Greg Hartnett

This post could alternatively be called “Flickr, and the Power of Social Networking” but that wouldn’t get quite the attention. Before reading further, see Wikipedia’s entry for Goatse to decide if you’d like to continue.

A post from Zawodny’s link blog hit my RSS reader yesterday. A quick one-liner reading “Flickr: Photos tagged with firstgoatse: hahaha… what an awesome use of flickr :-)” intrigued me, so I followed the link and had a good laugh.

I was a little surprised to find out this morning that Jared had never heard of the Goatse, and thought it would be fun to hit him with the link, and grab a quick photo. His reaction was fantastic, so I decided to upload his picture, joined the Goatse group, and added Jared’s picture to the group.

Within an hour, the picture had been viewed 530 times! Sooo…. I told a friend “throw on a BOTW t-shirt cuz I wanna take your picture while looking at a really gross pic”. I gave a brief history of the Goatse, and she was game. Once again, her pictures came out hilarious, so I added added them. With the enhanced features of Flickr’s notes, I was able to add a **shameless plug** note with our domain name.

As of this writing (approx two hours after posting the pics), Jared’s picture has been viewed 1143 1460 times and the two of Liz (1 and 2 ) have been seen a combined 1230 times. So with some creative product placement, I was able to have fun with some friends, and get the BOTW name in front of thousands of eyeballs.

Amazing, this internet thing….

Related:

Digg
Supr.c.ilio.us
Boing Boing

I added a new category, humor, and will start posting funny stuff I stumble across. This is really cool technology - made available by Google video. (just press the little play button under the screen)

video contains a few choice words, consider yourself warned

Well, not actually free, but you don’t have to give me any money.

After posting about some of my activist activities, I noticed that I have acquired more than a few new links from other activists talking about some of the signs that I posted around Long Island (lightbulb). So, in an attempt to get more people involved in the political process, I propose the following to my industry peers:

1. Find out how to make a sign; you’ll also want to read - Legal Notes, Placement Strategies (note that I am attempting to make this non-partisan; your sign can say whatever you want)
2. Take a picture of the sign, and email it to me - please include where you posted the sign
3. I will post your picture on my blog (I may even decide to build a page of contributors, and provide links)
4. I will generate and send you a code good for three free submissions to the BOTW Directory

Simple enough. Now some ground rules…

So… if you are a webmaster, SEO, or blogger looking to get some exposure to your site, AND you are interested in participating in your constitutionally protected right of free political speech, then have a go at it. As the SEO crowd are at the forefront of guerilla marketing, just imagine what some determined SEO people could do…

Good luck - and play safe!

Well, it took only three days, and eight signs before I had my first encounter with the law.

I decided to take a different route to work this morning - in an effort to spread the word. While crawling along in traffic on the Southern State Parkway, I saw a perfect sign for a quick post - reachable by foot, definitely visible to a ton of people daily. So I pulled my car to the side of the road, popped the trunk and grabbed a sign. While sitting in my car listening to some Pearl Jam, I applied the duct tape, and grabbed my camera. I hopped out, slapped up the sign, took a couple of pictures, and returned to the car. While putting on my seat belt, a State Trooper passed by, and quickly pulled off to the side of the road, popping on his lights.

He pulled along side me, and asked what I was up to. At first I drew a complete blank, and then replied “Uhhhh… political speech”. He took a look at the sign, and asked, “Impeach? Impeach who - the big guy?” After a little chuckle, I replied, “Well, of course”, and over the course of the next 90 seconds or so, I explained to a New York State Trooper how I felt that for lying to the American public, and for crimes against humanity, GW deserved impeachment.

I then respectfully informed the trooper that I believed what I was doing was legal, but I would be happy to take the sign down immediately if he wished. He instructed me to do so, and waited for me until I had it down. He then told me, I shit you not, “Be careful hanging those signs“. I almost laughed out loud.

So, kudos to the officer that informed me that he did not want to intrude upon my right to speak out. I respect the fact that he was concerned with the safety of the motorists - he didn’t want me causing a distraction, potentially leading to an accident (though traffic was almost at a stand still). I have always found it to be prudent to speak to the police with respect and courtesy - I would advise you do the same should you have a run-in.

Check out all of my freeway blog pics.

are belong to us… (sorry for the ad)

Engrish has come a long way. Check out some of the recent pics at Engrish.com.

After dropping my son off at school this morning, I took advantage of being on the parkway and posted some additional signs. I was able to get all of them on the freeway, placed in spots that are known to have high traffic build up. As the typeset is not as large as I’d like, these should be most visible by morning commuters.

Check out my Flickr acount to see all my freeway blog pics.

On my may in to work this morning, I noticed a couple of the signs that I had posted yesterday, still intact. Cooooool.

I came into this weekend really inspired by the work done by the freeway blogger in California, and by the call to action at the Daily Kos for tomorrow. So Saturday morning, I took my son to get his hair cut, stopped by the ice skating rink to watch my daughter for a while, and then headed off to Home Depot to begin my day of preparations.

With some paint and rollers from HD, I made my way to Staples to pick up the last of my supplies. I was even able to score a huge cardboard box from the kid warking at Staples, which will definitely come in handy at a later date. Time to head home and get to work.

Though JR was more interested in playing with his pirates, Téa happily joined in. She was happy making a Peace sign, and was very curious what “Impeach” meant, and why I cared that Bush liead. It provided a fantastic opportunity to have a conversation with her, and I was happy to share this moment with ther.

