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Terrible Tilly Looks Good in Print

Seattle Magazine coverThis is the cover of the May, 2008, edition of Seattle Magazine, which has what looks like a really cool cover feature on the great places and sights along the Washington and Oregon coast line.

Heck, the whole magazine looks nice — never saw an issue of this one before, but if I lived in Seattle, I’d be tempted to subscribe. So, why do I have a copy here at home, and why am I showing it here on the blog?

Because I mentioned a month ago that I sold another photo, and it’s in this issue. w00t!

See image below. It looks good, n’est-ce pas?

Seattle Magazine scan
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A Week’s Worth of Blogging

What a week this was. Absolutely nuts, for so many reasons. I did manage to push out a fair amount of blog posts, including one about the main reason things were so crazy.

Small Business SEM

Kennewick Real Estate Blog

Richland Real Estate Blog

Pasco Real Estate Blog

@U2 Blog

There will be a dramatic slowdown in blogging soon, because I’m going to be going offline for a little while. That should be … strange.

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More Flickr Photos Found in the Wild

I’ve said it before: I love seeing people use my Flickr photos in their blog posts. The latest examples include Geoff Livingston celebrating the two-year anniversary of his blog by using this geese-on-the-Columbia-River photo:

geese on the Columbia River photo

Some more from recent weeks:

  • A blogger named Ann used a photo of the local middle school track on the what to do, poopsy-woo? blog.
  • Charles Spurgeon used one of my favorite photos — Cannon Beach, Oregon — on his Daily Spurgeon blog.
  • And a couple weeks before that, the same Charles used my photo of gorgeous clouds over the Columbia River on Daily Spurgeon.

Always cool to see people using my photos and sharing the link love back to my Flickr photostream.

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A Banner Day for Yours Truly

Lookie who got on the digg home page today:

digg screenshot

That doesn’t happen every day, so pardon me while I gloat a little. (Here’s the digg story URL.) In fact, it’s only the third time I’ve put a story on the home page. But this an interesting study in headline writing:

I submitted the same article to mixx, but used the boring headline that came straight from the Dallas Morning News article: “White House candidates offer plans to curb high gas prices”. I changed the title when I submitted to digg, came up with something much more interesting — a better hook — and the thing took off like wildfire. So, next time you read about the importance of writing attention-getting headlines for social media … listen to that advice.

One More Thing…

Speaking of social media, I wrote a guest post today for the Social Media Mom blog. You can read it here:

Guest Post by Social Media Dad, Matt McGee from the Matt McGee Blog

If you read it, let me know what you think. Is 10-years-old too young to start blogging?

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Social Media Submits: April 27

Slowly getting back on the horse after a week of too much travel. Here’s what I shared on various social media sites in the past day or so:

digg

mixx

Sphinn

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New Coldplay Single: Free Download

Viva La Vida or Death And All His FriendsJust got an email from Coldplay.com telling me that they’re giving away the band’s new single, “Violet Hill,” as a free download beginning Tuesday on Coldplay.com. The free download will be available for a week.

The new album is called Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends, and (as you can almost see on the image at right) it has some artwork with a half-nekkid woman on the front. So, not exactly the most fan-friendly album cover when you have a 10-year-old at home who likes Coldplay.

I’m really curious to see what this album will sound like. I’ve been a fan since their first album, but didn’t find the most recent album all that thrilling — it was almost like Coldplay-by-numbers. I’m looking for something that sounds different, something new. They need to find a new path and explore it. With Brian Eno producing, I’m optimistic they’ve done that. But we’ll see…..

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Did You Know Squirrels are Friendly?

This squirrel pretty much begged for my attention while I was walking around the Northwest Forest Conference Center near Houston last week. I ended up taking maybe 15 different pics of him (her?), and this one might be the best.

The Friendly Squirrel

He just sat on the branch posing for me as I took shot after shot….what a character!

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Update: Still Not on Twitter

Last week in Houston, when every speaker (except me and Stoney D.) at the Small Business Marketing Unleashed conference said the word “twitter” at least 25 times, I made a simple promise to everyone telling me to sign up: as soon as I rank #1 in Google for [last person on twitter], I’ll sign up.

Easy enough, right? Anyone that thinks I should sign up just needs to link to that older post with the exact anchor text as above, and in a matter of days, I should be number one.

I keep checking every day, but I’m not there yet. I keep bouncing between #3 and #4. Right now, I’m No. 4:

last person on twitter Google search

I’m quite content not having a Twitter account. I use FriendFeed and still get to see everything my contacts are sharing, so that’s cool. But really, if you’ve been bugging me to sign up, follow through and point a link with the correct anchor text to that old post that’s currently No. 4 for “last person on Twitter.” It’ll probably only take five links to push that post to the top….

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Another Week of Blogging

This past week was all about airports, hotels, conferences, and speaking gigs … so it was pretty light on the blogging side of things. Here’s all I managed to post since the last recap:

Small Business SEM

U2 Diary

West Richland Real Estate Blog

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I Bought a Suburban Today

And like every proud owner of a new set of wheels, I’m going to show it off:

My New Wheels

Ain’t she a beauty? Say what? Yes, a Suburban. Oh, noooooo. Not that kind of Suburban. I mean a Schwinn Suburban.

See, the missus has been working out at the local gym for a while now (and is looking fine!, I might add). And since I work from home now, I get absolutely no exercise. At least last year, when I worked half the month in Seattle, I would have to walk a couple blocks back and forth to my car, and I could go out and walk around downtown at lunch. But this year? No exercise at all.

I’ve been planning to join the gym, too. Except I’ve been traveling way too much since the start of the year, and have never gotten around to it. And then when I started researching prices, I wasn’t too thrilled.

So, I had this crazy idea to buy a bike. I thought I was gonna spend maybe $100 for a nice 12-speed or something like I used to have in my younger years, except they don’t make bikes like that anymore. (I’m so freakin’ old.) After a little shopping around, I decided on the Schwinn Suburban above. And it has all kinds of levers and controls and things that twist and turn on the handles, and I have no idea what any of them do. So, I read the Owner’s Manual and realized that right there is problem #1: It comes with an Owner’s Manual.

When I was a kid, bikes didn’t need owner’s manuals. This one needs it, has it, and I don’t understand it.

If the weather is nice tomorrow (it’s not supposed to be), I’m going to throw caution to the wind and pretend I’m 12-years-old and just go riding, Owner’s Manual be damned. And if something goes wrong, I’m going to take it back to the store, and then go buy a real Suburban.

:)

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