Jim Kukral of BlogKits put together a BFD Reader Survey. Please take it when you get a chance. It’s completely anonymous and I appreciate the feedback.

Got plans tomorrow @ lunch?

For this proactive lunchtime discussion, Constant Systems’ Aiden Audouy and Diane Brown will demonstrate their technology and explore with us the factors influencing whether their company will locate valuable business operations in NEO, or Research Triangle. By being at this Roundtable, you can help them determine NEO is the best location in the nation and prove that to their CEO.

For several months, these executives from the $1 billion British company Score Group (http://www.score-group.com/) have been in Cleveland attempting to make all the connections necessary to locate in Northeast Ohio an expansion of their biotechnology division, Constant Systems (http://www.constantsystems.com/). Community economic development leaders want Constant Systems to locate here, and we’re holding this Excellence Roundtable to help make necessary connections…

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No Umbrella �?? An Election Day In The City is about getting the vote out in Cleveland during the 2004 General Election and stars Fannie Lewis, Cleveland City Councilwoman for Ward 7. It premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah this past January and sold out at its Cleveland debut on Wednesday at the International Film Festival. Mayor Jackson�??s Arts & Culture Initiative will show the entire short documentary in the Rotunda before the Cleveland City Council meeting.

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Home broadband users under age 36 are more likely than their dial-up counterparts to consult a wide range of news sources; much of this increment comes from online news and national newspapers. 46% of broadband users in this age group get news online on the average day, more than twice the rate (21%) of dial-up […]

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Speaking of election fraud:

Since sitting down with Hayrikian the previous summer over a dinner of fish and vodka wherein he displayed his fish eating prowess by chomping the head off of it with his teeth, we’d developed a good working relationship. He spoke English fairly well, his contacts with the Armenian diaspora in the US helping keep him in touch with American ways. We seemed to connect, both of us able to tell the other a joke, laugh a little.

He had a goateed dissident’s stoic nature. He’d spent years in a gulag, and had become something of a hero to Armenians. His big issue was democracy itself, he had written extensively on it, his credentials and his party’s platform putting the issue of free elections at the top of the agenda. I often felt truly humble in his presence.

As we got to know him more, over time, I came to know his more erratic, egomaniacal, fish head chomping side. Maybe those years in prison did something to him. He seemed to have delusions of grandeur, to expect Armenia to make him president someday in return for his suffering, despite the electorate’s disinterest in his party…

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Scott Bakalar endorses Chandra. An excerpt:

From the moment – the moment – he entered the room and my field of vision, Chandra appeared to be in his element; comfortable in his own skin and dress casual clothing, comfortable with himself and the “strangers” that surrounded him. Marc Dann by contrast, shirt and tie, appeared stiff, and although I won’t commit to the word nervous, did appear a bit uncomfortable with the situation he found himself in.

At one point during the debate, Subodh’s cell phone went off in his pocket, with one of the longest-lived ring tones I have ever heard – all this while he was in the midst of answering a blogger’s question, making a point. He never even acknowledged the phone, didn’t apologize, didn’t look down, didn’t hesitate – just kept pounding away at his premise. Such is his focus and concentration…

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From our conversation with Jim Petro:

George Nemeth: �?�because what we try to do at Meet the Bloggers is we try to focus on policy stuff, and one of the things that I do at Brewed Fresh Daily is to kind of track economic development stuff, and I noticed on your website that you are talking about the privatization of the Department of Development.

Jim Petro: Yes. Privatization is the wrong word. It is taking it out of what is a much slower functioning entity, and that is the government, and moving it into a much more flexible and creating a whole new level of continuity by establishing the Ohio Economic Development Corporation. Six states have taken and created not-for-profit corporations to perform their development functions. In doing that, they have become leaner. They have become more flexible, in that they can make more investment without the constraints of government. They have actually been able to work much more quickly in making decisions and taking action to inspire the relocation or the expansion of a business, or to create the catalyst necessary to kind of incubate a business that becomes a technology business that grows up in a community like Cleveland…

Since all of the other gubernatorial candidates have done Meet The Bloggers interview, I think it’s time to start asking whether Ken Blackwell is going to do it, and if not, why not?

