Category Archives: Front Porch Forum

Daughter sending Parents on Long-Delayed Honeymoon

Posted on Friday, May 25, 2007 by • 1 comment

Here’s a beautiful story that just came across the Airport Drive Neighborhood Forum…

Hi Everyone – This weekend (Sat & Sun, 9am-3pm) I will be holding a yard sale at 33 Forest Street [South Burlington]. The proceeds from this sale will go to send my parents on a much-deserved, very belated honeymoon. This June marks their 30th anniversary. They have never had the money or time to take a honeymoon, or even a vacation together, though they did find the money to provide me with a beautiful wedding last year. To thank them for that, my husband and I are putting on this yard sale to raise the money to send them off on a little honeymoon. How much we raise determines how far we can send them. Ideally, I would like to be able to send them to Maine or the Cape because my mom has never seen the ocean, but has always wanted to.

The yard sale is being held at my parents’ house. They are completely unaware that this is to benefit them. They think I am holding it to raise money for my grad. tuition. So if you can stop by to support this, keep the real purpose of it a secret!

There are ceramics you can paint yourself, yarn, crafty whatnots, books, clothes, dishes, kitchen things, games, toys, etc. Thanks for your support! -Rebekah

If you’re local… stop by a spend a couple bucks. If you’re a Front Porch Forum subscriber, post this message on your own neighborhood forum to help spread the word!

Online Ad Revenue Grows 35% in 2006

Posted on Thursday, May 24, 2007 by • No comments yet

According to a new report, online ad revenue climbed to about $17B in 2006, a 35% gain over 2005.

Branded display ads and search placements helped the online ad industry post its best year ever in 2006, according to numbers released Wednesday by the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Overall, revenue increased 35% last year to $16.9 billion–due in large part to record fourth-quarter revenue of $4.8 billion.

Both search revenue and display revenue climbed 31% year-over-year, to $6.8 billion and $5.4 billion, respectively. Search accounted for 40% of last year’s revenues, slightly lower than the 41% it commanded in 2005. Display advertising, classifieds and referrals accounted for 32%, 18% and 8% of last year’s full revenues, respectively.

See more details here.

Front Porch Forum is just getting its sponsorship program rolling, and we’re going with a flat rate per ad approach.  This report states that 48% of online ads work that way, while 47% of the ad deals are based on ad performance.

Palore and EveryBlock Answer One Question

Posted on Thursday, May 24, 2007 by • No comments yet

From today’s Local Onliner…

We’re all guilty of feature creep. A lot of the stuff isn’t especially useful. Now comes Palore. When it comes to directory listings, Palore believes hardly any of the info is useful. In fact, consumers want to know just one thing.

“The interesting thing was that they all wanted just one thing and didn’t care much about the rest. It was all about users wanting to see something very specific and personalized to them when making a local search,” says [Palore co-founder Hanan] Lifshitz, an Israeli who had previously started a banner exchange network. “They didn’t want more reviews or better maps. They wanted to know things like:

* The size of a restaurant’s wine list
* Does the business have handicap access?
* Is the business sustainable / vegetarian / organic etc.
* Is there free wifi access?
* Did the restaurant win any award?

With such results in mind, Lifshitz launched Palore in Israel a year ago. The service quickly got 100,000 – quite a landmark in a small country – capped it there, and has been working on bringing it stateside since then. He’s raised $1 million from angels to do so, and has set up shop in the Bay Area.

Sounds compelling. In Burlington, lots of folks just post those questions to their neighborhood forum via Front Porch Forum. Not only do they get good results, but they foster relationships with their real-time in-the-flesh neighbors in the process. Next time, they’ll just call out over the backfence to ask about the wine list… offline. (horrors!)

Also… I was just reading more about EveryBlock, the pre-start-up about to get underway by Adrian Holovaty, late of washingtonpost.com and recent winner of a $1.1M grant from the Knight Foundation. His project… To create, test and release open-source software that links databases to allow citizens of a large city to learn (and act on) civic information about their neighborhood or block. His goal… To create an easy way to answer the question, “What’s happening around me?” Hey! That’s one question again.

Favorite Posting of the Week!

