I am so happy to see a bunch of new people signed up. I think the banner was a really good idea after all. Thank you (e:jill) so much for helping with its construction.

(e:nickizen) , I am glad to see that someone else[inlink]nickizen,1[/inlink] has mentioned Coffee & (MAP TO: 718%20ELMWOOD%20AVENUE) other than me [inlink]paul,1263[/inlink]. It's sad to see so few people there, when Spot is always packed. I read in the paper that spot was franchising into the middle east. Does anyone have more detals on that?

[size=m]Looking for Coffee &[/size]
On The Web
If they do have a web site, it's sure hard to find. I think it has to do with the fact that their name was not the best idea in terms of computerized cataloging. While we can pretend that computers are not an important part of local neighborhood culture, the unfortunate truth is that the way they think, rules most of our lives. Especially in terms of information dispersal. For a human Cofee & = Coffe& = Coffee And. For a computer they are not the same.

The difficulty is compounded because if you search for "Coffee and" you get results that involve "coffe and anything." Coffee is an extremely common noun and " And" is a keyword on many search systems that means plus. While "&" is another special computer character that is often stripped in searches. That makes it not very good for searching.

Think about how many businesses and phone numbers you look up on the web. Basically, ambiguity is never good in a business name.

I tried using google new local beta which allows you to look for something including the address of the actual business. Ironically, if you search for "Coffe &" plus plus" 718 Elmwood Avenue Buffalo, NY 14222" or you search for "Coffe And" plus the address you get no "Coffe &" but you do get "Spot Coffee" as the number one return followed by every other Coffee House around.

In The Phonebook
Even in the phonebook. What does one look under? Here are some samples that give me nothing on Verizon. There phone number is 884-3535 by the way, I found it on the foreverelmwood site

"Coffe &" - [business]Coffe &[/business] - gives me nothing of use

"Coffe And" - [business]Coffe And[/business] - gives me nothing of use

While for spot coffee:

"Spot Coffee" - [business]Spot Coffee[/business] and I get all four business locations.

Just Testing the URLs
www.coffe&.com is nothing but on the other hand www.coffeeand.com is something , a placeholder that lets you buy the domain name.



I wrote to ask them how much they would want for it and they replied $7000. I basically told them to f(*&% , I hate internet barons.

[size=m]Neighbors Helping Neighbors - Web Model[/size]
Does Coffee And have a web page? I was thinking of helping them out with their net presence in return for them advertising for us. Kind of like a barter system with no cash trade.

While I cannot offer advertising on this site because of conflicts of interests with journals, I could hook them up with a web design student that could make them their own site, unless they already have one.

Does anyone know who I would talk to about this? If it works, I could end up making the same deal with other elmwood businesses. I would help my students build their portfolios, help get people talking about their neighborhood and recording their historical presencse, while helping local business. Could be an interesting model to develop.

[size=m]Offer Something Better[/size]
Event calendars and Reviews
A web site would allow them to post schedules, web cams of events, etc. Maybe they could be the first to have one of my all-purpose elmwoodstrip.com kiosks. Who knows? (e:ajay), would you want to work with me on that?

Wireless Internet Access
I can't stress this one enough. Maybe they already have this too but if they do its a secret. Having wireless internet would cost them about $30/month. I am sure between (e:ajay) [inlink]ajay,3[/inlink] and I, we could easily get them started. That is something very few other businesses are willing to offer. Namely spot coffeee. Off the Wall has it but I heard you have to pay, and that never brings people. Or maybe I am wrong and it does. Either way it would be a good service to offer.

Well, as the summer winds down, I find myself overwhelmed with little projects I have created for myself. There is only one week left and I have about 1000 things to do for the site, 3D modeling, planning syllabi, etc.

This is the democracy- building, miracle piss that America promised Iraq before the war. It helps the democracy plant grow out of the dry desert ground.

This image would have never made it into the history books of the past, which have now been replaced by the internet. Thank you google for sewing our historical quilt even if you do support terrorists [inlink]paul,1820[/inlink] (just kidding)

Maybe this is a common democracy-building technique. It is hard to know without having had digital cameras and an internet back in 1776. Perhaps, if we had the internet back then, we would have a picture of George Washington pissing on King George's portrait.

A Spanish-language version of Windows XP, destined for Latin American markets, asked users to select their gender between "not specified," "male" or "bitch," because of an unfortunate error in translation.

Everyone is still recovering from the party last night. It was nuts. Lots of people recorded the event, so I hope to see some good pics of the actual event here. I only took pics afterwards. We had at least 104 people at the party according to (e:jill) 's list, which I think is quite accurate.



I believe the last people left around 7. It was such a diverse crowd of people, many of whom did not know each other, but everyone got along great.

(e:lilho) worked the bar most of the night. She actually made $16 in tips.



Somewhere, there is a whole video of that, which I will post as soon as it is edited and compressed. Thank you (e:soyeon) for bringing your camera dn the delicious ham sushi.

Everything got really dirty. This is a picture of t he kitchen floor to give you an idea. The whole apartment is pretty nasty though, we will have a full day of cleaning ahead but I am the only person up so far.



(e:terry) took a Claritan D and past out in the living. His alergies must have been really bad.



(e:mike) went to bed early, first on top of (e:jill) 's car and then with a little work getting him back into the house, he fell asleep on the floor. Basically, how any 21st birthday party should be celebrated.