An excerpt from our conversation with Bryan Flannery and Ted Strickland:

George Nemeth: This is George Nemeth of Brewed Fresh Daily, and I wanted to talk about subsidies in kind of a different realm, although it has to do with agriculture initially. I want to talk about alternative fuels and what we can do about the fuel crisis, as it kind of applies to the energy crisis, like we talked about earlier, particularly subsidizing for things like ethanol, coal-burning plants, and how we upgrade our energy programs, so Ted, if you could start?

Ted Strickland: Well the first major proposal that I put forth as a candidate for Governor is a proposal to invest, make available $250 million per year in tax-free federal bonding authority for the specific purpose of pursuing alternative energy, energy innovation, energy research. If I could just give you an example. I was watching CNN Presents last night. They were featuring Brazil, and Brazil in the �??70s was in the tank. Its economy was. They decided to invest in alternative energies, and specifically into ethanol.

George Nemeth: Brazil is the largest producer of ethanol in the world right now.

Ted Strickland: Yes, I know, but Ohio is the third leading user of ethanol products, fuel products in the entire country…

Make sure you read the whole piece, including Flannery’s response.

Thanks to all of you who’ve taken the BFD reader survey so far. I’m getting good feedback.

One thing I’d like more comment on. Several people would rather not see me posting updates regarding Meet The Bloggers here at BFD. I feel the same sometimes myself, but I’m not sure people are going there on a regular basis. I will take a look at the stats and see what they say. When I ask questions at MTB, they’re usually because I’m interested or I think BFD readers are. So, please comment on BFD/MTB. More on the reader survey later.

Silly boy that I am, I sent G an email asking him to post a link for for effort to go to the Second National Summit on Community Wireless Networks. He reminded me that I can steal his blog. Duhhh! So here is my grossly shameless self promotion.

I am going to the above named Summit this next weekend. If you remember, I went to the first one (mostly on my own dime, when I had a dime) two years ago in Urbana, Illinois. I recorded my entire experience on this wiki and brought back the info and contacts that is making the new mesh network in Tremont a reality.
But, this year, the Summit is in St. Louis, MO and I’m short on funds for covering all the expenses. I’m traveling with Bill Callahan of Cleveland Digital Vision and we have arranged to go down to Columbus to pick up folks from Ohio Community Computing Network so we can split travel expenses 5 ways. And it looks like I will have space to crash on someboy’s hotel room floor.

You can see that I’m trying to keep expenses down as much as possible and I appreciate the sharing and generosity of my fellow community network advocates. Also thanks to all that have helped so far, but I am still short funds for registration and other expenses.

PLEEZE click this link and contribute to the Wifi Summit fundraiser!

If you are hesitant to signing up to paypal, send a check made out to TWDC dba Tremont Wireless Neighborhood to the address below.

TWIFI
2274 Thurman Ave. #2
Cleveland, Ohio 44113

Donations are tax deductible thru Tremont West Development Corp, our fiscal agent.

I will post my notes on wiki again, so basically, if I GO, YOU GO. So lend me a hand and help make internet access for everyone a reality in northeast Ohio.

From Stuart:

The Cleveland Orchestra is another of Cleveland’s artistic treasures. Did you know that they’re the most recorded orchestra in the world? They’re a hot ticket globally and recognized as one of the finest orchestras in the world. I understand that they’re particularly well respected in Europe and that they have a more European than American performance style. Of course, I’m not nearly well attuned enough to the subtleties of classical music to appreciate these distinctions. Still, when you hear them perform, their immense talent and dedication is obvious. Also, their Cleveland home is absolutely beautiful.

The Cleveland Orchestra is scheduled to perform at the beginning of the Ingenuity Festival…

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Podcast of the forum held on March 20th 2006 featuring George W. Bush, President, United States of America.

