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SkyMall Monday: Is the tugo rolling luggage drink holder clever or idiotic? {Gadling}
Nov 14th 2011 3:00PM In this instance, I believe quantum physics has the metaphorical answer. It states that The Very Stuff Of Stuff can exist in both a wave and a particle state, at the same time, in ways we can't really get our heads around without instantly dying. This is similar. It's both sublimely magnificent and unspeakably awful. It simultaneously makes you look admirably practical and a complete and utter tool.
Now, if they made one that held a book, so you could read while you walked, that would be a great idea, with the added value of being incredibly dangerous. I'd be there in a shot.
SkyMall Monday: InstaCloth & the horrible videos it inspires {Gadling}
Sep 12th 2011 7:35PM It's been a while since I popped over to read one of your posts and have a good scream.
This was quite the re-introduction to that whole vibe.
"Thanks", Mike.
Also, the guy in the first video is *clearly* a Terminator. We'll look back, as the bombs rain down from SkyNet satellites in orbit, and we'll think "Instacloth, you could have stopped him. But you blew it. Like you blew everything else."
70s Pothead Aesthetics, Meet Austrian Art {Gadling}
Jul 31st 2011 1:29PM "Fantastic Realism" in this case a synonym for "like nothing you've ever seen before and, if you're lucky, never will again"? Okay, I can deal with that. I'm all for works of wildly provocative artistic rebellion. By "all for", though, I mean "in support of intellectually", which isn't the same as "like".
Did you get a sense from anyone you met that anyone was actually *enjoying* what they were seeing? Or am I being blinkered in suggesting there's a difference between Enjoyment and Appreciation, if you will? (It's quite possible I am).
Also - in saying it makes you hungry - good point. Architecturally, eeeuuuuww. But if you said "that's mostly marzipan up there" I'd have fallen in love with it.
Six Reasons I Broke Up With Your Travelblog {Gadling}
Jul 29th 2011 2:26PM Hey, what is this? WHAT THE HELL?
Well, whoever you are, "Pam" (if that's even your real name, I know how you people work), how DARE you condemn my blogging style. Obviously you need putting in your place - or rather, my place. Empathy fail, "Pam".
Time for a few home truths.
1) The longer a person spends on my site, the better my ranking. That's why I have pop-ups galore, a full-screen hairtrigger newsletter subscription box with a really, really small X-button *that's in a completely unexpected corner* (I'm proud of that one), and lots of things you have to click through to get to other things, *especially* unsubscription forms. The longer they have to click through my site, the more it takes the fight out of them and the more vulnerable they are to my sales team. Grind them down and they're mine (that's what some blogging gurus refer to as "core audience" - everything stripped away). And when they're after an unsubscribe, you need them to really give up. You know? Every "OH FOR..!!!.....FINE, I just can't be BOTHERED" is a victory of retention.
2) Advertising is less about meaningful, fitting relationships and more about acreage. My readers don't want to be faced with "choices" or "thinking", that just confuses their tiny minds. A really great way to prevent this kind of muddied content is to have pop-over adverts (Google it, you'll love it), where they don't even need to click, they just infringe a certain amount of page-space with their mouse and the screen instantly fills with crud. *My* crud. That's a real earner.
3) Content. Let's talk about content. Actually, let's not. I'm less interested in what content is and more interested in how frequently it goes up, ie. how often I can share it on social media. Do the math: 3 posts a day retweeted every hour all day long is 72 chances to get eyeballs. I don't care what that content is. Nobody should. It's about width, not depth. Anything else is vanity.
4) You know what the answer is to your "I can't read everything" problem? It's this: Don't Try. The road to success is sharing everything you see without even clicking on it. Who can *possibly* read all of that, especially this endless "longform" nonsense? (My motto: if you can't say it in 140 characters, it's not worth saying). I certainly can't keep up. So I don't. I just share it around, Stumble it and Digg it and Tweet it until all the coffee in the world can't keep my eyes open. Because that's what it's *for*.
(And I just bet you're one of these "narrative" people too. Ugh).
5) Comments. Another time-saving tip for you here, "Pam". You only need to remember two ways to comments:
(a) "LOL".
