Sharonistatastico was featured in a news story about unplugging:
For Ariel Meadow Stallings, it was the hours lost while surfing the Internet that left her feeling like she had been in a drunken blackout.
Both women are part of a new grass-roots movement in which tech geeks, Internet addicts, BlackBerry thumbers and compulsive IMers are deciding to wrest back control of their lives by daring to switch off — if only for a day."
CommentLuv is a plugin I’ve always wanted to try out. It posts the most recent headline of each commenter’s blog after their comment. It is like a little ‘hey thanks’ promo pop for commenters. Peter has a nice strategy on how to find bloggers using this feature: (extracted from Yaro’s post about Jason Potash’s CommentKahuna application):
I have also noticed that folks using the CommentLuv plugin on their blog are serious bloggers with great content which makes leaving relevant, meaningful comments much easier. I simply do a Google search with the “footprint” CommentLuv makes in the comment box and the keyword(s) and up pops a list of blogs to comment on.
ValleyWag does some math:
After Yuri Baranovski’s Web TV series Break a Leg reached two million views on YouTube, Google cut him a $1,600 check. In advertising math, that translates to an $0.80 CPM, or cost per thousand views. Taking what NewTeeVee knows about YouTube’s partner program, disgraced stock analyst Henry Blodget suggests that YouTube charges advertisers a CPM between $1 and $3.20 and gets to keep between $0.25 and $2.40. The equation’s solution: On 3.4 billion YouTube views in January, Google grossed between $850,000 and $2.72 million. Taking the higher estimate, YouTube will have paid back Google for its $1.65 billion acquisition price in another 607 months.
Sure it’s political - but there’s nothing like watching an online backlash in progress. I’ve quit watching the debates they are completely devoid of any cogent analysis or articulation of the US’s economic and foreign policy problems. Instead we focus on Obama’s halo and Clinton’s shiftyness.
Much of the debate’s first half had Senator Obama on the defensive. ABC News anchors Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos confronted Obama about his former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and his alleged ties to a former member of the ’60s group the Weather Underground. Obama was even asked about the fact he doesn’t wear an American flag on his lapel. Obama was also pressed about his recent comments that disenfranchised Americans have turned to guns and religion.
I wish we would stop calling them debates. They are nothing but. Completely moderated, completely stage managed and completely planned.
The ABC news site has been swamped with over 14,500 comments and growing.
I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer, but is anyone else completely freaked out about the economic state of the world? I have dozens of bookmarks of articles and news items but am never sure if I should share them or not. Anyway:
Soybean prices up 87% in the past year.
Wheat up 130%.
Philippines is having to borrow rice from other countries.
World Bank is warning 100 million people could be pushed into poverty.
Protests in Cameroon, Senegal, Mauritania, Haiti, Indonesia.
I’m not even going to touch oil prices right now.
The wizards at Six Apart - I can see them from down the hall actually - have done it again.
BlogIt allows you to post from Facebook to Twitter, TypePad, Vox, Movable Type, Blogger, LiveJournal, WordPress.com, self-hosted WordPress, Pownce, Tumblr and more services on the way.
It doesn’t matter where you blog and what platform your blog with - you can use BlogIt to any of the popular blog tools and update everything at one time.
Symbols, icons and movements of love and hate are all cohesive when we see them in the media or magazines - but who does the leg work? The costuming?
The white robes and pointy hats are unmistakable. But who makes them?
Mother Jones has an article and photo essay, Aryan Outfitters:
Ms. Ruth is a 57-year-old tailor who lives in the Deep South. She makes ceremonial Ku Klux Klan robes and comes from five generations of the Klan. She uses the earnings to help care for her 40-year-old quadriplegic daughter, “Lilbit,” who was injured in a car accident 10 years ago.
Even the hateful are a niche that has specific problems that need to be solved by the right merchant.
Each morning on my walk to Six Apart down Folsom to 4th I pass the Mexican consulate with usually about 3 dozen men, women and children waiting in line for the offices to open at 9. Just as you pass the building you see a sign on the sidewalk that says ‘Pasaportes Fotografias’ (might be vice versa). There a young guy has a white background anchored to the outside wall of the building, a camera and tripod, a small table with a clipboard and a little fence for crowd control.
Genius.
A defined audience and he is right there to help them solve one very specific urgent problem.
I was going to take a picture but didn’t want them to think I was some kind of Minuteman.
Please stay in view:
Targeted ads might be a brass ring for the online marketers, but consumers just aren’t buying it. According to a recent Harris Interactive survey, 59 percent of Americans take exception to Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo tracking their online activities for marketing purposes.
Yes trust Google and Yahoo - they certainly have no backdoor for the NSA or the FBI. Full disclosure: I use Gmail.
From the Oregon Center for Public Policy:
This tax season, a minimum wage worker who was employed full-time last year and raising one child will pay about $321 in state income taxes. That’s equivalent to the cost of about a month’s worth of food based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data. For a single parent working at minimum wage $321 is a lot of money, especially when you compare it to the income tax bill that Intel Corporation, with $9 billion in profits, likely paid last year: 10 bucks.
My name is Andy Wibbels. I'm the author of Blogwild! A Guide for Small Business Blogging and I've helped hundreds of businesses all over the world get started blogging, increase traffic and make money online. I am a Marketing Manager at Six Apart, creators of Movable Type, TypePad and Vox. Contact me today to learn more. Full bio
