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Not all B2B marketing plans are successful. As a marketer, you should be aware of the potential traps that cause your seemingly well-written marketing plan ...

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Touring the homes of all the dead who have ever lived Even the ones long gone burned buried torn down vanished Wandering halls Opening rooms Crossing borders to see all the places the dead have been Trying to learn what it means to remain present after the body has gone It is not something  I have thought […]

To imagine our worlds as settled in some aspects, to understand that some people dear to us are no doubt now part of our pasts, that while we may correspond  we will never be in each others’ physical presence again, yet still we shall continue to speak to and share in each other in all other […]

How delicious it would be to have a world that did not require all this thinking — where instinct and emotion were enough to carry civilizations from birth to death — where guns and brawn were acceptable in the face of disease — where fear of the unknown was codified into quick and dirty law […]

I swear Australia is just filled with real life pokemon



View Comic!

  I recently “discovered” UK illustrator Jane Newland while browsing images online. Safe to say that 80% of the time, when something different/exceptional/beautiful stops me in my tracks, the artist turns out to be British. ????         Jane lives and works in Norwich (the most complete Medieval city in the UK), which … Continue reading new art crush: jane newland

I have often been surprised how dangerous it is to cross a street in Malta, especially if there is not a pedestrian crossing. It appears that motorists among themselves have a contest to see who can scare the pedestrians most.  It is not surprising that Malta is among the countries with the highest accident rates in traffic in Europe. If the roads were in a better condition the victims would, due to possible higher speed, probably be many more.
Another thing that amazes a foreigner from northern Europe, is the constant honking. If honking were an Olympic event Malta would undoubtedly win a medal of high value. Many people I have discussed this matter with have expressed a thought that may be Maltese driving licenses are issued by Disney World or come withe the cereal packages from Scotts.
Another thing that is surprising to a foreigner is the rule that cars, that have been involved in an accident, must not be moved before the police has arrived and documented the damages even how small these are. For instance I saw two cars touch each other at Tigné Seafront in Sliema. It was only a small dent on one car. Both cars stopped traffic so that no vehicles could pass the place of the accident. This happened in rush hour. A motorcycle police arrived after about 10 minutes and marked the cars position by spraying marks on the road. It took about ten seconds. The queue, which was formed, probably reached St. Julians. But, of course, many young Maltese men were excited; there was a good reason to honk!

One thing that astonishes many foreigners visiting Malta for a shorter or longer period of time is all the fireworks going on both day and nights. What many visitors to the islands don’t know is that people die or are seriously wounded every year due to accidents with manufacturing fireworks. About a year ago almost a whole family was tragically wiped out in an explosion in connection with manufacturing fireworks. An independent inquiry has warned that Malta would experience at least one large-scale fatal fireworks accident in this year or the next. An inquiry for public consultation is opened and still pending. This week a new accident took place where three people were hurt, one of them is in a critical condition, in connection with making fireworks. It should be said that the responsible people were licensed to make fireworks. It seems like it is far too easy to obtain permission to make fireworks without very strict rules about where a factory might be placed and what chemicals should be allowed.

Terrible building on Tower Ro

Notice the text on the bus to Marsaxlokk

1. ICMR partners with Bharat Biotech International Limited for developing indigenous coronavirus COVID-19 vacc...  Zee News
2. Bharat Biotech to lead monoclonal antibodies project for Covid-19 therapy  The Financial Express
3. Bharat Biotech to lead project on monoclonal antibodies therapy for COVID-19  The New Indian Express
4. ICMR teams up with Bharat Biotech to develop Covid-19 vaccine  Times of India
5. CSIR approves project to develop human monoclonal antibodies that can neutralize COVID-19 in patients  Times Now
6. View Full coverage on Google News

1. Kareena Kapoor is missing her shopping sprees with Saif Ali Khan, shares throwback pic from Morocco  Hindustan Times
2. A Glimpse Of Kareena Kapoor's "Saturday Mood" With Saif Ali Khan  The Newsopedia
3. Bollywood actors share their secret workout moves amid lockdown  NEWS9 live
4. Sara Ali Khan says brother Ibrahim is ‘definitely interested’ in joining Bollywood: ‘It’s a dream right...  Hindustan Times
5. Sara Ali Khan on Ibrahim Ali Khan’s acting aspirations: It’s a dream right now, making it a reality is on him  PINKVILLA
6. View Full coverage on Google News

