Perfect Duluth Day | Duluth MN Blog, Events, News and More » wildgoose

Cravaack New Hampshire Dodgeball

wildgoose — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 02:19:32 +0000

Of all the obvious jabs at MN 8th District Congressman Raymond “Chip” Cravaack for moving to New Hampshire – which reached a fever pitch today for the New Hampshire primary – this is definitely the funniest. (Note to moderators, it’s blatantly partisan, certain to test the new commenting policy).

Not sure if the movie clips are fair-use or not so I suppose it could get yanked at any time.

PDD Sightings

wildgoose — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 19:26:56 +0000

This summer I took the folks out west to visit family and began what I hope may become a growing gallery on PDD. Shots of the PDD sticker/logo and where it has traveled (or been spotted).

The Mount Rushmore shots turned out ok ….

Perfect Duluth Day sighting at Mount Rushmore

But it’s the accidental pictures with the roaming, wild asses that turned out to be even more of a treat for me.

Wild Ass PDD Sighting, South Dakota

Now, who’s got some more?

Symptoms that men Paul Lundgren Should Never Ignore

wildgoose — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 04:05:44 +0000

Now on Yahoo News, Paul Lundgren’s Doppelganger. And it looks like he needs to take it easy.

6 Symptoms that Men Should Never Ignore

“You’re not dead til you’re warm and dead.”

wildgoose — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 19:39:05 +0000

Duluth got a mention in this 2010 Ted Talk by cell biologist Mark Roth: Suspended Animation is in our Grasp

[ted id=796]

More specifically he mentions the miraculous case of Janice Goodger …

There was a 65-year-old woman in Duluth, Minnesota last year that was found frozen and without a pulse in her front yard one morning in the winter, and they brought her back to life. The next day, she was doing so well, they wanted to run tests on her. She got cranky and just went home.

RIP, Clearwire in Twin Ports

wildgoose — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 02:08:27 +0000

Got this email last week.

It reads, in part:

As of 11/1/11, we no longer are selling new service plans in your Clearwire market. However, please know that your existing Clearwire service and device(s) will continue to work in the same great way that they have in the past. You’ll also continue to receive online and telephone support from Clearwire Customer Care whenever you need it.

Something funny happened on the way through the drive-thru

wildgoose — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 01:02:45 +0000

Here’s an actual photo of a letter that someone I work with received this week. She was just driving through the drive thru minding her business when the car in front of her paid for her coffee and egg sandwich, anonymously. It definitely brought a smile which I guess is the whole idea. Reminds me of that saying that was popular in the 90s: “Practice random acts of kindness and senseless beauty.” But it’s not random, at all. It’s called the “Drive Thru Difference” and I had heard about it being done as a consciousness raising campaign of KTIS-FM in the Twin Cities, and even read a blog about it awhile back. But apparently it’s happening in the Twin Ports with KTIS sister station KDNI-FM leading the way.

If you’re wondering about the mechanics of it (which I was), here’s a YouTube video of singer-songwriter Brandon Heath (who I really like) actually doing it at a Dunn Bros in the Twin Cities:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucvWmMXNay4

“>Brandon Heath Demonstrates the Drive-Thru Difference

“The Moon” 89.1 FM WGZS

wildgoose — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 16:09:35 +0000

Fond du Lac Band’s 89.1 FM WGZS “The Moon” was one of several Native American Radio stations mentioned in a report on MPR News this morning. I have been aware that the station was coming to the airwaves for over a year now and I have been listening randomly since it signed on in September. They are literally building the station from the ground up, and a week or so ago I noticed that the budding station had powered up enough to reach much of Duluth. It’s occasionally scratchy but I can pick it up at home in the Hillside and around town in the vehicle.

To me, it’s awesome. It’s very raw, and real. There are no commercial interruptions which is enough to recommend it right there (not that there is anything against commercial radio). The programming consists mainly of 70s and 80s rock, although when it signed on in September, it seemed to be dominated by deep Motown and soul cuts from the 60s. And just yesterday I was listening and there was some old time country. Really, it’s random. There are always some traditional Native American tracks sprinkled in and I expect more and more homegrown music and public affairs programming as they get their footing. From what I’ve personally observed, spoken word programming consists mainly of an introduction to Ojibwe language (priceless) and I did hear one interview about a community event that was upcoming. My recommendation is to set 89.1 FM on your car or home presets and give it some time.

The FDL Tribal Newspaper did a story about it in the October 2011 edition, you can click here for a PDF

What’s all the fuss about AimClear and Visit Duluth?

wildgoose — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 21:22:05 +0000

Like with parenting and other stuff I write about, I understand just enough about social media, search engine optimization and search engine analytics to be dangerous.

But I think I might understand more than the marketing “gurus” at Visit Duluth.

Marty Weintraub is a nationally (internationally?) sought out speaker and consultant on every kind of web marketing that you can imagine – Social Media, Keyword Search, Ad Placement, and so on. He also, apparently, loves Duluth. So he did some research on how the community is being marketed online and produced a study for free to give us all some food for thought on how Visit Duluth is spending their (tax generated) budget and if it couldn’t be optimized to deliver better results in the digital age.

Here’s the study

He came up with gems like this …

… Duluth’s automatically generated Facebook page is in the top of the results, 3 or 4 places above “Camp Bow Wow” in Duluth, Georgia. Really Duluth? Are you even trying to generate buzz for the Visit Duluth page on Facebook?

So what was Visit Duluth’s response to this well-intentioned free advice from a local business person who is an expert in the field? “We took a very serious look at the study they put out there,” [Visit Duluth] said. “But, actually (we) ended up finding a lot of flaws in it. A lot of problems with it.” source, Kevin Jacobsen, Northland’s News Center (but only because I can’t find an actual news release or rebuttal directly from Visit Duluth itself on their website.)

Instead of disputing the results with a knee jerk reaction, why not just admit that he might be on to something, that we could do some online marketing maybe a percentage or two of the $10M they are spending in print TV and whatever else right now. And above all THANK the guy for his free research and ~~move on~~ er, move forward.