Archive for June, 2008
June 18, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Guess who hit the digg home page again? 
Here’s what I’ve posted to various social sites in the last day or so.
mixx
digg
Sphinn
June 16, 2008 at 11:53 pm
There’s a firestorm happening online over an AP decision that bloggers aren’t even allowed to quote AP stories. (What a joke!) Seems the AP has told the Drudge Report to stop excerpting brief passages of AP stories … even though there are Fair Use laws that specifically allow such excerpting.
You can guess how bloggers have reacted to this: by banning the AP.
Ha! This is a serious case of deja vu for me. Twelve years ago, when @U2 was less than a year old, some guy from the AP emailed me out of the blue. He demanded that I remove the two AP articles that I had posted in full on the site. Fair enough, that was his legal right. I was doing more than excerpting; I was reproducing the full articles.
But I did the same thing: banned the AP. For 12 years, we’ve not posted AP stories on the web site. (We actually made one exception when we found that the only article about Adam Clayton’s marijuana arrest came from the AP. So we have one AP article in our database of 5,000+ articles.)
Can’t say I’m surprised at all by the AP’s shortsightedness. It goes back a loooong time. Meanwhile, other news organizations are smart enough now to email us to make sure we know about their latest U2 article. They want us to repost their material because it gets their name in front of thousands of eyeballs. A typical news article on @U2 will get several thousand pageviews per month. That’s pretty good exposure if you ask me. Just don’t tell the AP; they wouldn’t understand.
June 14, 2008 at 8:31 pm
What a crazy week. I was planning to get A, B, and C done … when, all of a sudden, I get a bunch of emails from my U2 - A Dairy editor over in London. He’s sending me proofs of the book — like, the actual book in PDF. Only it’s not finished until we go through it to find typos, caption all the photos, and make sure the photos are in the right place. So A, B, and C have been relegated to the back burner, where they still are, until I finish proofing the proofs. Gotta finish that by tomorrow night so he has them Monday morning, UK time. Fun!
My blog post recap will start with U2 - A Diary. Click the first link if you want to see what the insides will look like.
U2 - A Diary
Small Business Search Marketing
Kennewick Real Estate Blog
West Richland Real Estate Blog
Pasco Real Estate Blog
Richland Real Estate Blog
That airplane thing in the link above happens on Monday, and I’m seriously tempted to take the kids over to see these old, World War II bombers and fighters. Heck, if it didn’t cost $400+ dollars, I’d go up for a half-hour ride in one of them!
June 10, 2008 at 12:13 am
Been a bit busy the past few days working on my U2 book, but had some time today to get more involved on mixx, digg, sphinn, etc. Here’s what I shared over the past 24 hours or so.
mixx
digg
Sphinn
Not a single iPhone story submitted. But I did vote for a couple. And I do plan to buy the new one next month. But you knew that….
June 7, 2008 at 5:34 pm
I’m not one of those “I hate to travel” people, but my schedule so far in 2008 has me leaning in that direction more than ever. I’ve done more travel in the past four months than in any year of my life so far.
Where I’ve Been So Far This Year
It started with what was supposed to be a 2-day trip to Seattle in late January, but turned into a 3-day trip because the worst storm of the year shut down the Tri-Cities Airport. The photo at right is what my car looked like when I finally made it home. After that, the travel schedule went like this:
February 25-29: Santa Clara, CA
March 9-10: Portland, OR
March 10-12: Seattle
March 16-20: New York
March 28-31: Martinez, CA
April 20-22: Houston
April 22-24: Long Beach, CA
April 30-May 2: Seattle (I canceled this one, needed a rest.)
May 6-13: Philadelphia (and New York)
May 20-21: Portland, OR
June 2-5: Seattle
I get tired just looking at that list! But, if all goes well, the only traveling I’ll be doing between now and August is a quick drive to Portland later this month for a friend’s wedding. I can handle that. With air travel being as expensive as it is these days, and being such a complete hassle, I’m going to aim to stay home as much as possible. There’s a wedding in August I hope to go to, and a conference in September I’m already committed to. Other than that, I’ll be quite happy right where I am.
June 7, 2008 at 11:48 am
Not much going on with the blogs this past week, mainly due to my being on the road in Seattle from Monday through Thursday. But, let’s see what we came up with anyway.
Richland Real Estate Blog
West Richland Real Estate Blog
Kennewick Real Estate Blog
Pasco Real Estate Blog
@U2 Blog
Small Business SEM
Well, that was much more than I expected. Strange. Maybe I should travel more often. Or not.
June 6, 2008 at 12:43 am
I wonder… When traveling, why does the return trip always seem faster than the ‘leaving’ trip?
Case in point:
On Monday, I drove to Seattle. Trip time: 3 hours, 15 minutes.
Today, I came home from Seattle. Trip time: 4 hours.
Despite the evidence, today’s drive absolutely sailed by. Monday’s drive seemed like it took forever.
Why is that?
June 2, 2008 at 1:04 am
The McGee 4 went to the movies together on Saturday and saw Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, and absolutely delightful movie that had plenty to offer both kids and adults.
I was particularly glad that the movie didn’t go way overboard with special effects and sci-fi/fantasy gimmicks. This would’ve been a completely different movie in the hands of someone like, oh … Steven Spielberg. Prince Caspian is almost like an anti-epic — a big, grand film that seemed like it really wants to be smaller.
Now, it’s worth nothing that I enjoyed the movie a lot even though I’ve never read any of the C.S. Lewis novels, nor have I seen The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, the first film in the series. Turns out that there were a couple dialog references and other things I missed by not knowing the books/movie better, but as a complete rookie to Chronicles, I still really enjoyed the story. I confess to feeling lost for about the first 10 minutes, but after that it was clear sailing.
The only negatives for me? 1.) The thick English accents that the kids and some of the Telmarine lords used was hard to understand at times, and 2.) Some of the movements of the Narnians was a bit clunky. I’m referring to the centaurs and minotaurs mainly. But that clunkiness was actually somewhat endearing — it was almost like they were trying to make sure things weren’t perfect.
Overall, on a scale of 1-10, I’ll give Prince Caspian an 8. My 6-year-old loved it, and was crying when it was over — she didn’t want it to end. My 10-year-old liked it, but thought a couple scenes were too scary. Still, good for the whole family.
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