Richard Prince from the Maynard Journalism institute called me last night to ask about commercialappeal.com’s coverage of Isaac Hayes death. He quoted me extensively on our breaking news coverage in his blog/column. It’s about half-way down the page.

We owned the breaking coverage of the Soul Man’s death, but everyone in the newsroom and online just followed the breaking news process we had set-up– from sending out breaking news emails, text messages and putting up our breaking news bar on every page to putting together a video package and writing the story from every angle.

In previous years, this post may have confirmed that I am a nerd, but getting ubuntu linux up and running at home was so easy that I think it may be the new easy to use operating system for everyone to use.

We have six year old Dell desktop that we keep in the kitchen at home, that Jennifer and I have long passed onto the kids to be their computer. After many years of abuse from kids websites and free downloads, it had finally slowed to a crawl and both Internet Explorer and Firefox would intermittently shut down in the middle of using them. So, I decided to wipe the computer clean and start over. Instead of starting over with another copy of Windows XP, I decided to try out Ubuntu Linux (or Zoobomafoo as Jennifer calls it). I have installed different flavors of linux before including red hat, fedora and mandrake, but I have always switched back to windows for everyday use. So I reasoned, If I couldn’t get it to work again, I’ll just start over with Windows.

Installation was easy — About 10 minutes after slipping the Ubuntu CD in I had everything up and running except for my wireless Internet. I have an odd pci wifi card in my desktop (because of the ineptitude of our local comcast technicians to get my cable modem to work on the RIGHT cable outlet) that took a little tweaking, but in another 15 minutes my Internet was running. And in less time than it would take to install on a mac or pc my wireless printer was installed, too. The graphics card, sound card and external USB drive on the old PC just worked automatically without any tweaking. I had to install intall a special internet software pack to get flash and all the varous codecs to make web audio and video play correctly.

Now for the real test — Since I’m not the primary user of this pc, Ubuntu had to pass a bigger test than me before it got to stay– my family. I created user accounts for everyone and showed them how to log-in and they were off. With no instruction at all they had figured out the kde interface and were surfing to their favorite barbie site (Elizabeth), checking webmail (Caleb), reading their rss feeds via bloglines (Jennfier) or playing an ABCs game (Phillip). They didn’t even have any problems figuring out open office and have been able to open up word documents a friend had sent over.

So, now I am a week into it and I have had a good experience with ubuntu– no sudden crashes and no unwanted gaming downloads. I would recommend anyone trying it out with only one caveat. If I only had one computer to use, I don’t think that I would convert it Ubuntu. This isn’t based on any negative experience that I have had with Ubuntu, but with previous problems I had with other versions of linux. My technical expertise is somewhat limited so I just don’t like depending on something I have yet to completely understand. Six months from now, I will probably be fully prepared to remove this caveat, but I was willing to try out ubuntu because I have three other computers (laptops) available for use (Windows XP (just works), Windows Vista (will soon be XP or maybe Ubuntu) and a Mac (love it)).

Since we moved to Memphis, we’ve visited several different churches as we are looking for a church home for our family. When I’m investigating the church the first thing I check out is the church website for some basic information about the church. So the church’s site gives me the first impression of a church. I don’t expect a church to have a fabulous modern looking design, but I do expect a church to have an up to date site with basic information that is easy to find through a simple search.

As a first time visitor, I have a few simple questions that I want answered and a good church site should have this information either on the site’s home page or on a highly visible link clearly labeled for visitors. Here’s what I’m looking for on the church site as a first time visitor:

• Location – Where is it, how do I find it.
• Service Times – So I know when to show up.
• Kid’s Options during service – Do they have a nursery, kid’s church and for what ages so I can let my kids know what to expect.
• Dress – Do they dress up or go casual? I prefer casual, but can handle either.

Besides those first time visitor questions, I have a couple of other things that it would be nice to find out from the web site. These are less church website essentials and more to determine if it would be a good fit for us.

• Beliefs
• Bible Study/Small Group/Sunday School Options
• Missions opportunities
• Children’s ministry information and activities
• Staff Members Background
• Denominational Affiliation

A good church website is not a make or break thing for me about a church, but it definitely makes me feel more comfortable about visiting a new church (something I dislike doing) if I have some basic information.

There was an interesting article this past week in the New Times technology section on the practice of flipping web sites. It works pretty much like flipping a house. First, you find a web site that has been around while and has decent search engine ranking and a base level of visitor because of its longevity. Then you buy it for a couple of thousand dollars, give it a modern look and feel, add some social networking features to build a community and focus on SEO. After a few months to a year the traffic increases greatly, the page rank pulls it into the top five to ten and you sale it for around 10 times the price you paid for it.

Flipping a web site sound like a great idea, but I’m wondering how many times someone buys a site they can’t turn around and sell. I think you have to be pretty picky about the sites you buy and have a marketing plan with almost a specific buyer in mind when you sell it.