The Jeff Beckham Weblog

My previous post about the necessary upgrades to the Alamo Drafthouse’s online experience has drawn some interesting responses in the comments.
I wanted to expand on those a bit here.

Both Shannon and Will Warner mentioned one important aspect of the Alamo’s site that I overlooked the first time - the calendar.
The printed version of the Alamo [...]

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Another item spotted in Austinist this week. Allen Chen points out that the Save Our Springs Alliance now features an audio tour of Barton Springs on their website. From Philosopher’s Rock to the Diving Board to Eliza Springs, the audio clips are available for listening online or downloading.

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Local website Austinist was featured in the Life & Arts section of the Austin American-Statesman today.
The story gave some nice insight to the personalities behind the site: editors Matthew Odam and Allen Chen come across as nice folks who enjoy what they do. It was refreshing to see the more traditional paper take on the [...]

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When Entertainment Weekly named Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse the best theater in the country last year, the magazine called it “one of America’s most fanatically unique moviegoing experiences.” With imaginitive programming and innovative events, the Alamo has become a “must-see” place among Austin’s entertainment offerings.
The passion behind the moviegoing experience at the Alamo is clear, which [...]

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The Pew Internet & American Life Project published a report today that tries to explain why bloggers do what they do. The report oddly focuses on storytelling versus journalism (what’s the difference?), but more importantly, produced these statistics:

54% of bloggers say that they have never published their writing or media creations anywhere else; 44% say [...]

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Jon Lebkowsky points to a essay by Christina Wodtke in the design site Boxes and Arrows about how the classic text The Elements of Style still exerts influence over writers and designers in the online world.
But what originally caught my eye about Jon’s post was the mention of former University of Texas journalism professor Red [...]

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Ain’t It Cool News points out that the folks at IGN FilmForce are offering the first 24 minutes Richard Linklater’s new film, A Scanner Darkly, online via streaming video.
This is a terrific marketing move for the film and showcases the amazing animation work involved. If you’re considering seeing the movie, you should definitely check it [...]

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Rafat Ali and Staci Kramer have built paidContent.org into an indispensible resource around the business of digital media. I came across these two interesting items in their RSS feed today:

Esquire.com Opens Up Site: Esquire.com makes its archives free for anyone to read.
NYTimes’s Personalized Service “My Times” Debuts In Limited Beta: A personalization feature with RSS [...]

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Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that Rice University’s academic press imprint, which went out of business 10 years ago, will relaunch with an online model. The story says that Rice University Press will
post works online at a new Web site, where people can read a full copy of the book free. They can also order [...]

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PR Week reports that Dell has launched a corporate weblog, titled one2one. The announcement says that the blog will be written by multiple employees and will serve as a “tool that allows all of us to share our comments, ideas and insights.”
Steve Rubel has taken an early look at the blog and is underwhelmed. Rubel [...]

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