Fred Sandsmark's Blog

I won't attempt to answer the question that's the subject of this post, but I will point out that the Web PLUS local newspapers can yield some cool stuff. Such as this amazing tidbit, which turned up in my Google news alert for "Sandsmark."

From the International Falls, Minnesota Daily Journal:

50 YEARS AGO
Fairland’s last remaining dwelling will be moved by the owner, Ed Sandsmark, to Birchdale. Friends and relatives of Mr. and Mrs. Sandsmark, Fairland, gathered at their home Saturday evening for an informal farewell party. Mrs. Sandsmark will operate the telephone switchboard there.

Labels: fun, history, Internet, news

I've had an iGoogle page for a long time, but am just about ready to give up on it and return to the wide-open spaces of the "Classic Home." The main reason is that it takes a long time to load (not always Google's fault, I realize). And today I got this message.



Check me if I'm wrong here, but is this saying I can't display secure content in an iGoogle gadget? That's not good.

Labels: email, Internet, technology

Websites go down. It goes with the territory. Fasthosts says that 34 percent of companies it surveyed have had outages in the past year. (Sorry, no link.) So, what do you do when it happens?



Advertising Age blushes, and then makes readers smile. This seems as good a strategy as any. (The screen capture was taken earlier today.)

Labels: fun, Internet, technology

You see the news stories every once in a while: a letter, mailed dozens of years ago and presumed lost, appears miraculously at the home of someone. The long-lost letter trope is also used in movies.

Well, it happened to me. How else can you explain this?



That's right: I got an AOL CD in the mail the other day. It has all the hallmarks of AOL mailings of 15 years ago: Unlimited dial-up access! One free month! No credit card required! Even the 10-digit registration number and two-word password that AOL used back in the 1990s.

Pew Internet now finds that 63 percent of US households now have broadband. The target market for this sort of offer must be miniscule. (How many computers even have dial-up modems anymore?) I wonder what the response rate for this kind of offer is, and what the economics of it are.

Labels: fun, Internet, ISP, marketing, technology

I saw this chart in a piece of marketing literature and had to laugh.



Looks like about 85% of stuff falls into the "Other" category. It reminds me of my paper filing system: one big bin labeled "Miscellaneous."

Labels: fun, marketing, technology

Back in June 2000 I wrote an article for California Computer News about OneShare.com I had met the CEO, Lance Lee, at a White Lotus retreat; I was doing a package of stories on online investing, and OneShare made a fun sidebar, I thought.

Not long ago, I saw an article by Mike Cassidy in the San Jose Mercury News. OneShare is still going strong, and Lance is still running it. So much has changed in the last nine years; this continuity made me happy.

Here's my original article. I'm pretty happy with it, almost a decade later.

ONESHARE.COM SELLS BIG-NAME STOCKS A SHARE AT A TIME

By Fred Sandsmark

One of the numbers you often see in stock reports is volume — the number of individual shares of stock that change hands in a single day. With today's huge institutional investors and speedy electronic trading, it's not unusual for the volume to reach a billion — yes, billion — shares a day.

In that context, it seems unusual to sell just one share of stock. But that's exactly what OneShare.com does: it sells single shares of about 100 different stocks, ranging from AT&T to the World Wrestling Federation.

Lance Lee, a former broker, founded San Francisco-based OneShare.com in 1996 and remains the company's CEO. "I noticed that people were trying to transact single shares," Lee recalled. "My brokerage, like most brokerages, really discouraged it. It's actually very costly for the company."

So Lee started a company specifically to sell single shares. Oneshare.com began as a direct-mail business, but has grown into a busy online operation, with two-thirds of its business done over the Web. The company has sold 35,000 shares since it was founded.

Lee estimates that 30 percent of the stocks he's sold are bought for children, by their parents or grandparents, to mark special events or to teach kids about investing. His company serves this market with a colorful "My First Stock" frame and tutorial brochure. Oneshare.com provides its service for about $30 a share (plus the cost of the stock and optional framing). That may sound steep, but when compared with a broker, it's not bad. "If you go to a deep-discount broker, their com-
mission might be just $8," explained Lee. "But their certificate fee might be $25. It can add up."

And in spite of those fees, a broker might not treat the expensive piece of paper with care. For example, many brokerages fold certificates for mailing. OneShare.com ships them flat, since many customers display the certificates like works of art. A prime example is Disney stock (OneShare.corn's best-seller), which features a image of Walt with Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy and other characters.

