Summer Seen: Flowers on the Street

Flowers for Sale on Main Street in Nantucket. 

Google: Fake Clicks, Real Headaches

This from Web Pro News today..."Click fraud is the term used in the Internet search industry to describe the practice of clicking on search advertisements to run up the costs on advertisers.

Companies buy an advertisement through Google's AdWords program, whereby certain keywords are purchased in order to appear in the sponsored links section of the search engine's results page.

Advertisers bid upon the search terms with the top spot going to the top bidder. Once the advertisement is in place, advertisers pay a fee to the search engine each time the ad is clicked by a searcher.

Click fraud, estimated by some to be as high as 20% of all clicks, is caused by those with a vested interest using software that clicks on the ad hundreds or thousands of times to either drain the advertising budget of a rival company, or create revenue for the seller of the ad space.

Colorado-based Click Defense, a company that specializing in procuring rebates for advertisers, says the average cost per click is 50 cents, but prime search engine real estate can go for as much as $100. Disputing the 20% estimations, Click Defense alleges that click fraud on Google is as high as 38%.

Marvelous Likes the Pen

Tonight riding home on the Mass Pike, I listened to VB, filling in on the Howie Carr show. The topic was the recent story about Vladimir Putin. Meeting with Patriots owner Bob Kraft and Rupert Murdoch in Russia, Putin was handed Kraft's new Superbowl ring, studded with hundreds of diamonds---and promptly pocketed the 'gift.' VB asked callers for other stories of people receiving unintentioned gifts. A lady called and told about a scene she witnessed at the Braintree Cinemas.

"A boxer from Malden, wearing a white hat and white suit (VB quickly gave the name Hagler to this man) came to the movies and this young kid asked him for his autograph. He handed Marvelous the new Cross Pen that his parents had given him as a graduation pen. After a flourish, Marv declared 'I like this pen--may I have it?' and walked off, fancy pen in his pocket. The teenage ticket taker was chagrined, losing his nice pen to this multimillionaire boxer, just for being nice.

Huge SUVs on Narrow Streets

Sitting in the front room of the Dolphin Guest House, thinking about driving in Nantucket. Like my esteemed peers before me, Russell Baker and David Halberstam both have both railed about the size of people's vehicles on this little rock. Whether you believe that large SUV sales are down, bloated Excursions, Expeditions, Hummers and Range Rovers are still the cars of choice here.

It seems the bulkier and fatter the car, the thinner and richer the driver. Usually it's a reed thin, healthily glowing Nantucket 30-something woman, with a classic outfit of pale shades or white, a large wedding ring and tow-headed youngsters in car seats in the back. Her wealth and immense bulk, compared with the narrow 18th century cobblestone streets, irritates and annoys...not sure just why.

I rented a car and found myself stopped in traffic more than moving; these snaking lines going back back back and everyone here, so pleasant, so eager to say yes, go ahead, turn in front of me. Makes me love my new bike even more.

Silent Commercials on F/X

Watching the F/X channel. One of the channels you have to pay more than $4.95 per month for, hence not in my line-up in Deerfield. But here in Nantucket, I got to view Dennis Leary's surprise hit 'Rescue Me.' The show is well done, really good dialogue, and sharply defined characters. Leary is transferred to Staten Island, he's going nuts 'cause there is no action. Not enough fires.

Another curiosity about the show was a commercial for gin. No sound. Just a fish tank like surroundings, and a silent bottle making its way down...then a soft click showing a website. The silence was alluring, and memorable.

Trump Returns a Call, Reporter Faints

Michael Mayo writes with admiration about Jimmy Breslin, in the Sun Sentinel.

He gave us all a good tongue-lashing Saturday, and a lot of people nodded their heads in agreement.

He ripped newspapers for losing "their backbone and their nerve," ripped writers for their timidity and boringness, ripped George W. Bush for Iraq and Jeb Bush for Terri Schiavo.

He ripped a culture that has gone mad with celebrity worship and ripped Big Corporate Media for being complicit in it while ignoring real issues, a real war and real people.

He brought up the name Donald Trump, and his raspy voice pierced like a scalpel: "In the old days, he'd have to pay a big pile to get in the papers as much as he does. Guys would say, `Where's mine?' Now, he returns a call and the reporter faints. … If he calls, hang up on him. That's if you're dumb enough to have a phone on your desk."

Breslin is infuriated with the way the ongoing war in Iraq is being covered, or not covered. "Does it even get mentioned?" he asked. "Our performance on the war is horrendous. This will be looked at for a long time as a journalistic failure."

He talked about a woman Army reservist in the Bronx with four children sent to Iraq. "Even in the worst of World War II, we had a 3A [draft] classification. You couldn't send a father with four kids to the war. Now it's all right. They said, `She only delivers mail, she just has to drive on the highways.' I said you must not read the papers. That's a fine place to be killed."

Madaket's Famous Faces

Last night on Nantucket I decided to head out of town. So I parked my bike and took a shuttle bus out to Madaket. Madaket doesn't have much to it, a big boatyard, some fine homes, and a gorgeous harbor. But it does have the Westender, the bar where the sunset is the star, and you never know who you'll run into.
 

The last time I was here, in July, I ended up crashing a private party at this bar where there was lots of fine Nantucket beer and Tim Russert. I talked to him about his son, who was about to graduate from high school. So last night, I noticed a man who was sitting with his teenage sons. When he got up to leave, his face was familiar. It was coach Bill Belicheck, of the New England Patriots. Didn't even get to tell him what a coaching genius he is...but he knows that.

Filters: We Could Use 'Em

PJ O'Rourke stands out as one of the most articulate writers on the scene. Here is an interview with him from PR Week, about reporting and the public view of reporters.

O'Rourke: If you would have told me 30 years ago that journalism could get worse, I would have called you a liar. But it looks like it's headed that way. As bad as daily journalism can be, and TV journalism, all the kinds of journalism-- and they can be pretty bad-- [they're] not nearly as bad as Arianna Huffington's blog. Even the worst kinds of journalism, like the National Enquirer, it always has to go through a number of hands before it arrives at the public. It has to go through a number of filtering processes.

Now, there's nothing necessarily noble about those filtering processes, but just the fact that they exist does something. For one thing, it slows you down. It gives you time enough to think "Wait, wait, stop the presses, I don't want to say that." We had an underground newspaper in Baltimore right after I got out of graduate school, and we had to drive up to Philadelphia just to get it printed.

