We just got this note from Deborah Raney of Moundridge: "I’ve been out of town for a week, but in reading through the Eagle issues I missed, I noticed my husband had circled Theresa Johnson’s column about her quest for Wichita-area blogs. My husband suggested I send the link to a blog I recently created for him:
http://kansasprairiegarden.blogspot.com/
"For Father’s Day, I wanted to make my husband, Ken, a scrapbook about the beautiful prairie garden he’s designed and planted in our backyard. But before I had a page and-a-half put together it was obvious I am NOT a scrapbooker. But I do know a little about blogs, so I decided to build him a garden blog instead. He was pretty happy with the results and now I’m trying to keep it up-to-date. I really intended this to be just a private blog for our own enjoyment—a garden journal of sorts, so we can remember when we planted what, when things bloom, and what the garden looks like at various times of the year—but Ken shared it with a few people, the link got passed around, and now we’re getting some traffic and some comments.
"I built a second blog that our list of plants links to, so now we have our own resource of links to plant photos, care and feeding instructions, etc., tailored to the exact plants we have in our garden.
"We’re happy to give virtual tours of our backyard project and wanted to share with The Editor’s Desk."
Thanks, Deborah. Your blog is great. Very inspiring.
So far Deborah is the only person who has
responded to my post about Wichita-area blogs likely to be of general interest. Anyone else out there have an high-quality local blog to share?
Theresa
A reader wrote me to complain about pop-up video ads on Kansas.com. "I don’t know too many people that enjoy pop-ups or roll-overs as they are attempting to navigate a website for stories or articles," he wrote, "but I, like most others I assume, accept these in small doses as part of the price to pay for the convenience of having the information provided freely to my fingertips.
“However, I find the ads that contain video and/or voice to be especially annoying. The last week or two, there has been an ad for Scholfield Honda that appears on the right side of the screen that features a man talking.
“This does NOT make we want to go buy a car from them. I immediately close that ad as well as the follow up silent ad for Scholfield that appears after I close the talking salesman.
“I am a home subscriber to the Eagle and I also check the online edition for updates. What can be done to remove these audible ads?â€
Here is what I wrote back: "Thanks for your feedback. Sorry the pop-ups are bothersome to you. As more of our business moves to the Web, it’s important that advertising revenue move to the Web as well, and our advertisers are increasingly looking for multimedia tools to help them reach customers. We sometimes hear from print newspaper readers who wish there were fewer ads in the paper. Of course, I strongly disagree. Ads in the paper and on Kansas.com pay the bills that allow us to gather and report the news. One suggestion for you (if you’re not in the market to buy a car): Many Web browsers — Firefox and Internet Explorer 7, for example– allow users to block pop-ups Check your browser to see if you can enable this feature."
Theresa