important information for visitors to Earth (and other adventures in social networking)

Fri, Mar 01, 2013

What my followers on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ saw today:
• Important information for visitors to Earth:

• This cannot end well. Net providers begin warning of illegal downloads

• “A Syrian rebel uses a videogame controller to activate the machine gun of Sham 2, a homemade armored vehicle.” Holy crap. The Syrian civil war is like Maker Faire… and battle is like a videogame. DIY Weapons of the Syrian Rebels

• It’s not cheap. But deep down, you already knew that. Here’s How You Buy Your Way Onto The New York Times Bestsellers List

(hat-tip for today’s links: bronxbee)

share and enjoy

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RogerBW

Fri, Mar 01, 2013 11:14am

The main effect of the download warning system is to drive people away from BitTorrent and onto newsgroups and file lockers, which put rather more strain on the network infrastructure (which, as you’ve pointed out, is not in the best shape in the USA already).

teenygozer

reply to RogerBW

Sun, Mar 03, 2013 3:58pm

I think the main effect is that there is going to be a huge increase in sales for VPN services!

RogerBW

reply to teenygozer

Sun, Mar 03, 2013 4:08pm

I could not possibly comment…

Oh all right then. I think this is a great thing: the more people learn about VPNs to get their music and films, the more they’ll be able to use them when the next Big Idea about censoring the Internet comes along.

teenygozer

Sun, Mar 03, 2013 3:56pm

Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics wrote a book called Machine of Death. Via his online comic, he asked everyone who was going to buy the book to buy it on the debut day in October 2010 and not on any other day. We all bought the book on that one day, and it catapulted his book to #1 on Amazon’s best-seller list, incidentally preventing Glenn Beck’s latest screed that debuted the same day from attaining #1, which had never happened to Beck before.

Glenn Beck went on to complain about the book in interviews (“the liberal culture of death!!!1!) and on his show, which (via the Streisand effect) only helped make yet more sales. North and his co-authors scored a number of interviews to talk about what Beck had said on his show, thus getting the name of the book out there even more.

So, hint, hint to all, if you have a blog or an online comic and write a book, asking for a bit of orchestrated help from your readers is an inexpensive way to hit Amazon’s #1 and possibly get a little PR for your book.