Pathetic Wave

According to the Chicago Tribune, Wrigley Field has sadly been infested with half-fans who did the wave during a recent game against the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Nothing against the wave - plenty of respectable fans do it for other teams in other places. But you have to understand that doing the wave for the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field is like serving Harry Caray a glass of non-alcoholic beer.

Hilarious: "Terry Tate's World"

This has been around for a few months, and I think I've seen versions of them on TV, but the longer videos on You Tube are great. They seem to be uncensored too, which is even funnier.

Great things come on Fridays

The best Google-related item I found today has been a nice update on Google Maps. Now you can have saved locations and label them. So, now when I type in "home" on Google maps, it will take me right to my house's specific address. Same for "work", etc. Great addition.

New project: Literature reviews

One of my hobbies is reading great writing. Naturally, people are never surprised to see me going through books, spending too much time and money at bookstores, and lately seeking out good writers on the Internet.

In an effort to foster this literary environment online, I will start to write reviews of the works that I spend my time reading. This won't be limited to just fiction novels. I'll keep it open to non-fiction, poetry, short story collections, and anything else.

Most recently I've finished reading Truman Capote's non-fiction work In Cold Blood, so a review of it with my impressions will be the first to appear on the Writer Shore blog.

My current reading material is Yann Martel's novel Life of Pi, and we can expect a review of that to come second.

I think it'd be awesome for the readers of this blog to suggest anything you'd like me to read and write a review on. Just go to the comments and leave your suggestion, anything goes!

How much do professional bloggers earn?

Great question. In this post from ProBlogger.net, Darren Rowse sheds some light on how he's doing; and though he never provides any specifics, you get the sense that he's doing rather well.

After reading Darren's blog for a few months, it's become clear to me that he takes a proactive approach to earning money and being straightforward with everyone about his methods. Through doing this on his ProBlogger blog, managing one of his 20 other blogs, and working on a consulting basis he claims to make at least $100,000 a year.

A philosophy of mine, however, is that you cannot focus on the money when it comes to a creative medium. Darren doesn't do this, but those thinking about blogging are met with the temptation to think "how can I make money being creative?" This should be replaced with the more appropriate "I'm creative, weird somebody just gave me money for it!?" It's not the businessman CEO mentality, but it aligns with the Google business model that if it does the best to serve the user (in this case, the reader), the rest of your project will fall into place.

In connection with this I have been talking with someone in the last few weeks regarding the Writer Shore community generated online literary magazine project. As a prospective writer for the site, this person expressed concerns about executing their "first publishing rights" on an online literary magazine that's freely searchable and available to the public. I understood this concern and we left it at that. However, I think that sooner or later the attitude of those responsible for giving us really great content (good writers) will shift toward accepting publicly searchable mediums as a positive audience rather than a trash can for our marketable publishing rights.

The Internet as a publishing medium doesn't get much respect from those who consider themselves professional writers. With the proper visibility, the size of an audience a writer can get from the 'net is mind boggling. By default we have access to readers in any part of the world where somebody has Internet access. Just this week the Writer Shore blog has received visitors from Hawaii, Seattle, Florida, New Jersey, Chicago, China, Wisconsin, Australia, Detroit, and Italy. My intuition tells me the potential is there for serious writers. It's just up to the writers to take a bold step and deliver that content.

For more content related tips on Internet blog writing, Darren Rowse has been steadfast in his solid preaching.

WritersDigest.com writing prompts

Have a look at this amusing list of prompts that just gets you thinking about weird, random writing ideas.

Read more at www.writersdigest.com/w...

World Trade Center, September 13, 2001

I found this on del.icio.us, some photography from the 9/11 aftermath.

Read more at www.zombietime.com/wtc_...

Why is the president ignoring our laws?

Lou Dobbs impresses again in his CNN editorial indictment of the president for not following the rule of law. The last few lines of the article particularly resonate:

As Abraham Lincoln said, if bad laws exist they should "be repealed as soon as possible, still, while they continue in force, for the sake of example they should be religiously observed." President Lincoln devoutly believed that rule of law assured that ours would continue to be a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

And that should be the first demand of every American today.

By the way, what ever happened to CNN being a mouthpiece for the government? At least they've got people writing stuff like this. People just need to act on it. Read more at www.cnn.com/2006/US/07/...

Some Writers Digest gems

I started reading a web site called Writers Digest , and here are a couple articles I read on my first visit.

The first is a slightly obvious prose primer, but it's always good to see if there's something "obvious" that we don't already know.

The second talks about villainous personalities and how to align them with actual disorders to make for a good story. I happen to think this discussion feels a bit cookie-cutter, but it's a good start for thinking about the topic and connecting it to real problems.

Google shares its suspicions on click fraud

About a week ago I was having a brief and rather nerdy conversation with a friend who was saying that Google will soon fail because they don't have a product to offer, and because of that the click fraud problem will overwhelm consumers' trust.

