My Inbox: Good Neighbor?

Back in July, we introduced two regular topics to the Everything Internet blog. Today, we are adding a third regular topic. Here's a description of the new topic: My Inbox: Nearly every day, we receive interesting email. You know, these are the jokes, the pictures, and the other "indecent" content that gets passed around on a daily basis. If we find something new and interesting, you may see it posted here. All blog posts of this nature will start with the title "My Inbox:".

A city councilman, Mark Easton, lives in this neighborhood. He had a beautiful view of the east mountains, until a new neighbor purchased the lot below his house and built. Apparently, the new home was 18 inches higher than the ordinances would allow, so Mark Easton, mad about his lost view, went to the city to make sure they enforced the lower roof line ordinance. Mark and his new neighbor had some great arguments about this as you can imagine - not great feelings. The new neighbor had to drop the roof line - no doubt at great expense. Recently, Mark Easton called the city and informed them that his new neighbor had installed some vents on the side of his home. Mark didn't like the look of these vents and asked the city to investigate. When they went to Mark's home to see the vent view, this is what they found...

"Treat others as you want to be treated". "What goes around comes around". I can think of many phrases like this which seem appropriate for Mark. It would be interesting to know if he's able to retain his seat on the council after the next election. What do you think?

Singles Wanted

The fine folks over at Rochester Magazine are planning for their November issue. Once again, it will focus on the city's single scene, and they're looking for possible profilees. As you may know, ClubRochester has been a great source of candidates in the past. The profiles will be very short, with a 200 or so word bio and questions on what it's like being single in Rochester. (Best place for a first date? Worst/best pickup line you've ever heard or used? etc). If you know anyone who is interested in being profiled (and maybe it's you), please let them know. They are, of course, looking for all ages, races, colors, orientations, creeds, heights, dancing abilities, etc. Anyone with suggestions for the single in the city edition (anything singles-related)can email Steve Lance at slange@postbulletin.com or call 285-7770.

Filed in: CWS, rochester, mn, singles, postbulletin

Innovation Award: KROC Morning Show

It's been nearly a month since we awarded BuyOnlineNow.com with an Innovation Award. Today, we honor James Rabe and the KROC Morning Show. As an added disclaimer, CWS designed their website in 2003. However, this award is not about the design of the website but about how they use it. Over the past few years, James Rabe has done an amazing job of transforming the morning "radio" show into an interactive medium using the web. He uses the web to "communicate" with his listeners on items he talks about on-air. For example, he uploaded a picture of the $1,200 chandelier that Britney Spears had put on her baby registry after discussion the topic on-air. This type of activity has greatly enhanced the "dialogue" that he (as a radio personality) can have with his listeners. In addition, the station has done a fantastic job of cross-promotion with features such as online giveaways, "femail" (forwarded email), and rate-the-hits. But James hit a "home run" when he started taking pictures at Rookie's Ladies Night and posting them to an online photo album. This creative idea has generated an enormous amount of traffic to the KROC website and transformed a "faceless" medium (radio) into a personable business. Not only that, but James gets to spend every Wednesday evening taking photos of the hottest ladies in town. Deep down, I know this might be the real reason he started this gig. Whatever the reason, he's definitely creating a buzz and for that he gets our third Innovation Award.

Filed in: CWS, rochester, mn, innovation, kroc

More GroupLoop enhancements

Yep, we're still working on it. We've made a few noteworthy changes recently, and plenty more are in the works. A couple of these are brand new features. But for now, here are a few of the recent enhancements:

• For groups with multiple committees, the "Home" tab now displays recent activity that pertains to you as a person, across all your committees. This helps you notice new items without having to switch the committee view. We've also made some other changes to better organize the way committee-related stuff is displayed.
• On the "People" tab, there's a new tool in the sidebar that allows you to quickly add several people to your account at once instead of one at a time. You can also choose not to send them the notification email immediately, in case you have a large group and want to wait and notify everyone at the same time.
• We've also tuned the interface a little more, giving more natural sizes to text boxes and tidying up other elements.

As always, please let us know if there are changes you'd like to see, and stay tuned for more developments. Some of the recent updates only impact accounts with multiple committees (the Bronze plan and higher), so if you haven't already, try one of these plans for a month and see what you've been missing! You can upgrade or downgrade at any time. If you don't have a GroupLoop account, you can set one up for free in 30 seconds and drive around the system for yourself!

LarsonSidingAndWindows.com

Larson Siding and Windows, Inc. is an industry leading company known for "commitment to sales integrity, quality installations, and dedication to customer service and satisfaction". They specialize in siding, windows, sunrooms, and more. On their new site you will find information relating to the products and services they offer, photo galleries of past projects, and detailed company information. It was a pleasure working with Tony and the rest of the crew over at Larson to give their company website a much needed facelift!

