{"id":160,"date":"2006-12-03T22:13:43","date_gmt":"2006-12-04T05:13:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gen-o.com\/blog\/2006\/12\/03\/weekend-tidbits\/"},"modified":"2006-12-10T22:53:54","modified_gmt":"2006-12-11T05:53:54","slug":"weekend-tidbits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gen-o.com\/blog\/2006\/12\/03\/weekend-tidbits\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekend tidbits"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>I missed a <a target=\"_blank\" onclick=\"javascript:urchinTracker ('\/outbound\/www.nytimes.com');\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2006\/11\/28\/nyregion\/28ink.html\">recent story in the NYT<\/a> about the Finnegans Wake Society, which used to meet at Gotham Book Mart, until my favorite store store closed its doors a couple months ago.<\/li>\n<li>The excellent <a target=\"_blank\" onclick=\"javascript:urchinTracker ('\/outbound\/www.npr.org');\" href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\">NPR<\/a> show <a target=\"_blank\" onclick=\"javascript:urchinTracker ('\/outbound\/marketplace.publicradio.org');\" href=\"http:\/\/marketplace.publicradio.org\">Marketplace<\/a> did a <a target=\"_blank\" onclick=\"javascript:urchinTracker ('\/outbound\/www.publicradio.org');\" href=\"http:\/\/www.publicradio.org\/tools\/media\/player\/marketplace\/morning_report\/2006\/11\/21_mktmorn0450?start=00:00:04:59.0&#038;end=00:00:08:17.0\">segment<\/a> last month on Kepler\u2019s membership program, which has raised over $200,000 from shoppers, who, ahem, get nothing in return. Noticeably absent from the Marketplace piece was the very valid criticism that Kepler\u2019s should not be able to get away with soliciting non-profit-style membership contributions until they become more transparent about their financial workings and where the membership money goes. On the plus side, I recently noticed that inventory at the store has improved quite a bit with the critical theory, fiction, and sports sections all showing marked improvement.BN.com<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/search.barnesandnoble.com\/booksearch\/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&#038;EAN=9781400642243&#038;itm=1\">BN.com<\/a> has an item on my Christmas list, the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/search.barnesandnoble.com\/booksearch\/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&#038;EAN=9781400642243&#038;itm=1\">Lego Mindstorms NXT<\/a>, for $187.46 with the coupon code B3U6E4V. That&#8217;s, by far, the best price I&#8217;ve seen so far.<\/li>\n<li>Yahoo! and Reuters have collaborated to <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2006\/12\/04\/technology\/04yahoo.html\">solicit user-submitted news photos<\/a> through Yahoo!&#8217;s new <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/page\/youwitnessnews\">You Witness News site.<\/a> Reuters may then select photos for distribution to their clients, in which case, photographers will receive small royalty payments.<\/li>\n<li>remember watching with delight then 12-year-old Jeffrey Maier pull a Derek Jeter fly ball over the right field fence for a home run in the 1996 ALCS when I was a sophomore in high school. According to <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2006\/12\/05\/sports\/baseball\/05maier.html\">a NYT story<\/a>, Maier is now seeking a job in the front office of a Major League Baseball team, which is still where I hope, on some days, to end up.<\/li>\n<li>Has anyone tried the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/firstlook.nytimes.com\/?category_name=times%20reader\">New York Times Reader Beta<\/a>? I just downloaded it and will post my impressions soon.<\/li>\n<li>The Yankees appear closer to <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2006\/12\/07\/sports\/baseball\/07yankees.html\">signing Andy Pettitte<\/a>, according to the New York Times.<\/li>\n<li>Forbes has a decent, but short <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/2006\/11\/30\/dave-eggers-mcsweeneys-tech-media_cz_jh_books06_1201eggers_print.html\">profile of McSweeney&#8217;s<\/a>, for whom I used to work. I especially like the following passage from the article: &#8220;Like upstart publishers anywhere, McSweeney\u2019s has run into plenty of pitfalls, from bad planning and cost overruns to occasional cash shortages. &#8216;We\u2019re making mistakes on every level of the spectrum that mistakes can be made on,&#8217; says McSweeney\u2019s editor Horowitz. &#8216;but our audience is really forgiving of mistakes, too.'&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I missed a recent story in the NYT about the Finnegans Wake Society, which used to meet at Gotham Book Mart, until my favorite store store closed its doors a couple months ago. The excellent NPR show Marketplace did a segment last month on Kepler\u2019s membership program, which has raised over $200,000 from shoppers, who, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,1],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gen-o.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gen-o.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gen-o.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gen-o.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gen-o.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gen-o.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gen-o.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gen-o.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gen-o.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}