No, not the Montreal Forum, or the Halifax Forum – our Forum, here on The Green Interview site. When we launched the site, we wanted to reserve the Forum for subscribers – but the site has outgrown that limitation. Now we have several levels of subscriber as well at the capability for people to buy single copies of the interviews in various formats, from transcripts to full video – and people all over the world can reach our site through their libraries.
New Prices! New Partners! New Projects!
We're delighted to announce the most sweeping set of new developments at The Green Interview since the site first went live in April, 2010!
New Lower Prices!
When we started, we didn't know what it would cost us to provide a service like The Green Interview. Now we do, and it's less than we had feared. So there's room for us to lower the price. And we have – in most cases by about 30%.
These new prices are a response to feedback from people like you, our subscribers and registrants. Our earlier pricing, we learned, was too expensive, particularly for people in developing nations, and we really want to make the site fully inclusive.
In addition to cutting our prices, we're introducing a range of new purchase options and choices. The Green Interviews are now available as videos, audios and transcripts – and they can be purchased either as subscriptions or as individual interviews in any of those three formats.
Why We Don't Allow Anonymous Comments Here
Farhad Manjoo just published a firebreathing piece in Slate about anonymous comments, and why we need to get rid of them on the web generally. His opinions echo ours. I think anonymous commenting is a scourge and an abomination; anonymity allows any goof to spew out the most scurrilous bile without having to take even a smidgen of responsibility for it. If writers or commentators or public figures put themselves out front under their right names, why shouldn't the commenters be brave enough to do the same?
Columns Newly Posted on the Biography Pages
Whenever I've written a column about someone who I've subsequently interviewed on the site, I try to put a link to the column on that person's biographical page. But sometimes I forget. We recently went back through the biographies and the columns, and found un-posted columns about Bill Rees, Chris Turner, Elizabeth May and James Lovelock. They're all posted on those pages now, and we invite you to take a look at them. We think they'll enhance the interviews for you.
Back in Business!! Happy New Year!!
We're back in business! Fast and diligent work over the Christmas holidays recovered all the audio and video files, and got them back up on the site. Everything is now back to normal -- and we're incredibly grateful to Robert, Neil and Chris for their tireless (and successful) efforts.
The Recovery Begins...!
I'm delighted to report that the Chris Turner and Ron Colman video interviews are now back up on the site, and that the MP3 audio files are available once again for Colman, Vandana Shiva, Paul Watson, Farley Mowat and James Lovelock.
Video-Hosting Troubles
As a Christmas present, one of our suppliers gave us a big problem – and we're putting on a big push to get it resolved.
Here's the story. We don't keep our audio and video files on our own computers; they're kept on servers owned by a “video hosting” service called SesameVault. Just before Christmas, the reliability of SesameVault's service faltered badly. Then the service stopped providing the A/V files altogether.
The Green Interview is On The Air!
The Green Interview is on the air! Segments of the interviews are being broadcast over the educational services of Mount St. Vincent University. That's Channel 333 on Eastlink Cable anywhere in the four Atlantic Provinces of Canada, and over the air on ASN (the Atlantic Satellite Network).
Green Pieces -- a new section on this site
There's a new section on this site this week. It's called Green Pieces, and in it I'll be posting my own environmental writing, both reprints and new items, both substantial features and lectures and also some of my newspaper columns. To view it, just click on the "Green Pieces" tab above.
"Green Pieces" makes its debut with three hefty reprinted pieces, one of which is my major attempt so far to articulate a political and environmental philosophy that would provide a way out of the frightening situation we have created for ourselves.
The first piece, "Water Courses," is about the growing global shortage of fresh water, and Canada's role in it. Though it dates from 1990, it describes a situation which has not fundamentally changed except by growing worse.
We're Live at Mount Saint Vincent University!
The Green Interview has its first institutional membership in place! The site is now live throughout the computer networks of Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia -- our partner university, which has contributed the use of its TV studio and other video facilities, not to mention the indispensable role play by the university's superb Director of Instructional Television, Chris Beckett, who produces and directs the Green Interviews.
Since the beginning of November, anyone linked to the MSVU network has complete access to the entire Green Interview site, whether they logon from the campus or from their own computers at home. Early reactions have been very positive. One user called it "a wonderful resource," for example. We had a similarly enthusiastic reaction from a student user at the National University of Taiwan in Taipei -- though we haven't yet enlisted the whole National University of Taiwan.
This is our first institutional installation -- but by no means our last. Could yours be next?
