The Atlantic Yards project cleared a major hurdle yesterday when New York State was granted the right to use eminent domain for the development. The project has had a long political history pitting the developer, Forest City Ratner, against local groups, and an equally interesting design history, moving from an all Frank Gehry development to ceding the design of the Barclays Center/Net’s arena to the firms Ellerbe Becket and SHoP Architects while leaving the rest of the project design open to question.
MaryAnne Gilmartin is Executive Vice-President of Forest City Ratner and the point person on Atlantic Yards. I photographed her in 2008 from a perch overlooking Atlantic Yards for an editorial profile.
MaryAnne Gilmartin, Executive Vice-President Forest City Ratner, April, 2008.
Ace assistant, Dan Mezick, gets a Macbeth card into the frame.
On location on Tuesday. I’ve used this method a few times when a subject is high up but still within reach of a light stand. Time to hoist the Macbeth card. The camera is in the foreground, on its back, and pointed straight up to photograph the ceiling details.
More info. and final photos once the images are published.
We caught Mike Stern and his trio at Chris’ Jazz Cafe in Philly last night. Great show. No matter what kind of music you are into, if you get a chance – see Mike and his group.
I heard back from Six Apart this afternoon (see the prior post for the beginning of this story.) They did delete my TypePad account. While that’s great, their excuse for the current set up at TypePad (forcing all users, without their consent, into accounts which cannot be deleted) is that a “delete everything” button has not been created. They claim to have fast-tracked this but they are not sure how quickly it can be done. Additionally, their explanation for the behavior of the TypePad Rep who said that “accounts cannot generally be deleted,” is that she is “just trying to keep customers.”
I find these points wanting to say the least. It’s hard to see how TypePad’s policies are anything but created to force all users into permanent never-to-be-deleted accounts.
I made the following suggestions to Six Apart as interim steps to take while they create their delete button:
Don’t automatically create a Profile page without a TypePad user’s consent.
Don’t automatically force a paying customer who deletes their blog into TypePad Micro account without their consent.
Make it abundantly clear prior to signing up, for users of paid TypePad accounts or of free TypePad Micro accounts, whether they can delete their accounts at any time in the future.
Change TypePad’s stock answer when deletion requests like mine are made. The free profile accounts can’t generally be deleted statement is not true.
If you are a TypePad user and find yourself forced into a free account or into free services like the profile page without your consent then go directly to Six Apart’s getsatisfaction.com forum and post a complaint. This bypasses TypePad and will hopefully lead to any corrections you request.
I’m not sure when TypePad decided it would be best served by becoming a cult.
I signed up with TypePad about two years ago to host my blog. At the time it was a good decision. WordPress being open source, not well documented, and something of a free for all with a big learning curve, scared me off. I wanted to get my blog up and running quickly and a survey of blogging platforms led me to TypePad.
Fast forward two years. I’ve moved to a new web site, one that includes a WordPress blog. WordPress now has better documentation (online videos, etc.) so I’ve switched my blog to WordPress. Initially, I expected to leave my TypePad blog online until the account runs out in March, 2010, but seeing how quickly my new blog has been indexed online and seeing how the TypePad blog just confuses matters on web search results – yesterday, I decided to pull the plug and cancel my TypePad account. Thus, the odyssey begins…
I had a paid TypePad account. This kept it ad-free and supposedly provided me with better customer service. It’s easy enough to find out how to cancel a paid TypePad account. You go within your account and delete it. The problems start at that point. With TypePad’s policies, just by having a paid TypePad account they’ve created a profile for you without your consent. Additionally, when you delete your paid account TypePad gives you a free Micro account. Again, without your consent.
There is no information on TypePad’s site on how to delete a Profile or a Micro account. Given this, I submitted a help ticket to TypePad support only to find that the help ticket would not go through. It led me to an error page, which also had a form. Filling out the error page’s form led nowhere – it took me to the same error page. I then found a generic TypePad contact page on their site and filled out my request there.
With no reply from TypePad’s contact page and via some googling, I found a third-party site, getsatisfaction.com, where Six Apart (TypePad’s parent company) has a support page. I entered my request there along with information about what I had just gone through. Fairly, quickly I heard back from a Six Apart employee – one who has said she will delete the account and confirm that it has been done.
Hours later, I also heard back from TypePad’s contact page:
Thanks so much for reaching out, and we’re sorry to hear that you’re experiencing some frustration – we’re also really sorry that you received errors! Essentially, the free profile accounts can’t generally be deleted, but you’ll never be charged, and those do come in handy when commenting on other blogs. There is a possibility that we may be able to have it removed for you entirely, so if you would like for us to do that for you, and you’ve decided that having the free profile wouldn’t be useful for you, please let us know.
Can you tell us why you’ve decided to leave TypePad?
This reply is problematic on a couple of levels.
It counters what the Six Apart employee told me.
It uncovers policies at TypePad which are never directly stated on their web site. Create a paid account on TypePad and you are given a profile without your consent. Cancel the paid account at TypePad and you are also given a free Micro blog account at TypePad without your consent. Neither the profile nor the free Micro account can “generally” be deleted.
I’ll update this post when I get confirmation from the Six Apart employee that my account has been fully deleted. It’ll be interesting to see why TypePad’s corporate response differs from theirs.
Until then if you are a TypePad paid account user be forewarned that you are also roped into their free services whether you like it or not. If you are a TypePad free account user either by having a profile on their site, a free Micro account, or both, be forewarned that there is nothing setup to delete these services if you decide you no longer want them. This makes your TypePad presence permanent, as in forever, and it also gives Typepad of a method of following you if you make comments on other blogs.
One change with new web site and blog is the ability for both to format themselves on the iPhone and on other touch-type smart phones. This makes for quicker loading and painless viewing of both sites when seen by those on the go.
JonRoemer.com on the iPhone:
Learning to See on the iPhone:
For JonRoemer.com this is a feature built into the web site’s structure. It replaces my hand built, hand maintained, iPhone site which ran concurrent with the old JonRoemer.com.
For the blog, being on a WordPress platform, flexibility is the name of the game. I tried three mobile versions of the blog, each promised a simple design, but only one delivered on design, ease of use, and worked out of the box. The mobile theme I’m using is WPtouch iPhone Theme. It has many options built-in, all accessed via WordPress’ settings menu, it couldn’t be easier. If I had to change one thing with WPtouch iPhone Theme, I’d want the ability to not have the calendar month and day as an icon with each post on the homepage. That’s it. This WordPress Plug-in is incredibly well made and well documented.
The two other iPhone mobile themes I tried were Carrington Mobile and Wapple Architect Mobile Plugin. The former looked to be even simpler in feel than WPtouch but it did not reformat blog photos for smaller phone screens leading to half of each image being cropped out. The latter promised to automatically create a site that mimicked Learning to See but other than orange links it looked nothing like Learning to See and it too had image problems. It dropped many images when viewed on the phone leaving placeholder icons instead.
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Apologies to Eric Carle and Bill Martin Jr. of children’s book fame. If you have kids or grandkids, if you ever babysat kids who are in the board-book stage, you know their work. Hopefully, I won’t have an angry author and illustrator looking at me.
