday night, navigate through friends’ foaf, and basically make it so that I don’t have to waste my time checking to see if there’s new information in my favorite places. Oh and it should recommend things that I might be interested in, whether its something new at Amazon, an event on Craigslist, or a new website. Maybe what I really want is a TiVo for the web.

Perhaps I’m just lazy. Or perhaps I’m tired of the fact that all these communities, newsreaders, webmails, and sites on the web have become little islands unto themselves with no active connection to the outside world, and I, the cybertraveller, have to paddle out to them just to find out what’s new on each island. It’s not efficient, and I’d rather be spending my time writing.

I know that there are all these separate projects going on right now that solve some of my complaints here, but I want them to all come together and create the mother of all information managers. However, they can’t agree on a standard for some of this stuff, so how would they ever agree to work together?

Fun

Happy 100th Bloomsday!

Ashley

On 16 June 1904 Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, two characters in James Joyce’s Ulysses, set out on their epic journey through the streets of Dublin. Today also happens to be the 100th anniversary of Nora Barnacle and James’ first date, and let’s just say Nora wasn’t the good little Catholic girl that evening down by Dublin Bay. And if it wasn’t for Nora we probably wouldn’t even have this behemoth of a book, as she was the one who fished it out of the fireplace after one of James’ typical tantrums.

Your man wasn’t celebrated until after his death and slowly over the years Bloomsday turned into a tribute to Joyce. A few years ago I was in Dublin on Bloomsday. There were groups in Joycean dress following the path Bloom took that day. And I even tried to grab a glass of burgundy and a gorgonzola sandwich at Davey Byrne’s just off Grafton, but alas they had already drank the pub dry and strewn across the tables were the skeletons of eaten sandwich crusts. So I headed over to the James Joyce Room at Bewley’s instead. With the throngs of people at the 100th anniversary this year, I’m sure there are more than a few gorgonzola sandwiches lining Grafton Street.

And if burgundy or gorgonzola sandwiches aren’t for you, well then grab a pint of the black stuff, some bangers and mash, curl with a copy of Ulysses and try to make a dent in its 933 pages. Or may I suggest the film about Mrs. Joyce, Nora.

Movie Reviews, Writing

The Art of the Story

Ashley

Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg, DreamWorks, Pixar, and at one time Disney. What do all of these things have in common? They all had highly successful, well-received films because they know how to tell a good story well.

Think about the types of films that they’ve all created. Many of them had fantastic special effects and featured cutting-edge technology. But that’s not why people love them. Audiences get caught up in the struggle of a little fish trying to find his son. They feel the heartache and frustration of a giant green ogre that’s trying to impress his in-laws. Audiences cried when Wilson the volleyball gets swept out to sea – granted a lot of that had to do with the acting, but there was a heartfelt story behind it. The audience becomes a part of the action that is going on up on the screen, because the directors can tell a story. And that is why people love the films.

I wonder if young filmmakers are truly grasping this concept.

Reason I ask is that last week I caught a free screening of Napoleon Dynamite from Fox Searchlight. It’s a quirky little story about a social outcast in high school. Created by a husband and wife team, Jared and Jerusha Hess, out of Bingham Young University, it was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize for a Dramatic Film at Sundance and won the Film Discovery Jury Award for Best Feature at the U.S. Comedy Festival. However, I don’t see what all the fuss is about over this movie. We love it because it’s different. It’s not the same vein of lackluster comedy that’s being spewed out of Hollywood. Yes it has some great funny bits. Yes the actor playing Napoleon, Jon Heder, does a good job at deadpan comedy. But it doesn’t all come together they way it could.

I hate to see what could be a great little movie turn into a flop. There were a number of times throughout the film that I wasn’t engaged in the story. That was mainly in the beginning, which droned on for what seemed like an hour, before we know what this story is about. Once you get to the story it is very sweet and funny. It reminded me to some extent of the Royal Tenenbaum ( especially the beginning titles) in that it’s a reflection back on a childhood that was awkward, a bit strange, and weird. But it seemed the Hesses were more concerned about getting all those funny skits that they thought up into the movie rather than telling the story.

