Brewed Fresh Daily

Do you recognize this description of our city: �Cleveland: Seriously. Not just the Lake Erie shoreline has been redone to add to the attraction of the lakeside Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, but the Cuyahoga River no longer bursts into flames when somebody flips a cigarette butt into it. Now you have trouble getting a reservation at the bistros on "the Flats" beside it. All of this knit into a 100-kilometre string of parks and greenbelt called "the Emerald Necklace." The waterfront development caused Runner's World, of all publications, to call Cleveland, of all places, America's "premier turnaround town."� Even if it isn�t a completely accurate description of our waterfront, it is interesting that some still hold Cleveland up as a model. Of course, �Slinger� couldn�t resist a dig at Cleveland and ends his column with: �Imagine Cleveland showing us the way. How humiliating.�

Just got my issue of Inside Business today and look who's on the inside cover, none other than you.

"Isn't it disturbing that Cleveland is the third most segregated city in the country and also, at the bottom of every social, educational, health and poverty index? Clevelanders must be engaged to travel outside of these community silos and be encouraged to visit other places. We must to do it. As long as we wait for 'leadership' to do it, it will be too late."

What questions would get people connecting and collaborating more?

"The American Dream should be about more than owning a house, it should be about owning a business. Carlos Guzman, acting regional director for the federal Commerce Department's Minority Business Development Agency, told an Urban League of Greater Cleveland gathering at The Plain Dealer yesterday that entrepreneurship should be taught to schoolchildren. Owning a business is one of the surest paths to wealth, said Guzman, who directs his agency's Chicago office, which covers Ohio. Yet the percentages of minority-owned businesses, particularly those owned by African-Americans, lag the percentages of minorities in the general population. "

• Managers coordinating in the dark
• Team members working in isolation
• Hard to change processes and culture
• Forever to come up to speed
• Teams are insular
• Rework Effort duplicated
• Mistakes
• Palm-to-forehead slapping
• 10 percent of your workforce is eligible for retirement
• You had a big layoff in the last three years
• You expect massive hiring when your industry or the economy picks up

"The RedPaper is an experimental online information exchange that blends self-publishing with micropayments. An author's success depends on how popular poetry, police files and recipes are."

"Very interesting meeting last night at Flannery's. Folks from various departments of the City of Cleveland, some Connection Series BCP-CAT members, bloggers and assorted others gathered to have an interactive session with Zach Reed, council guy from the Kinsman/Mt. Pleasant area. Trouble was, it turned out to be something else. Mr. Reed has done some serious legwork with the help of former Mayor White and gotten some $50 million already allocated from government sources that he plans to use it to beautify the area and build a new library and school. Attendees for the most part seemed to want to know how they could help with the revitalizing the area, but Mr. Reed didn't seem much interested in help. He did ask us to send private investors his way. "

"I asked her whether she felt that blogging might be a self-correcting mechanism people themselves have invented to get the truth out--but she wasn't too familiar with the phenomenon so couldn't really offer an informed opinion."

Bruce blog learned from a certain director of a local nonprofit organization that the city of Cleveland Heights owns a small cache of chess tables that it bought in the 1970s. The tables have languished in storage all of these years�inexplicably, the city never put them out for use. What gives? These could be excellent ways to provide 'city comforts' at Coventry Courtyard or at Cedar-Lee.

Bob Hope, whose mastery of the comic monologue and the topical wisecrack carried him from vaudeville to Broadway musicals and then on to worldwide fame as a radio, film and television star of the first magnitude, died Sunday night in Toluca Lake, Calif., according to The Associated Press, which cited his long-time publicist, Ward Grant. Mr. Hope was 100.

"Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do." - Dale Carnegie

May we discover through pain and torment, the strength to live with grace and humor. May we discover through doubt and anguish, the strength to live with dignity and holiness. May we discover through suffering and fear, the strength to move toward healing. May it come to pass that we be restored to health and to vigor. May Life grant us wellness of body, spirit, and mind. And if this cannot be so, may we find in this transformation and passage moments of meaning, opportunities for love and the deep and gracious calm that comes when we allow ourselves to move on. - Rabbi Rami M. Shapiro

"This year we begin the rebuilding of Kinsman Avenue. The old way would be just to pave the road. Our new way involved the local development corporation and all of the utilities-even Ameritech, which has a switching station just over the Shaker border. Together we crafted a plan that includes new housing, new businesses, streetscaping, lighting, and other investments in Luke Easter Park. Kinsman, once a symbol of urban decay, can again become a vibrant neighborhood." Quote from State of the City Address, Mayor Jane L. Campbell, February 20, 2003

"[O]h, and while I was away... ... I made the Plain Dealer! Here's the article, by Chris Seper, on the sticky issues that professionals who keep online journals or weblogs face. I'll have to follow up with Lev Gonick and make sure that I'm on solid footing, but since my journal is generally more appreciative than critical, I'd be shocked if anyone at CWRU took offense."

Drinking three or more cups of coffee a day can almost halve the risk of cirrhosis of the liver, according to a new study in Norway. The protective effect applies even among alcohol drinkers, whose risk of cirrhosis is much greater.

Disclaimer: The Nimbis blog is maintained by the many members and Nimbis, and therefore individual posts and opinions may or may not represent every member of Nimbis or Nimbis as a whole. Long Live Free Speech!

I was thinking about having an open house at my office/studio. Perhaps it can be the next blogger bash as well?

Encryption of sensitive data is spotty, they said, allowing outsiders to reach into the system and change election tallies. A lack of oversight in the development process could allow programmers to create secret 'back doors' for tampering as well, they said. Though the system relies on credit card-style "smart cards" for authentication, voters can easily create their own bogus cards to cast multiple ballots, or administer larger changes by posing as a poll worker, they said. While such bugs are common in commercial software used to run desktop computers and websites, voting systems should be held to a higher standard, they said. Diebold should open the system up for public scrutiny to uncover other flaws, or at least design a paper trail to guard against electronic tampering, they said.

Southeast, a small charter airline located in Largo, Florida, has signed an agreement with SkyWay Communications Holding to offer free Wi-Fi Internet service, and phone calls for as low as 50 cents a minute. While it still needs the approval of federal regulators, Southeast would become the first U.S. airline to offer wireless Internet service and relatively cheap phone calls through seat-back phones. There is one caveat to the Internet service: Passengers would have to endure some advertising in order to get it.

Two devilishly charming men were kind enough to say nice things about me and my blog (to my face even), the zen-like maven Jack Ricchiuto and the technologically focused Bruce Kratofil. Based on their kind words, I was sure that they both were also hitting the Scotch when the hording masses weren't looking.

"My party will be the ANGRY MOMS PARTY - or AMP and before I brow beat you into standing behind me and lending me your support, I will outline my platform."

Liz Lawley made a great post on in-class and in-conference back-channels over at Many-to-Many. A key takeaway is that the back-channel will always exist. You can resist or incorporate it into your activities to focus the channel.

To celebrate the death of Saddam Hussein's two sons, a Juneau resident treated patrons of Jordan Creek Coffee to drinks Wednesday. 'He just came in here with the sign and said 'I'd like to buy them an Americano or a cup of coffee,' ' said Misti Hogberg, owner of the coffee shop in the Jordan Creek Center. The sign featured black-and-white photos of the sons and encouraged customers to ask about the 'R.I.P. Special.'"

This is a simple database for people operating or interested in operating wireless network nodes in Cleveland. If you're interested, please create a node for yourself. There doesn't seem to be a community, you can generate a base page Here

:"He also, mentioned a fellow blogger Joi Ito, whose paper Emergent Democracy sits beside my computer as I write this entry. I have not read the paper yet, but I am excited about reading it; and thinking about it in the context of civic engagement. For example, does civic engagement lead to emergent democracy, or are the elements of emergent democracy present prior to civic engagement? Does citizen participation in community intiatives lead to the type of democracy that represents the will and passion of the people? I have some idea, but I will wait to I read Ito's manuscript and will tell you what I think later."

