Dunes Blog

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Valparaiso has a problem and that problem is trains.

Now, let me preface this by saying that I love trains. I think they provide excellent economic value and are generally better for the environment. I also support the South Shore Expansion to Valparaiso and Lowell. I grew up being inconvenienced by trains my whole life so normally they don’t bother me.

But I’ve just about had enough.

Valparaiso is unfortunate in that it has a major freight railway running right smack through the middle of town. This usually isn’t a big deal, the chances of being stopped by a train throughout the day are pretty low. However, freight train traffic is increasing and it’s starting to affect my daily commute. I have to cross the tracks to get to an from work; as do a lot of people who live in Valpo.

Is it just me or lately has there pretty much been a train during rush hour every day now? Valparaiso screeches to a grinding halt during rush hour when one of these trains goes through. It’s a mess. There are only two ways to get over the tracks and each are on opposite sides of the city. Not only that, the trains usually move at a snail’s pace and are incredibly long.

I sat for 15 minutes the other day. That’s how long my commute should take in total!

It’s evident that the problem is only going to get worse. Would it be so hard for the train companies to not run traffic through there, say, between 4:30pm and 6:30pm? That probably won’t happen. The train companies have made it abundantly clear that they don’t really care for the communities their tracks go through.

What we really need is another north/south bridge over the tracks in the middle of Valpo. It would greatly reduce congestion during rush hour and improve traffic flow throughout the whole city.

What do you guys think?

My employer, Livemercial, had infomercial legend Billy Mays come to town a few weeks ago to make this hilarious ‘Office’ Parody for the ERA Convention in Las Vegas.

The video is great and Jim Barnthouse and the team did a great job putting it together. It was a big hit at the convention.

The visit from Billy Mays was great. He spent the day in the office and signed autographs. Then he made an appearance at the first Livemercial Digital Cocktail Hour. It was fantastic.

Check out the Livemercial Billy Mays ‘The Office’ Parody video below:

I was very impressed with the coverage on NWI.com of the recent flooding in the area. With no truly local TV station able to provide round the clock coverage, The Times stepped in and provided that coverage.

Their site was continually updated all throughout the recent crisis with the latest information. You could tell their writers were putting in overtime. They literally filled the site with content about the flooding, all the while continuing regular news coverage. It became a place to find out about the latest road and school closings. The kind of invaluable resource we need in this area.

One thing I and many others wanted to see was pictures. NWI.com became a central place where people could submit and view photos of the destruction in the area. It was fantastic. I literally went through hundreds of pictures and personal accounts.

NWI.com is truly becoming an online portal for Northwest Indiana. The design of their site is clean and efficient, it’s easy to navigate around and it loads quickly. Kudos goes out the the team managing the The Time web operations, they’re doing a fantastic job. I’ve managed content myself, but not on this scale, so I know the kind of work these guys do.

As someone who works doing SEO and Social Media, their site is doing a fantastic job taking advantage of these new technologies. The site has video, RSS Feeds, user comments (though I don’t recommend reading them, your I.Q. will go down) and ways to share content on other social networking sites.

I was surprised to see them stream the Gubernatorial debate live last night. This was an awesome thing to do since there really isn’t a way to air that stuff locally on TV (though I don’t know if the local PBS aired it, probably not).

NWI is undeserved by the major media networks because we are crammed between South Bend and Chicago and thus get the TV networks in both cities. Because of this, coverage on the Chicago and South Bend Networks about Northwest Indiana is sparse, to say the least. The Times is filling that void by using the internet to create a portal for NWI as well as it’s own de facto media network, as we’ve seen with them streaming live events.

Let’s hope they keep it up. I’d like to see a web based video network dedicated to NWI and maybe radio feeds or podcasts. I would also like to see them embrace blogs more and maybe create a directory/agrigator of local blogs.

Speaking of blogs. I was disappointed with NWI Bloggers during the flooding. This is probably the worst disaster to hit the area in a long time and many local blogs were silent (though a couple did blog). Keeping in mind that these blogs are run by people and they were probably dealing with the affects of the disaster. But Blogging provides a unique way to citizens to share their experiences and pictures. Granted, I didn’t write much about it myself because Valpo was spared the worst of the floods and I pretty much stayed in to avoid the chaos.

If you wrote about the floods, please send me links to your entries. I’d like to aggregate the links onto one page so that people can see what other people had to say about this terrible disaster.

Been meaning to upload these pictures I took at the Popcorn Festival last week. The parade and the festival are always great fun!

Here’s a link to the Flickr stream of my 2008 Valparaiso Popcorn Festival Pictures.

After lunch we attended the “Blogging and Elections” discussion. It was very interesting and I was really interested to hear what the Obama rep had to say. She came a long way and is really busy, so it was really nice that she was able to make it. I only wish the panel had been for longer and maybe a little better moderated.

After that I attended the Social Media session by myself. I was really disappointed with it. The guy presenting was really nice and I enjoyed hearing him speak. However, it took him half an hour to talk about why we were there. He only talked about Social Media in the ‘big picture’ concepts and quickly ran through two examples when he realized he was running out of time. I was hoping for more tips on how to use social media to generate traffic and revenue. I spend a lot of time in my job doing this (and personally as well). I probably could have given a more substantive nuts and bolts presentation.

The last session was about monetizing blogs. It was pretty interesting. The presenter was selling a product but he kept that until the end and I was actually interested in the product. He was from a new company called iSocket, that’s developing a new ad platform. I was sure to sign up for the  beta. I hope they accept me. I was a little disappointed at how negatively recieved PayPerPost was. I just got accepted into the program for my Ennui blog just yesterday and I was looking forward to making some extra cash doing it. I don’t know if I will now, since it’s so negatively perceived.

After that was over, the crew and I went over to Keystone Mall to the Apple Store. My co-worker got himself a fancy new 3G iPhone and I drooled over all the beautiful macs. Almost bought an Apple TV, but realized it wouldn’t work with my TV; it’s simply too old.

Now, we’re settled in the hotel for the night. Stay tuned for more pictures from today and check back tomorrow for more updates.