Reflect, reassess and redress your New Year’s Eve goals. I feel like this is an optimal time to do so because the fiscal year has changed, summer solstice has passed and we’ve begun the second half of the 12-month calendar. I can’t find a better reason to do this post other than the looming six-month deadline I’ve given myself to get my life together — at least at the unusually high standard I’ve set for myself.

Ah, goals. Inspiring and elusive alike.

Every year I do some NYE goals because they make me feel like I’m working toward something, whether the goals are personal, professional or somewhere in-between. It’s not about the summit, it’s about the climb, so to speak. I wrote about my NYE goals at the beginning of this year, working on them for a full week following Christmas. Seven in all.

Here they are again:

• Write more for myself
• Take more pictures
• Make a journalism backup plan
• Travel more
• Take women more seriously
• Forgive those that want to be forgiven and let go of all hate
• Be more positive

The hardest of which, is being more positive. At least trying to be the most positive guy in the room. Especially in a newspaper, which has a culture that lends itself to old-crank syndrome. But I’m proud to say I walk in and out of the office every day with a smile on. And hopefully, the people I work with at least leave with a smile too. We have good times at The Union.

As the year has gone, I’ve found that I’ve gravitated to all of my goals more strongly at one point or another. For instance, I made a conscious effort to take as many pictures and videos as possible when I went to Brazil. (You can find all of my Brazil work on this blog here.) While that enthusiasm has dipped considerably, I’ve still made sure to take pictures at every outing and trip I’ve done. Much more so than in years prior.

What I’m most happy about is that I’ve traveled to quite a few places, even if most of those places have just been around California. Right now, I’m on my way to San Diego to enjoy the Fourth of July weekend. I was in Reno a couple times this year, in San Francisco a bit, Chico a bit, and Los Angeles. It’s been good to get away, and even better to get back.

So as you can tell, there’s a lot for me to reflect about with my seven goals. I could go on and on. But I think it’s equally important to address the few goals I have which have not gotten much attention (writing for myself) and do something about it. Most people quit their gym membership in February, a month into their NYE goals of getting into shape. When I don’t write for myself regularly, I feel like I’ve quit on my gym membership. So for the next six months, I’m gonna make sure I don’t quit on that gym. Do you still have your NYE goals written down? What’ your gym equivalent?

I get it, but I don’t get it. I think, more than anything, the fervor over Michael Jackson’s death is just crazy. After all, he was one of the world’s most known figures in the 1990s (No. 6 after the Pope according to TV news). Not to mention he also was one of the weirdest celebrities ever, possibly sick and more than a little creepy.

What’s the interesting part for me, is the journalists that have to wrestle with celebrating the life of Jackson and taking into account his alleged sexual conduct with children. That’s right, not one kid, but two. (Shivers.)

I grew up in a household where we played Jackson tunes a lot — I mean, a lot. From Jackson 5 to the History album, we were on it. Both my mom and dad are huge fans, my cousin used to emulate him on the dance floor (still does apparently after his sister’s wedding in April) and we all used to sing along in family functions. That’s right, Jackson’s music was a staple at family functions. I guess you could say, like many others, I knew his music very well. But that’s about it.

So on one end of the spectrum, I love the music, love his artistry and his mastery of the on-stage performance. He was, is, and always will be the King of Pop. But there has to be some balance into telling this story. And frankly, right now I’m only hearing whispers of it. There’s some grumblings, but nobody really wants to bring up the “kid” stuff. I’m actually embarrassed to say that this has affected many a journalists I know.

How can I blame them? He was never convicted. Reminds me of Barry Bonds.

Does that make a sports journalist like myself a scoundrel? Do tell.

Finally jumped on the Feedburner bandwagon. Not so sure I feel comfortable about it, seeing how it’s another step towards full Google ownership. Have you seen how Google owns me?

Anyways, it’s really the only way to figure out how people are reading me via RSS besides basic traffic to the site. At least making that data readily available without some seemingly deep knowledge of the workings of databases.

I’ve searched for competitors in the RSS tracking arena and there really are none. (Hey, if this means you, step up!) So I think Google wins by default and that’s got to be sad. Is there no real competition? Even for a small fee?

There are articles galore about how to track your RSS feeds, either through access logs, placing an image in your feed or utilizing stats on how many times RSS buttons have been clicked. This is a good article about those methods. Problem is, they all make me think about something that should be inherent in the way huge blog content management systems like Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad and others work. Is it too much to ask for a way to track this stuff without having to outsource the work?

