“Friends of the Napa River is canceling this year’s Napa River Festival on Labor Day weekend, citing a shortage of donations.

“It’s a sad decision that we had to come to and it’s mostly related to the financial situation,” said Bernhard Krevet, president of Friends of the Napa River.

The festival comes with a price tag of about $80,000 for lighting, sound and fees to the Napa Valley Symphony, the featured performers, Krevet said.

In the past, donations from corporate and individual sponsors yielded enough to cover the event’s costs, Krevet said. Today’s difficult economic times have made it harder to get financial support, he added.

Because some pledged funds from cash-strapped sponsors never materialized, Friends of the Napa River would be about $10,000 in the red if it forged ahead with this year’s festival, he said.

The free Labor Day festival has an approximately 20-year history, organized by Friends of the Napa River. Last year’s event drew an estimated crowd of more than 6,000 to downtown, according to organizers.

This will be the fourth time that the festival has skipped a year. Third Street bridge construction put the brakes on the 2001 festival. Flood control work in and around Veterans Memorial Park foiled the 2006 and 2007 events.

If money can be found, Krevet said the festival will return in 2012.

Moira Johnston Block, a founding member of Friends of the Napa River who serves on the group’s advisory board, said she is “terribly sad” about this year’s cancellation. But she remains enthusiastic about the organization’s overall mission.

She calls the festival “the crown jewel of the revitalizing riverfront.”

“We’re a modest volunteer nonprofit group that works very hard, and never with enough funding, but I think that’s so true of many (organizations) like ours,” she said. “During this recession, it’s harder and harder for our non-professional staff and our volunteers who devote themselves to fundraising.”

What did the Valley look like in the year 1800? Where were the first vineyards? Which creeks had salmon? Where were the best fishing holes? How has the landscape changed, and what can it teach us?

Friends of the Napa River is working with the San Francisco Estuary Insitute to develop a Historical Ecology Project on the Napa River Watershed. A Historical Ecology Project is an intensive, broadly-based effort to recover, organize, and interpret diverse information about the early local landscape and how it has changed. Through such a project, local knowledge about the land is recovered and preserved for future generations.

Since conditions have changed so rapidly during the past two centuries, historical research is necessary to explain current conditions of local streams, forests, wetlands, and other habitats, and their ability to support people and wildlife. Despite the dramatic changes, it is generally possible to learn the original details of the native landscape, such as which creeks had salmon, how wide the river corridor was, which types of vegetation dominated where, and other important information about the natural functions of the landscape. The Project can help the community define and understand the existing environmental challenges and suggest how they might be successfully resolved in the future.

The San Francisco Estuary Institute, an independent, non-profit science organization, developed the award-winning Historical Ecology Program to support regional and local environmental planning efforts. SFEI’s regional program started in 1993 and has produced the historical maps of baylands, featured in the Bay Area EcoAtlas.

Anticipated Products: The Project is currently working on a richly illustrated Napa Historical Ecology Atlas. This publication will make the findings of the multi-year Project widely accessible. The Atlas will celebrate the natural heritage of Napa Valley, inspiring both increased stewardship and more accurate conservation planning. Additional products include detailed, large-format maps of the Napa River Watershed, from Mt. St. Helena to the marshlands of San Pablo Bay, showing the landscape prior to European settlement (circa 1800) and an intermediate point circa 1900. Accompanying databases and archives will make all data collected available as public resources.

Contacts: Kent Ruppert, Shari Gardner.

Download brochure here

The Napa Watershed Education Program is dedicated to teaching Napa Valley students, grades 2-6, concepts focusing on the ecological dynamics of our watershed.

Each grade level receives a series of three, hour-long, science based lessons. Each series is adapted to the specific grade level being taught and is supported by hands on materials, visual aids, and a teacher edition to provide additional activities. This program and all materials are provided at no cost to the students, teachers, or schools.

The program has been in existence for eight years, and has grown from three lessons a year to 145 lessons, totaling 3,600 student contacts, in 50 public and private classrooms. Although the program has had great success (see teacher comments), there have been years when the program could not be offered due to lack of funding.

We are seeking funding from private contributors within our watershed rather than from state and national resources that have proven unreliable in the past. The program budget is set at $10,000 a year as it has been for the past seven years. This is a very cost effective program providing high quality environmental education to our Napa Valley youth.