We completed a total of 11 signs - 4 of which I posted today. Two on overpasses (the westbound LIE and eastbound Northern State), one by an exit, and one at a merge. I will definitely need some bigger signs for the overpasses - I don’t think the five inch letters will be very visible to the passing cars. After seeing how the first two looked on the overpasses, I opted to place the next two in areas that were closer to the ground, and would have cars passing by at a lower rate of speed.

Some people driving by looked at me a little disapprovingly, and I know that I scared one dude. While I was hanging one of the signs on an overpass, an elederly man walking his dog approached me, saw me doing something, and stopped in his tracks. He paused, gazing at me with a mixture of suspicion and fear, and then literally sprinted past me. Ha! My wife later asked me how that made me feel, and I haven’t really decided yet, though I do know my feelings are somewhat mixed.

I am curious to see how long the signs make it in this Republican laden area. The messages are pretty tame, so I remain hopeful that they will make it a handful of days. I don’t know how many people will see these boards, or if anybody who does see will take anything away from it. One thing is for sure though - Long Islanders can plan on more signs in the days ahead.

See all the pics here.

I have grown increasingly tired of link requests from ever-more desperate webmasters. I am already completely overwhelmed with work-related email and I surely don’t need to pour through another:

Webmaster,

I’m working with legal advice company www.dogshitlawfirm.com.

I have found your site and believe it would be mutually beneficial for us to exchange links as our sites share related subject matter.
As you may already know, trading links with one another helps boost both of our search engine rankings.

As a result, I am sending this email to inform you about our site and to propose submitting our link to your web page located at;
botw.org

We would appreciate if you could add a link to our web site on your web page, using the following information:

Title Link : Worker Compensation Claim
Description : Workers Compensation in Australia. You may be entitled to claim worker compensation if you are injured at your job. Contact NSW based Legal Injury about your case for law advice today.
URL : http://www.dogshitlawfirm.com/workers-compensation.html

If you are interested in this exchange, please email me with your link details as well so I can add it to our site as soon as possible.

Thank you for your time and your consideration.

Sincerely,

Linkmaster
linkmngr@dogshitseofirm.com.au
www.dogshitseofirm.com.au

Instead of getting mad, and/or simply deleting them, going forward I will reply to each request that comes in with the following type of reply:

awesome! i was unaware of the importance of receiving links, but now that you have given me the low-down, i would welcome such an exchange.

i have taken the liberty of adding your link to a relevant category - please link to our site as soon as possible.

thanks,
greg

While I feel a little bad about blatantly lying to them, I will sleep a little better at night knowing that it was not I who started the intrusion.

This may be the coolest thing I have ever seen. What a fantastic way to practice and stay in shape in the warmer months. Check out the entire Airbag set of photos from UK boarder Kat Miller.

The pictures were taken at Gosling Sports Park in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire. So if you happen to be close, check it out. Alternatively, if you know of something like that on this side of the pond, let me know about it!

I am amazed at how much content I produce on a daily basis. Since my introduction to the internet, I have produced thousands upon thousands of pages of content.

Back in the day, most of it consisted primarily of cookie-cutter type hotel reservation sites. As many of them generated revenue via an afiiliate model, at the time I simply had to worry about generating the applicable html, grab the content provided by the supplier, apply the appropriate SEO techniques, manipulate the engine of choice, and presto - money in the bank.

The online world has since evolved, and while content has always been king, the focus on quality has never been greater - which plays into our current model splendidly. With the focus on quality, the time is ripe for the blog directory - once the search is complete, it should prove the perfect blend of technology and human interaction.

Not all the content creation is online. With the addition of human resources, there is a host of off-line content that is created on a daily basis. In addition, there is the content created in the password-protected areas, and all of the content passed back and forth via email.

Back to tweaking the new editor guidelines…

Now Playing:

Brokedown Palace by the Grateful Dead from Download Series Vol 7 9/3/80

As I wrote last week, I paticipated in the Million Faces Petition - an attempt to shed some light on the arms trade industry. Here’s my signature (I think the same night I added the photo to my blog).

This weekend, I will be making preparations for what I intend to do for the IMPEACH: National Guerrilla Action Day. The date is this upcoming Monday, January 9. I will take a few photos of my contributions. For some inspiration see Tales of the Freeway Blogger.

Now that 2005 is history, it is time to focus on the new year. I did pretty well with most of my resolutions from last year - I watched a lot less television, and read a lot of books. Unfortunately, I am still smoking those damn cigarettes…

So this year, I plan on accomplishing the following:

1. Quit smoking - definitely by the time I move into my new house, mid-July
2. Keep reading - keeping that TV off (with the exception of Sunday nights, can’t live without my Simpsons, Family Guy, and HBO)
3. Increase my patience level - the number one thing to improve my parenting skills
4. Keep better track of my finances - though I am fed-up with Quicken, and M$FT Money
5. Split my time more efficiently between Hotel Hotline and Best of the Web
6. Become a more conservative driver - I used to be until the purchase of my most recent car
7. Spend more quality time with Lily - remembering that we are a couple, not just parents

Those are the biggies - there are plenty of other things professionally and personally that I’d like to accomplish this calendar year, but in an attempt to not sound too long-winded, I will leave it there. Do you have any plans or resolutions that you wish to share?

Most importantly, I hope that you find peace, health and happiness in the new year.