Category Archives: starbucks

The future of corporate websites

Posted on by
Reply

I really like this statement by Jeremiah Owyang, The Web Strategist, in a post discussing the new My Starbuck’s website:

“The future of corporate websites enable customers to submit, define, and vote for next-generation products in collaboration with product teams.”

Man, wouldn’t it be nice if this was what we in libraries could experience with our vendors? I am a huge proponent of open source tools in libraries, including open source library systems like Koha and Evergreen. I wonder though if they would be gaining as much ground in the marketplace if library systems vendors were already doing what Jeremiah suggests.

Something is coming to town

Posted on by
5

Something is coming to town…My town…and it’s not Santa. It’s Starbucks. My oh my, what a surprise. We live in a place that is on the outer edges of a large metropolitan area, far enough away from bigger suburbs to be affordable, but not so far away that we miss all of the amenities of living in a big metro area. And truth be told, we already had a Starbucks in town, inside of the local Dominick’s grocery store. I hardly ever went there, though, mainly because that store’s prices are too high and we can get groceries a lot cheaper elsewhere. Anyway, imagine our shock as we drove by a certain area in our town and noticed a construction site with a big “Starbucks coming soon” sign.

Like the opening of an Apple retail store about a 1/2 hr. away, having a Starbucks so nearby is definitely a double-edged sword. In other words, dangerous.

And then I wonder whether my excitement at Starbucks coming to town shows just how shallow I am.

Back online again

Posted on by
Reply

It is great to have high speed Internet again after being without it for over a week. We are settling in nicely here in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. We all really like this location and we are enjoying the many conveniences such as tons of places to shop for groceries and other things. As an example of the benefits to living close to everything, Monday night, after a long wait, Comcast service people came to install cable TV and Internet access. I had bought a cable modem when we had cable Internet installed in our house in Indiana 3 1/2 years ago, and I assumed I could use that same modem here. Unfortunately, Comcast doesn’t support it and told me I had to buy a new one. I zipped down the road to Best Buy and found a nice Motorola cable modem for $75 (by the way, that’s less than half the cost of the modem I purchased from the cable company in Indiana when we moved there). The entire trip took only 15 minutes.

Another nicety? There is a Starbucks less than a block away. (Funny though, I have yet to go there.) I badly need a haircut, but the nice thing is that there are two barber shops within a stone’s throw of our house.

Status of our move

Posted on by
Reply

We’ve been going through a lot of uncertainty about our move back to the Chicago area. For one thing the time it is taking to get our Indiana house ready to show to potential buyers is enormous. There is so much to do and it is overwhelming. My brothers Dan and Tim helped out tremendously when they came last Friday through Saturday to paint and clean up the yard, but there is still a lot to do. A lot of the burden has fallen on Michele because I have been at work and during off hours, I have been working on catching up with grading and other work for the class I’m currently teaching for the LEEP program at UIUC GSLIS.

I’m happy to note, though, that last week we finally found a place to live in the northwestern suburbs of Chicago. The town we will be living in has a wonderful location about an hour’s drive from my in-law’s, with great schools for Keegan (and Tristan, who will start kindergarten next year). Our house is across the street from the commuter rail station so it will be a short walk to take the train to my work. There is a Starbucks one block away. The nice public library is a short walk of about four blocks. We won’t have a yard of our own but there are lots of parks and playgrounds we can walk to. We really praise God for providing for us and we are looking forward to the move in a few weeks.

We have a local family coming to see our house early next week and we hope that they will make an offer on our house. That would be a real answer to prayer, also.