They sat on the edge of the Green Sea, waiting. Waves of tall grasses as far as the eye could see rippled in the breeze. Adem, the elder, found the motion of the plains soothing. These were the hours that helped set his mood for the rest of the day. The calmness washed over him. Every morning for ten years he had come to Dragonwatch looking for… something. Anything. Any sign that the prophecy wasn’t just meaningless drivel. Each day he left rested but disappointed.

His daughter, Red, joined him more often than not—and not entirely by choice, most days. She found the entire experience utterly dismal. “How much longer must we wait, Father?” she asked.

Adem breathed a sigh. “You know the routine, Red. We will stay for two hours past first light. If one has not come by then, it will be another day.”

“Or another week, or another month or year,” Red grumbled.

“It might be, yes,” Adem said, placidly. “Or it might be today. The gods keep their own timetable.”

“And yet the prophecy says—”

“The prophecy is not exact; that is the nature of prophecies,” said Adem. He fixed Red with a glare. “We’ve had this conversation before, daughter. Are we to have it again?”

Red looked down at the ground. “I still don’t understand why these… things are held in such high regard. They killed thousands—tens of thousands—before they disappeared. It is said they breathed fire.”

Adem couldn’t help but chuckle. “Many of the gods’ creatures have had that ability,” he said. “As for the war between humans and dragons, not all took part. The actions of a few affected the course of all.”

“As you say, Father,” said Red. “May I wander a bit?”

“You may. Stay within the sound of my voice and come immediately should I call.”

“Yes, Father.”

As he watched his daughter leave, his thoughts turned to the prophecy. Despite his outward sureness of the truth, Adem was faltering. The first years had been exciting. When the clerics decreed that the Return was imminent and that the prophecy would be fulfilled, Adem had been the first volunteer. “We haven’t asked for any volunteers,” they had said. “There is nothing yet to volunteer for!” Adem had insisted that whatever plan the clerics came up with, he wanted a part of it.

The clerics assigned him the arduous task of waiting each morning at the edge of the Green Sea, the most likely location for the Return. Adem thanked them profusely and vowed to never miss a day; he never did. Adem was lost in memory when Red startled him.

“That did not take long, child,” he said, turning toward her.

“I was troubled. I felt I should ask—father, look!” she cried.

Adem followed her eye line. “By the gods of darkness and light,” Adem whispered. “You see it, don’t you, Red?”

“I do. I’m… sorry, father. I should not have doubted you.”

Adem waved the comment away. There would be time for a father-daughter talk later, if either of them decided it was still important after what was about to happen to them.

In the distance stood a creature out of legend, a creature that few believed ever existed. A beast whose return had been foretold in the ancient texts. It walked slowly toward Adem and Red, seemingly cautious, though why it would be cautious Adem couldn’t say.

“Where did it come from?” asked Red.

“I’ve no idea,” her father replied.

“It’s coming. What do we do?”

Don’t be scared, child. “We wait. It should be here soon, it is not far. It seems to be gaining confidence and speed. We have magic on our side, daughter. They are powerful, but we are far from defenseless.” Adem wished he were as confident as he was trying to sound.

The wait was not long and soon, the beast stood before Adem and Red. It was smaller than Adem expected it to be and had the grace to prostrate itself before them before speaking. “My name is Skye,” it said.

“I am Adem. This is my daughter, Red.”

“An apt name,” Skye said, gazing upon her. “You speak the Old Tongue?”

Adem bowed his head. “I do. Many of my kind do, though not all.”

Skye smiled. “It is the same with us.”

“Why did you come back?” Red blurted.

Adem’s eyes went wide at his daughter’s rudeness. “Red! That is no way to speak to an honored—”

“It’s quite all right,” said Skye. “Red, we know of your prophecy. We have a prophecy as well. They both speak of our return, but yours does not give the why. Ours does. Redemption. Our exile was self-imposed, you see. For five thousand years we have lived in the Elsewhere. Only after the Atonement would we be allowed to return to our homelands. That day has come.”

Red seemed content with the answer. “Daughter, it is time to fetch the others,” Adem said. “Bring them back in all haste, that they might greet our guest.”

The Green Sea itself seemed to heave a sigh, causing Adem to look up for the first time since Skye’s arrival. Where there was once nothing but green and brown, now there were hundreds of Skye’s kinsmen. They began to walk, slowly at first, as if they were just getting used to the feel of their legs. Adem noted that most were of a height; they stood less than two meters tall. Their skin was a motley collection of shades from pink to deep brown and nearly all had hair atop their heads.

“Ah, my brethren,” Skye said. “Adem, before we get swept up in the fanfare of our two cultures coming together again, may I ask a favor of you?”

“Anything.”

“May I touch your scales? I would be the first human in five thousand years to lay hands on a dragon. The honor would be immeasurable.”

A puff of smoke escaped his nostrils as Adem lowered his head to Skye’s reach and closed his bright yellow eyes. “My lord,” he said, “the honor would be all mine, I assure you.”

As I was saying before WordPress decided to break down on me…

Flashback! The year was 1995. At the age of twenty, I found myself suddenly living in South Florida, and not entirely by choice. I had not yet decided what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. To say that I was aimless would not be untrue; I had little ambition and few prospects for anything meaningful. On the assets side of my ledger, I had a car, my parents, a place to live, and food on the table.