1. Covid-19 Delhi latest figures- 224 new cases take capital’s total to 8,630, India tally at 59,662  Hindustan Times
2. Confusion over Delhi's Covid-19 toll as govt data, figures from hospitals don't match  Times of India
3. 3 More Private Hospitals To Treat COVID-19 Patients In Delhi  NDTV
4. Delhi Covid-19 tally tops 6,000 with 338 new cases in last 24 hours  Livemint
5. 100 rooms in Delhi's five-star hotels now hospitals  Times of India
6. View Full coverage on Google News

1. Not anticipating worst situation in India: Harsh Vardhan on Covid-19 pandemic  Hindustan Times
2. Health ministry says learn to live with coronavirus as India's COVID-19 count crosses 56,000  India Gone Viral
3. Government Tweaks Rules For Testing As COVID-19 Cases Rise. Details Here  NDTV
4. 80 per cent of Telangana will be rid of coronavirus soon: Eatala  The New Indian Express
5. ‘We must learn to live with the coronavirus,’ says health ministry  Scroll.in
6. View Full coverage on Google News

1. Moeten we Brussels Airlines redden of niet?  De Tijd
2. Hoog spel rond Brussels Airlines  De Standaard
3. Akkoord tussen Swiss en Lufthansa: blauwdruk voor Brussels Airlines?  Trends
4. Lufthansa groep vanaf juni met 160 vliegtuigen de lucht in  Up in the Sky
5. Lufthansa Group verdubbelt in juni het aantal vliegtuigen in dienst  Luchtvaartnieuws.nl
6. Hele verhaal bekijken via Google Nieuws

Turkse recepten tegen virus laten meer vrijheid toe  De Standaard

And the answer is: Yes, we did. Last week. But Open Road Media is putting The Iron Dragon's Daughter on e-sale again. $1.99 on this Wednesday, April 1, only. I don't have to tell you what holiday that is. But apparently they really mean it.

I expect most people who read this blog and wanted an e-copy of that book got one during last week's sale. But I publicize the event for two reasons:

1) Writers should always be as cooperative to their publishers as they can stand being.

2) Maybe the reason for this promotion is that they're putting a lot of books on sale at once.

If you're an ebook reader, you might want to look into the second possibility. Or maybe subscribe to one of the newsletters below.

Here's the e-letter they sent me, with all the boilerplate:
                         
Dear Michael Swanwick,

We are pleased to let you know that the following ebook(s) will be featured in price promotions soon.

ISBN13	Title	Author	Promo Type	Country	Start Date	End Date	Promo Price
9781504025669	The Iron Dragon's Daughter	Swanwick, Michael	ORM - Portalist NL	US	2020-04-01	2020-04-01	$1.99
9781504025669	The Iron Dragon's Daughter	Swanwick, Michael	ORM - Portalist NL	CA	2020-04-01	2020-04-01	$1.99

Open Road will promote the feature via social media. We hope you can share the deal with your network as well. You can subscribe to the newsletters at the links below so that you will get the direct link to the deal on the day that it appears.

Newsletter	Link
Early Bird Books	Subscribe Now
The Lineup	Subscribe Now
The Portalist	Subscribe Now
Murder & Mayhem	Subscribe Now
A Love So True	Subscribe Now
The Archive	Subscribe Now
The Reader	Subscribe Now

Please let us know if you have any questions. We are thrilled to be part of this promotion; hope you are too!

Best,
The Open Road Editorial Team

My Subterranean Press collection, The Postmodern Adventuers of Darger and Surplus,  has received quite a splendid review for Locus by Gary K. Wolfe, which has now been posted on Locus Online. Darger and Surplus are, as you probably know, gentlemen grifters in the future civilization that rises from the ashes of our own, after a failed revolution by the Artificial Intelligences we are currently hard at work creating. Humanity mostly won that war and the demons and mad gods were banished to a subterranean infrastructure too widespread and well-defended to be rooted out. But, as a result, the mechanical sciences have languished while the biological ones thrive.

All this is spelled out in the review more entertainingly than I have put it here. I encourage you to read it.

Meanwhile, here's the pull-quote I'd grab from the review if I were the sort of person who did that sort of thing:

As those Hugo voters apparently recognized nearly 20 years ago, Darger and Surplus not only join the small company of SF’s classic rogues, but the world they occupy is as complex, detailed, and morally chaotic as we’ve come to expect from the best of Swanwick’s fiction.

You can find the review in its glorious entirety here. Or you can just go to locusmag.com and poke around. Bot Locus and Locus Online make for informative, enjoyable reading


And as long as you're there . . .