(b) < repeating what was said in the original post >
Just don't forget to end that comment with a link to a site you want to get traffic to. That's a real n00b error, not doing that. I laugh and laugh when I see people "engaging with the spirit of the material" and all that malarkey. Don't these people have jobs? REALLY? But frankly, they're usually being paid to do it. (That's a nice little earner, I know people who swear by it).
I could go on, but I get the feeling it would be wasted on you, "Pam". Even though you seem to have your own blog and seem to be quite well-regarded, so you *must* have cashed in on all of that approval by now, because who wouldn't? What is there to lose?
Yeah, I reckon you're having your cake AND eating it.
I'll be ignoring your advice. All the best.
http://Mike-Is-Shirtless-In-Chiang-Mai.com
http://Mike-Is-Shirtless-In-Cancun.com
http://Mike-Is-Shirtless-In-Glasgow.com
Blogger Eva Holland {Gadling}
Apr 26th 2011 3:49PM I know this woman and she's completely crazy. The really good, smart, adventurous, super-travel-literature-literate crazy. You've a good one here.
A new place to spend euros: Estonia {Gadling}
Jan 3rd 2011 7:36AM Alas. Yes, I hear more and more from friends in newly-Euro'd countries how it's hiking prices. Spain in particular....
And there's the culture thing. I know the unified currency is (in theory) a more efficient way of doing things - but there was something thrilling about handling and learning different kinds of money. Money is like language - it tells you a lot about a country, in all sorts of sly ways. And it feels excitingly wrong - too heavy, too light, the wrong shape, the wrong size. It's yet another part of feeling like you've truly gone Elsewhere.
Estonia has been experiencing an information technology boom for the last decade. For example, it enjoys perhaps the most extensive WiFi coverage of any European country. I wonder how all these I.T. startups feel about the arrival of the Euro.
Bah humbug.
100 controversial whole body imaging photos revealed {Gadling}
Nov 16th 2010 5:36PM ...and by that I meant: the developers of the technology. Storage, yes, but removal of those images in any way, no. This technology should be locked down in all sorts of super-zealous ways. The fact these 100 images were presumably exported as JPEGs is surely the problem?
100 controversial whole body imaging photos revealed {Gadling}
Nov 16th 2010 5:24PM Only kinky if you find Commodore 64 graphics a turn-on.
Regarding PTRIX's point: agreed, storage should never have been questioned. What *is* staggering is that they weren't enormously paranoid about the images getting leaked that it was never allowed to happen. Isn't the situation a PR nightmare waiting to happen, the kind that's so obvious you see it coming as well as with hindsight? Didn't they read the signs? And didn't all the advance controversy etch those sights out in blazing neon?
That's truly staggering.
On long-term travel, snobbery & judgmental blogging {Gadling}
Sep 23rd 2010 1:10PM You're absolutely right. It's a patronising point of view to take.
But it's also a disingenuous one. As I've said in a comment on the article itself, Matt isn't living the lifestyle he's pitching as the superior way to live. He has various online business. He has commitments. He can't live "on a whim" and approach every day 100% afresh. What he's talking about is a lifestyle he's renegotiated so he can move around - but really, he's in full-time work (on *his* terms, but still full-time working).
I also take issue with the suggestion that every moment is a new beginning. This is one of the big issues with expectations of travel - that you can leave yourself behind and have a complete personality makeover. Whether Matt is saying this directly or not, it sounds like it's being suggested in the article. It's claiming that travel has the potential to completely remake our lives from scratch, and I'm tired of hearing that claim because it's sloppily-thought-out, faux self-help quackery. It's a recipe for disappointment, and for living your daily life as an exercise of irresponsible delayed gratification until that special moment when you start travelling and can have a perfect existence.
Ain't so. We always, *always* take ourselves with us.
And that's a strength of travel, not a weakness.
SkyMall Monday: Square Root Watch {Gadling}
Sep 15th 2010 6:52PM Ridiculously lovable.
(I wrote this last year: http://weburbanist.com/2008/11/24/creative-modern-clock-designs/ So I'm biased.)
Although that's nowhere near hardcore enough for me. I want a watch with a digital readout and a button which, when pressed, produces a huge equation, preferably riddled with quadratics, matrices and constant coefficient linear differentials. Then, after maybe 20 to 25 minutes of hard work in front of a blackboard, I can work out what the time is.
That's a world worth waiting for.