Upon moving to my new home, I set about finding a job. The first thing I found was a position at a movie theater across the street from my home. For the grand sum of minimum wage, I would sweep the theater floors, man the concessions, tear tickets and find creative ways to do all of that with the bare minimum of effort. My only lament is that I did not score any sweet movie posters during my time there; the job was perfectly… satisfactory.

I had a lot of spare time. As a teenager, and a bit younger, I had written a few stories here and there. Writing was something that I enjoyed, but not something that I considered for a career. On nights that I wasn’t working, I would be down the road at a Denny’s. At the start, I’d go in for 45 minutes, drink coffee, smoke cigarettes and doodle. After a few weeks, I would be at Denny’s every night that I wasn’t at the movie theater for hours at a time. Every time I went in I brought a notebook with me—remember, this is largely pre-internet time, and I certainly couldn’t afford one of the primitive laptops that were starting to gain in popularity. I started writing.

Given my generally sour mood due to my situation in life, I tried writing pieces of scathing wit and sarcasm. George Carlin was my hero. I wanted to lash out against… well, everyone. I had no specific target. I had pieces called “The Gay Community”, “Things That Piss Me Off”, “The Whole Race Thing” and “Paranoia, Paranoia, Everybody’s Coming to Get Me” (real original on that last one). Oh, I was clever. In the intro for what would have been my book of essays, I wrote “I dare you to try to categorize me!” Ouch.

After a few months I somehow got it in my head that I should write a novel. Yes, this is where the metaphorical shit would get real. I would write an awesome novel that everyone would want to read. It would be picked up by a publisher immediately and movie rights would be optioned shortly after. I’d adapt the screenplay and choose who played the lead. Both text and film would be showered with awards. Did I mention that I was a 20-year-old idiot with more experience watching television than with living life?

Write what you know, they say. My story would be set in South Florida, Houston, Providence… places I’d lived. The cast of characters would be based on my friends. A murder mystery? Why, of course my friends could solve a murder mystery! I knew nothing of murders or mysteries of course, but that was a minor detail. I gave my characters names like Ray Kinzie, a mashup of two childhood friends, Ray Martin and Chris Kinzie. I looked around at what was happening in popular culture and movies at the time… what’s trendy? Yep, I’ll make most of the the girls bisexual. That totally makes sense! I did mention that I was an idiot, right?

For months, I went to Denny’s three to five nights a week with several notebooks, writing my soon-to-be-award-winning novel by hand. I would arrive at nine or ten and leave at three or four in the morning. I’d swill countless cups of coffee and smoke nearly a pack of cigarettes on the longer nights—half a pack if I was only there a few hours.

I don’t recall now how long it took to finish the book—nine months, a year on the outside—but finish it I did. I titled it The Fifth City because when titling a murder mystery, it’s always a good idea to give away the ending right up front. Years later, seeking to tie it to another novel that I had started, I would change it to The Hard Way In. That was better, but did not improve the quality of the writing, which, you’ll recall, had been crafted by an idiot.

This is the part of the story where things start to break down.

Almost immediately after finishing The Fifth City, I set to work on my second awesome novel, Michael MacNamara. This would be the story of a hit man attempting to go straight and all the pitfalls that trying to leave the mob entails. My mother loved this one for some reason. I don’t recall letting anyone read The Fifth City, but MacNamara, I let slip. Reading it now, it’s not horrible. It has potential, even if it isn’t terribly original in its current form. I only finished the first chapter and a handful of scenes that would appear at various points in the story, but I learned an important lesson after the first novel: planning is key. The first novel had no plan, no outline, just a vague idea that I wanted my friends to solve a murder mystery. For Michael MacNamara, I outlined nearly the entire story. I had family trees, biographies and plot points for all the major characters and most of the minor characters. I spent so much time figuring out who was related to who that I never got around to writing the damn thing.

I ended up losing interest in MacNamara (much to my mother’s chagrin), and a few months later, decided that I would write The Great American Small Town Novel. Yep, I was going to out-Peyton-Place Peyton Place (not that I knew what Peyton Place was back then, aside from “it’s a novel… I think”). This made sense to me! I was from a small New England town! I could absolutely write drama! This should be easy!

It wasn’t (but you knew that).

I took inspiration from Neil Peart’s lyrics to the song Middletown Dreams and called my story… Middletown Dreams. Like Peart, I figured that nearly every state has a Middletown, and mine could be any of them. I wrote this one in parts; I decided a series of connected short stories would work well. A main character from one chapter might be a minor character in another and settings would be shared between several stories. It was to be a grand thing, and in the spirit of the Kevin Smith fan that I was in the 90′s, I managed to tie it into my first two novel attempts. Ray Kinzie from The Fifth City ran a pool hall in downtown Providence, Rhode Island that two of my Middletown teenagers frequented. Michael MacNamara’s brother went to high school in my Middletown before getting killed in The Hard Way Out—it was about this time that I renamed those first two books The Hard Way In and The Hard Way Out. I even wrote a new ending to The Hard Way In wherein my main character, Ian Brock, went to work for the family that Michael MacNamara would soon try to leave in The Hard Way Out.