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I’m happy to promote any musical activity in Cleveland! 22 MARCH, 2006 CLEVELAND OH:. Detroit Avenue Arts announces Resonance: a Festival of World Music to be held April 28 and 29, 2006, featuring ten groups performing music from four continents. In addition to attending an outstanding line-up of concerts, the audience will be able to become active participants in the festival through dance parties with live music both nights and hands-on workshops on Saturday afternoon…

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If you haven’t taken the BFD reader survey yet, please do so. As you can see, I’m trying to implement some of your requests, like making the author of the post clearer, and most importantly, going back to the pre-hack theme.

A quick reminder, based on another comment. In the sidebar, under the admin section, it says Register and Login. If you’d like to contribute local news, sports, whatever, you need to register. Once you register, I’ll email you [georgenemeth(a)gmail.com] to verify that your registered with a valid email. You must respond to this email, or I will not upgrade your permissions. Please understand, this is only to prevent spammers from stealing my blog. Early this year, I came to the conclusion that I’m not going to police my blog for other people’s poor behavior. I’ve updated the contributor policy page, which is linked in the sidebar. UPDATE: I also wanted to include here a link to the Word Press Documentation, that’s a step-by-step instruction to writing a post.

As I explained to someone asking me what was appropriate language to use on BFD was last night—you’ll find out. Some of the feedback I received was that they wanted so-and-so to stop using this language, or the didn’t think this person was that good of a writer. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion. Express it. Let’s learn how to give and take constructive criticism. Norm Roulet of RealNEO described it as culture in a conversation yesterday. One of the things about culture is that it’s constantly changing. How do you want it to change? What is your role in changing the culture?

From Christine:

Like pieces of a puzzle, the many different aspects of your being come together to form the person that you are. You work and play, rest and expend energy, commune with your body and soul, exalt in joy, and feel sorrow. Balance is the state that you achieve when all of the aspects of your life and self are in harmony. Your life force flows in a state of equilibrium because nothing feels out of sync. While balance is necessary to have a satisfying, energetic, and joyful life, only you can determine what balance means to you.

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Good stuff from Brian.

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Via CoolTown Studios, Cleveland IS NOT on the Top 10. What can we do to change that?

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Click thru and check out the photos Evelyn posted with this:

The Cleveland Film Festival screening of Laura Paglin’s documentary “No Umbrella — Election Day” quickly  sold out, but those who were n’t able to get tickets got another chance in the rotunda of City Hall on Monday night. Free and open to the public, the film played at 6 p.m., before a city council meeting. About 100 people were there. Paglin is a local director who has been getting a lot of attention lately. The subject of her short documentary, which recently played at Sundance, is an election day fiasco in ward 7, that took place last November. The “star” of the film is councilwoman Fannie Lewis, who fought heroically  for her constituents right to vote that day, when the board of elections failed to provide enough workers and ballots at one poling station…

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Bumped into Jim Kenny today at the NEO Excellence Roundtable. He took up Henry’s challenge and updated:

Kent State University has announced its graduate architecture program is moving to downtown Cleveland. It’s our hope the annual influx of creative minds will spur a higher level of consciousness for design and how it can shape indvidual and collective experiences.

We believe this announcement holds the promise of giving our central city the distinct look that could be classified some day as “Cleveland Style,” attracting even more members to our region’s creative class.

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This Q and A followed Sunday’s screening of American Blackout — a portrait of the American democratic process through the lens of filmmaker Ian Inaba. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-Georgia) visited Cleveland specifically for this screening and participated in this discussion following the film. American Blackout was the winner of the CIFF’s Greg Gund Memorial Standing Up Film Competition.