"A lack of effective security standards has slowed Business adoption of Wi-Fi but hasn't quashed enthusiasm for the technology. Here's what's being done about it."

"We must abandon our prejudices regarding the sources of economic value. The production of wealth comes not simply from labor or raw materials or even intellectual brilliance. It comes from new ways to give people what they want. By matching creativity and desire, the economy will renew itself."

Dear Constituent, You have the power to take on the special interests. On Monday, July 28th, Vice President Dick Cheney will raise $250,000 for the Bush campaign from a handful of special interest contributors at a luncheon in Columbia, South Carolina. Let's show George W. Bush and Dick Cheney that we will not let our government be sold to the highest bidder. Let's show that the grassroots are stronger than the special interests. At the end of June, the Dean campaign posted a "fundraising bat"-- a baseball bat that marked online contributions to the campaign-- on the Dean for America homepage. More than 73,000 Americans contributed $7.6 million dollars to Howard Dean in the second quarter, mostly through small donations. Thousands of Americans understood that their contribution, when combined with the contributions of thousands of others, had the power to change our country. The bat became a symbol of that power. To take on Dick Cheney and George W. Bush-- to beat back the special interests-- the Dean campaign is "Bringing Out the Bat" this weekend. Our goal is to raise $250,000 in online contributions by midnight, Monday, July 28th. You can take part. You can show George W. Bush and Dick Cheney that the grassroots campaign for Howard Dean is going to send them packing.

I wonder how many knowledge-based jobs have moved form Cleveland to India, Viet Nam, etc???

"In the process of my webhost moving the server hosting my account (which also includes Dawn's) her updates are no longer showing up on DawnOlsen.com. Troubles with her account are par for the course at this point but I'm getting to the bottom of it. The good news is, she has written new entries, which you can see (for some reason) at http://upyours.moxie.nu."

• Whoever comes is the right people
• Whatever happens is the only thing that could have
• When it's over, it's over

Four Internet service providers have filed an antitrust suit against SBC Communications, alleging that the Baby Bell unfairly inflated wholesale prices for high-speed Internet access.

[I]n his regular column published on PBS's web site Cringley wonders why other media outlets - which he said received the claims in the same e-mail he got - haven't bothered to report on the situation. One reason the Diebold allegations may not have gotten much attention is the story appears on a web site called "Scoop" under the headline: Sludge Report #154 - Bigger Than Watergate!

"When I pray, coincidences happen. When I don't pray, coincidences don't happen." - William Temple

The question is, whose definition of what this city and region needs will win out: Not the Democrats or the Republicans, but whether the humane and creative souls of an engaged and seemingly voiceless community, will speak to the power of saving Cleveland's soul and the future for everybody or, in the words of deceased Federal Appellate Judge A. Leon Higgnbotham-There is a dream in this land, with its back against the wall, if the dream is to be saved, if must be saved for all.

NE Ohio CrainTech: "The Say Yes! to Cleveland trip to Chicago that was supposed to take place this week was cancelled. Organizers hope to reschedule the trip for late September. The plan is to bring eight promising young Cleveland companies to meet potential investors and customers in Chicago. "

Where I work there is reputed to be an underground stream, flowing down the hillside, heading into the harbor. I keep listening for it. Honest. - from Full Moon Boat © 2000 by Fred Marchant

"Feeling a sense of wholeness isn't a function of a life based on consumption; it is a by-product of a life based on self-expression. The only way to discover ourselves is to express ourselves. Blogging is but one medium for this, and a worthy one at that. "

THEY�RE SCREWING THE PLANET The factory farming techniques used by Starbucks� coffee providers as unsustainable and environmentally devastating. In 1997 they released a vague, nice-sounding PR campaign stating that �hazardous materials such as chemicals and pesticides should be used safely and responsibly, if at all.� Great, but what does that really mean? Not much. Starbucks gets their coffee from countries like Guatemala and Indonesia, where the local dictators won�t enforce environmental regulation (and even if they did, the WTO would put a stop to it).

