mb palaver

WebPalaver: Jabberjaw, or Lessons from an Urban Mom

Some time after my friend Jabber's baby was born, she (Jabber, that is, not the baby) took to the web and started sharing her experience raising a baby in Manhattan.  Eight months ago, to my great delight, Jabber and her family moved back down to Washington, where they belong, in my humble, self-interested opinion.  Now Jabber's focus is on life with her toddler in DC, as her blog, Jabberjaw, puts it.  But if you're a new mom you don't have to live in DC to benefit from Jabber's now DC-centric blog, any more than you had to live in New York to benefit from it before, because she also chronicles the place-transcendent experience of life with a youngster, and provides exhaustive reviews of baby products (for want of a better term).  And even if you don't have children, she's an entertaining writer who's always fun to read (and those baby product reviews come in mighty handy for baby showers).

MoviePalaver: Karen's Movies, or Which Women To Watch

Occasionally friends will tell me they've let their Netflix memberships lapse because they can't think of enough movies to rent.  As someone with 115 movies in my queue, I can't quite relate, but I do have a suggestion, at least for fans of old movies.  My friend Karen, a/k/a The Queen of All Media, started a blog highlighting movies everyone should see.

Karen's current post, on the 1939 film "The Women," is quite timely, because a much-promoted remake opens tomorrow.  The original starred Norma Shearer, Rosalind Russell, Joan Crawford, and Paulette Godard. The new one, as you know if you've turned on a television in the last two weeks, stars half the women working in Hollywood today (Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Debra Messing, Jada Pinkett Smith, Bette Midler, Candice Bergan, Carrie Fisher, Cloris Leachman . . .).

Karen says:  "If the reviews for the new one are good, you may want to wait before you rent this. If they are bad, however, as most remakes are, I strongly recommend renting [the original] instead."  Given that the one opening tomorrow currently has a 34 on metacritic, you might want to look for the original.  (It doesn't appear to be available on Netflix at the moment, but you can find it at blockbuster.com if that's your thing.) Then again, Roger Ebert gave the remake a good review, so your mileage may vary.

To read Karen's review of "The Women, and for more classic movie recommendations, visit Karen's Movies.

TechPalaver: A Couple of Comments about Email Subscriptions

If you'd like to subscribe to mbpalaver via email, just enter your email address into the yellow box on the upper left corner and hit the "subscribe" button.

If you are an email subscriber, you might receive tomorrow or later an email with a post from last night.  Feedburner is supposed to send out emails between 5 and 7 am containing any posts that went up since the day before.  Sometimes they don't.  I don't know why, though it seems most likely to happen when the expiration date of the information is particularly short.

Also, although the subscription emails do include photos that accompany the post, they evidently don't always include an indication that a video clip appeared with it.  So if you want to see a video of Mats and Yannick playing tennis on a minicourt on top of a barge on the Seine, and get some infectious music (including a cover of OutKast's "Hey Ya!") stuck in your head, just go directly to mbpalaver.  (By the way, I replaced the youtube link with one from Dailymotion, as the picture quality is markedly better.)  In the future I'll try to indicate in posts when video clips are included.  I wouldn't want you to feel deprived.

WebPalaver: 12 Months and Counting

Today is mb palaver's first anniversary.  This is my 163rd post (which amounts to about one post every 2 1/4 days, which makes me feel much better about those weeks that have gone by post-less (I'm talking to you, last week)).  This has been lots of fun, and I am so thankful for all the encouragement you've given me over the last year.  You've commented 190 times, and provided countless comments and encouragement offline.  As I embark on year two, I pledge to add more bells and whistles; in the past I've always opted for posts instead of bells and whistles and, let's face it, time is limited.  One must take breaks to watch "30 Rock."

Please don't hesitate to chime in.  If you don't feel like commenting publicly but have any suggestions, complaints, corrections, or truckloads of Smarties you want to unload, you can always click the "email me" link up there on the left side of your screen.  And don't forget you can always subscribe to mbpalaver's feed.  (If you have trouble getting the email subscription to kick in, let me know -- there appear to be some glitches in the system.) In the meantime, I'd like to intrude on your kindness further, and ask you to mention mbpalaver.com to your friends.   After all, imagine the possibilities if you tell two friends . . .

and they tell two friends . . .

and so on . . . and so on . . . and so on . . . .

WebPalaver: End of Typepad Probation

Yesterday marked the end of my free trial with Typepad, the blogging service I use for this site.  Since I launched the site November 12, I've posted 53 times (54 counting this one) and you've posted 91 comments.  Thanks to all who have been reading, and to all who have posted comments so far:

Bill, Julie, Pudding Man, NorthernOutlaw, Mysterywriter, shootoutqueen/Ohiogirl/teegirl/Sybil, Jabber, Karen, contessa, S.Metzger, JD, Phil McT, eggy, Dubliner, and Rick

Don't hesitate to email me through the link above to the right (mbpalaver@gmail.com) with suggestions, complaints, story ideas, or Caribbean time-share offers.  And don't forget that you don't have to reveal any personal information to comment.

A couple of notes on Typepad:
Before starting this blog I dithered for a while on what blogging service I should use.  I fairly quickly narrowed it down to Typepad, which is a paid service, and Blogger, which is free (and now owned by Google).  I thought the technical support would be better for a paid service like Typepad than a free service like Blogger.  I can't say how Blogger's service is, but Typepad has lived up to my expectations.  In addition to a searchable "knowledge base," they offer personalized help via service tickets.  Whenever I've posted a question, someone has responded within a day.  Although a couple of times the first answer has gone slightly over my head (which isn't hard for me on technical issues), the help desk people have patiently spelled things out when I've confessed to being an eejit.

Typepad publicizes its free 30-day trial, but if you use promotion code MOVABLE you can increase it to 90 days free. (Thanks to How to Blog for that tip.)

(In case you're wondering, the above photo of Rosleague Manor, in Letterfrack, Ireland, has nothing to do with anything.)