Note: The audio quality of this recording is not on par with our typical podcasts — due to factors beyond our control…

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E CITY Student, Sahabahddin Muhammad, was named a 2006 Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award Winner by the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), based in New York City. Sahabahddin submitted a business plan for his small enterprise- Empire LLC- which is an event-planning company that focuses on safe entertainment for consumers and marketing opportunities for local businesses…

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From Sudhir:

Just over two weeks remain to register for an exciting new event: the NEO Short Film Contest - registration continues through April 14th. This contest, sponsored collaboratively by Voices & Choices, College 360, and the Cleveland International Film Festival, invites our region’s creative minds to envision the future of NEO or address overcoming one or more of six regional challenges identified by Voices and Choices eng

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George has slipped me the keys to the BFD kingdom to start a new weekly profile. Over the next several months we�??ll be contacting Northeast Ohio bloggers to get behind the URL. NEO blogosphere is a tapestry woven from bloggers of many backgrounds. We want to know more about the people behind the bloggers. Makes sense that we start with none other than George himself, the nexus of the NEO blogosphere. Here�??s a little about the man behind the conversation.

Name: George Nemeth
Age: 38
Resident of: Cleveland
Native of: Northeast Ohio
Personal: In a committed relationship
Blog: Brewed Fresh Daily
Paying Gig: Freelance Geek. Main clients are CoolCleveland and the Ingenuity Festival.
Education: John Carroll University
Story behind the name: I started using it in the title tag of the html of my blog. Googled it one day and was #1, so I registered the URL.
Story behind the blog: Way before blogging was popular (BFD started in July ‘02), I was fiddling around with the software. I wanted to do a personal website, but couldn’t think of exactly what to do, so I set up a blog.
What do you write about? When I started BFD, I wrote about business and tech. Then I focused on the Northeast Ohio Blogosphere, so my interest followed the blogs I read. Then I started reading popular blogs�??Boing Boing, which deals with strange stuff. Basically, I’m all over the map.
Are you comfortable with the writing process? Very. It grows on you.
Who reads your blog? Based on the reader survey we’re doing, it’s people across the board. That’s the wonderful thing about the Internet�??as long as you have a computer, you have the opportunity to be on equal footing with everyone. A single female with an undergraduate degree that makes $30k/yr can do the same things online that a married male with a graduate degree making $100k can.
What do you read? Mostly blogs. If it’s the MSM, I read it online. Every once in a while I read a book, but it’s mostly to relax.
How much time do you spend reading blogs? To be clear, I read my blogs through an RSS feed reader. Instead of visiting a website, the content is downloaded to my machine, which saves tons of time. Even though it’s more efficient, it still takes me a couple of hours total everyday. That’s not reading them all at once. That’s taking 10-20 minutes, several times a day to catch up with what’s updated recently. I’d also add that I post as I read.
What post(s) generate the most response from others? Another area that’s across the map. I keep a page linked in my sidebar of the top 10 most commented posts:
Top 10 Most Commented.

Leading that list is an item posted by Jay Yoo on Nov. 21, 2005 challenging Andy Birol�??s advice that �??Good ideas do not need angels (investors).�?� The post generated 99 comments, including thoughtful responses and engaging conversation from local venture capitalists, entrepreneurs both new and established and reps from local business incubators.

The conversation temporarily devolved from comment 19 to 27 into personal attacks, paranoia and references to genitalia size. But overall it was a fascinating discussion about what comes first �?? entrepreneurs or the culture that grows them; whether or not entrepreneurship can be taught; the dearth of female entrepreneurs seeking investment (and commenting on that post); some “who cares?” posturing over who has the better view of entrepreneurship in Cleveland; and, ultimately, the outing of a self-proclaimed �??expert�?� as a relative lightweight.

George jumped in at comment 63 to offer the following insight that seems to capture the philosophy behind BFD:

One of the things I�??d like people to say about BFD is that we�??re trying to model the leadership we expect. When people disagree, they do so loudly and honestly, but also respectfully.

That said, I want to express how grateful I am that all of you read what�??s being posted here and honor that with your opinions. I never imagined when I offered to let others blog here that it would generate these types of discussions. I�??m amazed and humbled by that.