I don't think Google will go under because of this, but he's right in identifying morality, trust, and confidence as the main items Google peddles. It sounds very much like accounting firms which drive significant value from their seal of approval that they place on verified and reviewed financial statements. Google maintains a similar but more globally visible portfolio of trust.

For this reason, Google must keep a finger on the pulse of how they're viewed worldwide. This article below specifies a situation where Google had to take care of important business.

Read more at www.mercurynews.com/mld...

I could use a humanoid

A human helper robot would probably help out, but I have no idea how it would get involved in my current life. I guess I would make it my slave. Do we all crave slaves? I think it sounds like a good idea to enslave computers if we could do it. Google is basically like a computer search servant. For now though, dream about this robot.

Read more at www.engadget.com/2006/0...

Text Link Ads idea

One of the topics I'm interested in as a web content developer is the progression of Internet advertising technology. Indeed it fuels much of the internet from Google to your local blog writer.

To be part of the Internet world you've got to be in touch with what's going on with blogs, popularity sites like Digg, del.icio.us, Technorati, and the like. A site that I read from time to time - CyberWyre - discusses such Internet traffic issues.

At this site they talk about a new advertising structure called Text Link Ads which highlights words in the content of a web page and links ads that pop up directly over those words. I'd like to hear what people think about that method, and if you could see yourself returning to sites that vie for your attention in that way. You can see it in action and more explanation at the article: www.cwire.org/2006/05/0...

Speak your mind to Google

Amnesty International has started a campaign to convince the major U.S. search companies to stick to their better principles and not aid China in their extensive Internet censoring over there.

irrrepressible.info outlines the situation and gives you a direct way to contact Google, Microsoft, Yahoo... take a look.

Google may post higher income on search, ad surge - MarketWatch

Google's earnings come out after today's market close, and with an article lilke this, who wouldn't go buy a few thousand worth of shares and make a few hundred bucks in the process?

However, I can recall times just like today (when Yahoo came out with flat earnings the previous day) and everyone thought that it was because Google stole their ad market share, when in reality the overall Internet advertising market was just flat, and Google had flat earnings, and the stock went anorexic and dropped sixty in a day.I'm just staying put.

Read more at www.marketwatch.com/new...

Dobbs: Not so smart when it comes to the Middle East - Jul 19, 2006

Lou Dobbs always seems to have a good take on complicated issues. Here's his commentary on the current Middle East situation:

Read more at www.cnn.com/2006/US/07/...

Google's doodle artist

I think this has been public for some time, so I'm not sure why CNN is calling him an "unknown artist". But anyway, now we know a little bit more about the guy responsible for this questionable 4th of July 2006 cats drawing.

Read more at www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/i...

Anti-penny, pro-rounding bill introduced in Congress

This article about halting production of the penny sounds like a good idea. Apparently something similar to this is done in Europe.

Read more at money.cnn.com/2006/07/1...

Writer Shore growing pains

A few weeks back I began posting on a writing web site called theNextBigWriter.com in an effort to network and interact with other Internet writers and to promote the new Writer Shore project (at least indirectly). Apparently people on a blog called SelahWrites noticed my link to this blog in the profile I created. At the time it had a small blurb about what the Writer Shore project, with one part reading: 'Writers come here and we aggressively promote the best talent to the reading, writing, and publishing communities.' In some ways this is still part of our goal. My profile alias was (still is) TheNextBigReader, and there was some speculation / confusion about what Writer Shore actually is.

This all happened before writershore.com launched, and I'm hoping the mission and intent are more clear now with the new site. As it stands this is still an experiment, and adjustments will be made as it moves along and grows.

Some questions they asked:

- am I a banned former member of TheNextBigWriter.com? Nope. No skeletons like that.
- am I an agent? Not really. But Writer Shore is what me make it.
- am I working in connection with theNEXTBigWhackO? Haha ... ask people who know me. The answer is most likely "yes".

Read more at selahwrites.blogspot.co...

...

Another more technical sort of growing pain showed up when I noticed that some of the design elements of the site render in annoying ways with Firefox. This disappoints from the standpoint that I was previously so excited about switching to FF, but there's no going back now. The site will adapt.

My Firefox extensions

This space is intended as a supplement to the Writer Shore community generated literary magazine web site, and as such the content of it will be pretty broad. I see that as a positive necessity.

The great part about this post, in particular, is that I've finally found the fix to tear me completely away from Internet Explorer. Previous to only a few minutes ago, I had wanted to use Firefox because I knew that everything about it was better than IE. The only thing keeping me faithful to IE was the fact that the Google Toolbar (BETA) didn't have the Bookmarks functionality (a petty reason, I know). Maybe I'm a slow Internet user in terms of geekiness and the ability to find all these things, but today I found a Google Bookmarks Button FF extension. It should accomplish exactly what I seek.

Great stuff, let's see how it goes. Check the thing out yourself.

Read more at www.menjatallarins.com/...

This is just an initial mention of the web site that this blog compliments.

www.writershore.com
The community generated online literary magazine