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Randy Cassingham is one of the first online publishers: his This is True column went online in 1994. It’s his full-time gig: over the years, it has brought him several million dollars in income, and he lives on 45 acres in western Colorado, where he looks at gorgeous snow-covered mountains from his home office.
“TRUE” (as Cassingham calls it) is biting social commentary, using weird news as its vehicle. It’s funny and has a loyal following: thousands pay $24/year to get the full column by e-mail each week. Tens of thousands get a free sampler. It might be the first example of an online “fremium” business model. In the early years, he turned down two unsolicited syndication deals to bring the column to newspapers — turning them down because he didn’t want to give up control of his work, he says.
Good move: now he’s compiling his archives into Kindle books, where he can get a 70% royalty on sales, rather than the 12.5% that Dutton (part of the Penguin Group) pays him when it turned another of his websites into a book.
And it’s working: Cassingham told me that in the first two weeks of Kindle book sales, the five volumes he has posted so far earned more than $1,400 in royalties from Amazon. “I’m boggled,” he told me by e-mail. “Imagine if I actually concentrated on this income pillar. Or had more than five books available. Or I sent one or more titles out for review somewhere, or advertised, or did ANY kind of promotion to anyone other than my existing readers!”
Imagine indeed!
Then he realized that a throw-away human interest feature he includes in This is True, the “Honorary Unsubscribe” of someone who died in the previous week, could also be good book material.
“These are the people you wish you had known,” he says. “Take the inventors I’ve featured. Did you know the same guy invented both the computer hard drive and the video cassette? What a fascinating guy!” He has also featured the inventors of the contact lens, the hovercraft, the Hawaiian shirt, even the guy who thought of putting a peanut inside an M&M. Then, he says, getting excited as he looks through his archive, “there are the medical researchers, responsible for saving thousands, even millions of lives, spectacular entertainers that died virtually forgotten, and…” Just as he says: the kind of people you wish you had known.
That book just came out on Amazon’s Kindle this week, and it’s the first of several in that series. Cassingham told me that “I’m glad I have a block of 100 ISBNs” — International Standard Book Numbers, which are used to identify books for retailers, including Amazon — “I’m going to need them.”
Cassingham used to have the material now coming out in his books available free in various web archives. He counted on Google’s Adsense program to bring in ad money, but it hasn’t worked as well as he had hoped, even though it’s all original work. “TRUE’s archive,” he admitted, “which had more than five volumes of material, only brought in $559 for the entirety of 2011.” Compared to more than $1400 in the first two weeks on Amazon, it’s no wonder Cassingham is starting to take the archives down. If someone follows a link to an archive page that has been removed, they now see information on what book it’s in — with a link to its Amazon sales page.
[Via - MadConomist.com]
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Man petitions the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to get Google trademarks canceled
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Google has filed a single UDRP case with National Arbitration Forum covering a whopping 763 domains.
The domains names include the word Google followed by common search terms, e.g.:
googleiphone4s.com
googlevolkswagengroup.com
googlescientology.com
googlesamsung.com
googledusseldorf.com
googlesalvador.com
googleducks.com
googlesaints.com
Many of these are ādouble trademarksā covering a Google trademark as well as another entityās mark.
So, youād probably figure that Chris Gillespie, the person who registered these domain names, would realize the gig is up and transfer the domains.
Nope. Instead he has filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to get Googleās trademarks canceled!
Seriously, this is how he explains it in his petition:
Petitioner is in the process of developing various affinity-based social networks that will allow users to interact with each other, and obtain content, products and services related to their affinity-communityās respective interests, including charity, lifestyle, shopping, dating/sex, travel, and health. Some of these affinity-based networks include The GLBT Network, The Jewish Network, The Christian Network and The Muslim Network. Each of these networks will have a number of websites relating to the affinity-communityās respective interests in various categories, including charity, lifestyle, shopping, dating/sex, travel and health. As part of these plans Petitioner has registered a number of domain names to be used in connection with bona fide offerings of goods and services.
Gillespie argues that Google has become a generic term and he has equal rights to use them in his domains.
I really donāt understand what he seeks to gain from this challenge. Itās not like Google is going to settle with him on the matter.
[Via - PickyDomains.com]
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Hypertension, or high blood pressure, can be a killer condition. It can lead to a whole host of potentially fatal diseases like kidney failure, heart attack or stroke. Hypertension can be caused by obesity, heredity, a high-salt diet, a sedentary lifestyle, smoking, etc. While heredity is something a person doesn’t have control over, smoking, a sedentary lifestyle and a high-salt diet are some things a person can control.
More than home-prepared foods, restaurant and processed foods are unquestionably saltier. So for people, especially the ageing population with escalating health concerns, who need to lower their salt intake, the Salinity Monitor Spoon recently launched by Japanese Compact Impact measures the salinity of soups and sauces at temperatures between 140F (60C) and 176F (80C). The spoon is put into the soup or other liquid foods, and the gauge on the spoon indicates whether the food’s saltin ess is between 0.6% and 0.8%, 0.9% and 1.1% or 1.2% and above. This way, the user can decide how much of the food to consume. The Salinity Monitor Spoon is currently pegged at US $58.