Filed in: CWS, larson, siding, windows, rochester

Kylie De Keyrel on CNBC

As mentioned on Tuesday, we had heard from the producers at CNBC that they were going to air my YouTube video "as early as Thursday". Apparently the folks over there are extremely efficient, because the video aired last night. Don't fret if you we're planning to catch it tonight, I grabbed a copy on my TIVO and have included it below. On a side note, I also received a call from the Post Bulletin last night and they have the following article in today's paper:

BYRON- While most 2-year-olds love watching Elmo or Dora the Explorer, one Byron toddler can't get enough of an investment guru. Kylie DeKeyrel squeals with delight at the sight of James Cramer, the high-energy, in-your-face host of CNBC's "Mad Money." Her love for the show inspired her father, Alan DeKeyrel, to post a videotape of his daughter dancing to the show's introduction on the Web site "You Tube" in August. "Every time (the show) comes on, she gets all excited and jumps around and yells 'Mad Money!' I just happened to grab the camera," he said. A proud dad, he thought a few people might get a kick out of his daughter's admiration for the Booo-yah yelling TV show host. "I kind of got a kick out of it, but I'm a dad," he said. "Every dad always thinks their kids are funny, but I just thought I'd throw it out there to see if other people thought it was funny, too." Apparently, they did. More than 1,400 people have viewed the 47-second clip of DeKeyrel hopping around in front of the TV yelling out "Money!" It's gotten a 4 1/2 star rating (out of 5) and comments about it range from "cute kid" to "ha ha ha." The video even managed to catch the attention of the TV show's producers. They e-mailed the Minnesota dad telling him they wanted to air his video on the show. On Wednesday night, Kylie made her national television debut. Now the mini "Mad Money" fan is relishing her fame. While her father was being interviewed, Kylie yelled out "Tell her I was on TV!"

Filed in: kids, youtube, cnbc, mad money, cramer

Josh Brule Joins CWS

Joshua Brule of Crookston, MN has joined the CWS Design Team as a web programmer. Most recently, Josh worked with the University of Minnesota, Crookston as a webmaster and application developer. During this time he developed and supported a number of applications and was a member of a team that redesigned the institution's website. He also managed the delivery of software distribution for the campus's MSDNAA (Microsoft Developer Network Academic Alliance) installation. He has a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology Management from the University of Minnesota, Crookston. Josh specializes in programming on the Windows platform and has extensive experience working with the following technologies:

• .NET 2.0 (C#)
• Visual Basic 6
• ASP v3
• VbScript
• XML
• PERL
• T-SQL
• Javascript
• XHTML
• CSS

Josh moved to Rochester recently with his fiancée Jamie and enjoys biking on Rochester's extensive trail system and tinkering with electronics. Josh can be reached at (507) 289-2229 x201 or josh at cws dot net.

Filed in: CWS, Rochester, MN, josh brule, new hire

My YouTube Video on CNBC

Approximately a week after I wrote this blog post highlighting YouTube.com, I took the plunge and posted my first video to the website. It was a simple "home video" of my 2 year old daughter and her excitement at the beginning of CNBC's Mad Money show featuring Jim Cramer. I'm a beginner when it comes to investing in stocks, so I enjoy watching the show to hear Jim's take on what's going on with the stock market. This means my daughter gets to watch Jim Cramer almost as often as Barney. I might argue that his "high energy" show is more exciting than a singing purple dinosaur, but it's been a long time since I've been two years old. Ironically, in my previous blog post I made the following comment:

"A great video has the potential to grant you Internet fame and land you on NBC's Today Show."

Little did I know that I would receive an email about my video from Dan Hoffman, CNBC's creative director, a month later. He wrote, "We noticed your great home video and would love to run it on the air here. I look forward to hearing from you and thank you for being a fan of the show. Boo-yah!" After a short phone call with Dan, they are kicking off a new "YouTube" section of the show and wanted permission to use Kylie as the lead. Out of millions of videos the director at CNBC finds mine? I haven't even sent the video to my family and now it's going to be broadcast on network television to millions of viewers. Grandma will never forgive me for this one! :) As of the writing of this blog post, my daughter had been viewed 925 times, been given a rating of 4.5 stars (out of 5), and had received 6 comments from fellow YouTuber's. You can view my short home video here or click on the player above. Watch for it at 5pm on CNBC as early as Thursday of this week.

Filed in: mad money kid, youtube, cnbc, mad money, cramer

I'm Baaack!

I'm sure that thousands of faithful "Everything Internet" blog readers have been wondering why our posts have been lacking lately. Ok, maybe not, but it's fun to play "make-believe". The truth is that this blog has been a bit "dark" since the end of August, and I have a great reason why. If you remember, back in June my wife and I had a new son that was born almost 4 months premature. He's been growing and getting bigger over at the St. Mary's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for over 3 months. The great news is that he's done so well that we were finally able to bring him home on September 1st. For those of you who have children, you remember what those first few weeks are like when you cut your sleep literally in half. Apparently, the good lord has taught our child how to eat, sleep, and poop, but not the difference between night and day. I have now mastered the art of writing blog posts and bottle feeding at the same time... so it's good to be back at work!

Filed in: CWS, Rochester, dekeyrel, carson, premature, neonatal