Blankspaces Panel 4.7.09 – how to be green in LA

Thanks to Michael Liskin and Blankspaces for setting up a great event last night, here’s the video from the panel — some good stuff, although nothing particularly interesting from me. Also on the panel, Siel (Green LA Girl), Tracy Hepler (Your Daily Thread), Mike Hill (AoSA), Karen Solomon (Opportunity Green), and Natalie Freidberg (All Shades of Green).

Live TV by Ustream

UPDATE: Read Lisa Borodkin’s extensive review of the panel.

LA Times Announces Brand X Link Farm

ThisisBrandX.com way to go LA Times This is Brand XLaunch early and launch often.

But don’t let the cat out of the bag before you’ve got a basic index page, 404 or… anything but the de facto Register.com-branded ztomy.com-fueled link farm.

So when the LA Times announced a “new product launch” in an all-staff memo this afternoon (thx, Ed) it was disappointing to see that said product was nothing but a Register.com link farm. Not to mention, what the memo describes is merely a repackaging of the short-lived print edition of Metromix along with some “reverse-published” blog posts. Whatever that means. Perhaps it can only be read when held up to a mirror?

Times editor Russ Stanton had this to write about the so-horribly-named-it-makes-me-quiver ThisIsBrandX.com: “It’s content sharing on an extremely local level and will bring our great work to an audience that does not currently see it.”

I feel for my friends at the LA Times who do amazing work in spite of it all. But the news about newspapers these days just gets me depressed. And with a name like Brand X — which implies knock-off, pirated, counterfeit merchandise — I just hope that the bulk of the content isn’t produced in China.

And anyway… THIS is Brand X:

Continue reading “LA Times Announces Brand X Link Farm”