I met Linda Solomon, who started the Vancouver Observer, at F5 Expo in Vancouver.
The Vancouver Observer is a crowdsourced news startup focused on Vancouver. Many contributors write for the site, but the content is curated professionally.
Tag - news
This is sick:
An official report from People for The Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), submitted nine months after a Virginia government agency’s deadline, shows that the animal rights group put to death more than 97 percent of the dogs, cats, and other pets it took in for adoption in 2006. During that year, the well-known animal rights group managed to find adoptive homes for just 12 pets. The nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) is calling on PETA to either end its hypocritical angel-of-death program, or stop its senseless condemnation of Americans who believe it’s perfectly ethical to use animals for food, clothing, and critical medical research.
Here’s the full story …
Before posting this, I did a quick search to see if perhaps this is a fake report or part of a smear campaign. It does not appear to be.
From the SunHerald article:
“PETA raised over $30 million last year,” Martosko added, “and it’s using that money to kill the only flesh-and-blood animals its employees actually see. The scale of PETA’s hypocrisy is simply staggering.”
The lesson for me, which is confirmed by just about every other experience with organizations that market themselves and their messages in similar ways, is to not trust any organization that uses uninformed and clueless celebrities as its main spokespeople.
Count me shocked.
MacSurfer, the grand-daddy and still king of Mac news sites, has unveiled a new look, now in beta. Times have changed, mullets have gone out of fashion, Michael is no longer the king of pop, and tie-dye is out … but MacSurfer, the essense of web 1.0, has stubbornly remained completely and utterly static. So any update is a bonus.
Major changes:
- 1-column to 3-column
- Font size for article titles is smaller
- Tabbed navigation (as opposed to no navigation at all)
- More add space (in the afore-mentioned 2 extra columns)
- Integrated search (not just a link)
- Archives
- Archives!
- Let’s say it one more time: finally, finally, archives! Now that great article you saw on MacSurfer but forgot where it was is findable.
- Translations (don’t get too excited, they’re via Google … “El Maco updating system blue muy excellent sofa” is a likely translation)
- Times when articles added
That’s a lot of change for a grand old dame … but there could be more.
Social features like commenting, submissions, and voting might make MacSurfer less of a jumping-off site and more of a social hub … which I think would translate into significant value for its owners. At any rate: wow – great to see the change.
If anyone’s still following the SCO/Linux trials these days, SCO just lost bigtime.Having briefly met and known SCO CEO Darl McBride, I was interested enough to check out SCO’s website. Clicking on the News link was amusing …
Apparently there hasn’t been any good news in 10 months.
It’s really good to see that the American media knows what’s important: 3-foot subs that aren’t.
It’s not like there’s anything more important to talk about right now.