Turning Raleigh Trees into Hyperlocal News Reporters by calishat.com →

How it works: when you ask a tree for local news, the program checks to find streets nearby. It then uses a news API to check WRAL, WTVD, and WNCN for mentions of those streets in the last 90 days. Finally, it bundles that information into a ChatGPT prompt and generates a summary (while links to the news articles used for the summary appear beneath.)

She will also be giving these trees the ability to give local restaurant recommendations and a heads up on nearby construction.

What wonderful and brilliant ideas. Great for local news websites.

Mosey on over to her site for other clever ideas and ways of massaging search engines and RSS tools.

Magazines We Love That Aren’t Our Own by Mountain Gazette →

A magazine at its best is a collection of ideas, carefully put together. It’s a mixtape of good people playing good music with words, photos, art, and opinion. Because it exists in a physical space, magazines can have an outsized influence on the world around us.

They are all proof of the Great Print Revival happening with magazines at the moment. They all make consistently great issues, have their own voices, and you should give them a try. 

It’s sooo good to see independent magazines making a comeback. There’s nothing like the tactile experience of feeling and smelling freshly printed issues in a bookstore (or the delight of seeing a magazine parchment sitting in the mailbox).

The folks over at Mountain Gazette, a once dormant magazine recently revived and doing well, share a list of other specialty/boutique print magazines they like.

Most publish a few times a year packed with coffee-table quality of the old days of yore. The stuff these folk put out is amazing, writing and design wise.

I’m a bit envious of them all because it’s something I used to do but gosh darn it’s a whole lotta hard work I wouldn’t have the patience for these days.

Anyway check out their list and why not subscribe to one or two that pique your interest?

Old school rocks, still.

The most harmful belief I had as a beginner photographer by aows (Adrian) →

I used to think that good photographers consistently take great photographs, and only rarely they make something subpar. Surely, their “keeper rate” was much better than mine. 

This was one of the most harmful beliefs I held when I was taking my first steps in photography. Because when you don’t allow yourself to fail, you play it safe; and when you play it safe, there’s no growth.

Making a bad photograph is not the risk: the lack of experimentation and play is the real danger.

No matter where you are in your photography journey, always keep trying new things. Keep shooting.

Fail, fail more and get better along the path of failures, good advice. It’s how we improve over time (or at least know when to move onto other things after banging one’s head long enough).

Watch video via Invidious→ or Youtube→

Looks like Adweek got their hands on a leaked pitch deck from OpenAI to big publishers on their “Preferred Publisher” program:

First, it is available only to “select, high-quality editorial partners” and its purpose is to help ChatGPT users more easily discover and engage with publishers’ brands and content.

Additionally, members of the program receive priority placement and “richer brand expression” in chat conversations, and their content benefits from more prominent link treatments.

Does this mean the big guys can pay to play on the web while us little people get shoved aside (again)?
, a media analyst:

↳ read the rest →

In a side note about pop-up newsletters, Craig Mod wrote:

With most creative work, the trick is to focus on habit formation. Somewhat counterintuitively, don’t aspire to be someone who writes a book — don’t be a sucker waiting for “inspiration” — instead aspire to be someone who writes on schedule. Books naturally flow from rigorous writing habits.

Very wise way of looking at it and not just in book writing…

As in:

Don’t aspire to be a newsletter writer
Don’t aspire to be a blogger
Don’t aspire to be a gardener, etc.

Just do the thing and do it regularly, at least for a while and see where it takes you.

The universe responds to action and it’s how it can — subtly or outrageously — steer you in ways unexpected to what you were looking for all along.¹

Something else I’ve gleaned from Craig’s advice:

Don’t aspire for subscribers
Don’t aspire for readers
Don’t aspire for comments, etc.

Just hunker down and do the thing! And please make sure it’s something you enjoy.