Monday, May 9, 2011

Hi,

Tomorrow’s the Astor Place Riot anniversary (1849).  A British actor, William Charles Macready was performing Macbeth at the Astor Place Opera House and complained about the “vulgarity” of the American life.  Led by American actor Edwin Forrest, angry crowds rioted smashing windows, etc.  The riot was quelled by troops and 22 people were killed and 26 injured.  Better think twice before complaining about the way we dress.  🙂

How energy efficient is your house?  The non profit EfficiencyPA is looking for a few homes to take part in a home energy efficiency audit.  Participants will get a home energy savings kit from Duquesne Light and be audited by Federal Department of Energy.  Hopefully, several will be named Home Energy Heroes.  Dead line for registering is May 25.  More info at their web site.  Awards will be given at the Allegheny County Green and Innovation Festival at Hartwood Acres on October 8.

I’ve heard of a bed in a box, but a bath in a box?  Yes, Bath Simple has a web site that lets you design you’re own bathroom and they then send you all the “parts” in a box (I assume multiple boxes).  Hire one of their installers, your own installer or if you’re handy, do it yourself.  You can put the old “parts” back in the box and send it to Bath Simple for recycling.  Kind of weird, kind of different.

They are giving free admission to the Clayton and the Frick on May 18 as part of National Museum day.  Reservations are strongly recommended.  More info at 412.371.0600 or their web site.

I don’t understand how anyone can own a business these days and not have the best web site they can afford, particularly in my business.  I just finished a project for the Bed and Breakfast Association of Western PA, of which I’m a member.  I’m co-chair of the membership committee and took it upon myself to find Bed and Breakfasts from Centre County west that don’t belong to our association.  I came up with 130 through various searches (I’m sure there’s a lot of other Inns I missed).  Almost a third of them don’t have web sites of their own.  Some just have listings on places like Yelp, Manta, Google Places, etc.  All very good sources of potential guests, but you need your own web site that conveys all the information someone deciding where to stay need.  While I’m ranting about this, it’s amazing how many of those web sites I did go to that do not have ez e-mail.  Some make you fill out a form and some just plain don’t have e-mail on their site, the only way to contact them is by snail mail or phone call.  When I started my on line reservation system, my very first reservation through it was for a one night stay, mid week from a couple touring America from Australia. I guarantee I never would have seen them if they had to book via a phone call or snail mail request.   Then there’s my favorite pet peeve, when you go to the the effort to find a particular web site, a page appears with a picture and an Icon that says “Click Here to Enter”.  OMG, I just went to all this effort to find you, now you want me to Click Here?  Guess who never Clicks Heres?  🙂

What brought this tirade up (besides my quest for new Inn members)  is there’s two things I was planning on talking about and neither have a web site.  There’s an Inn that has recently opened in Sistersville, WV.  It’s a pretty big place, the article I read on them didn’t give the number of rooms, but I can tell it’s pretty big.  I don’t believe it’s an overly fancy Inn, but they don’t have a web site.  They have 49 reviews on their Google Places, they even have one review from the United Kingdom!  But no web site!  Here’s an article in today’s Trib if you want more info.

Finally, the Muddy Cup Coffee in Bellevue has just expanded to the corner of East Ohio and Cedar Avenues over here on the Northside.  They are in the space formerly occupied by JR’s Bar, a long time nuisance bar.  Renee Tokar now has two coffee shops and no web site!  Again, I can do a Google search and find out that they exist.  I can even find out details about them, but no site (or sites since there’s two).  Renee seems to be trying to set herself apart from the other Northside coffee shops Crazy Mocha, Buena Vista and Amani.  She is encouraging professional and amateur musicians to stop by and play, practice or play.  To keep my theme going about whining about web presence, I read about the Muddy Cup in this month’s Northside Chronicle.  When I went to THEIR web site to link to the article like I just did with the Trib, the article doesn’t appear on the Chronicle’s site.

OK, I’m going to stop whining now, I’m going outside to enjoy this courgeous day.  I hope you can get outside as well,

ed