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You Look Like an Australian Cricketer

The other day I was in the Rutgers bookstore and a cashier told me I looked like Australian Cricketer Mark Waugh. After I asked for, and received, the definition of Cricketer, I told that student I was going to look up Mark on the web and I said, “if he is ugly there is going to be trouble!”

As I was leaving, the student told me Mark has a twin brother Steve and that I may be the missing triplet.

It’s interesting how people have never been shy about telling me who I look like.

In high school I was told I looked like movie star Tom Cruise.

In college I was told I looked like actor Tom Hanks.

In graduate school I was told I looked like former Yankees pitcher Matt Nokes.

As an instructor at both Saint Peter’s College and Rutgers-Newark my students told me I looked like outstanding actor Edward Norton.

Perhaps one day I will simply be recognized as me.

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Stations of Urban Mourning

A few months ago a man was killed on the street in my rough neighborhood in Jersey City, New Jersey.
That killing moved me in many ways and I wrote about the experience here in Urban Semiotic in a piece called Murder in the Jersey City Heights.
I also discovered an interesting form of ongoing public grieving that I call The Stations of Urban Mourning and in order to give form to the experience I did a Qualitative Observation of three public mourning sites in Jersey City. Here is the start of that report:

Over the past year there have been three killings in my Jersey City Heights neighborhood. Each killing ground is a spoke of suffering less than one block from where I live. You cannot walk any stretch of sidewalk leaving my apartment without walking on concrete that was once stained with the last bloody droplets of a human life. As I try to press meaning into these senseless killings I am reminded there is great truth in the oath of the street that life is cheap. However, dying, I have discovered, costs more than a corpse. Those who survive the street death of a loved one appear have a ritualistic and ongoing public grieving that this observation report will try to frame in a way that provides perspective on the Stations of Urban Mourning.

You can purchase the entire article here if you are interested in discovering more about The Stations of Urban Mourning: A Qualitative Investigation of Ongoing Public Grieving.

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Yahoo! Sponsored Search vs. Google AdWords

I am a big fan of Yahoo! Sponsored Search over Google’s AdWords for the following reasons:
Yahoo!’s user interface is deeper and more dynamic than Google’s.

You can get extremely precise tracking in a really easy manner that doesn’t take much clicking or site digging.
Yahoo!’s budget management is more flexible.
Yahoo!’s keyword setup is faster and clearer for first-time setup.

Yahoo!’s click-through rate is higher per impression.
Yahoo!’s bid position process is more transparent.
Yahoo!’s entire setup feels more established, cleaner and solid.
Give Yahoo! Sponsored Search a try if you want to get the word out about one of your websites. If you currently pay to play with Google AdWords, you definitely need to move up to Yahoo! Sponsored Search instead.

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Netscape 8.01

I always hated Netscape when they ruled the internet ten years or so ago. As a writer of books and articles I always found Netscape as a company to be arrogant, unhelpful, nasty and happily cruel.
I cheered when, Vader-like, Microsoft decided to rise and smash Netscape with Internet Explorer and I laughed out loud when Netscape went down in flames. 

Continue reading → Netscape 8.01

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30 Percent of Americans Read Blogs

Here’s an interesting survey from Ipsos:

Washington, DC – Debate continues about the effect that blogs are having on politics, media and public opinion in the United States. A recent survey conducted by Ipsos reveals one in three of Online Americans had read a blog at least once. More than half of blog readers say blogs influence public opinion (68%), mainstream media (56%) and public policy (54%). Updated periodically throughout the day, they provide online commentary on anything from politics to religion to celebrity gossip.

Three In Ten Online Americans Claim That They Have Read A Blog Thirty percent of the online population said they had read a blog at least once. Among those who read blogs, 38% do so at least once per week. More than two in five of those aged 18 to 34 (41%) and those with a college-education (41%) have visited blogs at least once. Geographically speaking, blogs are most popular in the western United States where 37% of residents reported visiting a blog.

Continue reading → 30 Percent of Americans Read Blogs