There was drama galore. Underage drinking. Teenage hormones. Race relations, in the form of an African-American family moving to predominantly white Middletown. Gasp!

Needless to say, Middletown Dreams didn’t work out, and after this third attempt to write something that would sell, I gave up. The trips to Denny’s became less and less frequent, and in 2000, I moved back to Houston. Shortly after, I would (re)discover the internet, discover that you could make money with it, and completely abandon writing fiction. From the early 2000′s until 2012, I wrote practically nothing that wasn’t for a blog, an affiliate site, or later, FeedFront Magazine.

Twice in the past decade or so, I’ve tried to go back to those stories and resurrect them. The first attempt, not long after Middletown Dreams, was solid; I typed up all my handwritten pages on a laptop (yep, Denny’s late-night again). I started to realize how badly The Hard Way In was written during this period, but I was only typing, not editing. After a week of typing, I got sick of reading the words and took a break. The stories languished on a hard drive for years after. The second attempt lasted about a day. Just a few years ago (2008 or 2009, I think) I opened the archive and dug out the manuscript with an aim to edit and rewrite. The story was incomprehensible. The problem with casting your friends in your novel is that they change. Well, either that or you lose touch with them and you forget little things like why they are acting the way they are in your story. More than ten years passed between the time I wrote The Fifth City and the time I tried to rewrite it… and I had lost touch with every single person that I had used in the book. The plot was confusing. The characters’ motivations were all unclear. At the end of the day, I zipped up the archive file and buried it back in my Documents folder on the hard drive.

And that brings us to today. In just a few minutes it will be July 1st, 2012 here in my time zone. My desire to write has been rekindled, but I will not be bringing back those old stories. As I mentioned a week ago, I’ll be working in the Fantasy genre, turning out short and long fiction in a rich, exciting setting. I attended Comicpalooza here in Houston back in May and I found myself more inspired than ever before. Inspired… and optimistic. I have written a novel. Sure, it’s not very good, but it’s done (first drafts count as done, and don’t try to convince me otherwise!). I wrote a whole damn novel (first draft, I know, I know) and I can do it again—and this time, I’ll take everything I’ve learned since that first attempt and I’ll make something worth reading. Here then, are five lessons I learned along the way:

1. My problems with using my friends as templates: first, that I did that at all. Second, that what I wrote presumed the reader knew my friends. Perhaps I meant to flesh it out later, but in the end, there are a lot of gaps in the writing that should have been filled with characterization. It all made sense to me at one point in time, but it’s gibberish now—and nobody else will get it either.
2. Passion is important. It’s hard as hell to finish a book without a passion for it. My second two novels failed, in part, because passion faded.
3. Planning is important. The Fifth City failed, in part, because I did not plan anything out. Flying by the seat of your pants is exciting, and practiced writers might be able to pull it off, but aspiring novelists? Not so much.
4. It’s the balance that counts, though. Too much passion, not enough planning is a bad thing. Too much planning, not enough passion, as in the case of Michael MacNamara, is also bad.
5. Don’t let your mom read your stuff. She’ll bug you for years to finish Michael MacNamara. Or, you know, whatever you’re working on.

Well, there you have it—my brief, 1,964 word account of my attempts to write fiction. From this point forward, it’s a whole new world. I’m glad you’re here to read it. Thank you.

Despite the negativity I feel about these types of posts, I feel it must be written in order to bridge a significant gap. It usually goes a little something like this: dear readers, I’m so sorry I haven’t posted lately, I promise I’ll try to make it up to you by posting more regularly…

This is different. This isn’t Daniel the Blogger apologizing for not blogging about blog stuff (whatever that may be). This is a restoration of this website (it’s not a blog, strictly speaking) after a period of inactivity lasting nearly two years. In fact, I wouldn’t even be writing this if I wasn’t… wait. I’m getting ahead of myself. Hold that thought. This is about me going after the one big thing that’s been rattling around in my head for about 20 years now. I’m climbing my Mount Everest.

I’m a Writer

In the mid-90′s I wrote my first novel. Don’t go looking; it is, and will remain, unpublished. It’s terrible. I’m not just saying that because I’m a self-deprecating kind of guy. It really is awful. But it’s done. Someday soon I’ll tell the story of how it came about, but for now, it’s enough to say that I have written a novel-length work of fiction. That’s important.

I’m going to do that again. And again. And again. And a few more times for good measure. I have started writing in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy genre (Fantasy, to be more specific). The plan is to begin with short stories and flash fiction, then use NaNoWriMo this November to kickstart the first of the new novels.

Why then, am I writing this awful “sorry I haven’t written in a while!” post? Part of my foray into the world of writing includes introducing myself to people in that walk of life. When they ask about my website, I can’t very well point them to a site where the last real post was made in September, 2010, can I? This post is for the folks in the Writer’s Digest forums and other groups who would like to know about me as a writer (while me as a podcaster has been fairly well documented at QAQN—have a gander at your leisure).

From a terrible murder mystery to scathing social awareness essays to a really weird bit of Dragonlance/Star Wars mashup fan fiction… from small town politics to romance to a mafia hitman trying to escape the life… I’ll be posting a number of things about me as a writer in the coming days. All of that—directly or indirectly—feeds into what I’m doing now in the Fantasy genre.

