substitute

Sometimes you see a news story or a link or whatever and think "Hey, this friend of mine would be interested. Other times you might see one and say "Wow, this is tailor made for this one friend of mine!" And then there's the time you see a web page and say "Holy crap! brianenigma is controlling the universe somehow!"

Combining Bettie Page and an inflatable monkey in one blog update. What are the chances, folks?

Someone mentioned "voip blog" on irc and we were joking about what that meant, like maybe cold calling people to blog at them. I made some crack about getting all sorts of stereotypical blogger types (geeks, subculture victims, etc.) and telling them they're doing VOIP blogging but actually having them do coldcall telemarketing. What to sell? Well, blogging itself! I thought we could have them sell "blogging kits" that included all kinds of useless crap and promised big profits from a home-based business. Ho ho ho. I even wrote celeb testimonial copy:

Hi. I'm Cory Doctorow. Many of you know me from my blog posts such as "Disney Dolls Again" and "Creative Commons Dog Toys". Many of you have asked me: how can I be a Top Blogger? Well, the people at Blog Professionals Kit in a Box have a great answer.

Of course I'm way the hell behind:


BLOG IN A BOX!

You can get your very own copy of Blog In A Box right now for a Very Low Special Introductory Price of just $37 $27. This is an amazing value we are offering you. Get your hands on a BRAND NEW product that we believe will exceed our expectations with flying colors due to the increased attention blogs are getting for just a fraction of the regular price of $67. Remember that with just One Sale, Blog In A Box pays for itself! But you don't have to stop there. Make it really work for you by selling it over and over turning it into a profit pulling machine!

Boy howdy! This is going to be even better than selling GRIT: America's Favorite Newspaper was back in fifth grade!

Now that Flickr is getting very popular, it's almost useless for getting photos from world events. Just a few months ago, getting a tag feed for some newsworthy current event returned pictures from people at the scene. The immediacy and the alternative to the wire services made it interesting.

Now everyone just uses Flickr as a generic photo hosting service and reposts wire service photos to reuse them on their blogs. It's impossible to plow through all that noise to find the gems people are posting that you'll never see on Yahoo! News Photos.