Posted by Chris Walbert on August 27th, 2008 and has 2 comments.
That’s right. This Sunday, August 31 is the Virginia Beach Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon. This will be my second Half after running the Baltimore one this past October. This course is supposed to be much flatter and faster than the monstrously hilly Baltimore course.
I’ve been training for the past 6 weeks or so and feel quite good about where I am in my preparation. I’ve started to have some pain in my shins and knees lately, but don’t foresee that being much of a problem on race day.
This Friday morning I’ll be driving down with Lauren and Andrea and meeting up with their friends at VA Beach. Hopefully we’ll have some sun for the weekend and not feel the wrath of Gustav.
Continue Reading Virginia Beach Half Marathon this Weekend
Posted by Chris Walbert on August 21st, 2008 and has 2 comments.
This week, John Berry penned a very interesting and thought-provoking piece for the Baltimore City Paper titled, “Press Release, The Sun’s Ever-Shrinking Newsroom Isn’t Good News For Baltimore“. In this piece Berry takes us through the last 10-20 years of staff cutbacks, branch closures, and formatting changes that have occurred at the Baltimore Sun. Berry makes many great points and shows why every major city needs a credible, well-researched, daily news periodical.
The vast majority of Baltimore citizens can agree with this. We need professional, full-time journalists to cover our city and bring all of the stories into the public eye. What Berry doesn’t discuss, and what many newspaper executives around the country are no doubt struggling with, is how do newspapers remain relevant and increase readership in the 21st century? How do newspapers grow and remain profitable so they can afford to hire and retain these journalists and run a paper that people want to read?
Advertisers are the major revenue stream for any newspaper. As all of us know, there has been an explosion of new media options over the past 5-10 years. Where advertisers used to only have to choose from TV, radio, magazines, and newspapers, their choices have been compounded exponentially by the options available on the web, mobile, and other digital platforms. Newspapers have been hit especially hard by the web and the accountability and tracking it offers.
Continue Reading How do Newspapers Stay Relevant and Survive?
Posted by Chris Walbert on August 1st, 2008 and has 2 comments.
Every year, for at least the past 5 years, I’ve said I was going to buy a new snowboard. And every year I ended up not buying one and just riding my trusty old Burton. It’s not that there was anything specifically wrong with that board, it’s just that it’s the board that I first started riding when I was 19, now 8 years ago.
The Burton I have been riding was also a very inexpensive, starter board. While I will not be competing in the X Games any time soon, it was definitely time to get a larger, nicer board that I can plan on riding for the next 10 years.
The new board, pictured above, is a Capita 156 and is part of their Outdoor Living line from 2008. Carrington at 3 Rideshop was nice enough to hook me up with this beauty at a very reasonable price. In fact, the price was so reasonable that I decided to pick up new bindings and boots as well. Like I said, I’ve been riding the same setup for the past 8 years.
Continue Reading I Finally Bought a New Snowboard
Posted by Chris Walbert on July 16th, 2008 and has 2 comments.
If you are reading this blog, or have seen a computer, newspaper, television, or any other media device in the past week, you know that last Friday Apple released the new iPhone 3G.
The vast majority of what I have read has been in glowing praise of the new iPhone. Despite the major issues experienced at Apple and AT&T stores across the country last Friday, everyone who has one seems to love it. I have been suffering from a severe case of iPhone envy over the past week.
There are now also tons of very useful applications that you can download to your iPhone. Mike got one that allows him control his computer’s iTunes via the Airport Express directly from his iPhone. This is only one small example, but there are many out there.
Now, let’s look at my current mobile device situation.
Continue Reading A Mobile Phone Quandary
Posted by Chris Walbert on July 7th, 2008 and has 3 comments.
Baltimore Restaurant Week is quickly approaching and will occur July 26 - August 3. I have yet to attend Baltimore Restaurant Week, but am really looking forward to going this year. There are a lot of new restaurants that I am anxious to try as well as some that I just haven’t gotten around to visiting yet.
For those that don’t know, Baltimore Restaurant Week is a celebration of our city’s fine dining establishments. During this week, you can eat at a number of area eateries for a very reasonable price. Each one offers a variety of three-course dinners for $30.08. Some also have three-course lunches for $20.08.
Continue Reading Baltimore Restaurant Week
Posted by Chris Walbert on June 24th, 2008 and has no comments.