Culturejam: Hijacking Commercial Culture delivers a fascinating rap on the 20th Century movement called Culture Jamming. Pranksters and subversive artists are causing a bit of brand damage to corporate mindshare. Jammers, cultural commentators, a billboard advertiser and a constitutional lawyer take us on a wild roller coaster ride through the back streets of our mental environment. Stopping over in San Francisco, New York's Times Square, and Toronto, we catch the jamming in action with Batman-inspired Jack Napier of the Billboard Liberation Front, Disney arch-enemy Reverend Billy from the Church of Stop Shopping and Media Tigress Carly Stasko. Culturejam asks: Is Culture Jamming civil disobedience? Senseless vandalism? The only form of self defense left?

"Thanks to Ron Copfer, wireless web surfers have a new playground in downtown Cleveland. Mr. Copfer, the CEO of Fathom IT Solutions Inc. and longtime civic activist, is providing free WiFi access to part of the Historic Gateway Neighborhood. WiFi technology allows portable computers and handheld devices to access the Internet at high speeds. The service is the second public access �hot spot� in the downtown area. The Cleveland Public Library offers a hot spot in its reading garden. And the city of Cleveland plans to put a hot spot on Mall C next to City Hall when the park there reopens this fall. Public �hot spots� are growing in popularity across the country as more workers are using hand-held devices and lap tops with built-in WiFi capabilities. "

"Expect to hear a lot about RSS at Gnomedex." - Chris Pirillo

"Discount ISPs have been attracting a new breed of penny-pinching customers in this weak economy, says Lydia Leong, principal analyst at Gartner, a market research firm. Experts say that new ISP business models and the continued declining cost of underlying bandwidth make it easier for providers to offer dirt- cheap prices. But with bargain basement deals come trade-offs such as less-than-stellar customer support, no e-mail or newsgroup features, and no storage for posting a home page. Another minus: Your super-cheap ISP may not survive on its razor-thin profit margins and could go out of business without warning"

Have you stayed away from wireless LANs (WLANs) because of their notorious lack of security? If so, it's time to take another look. The Wi-Fi Alliance, which tests and certifies products based on the 802.11 specification, recently approved a new security standard called Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), which addresses just about every WLAN vulnerability.

• Jack Ricchiuto - Gassho
• Chas Rich - Sardonic Views
• Craig Lyndall - Filtering Craig
• Bruce Kratofil - Bug Blog
• Michael Leaphart - Leaphartdotcom
• Marc Lefkowitz - Hotel Bruce

she's won the pulitzer prize for poetry & the national book award, she's from cleveland & she gets WAY too little credit in her own home town. mary oliver's reclusiveness sometimes takes a back seat to her poetry, but her extraordinary verse, steeped in a mystical examination of nature, merits her a select place in the local literary pantheon. let's take a minute to celebrate the work of mary oliver.

With cell phone use on the rise, riding RTA is already a lot like "poetry in motion." But public transit may get even more verbose if a proposed collaboration between The Poets and Writers League of Greater Cleveland and RTA materializes. The project will display the work of a dozen local poets on buses and trains. A similar collaboration between the two groups in the early 1980s was a success, and RTA has indicated they will support and partially fund the project again. The League is pursuing additional funding needed to administer the program, according to those familiar with the project. The groups are pushing for the project to happen by the winter holidays.

