Remember when I said I was now going to do dofollow commands on my comments?

Yeah… that’s dead.

It seems that it may not appease the Google gods, so out it goes.   I’m getting a little tired of how Google has seemingly gotten a stranglehold on how the web works.  They dangle your PageRank over your head, and make you dance for your dinner like the proverbial organ grinder’s monkey, but, alas, what can you do?  Until some upstart comes along, as they did to the former king, Yahoo, this is how it’ll have to be.

I still think dofollow is a nice idea for your readers, but, as I like traffic coming into my site, out it goes.

The Performing Rights Society, a UK based organization charged with watching over musical copyrights, whom I have discussed before, are back with a new doozy of a story.

Dam House in Astley, near Manchester, UK, is a historical site and is open to the public. On the premises they have a tea room with fresh cooked food from an on-site kitchen. Well, last year, someone from the PRS stopped by, and, horror of horrors, they could hear the radio from the kitchen in the tea room! Being the nice folks most copyright organizations are, they informed Dam House they needed a license to play their radio. Not feeling like arguing with them, Dam House said they would pay the license fee.

Upon asking questions, the PRS learned they have an annual Christmas concert at the facility where children sing Christmas carols. Well, due to that little tidbit, the license fee shot up to £230 (approx. $460 USD). They held a raffle to pay the fee, and they moved on. This year they learned the fee was going to be £470 (approx $940 USD), and it seems this is because they have a function room. The PRS has informed them they can avoid all of this if they agree to sing songs only that are no longer under copyright.

Is it any wonder why people hate groups like the PRS, RIAA, and IFPI? It’s all fine and well that they want to protect copyrights, but this is insane. I am all for musicians getting the money they’re owed, but come on, the radio was in the kitchen, it was obviously not for public performance. And making kids who sing carols pay for the rights? Please. Yes, protect the copyrights, but have a damn heart, it’s a charity for crying out loud.

***MAJOR SPOILERS***

Continue Reading ->

Brace yourself folks, we’re looking at months it seems.

Of course both sides have their versions of what’s happened.  You can find the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) version of events here, and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP) side of things is on the front page of their site currently.

There is a great breakdown of today’s events at DeadlineHollywoodDaily.com, and it seems that it was known the producers were going to try to pull a dirty trick today.  It seems they were tired of being seen as the bad guys, so they wanted the writers to walk away from the table to show they were the unreasonable ones.  Problem is, the story got out before they decided to give the WGA a list of demands that would bring the negotiations, such as they were, to a screeching halt.

As it stands, the producers have thrown down the gauntlet, they aren’t ready to budge.  At this point we’re probably looking at months, and this television season is effectively over and done with.

Laura of TLD Cocker Spaniels has her hands full with cocker spaniels at the moment. (For those who follow along, Laura was the breeder of my Winston and Patrick) Besides her usual puppies, which the current litter is ADORABLE, she has three adults that need homes.

Pictured here is Monte. He was born December 16th, 2006, and is fixed, house broken, and knows multiple commands (sit, shake and so on). His owner sadly had a stroke and is no longer able to take care of him. I feel horrible for the little guy, so before I go and do something stupid/silly, please someone give him a good home!

She also has two 2-year olds she is retiring from her breeding program, Jackson Brown and Kristee. Both have wonderful pedigrees and used to being indoors.

If any of the adults interest you, check them out at her site.

ETA: Monte has a home!  The other two still need them!

I know… I keep talking about this, and I am sure people are bored with it, but too bad!

You have to give it to JJ Abrams, the man has turned viral marketing in to a damned art form. As I discussed in the last update of the mystery movie known as Cloverfield, the film seems to be adding more mystery sites out there; this time around there is only one mystery site, but also a fake commercial for the Slusho! drink.

The new site hasn’t been 100% confirmed to be from the makers of the movie yet, but it sure seems to be. Tidowave.com is a site dedicated to how the fictional Tagruato corporation is destroying the planet’s oceans. They include stories on the ecological impact of various Tagruato projects as well as the supposed death of a marine biologist and his family that worked for the company. The site is a little too slick to not be an official viral marketing site, in my opinion.