Changes to Daniel M. Clark .com

I started this site back in 2002 and it languished for about five years. I installed WordPress in 2007 and tried my hand at blogging, and that lasted about three years because I was a pathetic blogger. DMCDC is being transformed yet again, this time to showcase my writing. I have trashed dozens, perhaps upward of a hundred, old posts—I can hear my affiliate marketing friends screaming “LONG TAIL YOU IDIOT!” at me through their monitors right now. That’s okay. This site isn’t the blog it used to be. I aim to sell exactly one thing here: me. My own original fiction is taking the spotlight. No more banners, no more buttons, no more ads (though if it makes my AM friends feel any better, I’m keeping all my in-post affiliate links intact and will use in-post affiliate links going forward when it makes sense to do so).

The surviving slate of categories (Affiliate Marketing, Random Ramblings, Tech & Internet, et. al.) will be archived. The posts will still be available, but they’ll be effectively buried. Replacing them will be Novels, Short Fiction, Flash Fiction, The Craft of Writing and News & Updates. This isn’t a blog anymore, you see. This is a website that happens to run on WordPress. I’m not a blogger. I’m a writer.

And this is my Everest.

You may have noticed that I haven’t written anything since last September. For the foreseeable future, everything I do will be posted at QAQN.com. This blog had a good run, though I was very… inconsistent. I don’t have a ton of interest in blogging, but podcasting is another matter. Come check it out!

So this morning we filed a civil lawsuit in federal court against advertisers we believe have deliberately broken our rules.

~Official Google Blog: Taking rogue pharmacies to court.

It’s hard to imagine that Google doesn’t realize what douchebags this makes them sound like. I’m all for getting these kinds of pharma companies (as mentioned in the article) out of the search results. I’m all for the proper authorities working to take those companies down. What I’m not in favor of is setting a precedent that says not playing by Google’s rules is somehow illegal. Google policies are not law.

There’s a sign at my local McDonalds that says, in effect, “no shirt, no shoes, no service”. They can throw me out of the restaurant if I come in without a shirt on. What they can’t do, is take me to court for breaking their rule.

So, just a few minutes ago, I got this in my inbox:

To Daniel Clark:

As a participant in one of Newegg?s Advertiser Programs offered through Commission Junction, you may be aware that Newegg does not accept affiliates into any of its Advertiser Programs if the affiliates have sales tax nexus with North Carolina or Rhode Island.

An affiliate has sales tax nexus with a particular state if the affiliate has either (a) an office, residence or other physical presence in that state, or (b) activities in that state by the affiliate, its employees or a person or business with which it has some sort of contractual or agency relationship, which are sufficient to require the affiliate to collect and remit that state?s sales tax under state and federal law.

Based upon the information you have provided to us, we have determined that you do not have sales tax nexus with either North Carolina or Rhode Island and are treating you accordingly. However, please notify us immediately if you have nexus with either of these states.

Thank you for your cooperation

Hideaki Kondo
Affiliate Marketing Manager

Did they just really send me an email to tell me that they double checked and found that I’m not in a state where I’d have nexus? I dig NewEgg, and I’m sure Hideaki Kondo is a nice person; this just struck me as, well, odd.

I hope Marvel casts someone better than Jessica Alba to play Sue in the Fantastic Four reboot, like a can of corn or Soupy Sales’ corpse.

— GailSimone (@GailSimone) August 31, 2010

Normally, I’d just retweet something like this, editing where necessary to interject my own reaction. Unfortunately, there is no way to edit this thing down without completely destroying the superb wit of Gail Simone’s message. So, here you go. Let’s start a petition to get Soupy Sales’ corpse to play Sue in the FF reboot!

And if you’re not reading Birds of Prey, get to it. It’s awesome again.

Last Friday, August 13th, I flew up to New York City to attend two events: Audience Conference and Affiliate Summit East 2010.

Most of what I wrote while there was posted over at Geek Dads Weekly, but before I give you the links, check this out:

That’s me on stage at Carolines. Yeah, that Carolines. I can’t say I killed ‘em, and I almost got yanked off stage when I said I was going to pitch something (a bad turn of phrase – I wasn’t really pitching anything, just announcing a charity project). But I can say that I was on-stage at Carolines, which is pretty damn cool.

Okay, here are some links to what I wrote while in New York. There’s still more to be written, especially about Audience Conference, and I’ll update with links to those posts later on.

• Geek Dads Weekly at Affiliate Summit East 2010
• Attention! This Book Will Fight Breast Cancer
• Affiliate Summit East 2010 – Day 1
• Geek Dads Weekly #28 – Live From Affiliate Summit East 2010
• John Chow and James Thompson, the Beer Funnel!
• Beer and Cupcakes in the Blogger Lounge!

Social media is supposed to be about communication, but do people listen to you when you use the medium?

Followers, friends, connections, buddies, whatever-they’re-called-on-LinkedIn (sorry, I just can’t bother with it)… whatever they’re called on whatever services you use, they’re not what you think they are. Chances are, they’re not listeners – and you need them to be.