Posted on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 by • No comments yet

Here’s a wonderful Front Porch Forum posting from a senior citizen on the ONE East Neighborhood Forum.  She was stunned by the quickness and number of responses to her call for lawn help.  She’s full of gratitude for those around her who beautify the neighborhood.  She issues a safety reminder.  And, she offers a $100 reward for return of her lost hearing aids!  Read on to see what she was doing when she lost them!  -Michael

Wow. What a response to my mowing plea. The 1st one came in at about 1 AM. I am not a regular computer person yet so didn’t check my email until late in the day by which time someone had called me on the phone and then actually mowed my lawn. Thank you so much to the other 5 or 6 people who offered.

Thanks also to the people who plant flowers in the greenbelt and the ones who pick up trash, which I hope someday will be all of us all the time. My grandmother used to stoop over and pick up trash when I was a child and I would be mortified. Now I do it too.

I’m also grateful to the bikers who ride responsibly who mostly seem to be children. It must be hard to remember how quickly a bike can appear out of nowhere and how relatively slowly a car can respond.

I have another topic. Last night I lost one of my hearing aids. I was getting a ride home up North St.on the back of a motorcycle and it was in my left hand pocket. We rode from parking space in front of the brick houses on Elm St. on UU Church property to North St. and then up North St. to 447. There is a $100 reward. Thanks.

Google’s Vint Cerf calls for e-Respect

Posted on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 by • No comments yet

A friend just shared this bit from NPR by Google Vice President Vint Cerf (thanks Nancy).

Once, I was being driven by limo to a hotel in Palm Springs to give a speech. The driver appeared to be in his 60s, and I remember thinking, “How sad that he has to keep working at this menial job.” It turned out, though, that he was the retired CFO of a major Chicago-based corporation who had gotten bored with golf. He took a part-time job driving the hotel’s limo, so he could meet people and stay in touch with the world. He even ended up giving some good advice to me, a financially naive engineer.

I believe that every person deserves respect, and that I can learn something new from everyone. Now, I make a point of asking people about their stories…

He goes on to call for civility on online mediums too. Amen… that’s one of planks of the platform on which Front Porch Forum is built.

Good Web Host Recommended

Posted on Monday, May 21, 2007 by • 8 comments

Some folks have taken the time to share their appreciation of Front Porch Forum with me today. That’s a wonderful thing. As one of them wrote about people’s tendencies to criticize…

Although positive feedback may not make it through as much as negative in general, it’s usually there. So many of us need a gentle reminder to share our positive thoughts and feelings in an effort to build a healthy community (and to give some context for our more constructively critical thoughts).

So this spurs me to share the great experience I’ve had for past nine months with JP Peach and Associates, the web host for this blog and Front Porch Forum. Peach, the man behind the company, knows his stuff and does a great job meeting specific needs. We started at one of the big daddy web hosting companies (although not THE Big Daddy), and they simply could NOT meet our specific needs. With Peach it’s been no problem. And his prices are reasonable.

If you’re looking for a web host along these lines, check out Peach. From the site…

The flexible organization of J.P.Peach & Associates allows us to offer a wide range of services at a significant cost savings compared to other software companies. We are a collection of independent contractors and keep our overhead cost low by not maintaining a bricks-and-mortar location.

Our company and web hosting are built on flexibility. Over the years we have used a large number of web hosting services, from the cheap to the expensive, and have never been really happy with any of them. They forced us into a “hosting package” that never really fit our client’s needs. So, we decided to set up our own server so that we can have full control over it. If you want to host your site with us we will customize the services and software to fit your needs. We have “hosting packages” but they are only a starting point, we will customize the hosting services to meet your specific needs.

[I’m not getting any compensation for this plug… it’s just good karma to acknowledge a job well done.]

Amazing Event in NYC

Posted on Sunday, May 20, 2007 by • 6 comments

The Personal Democracy Forum was intense! Amazing that Front Porch Forum landed me on the agenda alongside the CEO of Google, the founder of Craigslist, best selling authors, a thrice Pulitzer Prize winner, several web advisers to presidential campaigns, A-list political bloggers, top academics, other VIPs, and lots of up-and-comers. I was and am honored and thankful to Micah Sifry for the invitation.

I learned much from the various sessions and hallway conversations. Here’s a photo from Steve Garfield of one panel’s audience (with me typing away on the floor in the foreground),

and another by Caviar…

Front Porch Forum was very well received by a several folks I met there, but not all. Our approach is different enough that it requires a ready and open mind to understand it, and in a “30-second elevator pitch” environment that can be a challenge. That’s fine… many there were eager to know more.

