Can Gather.com Get Book Lovers Online? - 12/12/2005 - Publishers Weekly:

It’s no secret that publishers have yet to figure out the best way to leverage the marketing power of the Internet. The Web remains something of a technological pi�ata for the industry: it has the promise of yielding great rewards if only someone could find a way in. Gather.com thinks it has.

Established in November and now with a membership of just over 5,000, the Boston-based dot-com is a mix between a lifestyle portal and a content aggregator. Offering users the opportunity to publish their own content and then rate that of other members, Gather’s founders hope the site will give users something that the blogosphere-at-large does not: a built-in audience. [Huh?]

While much of Gather’s staff comes from outside of publishing, the company has hired former B&N.com executive Carl Rosendorf as president and COO. Rosendorf’s appointment is a move Gather publicist Lisa Hurd-Walker (herself a former staffer at Barefoot Books) said demonstrates the site’s dedication to the book space. “Developing relationships with publishers is one of our highest priorities.”

Publishers Weekly bizarrely gave this startup with a tiny audience a full-page spread.

It looks like they want people to contribute free content so they can make money from selling advertising.

I see absolutely no reason for either publishers or readers to bother with this site. The action is in the blogosphere and this startup is massively clueless.

Pralines: A New Perspective:

you’ll love pralines, the classic Louisiana sweet with a pedigree of over three hundred years, a confection so delectable that many southerners have kept their prize, secret recipes locked away. Well now, Ebony Martin and Monique James, owners of the gourmet praline company, Southern Delights, Inc. are about to give you the key!

Making perfect pralines isn’t just a skill, it’s an art.

While it may seem that it is more important to find new perspectives on, say, the war in Iraq, or global warming, pralines are a holiday tradition in my family. My mom was raised in New Orleans. This book deserves some holiday push.

Aging Tomcat Jet Makes Last Runs Over Iraq:

MANAMA, Bahrain — The Navy’s F-14 Tomcat, a Cold War-era fighter jet emblazoned in the public’s imagination as Tom Cruise’s sleek ride in the movie “Top Gun,” is beginning its final weeks of combat sorties over Iraq before being retired from the U.S. arsenal.

A pair of Navy squadrons with the last 22 operational Tomcats are flying bombing and strafing runs on insurgent targets in Iraq, jetting off the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, which departs the Persian Gulf for its base in Virginia early next year.

By next fall, Navy pilots will have switched to the smaller, more reliable and easier to fly F-18 Hornet, said Cmdr. Jim Howe, deputy commander of the Roosevelt’s F-14 squadrons.

Wait a sec. Doesn’t the Hornet notoriously ,well, suck?