Category: Technology

Just when you thought the current crop of “I make money blogging” bloggers couldn’t get any more annoying, here’s even more fuel to the fire:

Ad network AdBrite announced this morning that they have begun selling full-page ad units of the sort that you’ve no doubt seen on some of the bigger, more old-school web sites like PCMag and the New York Times. Now you too can interrupt your readers’ time with a full page ad in the middle of their time on your site.

More power to the “I make money blogging and so can you!” crowd out there, but I just don’t see why you’d want to pollute your space of creativity and expression with ads that are probably not going to make you much (if any) money anyway. Sure, a few ads here and there are fine, but interrupting your readers attention and experience by throwing up a full page ad before they can visit your site or splicing AdSense units into your post just seems pathetic to me.

For bloggers with less than a million page views per month, the trade off just doesn’t seem worth it since all you’re doing is propping up the ad networks by participating in these schemes.

AdBrite: Full Page “Skip This Ad” Units Now Available for Everyone

I use a service called “Callwave” to handle my voicemail. Basically, it turns incoming voicemail into txt messages so I don’t have to listen to every message.

Or that’s what it’s supposed to do. Looks like the service has been down all morning and I can’t login to my account via the website to even check on things or cancel my account. I’ve spoken to a couple of other Callwave users who are seeing the same thing on their accounts.

They’ve got a blog but haven’t updated it with any issues today. Ugh.

Looks like I’m declaring voicemail bankruptcy! The joys of being an early adopter…

Callwave

Everyone loves fame (except for the wise ones), so it’s no surprise that there’s been an over abundance of “popular” lists and rankings emerging from all areas of the blogosphere lately.

The sad fact is that no one really cares.

Hot on the heels of the Techmeme Leaderboard, the newest offenders are Scoble and TechCrunch:

So Google recently made it fairly easy to determine the number of Google Reader subscribers around a particular blog. Gabe Rivera at Techmeme did a little work on excel and came up with an unofficial list of the top blogs and the number of subscribers each blog has on Google Reader. He sent the list around to people for comments – with his permission we’ve published it below.

Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim has the right idea:

Here’s some honesty. I love seeing Marketing Pilgrim on any list–like many bloggers–and I suggested MP be added to this new list. Guilty, as charged. But then I stopped and asked, “when will this blog-list insanity stop?” Do we really need to keep compiling lists of top blogs?

The blogosphere is all about the “long tail.” If we continue to highlight only the top 0.0001% blogs we do nothing but encourage the echo-chamber when instead we should be trying to delve deeper/wider into the blogosphere.

I’ve recently discovered a great trick to get past my disgust at such navel gazing… unsubscribing. Seriously, it works wonders to vote with your feet eyeballs attention and let the free market figure out when bloggers have spent too much time staring into the puddle of Narcissus.

There’s a wide world of incredible things happening online in terms of new platforms, new programs and new marketing paradigms… I’d rather focus on those and read bloggers who are doing the same instead of admiring the size of their feed numbers.

Two of my favorite writers, Cory Doctorow and Ursula K Le Guin, are in a bit of a spat over the perception of fair use and creative commons in relation to a short Le Guin piece that Doctorow published on the uber popular boingboing.net blog:

In a nutshell: I quoted, in its entirety, a one-paragraph story that Ms Le Guin sent to the fanzine Ansible, in which she made fun of a book review in Slate that said that Michael Chabon “has spent considerable energy trying to drag the decaying corpse of genre fiction out of the shallow grave where writers of serious literature abandoned it.” Le Guin’s paragraph was a long one, about 500 words, and I pasted the whole thing in, because I thought it was delightful.

In my own non-important view, I have to side with Doctorow here… he seemed to have nothing but the best of intentions and wanted to introduce a new crowd of readers from boingboing to Le Guin’s excellent work. Additionally, his explanation of Fair Use seems to be right on… but I’m not a copyright lawyer (thank the gods), so what do I know?

Yet again, here’s an instance of the offline and online publishing worlds having a difficult time grok-ing the intricacies of each others’ systems, customs and practices.

You say tomato, I say tomato… let’s call the whole thing off.

An apology to Ursula K Le Guin – Boing Boing

Stephen Colbert assumes the role of Maureen Dowd in today’s NY Times. Very very funny:

Surprised to see my byline here, aren’t you? I would be too, if I read The New York Times. But I don’t. So I’ll just have to take your word that this was published. Frankly, I prefer emoticons to the written word, and if you disagree :(I’d like to thank Maureen Dowd for permitting/begging me to write her column today. As I type this, she’s watching from an overstuffed divan, petting her prize Abyssinian and sipping a Dirty Cosmotinijito. Which reminds me: Before I get started, I have to take care of one other bit of business:

Bad things are happening in countries you shouldn’t have to think about. It’s all George Bush’s fault, the vice president is Satan, and God is gay.

There. Now I’ve written Frank Rich’s column too.

Great stuff… go read the whole thing.

I’ve had a couple of people email me to find out where the videos and pics of Mary Hudson, etc are located on the web.

