Nice Place to Visit, But I Wouldn’t Want to Live There

Courtesy of my friend Mike Calore: Null Island is the name of an imaginary place located at zero degrees latitude and zero degrees longitude (0°N 0°E), i.e., where the prime meridian and the equator intersect. The fictitious island, usually defined as 1 meter square, is often used in mapping software as a placeholder to help find and correct database entries that have erroneously been assigned…

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JOIN MISSION:GALACTIC

Now that’s what I call a contest! Calling all Elevate® members: Get in the running for Galactic Status by flying Virgin America, Virgin Atlantic, and Virgin Australia to earn status points throughout the year. The Elevate member who scores the most status points by August 7, 2013 wins a suborbital space flight on Virgin Galactic.…

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On Chinese Beaches, The Face-Kini Is In Fashion : NPR

On Chinese Beaches, The Face-Kini Is In Fashion : The Two-Way : NPR In China, it’s the height of beach season for Qingdao’s huge Huiquan Beach. But while many visitors want to enjoy the sand and water, they’re not so wild about sunbathing. So they often rely on a local tradition: the face-kini.

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The Problem with Guest Posts on your Blog

The Problem with Guest Posts on your Blog When working on an editorial strategy for their blogs, clients often ask me about “guest posts.” Why write our own content, the argument goes, when there are numerous industry luminaries willing to write content for our blog for free?

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Sorry, Big Guy

You hear this happening from time to time but this is the first time I’ve seen it become policy. I’m a little surprised it’s taken this long to happen. United obese: United Airlines to make large, heavy fliers pay for two seats — chicagotribune.com

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How to Get Rid of Any Frame (Including the DiggBar)

God bless Danny Sullivan. Buried in the text of this awesome post is the simple code for breaking your site out of any page that tries to frame your content. (Hello DiggBar!) Danny said he couldn’t get the entire code to show up in his post, so I’m pasting it here (in part so I’ll…

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Things That Suck

Of all the junk mail that exists, the absolute worst is the stuff that is a printed, single-sheet of paper, folded in half, and glued together on all sides. To open it you have to painstakingly tear off the perforated strips all around, all the while reading about the WARNING: $2,000 FINE, 5 YEARS IMPRISONMENT,…

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Why I Sold My Business

I’ve been amazed by the outpouring of excitement, congratulations, and general attaboys that have come along with my recent announcement (if you can call it that) that I’ve sold my business, Filmcritic.com. Some have asked why I did it, and I’d like to answer that in brief here. One friend suggested I was “selling off…

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Poor Kid

(From my daughter’s elementary school “literacy night.” That’s Clifford the Big Red Dog, by the way.)

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