newest stories

newest stories

Cross-posting, by Paloma Cruz

Shameless promotion of headlines in my other blogs:

Bilingual Life

• undocumented immigrants being charged with criminal trespassing
• 16 years of Café Tacuba/ "La Vibra, the Houston Chronicle’s Spanish weekly entertainment supplement, has Café Tacuba as their cover story last week. The story is, of course, in Spanish, but it covers their career and talks about their next concert (last Saturday in Houston)."
• a brief history of anti-immigration. "Metroblogging’s Paul Chavez walks us through the history of anti-immigration sentiments in this country in a post about the Minutemen coming to Houston."

Houston Life

• City events

Library Life

• A Texas Digital Library. "Four Texas university systems and Rice University will collaborate on a digital repository whose goal is to offer online resources, such as teaching aids, dissertations, and practical information, although not books."
• Sunday hours added to Houston Libraries
• returning library books on time. "LifeHacker recently published a post entitled How to finish library books on time which has a link to a tabbed system to… well, finish library books on time and (here’s the important part) return them on time as well."

Ordinary Life

• I’m in a mood - welcome to retail therapy. "These posts will be things I want to buy, but can’t. It’ll be a virtual shopping bag, just shy of actually taking things to the checkout counter to pay for them."

Pasadena Life

• watching Emily. "In case you haven’t been paying attention, Hurricane Emily is headed to Texas."
• senior health workshop. "If you’d like help in understanding the new Medicare Prescription Drug Program taking effect in 2006, the Madison Jobe Senior Center is teaming up with the Pasadena District Social Security Office to host a free workshop, Tuesday, July 19th, 2 - 3 p.m., to explain the details to you."
• great Pasadena photo. "Houston Photobloggers has a fabulous photo of Capitan Theatre, in Pasadena. As far as I can tell, it’s the only photo of Pasadena in their collection, but certainly worth a look."
• the city of Pasadena has a budget… sort of. "At first glance, Pasadena’s 2006-10 budget forecast may look bleak. However, the document is intended to give the city a starting off point to plan for the future."

Public Relations life

• work for Gizmodo. "Gawker Media is expanding its technology coverage, and is seeking to fill the following positions. All these roles are full-time, and paid accordingly, though we take a relaxed attitude towards external freelance."
• do I own this brand? "The redesign of the Diva Marketing Blog has prompted a discussion centered on the question who owns a brand?"
• are bloggers journalists? "This is a question that comes up frequently in my life, from both ends of the issue. If I’m covering a topic in one of my blogs and request information from a company or organization, should they treat me the same as they would a Houston Chronicle reporter? At the same time, if a photoblogger calls my office wanting to set up a shoot of one of my clients’ buildings, would I give him or her the same consideration as… say, a photographer from 002+ Magazine?"
• the wonderful world of media relations. "John Wagner’s comments in Now It’s The Corporate PR Folks’ Turn To Be Slammed about his experience with the media has had me thinking about the adversarial quality of my daily dealings with the members of the press. And I’ve been thinking about the many things I do, every day, to make those dealings better."
• PR blogging isn’t ego polishing…"…or so says John Wagner in his post PR Bloggers Not All In It For Self-Promotion. In it he responds to some recent criticism and attacks that public relations professionals have received, in particular PR bloggers."

teaching life

• Operation Backpack. "It’s the city’s largest ever school supply drive."
• more seniors are raising their grandchildren. "I come from a family of teachers, so I’ve pretty much heard every teaching story you can think of. I know, my sisters know, and all teachers know that more children are being raised by their grandparents these days than ever before."
• back to school at Pasadena ISD. "The Pasadena ISD Web site has a Back to School Guide up to help parents get ready for the August return date. Here you will find everything from enrollment processes to meal prices and school holidays. Worth a visit."
• a blog to save Fort Bend ISD. "A good example of how a community blog can generate conversation and interest in a grassroots initiative."