Let’s use Twitter terminology from here. There’s a huge difference between a follower and a listener. A follower is a statistic. A follower is merely a part of a tally found on your Twitter page. A listener is engaged. A listener takes the time to read what you put out there. A listener may not always answer your call to action, but at least he hears your call to action – a follower doesn’t.

There are lots of ways to ensure that you have a great follower-to-listener ratio. Be personable. Be passionate. Be likable – or at least notable. Be witty, funny or thought-provoking. Be interesting.

How do you ensure that nobody listens to you? Here’s two examples. Both of these people started following me, and I always check out the streams of those who follow me before following them back (or not).

On the left, someone who never interacts, and updates his status with the most inane, boring statements someone could make. On the right, someone who only ever retweets other people while occasionally posting tech headlines that are readily available from places like TechCrunch or Mashable.

Don’t be these people. More importantly, let’s send a message that this is the wrong way to use the medium by not following them back – even if you’re planning on ignoring them. Accounts with 20,000 followers that look like the above examples only encourage others.

So there’s that. Are you working to turn followers into listeners?

There is nothing – nothing – fun about using the self checkout. Hey Walmart – and all you other grocery/general stores that have these self-serve checkouts… we’re not stupid. You have them there so you don’t have to pay another cashier to work a register. Don’t act like you’re doing us a favor, okay?

When the iPad was first released—has it really only been 3.5 months?—I railed against it for being nothing more than an oversized iPod Touch. I didn’t see the value of it, I didn’t see where it could fit between a smartphone and a laptop (especially if the smartphone was an iPhone and the laptop was a Macbook Pro).

The screen was too small. There was no camera. The screen wasn’t the right aspect ratio, wasn’t true HD. No multitasking. Awkward to type on. Goofy name. You know the list. You’ve been hearing it since the device was announced back in January.

But then a funny thing happened. Apple sold a few million of ‘em. People in the really real world, not the bizarre faux-world that tech journalists tend to inhabit, started to give their opinions about the iPad. By and large, people love this thing. The lack of multitasking that all the tech bloggers said would kill the iPad? Didn’t matter. Remember how all the ‘experts’ said this thing was going to be a disaster?

I was down on it for less common reasons. I didn’t care that it couldn’t multitask because I was used to that on my iPhone. I didn’t care that there wasn’t a camera because I can count on one hand how many times I’ve used the camera on my Macbook Pro. The main reason I wasn’t sold on it was that I simply couldn’t imagine where and how I would use it if I already owned both an iPhone and the aforementioned Macbook Pro.

When the reports started coming in from real world users, I started to change my mind. I started to realize that a 9.7″ device could work really well in my life; I could velcro it to the wall in my kitchen for referencing recipes, I could use it to read any book ever written to my kids at night, I could use it in the car for maps like I do with my iPhone, only larger. I could do all these things with my Macbook, but mine is the 17″ model – velcro is out of the question, it’s awkward to read on while laying in bed next to the kids, and there’s no 3g access built-in, so maps in the car aren’t possible. These are only a very few of the many uses I came up with.

I started to really warm up to the idea of getting an iPad. Then I got the iPhone 4.

Now I’m back to swearing off the iPad… temporarily. You may have heard about the iPhone 4′s “Retina Display” – the device has 326ppi (that’s pixels per inch) and it looks amazing. It’s got cameras. It’s got multitasking. It’s got a lot of things that people have been bitching about for a long time. What do you think the odds are that this stuff isn’t going to be in the next iteration of iPad?

The display alone is worth the wait, to me. These things ain’t cheap, after all. I’ll wait until the announcements come for the next version of iPad – probably either before Christmas this year or early next year – and I’ll make a decision then. If there’s no retina display, no major hardware upgrades, maybe I’ll just go ahead and get one then. But if those hardware improvements are coming, I’ll feel pretty damn great about not spending my $700 on a first generation iPad. It’s not like I need one… right?

Or woman. Whoever is in charge of coming up with promotions needs to be replaced. This isn’t the first time I’ve written about Papa Johns, and I suspect it won’t be the last. Here’s their latest batch of WTF:

You’ve probably spotted the problem, but I still feel compelled to point it out. Numbers 1, 3 and 4 are exactly the same offer. How about a few more specials? Four large pizzas for $40? Five large pizzas for $50? Why stop there? Clearly they think we’re dumb enough to go along with this, so how about THE BEST VALUE: 10 Large Pizzas for $100! Amazing! What a deal!!!

Part of the premise of several things I post here is the realization that some people or companies are dishonest. Noting the dishonesty, be it here or at other blogs or publications, says to those people or companies, “Hey. We know what you’re doing. We’re not stupid.”

Too often though, we are lied to and we accept the lie.

Two days ago, I picked up my new iPhone 4. I “bought” it from Radio Shack for the excellent price of zero dollars and zero cents. In fact, they gave me $20 on top of that price, to be used toward AppleCare or an accessory of my choice. The reason the phone was free? Radio Shack is running a deal (through this month) wherein customers may trade in their iPhone 3GS for a $200 gift card, which can then be used toward the purchase of an iPhone 4. Since I wanted the $199 16GB iPhone 4, my “purchase” was a wash. I’m mentioning that so I can mention this: in the course of my conversation with the guy at The Shack (branding #fail, but that’s for another post), he commented that the reason the phone was only $199 was that AT&T was subsidizing the unit with a 2-year contract.