(e:matthew) 's friend's Christine and Tony came out. They brought a giant high heel pinata which complimented our parrot pinata for a dual pinata party. There was so much candy, I think that is why so many people satyed so long. Pinata's are a bad idea in the long run, they made a giant mess and now there are 3000 peices of candy to pick up.



Here is the kitchen sink, like any surface in the house it is covered in bottles. You can see the parrot pinata's head above the sink.



The Kitchen table is the same way. It will be so fun cleaning.

Well, I am still working on this VR world for Josephine. My version of the cat monkey doesn't look like how she wants it probably but I fell in love with it now after 8 hours and its not going to change much.

These are pictures from the garden, paul style.

This is my boot. I love this boot, it has been all over the world. Basra loves to eat my boot.



He also like to eat flowers and started trying to walk on two legs in order to reach them today. It was a small step for a tortoise and a giant step for tortoisekind.




In celebration of his acheivment I made a little leg art, to show off his tough legs.

Holly - [inlink]holly,87[/inlink]
Ajay - [inlink]ajay,89[/inlink]

You all could not have read my whole journal because it never says that I want google to take stuff down or censor it. It states multiple times that I am against internet censorship. It was just mentioning that the issue brings up lots of questions about ethics and responsibility.

I did, however, say the people hosting the information on their server are a bit responsible for the information. It is on their computers after all. They are not just cataloging as google is! They are actively distributing this type of information.

If you are refering to this :
"Do you think America should declare war on Google(just before their Stock Market launch), as well as, on the country that is serving this document to google? "

I was simply being sarcastic and saying that it was in line with current government policies and last two wars that we fought. I don't even know how you could take it seriously as it mentions America starting a war with an American corporations. Sorry if you misunderstood what I was saying. The osama picture was part of the joke.

[size=m]What is this about?[/size]
Holly, what is this part supposed to mean, " . . on what Paul considers unsavory or even dangerous information on the internet." You make it sound like I have this weird fringe opinion that the Terroist Handbook is both dangerous and unsavory. Or are you trying to say you find the Terrorist Handbook both savory and harmless?

Promtoion, advertsing and the radio and money
[inlink]jessbob,40[/inlink]

I have thought about his issue a lot as I knew it would come up at some point. I am also really curious what everyone else has to say about this.

[size=m]What to do about promoters?[/size]
In my opinion, it really doesn't affect the site too much when people use journals to promote their band, etc. If people attempt to commercialize by having promo journals, they still need to maintain an interesting journal in order to have any real lasting effect or to get the hundreds of daily readers interested enough to go to events or examine and purchase products. If they don't provide that, they lose out. It's the way I intentionally designed the system to work. By not writing continuously, a journal drifts off into a space that puts it several clicks too far away for the casual reader to find the intended message.

In this particular case, I can't complain though, because we have been looking for local music for elmwood radio, in an effort to remove corporate music from our station. However, it has been really hard to find bands. Mostly, because I am not into very into non electronic (pronounced computerized) music and don't go to many concerts. In this case, both bands contacted me about getting airtime on elmwood radio and I suggested they start a journal. (e:hanabi) also put a link on his site to ours, which drew a little extra traffic to our site.

Perhaps, in the future I will make another route avaible for people who just want their music played. But like I said earlier, without the accompanying journal, people are not very likely to pay attention to the music.

[size=m]Business Chronicles[/size]
The same thing happend a while back with this artist who made fancy custom bicycles. He started a journal but then never followed through. It definately would have been a great way to promote his bike business. Especially, seeing as he was opening a business in the elmwood area. He could have chronicled what it was like to start a business, and really gotten people interested in his bikes. I often wonder why the poepole from Coffee & don't start a journal to promote their coffee shop. It would have been really neat to see the chronicles of owning a local coffee shop on elmwood. I am sure it would have drawn more people to the store as well.

[size=m]Advertisments[/size]
I guess I should probably just have accepted advertisements. I know I could have made a lot of money at this point but in reality I can't compromise on the ethics behind it. Say I offered a local business advertsiing space that they paid for in order to raise money for a new server, etc. Then, someone writes a journal slandering that business. I instantly have a conflict of interest and I don't want to deal with that.

[size=m]What I need[/size]
I have no idea how to manage the social and business side of things on the site, I am just a programmer! What I really need is a PR person. Someone who could deal with issues like this and interface with musicians for me. Someone that could go to events and hand out flyers and get new bands interested in playing on our site and writing journals.

I also need someone to make a promo video, design and distribute flyers, organize and host fundraiser events,as well as, find out what people like and don't like. I also need someone who can start doing more street videos and interviews, someone to contact local papers about writing a review of the site, and most important a grant writer to help me get grants so we can take this project to the next level.

First off I would use the grant money to hire the PR person, then for example, I would really like to see a place in town where the latest journal is projected onto some public space, thereby making the meaning of public journal even more public and in a way maki
ng the whole journal thing more
ta
ngible to the average citizen who is used to televsion. I would also like to see kiosks where people can update around town ( i would build these), but without any money or a grant nothing is going to change. Any ideas? Anyone intersted in helping out with the PR side of the site?

(e:lilho) and I went to go eat Vietnamese food at the ultra tasty vietnamese restaurant on elmwood between utica and hodge. Unfortunately, it was closed so we headed over to Ambrosia.

Along the way noticed the thrift shop at 469 elmwood had books on sale for 25 cents. Also, Pier One had 15% with student ID.