But stock certificates are more than pretty pictures. Each share of stock comes with rights and privileges. For example, every shareholder receives the company's annual report, and can attend — and vote at — the company's annual shareholders' meeting. (In darker days at Apple Computer in 1986, Steve Jobs sold all but one of his shares of Apple stock. He unloaded the shares to protest John Scully's management, but he still wanted to attend Apple's annual meeting.)

Some companies even send gifts to their shareholders — for example, McDonalds has sent coupons for food, and Wrigley has sent chewing gum. Companies that pay dividends mail checks (sometimes for just pennies per share) to shareholders.

And in select cases, a single share can confer the right to invest in the company without using a broker. This is called a Direct Reinvestment Plan (DRP). Shareholders in companies with DRPs (some examples are Campbell's Soup and General Electric) can invest as little as $10 per month, while some DRPs allow monthly purchases of up to $10,000.

But OneShare.com doesn't oversell these programs; its goal remains educational. "Our aim is to teach people about the fundamentals of stock investing," says Lee. "And not to make day traders," he adds with a chuckle.

Labels: clips, fun, money, personal history, writing

I guess the immediacy of Facebook has drawn me away from the ol' Blog. Sorry about that.

I had my first piece published by the CSUEB alumni magazine recently. It's about Assistant Professor Nidhi Mahendra's work with Alzheimer's Disease patients. Hope you like it.

Labels: clips, neuroscience, writing

Some days the Internet delivers wonderful treasure. Today's one of those days, when I got an email from a guy I'd interviewed eight years ago. With his permission, I've posted the email here. The article in which he's quoted - published in 2001 - is below his note. (Remember, this was before WiFi or iPhones or Facebook.)

Hi Fred,

I stumbled over this article on your website while I was searching google for myself haha. It's Friday and I was bored at work...

Emailing just to say hi, as requested in the Afterword of the piece. I remember answering your questions (I must have droned on and on), but wasn't sure of which magazine it was for. In the end I figured it never got published, which I thought was a shame as I never got to read it. Anyway, glad it did get published and I enjoyed your article (even the stuff not about me!), I'd forgotten about using the internet in the Indian chap's little house.

Anyway, thanks for putting it online. I was happy to read it.

Best wishes for your future publishing undertakings.

Graeme
Glasgow, Scotland
(currently in London, England)

World Wide Wandering

Online travelogues are informative and easy to create, even while you’re traveling

By Fred Sandsmark

Most of us create a packing list - at least a mental one - when we prepare for a trip. It has basics like changes of clothes, credit cards, prescriptions, and maps, as well as other helpful things like guidebooks, beach towels, and binoculars. But these days, many travelers are also packing digital cameras and laptop computers to document their trips - and they're posting their adventures on the Web, sometimes right from the road.

Take Brice Wong of Vancouver, British Columbia. Last fall, before embarking on a 10-day road trip with two friends to go mountain biking in Moab, Utah, Wong packed a "mobile office" - computer, digital camera, PDA, several mobile phones, and an inverter (to run 120-volt devices from the cigarette lighter) - in his Mazda B4000 4X4 pickup, along with the bikes. Wong and friends produced a travelogue, hilarious and occasionally profane (this was a pickup-full of twentysomethmg males, after all), and posted it at www.futurelooks.com. The journal's not just for laughs, though; the descriptions of Moab's mountain-bike trails are frequently as vivid as the famous red rocks themselves.

Why did Wong create the travelogue? "People are nosy," he says with a laugh, "so I figured, why not share our fun and adventures with the world? Plus, it gives people who have never been to Moab a true sense of what it's really like. Sometimes travel agents and magazines and promotional materials really don't give you the whole truth, but if you read someone's journal or diary you're going to get the real deal."

What’s my motivation?

Another good reason to keep an online travelogue: It's easier than ever. A handful of Web sites make travelogue creation a simple click-and-type operation that any technophobe can handle. But the motivation for individual traveloguers varies. For Graeme Renfrew - who quit a "subterranean desk job" in Glasgow, Scotland, cashed in his pension, and set out on a 14-monih trip around the world - a travelogue is an easy, inexpensive way to check in with the family (his travelogue can be found at www.travelpod.com). "It's cheaper than phoning home," says Renfrew. "The Web travelogue lets me tell them everything is OK from a distance. And if they aren't interested, it doesn't bother me."

Vanity drives a lot of traveloguing, too. "We refer to it as ego gratification," says J. R. Johnson, chief executive officer of VirtualTourist.com. "It's the same reason that your grandparents sat you down in front of the screen to see their slide show of Europe. There's some bragging involved in showing all the places you've been."