I mean, talk about filtering processes. The printing plants in Baltimore would not print it. And this was a printing plant in the slums of Philadelphia that did grocery store inserts, nothing noble. This was not some art house. But every now and then, the old guy who owned it would call us in and say "Wait a minute, what's this thing here about making Molotov cocktails? If my union guys down on the press see this, they're gonna blow their top."

I'm sure that this prevented some noble thoughts and some brilliant art and quite a lot of porn from getting out to the public, but it also prevented a lot of stupid stuff from happening. So you take the filtering away and what you get is unfiltered. Try it with coffee.

RFID Tags Will Become Ubiquitous--soon!

This from USA Today "For instance, the technology could have a profound impact on garbage. Never again would you have to sort recyclables from other garbage. Just throw it all together. At a garbage facility, trucks could dump their loads on a conveyor belt that goes past an RFID reader, which could identify the tags on the products going by — a glass Pepsi bottle, a plastic milk jug — and redirect them into appropriate recycling bins.

Stephen Ho, who just got his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology calls his idea, which will only work once RFID is on every product, "location-relaxed storage." It's a funny euphemism in the tradition of calling a bald person follically challenged.

Basically it means that instead of organizing a warehouse by putting items in their carefully defined proper places, RFID will make it more efficient to just throw everything everywhere. It's the total chaos warehouse.

How can that possibly work better? Well, picture an Amazon.com warehouse. A worker is looking at an order for one copy of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Beagles and one copy of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Chances are that the spot for beagle books is far away from the spot for T.S. Eliot books. The worker has to zoom around the warehouse to fill the order.

Now let's say every book has an RFID tag. Whenever a truckload of books arrives at the warehouse, instead of sorting them into defined slots, workers just shove them anywhere there's an empty space. Copies of Idiot's Guide to Beagles and Prufrock are scattered all around the building.

Because the books are scattered around the warehouse, one of each is likely to be nearby, making the worker more efficient — he might just have to walk a few steps to get both books. Ho mathematically proved that the chances are greater that both books would be closer when using this chaotic, location-relaxed storage system, vs. using an organized warehouse.

Of course, if the electricity goes out, the warehouse is hosed.

High Beams Keep Drivers On the Road

Lawrence, Kansas is a liberal town, with a leg up on the internet enabled home news experience. The publishers of the local paper there were clever, they own the company that puts in the cable tv and high speed internet wires. So they have an 80% cable coverage, and have mixed up a huge combined newsroom where web, print, and TV use the same newspeople to report all at once. The publisher Dolph C. Simons Jr, 75, is a crusty old coot who still types with a Royal Manual typewriter, and eschews email.

But at the end of a long NY Times piece, he waxed futuristically poetic about why the newspaper people have and must offer the same or better on the web.

'We have to drive with our brights on,' he said. 'we can't be out there with our fog lights, or someone will drive us right off the road.'

Hillary: Reassuring Senatorial Egos

Tina Brown used to edit Joe Klein's stories when she was at Vanity Fair, and recently columned in the Washington Post about his new anti-Hillary tome. She knows him, and thus is qualified to judge what's behind this book, full of weird and wacky assertions about the former first couple.

"What Klein doesn't understand is that Hillary's success today depends not on an ability to be aggressively masculine, but on the exact opposite. That black pantsuit is the power woman's burqa -- a disguise for screening out, not extinguishing, distracting gender. All the bipartisan charm she's been wielding -- the assiduous reassuring of schoolboy senatorial egos, the tireless disarmament campaign of sharing the limelight -- comes right out of the female playbook of flattery and compromise.

When she plays the attack dog, as she did at a New York fundraiser two weeks ago, it's actually a rare but welcome flash of after-dinner dominatrix. The tone of Ed Klein's book epitomizes the pouting of all the guys she has ever defeated in a contest of intellect. In the Senate Hillary has grown, and, in a way, the public has grown with her. We have absorbed her tribulations. And whether or not we want to vote for her, we share her desire to leave them behind."

Ramblings from Ack

Some things you are going to hear more about...and you heard about them here first.
Reporting from the Dolphin Hotel, Nantucket.

Europe is all abuzz about the Polish Plumber. A publicity campaign featuring a hunky Polish Plumber is a jab at comments in France expressing fears that plumbers and other tradesman from eastern Europe would take jobs away. So the tourism board of Poland uses posters to state 'I'm a polish plumber...and i'm not going anywhere.'

Many top athletes in college are taking jobs as members of NASCAR pit crews. The Wall Street Journal wrote last week about the lucrative, high stress job of changing tires and pumping gas in the pits of NASCAR.

They time the tire changing and you have to have the 60-lb tire over there in 1.2 seconds or less. These guys whizz around and many are former linebackers or baseball stars. The best of them make $100,000 a year for these high pressure jobs.

Entering the new realm of nerdhood, with my dual monitor desk action. 

Chickadee's Trills are Fighting Words

A chickadee with a leg band. 


CNN Today in a Reuter's story about the calls of Chickadees...and what they mean

"If you ever go out and are hearing a chickadee making a really long string of "D" notes on a call -- six or eight or even 10 -- you know there is a really dangerous predator around, maybe the next-door neighbor's cat or an owl or a fox," Templeton said in a telephone interview.

"It is very strongly correlated with predator body size."

And with chickadees, smaller equals more dangerous, Templeton wrote in a report published in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

"The only predators that can really catch chickadees are the ones closest to them in size," Templeton said.

Captive chickadees reacted strongly when shown a pygmy owl, for instance, but their calls communicated less alarm when they saw a larger raptor.


The social birds often mob a predator to drive it away.

When recordings were played back to chickadees, they showed "mobbing" behavior appropriate to the predator that the recorded bird had been seeing, Templeton said.

Scott Ritter: The U.S. is at War with Iran Now

Last night we drove up to Woolman Hill in Deerfield to hear Scott Ritter speak. Ritter, former UN Weapons inspector, is a tall man with a commanding knowledge of his subject. He spoke without notes and with passion about how the US constitution is being shredded by the Patriot act and other adminstration initiatives. He said that the US is now at war with Iran...with spyplane flyovers and secret missions...and that the neo-conservatives have been planning our next target for years. Ritter pointed out that MEK, the Mujahadin group that was originally formed to take the hostages in Iran in 1979, now is operating with CIA funds and is sending insurgents into Iran to plant roadside explosives and do the same thing to Iran that the rebels are doing to the US. We're backing a group that bombs people like our enemies do to us in Iraq.

