The River

The personal professional blog of Pamela Parker -- musings on marketing, advertising, media and technology.

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Hey, Google’s Blogging!

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Well… Google has finally launched an official blog. It’s at www.google.com/googleblog

Evan Williams of Google’s Blogger.com made the first post and linked from his personal blog.

UPDATE: Ah… in a sign of corporate fear, the company’s already edited its one and only post (other than the intro post). The post originally defended Google’s opening of offices in India, saying it was no different than its opening new offices in Zurich. Apparently the company had gotten heat as part of the whole outsourcing debate. The revision also removed the one link to content that was outside of Google’s domain — a link to an outsourcing-related article at Fast Company. Now, magically, the “controversial” references have magically disappeared. Darn.

New Name

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It really IS like 1999 again. Back in 1995, I decided I wanted to learn about this Web thing. I’d had a Compuserve acount since 1993, with an e-mail address of 71664.2212@compuserve.com. (The fact that I remember those numbers kind of scares me.)

So I went to the bookstore and bought “Teach Yourself HTML in 7 Days” by Laura Lemay. (It’s gotten harder now.)

While browsing the HTML section in the bookstore, I started talking to a guy leafing through similar books. I think I was asking him for advice. Turned out he was starting up an ISP, so I got his info. I was ready to graduate from Compuserve. During the start-up process, I had some issues getting connected to the Web. Only in 1995 would the owner of the ISP — the guy from the bookstore — come over to my place and troubleshoot my computer. Turned out it was a problem on their end. (See? Just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean I’m a technological idiot.)

All this to say that I named my first Web presence The River, and that’s what I’ve decided to re-name this one. So… Welcome to The River. the-river.net

DVRs “Stumped” by Friends Final Episode

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As Boing Boing mentions, the final episode of Friends started at 8:59 and ran until 10:02 or 10:03, thereby screwing things up for those of us who “taped” the show on our PVRs. (Mine’s a ReplayTV and I haven’t fallen completely for the TiVo=PVR thing.) This caused a bit of a domestic disturbance at my place, as the show suddenly stopped and a message came up onto the screen (Delete this show? Watch another recorded show?), right in the middle of the penultimate scene. Since the household gadgetry is my realm — to my chagrin — my husband stormed out of the room and told me to let him know when I’d fixed the problem. Hmm…

Was happy to see people blogging on it this morning, if only because I feel less alone. It’s interesting how the PVR revolution is causing fall-off in communal watching experiences, yet the communal DVR experience — of being screwed by NBC’s timing — is somehow still comforting.

UPDATE: More discussion of the Friends/PVR phenomenon.