Tag Archives: information

Birmingham to Atlanta high-speed rail study announced

Posted on June 24, 2010 | 2 comments

Earlier today, Birmingham Mayor William Bell joined the Regional Planning Commission of Greater Birmingham‘s executive director Charles Ball as plans were formally announced for a feasibility study that could lead to the creation of a high-speed rail link between Birmingham, AL and Atlanta, GA.

Ball stated during prepared remarks that the study would cost $500,000 with half of the funds available due to a portion of the federal stimulus bull. It will be a partnership between the RPCGB, the Georgia Department of Transportation and Norfolk Southern. The study is scheduled to begin on July 1 and take one year to complete.

The video includes portions of Ball’s comments and all of Bell’s comments to those gathered.

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Posted in transportation

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How big is the oil spill? You don’t want to know…

Posted on May 10, 2010 | 2 comments

Gulf Coast oil spill mapThat’s the question that the folks at Google decided to help people figure out. The image to your left is a screen capture from Paul Rademacher’s website and shows the spill in relation to the size of Birmingham and Central Alabama.

Rademacher’s site currently contains a Google Earth embed using the application’s API that lets you see how the oil spill compares to several major U.S. cities. Here’s a link to a screen capture of the oil spill in relation to Chicago, IL and Lake Michigan. He’s the engineering manager for Google Maps’ front end.

Visiting the site will also let you compare the size of the Deepwater oil spill to any city and points you to where you can download the data to show it in your own install of Google Earth.

UPDATE: Additional images – one showing the spill area in relation to Atlanta and Montgomery and another one showing the capture from when you first enter Birmingham, AL into the interface.

Image: Screen capture from http://paulrademacher.com/

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Posted in National, Online

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Anyone interested in photowalking?

Posted on May 5, 2010 | Leave a comment

Birmingham Skyline, Southern Pixel/FlickrThere seems to be a renewed interest in capturing snapshots of Birmingham’s daily activities. Scott Schablow has recently tweeted about wanting to reorganize a lunchtime photowalking group (contact him directly if you’re interested) while the Magic City Flickr Group started sharing their photo of the day via the popular microblogging network.

We’re even using the photos submitted via Flickr to our Terminal Flickr Group as part of our Late Arrivals post at the end of the day (we’re adding another way to submit photos to the site tomorrow). There are several photo blogs in metro Birmingham as well – so why not add the names and URLs of those sites to the comments section…

Photo: Birmingham Skyline. Southernpixel/Flickr

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Posted in Photography

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Birmingham prepares for the Second Front

Posted on May 3, 2010 | Leave a comment

The Second Front logoKyle Whitmire introduced a new political news blog to Birmingham, AL earlier today. The site, called The Second Front , is the first of several blogs that will make up a new site called Weld for Birmingham.

It’s a new venture for Whitmire (an award-winning columnist formerly of Birmingham Weekly ) and his former editor at the Weekly Glenny Brock, who contributed to the site’s first day of stories with a post about last week’s Design Review Committee decision involving Walgreens.

This section of Weld has already collected a lot of fans via Facebook and Whitmire has been tweeting using The Second Front‘s account for a couple of months now.

Wade Kwon was able to catch up with Whitmire by phone to find out more about the new blog and the overall site and shared the answers over on Media of Birmingham while Ike Pigott wrote earlier today about whether or not it is the online newspaper that Birmingham’s been waiting for.

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Posted in Media, Online

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Creative collaborative community – that’s the plan

Posted on April 19, 2010 | Leave a comment

Today I’m starting to test the waters virtually to determine whether or not we’ll open our own office later this summer. The space would double as a coworking community for some of the city’s creatives and a physical home for us to host events related to content on the site.

There’s a new section in the process of being built out that currently has a post explaining what’s on my mind (at least, the first of many that will explain) as well as a survey that will help us determine if we can responsibly move forward with the process. The new section will also be used this spring and summer to help folks get a better understanding about just what coworking is and take a look at some of the other coworking communities taking shape in Birmingham.

The hope for the short term is that those of you that are freelancers and solopreneurs (and potential sponsors) will consider filling out the survey and passing the link on to as many people as possible.

We’ll keep you updated on what’s going on.

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Posted in From the Stationmaster, The Terminal

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UPDATE: A busy summer ahead for local media

Posted on April 19, 2010 | 1 comment

John Archibald - acnatta/FlickrThings are getting interesting all over Birmingham, AL (particularly in the world of local media) as we enjoy a beautiful spring day.

Kyle Whitmire has shared via Facebook that John Archibald has written a column about the buyouts at The Birmingham News though it hasn’t been published as of yet.

UPDATE: Kyle has decided to post the unpublished column as a note to his Facebook profile. He’s also shared via Twitter that he will be on The Matt Murphy Show tomorrow (Tuesday) morning at 7:30 a.m.

UPDATE 2: John Archibald’s column returned to the pages of The Birmingham News on Wednesday morning. It was not the “unpublished” one that has been circulated via social networks and local bloggers, but a follow up to his April 14 column about Alabama oddity.

The News started offering buyouts in November 2008; they were extended in late 2009 and again earlier this year (February).

We’ll keep an eye on what’s going on over there for you. You may also want to check out the recent posts over on Media of Birmingham.

We’ve got a favor to ask of you ourselves; we’ll explain shortly…

Photo: acnatta/Flickr

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Posted in Media

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No fake mustaches in church? Really?

Posted on March 16, 2010 | Leave a comment

A Fake Moustache Warning. bovinity/FlickrThe fact that Birmingham, AL ranked as the country’s 30th craziest city in a recent list shouldn’t be what throws you for a loop. It should be the ability to be reminded about just how crazy some of the laws on the books in the state of Alabama are.

Among them, the fact that it’s illegal to wear a fake mustache that causes folks to laugh at church. Really…

So where is the weirdest city in the U.S. according to the list created by The Daily Beast based on the number of psychiatrists per capita, stress levels, eccentricity and drinking levels (our numbers are 9, 31, 36 and 38 respectively)? Cincinnati, OH.

Check out the full list of crazy cities on The Daily Beast’s website. Of course, you can always sign a virtual petition to change the law…

Photo: A Fake Moustache Warning. bovinity/Flickr

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Posted in Quirky

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