Ritter made another point--In 1979, the Shah of Iran said they wanted a more reliable source of energy than the oil they are awash in. What later occured was a boycott of Iran oil after the hostage crisis...so their need for nuclear energy is real. Our dismissing of their needs, and insisting they are building weapons, says Ritter, is arrogant and not reality based. "They have a right to a nuclear energy program, just like we do," he said. Unlike the heralded Iraqi 'election,' right now in Iran they are having a real election...and we should respect it, not listen to the propaganda revving up fear of their nuclear weapons aspirations.

Talking in the Studio of WMAS-FM

It is a lovely summer. Being in the travel business brings no end of pleasant gifts and fortunate circumstances. Today I dropped by the studio of WMAS, right next to the Connecticut River in West Springfield. I was there to tape a segment about travel with Lopez, who produces the morning show on the FM station. Lopez looks just like the name, a bright young man who looked very confident at the mike. I ducked into the last studio on the left, the AM studio, and we began taping. Deena began with her breezy 'wmas, ninety-four fm' and began asking me about popular travel destinations.

The big mike loomed at me, and I had brought some fodder for their FM jocks to ponder. My story about the clothing optional resort just came out in the local free paper, so I showed it to them. They popped in a few questions and I suggested that San Diego would be a perfect place to go for an interesting vacation.

F1 -- Stuck in Soccer Like Stupor

The so-called F1 Fiasco was the talk of the racing world Monday, said Yahoo, igniting outrage and finger-pointing among backers of the successful international circuit and Americans who want to see it succeed here. As cars circled the track for their warmup lap in the U.S. Grand Prix on Sunday, 14 of 20 drivers abruptly pulled off in protest over a tire-safety dispute.

A crowd of 150,000 and an international television audience were left to watch six remaining cars buzz around the course for an hour and a half. Fans who remained in the grandstand until the end — thousands went home — vented their frustration by throwing debris and booing the eventual winner, superstar Michael Schumacher.

Formula One racing does not face this problem in other parts of the world, where it ranks shoulder to shoulder with soccer in popularity. Crowds flock to events throughout Europe, South America and Asia. Schumacher is among the most recognized of all athletes.

Yet, much like soccer, the international circuit has struggled to gain a foothold in this country since arriving at Sebring, Fla., in 1959. Each year since 2000, when Formula One races were inaugurated at a special winding track on the Indianapolis infield, crowds have steadily declined.

Will the 'Hits' Still Come if we Stop Paying?

How much does it cost for a trade publication called 'Hits' to say nice things about you? Andy Gershon, president of V2 records, found out recently, as published in the LA Times.
"In Hits' case, a review of its website showed that changes in coverage coincided with decisions by Gershon and another company to stop or vastly reduce payments for advertisements and promotional services.

In March 2003, when Gershon's V2 released the first White Stripes album, Hits' website praised the label by saying it "will take a 'Seven Nation Army' to hold V2 Records back from breaking cult band White Stripes wide-open this time around." Back then, Gershon said, his company had paid Hits about $50,000 for ads and services.

Two years later, after Gershon had stopped paying the publication, Hits published the criticism that drew his ire and prompted his e-mail.

In another case, when Lyor Cohen became chairman of Warner Music Group in 2004, his company was paying Hits more than $2 million a year for advertisements and promotional services. The publication called his appointment a "blockbuster" deal and quoted Warner's chief executive as saying that Cohen was "one of the most respected executives in the business."

Within months, Warner significantly decreased its spending with Hits. Last month, the publication's website described Cohen as "overly aggressive" and "untrustworthy," mentioned his "inability to turn things around" and compared "the staggering list of bridges he's burned to the Russian retreat in World War II."

Don't Try to Rob People with Curling Irons

Found this on the web.

'They Just Whooped The Hell Out Of Him!'
An armed robber brandishing a revolver and some tough talk entered Blalock's Beauty College demanding money.

He left crying, bleeding and under arrest, after Dianne Mitchell, her students and employees attacked the suspect, beating him into submission. Mitchell tripped the robber as he tried to leave and cried aloud "get that sucker!" as the group of about 20, nearly all women, some wielding curling irons, bludgeoned him until police arrived.

"You can tell the world don't mess with the women here," said the 53-year-old who manages the Shreveport beauty school.

Paying Celebs for those Hard to Get Shots

This from a recent story from the Wall Street Journal on line:

"Richard Spencer, the editor of InTouch Weekly, which is published by New Jersey-based Bauer Publishing USA, says most A-list celebrities who seek publicity will choose a magazine with a wider circulation over a payment that gets them fewer readers. "Do you want to be seen by a million viewers or have a little more money in the bank and be seen by fewer people?" he asks.

While an exclusive photograph can increase sales by significant numbers, it's not always a slam dunk. The issue of US Weekly featuring Mr. Pitt and Ms. Jolie, for instance, sold 1.1 million copies on the newsstand, against an average of 1.05 million copies over the last 12 issues.

Richard Desmond, the owner of Northern & Shell, is another in a long line of colorful British publishing figures. He built his business selling pornographic magazines like Asian Babes before acquiring OK! and a number of daily newspapers. "Dirty Des," as he is often referred in the British press, offsets huge payments to celebrities by distributing his exclusives to international editions of OK! in places like China, Australia and the Middle East.

People, US Weekly, InTouch and Star all say they don't pay stars directly for access. But some have found loopholes: People magazine, for example, recently struck a financial deal for exclusive photos of Britney Spears's wedding. "We had our own deal directly with Britney's people," says Sandi S. Werfel, a spokeswoman for People. "Money went to her charity."

AP: Another Faltering Dinosaur

Bob Benz and Mike Phillips in The Online Journalism review slammed a recent decision by the AP to charge extra for content used on newspaper's websites.

"The Associated Press is planting the seeds of its own demise. AP’s most recent act of self-destruction was its April 18 announcement that it would start charging newspaper and broadcast clients an additional fee for using AP content on their web sites.

This move -- sprung on its clients just as they are recognizing the urgent need to reinvent themselves in multi-media, web-driven modes -- ignores powerful trends:

All forms of content are migrating – each to its most appropriate medium. Readers and advertisers are following. As news media and other information providers jump into one media platform after another, the Web is emerging as their operational core.

From blogs to open-source journalism to free newspapers, a wave of unpaid information is sweeping paid information off the media beach.