Of course, you’ve heard that before. It’s a fact of life with cell phones – or rather, cell phones that don’t suck. The phone is normally $5,000 (or $599, something like that) and the carrier is knocking a bunch of money off the top which you’ll pay back over the life of the contract.

That’s a lie.

Does the carrier pay – in this instance – Apple the difference between what I paid and what Apple charges? Sure. Yes, technically, AT&T is fronting some of the bill. The difference between what Apple charges ($599) and the $199 I would have paid were it not for Radio Shack, is $400. The contract length is two years. Subsidy per month? $16.67.

Logically, if I were to stay with AT&T past the two-year contract, my monthly plan should go down by $16.67. After all, I’ve paid back the “loan” that AT&T gave me (which is what it would be defined as, if they gave me money upfront that I was paying back over time).

More importantly, if I were to buy a phone unsubsidized and bring it to AT&T, they should hook me up with a plan that’s $16.67 per month less than they normally charge.

Neither of those situations is reality. AT&T charges every customer the same rate plan as every other customer. If there is no difference in the monthly charge between someone who bought a subsidized phone and someone who didn’t, and if the monthly bill doesn’t go down after paying back the $400 difference, then AT&T cannot claim that unit subsidies are built into the monthly price. AT&T isn’t subsidizing anything. It’s a lie. QED.

I, for one, will stop perpetrating the myth that the carriers are subsidizing the phones. Who’s with me?

A good writer posts updates like this to Twitter:

A poor writer would have phrased it:

Some people act like jackasses on our forums and then they’re like, I’m a subscriber! like that makes a difference. lol. asshats.

Jason Snell is the editor for Macworld magazine, and a good writer. The internet has lowered the standards of communication; it’s nothing new, but as more and more people participate online, it seeps into our culture. I’m fighting back. There’s no better way than by making an effort in my own life and setting a good example.

I’ve never been that bad when it comes to abuse of the language, certainly never egregiously so. I’m making a commitment to higher standards, regardless. I don’t want to be perceived as boorish by anyone.

On Tuesday, [Conde Nast] announced it would resurrect Gourmet magazine, the celebrated food and travel publication the company discontinued in October, as an iPad application called Gourmet Live.

via Gourmet Magazine Revived for the iPad – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com.

In the comments of this article, Leucas wrote:

“Other than some fancier UI, IPad apps for magazines are just glorified Web pages”

Exactly. I’m always perplexed by those in the tech media who gush over magazines being ported to the iPad (or its inevitable rivals). The further away from the print version they get, the closer to being a website they become. And what is so inherently special about a website?

Me: I’m going downtown to play poker tonight.

Her: Wow, really? But there’s no casinos in this city or anything, right?

Me: Well, no, there’s no casinos, it’s just a bunch of people playing. You know that movie Rounders?

Her: Seedy, smoke-filled back rooms?

Me: We’re a bunch of geeks playing poker in a comic book shop. It’s quite well lit and they don’t allow smoking. John Malkovich won’t be there. It’s pretty much the anti-Rounders. I guess that wasn’t the most apt comparison.

Footnote: came in third again. Won $80 less the $20 buy-in. Go me.

I was recently introduced to Blackbird Pie, a pretty slick method of quoting Twitter updates. Bloggers who wanted to quote Twitter updates have had two options: get a screen capture and post the image or quote the update in plain text with a plain text link to it. The former was a bit of a hassle, the latter was a bit boring, visually. With Blackbird Pie, we can have the style of posting a screen cap and the ease of copy/pasting plain text (links included).

The benefits of quoting Twitter updates in this fashion should be clear. From an SEO point of view, having text on the page rather than a screen cap is a plus. You’ve also got live links in there as well. If you’re quoting yourself, as I am here for the demonstration, you’re promoting your Twitter presence with a live link and a link directly to the update which users will appreciate.

Get the Blackbird Pie Bookmarklet

The most effective way to generate the code you need to display the quoted Twitter update is to use a browser bookmarket, available from Publitweet. The premise is simple: drag the bookmarklet into your browser’s bookmarks bar, and when you visit the page you’d like to quote, push the button. Copy and paste the resulting code into your website. Easy!

There is also a WordPress plugin for inserting Blackbird Pie code, but I found it to be overly tedious. Rather than giving us a simple button in the Upload/Insert menu on the Edit Post tool, we’re required to use shortcodes. If you’re going to go to Twitter to get the ID of the update anyway, why not just use the browser bookmarklet and get the code immediately? Until the plugin streamlines the process of inserting the proper code, the bookmarklet is the way to go.

Maybe you’ve seen the ads on TV or heard them on the radio or seen them in magazines. Discover Card would like you to know that you can earn 5% cash back in certain categories (currently, Restaurants) when you pay using your Discover card. Everything else, you earn 1% cash back. Coming up in July, it’s even better – the 5% cash back applies to purchases made in the Gas Stations, Hotels, Movies and Theme Parks categories. Sounds awesome!

But we were not born yesterday. We read the fine print, don’t we?

