Month: September 2006

the problem with celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month

Until my youngest sister got married, and we welcomed her Honduran husband (as he frequently calls himself) into our family, I never gave much thought to the differences found from one Latin American country to another. I would have probably said that it wasn’t that big a deal, other than differences in accent and food. I couldn’t be much more pronounced that the differences one finds when comparing one area of Mexico to another.

Boy was I wrong. There are differences in attitudes, beliefs, customs, language, food… and those are just the first that come to mind. When my brother-in-law and his family get together, I can barely follow the conversation. And if they really get going, switching casually to colloquialisms and slang, I can’t understand anything.

How do you celebrate Hispanic heritage when the “heritage” part of that is so varied, so different?

Unfortunately, I don’t have that answer to that. However, read Hispanic Trending’s “Rich and varied ‘Hispanic heritage’ not easy to define” for a great post on this topic. Maybe it’ll inspire you to an answer.

the Houston Zoo has a blog

Can’t wait to hear about Shanti’s condition? Don’t know who Shanti is? Head over to the Houston Zoo blog and find out!

I’ll admit that this particular topic is not really something I consider… breaking news. Still, the posts are interesting and it’s nice to see the new medium being embraced by such a well-known organization.

According to the PRSA Houston site, which is how I found the blog, “The interactive blog was created in partnership with Schipul, the Web Marketing Company.”

I’m adding this to my Bloglines account.

what not to do if you're starting an internet business

I have problogger on my RSS feeds, and often come across content I just have to share. In a recent post, Darren Rowse shared info from 8 Pitfalls To Avoid When Starting An Internet Business. Here’s the shortcut version:

  1. Don’t start a business teaching how to make money online
  2. Choose non-Internet related niches
  3. Don’t focus on making money
  4. Don’t enter a tiny market
  5. Watch out for tiny margins
  6. Look for leverage points
  7. Avoid self-employment thinking
  8. Be aware of your own limitations

All very good advice.

more red lights

Mike McGruff has posted the locations of the second wave of Houston red light cameras. The first wave went up over the summer.

From his post:

  • FM 1960 at Tomball Parkway
  • Southwest Freeway Feeder Rd at Fountainview
  • Bissonnet at West Sam Houston Parkway South
  • Southwest Freeway Feeder Rd at Chimney Rock
  • Southwest Freeway Feeder Rd at Westpark
  • East Freeway Feeder Rd at Uvalde
  • Southwest Freeway Feeder Rd at Hillcroft
  • West Sam Houston Parkway Feeder at Beechnut
  • Gessner at Beechnut
  • West Loop at Westheimer

I do find it funny that the highest list of red-light-runners is at Bay Area Boulevard @ El Camino Real… so far.

Feedvertising

I, personally, don’t have enough feed subscribers to make this a money-making piece of news to me. However, I just found out that Text Link Ads have just launched a new advertising format called Feedvertising. (Found via problogger.)

In his post, Darren writes:

There are two main ways you can use Feedvertising in your Feeds:

1. To promote your own products, services, affiliate products, key pages on your blog etc (placing ‘personal’ ads as I’m doing now)
2. Letting TLA sell ads for you in their marketplace

You can of course do a combination of both. You have 6 ad slots available to fill which are rotated as you write more posts.

From the Feedvertising page:

Bloggers can use our FREE Feedvertising technology to run text link ads in your RSS feed. Whether the ads come from us, your own in-house efforts, or your affiliate links… the choice is totally up to you! Currently for WordPress 2.0+ users with more blogging platforms coming very shortly.

Cool. I’m putting this on my “to use” list.