As content loses value, expert editing and customer-driven bundling are becoming the tools for building audience. And audience -- not content -- is the news industry’s value proposition. Contrast those trends with AP’s recent moves:Belatedly taking note of precipitous readership declines among young people, the AP is shopping around a youth publication prototype called APtitude. Its dominant story form is long narrative accompanied by a photo or two. But young people, as Rupert Murdoch recently pointed out, are digital natives, not digital immigrants. Their primary language is digital. When they do use their secondary language, print, their warmest response is to print formats that are highly visual and that are built with high proportions of short, non-narrative story forms. This ill-conceived venture will add to the costs born by AP clients.

Female Orgasm: A Biological Leftover?

Jennifer Loviglio is a columnist for the Rochester City news, who just won an award from the folks who congratulate alternative weeklies. Her column, "the XXX files, looked at a study showing that female orgasms are relics from the biological past, like nipples on a man, not needed any more.

"Lloyd's hypothesis raises some darker issues. If the female orgasm is just a biological leftover, like the appendix or pinky toe, does that mean it's phasing out? Will our daughters' daughters have even fewer orgasms and then, some bleak day in the distant future, none at all?

Well, I'm not going to stand for that, girls. Are you? I'm no sex biologist (but if you happen to know one in need of subjects, give a holler), however I'll bet through diligence and hard work we can keep orgasms from fading out of the species.

Shows like Sex and the City, Real Sex, and even Dr. Phil make achieving the sublime seem almost mundane; it's OK to admit that sometimes it takes more than just a symmetrical man to get you off.

So, ladies, start your engines. With or without your partner, grab your bunny-shaped vibrator, remote-control dolphin, and Eroscillator (with its five Flabbergasmic attachments!) and get busy. Ignore that occasional Mr. Potato Head feeling --- all those oddly shaped items sticking into you --- and go for the orgasm you deserve. Through your selfless efforts, Rochester will continue to shine as a place where women make a difference.

Coming: A Foxy Look at Business News

The Wall Street Journal on line opined today about News Corp's plan to launch fox business news...soon but not today.

"A former Republican strategist, Mr. Ailes is known for thinking like a political tactician, so his public diffidence about the new venture may well be an attempt to lower expectations. Mr. Ailes said he has urged Mr. Murdoch to stop announcing launch dates. "I keep telling Rupert, 'Quit saying that,' " Mr. Ailes said at the gathering of media executives. "I'd like to do it this year, but I'm not in any hurry just to do it." He said the channel, to succeed, would have to reach 40 million homes within the first three years. "All these pieces have to come in line," he said.

Indeed, successfully launching a cable channel has never been harder, given how cluttered the dial has become. Most cable operators will make channels available only at the high end of the dial, on digital channels that reach fewer than half of cable subscribers. Low-numbered channels are prized because they reach all cable homes.

As a result, many new cable networks launch with just a few million homes and never get traction with viewers or advertisers. "You can get on, but if you're not in the top 100 channels, no one goes there," says David Bernknopf, an Atlanta media consultant.

CNN's New Ideas

Jomathan Klein has moved aggressively to make CNN's prime-time producers shift their focus to longer, more-polished pieces, eventually creating a sort of "60 Minutes" every night. It's an art he knows personally: for two decades he worked as producer at CBS and, as the network's executive vice president, he oversaw its prime-time programming. Forever roaming the halls and popping in on —producers, he's transformed CNN culture—news meetings are now singularly focused on finding characters and discussing storytelling technique. In the past, CNN was plagued by a bumbling media image. Klein has imposed strict message discipline and many staffers refused to talk on the record about the network for fear of losing their jobs. Privately, though, many staffers express discontent with the new regime, saying it's not possible to make "60 Minutes"- style pieces on a limited budget and tight time constraints.

The ratings have yet to pro-vide consolation: in May CNN averaged only 610,000 viewers in prime time, still well above third-place finisher (and NEWSWEEK strategic partner) MSNBC, but still far below Fox's 1,401,000 viewers. CNN officials say they have numbers to be proud of, pointing to strong improvement in the key 25-to-54 demographic and a powerful performance by the brand name when CNN's numbers are combined with those of its sister network, Headline News. That network has improved dramatically in the ratings thanks almost entirely to its legal-affairs program hosted by Nancy Grace. Last Thursday, Grace drew 804,000 viewers, more than any CNN prime-time program save for "Larry King Live."

Another Reason for Google's Rule

Kevin Coughlin wrote a piece for Newhouse news service sunday about Google's special blend of young and old employees, that has propelled them to the top of the internet, and pushed their stock up in the $300 range. Rob Pike is one stand-out who was profiled. "Google treats employees like college students because they were recently," Pike says. "That's weird. But it's better than being treated as a geriatric." Working with brainiac kids keeps him sharp. To keep up physically, he bikes 100 miles a week.

Google has become a magnet for technology's best and brightest minds. They are coming from NASA, MIT, and Berkeley, wrote Coughlin. "Here you can have an idea on Monday," says Pike, "and have it on the web site by the end of the week."

Newspaper Readers Prefer the Web

Lisa Baertlein writes on Reuters, "Nearly one-fifth of Web users who read newspapers now prefer online to offline editions, according to a new study from Internet audience measurement company Nielsen//NetRatings.

The first-time study found that 21 percent of those Web users now primarily use online versions of newspapers, while 72 percent still read print editions. The remaining 7 percent split their time between online and offline editions. Comparable historic statistics were not available.

"A significant percentage of newspaper readers have transferred their preference from print to online editions," said Nielsen//NetRatings senior media analyst Gerry Davidson."

Firing on All Eight Cylinders

Last week was a big one for GoNOMAD. We began the week with news that the Wall Street Journal included a mention of us in a story about where to find info. about family vacations. Then Channel 40 ABC news came up to interview me for the 5:30 news. Later in the week, Brad Shepard called from WHYN-AM 560, to do a short segment about GoNOMAD for his morning show. And finally we heard from Tom Vannah that the story I wrote about the Nude Vacation was going to be on the cover of both the Valley and the Hartford Advocates!

This all has to do with delegating. Since I have had Stephen Hartshorne and Paula Morzenti in the office doing web design, and Jenn and Jessi working as interns, it has enabled me to focus on the bigger picture. Promotions and sales are what the Chief needs to be doing, hence our string of recent publicity scores.