* Earn 5% Cashback Bonus for gas (at stand alone gas stations), hotel stays, movies and admission to theme parks from 7/1/10 (or the date on which you signed up, whichever is later) through 9/30/10, subject to a cap of $300 in purchases.

It’s that last bit that interests me. What is 5% of the “cap of $300 in purchases”? Fifteen bucks. Sure, that’s better than the three dollars that you normally earn under the 1% plan, and I’m not one to complain about getting cash back on things I’m going to buy anyway. What bothers me is that in all of the advertising for their 5% deals, Discover never mentions up front that there’s a pathetically low cap. I can just imagine the number of people that see that ad and think, “hey, I spend $1,000 a month on hotels alone because I travel a lot, and since I drive, I spend another thousand on gas! I could probably rack up a hundred bucks or more in cash back, just on those two categories!”

No, you can’t.

Can you imagine how ridiculous it would sound if the voiceover in Discover’s TV ad told the truth, out loud? “Earn up to $15 cash back on the things you buy anyway, subject to terms and conditions.” Who would rush out to sign up for a new Discover card?

That, I suppose, is exactly why companies feel they need to trick us by playing with the numbers and using fine print shenanigans.

I’ve noted before that I really don’t care who follows me on Twitter. Spammer, scammer, porn bot, marketer, whatever – I don’t care. That doesn’t mean I don’t notice things in my follower list, though. I gain new followers infrequently enough that I opt to recieve emails from Twitter telling me when someone new follows me. I notice.

I’ve been using Twitter for just over three years. In that time, I’ve amassed about 950 followers. Now, I’m not foolish enough to believe that I’ve got 950 people paying attention to me, but the number is what it is. Over the past day or two, that number has gone up by over a hundred, putting me at 1,075 (at the time of this writing). Three years, 950. Less than three days, another 125 – and growing.

Now, I’d like to say that it’s due to something that I wrote here or something that I posted somewhere else, but the truth is that every single person who has followed me in the past couple of days has been the result of my joining the 30 Day Challenge. All of the “people” who started following me have around 5,000 followers, they’re following about an equal amount, and they have anywhere from 0 to 100 tweets. That’s right, zero tweets. Some of these people racked up 5,000 followers without tweeting a damn thing.

Do I care if they’re following me? Nope. Nothing’s changed in that regard. Will I follow any of them back? Hell, no. These people provide no value. They’re all – every single one of them – pitching various internet get-rich-quick schemes. You have to be either brain dead or one of them to follow any of them back. Come to think of it, I’m not sure those two things are mutually exclusive.

Update, June 10th

Interestingly, nearly all the followers I picked up have disappeared. I don’t know if it’s because Twitter deleted their accounts (possible, even likely) or if it’s because they all simultaneously figured out that I wasn’t going to follow them back. Either way, they’re gone now.

I think I’ve come up with a good answer to the question isn’t switching to a Mac hard?

It’s not hard; it’s not hard at all. It looks a little different. You need to get used to having the close/minimize/maximize buttons on the top left. You need to get used to having the menu bar at the top of the screen, not at the top of the window. But really, the two operating systems are, for the average user, very similar. Here’s my short answer; feel free to use it whenever someone asks you about switching to a Mac.

Switching to a Mac isn’t like learning Japanese when you’ve spoken English all your life. It’s more like, you’ve spoken English all your life, then you move to New York.

…at least, for TweetDeck users.

I’ve just installed the latest update to the venerable Twitter client, version 0.34.2. Apparently, the 0.34 line was released back in March, but being as far ahead of the curve as I am, it’s like I’m behind it. Actually, I am behind it. Well, whatever. The software just told me today that there was an update, so it’s new to me. <shrug>

Significant to this release is the addition of Global Filters, a feature that I’ve been praying for since I started using the software eons ago (in internet terms, anyway). What makes Global Filters so powerful is the ability to filter out tweets according to their source. Previous filter efforts in TweetDeck limited users to filtering by tweet content.

One of the loudest complaints I hear from people is that FourSquare updates on Twitter bug them. Well kids, here’s your out. Start using TweetDeck.

TweetDeck - Settings -> Global Filter

I’m not one to complain too much about FourSquare, what really bugs me is blog headlines that are forced into my stream via TwitterFeed. With the new TweetDeck Global Filter, I can hide them. Of course, this means I won’t see 95% of what Jim Kukral posts to Twitter, but that’s okay. I’d much rather read what Jim cares to write himself than what TwitterFeed puts out in his name. Those tweets are far, far more valuable.

On the flip side? If you really like FourSquare, TweetDeck now has integration with both that service and Google Buzz.

I’ve just submitted my details to confirm my slot as a speaker at Affiliate Summit East 2010, happening August 15-17 of this year. The panel is called Podcasting 101, and it’s led by Trisha Lyn Fawver, a blogger (TrishaLyn.com) and podcaster (Affiliate Marketing Fanatics).

Also on the panel? Joe Magennis, my partner on Geek Dads Weekly! Our third on the show, Drew Bennett, is up for another panel at the conference, and speakers are only allowed one panel each.