But Johnson thinks most traveloguers who use his service just want to share their knowledge. "For the most part, our members just really like helping other people," he says. "They had a good time, and they want other travelers to do the same." That often means posting specific restaurant and hotel recommendations, sightseeing suggestions, and hard-won "insider" advice.

Some people use a travelogue for capturing impressions, telling personal stories, and flexing creative wings. (Adjective alert: Amateur travelogues frequently contain prose as purple as the final fleeting flares of a simmering sunset over the tranquil waters of a steamy tropical South Pacific atoll.) Other travelers just post a skeleton of their travelogue as they go, recording events in real time, and then flesh out their account with photos, movies, sounds, and Web links when they get hack home.

Bring it on home

You don't need to carry a lot of equipment to create an online travelogue. Even Wong (of the mobile office) tries to be sensible: "I know there are lots of different sorts of gadgets and stuff on the market," he says, "but sometimes you have to really sit and think, 'How practical and reliable is this thing I'm going to be lugging around with me?' Because, man, I tell you, I hate carrying useless stuff."

People who choose to travel light can use public computers in libraries, copy shops, and hotels. There are also cyber-cafes - coffeehouses that sell Internet access by the minute. They're not hard to find in North America, or even abroad. "Last year while in Chiang Mai, Thailand, I saw five Internet cafes side by side," recalls Luc Levesque, who runs the TravelPod Web site. "Just about everyone, from restaurants to coffee shops to public libraries to laundromats, has a PC with a modem waiting for your five dollars."

Renfrew agrees - and says that these spots can often provide a window into the local culture. "There are Internet connections anywhere there are tourists with money to spend and friends to contact," he says. "One of the places I went into to check my E-mail [in India] was just some bloke's two-room house, with blue-washed walls and ceilings so low I had to crouch to get in. There was a shrine to Shiva in the same room as the clunky PC, and his mum and sister were doing each other’s hair and singing behind me. It wasn’t exactly high-tech - but it worked.”

How to create your own travelogue

Many Web sites can help you produce a travelogue. Here are a few of our favorites; all are free and none require technical expertise.

Blogger (www.blogger.com) creates Web logs or "blogs," which are just simple Web sites whose contents are organized chronologically. A blog can produce a serviceable travelogue, but you must provide the Web space to host it.

By Travelers (www.bytravelers.com) lets you link a map from its library with your travelogue. Otherwise, the site is bare-bones, so the focus is on storytelling rather than flashy features.

TravelPod (www.travelpod.com) can send E-mail to a preset group of people every time your travelogue is updated. It also gives the option of assigning a password to a travelogue, so only friends and family can see it. Photos and movies can be added, too.

VirtualTourist (www.virtualtourist.com) is an extensive travel community site that hosts travelogues. It asks specific questions about hotels, restaurants, nightlife, tourist traps, and such to elicit users’ opinions. One clever feature: You can use photos posted by other members (the site boasts more than 140,000 members) as electronic postcards.

AfterWords:

This article appeared in the short-lived Mazda Zoom-Zoom magazine in winter of 2001. It remains one of my favorites, mostly because I had the good fortune of locating wonderful interview subjects. Unfortunately, I've lost contact with them. Brice and Graeme, if you find this, please drop a line!

Copyright © 2001, 2006, 2009 / Fred Sandsmark / Marble Publishing

Labels: clips, email, fun, gadgets, Internet, personal history, travel, writing

Our family was driving to South Dakota when Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon. I remember watching it on a snowy black-and-white TV, somewhere in the heartland. (Normally, we wouldn't spring for a motel - much less one with a TV - so this was a big deal.)

That summer, Gulf Oil gave away paper cutout models of the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) if you bought a tank of gas. Mike and I got several of these during the trip, and one survives to this day - it's been hanging in the attic for decades.



Another of the paper models was built with a Black Cat payload. That one never made it back.

P.S. Turns out you can download, print out, and build your own Gulf LEM, along with many other spacecraft. Now that's what the Internet was made for.

Labels: history, Internet, news, personal history, science, travel, TV

I had the privilege of writing a profile of UC Berkeley law student Samika Boyd for the current issue of Boalt Hall Transcript, the alumni magazine of Berkeley Law. She's a remarkable woman; I hope you like the article. (There's a lot more to her story that was left out due to space considerations.)

I have several other pieces in the magazine: an article on global warming and the law of the sea in the arctic region; piece on hedge fund regulation; and a short profile of Jess Bravin, the Wall Street Journal's Supreme Court Correspondent. To read them you have to download a PDF of the entire Spring 2009 issue of Boalt Hall Transcript.

Labels: clips, law, people, writing