Kid, meet the candy store. For the next couple of days I’ll be blogging from the Tony Perkins AlwaysOn Stanford Summit. Some of you will remember Tony Perkins from Red Herring days. But, out here, what you did before whatever it is that you’re doing now is so… last quarter. In the shadow of the Stanford cypress – cradle to Yahoo! as well as Google – you can’t spit and not hit the next entrepreneurial change agent.

Three phone books landed on our front porch this weekend: A thick white pages with separate alphabetized business listings, a thick, traditional yellow pages, and a thinner yellow pages focusing on my town. They are sitting in the back corner of our living room. To be honest, they’ll probably sit there all year.

Here’s your first real update about the 2008 Newspaper Association of America Digital Edge Awards.

A few things didn't exactly make it into this morning's Online Publishing Update*, but are worth reading anyway, so here goes....    

This week over on GrowingAudience.com, NAA released the latest in an ongoing series of Audience Building Initiative case studies. These case studies, by Rich Gordon of the Medill School of Journalism, look at initiatives that have successfully grown newspaper Web site traffic.  This time, Gordon focused on The Racine (Wis.) Journal Times.

With a bag of popcorn, a Diet Coke and my computer in front of me, I watched the CNN/YouTube Democratic presidential candidate debate tonight on CNN.

If you visit newspaper Web sites, you deserve credit for helping break yet another online traffic record.  In the second quarter of 2007, more than 59 million people – that’s 37.3 percent of all active Internet users) – visited newspaper Web sites based on monthly averages.  

I admit I slacked on the blogging a bit last week – but I had a really good reason.... For now, though, I wanted to give you all a heads-up on what's coming later this week.

Wired’s Jeff Howe asked in an essay earlier this week, "Did Assignment Zero fail?"   Well, yes.  And, more importantly, no.  Howe wrote Assignment Zero was a "highly satisfying," educational, discovery-packed, partial failure.

Rob Curley’s team at Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive today launched its first community site, LoudounExtra.com. Outside of the semi-weekly “Extra” print/online sections through washingtonpost.com, this is the newspaper’s first significant foray into a separately branded and designed hyperlocal site.

This summer marks the 10th anniversary (or birthday?) of blogging. The Wall Street Journal marked the event this weekend.

The News-Gazette in Champaign, Ill., has launched a special online section to get local kids involved in the newspaper and Web site – all centered around Harry Potter. The fifth Harry Potter movie hit theaters earlier this week, and children (and adults) across the world are eagerly awaiting the seventh and final book, to be released later this month.

On a spur-of-the-moment caffeine run this morning, a co-worker and I walked through Ballston Commons in Arlington, Va. and saw a flat screen (about 3 feet by 4 feet) on the floor with an interactive Pong-type game on it. A 3-year-old boy was clumsily trying to kick the virtual ball. And when his game was over, an ad for Hilton hotels appeared.

Borrell Associates, Inc. took a look at some of the top newspapers (in terms of online sales strategies) and found commonalities among them -- meaning there are definitely models out there to follow!   Borrell Associates found all the newspapers that were successful in gaining large shares of local online revenue and growing the online business had these characteristics....

It’s a dilemma many newspapers are faced with: Online comments on newspaper stories or blogs can sometimes get nasty, especially when comments are unmoderated and users can hide behind cryptic aliases. Do you let the community moderate itself (which has had some success at smaller-market newspapers), or do you heavily moderate the community?   The Sacramento Bee’s management has decided on a new tactic: Require real names (first and last), but moderate the comments less.

“If you want to really see someone’s strategy, take all their strategy books, missions, visions—take them all outdoors and make a big bonfire. The real strategy is the operating budget, the capital budget, who’s been promoted, who’s been held back.”  - Eileen Shapiro, author/strategist 

Late Friday, we released a new Snapshot article, guest written by Ray Marcano of the Dayton Daily News. Seeing an opportunity in the pets category, Marcano and his team went into start-up mode and planned, created and successfully launched the niche Web sites 937pets.com and 513pets.com in less than two weeks.

We all know the iPhone is here – by some estimates, more than 500,000 people bought one in its first weekend on sale. With a Web browser, camera, MP3 player and more in it, the iPhone has the potential to be incredibly useful as an on-the-go device.

 There’s no Online Publishing Update tomorrow (July 4) because of the holiday, but there were a few interesting articles, etc. from the past day or two that may be of interest to digital media folks.   But first: In late May and early June, the Newspaper Association of America invited the two leading Web-measurement companies – Nielsen//NetRatings and comScore Media Metrix – to participate in Webinars that would address numerous questions. Those questions included, “Why are panel-based measurements of Web-site audience so different from log-file analysis?” and “What is the methodology behind panel-based measurements and what are suppliers doing to certify the integrity of their data?”