The published panel description is as follows:

Podcasting 101
Session 1d
Location: Room 4
Time: 12:00pm-1:00pm

In this era of self-publishing, anyone – including you – can produce a podcast (and make money doing it!) Come learn the basics of producing, monetizing, hosting and promoting your very own podcast.

Experience level: Beginner
Target audience: Affiliates/Publishers
Niche/vertical: Podcasting

We’re up first on the 15th! Well, along with three other sessions in that time slot. I’m not actually sure if that’s a good thing… but I suppose if I start to get nervous, I can remind myself that I’m getting it out of the way early so I can enjoy the rest of the conference.

I sat on an impromptu panel at Summit West in Las Vegas back in January, as part of the GeekCast.fm Live! session. It was a lot of fun, and I’m sure this panel will be, too. Fun and informative, that’s our goal.

Are you planning on going to Summit? I’d love to say hello.

Update: shortly after I posted this, it was announced that Drew’s panel has been approved and scheduled. He’s on Tuesday at 2pm with Murray Newlands and Eric Schechter, and the session is called How Bloggers Can Successfully Connect with Audiences.

We have a piano in our apartment, an upright that’s been in Angela’s family for a time. While she can pick out a few tunes, Angela can’t really play – which is why I’ve been less than ecstatic that we’ve had to lug this thing everywhere we’ve moved in the past eight years.

That’s about to change.

I won a prize in a contest a couple of months ago, a course of my choice in the Learn and Master series from Legacy Learning. I decided that rather than get the guitar course (which I’d been eyeing but don’t really have time for), I’d get the Learn and Master Piano course for Angela. In true Daniel-fashion, I’ve set up a website that both promotes the course and chronicles Angela learning to play the piano.

It’s called, appropriately enough, Angela Learns Piano. It’s young – so far, there’s just a couple of very short interviews that I’ve conducted with her, but in time, we’ll flesh it out with some audio and video. The process is fairly slow… finding time with her work schedule, a busy husband and two kids isn’t easy for her, but I’ll post about it here whenever something new goes up on the site.

Hope you like it.

Warning: there is some suspiciously guru-ish lingo and ideas coming up. Sorry. I’m not a Twitter guru. I’m not a social media expert. Anyone that tells you they are is a douchebag. I just had an idea that might be fun, one that I’m going to try myself, and I thought you might be interested.

What’s Twitter for, exactly? The answer, in varying degrees, is different for everyone. Some use Twitter for true social interaction; they send lots of @ replies, and engage in actual conversations. Some use Twitter an an announcement platform; they don’t have very many conversations and/or tend to post very little other than headlines from their blogs. Some use Twitter as a marketing tool; while they may have some personal interactions, they’re there simply to pitch their products. Businesses often use Twitter as a channel for customer support, which is great.

Regardless of how you use Twitter, there is an underlying truth: if you engage with your followers, and with the people you’re following, your experience will be more rewarding. Even if you use it as an announcement platform, having the occasional conversation with a follower can turn that follower from a person who might be marginally interested in what you’re tweeting into a loyal customer. If you’re all about the social interaction aspect, then my challenge might be a little “yeah whatever” for you, but who knows? Let’s see what happens.

My challenge is simple.

Send an @ reply to everyone you follow.

That’s it. Interact. Have a single conversation with everyone you follow. Following Kevin Smith? Send him a message. Following me? I’d love to hear from you. Even if you’re following a company that doesn’t really do @ replies, send ‘em a message anyway. This isn’t about increasing your follower count (because I’m not a social media guru/expert/douchebag), this is about finding some value in your use of the platform. There is value in having a conversation with someone, even if it’s not related to selling that person a product or service.

If you’re following only a couple of hundred people, it shouldn’t take very long. If you’re following 50,000 people, well, that’s ridiculous. Stop it. People with half a brain know that you’re not really paying attention to all those people anyway.

Hell, I don’t even follow people back that follow me if I see that they’re following thousands of people… I’m not interested in bumping up someone’s follower count, I’m interested in interacting with people.

Are you?

You know what would be awesome? This:

.text-right { text-align: right; }
.sidebar-text { font-size: 1.2em; include: text-right; }

See what I did there? Now, how is that helpful? I mean, it would surely be just as easy to type text-align: right rather than include: text-right. Where I think it’s helpful is in dealing with things like this:

.rounded-1em {
              -moz-border-radius: 1em;
              -webkit-border-radius: 1em;
}
.rounded-right-1em {
              -moz-border-radius-topright: 1em;
              -webkit-border-top-right-radius: 1em;
              -moz-border-radius-bottomright : 1em;
              -webkit-border-bottom-right-radius: 1em;
}

If all you wanted to do was round one side of a box (which I do, actually) do you really want to type all that out? What if that’s your site’s motif? Do you want to type that out for your content box, your headings, your subheadings and all the other elements that need it? You could set up a bunch of rounded corner classes with names like .rounded-right-1em, .rounded-right-2em, .rounded-left-1em, etc. All your other classes or IDs would be simpler to edit down the road. And, okay, I know – copy and paste, right? But come on, that’s not exactly the most elegant solution.

In most programming languages, you can nest functions within functions. This is kinda like that. Being far from an expert, if there this kind of functionality is already available in CSS (or if there’s a suitable workaround), I’d love to hear about it – please let me know in the comments!