It appears so.

Here’s the feedburner feed or just click on ‘Subscribe‘ at the top right under my name.

My buddy Robert LaHue did this video for the Marysville Appeal-Democrat.

If you interested in the video Brian Hamilton shot for The Union, go to www.theunion.com/videos.

Lance Armstrong at Nevada City Classic — powered by http://www.livestrong.com

Make no mistake about it, the crowd was huge at the 49th annual Nevada City Bicycle Classic. The question is, how huge?

I’ve run into a couple of folks who have asked me about the number, which they think is off. I reported in The Union that there was 30,000 people in Nevada City for the race. That’s the same number I got from Lt. Gage of Nevada City’s police department, who cited some flyovers that were done during the height of Lance Armstrong mania.

What I’ve gathered is that there were reports of 12,000 to 45,000. Those are some huge variances. Before even going out to the race, I had a talk with our city editor Trina Kleist about gauging the crowd. I was given specific instructions to do my own count, using a methodology she had passed on to me, and then ask around among the official sources (Lt. Gage) as well as other media outlets. It just so happens that the PA announcers of the race announced 15,000 right before the Men’s Pro 1/2 race. This after I had been given a count of 5,000 that I had been skeptical of. My own count wouldn’t have mattered because I was back in the office to write my story by the time the main event began.

At the same time, and many folks agreed with me, 45,000 just seemed to ridiculous. There was definitely breathing room in the crowd and I doubted that many people could get into Nevada City in the span of time it took for me to leave it.

So what is a journalist to do? Go with the official source says the copy chief. And so we go with the official source. Maybe later down the road we’ll get some more hard numbers based on aerial pictures or something.

For full race coverage from The Union, go to www.theunion.com/NCclassic09.

It started with a simple problem: I couldn’t sync my work calendar to my phone because my job didn’t work on the exchange network. Whatever the technical details really are, my smart phone and my e-mail and my appointments and everything in between were not on the same page. In my honest opinion, nothing is worse than not having your work and personal life in sync — that is to say, not conflicting with one another.

Because I didn’t have it together , I ended up double-booking my time for a weekend — once for business and once for a personal matter. Both required a financial investment, a retainer of sorts for a seminar and money down for a flight. That’s what I call an unforced error.

In response, I went the traditional route and caved to the idea of having my work e-mail and calendar go to my phone, something I had been avoiding to keep some sort of separation between church and state. As I just wrote, that didn’t work out for technical reasons I cannot explain or regurgitate without feeling sick in the stomach.

Some contextual history

A long time ago, I thought it might be cool to keep an online calendar on Yahoo! It was a short-lived affair for two reasons:

1. A lack of appointments. I literally didn’t have much going on, other than the occassional dinner date, movie, etc. That doesn’t need a calendar at all, just a sharp mind — if that.
2. There was an emphasis by Yahoo! to utilize the ability to share your calendar with other Yahoo! contacts or make it a publicly available calendar. Being outside of the business realm at the time, a red flag went up for me. I consider my time and the things I do a private matter not for mass consumption. Especially to the entire world. (It’s not like I was a public person at the time, but it was really the principle of the matter. You don’t need to know what I’m doing.)

So with a bit of paranoia spurred by movies like “Hackers” and “Enemy of the State,” I gave up on that. Wasn’t a big deal at the time.

Fast forward seven years. The advance of Google’s Gmail and other services (including those they have purchased) have had a significant impact on my online world. I use Google Reader to keep track of hundreds of sites and blogs. I use Blogger for my sports blog. I use Google Maps for directions, mapping for my jogging routes and to find restaurants. (Yeah, I know. That’s a lot.) And of course, I use its search to bridge the gap to the rest of the internet.

Last week, I took another step with Google, utilizing its calendar for all of my work, blog and personal needs. With the help of Google’s mobile prouduct, Google Sync, I’m able to get the same calendar on my phone with the ability to update from either the web or the device. (BTW, there was definite trouble getting this all to run smoothly, but that’s another entry.)

If you’ve been following, you can see what kind of picture I’m painting. Google knows what I’m reading, knows my interests based on search queries, knows my location and jogging routes, and now what I’m doing most of the day. I’m starting to realize what kind of power this company has over me. The privacy concerns I had once before, have quadrupled twice over.

