$1.6 million for Branson.com

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So says pal Morris James. “The most money ever paid for a dot-com address for a city was for Branson.com. Commercial real estate broker Larry Milton and his wife plunked down $1.6 million for the address last year.”

For that kind of money you’d expect to be at the top of the Google ranking and Branson.com is (the top of the non-paid results). The link reads: “Branson.com: The Official Website.”

Like Morris, I wonder what makes the site “official?” Would the local Chamber of Commerce have a better claim on that distinction?

Stories like this always remind me how fortunate we were to register (waaaay back when) our company names (Missourinet.com, RadioIowa.com, Learfield.com). But one of my favorites is Legislature.com.

Demystifying blogging

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My buddy Chuck posted the following to his blog (AgWired) today:

“Hi there AgWired fans. This morning I’m doing a new media presentation with the folks at John Deere and their agency, BCS Communications. This is an example post for the presentation.”

So what? For many (most? all?) of the people in the room, updating a web page is a Dark Art. Magic. At the very least, a pain in the ass. Some person or persons (or a committee) has to approve the copy and then send it to the web people and –eventually– the web page gets updated.

Chuck just logged in to his Word Press account. Bangs in the copy above…hits the submit button…and publishes for the world to see. It took less time than it is taking me to tell you about it.

I’ve used this analogy before but it’s a good one. When a room full of execs see a demo like this (I wasn’t there but I’ve done a few of these)… it’s like the scene in every Tarzan movie with the Great White Hunters “make fire come from stick,” or when they crank up the movie projector (where did they plug it in?) for the pygmies.

US teachers using online news sites in classroom; newspapers left behind

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LostRemote points to a survey of over 1,000 teachers that found that 57 percent use national or international news websites as a source of news for teaching purposes, compared to 28 percent for daily newspapers and just 13 percent for local TV news.

“Students do not relate to newspapers at all, any more than they would to vinyl records,” one teacher said in the study. Local papers “haven’t recognized how quickly this transition is taking place,” said the study’s author, Thomas Patterson, a professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. What about local TV sites? They weren’t even mentioned.

Uh, any mention of radio news?

Futurism: Glancing sideways

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“The thing that’s going to be quaint about “cyberspace” (that already is, really) is the inherent assumption that it’s a realm unto itself; that it’s in any way elsewhere or other. Glancing sideways is becoming more generally recognized as about the best way of doing what we used to call futurism.”

–William Gibson

Kennett expats in environmental face-off

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Rock star Sheryl Crow and movie producer Laurie David, who helped work on Al Gore’s Oscar nominated documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” are teaming up for a two-week bus tour across North Texas and the Gulf states. The tour is designed to fight global warming and save the environment.

The tour hopes to stop TXU’s controversial plan to build 11 coal-fired power plants across the state of Texas. Governor Rick Perry’s plan to fast-track the coal plants has been attacked by environmentalists and a coalition of cities.

C. John Wilder, 48, is chairman of the board and CEO of TXU Corp., one of the nation’s largest electric energy companies.

Brother-in-law Lew connects the Kennett dots in this story. Not only are Ms. Crow and Mr. Wilder from Kennett, they lived in the same house (on Emerson Street), although not at the same time.

Sounds like the beginning of a pretty good screenplay, doesn’t it?