Forget even FSJ, this is brilliant. A striking and snarky analysis what exactly is going on on the internet:

Q to Session 2 – would any of the panelists use the apps they have seen today? Not one “yes”

Despite grounbreaking advancements in search technology, I still can’t find a female in this room.

wow…you would think the techcrunch40 web site would not have DDoS just because Arrington is on stage

Having spent a few moments with the 40 list, I am not sure how I feel right now to think we didn’t make the top40.

This is live reporting, interesting live reporting! A worthy Cowboy!
[via Valleywag.]

Related posts:

1. Protect Your Online Reputation…Always…Forever
2. Can You Really Prevent Copyrighted Media From Being Uploaded?
3. Valleywag editor worth $1.50. That’s how Denton makes money.

“Yes, madam, I am drunk. But in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.”

“To alcohol, the nights that you’ll never remember, with the friends you’ll never forget.”

“If alcohol is a crutch, then Jack Daniels is the wheelchair.”

“Alcoholism is the only disease that you can get yelled at for having.”

“To alcohol! The cause of … and solution to all of life’s problems!”

“I feel sorry for people who don’t drink, because when they wake up in the morning, that’s the best they’re gonna feel all day.”

“Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.”

“Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.”

“Your not really drunk if you are laying on the floor without holding on.”

[tags]famous jacks,jack daniels, whiskey,alcohol,alocoholism,drunk,churchill[/tags]

Related posts:

1. Top 20 Jacks. No.18 – Jack & Jill
2. Top 20 Jacks. No.5- Jack Dempsey
3. Top 20 Jacks. No.17 – Jack Black

In my opinion blog networks are just as easy to start and develop a solid base of traffic as they were 2 years ago, or even three years ago. Some say you can’t launch yet another tech blog. But my prediction is you probably could. You would have to work at it. But you could launch and even be successful. Because of social networking sites like Digg,Reddit, and Netscape. But its not always the smart thing to do.

So what mistakes do we have to avoid, David?

Here’s my take on the mistakes that Kill Blog Networks.

1. Leadership Burnout
2. Crappy Location
3. Bad Paintjobs
4. Supersized Egos
5. Failure to Listen

I don’t think these five points are anything new. Traditional businesses rely on a good combination of great leadership, good location and presentation/packaging, and business sense to survive. The same goes with blog networks. Sure, blog networks are new, but these are still considered businesses. There are investments. There are costs. There are earnings, too.

You start a business, you grow a business, and when the time comes you either sell the business or terminate it if it turns out to be a dud.

And that’s why not just anyone can run a blog network and expect to be successful (in whatever way “successful” means, be it in terms of popularity, income, or the right to be snarky). And that’s why even if you’re damn good at blogging and damn good at business, you can’t expect to hit it off well with just anyone. There’s such a thing as synergy, so you have to choose your partners (and your affiliates) properly. In the end, it’s all about passion. If you realize that what you’re doing not your thing, after all, then chances are your enterprise is doomed to failure.

I would focus on building one site with multiple solid partners. Then as time grew on after a year or maybe even to I would branch out into one or two other sites instead of trying to grow so fast I couldn’t keep up with the work involved. So Future Blog Network Owners of the World remember to build one site at a time never losing track of your goal of building a large network of sites. Choose your partners wisely and create exit strategies that are amicable for all parties at the start.

Good advice.

[tags]blog networks, blogging, problogging, advice, business[/tags]

Related posts:

1. 9 Secrets of Highly Unsuccesful Blog Networks
2. Inside the Blog Networks.
3. How to start a blog network and hang onto your pajamas.

When I was a little girl, I thought – for some reason – that my father was normal. So he wore cowboy boots. That was okay because we were Southern and lived on a farm.

And he watched Gunsmoke. A lot. And John Wayne movies. Fine.

He always wore plaid shirts and blue jeans. He played with his cows in his free time, even though he really made money in construction. And he had a Colt revolver. And horses – ornery ones. And Western saddles. Still not too strange.

It wasn’t until the day I saw him decked out in chaps and sheepskin vest with a ten-gallon on his head and a whip at his side, headed out for roping practice on the horse he’d recently broke, that I realized: my daddy was Not Normal.

Like many his age, he’d been caught up in the cowboy mystique when he was young. Too much Howdy Doody and Red Ryder on television, too many singings of Happy Trails and Red River Valley, had affected his brain. He thought he was a cowboy.

My mother didn’t think very highly of it, particularly when he filled the gun rack in the hallway with Western rifles. A gunbelt hung casually on one side of it, each little slot filled with a bullet and the pistol weighting it all down; on the other side, two different hats and a whip increased the clutter factor, as did the brown leather chaps and the Western vest. Shotgun shells and bullets littered the shelf at the bottom, and little drawers were filled with gun-related implements. The whole thing must have been worth thousands of dollars.