A Troubling Tattoo

Joseph Elwell, 37, has a problem on his chest. It all started when he decided to get a tattoo. A troubling tattoo. Police in Medford arrested him last week after he tried to run a cop over with his car. He was charged with assault with a deadly weapon. It was easy to identify Elwell, and the troubling tattoo is why.

He has am image depicting a man shooting a kneeling cop in the head all over his chest. Despite this, the police pursued him because of the alleged crimes, "despite the fact that the tattoo is disturbing." Tattoos bug me.

Windfarms off the Danish coast. 

Wind Farms--The Danes Like 'Em

A month ago I mentioned some Nantucketers were going to find out first hand what it's like living next to a windfarm. So they went, courtesy of a lobbying group, to Scandinavia and met Danes who live near these facilities. Ack.net, my favorite source of Nantucket news, said this.

"After stops at the 70-turbine Nysted Harbor offshore wind farm in Rødsand, the 80-turbine Horns Rev offshore wind park at Blåvand, and two onshore wind facilities in Tjæborg and Velling, those who left Nantucket feeling supportive of a wind farm in Nantucket Sound came away with even stronger convictions about the need for wind power.

“I’d never seen one before and I was amazed,” said Carl Borchert. “The visual impacts were even less than I thought. It’s hard to believe what all the fuss here is about. But they’re really doing it over there. They’re light years ahead of us.”

Borchert was joined on trip by his wife, Randi Allfather, as well as Nantucketers Laura Wasserman, Stephen Peckham, Victoria Pickwick and Dorothy Vollans. The only thing the Danes don't like is the blinking red light near the farm...but the company said they are working on a way to get rid of it.

Waking Up for Airtime on WHYN

All night I tossed and turned, thinking about what time I needed to wake up. I had agreed to do a phone interview on Springfield's WHYN-560 AM at 7 am, and these guys get up early. I kept imagining I had missed it, then dozing off, then waking up suddenly. Finally, I came downstairs and couldn't find the number--it was 6:57 and the call was minutes away. So I drove to the office, got some coffee, and by 7:06 am I was offering witty repartee with Brad Shepard about Dracula and Hungary.

Shepard's a guy with radio in his blood...you can tell by that silky voice and the hearty laugh. He also loves travel, albeit vicariously. We talked about Hungary and about my trip to the nudist resort, and he didn't need to do much prompting. I live this stuff and can do it any time of the day and can usually spin a good yarn. Hopefully, we can do this on a regular basis, it would be fun to have a local radio outlet like this AM powerhouse on which to share our exciting travel stories from GoNOMAD.

Georgia In My Way

In Milwaukee, the City Magazine snagged a former Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter, who left the paper for the mag, and now tells all the inside secrets of the state's largest daily.

"In The Trenches

For someone who has never worked at a daily paper, there is no preparation for the cramped, seedy quarters of a newsroom. Reporters’ desks are banked against each other, there’s barely any space to write or store files, you are engulfed in conversations of other reporters doing interviews or simply gas-bagging with an office colleague, and there is paper – and newspapers – piled everywhere.

Reporters often eat at their desks, crumbs of food and candy wrappers drop on the floor and the janitors fight a losing battle in the ongoing war. In years past, the newsroom had mice.

My desk was sandwiched between Annysa Johnson and Georgia Pabst, two reporters with voices loud enough to shatter any concentration. There were moments when the person I was interviewing on the phone could hear Annysa’s voice as clearly as mine and countless times when the piles of papers on Georgia’s desk and at her feet would slide onto my precious slice of workspace and I would bark at her to back off. It became part of a bantering routine between Georgia and me.

Stinging Nettles: It's What's for Dinner

Went out and bought a copy of the Wall Street Journal when someone emailed saying they had seen GoNOMAD in there. Wrong date, we were in Monday's edition, but still found some interesting recipes. Naha, in Chicago, likes to blanch stinging nettles in boiling water, squeeze them dry, then saute them in butter and serve on wine-braised lamb shanks with polenta. In NYC, Craft offers stinging nettle pasta, using pureed weeds, shallots and lemon juice. Out in Seattle, Earth and Ocean mixes them with morel mushrooms and tops it with pan-seared sockeye salmon and a mushroom-thyme jus.

The leafy vegetable has an 'earthy spinach' taste, according to chef Carrie Nahabedian. They also love the low, low price of this plant that pricks your ankles while you hike.

Jackson's Useless Beauty

Roger Friedman writes on Fox news' "The area where Michael Jackson lives, the Santa Ynez Valley, is jaw-droppingly beautiful. The real surprise about Santa Maria is that if you go 20 miles in any direction, the surrounding landscape offers unlimited
enjoyments. From the moonscape of the Guadalupe dunes to the honky-tonk charm of Pismo Beach, cows grazing on pastoral hills, stony granite-lined mountains, the
dusty roads of Casmalia and the gorgeous pink-and-orange sunsets over flat fields of broccoli farms, the whole area has been a pleasure to live in.

You can't help thinking, though: Somehow Jackson missed all this. Living behind his gates, lost in a world of make-believe, he never got to appreciate, as Elvis Costello might call it, all this useless beauty.

Search Spamming: Ugh!

Been having some problems, sorry about those bogus photos that don't load. Been discovering some new weird stuff that people are trying to do with links on the web as scams. Web Pro News reports on Search Spamming: that the Financial Times printed invisible links on a page, so that even though readers didn't see them, search engine robots would. They cleverly sprinkled these relevant keywords, like fairy dust, in the text of financial articles...a web first, according to the authors.

Nathan Weinberg said "If you sell a link to some website and hide it, just to pass along PageRank to a website, you will get found out, and hopefully 100 or more bloggers will write about it. Then, when people search for your website, maybe they'll see the word "dishonest" in a high ranking article about your company. And you'll deserve it, you certainly will.

What Would You Say

If you were given a minute to blast your opinion out to the world, what would you want to talk about?

In Ohio, there is a bike that tows a yellow trailer. Atop is an old fashioned phonograph-like horn, and inside is an Mp3 player, cellphone and a microcontroller. Daniel Jolliffe, of British Columbia, put together this device that enables people to call and make declarations over this speaker in public places. Wired News reports.

"It's almost like psychotherapy, where people feel better once they get this off their chest," he said...with almost 250 entries from the public so far, the answer to 'what would you say' runs the gamut. One caller intimately discusses her spreading cancer, another offers a bizarre performance of the theme song from Beverly Hills Cop in the voice of a chicken. Others rail against the tyranny of the GOP administration. Call them at 614-441-9533 if you too, want to be heard. For a minute any way.