Today�s announcement that OfficeMax would be bought by Boise Cascade was one of the worst kept secrets in town as shown by its steadily rising share price over the last few months. When I first heard about the acquisition seven weeks ago it was already a �done deal,� according to my source. By that time the stock was up to $5.50 a share from a 52-week low of $3.05. When Crain�s reporter Shannon Mortland wrote about the rumored deal last month the price was north of $6 a share. By last Friday it was over $7. Boise Cascade will pay $9 a share. As the company�s largest shareholder, OfficeMax CEO Michael Feuer�s stock is now worth about $54 million. But back in 1997, he told Crain�s that he was buying more of the stock, then at $10 a share, because it �was exceptionally low and an exceptional value.� Things change.

Tyler Hamilton, the US cyclist currently running fifth in the grueling Tour de France, is beginning to make a habit of doing things the hard way. Last year, he came in second in the Tour of Italy, despite riding most of the race with a fractured shoulder. He gritted his teeth so hard to overcome the pain that he had to have 11 of them recapped. Today he is up with the leaders in the Tour de France, this time with a fractured collarbone. "There may be a few more trips to the dentist in my future," Mr. Hamilton wrote in his race weblog last week. "It was pretty gritty out there."

Small money is the only money that is reliably clean. The Internet is the best way to raise it - quickly, easily and cheaply.

Speakeasy, an Internet service provider based in Seattle, wants to turn wireless socialists into neighborhood capitalists. It will allow its customers to charge their neighbors $20 to $100 a month for Wi-Fi access to their broadband connections. Speakeasy promises to handle the billing and will split the fee 50-50 with the subscriber. (In return for its half of the fee, Speakeasy provides the neighbors with access to its technical support, e-mail system and software.) Speakeasy started as a cyber cafe and has evolved into an Internet provider catering to a technologically sophisticated clientele. It says it has 50,000 to 100,000 subscribers nationwide, 40 percent of whom have Wi-Fi systems in their homes. That is in contrast to the nationwide Wi-Fi penetration of about 3 percent of all homes. Unlike most Internet providers, Speakeasy has long permitted its users to share broadband connections over Wi-Fi, largely as a way to provide free samples of its high-speed service.

Early last spring, NYCWireless co-founder Anthony Townsend got a note in the mail saying that someone on his network had been violating copyright laws. This type of note is becoming increasingly common as record companies and Hollywood studios subpoena Internet service providers (ISPs) for information about subscribers in order to stop people from trading songs and movies online. But Townsend's case was unusual: As the representative of a loose collection of wireless "hot spot" Internet access points, there was no way he or the relevant access point operator in New York's Bryant Park could identify or warn the file trader.

Users get lost inside PDF files, which are typically big, linear text blobs that are optimized for print and unpleasant to read and navigate online. PDF is good for printing, but that's it. Don't use it for online presentation.

Systems powered by the Extensible Markup Language might someday prove to be the standard for information sharing between businesses, but not in the near future. The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is sometimes pitched as a better and less expensive way to trade e-commerce information than the stalwart electronic data interchange (EDI). But contrary to popular perceptions, XML can actually cost more than the systems many companies already have in place, and it isn�t clear that most of them need the extra capabilities that XML offers. The take-away: Until XML reaches scale, it won't be a good choice to replace proven EDI systems. Managers should make the most of their existing EDI systems while keeping an eye on XML�s progress.

Newsweek and The Morning News are abuzz about The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and its relation to Eldred v. Ashcroft. Slashdot has an opinion, too.

"Based upon the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill," reads the credit, as though 20th Century Fox is ashamed to say its League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comes instead from a mere comic book. Suffice it to say that the comic opts to speak its mind, whereas the big-screen adaptation would prefer to blow your brains out of your ear with a rather loud BOOM. Comic books, which have long suffered at the bottom of the popular-culture food chain, slowly crawl heavenward, while the movies sink further and further into whatever lies beneath the cellar. Readers of Moore's series, initially about a Victorian Age Justice League cobbled together to retrieve an anti-gravity device, will look at the screen and recognize little of what they see. Instead, they will feel betrayed and bored and -- worst of all -- condescended to; those unfamiliar with the premise will wonder what's the bother at all.