Now�?�let�??s get back to the conversation. What do you want to know about NEO bloggers?

Norm writes:

Constant Systems’ Aidan Audouy and Diane Brown drew a diverse audience for a roundtable dedicated to closing the economic development loops needed to attract their company to Northeast Ohio. Roundtable attendees had the one challenge: to learn enough about Constant Systems to determine who we know who may help Constant Systems succeed here - an experiment in viral social networking, open source economic development and the power within very few degrees of separation…

Sorry, gentle readers, but I have to talk about Meet The Bloggers here. I checked my web stats and the vast majority of traffic comes from people going there from BFD.

So, I’ve posted an MTB podcast of yesterday’s roundtable here. Thanks for listening and thinking about how economic development can happen thru helping a British company sell their products from the beachhead they’ve established here in Northeast Ohio. I know it’s a stretch of the imagination for most people, but all of us can help improve the economy here. Thanks especially to Norm for this opportunity to collaborate.

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Check this out if you are interested in this type of thing. A new service called Evoca allows you to basically create online audio for free through your computer, then either post it to your blog, or share it in a group. Not a podcast by true defintion of course, but nevertheless, it’s audio online, and it’s FREE!

I’ve gone ahead and made a Brewed Fresh Daily group, check it out here: http://www.evoca.com/groups/brewedfreshdaily

You can see my recording there, feel free to make your own recording and test it out. Kinda neat. Could be a new way to communicate with each other. I doubt George wants any sales pitches though. I resisted!

My studio-mate, business partner and good friend Dave Potokar has recently donated his time for an amazing charitable organization put together by another amazing Cleveland person, Maria Weybrecht. Why post this? Because it illustrates how Clevelander’s can work together, and showcases yet another amazing organization that we should all be proud of.

From Dave’s blog.

We just started the process of creating a new website and identity for an incredible not-for-profit organization called Kids in Flight (www.kidsinflight.org). Started by Cleveland State student, Maria Weybrecht, Kids In Flight plans events and functions for children who are sick, in treatment, or have other serious ailments. They take kids up in small airplanes for the day and give them a chance to experience the wonder of aviation and at the same time, gives them a chance to forget their troubles and illnesses, even if for one day. I am donating my time to build their identity and design their new website, KidsInFlight.org.

Kudos to Dave for his generosity in taking up such a good cause, and Maria, wow, she’s got the right way of thinking about life. It’s nice to see Clevelander’s pull together for stuff like this.

At this time, I’d like to ask any charitable organization in town that is in need of any type of web work (online marketing, design, search engine optimization, whatever) to please post a request for help here in these comments.

I know many people including myself who are MORE than willing to help you out for free. You just need to tell us what you need. I bet you’ll be surprised at the offers you’ll get. Please include your contact information and what you’re looking for help with.

Eric Vessels links to a great ad. Why aren’t we seeing it on TV?

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From Scott Suttell:

The Sausage Shoppe, a meat processor and retailer in Cleveland, is in Meat & Poultry magazine’s spotlight in a feature story on how the business has persevered during the grind of a long-term construction project on Memphis Avenue…

UPDATE: Tim Ferris comments here.

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• Ohio 13 votes
  Another political blogger. Anyone know how to contact them?
  (tags: Ohio Bloggers Politics)
• Neti pots to clean your sinuses
  I love my neti pot. I do mine every morning before coffee…
  (tags: BFD)
• The new economy
  “The premise is that relationships are the new wealth that will inspire well-being in communities and regions. Many ah-ha’s as we introduced new language, principles, and tools - all supporting organic and self-organizing growth.”
  (tags: AppreciativeLiving)

Matt supports Steve Goldberg’s Bodhisattva Economic Development post with… of all thing, Michael Porter’s work.

Zen?

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From Bill Barrow, a press release he’s passing along:

What are you doing on April 5th?

We’re looking for 40 good people - that’s the number of available slots still available for the first ever Canalway Symposium.