Talkin' on TV about XXX

Today we had a visit with Ray Herschel, who came to South Deerfield to interview us about the new .xxx domains. I commented that this new domain is actually going to increase the number of porn sites, since any smart owner will just pick up the more expensive .xxx domain and put the same content as he is now offering on .com. This new grouping will cost more per year than regular 'com' sites, and $10 of this fee will fund a nonprofit effort to educate about the evils of blue web viewing.

Activists like Donna Rice Hughes are saying that this won't help their cause, since it just creates more ways to put porn up on the web and the ACLU says it threatens innocent search terms like 'breast cancer' or 'homosexuality' with being pushed into this xxx zone, which will become the web's own little red light district, or to some, 'porn ghetto.'

Watch tonight at 5:30pm on ABC News40, Springfield.

Toyota to Eat GM

GM announced that what was once a special employee benefit will now be open to anyone...anyone who wants to buy a GM instead of a Toyota. Here is AOL's account.

Things are not looking good for the world's largest automaker. Inventories of vehicles are piling up on dealer lots, sales of high-profit large SUVs have fallen off as gas prices have gone up -- and several GM divisions (notably Pontiac and Buick) are close to being on life support .

In response, GM has cut production by 12 percent (with future cuts and plant closings in store) and resorted to extraordinary incentive programs that amount to fire sale prices, while competitors -- most notably Toyota, the world's Number Two automaker -- are selling cars at full mark-up and are awash in profit.

Toyota reportedly has enough cash on hand to buy GM's entire automotive operations outright -- and is gunning to replace GM as the world's Number One automaker within five years.

So what will happen to GM?

The Rich Aren't Like Us

Michael Kittredge is a legend in the Pioneer Valley where I live. My cousin Steve once worked at the factory where the man's fortune was built and praises him as a major mensch. A recent article in the Sunday NY Times featured details of his life and toys, an example of Nantucket's Richest, "who leave even the rich behind." I have always had an ambiguous feeling about Kittredge, hearing on the one hand from people who had met him that he was down to earth and a 'regular guy.' Why is it that we want the rich to still be like us?

I've met people who have been to his palatial homes in Leverett or Nantucket and say that he is so over the top, almost trying too hard to spend money lavishly in front of them, it becomes a joke. The endless rows of green fencing, the vast compounds the cavernous gyms and spas. Consumption, consumption, is this glamorous?

But it all feels like a quibble...I mean, I guess I'd like to have a 10,000 square foot beachfront manse on Nantucket, complete with a basement movie theater and a 2000 bottle cellar. "Successful people want to be with other successful people," explained the multimillionaire. "Birds of a feather."

Pondering the Complexities and Getting it Right

Alan Ehrenhalt reviews a new book by John F. Harris, The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House in today's Times Book Review. Here is a section that gives a good glimpse into why he was so successful as president.

"Most presidents -- most public leaders -- are complex human beings, and that is certainly true in Clinton's case. But as Harris makes clear, he was more than that: he was a man who appreciated complexities and pondered them endlessly; who saw the ambiguity in nearly any policy situation; who loved to tease out the subtleties and distinctions that lesser minds found uninteresting.

Occasionally during the Clinton presidency, writers dredged up Scott Fitzgerald's definition of a first-rate intelligence: that of someone who could hold two opposed ideas in his head at the same time and still function. No one in the past century of American politics met that test better than Clinton."

IM'ing Jack Straw

I've managed to wrestle the copy of Thomas Friedman's new book, The World Is Flat, from my significant other long enough to read a fascinating snippet about the author's encounter with Colin Powell in 2001. "I could not resist asking him where he was when he realized that the world had gone flat. He answered with one word: 'Google.' Powell said that when he took over as secretary of state in 2001, and he needed some bit of information--say, the text of a UN resolution--he would call an aide and have to wait for minutes or even hours for someone to dig it up for him. 'Now I just type into Google 'UNSC Resolution 242' and up comes the text.

Powell, a former member of the AOL board, also regularly used email to contact other foreign ministers, and according to one of his aides, kept up a constant instant-messaging relationship with Britain's foreign secretary Jack Straw. At summit meetings, as if they were a couple of college students. Thanks to the cell phone and wireless technology, no foreign minister can run and hide. 'We have everyone's cell phone number' Powell said.

Moved to Sing in Ephesus

We put up new articles every day on GoNOMAD, This excerpt is from Jessica Hayden's story about visiting ruins in Ephesus Turkey.

"As a group of German tourists left the theatre, one of the women broke away and walked towards the center of the stage. With one hand on her heart and the other outstretched towards the sky, she began singing opera. With the gusto of a woman not afraid, her notes sailed through space and time.

Visitors stopped climbing the stairs. Tour guides stopped talking. Captivated by her voice, her audience watched the impromptu show on a stage where performers have been giving shows for over two centuries. When the German woman finished, she gave a little bow, embarrassed, and ran to catch up with her group. And the crowed applauded."

The Evils of a Good Buzz

John Stossel is one of my favorite TV reporters. He rubs against the grain of both liberals and conservatives, and has been vilified by both Ralph Nader and Al Franken. Ted Turner walked out on one of his interviews, after Stossel questioned whether it is more virtuous to donate to charity or create jobs through successful businesses. His new book "Give Me a Break," has many worthy and quotable sections, including this exchange with DEA director Tom Constantine, about legalizing drugs.

"When I asked him why alcohol was okay, but not marijuana or cocaine, he said people drink liquor for the taste, not to 'get high.' This inspired me to provoke him. 'I hate to say this, but when I have a shot of gin or vodka, I'm doing it to get a little buzz on. That buzz is bad? Should it be illegal?

'If you drink for that purpose,' said Constantine, 'that's not too smart.' Should we be outlaw smoking? His answer had a Taliban-like quality to it. 'I would say 10, 15, 20 years from now, in a gradual fashion, smoking will probably be outlawed in the U.S."

Back to Summer in Deerfield

Back after a week to steamy New England, quite a contrast to cold and rainy Buda. The stubborn spring has finally turned to a sultry summer, and GoNOMAD's office is now air conditioned. It was inspiring to read that there were more than 100,000 unique visitors on the website last month, an all-time record. Knowing that our site continues to attract lots of visitors makes the job all that much more rewarding.

Our summer interns have been working hard and Jessi has been blogging about travel writing every day. This and the other blogs add a dynamic element to the site, new content is the lifeblood, and we're pumping more and more stories in to keep things fresh.