Part of my pitch…

Imagine much of today’s social media occurring among clearly identified nearby neighbors, instead of anonymous distant strangers.  It’s happening with Front Porch Forum where 20% of our pilot city has subscribed in our first half-year.  Every plumber recommendation, restaurant review, piece of citizen journalism, classified ad, etc. posted not only gets a direct result, but all those messages add up to neighbors getting to know each other and build real community in their neighborhood.  People LOVE it!

The speakers’ cocktail party the night before the event was hosted by Google at their NYC digs… definitely not your usual cubicle farm. Here’s the view (thanks to Steve Garfield again)…

Ermine, Fisher Cat, Moose visit City Cousins

Posted on Sunday, May 20, 2007 by • 1 comment

Front Porch Forum members have a way of surprising me. Every time I think the postings are getting predictable, someone writes to their neighbors with something a bit different.

This past week it was an innocent enough question in the King Maple Neighborhood Forum in an urban section of Burlington, VT…

What’s the weirdest animal you’ve seen in your yard?

Some of the answers…

•We’ve had zillions of squirrels, skunks, mice, raccoons and bats. I’d have to say an opossum is the oddest visitor. A couple friends of mine swear they saw a fisher cat run through the yard once, but I think it was some kind of weasel.
•I’ve definitely had possum, used to have a family of badgers till my neighbor ‘eradicated’ them, but the most unusual was a pure white ermine that hung around one winter.
•We have seen possum in our back yard. We also have a family of skunks living under our house, though our neighbors are convinced the family is under their own house. Hard to tell. And raccoons are everywhere, living who knows where, probably in trees at night in the warmer months.
•My beau just reminded me today that we once saw a porcupine passing through here. Some friends said they saw foxes on Main Street. Another friend told me a story about seeing a moose near the Burlington Square Mall around 3 a.m. a few years back. Kooky!

Sponsorship Status for Front Porch Forum

Posted on Friday, May 18, 2007 by • 1 comment

Front Porch Forum has enjoyed a surprising level of success facilitating neighbor-to-neighbor connection. In our first half-year, 20% of the City of Burlington has subscribed and put our free service to great use. Thanks and congratulations to the thousands of people who are making it all happen.

Now, we’re focused on developing a local-business-to-neighbor component… our new sponsorship program. We intend to provide snippets about local businesses largely not available elsewhere, AND, in the process, we aim to generate enough income to cover the expenses associated with hosting 130 neighborhood forums across Chittenden County.

We’ve been working on this (and posting updates on the various neighborhood forums) for the past few months. Now, this week, we tested our first sponsor message from Seven Days, the local free weekly newspaper (Cathy Resmer blogged about it)…

SPONSOR MESSAGE
By Seven Days, http://sevendaysvt.com, web@sevendaysvt.com
Wed, 16 May 2007

Should Zoe Christiansen be allowed to play her clarinet on Church Street? Find out why this young busker was banned from the Marketplace. Listen to her music and tell us what you think at http://sevendaysvt.com.

We’re sensitive about balancing this new program with the desire to keep each neighborhood forum focused on the neighbor-to-neighbor conversation, so your feedback will be much appreciated. We’re excited about the sponsorship program because it will support (hopefully!) Front Porch Forum as we move forward AND it will give local businesses and nonprofits a chance to connect with various neighborhoods.

We’re still in an early testing phase, so we’re only working with a few sponsors. If your business, nonprofit, agency, special event, etc. is interested in sponsoring a few to all of the neighborhood forums in and around Burlington, please add your information to our sponsor wait list. If you already have joined that wait list and would like to join Seven Days and others in our initial test, please contact me directly. Cheers! -Michael

Husband Rentals get Press

Posted on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 by • No comments yet

Paula Routly has a good piece about a local hardware store’s “Rent-A-Husband” service in today’s Seven Days. The dust on this was first kicked up by John Grimm when he joined Front Porch Forum and posted his thoughts… past postings here and here.

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Ghost of Midnight is an online journal about fostering community within neighborhoods, with a special focus on Front Porch Forum (FPF). My wife, Valerie, and I founded FPF in 2006... read more

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