Blog admin: graphs, feeds and amazon

Hi everyone. Just a little admin here.

Graphs and charts

You probably noticed in my posts on U.S. jobless claims and inflation that my graphs were looking MUCH improved.

Well, I have been reading Tim Iacono’s site and have always thought, "why do his graphs look so good and my look so crap?" Then I happened on Jake’s blog at EconomPic Data and, quite frankly, he does the best charts and graphs out there. If you are a visual person and want to see data in graphs, he’s your guy.

So, I had to get with the program. I found a solution in upgrading my graphs to Excel 2007 format (funny that). I hope you’ll like the new look. Let me know.

Feeds

As for feeds, I have updated my FeedBurner feed to reflect my new site address and would appreciate if everyone moved over to the new feed address because I will look to shut down the old fed by the end of the year. The new feeds are here to Subscribe via Emailand here to Subscribe via RSS. I encourage you to subscribe via Feed because that allows you to get all my posts and read them when and how you choose rather than being chained to a computer.

Amazon

The last piece of info is about Amazon.com. I love Amazon. I am an Amazon Prime customer (a program I highly recommend) and I have bought tens of thousands of dollars of stuff from Amazon.com .co.uk and .de. Once in 1999, when I was living in London and I couldn’t buy cheap DVDs, I ordered $1000 worth at amazon.com in the U.S. and picked them up the next time I was in the States. They’re great because I use them to send gifts to friends and family in the UK and Germany too.

So, I have become an Amazon Associate, which means I have my own personal Amazon store (woo-hoo)! Anyway, I have set it up so that the stuff in the store is related to my blog topics of economics and politics. Links are on my site. Please take a look at the store and let me know what you think. And, of course, I get a commission on anything you buy, so I’d be grateful for your patronage.

Along those lines, I will start recommending some books that I think are great. I got this idea from Paul Kedrosky’s site. He recently recommended the book "Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do." Great book. Please pass along your book recommendations to me as well. A reader passed on another good tip called ‘Medici Money‘ (hat tip Sune).

So that’s it. Feel free to email me anytime. Take care and Happy Friday.

Edward