Update 6 (January 4, 2012): Some users are reporting that some of their recent activity is no longer showing up, like comments on other friends’ posts or event activity on Facebook Timeline. It appears Facebook has now removed the option to display such stories at all on Timeline.  Some users (and I’ve tested myself now) cannot unhide their Event activity if they had hidden it in the past. From now on, stories such as commenting and event activity will appear in the News Feed and Ticker based on your friends’ subscriptions to you.

For example, if you go to a friend’s Timeline, you will not be able to see whose posts they have commented on recently. If you want to find out, you would have to go to Subscribed (at the top) and check “Comments and Likes.” From then on, whenever that friend likes or comments on something, it will appear in the Ticker (above the chat bar on the right side).

It does not look like Facebook will ever restore commenting/event activity to Timeline. There is a glitch with Event activity that has yet to be fixed… Report It

Edit: I have been doing some testing and look at this:

Event stories do not appear under Recent Activity in the old profile...

And after switching to the new profile….

It seems it works now...

Alright, so event activity should appear on the timeline. We clearly have a problem now….

Update 5 (November 6, 2011): If you are using Facebook timeline, you can edit which types of updates you’ve hidden by clicking on the pencil icon to the right of the Recent Activity box as shown below

View Hidden Activity by clicking on the pencil icon and then selecting "Hidden Activity..." from the drop down list.

If you are looking to hide activity, simply click the “x” that appears when you hover over a recent activity story and click “Hide Similar Activity from Timeline.”

To hide recent activity stories of one type, click on the "x" that appears when you hover over a post and select "Hide Similar Activity from Timeline" in the drop down list.

Update 4: Facebook has brought back the Edit Options link at the bottom of my wall. If you have accidentally hid any type of activity on your wall, you can now un-hide it by going to the bottom of your wall, clicking on Edit Options, and clicking the “x” next to the type of story you want to un-hide. Note that the Edit Options link may take a while to propagate to all users once again.

Update 3: Speculation. Some users had reported that some links, such as YouTube videos, they were sharing did not appear on their wall, only on their news feed. These users had also reported that they had clicked on “hide all comment activity.” I believe that there might have been a bug that caused links to disappear when a person hid their comment activity. Facebook has most likely taken the recent activity options off for now while they sort out this bug and hopefully it will be back up soon. Can anyone confirm that they were not able to see their links they had shared after they hid all comment activity? Comment below

Original Post: It looks like Facebook has begun to roll out the “Recent Activity” options to its users. Facebook removed these options and defaulted all recent activity to “on” back in December of 2009. Take a look at what I found earlier this evening:

An option is now listed that allows you to hide all likes.

“Recent Activity” shows recent comments users have made on posts, and recent pages they have liked, as well as public events users are attending and other things. Back in December 2009, Facebook, somehow, decided that it would be always on, and if a user didn’t want a post to show up, they would have to manually remove it each time.

These settings bring more privacy back to Facebook! If a user comments on a friend’s status, and that status was set to friends of friends, by default, all* the user’s friends would see that they commented on that friend’s status, regardless of friendship, in their news feed. Now, users can set it up so that their comments aren’t shown in their recent activity.

I appreciate Facebook bringing back this option. It was annoying to have to go into my wall and remove posts that I didn’t want to show up in my friends’ news feeds.

To unhide a certain type of “recent activity” story on your wall, scroll to the bottom of the wall, click on Edit Options, and click the “x” next to the type of story you want to unhide.

This post has been formatted from its original version. Updates 1 & 2 have been edited into the story/removed.

*Note: Not all users are guaranteed to see the post, depending on each individual’s news feed settings.  

New Sound Records – go to 7:20…

WWS Magazine – Big Maal Exclusive Interview

Definitely something that I enjoyed and I look forward to doing many many more.

- Big Maal

Or you may not have. After all, who notices that stuff? Anyone who looks at your profile is looking for posts and comments there by you and your friends. Nobody reads those little blurbs.

Exactly my point. There are three reasons I hide the Recent Activity.