This makes my next set of choices very easy and very slim:

1. Spread out my online services — I don’t need gmail/gchat. I can us my domain e-mail. (Currently, I’m having it imported into my gmail — I know, but it’s this synergy thing I’ve got going.) I can utilize other search engines, such as Yahoo, Cuil, MSN, or Ask. I sort of like Ask’s interface and it gets the added benefit, as does Cuil, of not being a portal. I can use Newsgator RSS products to follow blogs and sites. Wordpress for my blog and etc., etc. Basically, I don’t have to use their free services. There’s lot of free services out there that do a lot of what Google does, and sometimes better.
2. I can have faith in Google — There is an option, found here, to turn off personalized Google advertising through Adsense and Adwords. It has to be used on each computer you access your Google account. But that’s explicitly for the purpose of targeted advertising. It doesn’t erase the fact that some administrator can undoubtedly look through my history and glean all the personal details necessary to target me maliciously. (It’s not like I’m hiding, but nonetheless it’s there.) That’s why I have to hope Google is vigilant in its protection of my information and deletes or clears the cache of information on its servers on a regular basis.

Because the allure of synergy and portal Web sites are so compelling with Google, Yahoo, MSN and others, it is too easy to get caught up in taking advantage of the readily free services. I think the best practice will be to diversify your online endeavors among the leading industry sites, rather than invest your entire online life in one portal. If anything, it’s protecting yourself. Just like I hope it will protect me.

Google Products I use

• Adsense
• Alerts
• Blogger
• Calendar
• Docs
• Gmail
• Google Friend Connect
• iGoogle
• Mobile
• Picasa Web Albums
• Reader
• Google Talk
• YouTube

Link: Google Privacy Center

Editor’s note: This post has been updated with links and photos to other stories on the Nevada County Tweetup.

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Before I could call it a night after schmoozing with the Nevada County Twitterati, I had to write a few words on the event for the newspaper.

Broad Street Bistro’s wireless waves surged Wednesday evening as the restaurant hosted Nevada County’s first-ever “tweetup.”

The tweetup, a gathering for social networking enthusiasts, was hosted by KVMR’s See Jane Do radio show crew and The Union. Media consultant and local blogger Marsha Lanier gave participants a 101 course on Twitter and Facebook.

Giovanni Paredes, who runs the weather Web site www.nevadacountyweather.com, said he enjoyed networking with fellow Twitter fans.

“I think it’s important for the community to get together and figure out what we’re doing with social media and how it can help us,” said Paredes, a Nevada City resident. “I think the growth potential is there for businesses and bloggers alike.”

Samantha Steele, who has a startup called Secret Shout based in Nevada City, took the opportunity to learn more about Twitter.

“I came because of curiosity,” Steele said. “I’ve never been to a tweetup and I just started twittering and I love it.”

It appeared, from my estimates, that there were between 50-60 people at one point packing into Broad Street Bistro. (A big thank you to Theresa for keeping the shop open for us.)

I’ve been going through all the photos I’ve seen online from the Tweetup and the various blog posts. I’ll update here with my compilation of thoughts on the event. But if you’re interested, you can search the hash tag #nctweetup for a lot of comments that have already been made.

–

Related in the Twittersphere

• Speaker Marsha Lanier (@marsha_lanier) provides some great photos of the Tweetup on Yfrog. She also did a nifty slideshow which is above.
• Christina Hills (@christinahills) also shot some photos onto Yfrog.
• Then there was See Jane Do’s blog post on the event.
• Dixie Fix: 5 Mile House reopening; Tweetup

All it took was a tweet to set Nevada City abuzz.

Lance Armstrong, Levi Leipheimer and Chris Horner of the Astana Cycling Team will bring their star power to Nevada City, taking part in the 49th annual Nevada City Classic this Sunday, Armstrong confirmed Tuesday.

Armstrong, the seven-time Tour de France winner and noted cancer survivor, made the announcement on the popular social networking site Twitter, writing: “(Leipheimer), (Horner), and myself are racing the Nevada City Classic next Sunday. A great American race!!!”

News of Armstrong and Leipheimer’s possible participation first surfaced Monday, as race director and Tour of Nevada City Bicycle shop owner Duane Strawser fielded telephone calls and exchanged e-mails with the Astana team manager to work out logistics.

Strawser had been helping the team decide at which airport to land for its chartered flight; the airport remains undetermined.

Since then, questions have streamed into Strawser from regional and national media outlets, wondering whether famous riders will show up.

