:deuceweb.blog

Well, after messing with it tonight and late last night, I was able to get the plugin inlineRSS working. What’s even better is the developer (Cal Demaine) was willling to help me out! I was having issues with directory permissions and getting the cache files to write correctly, and Cal was nice enough to give me quick responses and suggestions to fix the issue. So, Cal, if you happen to read this….thanks!

I spend quite a bit of time wandering around the web. I’ve only recently started using a site called del.icio.us, and have been using digg.com and shoutwire.com for a while. Essentially, these are social bookmarking sites. del.icio.us is useful as a tracking mechanism for all kinds of information, and uses “tagging” to identify items that might interest others (and to remind you what was interesting). digg and Shoutwire are very similar to each other, with the main difference being digg is generally tech-related news, while Shoutwire contains all sorts of news items.

Now, how do inlineRSS and the sites mentioned above relate? Well, I thought it would be useful for visitors to find out what sorts of things I’m bookmarking and taking note of as I browse around the web. So, using inlineRSS, I was able to create a page that contains recent “bookmarks/shouts/diggs”. Check it out.

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A few days ago, my buddy Zack sent me the following article…

Motown Loses Its Mojo

It’s pretty hard to disagree with the points the author makes. Reading the Detroit Free Press and other news sources doesn’t paint a good picture of this city. I don’t actually live in Detroit, and I think that’s one of the main things that brings home the points in the article.

When I first moved to the Metro area, I seriously considered living in downtown Detroit. Several factors played into that decision, not the least of which being a city income tax of 3%, high property taxes (if I bought, which was a remote possibility), and semi-high rent costs. In the end, I got more for my money by moving to Southgate, and now Royal Oak. The decision was made without knowledge of all the other issues that plague Detroit, and I have to say it was the right one for me.

One of the hardest thing for me to understand about the city of Detroit is the largesse of city government. If you look at the population growth and decline for Detroit, you notice the city hasn’t kept it’s workforce proportional to the population. Now, call me a simpleton, but if the taxable base (thus tax revenue) is reduced, then you can’t afford to pay for city employees and/or services in the same volume you did previously. Do the city and it’s employees not get this?

Lastly, we get to what could possibly be a good thing for Detroit: going into recievership. Granted, it would be a painful process, people will lose jobs, etc. etc. etc. As outlined in the article, it’s going to be very difficult to accomplish this, especially with this being an election year for Governor Granholm. Hopefully, she’ll either get replaced or turn her attention to Detroit very early in her next term.

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TNT is quite possibly the greatest channel on cable tv. What other channel can you count on having a great drama or movie almost every night of the week? Just tonight, I was able to see two episodes of Law and Order, now another show called Cold Case is on, and they’re both great. On top of that, Thursday through Sunday this week, TNT is showing a Lord of The Rings movie each night. Whoever is in charge of scheduling shows on TNT deserves a raise.

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Per this interesting article….there is a study conducted by a professor at Central Connecticut State University to determine “America’s Most Literate City.” Looks like Seattle is number one this year, with Minneapolis coming in second. Detroit is a distant 56th.

It’s interesting to read about the methodology used to determine this. Takes into account library system, internet purchases of books, newspaper circulation, and whole bunch of other data. Where is your city at?

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After reading a headline on the WSJ homepage about GM considering a sale of their stake in the GMAC unit, I found another article with more info at Bloomberg.

According to GM’s 2004 10-K filing, the GMAC division was responsible for $2.9 billion in net income. That’s “billion,” with a “b.” In the filing for GM’s Q2 10-q, it lists the net income for the first six months of 2005 from GMAC at $1.6 billion. Both of these are occuring on GMAC revenues of $31.1 billion and $16.5 billion, respectively. Now, let’s do a little math….

For net income of $2.9 billion against $31.1 billion of revenue for 2004, GMAC provided a profit margin of 9.3%. And looking at the first six months of 2005, GMAC provided a profit margin of 9.6%, with revenues of $16.5 billion and net income being $1.6 billion.

Call me crazy, but I’m thinking in these times, a profit ratio of nearly 10% is pretty dang good. As a business owner, I would have a tough time justifying the need to spin off a division that made profits like that. Of course, this would assume that profit margin won’t be hurt by the downgrade of GM bonds that happened earlier this year, but I guess we’ll find that out later. For now, let’s just get some popcorn and watch the show as the domestic automakers continue to provide business entertainment

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Well, it looks like the folks over at digg have a little competition now! A new site, Shoutwire, went live in November. It runs under the same premise as digg, but contains news articles about many topics, not just tech-related ones. Basically, users submit stories, and the community votes them to the front page in the form of “shouts.”

There is a great interview with one of the site’s founders here. I actually found it through the story submitted to digg about Shoutwire. It was quite interesting to watch the thread grow, and the resulting effect over on Shoutwire. I wish I had taken a couple screenshots, because the users at digg basically spammed the article base with horrible accusations and useless junk. Fortunately, the Shoutwire admins got it under control and back to normal.

I’m looking forward to reading news from Shoutwire, and submitting stories to it!

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