Pictures: http://photos.samharrelson.com (or you can just go straight to my Flickr site which is the same thing).

Videos: http://tv.samharrelson.com (or you can just go straight to my YouTube site which is the same thing).

There’s a constant stream of pics and videos flowing these days since Mary Hudson is having a lot of “firsts!” so be sure to check in or subscribe to those places if you’re into feed reading.

BTW, I’m also a heavy Twitter user. If you’re a user add me (http://www.twitter.com/samharrelson) or sign up and give it a go. It’s good for your constitution.

Wow (you have to watch all 8 mins):

Thanks to Ze Frank for the link.

What does this say about the affiliate marketing industry when leading “affiliates” …er… publishers can’t decide on a proper definition for themselves.  Let’s debate how many angels can dance on the head of a pin next:

28 Comments

Affiliates Grow Up and Exit

Blogged with Flock

Seth Godin lays down a beautiful analogy for those who watch the innovators and then attempt to follow their success in light of the Radiohead album release of In Rainbows.

This is exceptionally true in the case of online marketers who are frequently beyond watchful in their appraisal of new marketing approaches and hence beyond mediocre (video, social media, etc):

So, in every industry, the middle waits. And watches. And then, once they realize they can survive the switch (or once they’re persuaded that their current model is truly fading away), they jump in.

Seth’s Blog: Radiohead and the mediocre middle

Just came across this great (and evolving) list of important science fiction authors on Wikipedia…

Some notable science fiction authors are (in alphabetical order):

List of science fiction authors – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Feed.

Burp.

Change.

Repeat constantly.

xkcd is my favorite web comic. Today’s episode is completely hi-larious.

BTW, I read this out to Anna and my mom as we sit in the hospital room. Anna responded "The fact that you have to explain this makes it so not funny. You are a complete geek."  Yep.

xkcd – A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language – By Randall Munroe

Mary Hudson was born on Oct 9, which is also St. Denis and Companions’ Day in the liturgical calendar of the Roman Catholic Church.  We’re not Catholic, but since I do study religion (particularly ancient religion), I thought this was interesting:

This martyr and patron of France is traditionally held to have been the first bishop of Paris. His popularity is due to a series of legends, especially those connecting him with the great abbey church of St. Denis in Paris. He was for a time confused with the writer now called Pseudo-Dionysius.

The best hypothesis contends that Denis was sent to Gaul from Rome in the third century and beheaded in the persecution under Valerius in 258.

According to one of the legends, after he was martyred on Montmartre (literally, "mountain of martyrs") in Paris, he carried his head to a village northeast of the city. St. Genevieve built a basilica over his tomb at the beginning of the sixth century.

St. Denis and Companions – Saint of the Day – American Catholic

And here’s more about St. Denis from Wikipedia (he seemed to be quit head strong):

Saint Denis of Paris (also called Dionysius, Dennis, or Denys) is a Christian martyr and saint. In the third century, he was bishop of Paris. He was martyred in approximately 250, and is venerated especially in the Roman Catholic Church as patron of Paris, France and one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. The modern name "Denis" derives from the ancient name Dionysius, "servant of Dionysus"

According to the Golden Legend, after his head was chopped off, Denis picked it up and walked several miles, preaching a sermon the entire way.^[5] The site where he stopped preaching and actually died was made into a small shrine that developed into the Saint Denis Basilica, which became the burial place for the kings of France. Another account has his corpse being thrown in the Seine, but recovered and buried later that night by his converts.^[2]

Specifically, Denis is invoked against diabolical possession and headaches.^[7]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis

OK, back to changing diapers!

I love the "What’s In Your Bag?" Flickr pool where people can post up the contents of their day packs or bags for the world to see.  Pure gadget and manpurse (murse) pr0n.

I’ve even put up one myself in the past (though I need to update with my new canvas bag).

Anyway, this is the best entry I’ve ever seen, hands down.

What’s in my bag? on Flickr – Photo Sharing!

More pics to come soon on the Flickr page as soon as we get them downloaded from the camera… but WOW what a crazy day!

Here’s the preliminary judgement… she has Anna’s nose and my lips.  She also seems to have my stern look when she’s frustrated 🙂

Thanks to everyone for the well wishes via email, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, text messages and thanks to those who stopped by the hospital to see Mary Hudson.  We’re logging all of these for Mary Hudson to enjoy and reflect on when she’s older.

Mom and baby are sleeping soundly after an exciting 24 hours and I’m getting ready to join them.

I can’t process how excited I am to be this beautiful little girl’s dad, and I hope I live up to her expectations that she clearly expresses every time she opens her eyes and looks me in the face.  Talk about a perspective changing experience!

More soon…

mary hudson getting weighed and measured on Flickr – Photo Sharing!

Mary Hudson Harrelson entered the world this morning at 6:30am.

She’s beyond beautiful. The delivery was wonderful and an amazing experience for everyone.

You can follow updates on our Flickr page:

Sam’s Flickr Page

We’re in the hospital tonight awaiting the arrival of Baby Harrelson!  Contractions started around 5 and intensified until around 9pm when we decided to head to Mission Hospital here in Asheville.

