Author Archives: Jason

About Jason

Jason R. Koepke is Founder and Data Strategist at GNT LLC, a risk-analysis and data strategy firm that provides analytical and technical services to the public and private sectors. His work and research has been featured in the academic, financial, and technical industries.

Online Ordering Oddities

I decided to subscribe to The Week* so I went online to place my order. I went with the 50 issues subscription but chose bill me later. The next page to display offered to give me eight bonus issues (making my subscription 58) for the same price if I would pay now with my credit card.

Should I always first choose the “Bill Me” option when ordering online? What have you experienced?

* The Week is great; it’s like The Economist’s smaller, poppier brother. They make excellent companions, well, at least before The Economist’s slide into not-so-hotness.

NPR’s Music Coverage

NPR’s music site always amuses me. They just posted an audio review to Ghostface Killah’s Fishscale. I can imagine the older listeners being confused and annoyed, the old listeners trying to intellectualize Ghost, and the young listeners thinking they are cool because they can now talk about the album when their not (indie) label droppin’.

In any event, the review is not worth listening to (and the album is not all that great, especially compared to Supreme Clientele and Pretty Toney Album; although, the interview with Rza by Terry Gross that is linked to on the site is worth listening to, just to hear Gross beg to be cool). However, the site is still worth keeping tabs on, assuming you can handle the indie-biasness and forced hipness of the whole thing. Some of the people NPR have working on the site are people/heads NPR brought in because of their knowledge and quality.

Blogs As Data Sources

Super short post, so foul on my part.

A friend (NR) recently told me about MoodViews, which uses pulls various bits from blogs and aggregates them. I have not played with the site too much, but it seems interesting (but probably not much beyond that since it is so limited). From what I have linked through, it focuses on pulling the current state (e.g., happy) from bloggers and tracks changes in those states.

If this up your alley, it is worth a five-minute poke through.