Internet rumor has it that Google is set to announce their new web measurement tool today. Various articles in the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, and others are all saying that Wayne Lin, Google Business Product Manager, will announce the new tool this afternoon at the Advertising Research Foundation media conference.
As most of us who plan and buy online media know, the current tools available are either lacking or quite expensive. To be fair, I have not used comScore or Nielsen @Plan due to their prohibitive costs. I currently use Quantcast and Compete for the majority of my research. However, while these tools give you a basic idea of site traffic and audience demo, that’s really where their usefulness ends.
Another issue with these tools is that they, like old-school media measurement tools, rely on user panels. This means that only those who have allowed comScore, et al. to measure their web activity are included in the numbers. The reason that Google’s program may be more beneficial is that they will be gathering data from web servers. This should allow them to have more definitive data.
Continue Reading Google Ad Planner to be Announced Today
Posted by Chris Walbert on June 10th, 2008 and has 2 comments.
Last night was the Death Cab for Cutie show at Merriweather Post Pavilion. Despite the 100+ heat index, a few thousand people came out to enjoy the stylings of one of America’s biggest rock bands.
The show was opened by Rogue Wave, who I was looking forward to seeing. Though they only played for 30 minutes, Rogue Wave was tight and sounded great. The crowd applauded after each song, but it was obvious that the majority did not know Rogue Wave’s songs. The people were there for Death Cab.
Any time you see a band who is touring to promote a new album, you wonder if they are going to stick to their new songs, with maybe a smattering of previous hits thrown in. As you can see from the setlist below, Death Cab did an amazing job of working in songs from their entire catalogue. While not everyone knew some of the older songs, those who did were excited to hear them. Even though the set spanned the last decade, it flowed perfectly from song to song.
Continue Reading Death Cab for Cutie Show
Posted by Chris Walbert on June 9th, 2008 and has no comments.
This is just a quick post to link to some of the amazing new stuff that is out as of today.
New iPhone announced at WWDC. It will be available July 11 and starts at just $199. I think I’m going to have to cancel my TMobile contract early.
New Sigur Ros album leaked today. This is one of the greatest bands in the world. Their new album is beautiful, as always.
Tonight is the Death Cab for Cutie show at Merriweather. Hopefully I’ll have some photos to post tomorrow and will not get heat stroke.
The annual Maiste crab feast/cookout/karaoke party was this past weekend. As always, it was so much fun. Thanks Mike for hosting another great party.
I’ve also recently downloaded some other really good music that is worth listening to: Bowerbirds, Wye Oak (from Baltimore), and the new Lil’ Wayne. Check them out and let me know what you think.
Posted by Chris Walbert on June 2nd, 2008 and has 1 comment.
Last Wednesday, I travelled to NYC for the 2008 AAAA Digital Conference. I planned to live blog the event, but this didn’t quite work out. First, my train arrived a bit late, so I missed the first 30 minutes or so. I’m assuming that it was during the introduction that they doled out a username and password for their wi-fi. Needless to say, without the luxury of having this information, I had no internet connection.
While I was initially disappointed, I think it was actually a good thing. With so many conversations happening and information flying around, I definitely would have missed some key items if I had been also trying to craft coherent sentences. Instead of going through the conference session by session, I’m going to focus on the ones that most interested me and were, in my opinion, the most successful.
As I mentioned, due to a late train arrival, I missed almost half of Venture Capitalist Mark Kvamme’s talk. I did manage to catch his introduction of SearchMe.com. SearchMe looks pretty cool, but you have to wonder if it stands a chance in gaining enough users to make it viable. With its visual display, there is the opportunity for advertisers to incorporate much more engaging advertising than the standard 95 characters of text. It also takes a much different approach in displaying the search results, which makes it very interesting.
Continue Reading AAAA Digital Conference
Posted by Chris Walbert on May 20th, 2008 and has 1 comment.
I know that my last post was a restaurant review. I also know that I am not a professional food critic, so don’t worry, this is not turning into a restaurant-review blog. However, after eating at Clemetine, the new restaurant in Hamilton last Friday, I really wanted to get the word out about this great spot and encourage all of you to check it out.
Contrary to a certain review in the Baltimore Sun, Clementine, which is located in the 5400 block of Harford Road, is in downtown Hamilton and not Lauraville. The restaurant is housed in an unassuming storefront in the vicinity of a Blockbuster, a pawn shop, and a Dunkin Donuts. But please do not allow this to lower your expectations of Clementine.
View Larger Map
Continue Reading Clementine