The Ohio & Erie Canalway is hosting its first Conference to update and introduce a number of new features for this evolving National Heritage Area. The conference runs from 8:00 am - 5:00 pm and costs ONLY $20 - and that includes breakfast and lunch. It is being held in Akron’s Main Library.

There will be a host of interesting presentations on topics as far ranging as Signage and Business Planning for non-profits; we will introduce a new and interactive web site tailored for visitors, and speaking of visitors, the first dedicated Visitor Guide for the Canalway…

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From Bridget “these works previously hung at Tastebuds, a hip little lunch/cater spot over on 30th between Superior and St Claire…. these works will be on view April 3 - May 1 at Art in the Village @ 57oo Broadway, Slavic Village…”

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Amen.

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My sister Lisa and I are co-captaining a team for the MADD Strides for Change 5K walk in Cleveland on Sunday, June 4. Our team is called “Friends of Colin” because we will be walking in honor of her friend Colin Kelley, who was killed by a drunk driver.

If you are in the Cleveland area, I encourage you to join our team of walkers by visiting

www.stridesforchange.org

Choose Cleveland from the drop-down menu, then “Join an existing team.” Search for “Friends of Colin…”

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In a very interesting marketing move, The Plain Dealer has acquired naming rights to the former Nautica Stage/Scene Pavilion concert venue on the west bank of the Flats.

“This will get The Plain Dealer’s name out in front of a diverse group of people,” said Jerry Hoegner, the newspaper’s director of marketing services.

I’ve met Jerry and trust him, but I’m somewhat dubious of this Plain Dealer Pavilion. Such branding made perfect sense for the Scene, a publication that began as the local concert rag. With recent efforts to pdQ-ify the entire paper, the PD seems to be reaching out to readers who long to have their mug shot in Out & About more and more. First it was the success of pdQ, which brought some much needed flavor to the stale Sunday edition. The popular format was then used to revamp Friday!. And you don’t have to be William Safire to see that the Metro section, even though it is in a state of wacky flux, is hedging in that direction, too.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I love pdQ. I read it first thing every Sunday. I have all six times I’ve appeared in it taped to my fridge…

Much more there, including links.

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Bloggers have caught Republican Congressional candidate Howard Kaloogian falsifying evidence of the success of the war in Iraq. Kaloogian posted a photo from “downtown Baghdad” showing how peaceful and calm things were there; bloggers investigated the photo and it was recognized as coming from a suburb of Istanbul — something that could be proved by comparing it to web-based photo-albums showing the intersection and the surrounding area…

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Wendy Hoke spreading the good news.

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I’ve been conducting an experiment. After reading a bunch of posts, both at WordPress.org and other blogs, I’m starting to get a clearer picture of how the update-links.php file is working with Ping-O-matic. It appears that this post at All Narfed Up is correct. Blogs hosted at blogspot are updating, because of their subdomain.blogspot.com addresses. Sites that have the URL of their blog listed as www.havecoffeewillwrite.com that are pinging ping-o-matic are SOL.

So, I got my blog updating in two steps. First, in WordPress, under Options -> General, change your URLs to the domain without the www. Mine is listed as http://brewedfreshdaily.com. Second, if you’re listed on the NEO Blogroll, and you’re not updating, send me an email, and ask me to take the www off your entry I have listed. I’ll let you know that I’ve changed it. Then wait about a day and check to see if your listing has updated. That’s about how long it took mine to start working.

Hope this helps.

A BFD reader informs me that I’m on pg 48 of this month’s issue of Inside Business Magazine. I was asked by Morgan Lewis to do 400 words on the future of blogging, the mainstream media, and politics. I did the piece as a password-protected page which I sent to a few people for comment and now I’m inviting the rest of you to participate. Thanks for all the feedback I’ve already received, and in particular, to Jill Miller Zimon, who reviewed the draft for me.

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We got this email this morning from our friend Ed Hauser. Take heed. Our government employees think they can confiscate everything, in the name of the public good, without being held personally liable. We need to start changing this…

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Sweet.