Every time I get back from a trip, I think about how long it will be until I go somewhere again. At this point, a few weeks of hard work in the office sounds mighty good, no planes to catch and only the daily duties to perform.

Snitch on the Pirate, Get a Real Copy Free

Microsoft recently decided to deal with software piracy in a unique way. They declared that all users with preinstalled versions of Windows XP (the campaign is valid only for this version of the operating system) will receive a genuine version if they can prove their copy is pirated.

In addition, Microsoft threatened to withdrawn the users’ right to update the versions that cannot be authenticated. In other words, you rat out on the provider of the pirated version, let him deal with the copyright protection authorities, and Microsoft rewards you with a genuine Windows version.

Microsoft claims these pirated copies are sold to fool users, which we all know is a joke, anyone buying from the corner of street being aware of the risks.

Towering Russians and Glowering Germans

For our last day here in Hungary, we took a drive out to the Statue Museum, where after 'the political changes' many of the hated statues of Lenin and others were taken. Our guide, an attractive and fiesty young blond, corrected me when I referred to any 1989 revolution here. "There was no revolution," she said sharply, turning and looking at me from the front seat.

Standing corrected, we toured the outdoor exhibit in the rain... Russians stood eight feet tall, towering over the more docile-looking Hungarian, shaking hands in the name of progress. Other statues showed Germans triumphantly holding weapons high, yet another nation that successfully conquered and occupied this land.

The small exhibit was set up in circles, and in the middle was the Russian Star, showing simply that progress was not really possible in that terrible system. The front gate appeared to have no real entrance, another allusion to the dead-end the Hungarians felt they were living in under the thumb of Soviet oppression.

Can Ecotourism Save Hungary?

Our trip to Hungary feels like we've arrived at a friend's new home but he is still busy banging nails, hanging up photos and moving in boxes. The country is primed to be an eco-tourism destination, and in the bleak great plains, they are working long days to get it ready. We took a boat to see a newly built system of wooden walkways stretching 1500 meters out over the water into a marsh to be used for birdwatching. This area used to have workers toiling on state farms, but since 'the political changes,' as the fall of communism is called, these farms, like many steel mills, are no longer. I asked our guide at the Hortobaby Nemzeti Park how many locals they employ. The answer was that this is really the only work around.

The other new project that may someday pay dividends is the cave walk that has been built 275 steps down near the lovely town of Eger. We took a hike for 2 kilometers underground, where we saw stalagmites, stalagtites, and only a few other visitors. It has been open for all of four days! Tourism is proving to be the only way more and more of these soft economies can prosper, and Hungary, like the rest of the poorer parts of the world, is determined to get their fair share.

Fighting Fire with Fog

Read a story today in Wired while traveling by bus through the Hungarian countryside about firefighting. It seems nothing has really changed in hundreds of years until now...they put wet stuff on the hot stuff to put out the fire. But todays fabrics are made of polymers that give off noxious gases and when you dowse a flame, huge pillars of steam pour out, often cooking the men behind the hoses. The worst part of the fire is the toxic gas, not the flames.

So this fire chief in a town outside of Portland Oregon has developed a new method, based on the experiences of the Swedes. They shoot a burst of fog pulsing just a second at a time toward the flame to cool down the noxious gases...this way these poisons, which are the biggest killer of firefighters die down before they attack the flames. But in NYC the chiefs just replaced the fog nozzles with straight up water nozzles, saying it takes less work to use them. There is a controversy over this new way to battle blazes with both sides insisting their way is the best. Wired is famous for bringing arcane issues like this to the masses...well at least to me and my blog readers.

It's the Photos, Stupid!

Traveling with an international contingent of journalists, I am noticing the contrasts between us. Stefano, an Italian publisher and photog, said that in Europe, the first priority in an editor's view is the photos...if these are up to par, then the story is reviewed and considered. We usually do this in the opposite way, looking at the text first and if we like it, we ask for the photos. On this trip, sponsored by Tourism Hungary, there are accomplished writers for magazines from Poland, Czech Republic, Russia, Japan, Spain and Italy. We've got some real shooters with us, carrying bulky bags full of huge lenses and they all tote tripods.

At the baths last night, the shooters all brought their cameras with them into the water, willing to risk accidental submersion for the perfect shot. They held them high and waded out into the current in search of their shots. There is a bit more formality here, not as easygoing as a group of US journos on a junket, and we've been jokingly referring to our colleagues by their nations, not their names.

Miskolc's Star Attraction

Miskolc, Hungary is a town that's been devasted by "the political changes." That is the word for what happened in 1989, when communism gave way to a free political process and Soviet domination faded away. The town has rows and rows of ugly white apartment buildings, and a huge hulking steel mill that's been shuttered for years. Umemployment stands at about 18%. But this city in the northeastern part of the country has one shining gem....a bath carved into a cave.

We visited this thermal cave tonight, and got a chance to enjoy it all by ourselves. There is a thermal bath that at 35 degrees c feels like a bathtub. Then we popped into a sauna and heated up....then we went into another series of pools that were about 30 c. These wound their way through a cave and a current carried us along....the pools were tunnels lit with lights and you rode with the stream. Further back in the cave was another entrance to a thermal pool, this one like the first warmer. Following the long tunnel of water back, the end was a circular room with a ceiling of stars, and jets to massage your back as you enjoyed the warmth.

This thermal pool costs $8 to enter and is a magical place. The citizens of Miskolc may have economic problems, but they have the world's best place to relax!

A Good Guide

Richard Bogdan is a good guide who has made our trip to Hungary work like a well oiled swiss watch. You can never underestimate the value of a good guide, one who knows how to keep people moving, and takes the time to tell you the things you need to know. He was also smart enough to send back a bottle of "Bulls Blood" wine that was bad and get us a new bottle from a different year. Here are some of the things I've learned about this country since we've been here.

The Hungarian alphabet has 44 letters in it. That's why the words are so long, since often two letters are used to make one sound. Such as the ubiquitous SZ, and all of the letters with the little dots on top.

Hungarians earn on average about $100 per week, so basically this country is very poor. You can tell by the ancient boxy Ladas that tool around and the ugly Soviet era apartment blocs that dot the landscape.

There are no intact castles here. They were all destroyed in the 18th Century by the Austrians, who occupied and didn't want the locals to have any way to defend themselves. There have been so many occupations and failed uprisings here it is a very sad tale....1956 is famous for the failed revolution and the creation of a flag with a hole in the center, where the hammer and sickle was located.

