Utilities’ websites run spectrum of utility
Take a moment to check out your local utility’s website. You may like what you see. Or not.
A survey of the performance and usefulness of utility websites by Boulder-based consulting firm E Source shows two Colorado utilities at opposite ends of the spectrum.
Ranked 12th nationally out of 105 gas and power companies is Xcel Energy.
And then there’s the municipally owned Colorado Springs Utilities, uncomfortably close to the bottom at 102nd place.
Out of a theoretically perfect score of 100, survey respondents gave Xcel a rating of 69.4 percent. Colorado Springs limped in with a 44.4 percent. The top- ranked website was for Portland General Electric, with a rating of 77.3 percent.
“Highly rated websites were not necessarily the prettiest,” said E Source analyst Andrew Heath. “The best sites offered the online features and functions that customers want and made them easy to use.”
Dish ploy was all Greek to Virgil, N.Y.
Among the towns slighted by EchoStar’s Dish Network publicity stunt last week was Brookvale, a historic burg near Evergreen at the base of Mount Evans.
Resident Paul Fiorino was looking for a Colorado marketing firm after hearing the news that the former Clark, Texas, got the nod from Douglas County- based EchoStar on Tuesday to rename itself Dish.
“I’m just upset that Brookvale isn’t being looked at as a real place that has history and pioneers,” Fiorino said. “They don’t realize this town holds such an important aspect.”
But it was Bruce Grodner, a Virgil, N.Y., resident, who explained best why his town dropped the name-change idea. Some residents were up in arms that other residents wanted to throw away thousands of years of history.
“We’re all Greek names around here – Homer and Ulysses,” Grodner said.
We get your point about Greek history, Bruce, but wasn’t Virgil a Roman poet?
Ad firm does good with volunteer grant
If you work for the advertising firm McClain Finlon, you could travel the world.
The Denver company offers a “Global Do-Good Grant” which allows one employee the chance to go on a “volunteer vacation” anywhere in the world.
The employee receives an extra two weeks of vacation time and financial support to go anywhere with a volunteer organization of his or her choice. Employee Christina McCoy, an ad production artist, won the grant this summer. She traveled to Arusha, Tanzania, for three weeks and taught art to young adults in the tiny village of Pantandi. She volunteered for Cross Cultural Solutions, a group that educates and helps equip young people for jobs.
Judicial blogger a federal prosecutor
The author of a sassy blog about the federal judiciary, “Underneath Their Robes,” is no longer cloaked in mystery.
The writer purported to be a young, female lawyer who worked in San Francisco but in an interview with The New Yorker magazine identified himself as a federal prosecutor in Newark, N.J., Assistant U.S. Attorney David Lat.
The blog was taken off-line Monday in a “mutually agreed upon decision,” The Record of Bergen County, N.J., reported Wednesday.
The blog contained sightings of different judges, including Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito going to a Newark restaurant. It also had lists of “super hotties” and named “Sporty, Spicy Judges,” such as Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who threw out the first pitch before a Chicago Cubs game.
Two female judges, Kimba Wood and Kim McLane Wardlaw, were described as “babes” in one recent posting.
Lat, one of about 100 assistants working under U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie, was still employed there, office spokesman Michael Drewniak said Wednesday. He declined to comment further. A message left Wednesday for Lat was not immediately returned.
Coffee company’s name a real kicker
Sure it’s named for a donkey, but the folks at Bad Ass Coffee Co. acknowledge that the name might raise a few eyebrows.
“It has a history,” said D.J. Calvin of Calvin Enterprises. “It’s not meant to just be vulgar, but it does turn heads a little bit.”
Calvin Enterprises has secured development rights for the Utah-based Hawaiian-style coffee shop chain for Colorado, Arizona and Nevada. The company will open its first Colorado location in Greeley next year and will follow with a second in Loveland. Calvin predicts that Colorado could host as many as 50 Bad Ass Coffee shops in the next decade.
The company is named for the donkeys that once hauled heavy loads of Kona coffee down from the mountains, according its website, which prominently features a donkey logo.
Nonetheless, the name has been the source of controversy in Tennessee, Florida and a few other markets the company has ventured into.
Greeley planning manager Greg Thompson doesn’t expect any problems here.
“If they didn’t have a donkey in there – if they showed a gluteus maximus, I might have greater concern,” Thompson said. “The interesting part of our language is that words can mean different things.”