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I hope no one out there was using the Hiperminimalist theme, because I’ve deleted it. I really don’t want to have to manage that many themes. So I’ve got it down to 3.

If you’re reading BFD with IE, please change your theme to Letterhead using the theme switcher. That one appears to load the fastest. Thanks, BillyGoat, for bringing it to my attention. Being a mac owner who uses FireFox, I forget the rest of the world is on XP and IE…

Dennis Coughlin on the recent I-Open conference:

What was so exciting was the breadth of experiences, positions, backgrounds of the twenty-four who elected to participate. There were people from Cleveland; Jefferson City, Missouri; Wayne County; all over Cuyahoga County; Nashville, Tennessee; and Indianapolis, Indiana. There were people who work for the City of Cleveland, TVA, Cuyahoga County, various non-profit organizations, the Cleveland Institute of Art, Case Western Reserve University, Myers University, the Cuyahoga County Library.

There were people who are economic development directors, librarians, students, unemployed, non-profit administrators, small farm supporters, network builders, community development leaders, car restorers, technology directors, bio-fuels engineers, agricultural innovators. There were people in suits, people in jeans, and people in skirts.

We got involved in the discussion of first curve versus second curve innovation strategies, quality connected places, building connected networks, building innovation networks, growing regional economies, appreciative networks, authentic engagement, network weaving, collaborative projects.
All of these people came to the table and participated in open conversations building trust, finding common ground, and building new collaborative networks. We developed new ways to help focus our actions leading to bring innovation to our communities…

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From Bill:

So Goldberg is picking me up in a rented minivan in six hours and we’re heading out for the National Summit for Community Wireless Networks in St. Louis, stopping in Columbus to pick up Katie and Robb, two Ohio Community Computing Network Vista volunteers…

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But I had to pick a theme and turn caching on. The website was way too slow. Thanks for understanding.

From Hannah:

Beginning on April 10th - - just a few days away - - downtown employees, residents, students and tourists will be able to hop on one of two trolley lines, developed by Greater Cleveland RTA to replace Loop bus service.

The E-Line trolley will link entertainment venues, from the Warehouse District at West Ninth Street, down Euclid Avenue past Playhouse Square to East 21st Street. The B-Line trolley will connect business, circling Superior and Lakeside Avenues between West Sixth and East 12th Streets.

Both lines will operate from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. with 10-minute frequency. If the nostalgic green-and- gold trolleys, complete with cow catchers, wooden rails, and brass bells, don’t put a smile on the face of downtown travelers, the price of riding will. The trolleys are free now through Labor Day…

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Check out this one from Chip Bok.

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Perhaps things will start changing when everyone’s ideas are considered:

Too often in Cleveland’s history, our leaders have sought silver-bullet fixes to Cleveland’s myriad woes. Each initiative, from Gateway to building a Convention Center, is billed as being the unique solution that will magically solve Cleveland’s problems in one fell-swoop. Ideas are proposed behind closed doors, and decisions are frequently made with little community input, and usually even less input from homeless people.

As Mayor Jackson’s interest in taking an unannounced tour of homeless shelters would suggest, we may finally have an administration in this City that is not openly hostile toward us or homeless people, nor do we have an administration eager to ignore the issues and concerns expressed in our paper. Thus, the time is ripe to widen our forum and give those who struggle to survive in this city a chance to propose more ideas to make Cleveland a healthy and stable community.

We want to hear everything: ranging from ideas about new community projects to tearing up all the parking meters or easing vending license fees. We want to hear any idea that could improve Cleveland in any way whatsoever, for specific people, or Cleveland in general…

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Helping McKala put up a wiki for her healing services. An open source wiki with a css skin I did some mods on. She did the pics. After showing her the basics, she’s her own wikidomo, one of the things I love about setting wikis up and showing someone the basic—they’re empowered to update their websites without having to struggle with learning HTML.

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