I just took a quick swing into and out of NYC, catching up with some great friends whom I haven’t seen in the better part of decade. It was awesome to hang with Rachel, Micha, and Katha and one of the highlights was checking out the High Line in Manhattan.
Last year attended The 99% Conference in NYC and one of the keynote speakers was Robert Hammond who (along with Joshua David) spearheaded the project. Robert gave a great presentation which you can check out by clicking here - on how the project was born and how he helped to start a movement in the community to bring it to fruition. I was immediately fascinated by not only the look and feel of the High Line but also how it came into being.
Here’s a quick video of the park that I shot of us at the High Line as well as some footage of us enjoying the mustache exhibit by Dave Mead at the Chelsea Market.
Have YOU been to the High Line? Would love to hear your thoughts on the park - or David Mead’s photos. Those mustaches are fierce. Fire away in the comments.
This evening I had the best cab driver ever, leaving the SXSW Interactive festival. Driving through the streets of Austin, he asked if we had ever heard the story behind the many moonlight towers that light up the city. What follows is HIS account of how the moonlight towers came into being, with links I found that have a more detailed account of the story and the history associated with them.
Austin was home to the first recorded serial killer. In 1884 a series of murders prompted the city to install these towers to better light the city and improve public safety. Most of the towers still exist today (map).
The killer would be on the loose for the better part of 1884 and was linked to the murder of several women who were servants throughout the city of Austin.
Though the perpetrator was never caught, many suspect that his rampage continued across the Atlantic. In 1888 a killer also brought panic to the city of London. We know him as Jack the Ripper. It turns out that there was a very interesting connection between those London murders and Austin murders in terms of the victims and the methods used. But the connection goes deeper. One of the suspects in the London murders was a cook who went by the name Maurice. As it turns out, he had previously been employed at The Pearl House - in Austin. He left the city in January of 1886, the murders ending just 3 weeks prior to his departure.
There’s a great (but long) piece about the Austin murders written by Katherine Ramsland that you can read by clicking here. It goes into much more detail than I’ve put down or that our cab driver shared with us. Big props to Austin for staying weird and having cab drivers well versed in local history.
In 2008 we spent roughly 10 days in Peru hiking from outside of Cusco to Machu Picchu via the Camino Salkantay. This video documents our hike and the experience of a lifetime.
So the Facebook vanity URL goldrush is on… In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, Facebook has basically announced that since this past weekend you could log in and get a username. Instead of getting to my FB profile with a long-ass url, you could hit up. www.facebook.com/ryanmiller315 - easier to remember, right? It fits on a biz card, or an email signature.
That’s the upside. The downside is that its first come first serve (not really a downside I guess) but once you choose your url, that’s it. You can’t change it. EVER. So before you decide you want your FB url to be BigSexy99, think again. Its like getting a really bad tattoo. My friend Katie has a good post on this as well that I caught as I was writing…
But inevitably there are going to be lots of Ryan Millers out there so the chance that I would get my own name was slim to none. Alas, I’m stuck with something less than ideal.
Where there has been a lot of excitement is when it was announced that brands (fan pages) can also get a vanity url. I could hit up www.facebook.com/cnn - again, easier to remember. The downside? You need to have at least 1,000 fans to qualify. So I really can’t get the hook up for my indie music fan page. That sucks.
But is this huge news for brands? Gary V. did a quick video about this announcement and thinks its a game changer. But I have to disagree. Sure, its convenient and for brands that are already playing in that space, its a nice addition and a welcome tool for establishing a presence on the network. But I don’t think its earth shattering.
Here’s why…
First of all, I think FB is a much better platform than MySpace was, in terms of organization, applications and visual layout. One of the reasons I think people left MySpace in droves was because it was almost too open. I couldn’t deal with dancing hamster backgrounds and Tide Detergent adding me as a friend when I wasn’t a fan to begin with. Facebook however, isn’t nearly as customizable as it could be and while its a good platform to interact with fans that are already on that platform - as a brand I have much more flexability for design and features on my own website (should I have the time and budget to invest in building what I want).
I’ve also read that this will be great from a marketing standpoint… But why would I market my facebook URL as a brand? I know its the next ‘cool thing’ but if you’re a business that is doing work in social spaces, marketing on Facebook alone isn’t going to cut it. Maybe you have a blog, a Twitter account, and a Facebook account… Why then would you market the Facebook page? I think its a better idea to get people to your website and link them off to the platform that they prefer. That’s not to say you shouldn’t be doing outreach on EACH platform, but to pimp your FB page on a billboard isn’t a battle plan.
So how could a brand still capitalize on this if they dont’ have 1000 followers or got beat in the gold rush? My advice is to standardize and redirect. If you’re a business and don’t own a domain name, (ryancmiller.com) spend the $10 and get one. You’ll be glad you did. Then I would make sure that all my pages on social networks are easily accessible from my main website or blog. And finally, if you want to pimp your facebook url but didnt’ get a vanity url - just build a simple redirect page (here’s how) that takes you to the Facebook Fan page when you hit www.yourdomain.com/facebook . Its simple. You can change it. and It Works.
What do you guys think? Does having a FB vanity url matter for people or brands? Is it a game changer? Am I full of crap? More importantly, did YOU get the url you wanted?
We arrived late to Grand Central Station, not pulling in until almost
3:30 p.m. and by my watch, that left us just less than 24 hours in New York. Jay and I were downstate for a quick visit with one of our mutual friends, who had flown in from Seattle with his wife. Palmer and Sara were shacking up at the Chelsea Hotel…a place who’s
cracks and crevases were inspiration to the likes of Dylan, Waits, and Ryan Adams, just to name a few. But, being that rates were somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 per night, it just wasn’t in the cards. No, the plan was to stay a night at the Chelsea Center, a small youth hostel located near the Chelsea Hotel, with modest dorm room accommodations for about $20 per night. For that kind of price I can assume that I’ll be sharing the barracks with some drunken Europeans, a couple of hippies, and inevitably at least one smelly guy.
I had been debating going on this little excursion right up until the night before we were to leave. I hadn’t had a paycheck in about 3 months since I’d quit my day job and was trying to figure out a way to make this trip a business expense, but to no avail. In any case, it would be good to see Palmer.
I haven’t seen him since his wedding which must have been 2-3 years ago now. Who knows. Since then, he’s moved out to Seattle to persue a film making career. Maybe he knows something I don’t. Maybe Seattle is on the cusp of being a film town, or he saw it as an opportunity to be a big fish in a small pond (given that he has no experience in film per se, but was a philosphy major in college and has had stints as a custodian and in alcohol retail). In that time he hasn’t changed a bit. When he met us outside of Grand Central he was still decked out in cordoroy pants, a vintage coat and an army cap, smoking a Camel. I’ve always looked up to him because he has in certain ways because he has this inate sense of certainty, even when he’s wrong, he seems right. He knows what he knows,and is pretty stubbon when it comes to trying to change his opinion about anything.
Living in upstate NY, we’ve had the most mild winter that I can remember. It was green and in the 50s right up through the end of the year. However winter finally came and although is barely any snow, the wind reminded you what time of the year it was, a kick in the nuts after stepping outside.
One of the things I love about Manhattan is the joy of people watching. Walk down any block in the city and you can see a huge cross section of those who walk God’s green earth. The spectrum is just so much wider than most places in this country and probably the world. I’ve seen some of the most beautiful women, some of the best and worst dressed people, and of course the occasional crazy guy. And what’s funny is that whether its a man dressed as Superman with his back on a skateboard pedaling down Avenue of the Americas, or your standard run of the mill doomsday soothsayer, most other people on the street either don’t mind, or don’t notice.