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Hunter Moore, 26, this week sold IsAnyoneUp.com - where people were encouraged to send in intimate pictures of their exes - to Bullyville.com for an undisclosed fee.
He said he cut the deal to ’stand up for under-age bullying’, with its new patrons saying the controversial site ’served no public good’ and ‘that is why it’s offline’.
But Bullyville’s founder James McGibney is under fire for his affiliated Cheaterville.com site - where people are asked to post photos of people ‘who have wronged them’.
This is because there is little way of confirming concretely that each of the hundreds of submissions have indeed been unfaithful, or whether the posting is part of a bullying vendetta.
Los Angeles-based Moore earned up to $20,000 each month from his site, run by a team of four, that attracted more than 300,000 hits each day and became popular across the world.
It would see subscribers publishing their ex-partner’s pictures, their full name and links to the social networking sites - all without their permission.
They would then inevitably be ridiculed and often forced to shut down their profiles. Initially, the site was set up to sell merchandise and promote music club nights.
But, in a letter detailing his decision to sell the firm, he revealed he struggled to make ends meet and turned to porn to make money.
Constantly threatened with legal action by people whose pictures appeared, he was also warned by Facebook because many of the photographs were lifted from the site.
He reportedly ignored a cease and desist letter from the web giant, and said he sent the social networking site’s lawyers a picture of his genitals in reply.
The purchased domain now redirects straight to the Bullyville site, where letters from Moore and McGibney have been posted.
Moore wrote: ‘Running this site has been an uphill battle to say the least.
‘From the server company’s bills to the lawyers taking people’s money promising they could get your images down to Facebook, PayPal, Live Nation, A Day to Remember and the countless others who tried to shut me down, beat me up or the girl who stabbed me and yet we are still here.
‘The site was a blessing for me and still is, but I am burned out and I honestly canāt take another underage kid getting submitted and having to go through the process of reporting it and dealing with all the legal drama of that situation.’
McGibney said he ‘commended’ Moore for ‘having the courage to write this letter, knowing that heās going to face a massive amount of negativity for doing so.’
He said: ‘Iāve known Hunter for quite some time now, and the fact of the matter is that heās a very smart guy. While he has been misguided, he is very astute and socially observant.
‘His ability to not only capture the attention of young people, but to spur them into action as well, is truly unique in an era where social media makes it so easy to be a passive consumer of information.
‘After spending some time with him, Hunter realized that Isanyoneup.com became the same exact bullying he created the site to retaliate against.’
Addressing the concerns raised over Cheaterville he added: ‘[It] is constantly accused of bullying. I disagree, as do the millions of people who use its free service.
‘CheaterVille.com provides a public service to people by warning them about the narcissistic and predatory individuals who use online dating sites to find innocent victims.
‘The dating market is a marketplace like any other, and it is improved by information - including data on people who claim they are single when they are in fact married, have kids, or in some instances, conceals an STD.
‘Iām sure I will have to deal with public blowback just as much as Hunter will. But, I can sum up this ordeal quite simply: IsAnyoneUp.com served no public good. That is why it is offline.’
Moore said he was now launching a new project called wepartyforacause.net which would see parties organised ‘to benefit different charities’.
He added: ‘These will be some of the largest and craziest parties you will ever see with a percentage of earnings going to a range of causes.
[Via - PickyDomains.com]
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Book of the day - The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions
You’re bored, really bored. The meeting had been going on for hours and hours now, with no end in sight anytime soon. Unfortunately, you don’t have much of choice. Like it or not, you have to see through the ridiculously boring exchange or you won’t get a full day’s pay. And then you ask yourself, what else can you do to keep your sanity in place? You look at your notes, and there, in the margins of your notepad, you find yourself doodling an awesome eight-legged creature with sharp fangs, an evil-looking grin and scorching red balls for eyes. As the hours slip away, you wonder how different things would be if the creature came to life and scared everyone in the meeting room away.
Sounds familiar?
An up-and-coming gaming company called Grafighters intends to do just that - bring your creatures to life and play with them, in the virtual world, at least. Grafighters is a gaming platform where users can send doodles to fight against each other. First thing you need to do is draw the creature you have in mind on a piece of paper. Using the app provided on Grafighters, you go through an uploading process where you specify the drawing’s body parts. If the drawing has a really big head, you get points for intelligence. If it has muscly arms, you’re awarded points for strength. If the drawing is tiny and well-balanced, expect some points for speed. Your character’s category, like “toughness category” or “intelligence category,” will determine its fighting technique the moment it goes into battle.
As of this writing, there are a couple of different environment stages available. There’s the Deep Sea Ocean, Ghost Town, London Street, and there’s also the North Pole, a Christmas-themed level.
Eric Cleckner and Dave Chenell, the brains behind Grafighters, are looking to launch the app on the iPhone, too, so that your character can be with you wherever you go - Tamagotchi fashion - except that this character is your own creation.
So will your character be breathing fire, or sprouting spikes when mad like a porcupine?
[Via - Madconomist.com]
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