Web Junkie life

• the value of a wiki. "The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog has this wonderful post describing the true value of a wiki, Disaster Response, via Wikis."
• how to be a more productive blogger
• the 50 Coolest Websites of 2005
• productivity tip: stop checking your email
• now I’ve heard everything… Wayback Machine is being sued

news posts, on the new site - 7/11

Here are the wonderful posts you've missed so far at the new home stories from a Web Junkie life:

• Dreamhost special
• making money blogging
• E-voting
• 7 free resources for search engine placement
• 8 rules to know

moving to Word Press

(...reprint from Paloma Cruz...)

After testing Word Press for several weeks, and comparing it to Blogger, I've decided to move my blog projects to the palomacruz.com domain and update using WP. What that means is that I'm going to begin reposting everything from the blogspot.com sites to palomacruz.com. It also means that all new posts are going on the new locations.

Reasons why I'm making the change

More control over posts. The ability to track statistics. Trackbacks. More control over commenting. Hundreds of themes.

I like it better.

I'm thinking about moving this update log from MovableType to WP as well.

I'm still thinking about it.

***

The new address for stories from a Web junkie life is: webjunkie.palomacruz.com.

useful Web sites

Summer Fun

From Encarta:

• Road Trip Reading: Great Summer Travel Destinations
• 10 Great Travel Adventure and Discovery Books
• 10 Books You Should (Re)Discover

Tools

• Found via Library Technology in Texas, Plogress. Here's her summary: "Plogress.com is a relatively new web site that tracks legislation your federal Congressmen are working on. The neat part is that you can subscribe to an RSS feed for each. For example, I found the list of Texas Congressmen and clicked on Kay Bailey Hutchinson's name. There, I see all the current information on the legislation she is working on, as well as roll call votes. In the left column is the term "RSS." Now, any updated information concerning this legislation comes to me." Having only recently discovered BlogLines, I know that I'm going to add the relevant RSS feeds to my account. If nothing else, I'd like to see what my people are up to these days.
• Found via h20boro lib blog, Acronym Search: "Acronyma provides a simple way to search for the meaning of more than 460,000 acronyms, in several languages (English, Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Italian, and Portuguese)"
• Found at LifeHacker, What Does That Mean? catchphrase dictionary. "New wiki What Does That Mean? is a reader-built index of English catchphrases and idioms from around the world. So if an Aussie says you’re a flamin’ turkey at least you’ll know you’re being called an idiot. I recommend the “Random Page” link on the left sidebar to see some regional catchphrases on shuffle. Fuhgeddaboudit. "

helpful info & things I found interesting

From Bob Parsons, Your credit card info and identity will probably be stolen -- unless you understand a few simple rules. How to avoid the hassle of your life! "If you don’t know how to detect Phishing, your personal info will be stolen. You need to be aware of what Phishing is, and how to detect and protect yourself from it. It’s important that you read and make it a point to understand the rest of this article. If you don’t, you can be very sure that your credit card information (and quite possibly your identity) will be stolen."

According to Pew Internet, "Some 55% of adult internet users have looked for "how-to," "do-it-yourself" or repair information online and roughly 1 in 20 internet users – about 7 million people -- search for help on a typical day. The prevalence of this activity is yet another example of the many ways online Americans use the internet to gather practical information for their everyday lives." The report is available via PDF online.

Even the Army knows blogging is here to stay. Evidence? They now have policies on blogging, as shown in Arianna Huffington's recent post: Army's Rules for Blogging from the Battlezone.

Business Week reports that on June 27th bloggers might benefit from a Supreme Court ruling for journalists. "That's because Floyd Abrams, a lawyer for the reporters, has said in court and publicly that this reporter-source privilege should apply to bloggers as well."

Found via LifeHacker, a link to 50 smart money moves. "CNN’s Money magazine lists 50 personal finance tips ranging from real estate to retirement to career networking to home gadgets that save you cash."

Found via Blogger Buzz, Fifty (50!) Tools which can help you in Writing. "Roy Peter Clark from Poynter Institute has posted up 50 tools that can help you when you do any kinds of writing. This is a extensive list of writing tools, but by no mean you need to apply all of them when you do any writing."