The Ray Kurzweil Reader is a collection of essays by Ray Kurzweil on virtual reality, artificial intelligence, radical life extension, conscious machines, the promise and peril of technology, and other aspects of our future world. These essays, all published on KurzweilAI.net from 2001 to 2003, are now available as a PDF document for convenient downloading and offline reading. The 30 essays, organized in seven memes (such as "How to Build a Brain"), cover subjects ranging from a review of Matrix Reloaded to "The Coming Merging of Mind and Machine" and "Human Body Version 2.0."

Market-intelligence firm eMarketer says U.S. online ad spending will grow nearly 5% from last year, the first jump since the dot-com boom days of 2000.

=================================== Bloggers have spoken... Venue Voting and Agenda Voting has ended, and it's now time to RSVP for your Weblogger Meetup. See info below. =================================== What: International Blog Meetup Day When: Wednesday, Jul 16 @ 7PM (Please RSVP now!) Where: Arabica at Univ Cir 11300 Juniper Rd Cleveland, OH 44106 216-791-0300 Active Bloggers Near Cleveland, OH: 42 22 voted for a venue

Sean Gorman's professor called his dissertation "tedious and unimportant." Gorman didn't talk about it when he went on dates because "it was so boring they'd start staring up at the ceiling." But since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Gorman's work has become so compelling that companies want to seize it, government officials want to suppress it, and al Qaeda operatives -- if they could get their hands on it -- would find a terrorist treasure map. Tinkering on a laptop, wearing a rumpled T-shirt and a soul patch goatee, this George Mason University graduate student has mapped every business and industrial sector in the American economy, layering on top the fiber-optic network that connects them.

Interesting suggestion, though the term doesn't roll of my lips. Notwithstanding the theoretical implications of the small world phenomenon (i.e., "six degrees of separation"), Valdis Krebs has done much to demonstrate that in real social networks, most of the action is with friends and friends-of-friends. After all, the real world requires things like functional trust and a reasonable expectation of reciprocity. Even if our effective social reach isn't as long as we might hope, most of us don't do a very good job of managing the business relationships we do have. As Jan Twombly and Jeff Shuman would point out, if we approached our business friends-of-friends networks as "customers," we're more likely to be able to develop purposeful relationships that help us achieve our objectives, in turn.

German machine music pioneers Kraftwerk go cha-cha? It's not as unlikely a combination as it might sound, especially to Chile's Senor Coconut, who has just released El Baile Aleman, which is nothing other than a set of Kraftwerk tunes gone Latin, performed as cumbias, merengues, and, of course, cha-cha-chas. "I think that it's not just a covers album," explained Coconut, who's also known as Atom Heart and Uwe Schmidt, a longtime veteran of the German electronic dance scene. "It also unveils quite a lot about the original compositions and their significance as well as it is able to cause a huge question mark to pop up in your mind."

Avoid "X-rated" expressions They're not actually X-rated, but if you think about them that way you can remember that there is no x in etcetera. Nor is there one in espresso. Etcetera is Latin. It means "and the rest." Espresso is Italian, and it describes how coffee is "pressed out." It doesn't have anything to do with speed and therefore is not related to the word express. Although it can certainly speed you up if you drink it.

It is a little after 3 pm on Monday afternoon. I am watching the local Dopler Radar on Channel 5 and they have spotted a 'rotation' indicating a possible tornado by Ravenna. When they go to zoom in, a dialog box pops up... "This program has performed an illegal operation and will shut down...". I switch over to Channel 19, they are also showing their Dopler, as is Channel 3. After a few minutes I switch back to Channel 5, they have re-booted and are showing the latest radar scans. Not one minute goes by, when AGAIN, the same dialog box pops up... "This program has performed an illegal operation..." Looks like a Windows 2000 [or prior] dialog box. Well, in Cleveland we have redundant systems [3 local staions with 3 separate Doplers], but what about some little town in the middle of nowhere that has one Dopler and the interface running on the same Windows system as Channel 5's. Could lives be lost as the local station constantly re-boots trying to determine the path of the rotation? I wonder how many of our 'homeland security' and emergency systems are also based on a crash-prone OS?