Hungary is full of beautiful women, who wear low cut tops and very tight pants. The Hungarians also kiss, hug and pet a lot, and I've seen at least a dozen pairs of clutching lovers in various states of making out while I've traveled here over a mere four days. And finally, every Hungarian appears to have a cellphone, I saw two eight-year-olds chatting way today walking down a mountain trail.

Visting the Gulag

Sitting in an office in Eger, Hungary, at the Flora Hotel. Yesterday we visited the small town of Recski, where from 1950 through 1953, the Hungarian gulag was located. The memorial includes a recreated barracks with Auschwitz-like wooden bunks, grim watchtowers, and glowering guards. No one knew about this place where thousands were forced to work in quarries and fed moldy bread, until Stalin died in 1953, and the camp was liberated. The descendants of the tortured have put up a chilling memorial here, showing photos of the persecutors and the persecuted.

Besides this grim reminder of an evil past, there is little else in Hungary to remind one of the former Soviet state. Lovely green rolling hills, lush forests, and an absolutely boggling language make this a true GoNOMAD adventure. See Kents Be Our Guest blog for more details.

Vlad the Impaler's Mountain Prison

Blogging from the lounge in our hotel in Budapest. Today we had a busy day, including a 27 km bicycle ride along the Danube, which is decidedly not Blue, despite the song. We drove up a mountain and at the top were the ruins of an ancient castle. Sadly, said our guide Richard Bogdan, this edifice was destroyed by the invading Austrians several centuries back.

Richard told us that this place was significant because Count Dracula was imprisoned here for twelve years. He explained that Vlad Tepes, the son of a man in the order of the dragons, was a military officer and not a count. He was famously known as the impaler. This name came about after three thousand of the hated Turkish invaders were captured and they weren't sure what to do with them. Dracula opted for the torture of the time, and a forest of three thousand trees was used to create sharp poles. All of the 3000 prisoners was impaled on one of these trees.

The mountain has a new attraction this year. They hook you up to a harness and attach you to a cable and you can wizz down the cable to a station on the other side. There are nine of these towers connected by cable, and this new adventure activity is packing them in up here in Visgrad.

The Kindness of Strangers

JFK Airport is a horror show with a silver lining. Flying out of the airport for an 11:00 pm flight, we parked hundreds of yards away from the entrance to the monorail. Then we were dumped off at a terminal and had to walk dragging luggage and dodge cars coming--fast--around a building, into a narrow terminal that was mostly closed.

A young women complained to the TSA baggage inspector about the conditions. "You can write a letter to the managers at Delta," the tall, black uniformed inspector said. "I don't handle that, I just inspect the bags." After the annoyed woman was out of earshot, the man turned and said 'you can bet THAT bag will be searched," and laughed with his coworker.

We spotted a bar with a Sam Adams sign. We Walked in and no one was about.... but soon a man came in after us, saying the bar was closed.

"We're waiting for an 11 pm flight," we said, since it was just 9:15 or so on a Thursday night. "Oh, you would like drinks? What would you like?" We followed him back to the bar and he had the bartender make us doubles in Burger King cups, to go.

We tipped him handsomely for the $15.99 each drinks, and headed back out to the terminal to have our Sbarro chicken parm served in paper plates.

Page Rank and Linking Explained

The NY Times loves the mysteries of the web. "The Internet is a very good analogy to a company," Mr. Dash said. "There is always going to be somebody complaining. At least the first voice they hear is yours."

Last year Mr. Dash participated in a challenge in which competitors attempted to get their Web site to be the first Google result for the made-up phrase "Nigritude Ultramarine." Mr. Dash won the second round by posting a request on his popular blog asking readers to link from their own sites to his using the phrase.

An attempt to influence the rank of a site returned by a Google search is known as Google Washing or Google Bombing. Referring to the process as "gaming Google," Mr. Palfrey explained that Google's dominance as a search engine was largely due to a technology called PageRank, which he called the company's "special sauce."

"The idea is that they have deduced, based on an algorithm, which are the most authoritative sources," Mr. Palfrey said. "They give each page a rank from zero to 10. The higher your PageRank, the more your site comes up."

As Google explains further on its site, "Votes cast by pages that are themselves 'important' weigh more heavily and help to make other pages 'important.' "

For example, Google had a PageRank of 10 in a recent check; Ilovebassfishing.com had a zero. "The trick," Mr. Palfrey said, "is if you can get lots of people that have a great PageRank to link to you, you're going to be driven up very high."

A Busy Blur Before Takeoff

Today is a blur, time is racing. Trying to get all of the things done in the office before I fly tonight. What an exciting feeling, waiting for an 11 pm to sultry Budapest. I have been briefed on the nation by two Hungarians who we met in NJ. They recommended Vicograd, a stop that is included in our Tourisn Hungary itinerary, and she taught me how to say please and thank you in Hungarian.

The office hums with activity today, as Desmond Dekker rings out in reggae style on the radio. Jessi is here working on a story, and Paula is busy fixing links. Joe is in his corner emailing our newsletter to 12,800 subscribers. This is life in the web world, with a busy staff of people taking on challenges of publishing pixels instead of ink, and making a profit from it. Glad to be here and also glad to be flying tonight.

Prosperity--You Can't Take it for Granted

GoNOMAD is lucky to be located in a prosperous New England town. I know this because when I walk to the bakery, I pass by shops that are full of customers, a real estate office brimming with listings, and a hardware store with a full parking lot. It is reassuring to live and work in a bustling village, and South Deerfield, MA is indeed a small town that works. The stores provide the goods that the people want and need and so they thrive.

Many small towns in the U.S. are dying off, nobody wants to live there, and the shops, bars, and restaurants we take for granted are not thriving any more. Like a human being, the energy that comes from people coming and going and the exchange of money between them is needed to keep a town alive.

I thought about this tonight when I walked through a new natural foods grocery and restaurant that just opened up in Easthampton, MA. It was shiny and new, and open at 7:30 pm, but there were no customers there. Located in a converted mill, this new store is not on the way, and won't get any drive-by business. I felt like I was watching a business that would not succeed. It felt terrible because the new shiny store was lovely, and carried a wide selection of organic foods. I hope that I am wrong but it felt indeed, much different from the prosperous street where I run my business, like somebody has made a gigantic mistake by locating there.