Seriously, enough already, just give us the damn movie so I can kick myself for being this interested!  Ain’t It Cool News had a supposed review of a test screening a while back, but who knows if it was real.  If it was, it does sound promising.

Official Sites

1-18-08

CloverfieldMovie.com

Trailers

Supposedly Connected Sites

BoldFutura.jp – Part of the Tagruato Corp. (this one is questionable to being legit)

Jamie and Teddy – Love videos from the character of Jamie to someone named Teddy.

Slusho! – The mysterious drink that also has a connection to Abrams’ old series, Alias.

Tagruato Corp. – Yeah, I discussed it above already.

Tidowave.com – No one knows for sure yet that it is connected.

MySpace Profiles of Characters

Beth McIntrye

Rob Hawkins

Hudson Platt

Lily Ford

Marlena Diamond

Jamie Rascano

JJ Hawkins

Sites Following The Insanity

1-18-08 Project Cloverfield – This one is my favorite of them.

1-18-08News.com

Cloverfield Central

Cloverfield Clues

Cloverfield Movie News

Back when I was writing in the 1990′s, it was almost always about toys, more specifically action figures. At the time I was considered one of the leading experts in the industry on action figures of the 1970′s and 1980′s, but I always had a soft spot for G.I. Joe, specifically the 3.75″ line.

I had grown up loving the toy line, which was in response to the ultra successful Star Wars line in the same scale, and was launched in 1982. The overall toy series had it’s ups-and-downs, and seemed to have breathed it’s last in 1998, though there were several unsuccessful attempts to re-launch it, it seemed the line was dead for good.

With 2007 being the 25th anniversary, Hasbro decided to give it a try again with a nostalgia angle and… BAM, huge success. To the right you can see Snake Eyes from the new line, a favorite of almost every collector since his first appearance, and you can see what a great line this is.

Retro packaging with some new flair, superior sculpts, great articulation, an overall homerun of a line update. And it’s made me realize something… I’m still a huge toy geek! I have bought everything in the line so far… in multiples. And the funniest part is that I couldn’t care les what folks say, I love my geekiness, and I embrace it.

I came to this realization last night when I was in Wal-Mart, giddy over them getting a new shipment and I walked out with a cart full. That also made me realize, “Wow… I am that grown up geek they aimed this for! It’s nostalgic, but I have money to blow on it now… WHO CARES!” *throws another stack in his cart*

And I leave you with the theme song you can never get out of your head:

Yo Joe!
He’ll fight for freedom where ever there’s trouble.
GI Joe is there.

It’s GI Joe against Cobra the enemy
Fighting to save the day.
He never gives up.
He’s always there,
Fighting for freedom over land and air

GI Joe- A real American hero
GI Joe is there

GI Joe is the codename for American’s daring, highly trained
special mission force.
It’s purpose, to defend human freedom against Cobra-
a ruthless, terrorist organization determined to rule the world.

He never gives up.
He’ll stay til the fight’s won.
GI Joe will dare.

GI Joe- A real American hero
GI Joe

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=W6ueHzMwxt0[/youtube]

Its been over two years since Debra Lafave first graced this blog.  For those who don’t remember her, this is the Florida teacher who slept with a 14-year old student.  While she was found guilty during her trial, the judge decided she was too pretty to serve time in prison.

Yes… too pretty… it makes the min explode.

She is out of her 3 years of house arrest and now she is serving 7 more years on probation.  One of the terms of her probation is that she may not speak to any teenager without permission given before hand.

Oops.

While she did only talk to th other girl who worked with her as a waitress at a restaurant, and all that was said was that they discussed Lafave’s personal life, but no details beyond that.  She has been arrested and released, and had to promise for a future court date.  She is now working as a receptionist for her mother’s beauty salon, and has been for the past month.

While I am no fan of Lafave’s,  I do think what has been portrayed as workplace chit-chat with a 17-year old girl makes it fairly heavy handed to call it a parole violation.  Hopefully that was all it was, but who knows, and who knows if we’ll ever hear the true story.

Welcome to week 5 of the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) strike. Where is everything at?

On Tuesday, the WGA will return to negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP). The last talks resulted in an insulting, and quickly rejected, offer to the writers.