1. Content Death. I’ve heard it said (by @copyblogger), “You’re only as good as your last post.” This is an expansion of that idea. When I post on my Wall, I want people to see it. If I share a link, I want them to follow it. Naturally, older posts get pushed down, but the last three or four are still visible “above the fold.” When Recent Activity posts pop up, my own posts are pushed down, decreasing the likelihood of being seen.
2. Wall Clutter. I’m on Facebook a lot—posting, commenting, and liking probably 30-40 things a day. If even half of that stayed on my Wall, even I would have a hard time looking at my Wall. And these posts show up in groups, diluting my content. 
3. Irrelevancy. As I said before, who reads those snippets? You could argue that Recent Activity shows engagement of your audience, but I would counter by saying that Comments on your posts (and your responses to those Comments) are far more effective. Plus, it’s not as if I’m deleting my post; that’s still visible on my friend’s Wall—where I posted it. And, as Facebook reminds you every time you hide a Recent Activity post, only mutual friends (who can already see the post on my friend’s Wall) will see this snippet anyway.

My one exception to this rule is when I Like a Page. When I Like a Page, I want everyone to know. I’ve found value in what that Page represents, and the very act of Liking is an effort to promote that Page. Since Facebook has buried Likes under my Profile’s Info section, they’re not readily visible, which means I don’t mind giving my Likes a little bit more publicity.

What about you? Do you have a similar strategy? Or do you disagree—is Recent Activity really useful?

Looks like I’m out of chalk again.

• my song “Prize Fight” on a major radio station.
• Songs submitted to WHBC830AM (My radio home for 3 years).
• a stamp of approval from the Legendary “Cold Crush Brothers.”
• artwork done to promote each of my individual tracks.
• a RIDICULOUS song of GRAND proportions! that has yet to be released (wait until you hear this SAMPLE! smh).
• a couple SOLID aliases for my microphone persona
• DRIVE to take this music to the next level

Sounds like a BET! Gotta keep pushin’…

- Big Maal

http://www.shoutcast.com/shoutcast_popup_player?station_id=212924&play_status=1&stn=Classic+Hip+Hop+Radio

Shoutout to Easy A.D. of the legendary Cold Crush Brothers and A-tone, the Hip Hop Historianfor the amazing opportunity!

Check out the Artwork for this track at the “Gallery”…

Check out the “Gallery” to see the artwork for my two newest tracks:

Big Maal – Prize Fight
Big Maal – Show Me The Money!

Facebook logo Español: Logotipo de Facebook Français : Logo de Facebook Tiếng Việt: Logo Facebook (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

(Update: We have less control than ever on Facebook. Use socialfixer.com. It’s the best we have.) Facebook sucks when it comes to privacy. I can’t wait until somebody sues them for it and forces them to change. Maybe someday they’ll realize that good usability and privacy is a great business model.

Until then, here are three different ways to clean up one of the most egregious facebook privacy screwups to date.

Annoyed that facebook has decided to make every detail of your actions everybody’s business? Tired of clicking the little x and then clicking “remove” from the annoying facebook confirmation popup over and over again? Here’s how to quickly delete your facebook recent activity.

There are three ways to eliminate all of those annoying updates with a single click. The downer is that you still have to do it periodically. Most of these are cross-browser compatible for at least firefox and chrome.

• Use better facebook.  There are tons of other reasons to use better facebook too. Not the least of which is that my top blue facebook bar is locked in place while I scroll the content of a page. Very convenient. However, betterfacebook implementation of remove recent activity is less than perfect. It misses some from time to time. But it adds a “remove all activity” link to your activity. The new version of Better Facebook removes all recent activity (or whichever bits you specify in the settings,) each time you visit your facebook profile page. Get better facebook!.

• http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/67751 You have to install greasemonkey first, but it’s totally worth it. I heart greasemonkey,  This one adds a “Remove Recent Activity” button to the right facebook side panel. Works like a charm, once you find it. Facebook is so damn cluttered. (Edit: turns out you have to reload your profile page for the button to appear.)

• I haven’t tried this one. It involves imacros and seems tedious. http://www.cynthiaperla.com/facebook/460/how-to-delete-all-groups-and-wall-posts-from-facebook-using-imacros.html

Related Articles

• Facebook: Privacy Out The Window As Comments You Make To Others Appear On Your Wall (daaaveeeee.wordpress.com)