I’m often looking at logs, Alexa, Google, etc. This morning, I noticed that (according to Alexa) JoeTech.com is ranked 616 in New Zealand. I think it’s pretty cool that enough New Zealanders stop by every day that this little blog ranks so high. In fact, I’ve decided to post about it, just as a kind of shout out to those of you visiting me from New Zealand. It is, after all, one of my intended travel destinations for when I am able to travel the globe freely.
I know you’ve been emailing me pretty adamantly for a long time now, and I really should have responded before now, but I felt it would be better use of my time to respond to all your emails at once, so here goes.
My wife bought me a great Bulova 96G46 watch, so I don’t have a need for a “great aggressive price rolex” at the moment. You sent me a lot of emails about that in the last six months, so I figured I should start there to curb your anxiety. You might have guessed that my wife already thinks I’m a “hero in bed”, so I didn’t even open those emails, but I have to wonder where you got the impression that I needed help in that department. I saw the emails you sent about “increasing my size”, in which you pointed out that girls are “joking at” me. Are the two related? Oh… And about the Viagra and Cialis… I don’t really need either yet, but I saved those emails for later. You might want to look into getting a new keyboard, though. Many of your emails (those ones, especially) have all the words messed up with odd characters like “v1agr@” and “cia’lis”. It looks a little unprofessional.
By the way, did you give my email address to a colleague? Someone else has been emailing me about “Christian dating” and I think they signed me up because I get emails from all kinds of hotties talking about how they can’t wait to meet me. Most of them are confused, though, because they often refer to the last time we chatted or when we hung out at the club, and I’ve never gone out with any of them. I don’t think they’re all Christian, either, because the things some of them send to me on AIM would make you blush, and all of the ones on Yahoo! Messenger have dirty web cams they want me to look at. Is that what their savior, Jesus, would approve of? I’m not very religious, myself, but I doubt it.
In the past year, you’ve also been pretty generous, offering me lots of free stuff, including gift cards for Wal-Mart and Best Buy, free deposits to accounts at online casinos, ecommerce solutions, airline vouchers, lottery winnings, and more, and the only thing you ever asked me for was to help you move the 13 million dollar savings of your late husband, General Obaname Antawnda to the United States. I hope I haven’t missed out on all this good stuff. I’ve been so busy and you seem to have a lot of free time, so I thought I’d ask if you could help me out. Just cash the lottery winnings on my behalf, play the online casinos, and sell the vouchers and gift cards and just send me half. That’s gotta be like ten million bucks for you. I bet you could get a lot of Viagra for yourself with that kind of cash. Give it some thought and get back to me. I have all your emails going to a special folder right when they come in, so just email your reply.
Anyway, I really should get some work done or I’ll wind up needing to follow up on one of those Google or Yahoo jobs you emailed me about.
UberAffiliate is having a great contest. He’s giving away 5 125×125 ad spots to those people who send him the most visitors from this morning through the 17th. I’m almost a whole day late to the game, but I’ve gotta try.
Here’s four reasons you should help me win.
1. All you have to do to help is visit this great Affiliate blog
2. The more traffic I get to JoeTech.com, the more contests I can have.
3. If I get an ad spot, I’ll give someone $20 at random (I might anyway… stay tuned).
4. I’m giving away $100 per month and can’t afford much advertising.
So there you have it. Just click the link and you’re done. And if you happen to get stuck because you see an interesting article, even better.
This year, the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada decided to recognize bloggers by giving some well known blogs access to the show much like they’ve given access to the press for years. This was a great step forward for bloggers. Now let’s take a step back. No really… Let’s let Gizmodo do it for us.
What happened?
Gizmodo staff, treated like responsible reporters by CES, decided to “give bloggers a black eye” as John Chow put it, by playing a childish prank with a nifty little tool called TV-B-Gone. Gizmodo proudly provided details, received a boat load of backlash, and then tried to downplay it with a story about a dumb teen who derailed trains with an IR device. Personally, it makes me sad to see a large, known blog cop out like this.
Why did they do it?
Let’s be fair. You don’t have to be a twelve year old to think a prank with someone’s TV is funny. I still plan on buying one of these to mess with friends. According to Gizmodo, the initial intent was just to mess with a couple people. Too bad they have no self-restraint.
Way too far
There’s two problems with this prank. First and foremost, it affected much more than just a couple buddies. Instead, their fun and games affected convention-goers looking for the latest demonstrations of products and the companies trying to give those demonstrations. Not only did their prank inconvenience many people, it also may have cost companies sales and credibility. The second problem with their prank is much more devastating, in my opinion. Gizmodo was supposed to be at CES in a professional capacity, and whether they like it or not, their actions reflect on the blogging community as a whole. It’s hard enough for a blogger to get event organizers to recognize us as legitimate media outlets. Now, Gizmodo has made us all look like a bunch of kids joy-riding on the internet.
What Gizmodo should have done
As I mentioned above, Gizmodo bragged about the event, offered an incredibly weak apology, and then tried to brush it off as nothing when they were called out around the blogosphere. Apologies are great, but they don’t excuse actions, and theirs didn’t seem very genuine, anyway. I would have liked to see an open letter to CES, Motorola, any other companies affected, CES visitors affected, and the bloggers of the world. That open letter would have included an admission that they did something they really shouldn’t have and that it was very thoughtless of them, an apology for having been so incredibly thoughtless, and a plea to CES and any other event organizers to note that the actions of Gizmodo should, in no way, reflect other bloggers in the world who seek to be seen as responsible media outlets. Of course, if there was a surplus of intelligent thought at Gizmodo, perhaps there wouldn’t have been anything to apologize for in the first place.
I’m often looking at logs, Alexa, Google, etc. This morning, I noticed that (according to Alexa) JoeTech.com is ranked 616 in New Zealand. I think it’s pretty cool that enough New Zealanders stop by every day that this little blog ranks so high. In fact, I’ve decided to post about it, just as a kind of shout out to those of you visiting me from New Zealand. It is, after all, one of my intended travel destinations for when I am able to travel the globe freely.