Dean has appropriated the late Paul Wellstone�s line that he represents "the real Democratic Party." That�s arguable. The Democratic candidate closest to Paul Wellstone�s progressive politics is Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, a founder and co-chair of the congressional progressive caucus. Kucinich has a long record of progressive politics...

Q: I absolutely love coffee, but since I turned 40, my husband thinks I should give it up for health reasons. He says coffee is bad for your heart, among other things. Does he have a point? A: Coffee may pose problems for people who consume too much caffeine or who are extra-sensitive to caffeine. But for most people, drinking coffee is a harmless habit. If coffee did have serious health consequences, we'd be in big trouble. Almost 110 million Americans drink coffee every day, about 9 billion gallons a year. Early studies linked coffee drinking with pancreatic cancer, high blood pressure and heart disease. But this research often didn't account for the negative consequences of cigarette smoking, once a habit of many coffee drinkers. It wasn't the coffee but the accompanying smoking that was the real link to health problems. At the same time, caffeine is an addictive, mood-altering substance. Hundreds of compounds give brewed coffee its unique aroma and taste.

In 1950, Popular Mechanics saw the future. Disposable dishes, fax machines, milk in frozen bricks, candy made from rayon underwear, and house cleaning with a fire hose...

The internet isn't a tool. It's a medium. And it's not a medium for interactions between Dean and person A and Dean and person B. It's a medium for interactions between A and B --about-- Dean. In other words, by enabling an ideavirus to spread, the Internet allows someone without the money to buy a lot of TV to be the topic of (many) conversations.

• Why Blog?
• Want to Blog!
• What the heck is a Blog?

Cool Cleveland's Art/Tech/Dance series has taken Cleveland's creative class of interesting and engaged hipsters to some of Cleveland's best communities to party and meet new friends. For Thu 7/17, starting at 4PM, we move the party to Cleveland's hottest new neighborhood, North Collinwood, quickly becoming famous for the Beachland Ballroom, the Grovewood Tavern & Wine Bar, and it's prime location near the lake. At the request of Cool Cleveland readers who don't want the party to end, this time, we'll start you off with ethnic food from Cleveland's east side (everything from Sushi to fresh bratwurst to Hungarian pastry to Nigerian, Soul Food and Italian), throw in an open bar with beer and wine (courtesy MyOhioWine.com), and keep the party rolling with live performances (DJs, Cleveland Style Polka and wild tape loops). Then, if you haven't had enough, your ticket gets you into the Beachland Ballroom for free, with more live performance, music and film all night long. Area artists will be exhibiting work, organized by Arts Collinwood, and you can tour some of the neighborhood buildings just ripe for your creative juices, courtesy of Northeast Shores Development Corp. The party doesn't end at A/T/D/4 Beachland Summer Party. Check out what everyone knows: it doesn't have to be sponsored by a big corporation from out of town to be cool. We've got great neighborhoods, food and incredible art right here in Cleveland. Join your friends and make some new ones.

You've come to a friendly place, and we welcome you to our book-lovers' community. What is BookCrossing, you ask? It's a global book club that crosses time and space. It's a reading group that knows no geographical boundaries. Do you like free books? How about free book clubs?. Well, the books our members leave in the wild are free... but it's the act of freeing books that points to the heart of BookCrossing. Book trading has never been more exciting, more serendipitous, than with BookCrossing. Our goal, simply, is to make the whole world a library. BookCrossing is a book exchange of infinite proportion, the first and only of its kind.

O'Reilly has released the "Google Pocket Guide" to help Google users learn the fundamentals of a Google search. The book includes making the most of Google's special syntaxes, hidden options, and powerful combinations; consulting the Google dictionary; looking up individuals and businesses in the Google phonebook; finding related web sites and pages; and restricting or expanding a Google search by subject, web site, domain, time, title, etc.