There are lots of little skits/scenes that are precious. Yet, there seems to be a disconnect between them sometimes that resulted in a number of lulls in the movie. And there were scenes that we were laughing at not because it was funny but because it was awkwardly stupid. Luckily I had a great group of guys sitting next to me that that didn’t follow the convention of not talking during the movie. There were some times I was laughing because of this group of guys sitting next were making little comments and well, you can’t recreate that at every showing. Also, since it was a free screening there’s a bit of the “well it’s a free showing and since I didn’t pay for it I’m not as invested in it, demanding that it’s up to my standards of what funny is”.

If I were in charge, I would suggest going back and editing this movie. This is what I think would help make it even better:

Establish location in the beginning – We need to know that this is Idaho. I shouldn’t have to read a synopsis of the film to know where it takes place. It’s not clear in the beginning. To me it looks like the mountains in California. Reason that we need to know where we are is that we’re questioning what year this is. Is it the 80’s? If we think that then we’re nit-picking at what is wrong with the movie: Glamour Shots weren’t popular until the 90’s, the ring tones are too modern, and the Internet was still in it’s baby stages, no one used the word cyberspace, went in chat rooms or bought things online. Also the chicken farm and milk testing scenes then make sense. If we’re supposed to not know, well, it doesn’t work. Establishing that it’s Idaho explains everything, because Idaho is perceived by the general public as being completely backassward.

What is the Story? The central conflict? – We don’t know what to root for until we know that the kid’s interested in the girl and even then we lose that somewhere in the middle. We start getting concerned about the presidential race and the girl kinda takes a back seat. I would have liked to have seen just a bit more of her. If it’s not the girl, then I’ve left that theater not really knowing what this story is about.

What’s his Internal Conflict? – What is going on in this kid’s head? Yes we’ve all known this kid when we were in school and maybe we were him in some ways. Hell, we certainly laugh at times because some of us have done things that he’s doing – “My girlfriend is a model and can’t make it to the dance” However, there are times, mainly in the beginning, I was asking “is it that the actor can’t act, or is the character supposed to be this way.” I know that in some ways we’re not supposed to understand this kid, but we should know what’s motivating him? Could be solved with speeding up the pacing or adding voiceover if you must.

Speed up the Pacing – The beginning needs to be cut down. Although there are a number of very funny and cute scenes in there, the story doesn’t really seems to start until we’re concerned about the boys getting dates for the dance. You could take some of those funny little scenes and move them elsewhere in the movie. Loved having the 80s music at the dance, but for the length of the movie cut the dance scene is just a tad. Also, I left the movie not really remembering what happened in the beginning.

Cow Shooting Scene – Loved it. This is one of those great little random scenes in the beginning that could be moved elsewhere in the film. Juxtapose it with the milk tasting scene later on in the film. However you can see fishing line attached to the rifle. Breaks the suspension of disbelief.

Too many characters – There’s a bit of a theme in my comments that I can’t remember characters. Shows that perhaps there are too many, audience attention is divided. Could have combined some.

Summer – Played by Hillary Duff’s sister, Hailey, we need to hate her more. Just because she’s the popular girl is not enough of a reason to hate her. I would have had her be the one that is made to go to the dance with Napoleon. Combining characters many times can fix a story.

Summer’s boyfriend – We should see more of him. I would have combined this character with all the other school bullies. It makes us hate him and hate Summer even more because she’s dating him.

Rex the karate guy – By the time Napoleon’s Uncle Rico was in Rex’s girlfriends house towards the end of the movie, I had forgotten about Rex and that she was Rex’s girlfriend. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t remember how she was connected to other people in the movie. Probably if you speed up the pacing then it isn’t an issue. Definitely keep it in. We want to see Rico get beat up.

Uncle Rico – We hate this guy. I don’t feel sorry for him. He’s a bastard of an uncle to Napoleon. So why have him find his soul mate at the end.? Who cares! He deserves to be alone for being such a jerk to Napoleon and screwing up his love life. And who is that woman that pulls up on her bike? She’s in the middle of nowhere and there’s a loner-guy living in his van, throwing footballs at a camera? No normal, nice looking woman would go anywhere near him.