Leipheimer, who won the Nevada City Classic in 1998 and is the three-time reigning Tour of California champion, helped quell the unrest on Twitter.

“Yes, we, (Armstrong), (Horner) and myself will be racing the American classic Nevada City on Sunday,” Leipheimer wrote. “This is one to come watch, party.

“I’m excited to see Nevada City again, it’s been 11 years since I’ve done it, in the beautiful Sierra Mountains of (Northern California).”

Armstrong’s manager called Strawser early Monday to set up a charter flight into the Nevada County Airport, just east of Grass Valley on Loma Rica Road. The famous cyclist has previously raced in the Nevada City Classic on a number of occasions, finishing second in 1991 to Chris Huber.

“We are excited,” said Cathy Whittlesey, executive manager of the Nevada City Chamber of Commerce.

She, too, has been fielding endless phone calls about Armstrong and Leipheimer from media and interested residents.

“It’s been a whirlwind,” Whittlesey said. “We expect it will draw a lot more people than what we were expecting before. I’ve had people tell us that they weren’t going to come to the race before and are now coming.

“We need this here,” she said. “It’ll bring some life to Nevada City.”

The news brought a smile to local business people.

“It’s good and it creates more of a draw,” Friar Tuck’s bar manager Ernie Hosopple said, reminiscing about Armstrong’s last visit. “And I think it helps with the Tour of California.”

Strawser noted the impact of the stars’ presence will more than likely boost businesses outside the community.

“The problem is, our hotels are already sold out, so outside businesses will benefit,” Strawser said.

“But this is going to be a great test for the Amgen Tour of California. If we can handle this, we can handle a stage for Amgen.”

Nevada City residents who are not accustomed to observing the second-oldest bicycle race on the West Coast are finding themselves drawn in by the star power as well.

“I haven’t really picked up on it before,” said Nevada City resident Douglas Depew. “I guess I’ve been busy or something.”

Thinking about catching Armstrong in live action, Depew said, “You can’t beat that.”

Editor’s note: This story originally appeared in The Union.

The best part about being a reporter is getting the scoop on a story.

The worst part about being a reporter is seeing your hot scoop go cold because some other news organization reports the story better and basically takes over your initial hard (or lucky) work.

It’s the life in the news business. You win some, and you lose some.

I think I got lucky yesterday when I received a phone call close to 10 p.m. from Tour of Nevada City owner race director of the Nevada City Classic Duane Strawser. He was just calling me back after I had made some inquires to him about some chamber of commerce issue (which he sits on as the president).

By this time, I had heard a rumor from pretty good source that Lance Armstrong and Levi Leipheimer were possibly racing in the Nevada City Classic, bringing some super star power to the event. I scrapped whatever thought I had about the chamber and asked Strawser what was going on. He provided the confirmation I needed to sound the alert in the newsroom, but that wasn’t satisfying enough. So I took a shot in the dark by sending him at tweet. OK, two tweets. One before I talked to Strawser and one afterward.

Rumor has it that @lancearmstrong is coming to the Tour of Nevada City and the Reno race … can I get a confirmation please?

And:

Rumor somewhat confirmed … @lancearmstrong coming to Nevada City for Tour of Nevada City Classic… apparently, it’s down to logistics

I’m sure this was pretty good theater for whoever was paying attention to me at 10 p.m. on a Monday (1 a.m. for you east coasters), but it was definitely a calculated move to see if Armstrong would actually respond and confirm. I mean, why not try? It’s like I can text him myself and he can choose to respond like some girl I’m trying to date. There’s no sense of failure.

Anyways, he actually responds within the hour:

fact.

That’s it. One word. That’s all it took to set in motion a hurricane of folks hounding Strawser for interviews, the million or so followers of Armstrong to repeat the rumors and all the while me calling every airport within the vicinity to see where he’s gonna land. Two tweets later from Armstrong and almost 17 hours, he delivers this gem:

Race update – @levi_leipheimer, @hornerakg, and myself are racing the Nevada City Classic next Sunday. A great American race!!!

What this really shows me is the power of this tool. Just like with the invention of caller ID, Armstrong can pick and choose when to respond to the communication, but you know what, it’s still a direct form of communication. Because of that, I was able to build a whole story about his tweets to race in the classic, as well as Levi’s, for my newspaper. If that’s not Web 2.0 reporting, I don’t know what is.