Just wanted to call attention to a really nice piece on the possible death knell of Twitter. Yanno, someday. I just ran across Winston Ross’s blog talking about the shape of things to come with regard to social networking sites. And he’s a fellow Oregonian 
Anyway Newsweek killed his piece because it timed out badly with a similar piece by Time magazine. Publishing house of cards, I guess. Here’s an interesting factoid:
By April, Twitter had nearly 20 million unique visitors, up from 1.5 million a year before that. Now the web is abuzz with speculation that Twitter is nothing more than a passing fad, a theory supported by the latest round of Nielsen research that shows 60 percent of its users don’t return after their initial signup.
60 percent. I admit I’m surprised it’s that high. I think I’m just sick of hearing about all these sites, and the stupid antics people feel compelled to announce to the world via them. Guess I’m not the only one.
Mr. Ross muses if it’s possible to unseat the reigning king of the hill, once a site has grown big enough. I say yes. AOL once dominated the scene, especially with their chat rooms, but as far as I know they’re toast now. Everyone I used to know who used AOL no longer does. Including me.
Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see what crops up next.
Today’s breakthrough in my writer’s block is courtesy of Sully Erna, frontman of Godsmack, more specifically his song “The Enemy.” I’ve got a bunch of new characters to draw up now, and I have to decide their lifespans. Some will be like the red shirt guys on Star Trek (they’re always the ones that get killed), but some I think I will need to keep around for future scenes. I even re-watched “xXx” (Triple X) the other night, which I think is really fun (Vin Diesel kills me – “Stop thinking Prague PD, start thinking Nintendo: Blow stuff up!”) and had high hopes for it getting some neurons to fire, but nope, nada, zilch this time. It’s weird the things that will trigger something in my brain. I knew I needed a harder, edgier tone than I’d been letting this thing slide into, but couldn’t quite seem to get into the groove. This holds much promise. I still might need to blow stuff up so don’t go anywhere, Vin.
:::creaking gears spinning into action:::
Hot on the heels of all my bellyaching about social networking, I found this gem over at Meg Gardiner’s blog, lying for a living. Frankly, it staggers the imagination.
The new head of MI6 has been left exposed by a major personal security breach after his wife published intimate photographs and family details on the Facebook website.
Sir John Sawers is due to take over as chief of the Secret Intelligence Service in November, putting him in charge of all Britain’s spying operations abroad.
But his wife’s entries on the social networking site have exposed potentially compromising details about where they live and work, who their friends are and where they spend their holidays.
Amazingly, she had put virtually no privacy protection on her account, making it visible to any of the site’s 200million users who chose to be in the open-access ‘London’ network – regardless of where in the world they actually were.
I’m speechless. Well, almost. You would think the wife of the man set to head up Britain’s equivalent of the CIA would have some notion of security. And you could be forgiven for thinking that. Why was this woman even allowed to get near a computer?
My guess is Sir John’s going to be looking for another job, ’cause…yeah.
By LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press Writer Larry Neumeister, Associated Press Writer – Wed Jul 1, 8:34 pm ETNEW YORK – A Swedish author whose new book was promoted as a sequel to J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” cannot publish it in the United States because it too closely mirrors Salinger’s classic without adequate parody or critique, a judge ruled Wednesday.
How can this be called a “sequel”? J.D. Salinger did not pen it, nor endorse it, and while I’m sure he’s gratified that his book is known the world over, I can’t imagine any author being pleased that their book is being essentially copied for someone else’s gain:
She (U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts) also rejected arguments that the depiction of a character in Colting’s book to represent Caulfield 60 years later was a parody. She said in a footnote that Colting and his publishers made no indication before the lawsuit was filed that the book was meant as a parody or critique of Salinger’s work.
“Quite to the contrary, the original jacket of ‘60 Years’ states that it is ‘… a marvelous sequel to one of our most beloved classics,’” the judge said. “It is simply not credible for defendant Colting to assert now that this primary purpose was to critique Salinger and his persona.”
More derivative work, like the P&P&Z. I just think authors should have a say in who gets to profit from their work.
According to Edith Wharton in the News, it was on this day in 1921 that Edith Wharton became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her novel The Age of Innocence.
If you’d like to read it online, it’s available here:
Ok all you vampy-loving people: A new vampire movie is on the horizon. Ethan Hawke’s Daybreakers is slated for a January 2010 release.
In this one, set in the not-too-distant future of 2019, a plague of some kind has turned most of humanity into vampires, and the surviving humans are being kept alive like cattle as a food source. However, drama ensues when the ruling vampires discover there’s only enough blood left for one month. That’s not a whole lotta time to find an alternative. It looks dark, edgy, and one of my fave actors, Sam Neill, appears to be some head honcho of the vampires. Willem Dafoe wields a crossbow.
Looks like the vampire genre is still going strong, it’ll be interesting to see how this does at the box office.
So my question would be: How many humans does it take to sustain one vampire? If the world goes 95% vamp, that doesn’t seem like enough humans to keep them going. I know, I know, what’s the point of trying to inject logic into a vampire milieu? This movie seems to be trying to play up vampirism as a curable disease, which kind of does beg the question then. The ratio of humans to vamps seems a little backwards to me. Oh well. What do I know?
For those who, like me, have not read the Twilight series, nor seen the movie, you can now feel completely justified. This jewel of a video located in an article at io9 about why vamps have become heartthrobs is too funny to miss. The video is the first vid, right under the photo of Angel and Spike at the top of the article. But fair warning, don’t watch it on your laptop in the middle of a staff meeting. I was doing all I could to keep from howling with laughter at my desk. If the rest of the writing in Twilight is as dreadful as the few lines we hear from Edward in these clips, it astonishes me that millions of teenage girls have not clawed their own eyes out. I think I literally cringed.
I also never saw one episode of BTVS, I’m starting to think that was a mistake:
“I’m the Slayer. S L A Y E R. The Chosen One. Look it up.”
As always be sure to read the comments accompanying the article, that’s often the best part.
As much as I’m loving writing this vampire story, I think if I ever get around to trying to get it published I’d like to use a nom de plume/pen name/pseudonym. The problem is how does one go about choosing one? The possibilities are endless.
So I did what I always do. I hit Google. A search on “pen name generator” brought up the Random Name Generator which is pretty good. A couple of the others that came up are obviously just for laughs, they produced absurd names like Sir Pumpkin Longshanks via the Pen Name Generator at Poemofquotes.com, and the aptly titled Preposterous Pen Name Generator at the Donnybrook Writing Academy gave me “Ives Zuzanna le Sigh”. Le sigh, indeed. Pepe le Pew would be so proud.
The next thing I did was start a list of the ones I sort of liked, and kept playing with the name generator to see what else might pop up, which knocked a few off the list and added others. I think I’m getting close to making a decision, because there’s only one I can even remember off the top of my head. I’d say that’s a good sign it could be THE ONE. This is why I’ve never gotten a tattoo (ok, one reason). I need to be absolutely certain I’m going to still like it a year from now.
I ran across another blog today, Kelly D. Palmer’s Mysterious Musings, in which she muses on What’s in a (Pen) Name? To her dismay, she discovered her own nom de plume is already taken on Twitter, so she had to use a variation of it. Once I settle on a name, I’ll have to check for it on Twitter and see if the domain name is still available for a Web site. Yes, that’s right, I’m thinking I’m going to have to cave and join Twitter whether I like it or not.
Le sigh.
