Posts in the "website stuff" category - Chris Hardie

If you're like many people, you've renounced the joys and complexities of face to face socialization in favor of robotic and impersonal displays of feigned consideration on Facebook. Wait, that didn't come out quite right. If you're like many people, Facebook plays some part in your daily engagement with friends, family, coworkers and/or your surrounding community. That's a little better. Well, this website now has a public Facebook presence that you can add to that engagement. If...

My blogging has obviously been a bit scarce lately, certainly a long ways off from the target frequency I'd set at the beginning of the year.  I continue to compose blog entries in my head and the list of topics I'd like to cover grows weekly, but I've not made the time to do the most important part, actually sitting down to write. It will make me feel better to acknowledge that here, so: my blogging is paused right now. I plan to resume a regular schedule later this summer.   I'm still...

Welcome to my first blog post of 2010.  I didn't expect that my hiatus would be over a month long, but here I am in mid-January. Thanks to those of you who took the time to complete my blog feedback survey at the end of 2009 - it was really helpful in understanding how my regular readers see the blog.  From the responses I received, here are the highlights: 60% of you read most of the posts here, and 40% always read the full posts. Most of you find out about blog updates from Twitter...

I'm doing some planning for the future of this blog, and I'd like your feedback.  Of course, you're always welcome to leave your comments in the comments section below, but I've also created a survey with some specific questions that I would appreciate your candid responses to. It's only 10 questions, most are multiple choice, and if you do take it by the end of the year, I'll put you in a drawing to win $25, either for any business in the Center City business district in Richmond, Indiana or for Amazon.com....

I tried a little experiment with Twitter last week.  I see lots of folks talking about how to make money with social media exposure like Twittering, but hadn't yet seen anyone talking about how to give away money via the same.  So on Wednesday I put out a challenge that for each new Twitter follower I got  on my account between then and 5 PM on Friday, I'd donate $2 to the Boys and Girls Club of Wayne County. What happened? I honestly didn't expect anyone to really notice the challenge,...

All bloggers do it at least once in their blogging career.  It's remains pretty faux pas in my opinion, but here I am anyway.  You know what I'm talking about, don't you? It's the blog post that only exists to note that I haven't been blogging much lately. Gasp. Sometimes it can be a sign of a dying blog, or a lack of personal creativity, but I assure you that's not the case here.  No, I think we all get to have at least one of these kinds of posts once every few years or so.  I think my last...

Every time I go on vacation or get a little bit of time to step back and think, I end up making long "to do" lists for myself.  The lists are about projects I want to start, books to read, things to learn about, people to get in touch with.  It's common for some significant chunk of those lists to be related to how to make my home, Richmond Indiana, a better place to live, work and play. At the same time, I recognize that other people are out there coming up with their own ideas about how to make...

I think I've raved here some before about the someecards website and how lovely I think it is.  I have to stay away from drinking liquids when reading it lest I spray said liquid all over the screen in choking laughter.  Many of the cards you can send are hilarious because they so concisely encapsulate some of the more crude or dark thoughts that pass through the human mind now and then, and in a way that somehow brilliantly echo my own sense of humor.  That's maybe not such a good thing...some...

I haven't had the chance to blog lately, but here are some bits and pieces to chew on. First, some links: Friday's episode of On the Media was excellent as usual, but did an especially good job of covering the strange way the 11 PM Eastern network television calling of the election works, cognitive dissonance around the world about electing Barack Obama, and difference between real grassroots organizing and just another marketing campaign. Great stuff. Clearing Up Basic Misunderstandings...

You may have noticed that I was playing around with the Twitter Tools plugin for Wordpress, and that it was generating these weekly digests of my Twitter posts on Fridays.  I'm not going to do that anymore, but you can always follow me on Twitter directly or with your favorite blog/RSS feed reader/twitter tool or by looking in the sidebar of the blog front page. I'm removing Google ads from my blog.  I'm tired of them, and they're not earning their keep. You can now subscribe to the comments...