Mom was sure my brothers and I would get into it. We just ignored it. We were used to my dad’s eccentricities.

And so I grew up watching him learn how to rope calves, then cows; seeing him train the dogs to herd so they could help him out; watching him ride around nosebleed cliffs to get to the newborn calves in the winter, when ice coated all the rocks.

When he started out, he was a wannabe. There’s no doubt. Chaps and a horse do not make you a cowboy.

A cowboy is made by being ground across the rocks and thistles of the wilderness – sometimes literally, when the horse tosses you. A cowboy is shaped and moulded through backbreaking labor in the still mists of morning, by delivering the breech calf in the dead of night. When you’ve broken ice around the dying baby calf, carried it into the barn with its lowing mother following, and lit the kerosene stove to warm it up and watch the life rise back up in it, that’s when you start being a cowboy.

I was never a cowgirl. Though it was me who held the bucket for the messy-mouthed babies to nurse from, I didn’t like it. I disdained the hard work in the sun. The horses didn’t like me much; one of them bit me on the shoulder when she first came to us, leaving a bruise that took a month to fade. And guns – forget about it!

But over the years, I watched my dad build his skills, growing better every day, keeping his cattle under control and selling them off for extra money. He bought more land for the farm he could barely afford at first. He sold off the tobacco base, focusing on having land to wander, and never allowed hunting for fear one of the damn slickers would shoot one of his animals instead of a deer. More than once, he ran off encroaching hunters. Men with two-shot deer rifles won’t cross an angry mounted cowboy with a gun and a whole bunch of bullets.

He doesn’t do that stuff any more. He did something stupid involving a non-filed sight, a loaded gun, and quick-draw practice, and I guess the hole in his foot soured him on the whole real-cowboy concept. But he still has the horses, though they’re aging and swaybacked, and every so often there’s a new baby calf to take care of.

But he’s always going to be a cowboy. He’s always going to have that thread of America running through him, the refusal to back down, the determination to succeed through hour upon hour of fruitless practice, willing life out of stony land and frozen baby calves.

A cowboy isn’t Gene Autry or even John Wayne. Most cowboys never got into a gunfight. But when you’re finding someone who defines who and what America is, that’s the cowboy: grit and determination and hard work and love for freedom and what you have. Being a cowboy isn’t about possessions or money. It’s about finding that toughness at your core, the moral structure, the work ethic, and growing that fibrous root into a cactus flower, prickly and remarkable. It’s about making the desert within us bloom. And it’s about just existing, being as much a part of the world around you as it is a part of you.

We need more cowboys.

Related posts:

1. Now Who is the Cowboy?
2. Cowboy threatens to shoot me if I don’t post this.
3. Cowboy invades B5Media and steals Blog Herald

Sometimes I feel like a right idiot….and this is such a time.

I forgot to mention two other characteristics of a real Cowboy- he’s stubborn as hell, but if he’s wrong, he’s not afraid to admit it….

Yesterday, Mr David Krug got in touch with me and-:

a. Offered to pay up front the next 3 months worth of revenue, including shopzilla, revenews et al.

b. To buy the blog back off us if we weren’t happy.

So there is me in the doghouse feeling like a schmuck….

I have to retract yesterday’s post and issue a full apology to Mr David Krug.

Not only that, a client of mine who has also become a friend- really stood up for Mr David Krug as a character witness and it really is true that Mr Krug has been away from his desk this past month or so. He backed up both Mr Krug‘s good character in general and good intentions as far as this deal was concerned.

One of the comments in reply to my post yesterday left this link, which I read with some horror…it was so vitriolic and hateful- it got me thinking from Mr Krug‘s perspective- of what he has to put up with in his Warholesque quest to bring “personality” and “fame” into blogging- and I sure as hell am not on jumping on that bandwagon. Childish, nasty and completely OTT.

As far as we are concerned (when will this damn story be put to bed?) – the complaints of Mr Dan Zarella have been settled. Here is the low-down in case any of you haven’t read about this before-: Celebrity Cowboy. As far as I know, Dan has had his $500 refunded and there is no content on this blog written by him. Correct me if I’m wrong. The fact that the story continues to run is probably just a time delay, owing to sites like Blog Network Watch which previously reported the story and linked it to hysterical anti-Krug blogs like Gonzo Musings.

So maybe enough said.….. It’s a hard word to say, especially for a stubborn Taurean Dog Cowboy like myself (well, former cowboy actually)- but here it is-: A slap on the back and a bear hug SORRY to Mr David Krug….the ads are back up and please forgive my impulsive post yesterday- written without due care and diligence.

Related posts:

1. Now Who is the Cowboy?
2. Krug’s Response
3. Now Where The Heck is the Collective?