Month: March 2008

mp3 of Bill Clinton’s Speech in Asheville

Bill Clinton gave a stump speech here in Asheville last night at Asheville High (here’s a pic from after the speech):

Scrutiny Hooligans » Clinton wows ‘em @ Asheville High: “Love him or hate him, President Clinton knows how to deliver a speech. He’s a master at working a crowd even if he’s ultimately preaching to his own choir (reports have come in that several Obama supporters were denied entrance into the venue).”

Here’s the mp3 and head over to ScrutinyHooligans for the audio stream (runs about an hour).

I Love Project Gutenberg

I’ve been looking for a real world copy of this for a while… and it’s been a free ebook all along:

Myths of Babylonia and Assyria by Donald A. MacKenzie – Project Gutenberg

I’m so jealous of the tools and resources that young people have at their disposal today. Makes me weak-kneed to think of the incredible amount of information my 5 month old daughter will be able to access throughout her life.

Let’s keep the web clean for the next generation.

Doing My Thing

I co-hosted AffiliateThing on WebMasterRadio.fm this week with Shawn Collins (Lisa was sick).

We had a great time and I’m proud to be a member of the “6 Timers Club” on the show (take that, Kurkal).

Affiliate Thing Podcast – March 26, 2008 | Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins: “The March 26, 2008 episode of Affiliate Thing features guest co-host Sam Harrelson, since Lisa Picarille was under the weather.

Sam and Shawn were joined by Will Martin-Gill, senior manager of Internet marketing for eBay, to discuss eBay migrating their affiliate program from Commission Junction to in-house.

Also, they cover a new CAN-SPAM ruling, death of Facebook, Sam’s reality show of building an affiliate site, and affiliate link disclosure.”

Here’s the mp3 for your listening pleasure (or you can head here for the stream to listen).

“10 Minutes With” Podcast Series

Over on GeekCast.fm, I’m doing a new series of podcasts called “10 Minutes With” where I have a conversation with someone from the online tech or marketing world about a particular topic for 10 minutes.

Today, I chatted with Ted Murphy of Izea (formerly PayPerPost) about disclosure. It’s a quick, but valuable and interesting, listen.

Head over to GeekCast for the streaming audio:

10 Minutes with Ted Murphy: Disclosure : GeekCast.fm: ”
As part of the ‘10 Minutes With’ series here on GeekCast.fm, I recently chatted with Izea’s Ted Murphy.”

And here’s the mp3 for download.

Burning Vanity Bra’s

Lisa Picarille has started something really amazing.

She’s getting more women in the affiliate marketing space to realize that they can leave the makeup and fancy hair at the door and just hit record. We all care more about the actual content.

More on Affiliate Videoblogging » RevenueToday: “Since many people contacted me about yesterday’s post on women affiliates and videoblogging, I thought I would make a short video response.”

Here’s Stephanie Agresta‘s response:

And here’s Missy Ward‘s response.

Great job getting the video conversation going, Lisa. This needed to be said.

How To Track Twitter Conversations

Keeping track of Twitter conversations can be a pain since the platform doesn’t lend itself to keeping track of threaded comments. Users have developed the “@” form of replying, but unless you are constantly observing your Twitter stream and following everyone, you’re going to miss out on comments.

So, here are two great ways to keep up with Twitter conversations involving yourself (or others you may be interested in). If you combine these with your feed reader, it’s incredibly powerful.

First, is Quotably:

Sam Harrelson’s twitter conversations – Quotably.com

Then, there’s a Yahoo Pipes app that I first heard about from @DougH via Twitter:

Pipes: Twitter Reply Sniffer with Dates

Give them a try if you want to stay on top of your Twitter presence (or someone else’s).

US Gov’t Kills Spirit (Update: Spirit Saved!)

We spend close to $100,000 every minute in Iraq, but we can’t afford to keep NASA’s budget at its current size and ensure more incredible discoveries about our solar system (and ourselves since we are all created from stardust) from the Mars rover Spirit?

Spirit, the Mars Rover, Left to Die Before Its Time [Mars Rover]: “But now it looks like Spirit has rolled on its six wheels and done science experiments for the very last time. The U.S. government has forced NASA, this country’s national space agency, to cut its budget by 4 million dollars. And that means only one rover, Opportunity, will survive. To say that this is a tragedy is an understatement.”

Amazing. Human short-sightedness never ceases to disappoint me.

Yet another reason to vote for change in ’08.

Update: Spirt Has Been Saved!

I Can Has Great Marketing

4EF600CC-424E-4B77-9237-633AC87AE50D.jpgAngel Djambazov of Jones Soda’s affiliate program pointed me to what might be the greatest marketing scheme of all time… making your LOLCat famous.

