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A friend of mine works for Gannett, which owns USA Today and heaps of local newspapers and TV stations throughout the country. Well, most of the local sites are horrible at the very least. However, the company is in the process of rolling out new designs across their network.

The Desert Sun site from Palm Springs, California is one of the first sites to get the facelift:

Compare it to the site of its sister publication The Californian — which will likely get its new design soon — from Salinas, California:

I’m not going to do a site review, but can you tell the difference?

Get productive with the best Facebook Apps

Lifehacker breaks down Facebook Apps that can improve productivity.

A Social-Networking Service With a Velvet Rope

New York Times on Digg/Revision3/Pownce founder Kevin Rose. If anyone wants a Pownce invite, let me know in the comments. I’ve got a few left.

coComment to Launch New Version Tomorrow

A new version of this comment tracking service will go live tomorrow. You can check out the beta below:

http://beta.cocomment.com/
u: betatester
p: cocommentv2

Learning from Dave Winer

Joel on Software post explaining why he and Dave Winer don’t allow comments on their blogs. If I was a big-shot blogger like Winer or Joel, I could see how comments could get in the way. But as a writer for a specialized, modestly read blog, I’m happy to receive comments at all and think they add value to the posts instead of taking value away.

9 Ways to Build Your Own Social Network

Techcrunch breaks down options for building a social networking component into your website.

It seems that Bill Richardson's Presidential Campaign had a great time at the CNN/YouTube Debate on Monday that they added a new feature to their site.  If you go to the "Ask Bill" page, you can fill out a form with your personal information and a link to the a video question that you have for the Governor.

He states on the page, "I wish I could get to every living room and meeting hall in this country to talk to people, shake hands, and answer questions face-to-face.  I can't do that, but I can do the next best thing."

I'm wondering if candidates answering Internet video questions is just a fad, but this is a sign that the presidential campaigns are taking those questions seriously.

Bivings Fred Thompson Disclosure

I am a big fan of buying and selling items online.  I think using sites like Craigslist and eBay provide efficient and easy ways to find cheap and useful items and also for getting rid of unwanted stuff (for a profit!).  My most recent purchase was a 3 person tent in great condition for just $10 on Craigslist.  What a deal.

This begs the question though, which service is better? Craigslist or eBay? This question becomes more and more important as we discuss the future of classified ads in relation to newspapers and media.  How will the progression of these websites compete not only with MSM classifieds, but also with each other?

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Our recent newspaper study dealt exclusively with the features present on newspaper websites. We didn’t look critically at the design of these sites. The adoption of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) makes it possible for web developers to create rich designs while keeping the file size of pages to a minimum.

In looking at newspaper websites, it becomes clear pretty quickly that their homepages are bloated. They try to stick as much data as possible on the homepage (including ads).

Given that, we decided to look at the file sizes of the homepages of the top 10 newspapers, and how much of that file size is devoted to advertising. Note that file size does not always equate to load times. Other factors such as the number of database calls and the quality of the hosting environment play big roles.

These numbers were grabbed using the Firebug Firefox extension. Sizes were recorded both with Adblock on and off, so we can get an idea of how much space is devoted to advertising. (more…)

As I mentioned on Monday, Google — which owns YouTube — invited me to attend the CNN/YouTube Democratic Debate in Charleston, SC. 

Thank you, Google and CNN for a great time!  I had so much fun.

I was part of a group of about 10 to 15 YouTubbers that were invited.  Some were invited since they are active in political discussions on YouTube while the rest of us were selected since our questions had a great chance of making the debate. 

My question was to find out where candidates get their news and information and why they trust their main sources.  It didn't make the telecast, but just barely.

Personally, one of the most interesting aspects of the the debate was talking with my new friends who are active on YouTube.  For instance, one is starting a new job any day now and mentioned in a recent video that she mentioned her employment news.  Then all of the sudden she posts a video from Charleston explaining she's attending the debate as a guest of YouTube.  She laughed that the timing of the debate and new job aligned poorly.  Someone left a comment on her post giving her the impression that her subscribers might now think that she is a YouTube plant — a lonelygirl15. 

Another new friend got an angry comment from one of her channel subscribers just after she posted her first video from Charleston.  The person asked if she was attending the debate, and she said that she wasn't since we all had to sign non-disclosure agreements to not reveal our trip until the day of the debate.  The commenter called her a liar.  However, what could she do?

Transparency is crucial in social media, and two of my friends were accidentally caught in incidents that affected their reputations.  Hopefully, any disgruntled subscribers understand the circumstances that my friends were placed in.  That's one of the most important things I learned during my whirlwind trip — a once in a lifetime experience that I don't want to happen just once.

Now, in interest of transparency, here's a disclosure.  The Bivings Group has an account with Fred Thompson's campaign.  Having said that, here are the circumstances around my question and invitation.  I recorded my question before we had the Thompson account, and YouTube had no idea of my employer or job before inviting me last Wednesday.  Before the debate I did disclose my connection to Thompson to the Google staffers in charge of my trip.  Further, I also disclosed this fact to journalists that interviewed me about my experiences in Charleston.

Update: Netflix is back up after being down for many hours.  According to TechCrunch and CNET , this happened as a result of a power outage in San Francisco yesterday that caused major sites–including Netflix, Craigslist, Typead, Vox, and LiveJournal–to go down.

Last night as I finished watching Season 3 of Felicity, I sealed up my three Netflix movies and got ready to stick them in the mail this morning. Logically, my next step was to wander over to my laptop to prep my queue for the next round of mail-in movie rentals. Upon heading to Netflix.com, I was greeted by the following message:

"The Netflix web site is temporarily unavailable. It is anticipated that the site will be available again at 11 PM Pacific Time."

Needless to say, I was pretty surprised. I was even more surprised when I received a similar message at 8 AM this morning, saying that the site would be back at 11 AM Pacific time. And, you guessed it, I am still surprised that it is now 2 PM Eastern time, and Netflix is still down, and is likely to be down for the rest of the afternoon.

These technical difficulties are occurring simultaneously with some pretty dramatic changes over at Netflix. According to the Washington Post, the company is reducing its prices for some of its most popular plans by $1 in order to earn back market share from Blockbuster, which gained customers after beginning a policy that allows them to exchange mail-order DVDs with those in the store. From the Post:

Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter believes Blockbuster may have exposed Netflix's Achilles' heel by aggressively promoting the convenience of Blockbuster stores to build its online service. "Netflix has a broken model," Pachter said. "They aren't used to competition and now someone is competing against them very effectively."

Netflix ended June with 6.74 million subscribers, a decrease of 55,000 customers from April. It marked the first time Netflix's total subscribers have declined from one quarter to the next since the service began renting DVDs through its Web site in 1999.

It seems like Netflix is having a rough couple of days. If I had to guess, I would venture to say that these events are probably all intertwined. Does anyone have the details on the Netflix website?

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I submitted a question to the CNN/YouTube Debate, and last week YouTube invited me to come down to Charleston, SC for the debate. I’m one of about 15-20 people who were selected for a virtually all access experience to the debate. In fact, we get to go into the Spin Room after the debate to try to get follow up and reaction responses to the debate questions. More to come in a few days after I get back to DC…Remember, that The Bivings Group is working for Fred Thompson. Also, I don’t represent Google or YouTube.