I posted the coffee house photos on my site, the pictures are located here. Video footage of the coffee house will be available during the first FTC Newscast in March.

I’ve been using the Compare Friends application on Facebook and I found it pretty weird. If you don’t know the Compare Friends application, it basically lets you answer series of random questions and you have to answer by picking a friend out of the two (at random) that relates to the question. Some of the questions are like, “who would you hang out for the day” or too dating questions like “who would rather sleep with?”

Sometimes I just love the two friends it choses at random. My favorite of all so far was a question with my two friends, Amy and Sarah (who are sisters), with “Who would I rather marry?” I’ll let you decide which one I chose.

It’s going to be a crazy 3 hours for me and other coffee manics as Starbucks will close all of their stand-alone locations (not including kiosks such as supermarkets, airports, malls, etc.). On February 26, Starbucks will be closing all of its stores at 5:30 – 8:30pm so that the employees — about 135,000 of them — can be retrained. Starbucks spokesperson Valere O’Neil said:

“We will have all new standards for how we create the drinks. They will be trained in creating the perfect shot, steaming the milk, and all the pieces that come together in a drink.
It’s really about ensuring that the customer experience that we provide is the best that it can be”

As some of you may know, Starbucks have been in trouble for the past few months. Nearly 180 Starbucks is already shutting their doors because of a budget crises at Starbucks, in which most of them are closing because of a popular local coffee shop near the closing Starbucks. Overall, maybe its because of the raised prices that went in effect last year that rose the price of coffee up 9 cents because of the price of milk.
Some say that they have stopped going to Starbucks because of the “commercializing of the cafe.” When Starbucks started, it was like going to a Cafe Nervosa from the tv-series “Frasier,” it was a place to relax from your daily lives. Now, Starbucks is becoming a shop for music CDs, souvenirs, and food and consumers are upset about it.

I myself have stopped going to Starbucks in the last few months. I usually had Starbucks coffee in the evenings 4-5 times a week, now I go once or maybe twice a week if I’m lucky. I don’t usually ‘hangout’ at Starbucks, but I have a few times and kinda like the atmosphere of staying at a coffee shop.

The coverage of Super Tuesday on WNBC’s DT 4.4 feed was done so well, that no other station in New York didn’t do with their digital subchannel. There was some few kinks, especially when the news feed simulcasted on the WNBC feed which had the NBC network program at the time, but overall I think it was great. It was a production that actually allows the audience to see how a local station, like WNBC, obtains the latest poll results when the camera is not on.

The best part was its interaction to viewers with its webchat and live stream on the station’s site. I was logged in as anthonyz if you were chatting away in the chatroom. Reporters that were assigned to attend the candidate parties/headquarters were actually in the chat, such as Jay DeDapper at the Hillary Clinton headquarters. The anchors were also on, including Lynda Baquero, Brian Williams, Ann Curry, Tom Brokaw, David Ushery, Sue Simmons and sadly Chuck was having a hard time to login on his computer at the anchor desk. Moderating and answering questions was Perri Peltz and Michael Gargiulo; and tech reporter Sree Sreenivasan were watching the blogs and also chatting on the live chat.

The internet and young citizens are playing a big role for this election. So from time to time, WNBC invited college students of different ages and races to visit the studio and asked about their views and opinions about the election and what type of media they use. This actually was an important part because more young voters are voting for this election because of the internet.
I like to say that it was a combination of “local television” and “cable television” as it contained the feeling of a cable news channel but instead it concentrated the local area. I hope WNBC will do a similar program like this in the future for the November election day coverage.
Image Above: Snapshot of WNBC’s chatpage at around 10:30.

Jen, Fred, Brian, and I decided to take a trip to Sweet Hollow Road Saturday night. As many Long Islanders may know, Sweet Hollow Road is one of the most haunted areas on the island. We took about a half-hour to forty minutes in the area. Fred was able to catch some moments on camera.

First stop was the cemetery by the Northern State overpass. We stopped to record a conversation with the ghosts with a tape-recorder and I was trying to listen to static (in the car) to see if I could hear anything. With the tape recorder, we will investigate the recorded audio when we come back. So far, there was no evidence of a conversation at that time.

We then went to see if anything would happen under the Northern State Parkway underpass. Some say if you put your car in neutral  under the bridge ad/or honk your car three times, you will pulled up hill by ghosts. That never happened to us, we kept going.

If you know the story of “Mary’s Grave,” this one might be familiar to you. If you don’t know the story of “Mary’s Grave,” Mary appears on the side of the road walking or will jump out in front of a car. As we were slowly going through Sweet Hollow Road, I witnessed a white, looking figure walking away from the road in the distance for only a few seconds. No one else agreed that they saw it, but I swear that I saw a moving object. I’m not saying this was the ghost of Mary, but I did saw a white, human-figure walking between two trees until it disappeared.

At this point, we noticed something wrong with Fred’s camera. Everytime he would start or ending his recording session of his camera, the lens would pick up a white picture for about 2 seconds. After leaving the area, the problem no longer occurred.

Now here is something that was odd, very odd. On our way back from Jericho Turnpike, I had some problems with the acceleration of the car. I was cruising about 30 miles per hour and out of no where the car began making noises and I let go of the accelerator and the car was then cruising at a smooth speed of 20mph, I then speed up again and it sounded I was fighting with the engine and I let go of accelerator at 25mph and then it went back to 20mph. It felt like the car wanted to cruise at 20 mph although the Cruise mode was off. After pressing the cruise button several times so that it would be off again, the problem went away. There have been no stories like this one posted anywhere on the internet

After making a full trip of Sweet Hollow Road from Old Country Road to Jericho Turnpike and back, we decided to take a trip to Misery Road, which is also known for its ghostly and “alien” stories. We decided to stop again at the dead end and again record with a tape recorder a conversation, and I stayed in the car to try to find a static frequency on the radio to see if we can hear something. Fred was trying to make the ghosts “angry” while recording on the tape recorder.

After Fred and Jen came back to the car, we were discussing where to next (which was home). Now this was the spookiest part of the evening . When Anthony pulled his car out of park to drive, the car began to move all on its own at a high speed of at least ten miles an hour uphill without pressing the accelerator,  it also felt like someone was pushing the car. Everyone at first didn’t believe me until I showed them that cruise wasn’t on and my foot wasn’t on the accelerator. Fred, which was already recording it on video camera, grabbed his tape recorder and began asking questions. He asked questions like “are you the one moving Anthony’s car,” “are you angry at us.” He repeated the questions and several others. After one of the questions asked, Fred believes he hears a evil “argh” sound.

So that was our trip to Sweet Hollow Road. Next time we go, we will be more prepared with additional equipment and such. Was I spooked out, nope, but I think Jen was with the acceleration of my car when were at Misery Road.