Make Ur Lolcat Famous Contest « Lolcats ‘n’ Funny Pictures – I Can Has Cheezburger?: “Jones Soda wanted to put a lolcat on their clever soda bottles across the country. So we asked if we can run a contest to find that special lol. (It’s like American Idol, but we don’t has to listen to ur singing voice.)”

Despite my wife’s eye rolling every time I check icanhascheezburger.com (or wear my tshirt from them), I still love LOLCats.

Well done, Jones Soda (and Angel).

is it kosher to say “happy easter”? i should know with a divinity degree, i guess. makes me feel sorta uneasy saying “happy easter” since what we’re observing here was a rather revolutionary event.

maybe we should say “take easter seriously this year, dammit” instead of “happy easter”?

Looting of Baghdad Museum

Salon.com does a fantastic job of presenting the situation at the Baghdad Museum after the US invasion of Iraq five years ago and where things stand now.

There’s a text transcript as well as a mp3 podcast available of a very valuable roundtable discussion…

The looting of Iraq | Salon News: “Among the many unintended and unforeseen consequences of the U.S. occupation of Iraq that began five years ago this week was the wholesale looting of Iraq’s museums and archaeological sites. Iraq has been called the cradle of civilization. Starting with the Sumerian civilization, which more than 5,000 years ago produced what may be the world’s first examples of writing and math, the area centered on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and known as Mesopotamia has been home to a succession of cultures — Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian. Many believe southern Iraq was the site of the biblical Garden of Eden. But within weeks of the first American airstrike, the cradle of civilization had been robbed. Baghdad’s National Museum of Iraq, among the globe’s premier repositories of antiquities, was ransacked over the course of a week in April 2003. Statues were dragged down the steps, artifacts six millennia old were carried off in plastic bags. American soldiers were not dispatched to protect the museum until the thieves were long gone. “

You can download the podcast here.

Untitled

is it kosher to say “happy easter”? i should know with a divinity degree, i guess. makes me feel sorta uneasy saying “happy easter” since what we’re observing here was a rather revolutionary event.

maybe we should say “take easter seriously this year, dammit” instead of “happy easter”?

Untitled

During night 2008.03.18/19 the “Pi of the Sky” apparatus located at Las Campanas Observatory was observing the Swift satellite field of view with 10s exposures from 5:49 UT. At 6:12 UT we observed exceptionally bright optical flash reaching 5.8 magnitudo. It was automatically detected by the flash recognition algorithm.

GRB080319B by Pi-of-the-Sky

So Wrong It’s Funny

Shoemoney® is early on the April Fools’ Day jokes…

How Long Until Someone Is Killed At An Affiliate Summit – ShoeMoney®: So lately I have been asked a lot why I no longer attend affiliate summits. Well this is basically it. I think I would have had a lot more fun at the affiliate summit back a few years ago when I used to love to get drunk and crazy but that is not really my thing anymore. Mix that in with the fact each time I was asked to speak it was a complete train wreck. Then mix in the death threats, and the fact its kind of become a thug conference … well I just have a hard time justifying paying money to experience that… if that makes any sense.

This is why I don’t watch much TV these days… I have posts like this on the internets to laugh at and entertain me.

Head over and read the whole gut-busting post (and don’t forget the comments from the Shoemoney® Sheep Show as well).

Shawn Collins is Wrong: Asus eee Owns Dell Vostro

Shawn Collins has a new video demonstrating his crush on the Dell Vostro(I was waiting for him to lick it at the end).

He compares the Vostro to the Asus eee so I wanted to set the record straight…

The Asus eee (“Easy to Learn, Easy to Work, Easy to Play”) is a fantastic little machine that solves a number of problems in my life. It’s comparable to the Macbook Airor the Sony Vaiobut is still much smaller and much less expensive (around $400-$500 depending on memory, etc) than either of those.

Plus, the Asus is a solid state machine meaning that it boots up almost immediately (takes about 10 seconds), is very rugged and has an incredible battery life (around 3 to 3.5 hours for me).

With a gig of memory, 8 gigs of storage, 3 usb ports and a MicroSD slot, it’s the perfect travel machine.

So, there’s no comparison between Shawn’s bulky 14 inch Vostro that is sure to be dead in 3 years since it’s a Dell and my little Asus which will be humming along for years to come.

“It was from that planet [Nibiru], the Sumerian texts repeatedly and persistently stated, that the Anunnaki came to Earth. The term literally means ‘Those Who from Heaven to Earth Came.’ They are spoken of in the Bible as the Anakim, and in Chapter 6 of Genesis are also call Nefilim, which in Hebrew means the same thing: Those Who Have Come Down, from the Heavens to Earth.”

– Zecharia Sitchin, Genesis Revisited

Genesis Revisited