It’s currently 3:00am and we’re progressing nicely… should have a delivery sometime in the next few hours!

You can follow live updates on my Twitter stream (http://www.twitter.com/samharrelson)

More soon!

Going Into Labor on Flickr – Photo Sharing!

My life is now complete (via boing boing), a Bible translation project using the popular LOLCat form:

1. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat was invisible, and he maded the skiez and da earths, but he did not eated it.

2. The earths wus witout shapez and wus dark and scary and stuffs, and he rode invisible bike over teh waterz.

Thanks, Jeff D!

Genesis 1 – LOLCat Bible Translation Project

When I taught 8th grade science, we spent a considerable amount of time on Archimedes (machines, etc) and eventually Newton and the discovery of the calculus.

This news makes my heart swell as we continue to realize that we 20-21st century westerners weren’t the first to achieve such grand inventions as calculus or even a notion of grasping at the infinite…

Two of the texts hiding in the prayer book have not appeared in any other copy of Archimedes’s work, so no one but Heiberg had studied them until now. One of them, titled The Method, has special historical significance. It could be considered the earliest known work on calculus.

Archimedes wrote The Method almost two thousand years before Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz developed calculus in the 1700s. Reviel Netz, an historian of mathematics at Stanford University who transcribed the text, says that the examination of Archimedes’ work has revealed “a new twist on the entire trajectory of Western mathematics.”

In The Method, Archimedes was working out a way to compute the areas and volumes of objects with curved surfaces, which was also one of the problems that motivated Newton and Leibniz. Ancient mathematicians had long struggled to “square the circle” by calculating its exact area. That problem turned out to be impossible using only a straightedge and compass, the only tools the ancient Greeks allowed themselves. Nevertheless, Archimedes worked out ways of computing the areas of many other curved regions.

I hope my former 8th graders will here the name Archimedes again sometime in their life or career and think back to our class and how we were also grasping at infinity.

Math Trek: A Prayer for Archimedes, Science News Online, Oct. 6, 2007

I love the Beatles. They literally changed my life when I was a punk kid in Mullins, SC.

On the new Wu-Tang Clan album due out later this fall, there’s an interesting track that samples the famous (and lovely) Beatles song "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" which appeared on The White Album.

I’ve been hearing a good deal about all of the negotiations that went into making this possible and supposedly the Wu Tang album was delayed for this first ever Beatles sample.

Here’s the song in streaming format… I’ve had it on repeat the whole day.  Good stuff:

Wu-Tang Clan – The Heart Gently Weeps

Wu-Tang Clan – The Heart Gently Weeps / The Hype Machine

I just purchased the domain name “ClothDiaperDad.com” since Anna and I are going the cloth diaper route.

I’m not sure how I’ll use it, but thought it would be fun as a place to share learning moments and the inevitable mistakes (blowouts?!?) that will come with the use of cloth diapers.

BTW, we’re using BumGenius brand… they work great so far (of course we don’t have a baby just yet… should be soon!):

bumGenius

I’ll be co-presenting at this year’s Blog Wolrd Expo with Stephanie Agresta on Friday Nov 9. This looks like it’s going to be a great show with people such as Leo Laporte, Dave Taylor and my pal Jim Kukral attending and presenting.

If you’re in the Las Vegas area or looking for a reason to head to Vegas in November, I can’t think of a better place to be to learn all about blogging!

Blog World Expo

I recently found a replica of one of my favorite pieces of art and history, the statue of Ashurnasirpal II in the round from the Temple of Ishtar.

Ashurnasirpal was the ruler of Assyria in the 9th Century BCE and a very interesting historical figure. My little book published by Yale University Press last year (Asia Has Claims Upon New England) was about the artwork in his palace in Nineveh as well as the journey it took from ancient Assyria to modern day New England.

And here is the description of the original (including pictures) from the British Museum site (the original is in London now):

A rare example of an Assyrian statue in the round

Neo-Assyrian, 883-859 BC
From Nimrud (ancient Kalhu), northern Iraq

This statue of King Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BC) was placed in the Temple of Ishtar Sharrat-niphi. It was designed to remind the goddess Ishtar of the king’s piety. It is made of magnesite, and stands on a pedestal of a reddish stone. These unusual stones were probably brought back from a foreign campaign. Kings often boasted of the exotic things they acquired from abroad, not only raw materials and finished goods but also plants and animals.

The king’s hair and beard are shown worn long in the fashion of the Assyrian court at this time. It has been suggested that the Assyrians used false hair and beards, as the Egyptians sometimes did, but there is no evidence for this.

Ashurnasirpal holds a sickle in his right hand, of a kind which gods are sometimes depicted using to fight monsters. The mace in his left hand shows his authority as vice-regent of the supreme god Ashur. The carved cuneiform inscription across his chest proclaims the king’s titles and genealogy, and mentions his expedition westward to the Mediterranean Sea.

The statue was found in the nineteenth century by Henry Layard, the excavator of the temple.

I am a complete dork.

British Museum – Statue of Ashurnasirpal II