Pedro – The Napoleon/Pedro friendship was true to life. When thrown into an awkward situation (being in high school and an outcast) with someone else, you usually become friends with that person out of convenience, and it was what you’d expect a typical teenage boys’ friendship would be.

Pedro’s relatives – loved these guys in the car. I would have liked to have seen more instances of their “protection services”. They’re thrown in there at one point and then forgotten about until the family picnic where we see them in the background.

Ending – Napoleon’s dance skit on stage – we loved it, felt embarrassed for him, rooted for him, were amazed that he could dance that way, and proud that he got them all on their feet (with help from the girl he likes). The last scene is perfect the way it is, and it’s probably due to the Mormon influence here. Do not change it. Do not have Napoleon and the girl kiss. (I can’t remember her name, which says to me she’s not in it enough). I could see MTV(the producers) wanting to change it.

Music – There needs to be more mood/background music. There’s so much feeling that music can add to a film. I liked the instrumental soundtrack and would have liked to have heard it fill in some of the slower scenes . Might have helped me connect to the film more.

Tina – Did he still feed the llama throughout this time period? We don’t see that he still has to take care of her. Somewhere in the back of my head I’m thinking, “Did he starve the llama?”

I can see this film becoming a cult favorite mainly because it’s a stupid story told in a quirky way. But imagine what the Hesses could have accomplished if they just stayed true to the story

Stuff

A Protest of One

Ashley

In this week’s Metro, the Fly had a brief write up about someone who’s placing hoods on the Rodin statues at Stanford and writing “Rumsfeld was here” in chalk on the ground. A project design grad student, Steve Bishop, was able to snaps some photos of the hooded Rodin statues before the Cantor Arts Center museum staff dehooded them. My favorite quote from the article is from Bishop, “To me, that’s kind of ironic to worry about the statues and not the people at Abu Gharib.”

Sadly I have not heard about this protest in any of the media around here besides some footnote in the local papers. It would be interesting if any of the mainstream media picked this up. However, they’ve all moved on to a new controversial topic: the price of gas.

Picture of the hooded Rodin statues at Stanford
Link to Article about the Protest of One – you have to scroll to the bottom of the page.

Writing

Write Better!

Ashley

Think you have an excellent grasp on the English language? Do you question the grammar of your copywriter? Are you an engineer or programmer who insists that you can write better than your technical writer? Well sir, I challenge thee to a English contest!

You have 1 month to put your money (5 bucks) where your mouth is. Point-to-Point, a publisher/language school/tour company based in Ottawa, is inviting all native English speakers to a Language Contest. The prize is a copy for The Oxford Atlas and bragging rights of course.

At first glance of the text there are a myriad of mistakes that jump off the screen, however I know that they’ve laid a number of hidden landmines for the language police. The results and corrections will be posted on September 30th.

While I’m on the subject of writing better, will people stop using crutch words please? The best of us use them. The Bush speechwriter cannot stop using “embolden”, not that I would consider this speechwriter one of the best writers out there. I’m reading through best-selling author Anne Perry’s Thomas and Charlotte Pitt series right now. She’s stuck on describing gas street lamps and insists on repeatedly calling them moons. I’m guilty of crutch words myself. Whenever you write on one topic/genre long enough you’re bound to have words that you use when you can’t find new ones that would better describe what you’re talking about. It makes your writing go faster, and in all honesty, it is the easy way out.

One more thing about writing better. Would “comedic” screenwriters *please* stop using that stupid ESP/ESPN joke? It was funny the first time I heard it back on the 80’s sitcom Perfect Strangers. It was funny because Balki didn’t have a great command of English, he was new to American culture and didn’t know what ESPN was, and ESPN had recently launched under those initials that don’t mean anything. It’s about 20 years later, we all know what ESPN is, the joke’s not funny anymore. And when it’s comes to making a ditzy blonde look dumb, there are far funnier, contempory jokes to use.