There is a lot of speculation that the strike won’t settle this week, and may go as long as March. If true, as of this Sunday, most actors will be freed to look for work, which there is a lot of right now. Why? Because they may strike in June! Oh joy!

I hear a lot of people starting to call the writers “greedy” and how they are harming people like craft services, grips, and so on. To these people, all I can say is, “Way to believe the producers!”

The media never ceases to amaze me.

Emily Sander was a 18- year old student at Butler Community College in Kansas who went missing. She has unfortunately been found, murdered. The man suspected of killing her, Israel Mireles, is on the run with his girlfriend who is seven months pregnant.

In the course of this investigation, it was discovered the Emily went by the name Zoey Zane on Internet porn sites, and was an adult model. Her family was unaware of this, and sadly had to learn of this fact this way.

And this is where my beef with the media comes in to play. In a news piece from the 28th, about her autopsy which has confirmed her identity, I stumbled across this gem of a paragraph:

Sander’s case drew wide attention after it was revealed that she appeared on a popular adult Web site under the name Zoey Zane. In some photographs, she appears merely scantily clad in lingerie or cowgirl outfits. Other pictures, some of which require viewers to pay for, are more explicit, showing her nude, fondling herself and posing with other women.

Where do I even begin?  Why was this much detail necessary?  It wasn’t.  They couldn’t have just said “Also known as Zoey Zane, the name she used for her online adult modeling, Ms. Sander…”  But, no, “sex sells”, so they felt the need to include description that in no way aids in the hunt for the killer, and does nothing but to make things rougher for an already grieving family.

This story is about a woman whose life was tragically ended, and the hunt for the man the police suspect of doing it.  This detailed information of what she did for money is just sensationalist and irresponsible.  Get your focus back where it belongs and stop trying to draw in people for the wrong reasons.

If you would like to read more information, you can visit her former website at ZoeyZane.com, it is 100% work safe and is completely dedicated to finding Mr. Mireles.

I’ve been doing  a lot of coverage lately of this whole Facebook Beacon debacle.  I honestly can’t fathom what they were thinking when they came up with this whole thing.

For those not up to speed, back on November 6th, Facebook announced the launch of “Beacon”, a social advertising initiative that partnered with large websites like Fandango.com and Epicurious.com.  The idea is that as you interact with these other sites, the information shows up in your News Feed on Facebook, showing your friends the sites you interact with, and acting as a form of endorsement, or advertisement.

Well, the laundry list of issues this has raised is amazing.  (pardon me while I link to some of the stories I’ve written about it)

New York state is looking in to the legalities of the system – It seems that under New York state law, you can not include someone in an advertisement without their express permission.  This also applies to the new “Fan Of” feature for Facebook Pages.  If you become a “fan” of a business profile on Facebook, it shows up in your News Feed.

MoveOn.org has privacy concerns – People are complaining about the information shared with their friends, and MoveOn took up the banner to raise the concerns also.  I’m sorry, but no one needs to know what I’m spending my money on.  Not my friends, and certainly not Facebook.

Some concessions on opting-out… but not really -  On Thursday of this week, Facebook said they would make some concessions to the system, but when you read the finer details… not really.  The system now asks “Do you want to share this?” (which it always did)  Under the old system, if you did nothing, it took that as a “yes”.  Now the system will ask you again on Facebook if you want to share it, but if you take no action within two days, it still counts as a “yes”.

And now… the advertisers are saying Facebook lied to them – Now it has come out that the companies that partnered up with Facebook in this plan were told that it would be an “opt-in” system, or at least had it implied to them.  Coca-Cola, which was to be one of the key companies involved, has held off it’s support until they see how it shakes out, and they are one of the ones saying they were misled by Facebook.

So, in short, what are they doing?  Are they just so full of themselves and their rapid success that they feel they can do just about anything they want?  Facebook is playing in the big leagues now, it’s time they acted like it.  And I’m sorry, but anything that collects my personal information should be an opt-in system, NOT an opt-out one.  This is my personal information, I should not have to exert any effort to withhold sharing it.

What’s everyone else think?  Have they gone too far?