I was writing a comment for (e:zobar,89) and it turned into this entry.

Well, having dealt with the news a bit, it seems that "The News" does not search for what is going on but rather relies on PR directors telling them what the news is. Frankly, I think that is a kind of skewed way of reporting about what is going on but everyone I have talked with that has real media experience says that it is just the way things work. Now that we have a director (e:theecarey) , maybe she can do a little stuffing on our part.

Considering how overwhelming active and alive our comunity is and the fact that we have over 15,000, ~13,000 images and over 3,600,000 views with little or no advertising other than word of mouth - it is amazing that we exist pretty much off the radar. I would say that it is 100% a lack of effective public relations. I have never had any interest in doing it myself.

On the other hand, it has worked well for us in a way, because we have not had much trouble getting enough members to keep to alive and exciting, while avoiding the mainstream myspace/livejournal crowd. I mean we were in the news a couple of times and honetsly, what kind of validation is being in the Buffalo News.

I think being in artvoice would be 1000 times more effective andexciting. It is something I have thought about a lot. Originally, I thought just being hosted by artvoice would make a difference. I am kind of surprised that Jamie Moses wouldn't want to pimp out our existence more to demostrate the benevolence of artvoice. I mean, the service that artvoice provides us, probably makes them the single largest contributor to any non-commerical online public space in Buffalo. If it were me I would brag about my good will ;)

Sometimes I think it is my strict anti-commerical stance that keeps us under the radar. Othertimes, I think it is the fact that we mix news with personal lives and so the outlets that try and emulate the "real news" (including the buffalo news, lol) frown upon that as tabloidesque frivolity.

Then there is the fact that some people try and keep their real lives separate from their journal life because of whatever it is they are confessing. It is a mix of wanting to share and wanting to remain private. As I said in my thesis. It is a combination of wanting to be present and involved while avoiding public scrutiny.

Frankly, we have had one of the most lively community based blogging site that I have seen. Especially for a town of this size. So I say if the news and other media outlets don't notice us without us telling them and shoving it in their face, then they obviously are not attuned to what is going on their city.

Even without being "noticed" today, we will continue to sew the quilt our existence until one day it is so large and old that historians will notice just how fanctastic we really are.

Maybe next year when they have their bloggerCon we should just show up with 100 (e:peeps).

After hours of testing and pretending to be (e:twisted) on her verizon phone I was able to first all fix it so that MMS message that get base64 encoded get decoded when sent to your journal and more importantly - it removes the freakin stupid verizon picture message data at the end of the post.

So go ahead and send MMS from cingular and verizon to your journal using pmobl.

I fixed the wap chat. You can now chat when logged in from any WAP enabled phone. Basically, any phone since 1999. If you aren't logged in you can read the chat. Just visit estrip.org/wap or simply estrip.org on your wap enabled phone.

(e:carolinian) and I went sidewalk chalking on elmwood last night - take pictures if you see it, I forgot.

Tonight we are going to sidewalk (e:paul,771) chalking on elmwood around midnight if enough peeps are interested. I will bring chalk. Who wants to go?

This time we can make it more artistic seeing we don't have to spell out elmwoodstrip.com anymore.

Okay, this effected no one accept me and (e:enknot) but I fixed the flash sound layer that plays mp3 sounds when you upload them into your journal. You can see an example here (e:enknot,32)

Now you can once again use your email or your cell phone's email for posting to your estrip.org journal. Simply send an email to mobl AT estrip.org from your phones email. Before you get started make sure that you specifiy your cell phone's email in your cell phone control panel - the little green cell phone in your control panel. That way the site knows where to expect you to send pictures from.

If you want to specifiy a security code, you can add it there as well. If you do, you must type that code in your email body in order for it to post.

Any attachments (images,mp3s 3gps), get added to your journal entry. The subject line becomes the title.

Additional Tips:
To add a category to a mobile email post add the keyword cat followed by a colon, then the category itself, then another colon
e.g. to add the category food type cat:food: anywhere in the body of the email

To make a journal not public add pub:n: to the body of any body of the email

I am going to recommend that anyone seiorus about the mobile web check out this phone. I paid $599 for it last year and right now it is on sale for $299. It is the Sprint PPC 6700 and has a querty keyboard, touch screen, 400mhz processor and super fast internet connection. The internet package is $15 on top of the cost of the phone plan so it is extremely competitive with other plans and abotu $30 cheaper than cingulars pda package.





If you order it please give them my name because I think I get a discount and like ten people I know have gotten before I realized that.

Paul Visco

There was a typo that was causing the userpics to not switch. I just fixed it.

Thank (e:zobar) for the heads up.

I updated a bunch of stuff. (e:Strip) is finally running on the surebertCom javascript ui library which probably means nothing to everyone but (e:enknot) but basically after weeks of coding and standardizing entire object based javascript library, it is now in use and I will continue to work on it.

You guys are the big test for it, although I don't imagine you will see much difference.

I did update the restore backup funciton, no more pop-up, journal entry closes after publishing and notifies you that you published again, backup does not show up when coming back from uploading media, and once again, there are select transparent pngs in IE 6 after I tweaked the PNG code a bit to make it more efficient.

So for those of you that didn't know this, in 2003, (e:strip) started out as my Thesis project for my Masters In Fine Arts at UB. It is finally almost time for me to hand in my thesis. In order to complete it I will need some feedback from you guys.

Here are some of the questions, you can just post the answers on your journals. Please post the answers before friday, June 19th. Include a link to this journal so I can see the connection. If you want to keep the answers private for any reason you can always email me instead. Also if you have any additional information you would like to share, feel free to add it.

Thanks for your time.

People:
1. How did you find out about/why did you become of estrip?

2. How "out" are you about having a publicly accessible online journal. Do your friends know? Does your family know? Do your co-workers know? Does your boss know? Do you use your real name? Do you use your real photo?

3. How many epeeps have you met real life?

4. How has estrip changed the way that you meet people, on and/or off line?

5. How has estrip affected you love life?

6. How many of your friends have joined estrip because of your influence?

7. Are you from Buffalo/do you live in Buffalo?

Equipment:
1. What type of hardware or software purchases have you made as a result of using estrip?

2. Have you used the mobile version of estrip? Why or why not?

Lifestyle:
1. In what way has estrip changed your Internet surfings habits? Describe the amount of time you spend on estrip, when you use it and about how long?

1a. How many journals do you usually read per day?

2. In what ways has estrip changed the way you perceive your local community?

3. How has journaling about your life affected the way you spend your free time?

4. Has estrip changed your living situation in any way?

5. Do you find that you mediate/document more of your experiences now that you share them with others?

6. Has publishing on estrip affected the way that write?

7. Do you have other online journals? If so, with what service and has estrip affected your usage of that journal?

8. Have you ever gotten in trouble for using estrip at work?

9. If you have stopped using estrip, why?