Like everything else, Locus is feeling the financial stress of the lockdown. If you can afford it, and if you, like me, value the publication, consider contributing a little toward its survival.

Very few people in the science fiction community ever came face to face with Alice Sheldon, who wrote SF under the pseudonym James Tiptree, Jr, much less met her tarantulas. One of those very few was Gardner Dozois. When he sold his papers to UC Riverside (the proceeds went to keeping his wife, Susan Casper, alive for several years longer than would otherwise have happened), bookman Henry Wessells became aware of the correspondence between Sheldon and Dozois.

Now, Henry has created a chapbook, She Saved Us from World War Three, containing the two most significant letters from that correspondence. The first is from Sheldon, telling Gardner that the secret of her identity was about to go public and that she was not a man but a woman. The second is her relieved response to Gardner's assurance that they were still friends.

Which understates how Gardner felt about Sheldon/Tiptree. He was in awe of her as a writer and remained so after the murder-suicide that ended her life.

To go with the letters and give them some context, I interviewed Gardner about his friendship with Alice Sheldon and this introduction now forms the bulk of the chapbook.

Today is the publication date for She Saved Us from World War Three and it is currently available for sale. It costs $20, which is not cheap for twenty pages of prose but is cheap for a beautifully made limited edition chapbook with fold-out facsimiles of the letters themselves.

Those of you who need it know who you are. Me, I already have my copy. I'm going to dig up the oversized paperclip which Sheldon gave to Gardner  as a souvenir of their meeting and Gardner gave to me because souvenirs meant nothing to him and keep the two of them together. This is a very meaningful publication for me.

You can find ordering information here.


Above: The chapbook's cover. Photo by John DeChancie and used with his permission. John is a Mensch. I esteem him highly.

Analysis: Tennis pros' US return amid pandemic no true model

Vi Hart, adept at mathematics, music, and explaining things, made this video that explains the point (and the lack of point, too) of 12-tone music:

Hey, at least there still won't be any bickering about the seat being left up!

I wouldn't call it a "hi-hat." More like a "canopy hat."

I think they spent all their money on the fancy toilet paper. ~NSHA

In my last post I showed some simple ways you can use to help get your videos more views and subscribers. Now let's talk about getting some of that traffic over to your website or blog. Being that YouTube is the most used search engine in the world right now, and showing no signs of slowing down, this is something you want to tap into.

Using twitter is a great way to promote your website or blog and increase traffic. If your new to twitter and never used it before it works like this. You get 140 characters to write a short statement or advertisement depending on what you’re using the site for. Most people tweet simple things like there not feeling well or changes in their social life. All that’s fine but you want to use it to promote your website, so here are some simple things to optimize your tweets to get the maximum traffic return.

Google keyword tool is a great free seo tool you can use to find keywords for your site. Without keywords or key phrases your site won’t be found by users, and you won’t be indexed by the search engines. It’s also important that you pick the right keywords that match your sites description. Often these are overlooked, leaving people frustrated that their sites aren’t getting the hits they would like. To use Google keyword tool to fink keywords, here’s what you do.

When it comes to getting people to your site one of the ways you can do this is through social bookmaking sites. And while these all give your site excellent one way back links, there is one site that you should sign up to first to get more traffic, and that site is Stumbleupon. Why you should use Stumbleupon to get more traffic If you’re not familiar with Stumbleupon this is how it works for your site to get more traffic. Instead of using keywords like how you would for a search engine, visitors select categories that interest them such as videos, music, or computers to name a couple examples. Once they pick their categories and click on the stumble button their randomly taken to a site, article, or video that fits that category. They can then decided if the like or dislike that site by giving it thumbs up or down. The more thumbs up your site gets the more hits it will get because it will show up more frequently when people stumble that category. Visitors to your site can also write reviews and share it with other users or add a sites link to their list of favourite sites giving you even more exposure, back links, and that oh so coveted traffic..........

Every SEO and web expert out there and their dog will tell you how important Google page rank is to your site and how it can help your site rank well in search engine listings. One thing you might not have heard about is trust rank. It’s important to understand what this seo tool is, and to start making changes now because this is the direction Google is looking at taking.

Recently Google announced a new service called Google Plus 1. A new button that Google plans to rival against Facebook’s Like button. Plus 1 works in much the same manner as a like button in that it is a way to help determine a site’s popularity and relevancy to visitors. It will also be applied to Adsense ads as well, again similar to how Facebook uses it’s like button.

Most of the popular social book marking or networking sites have some form of social media share button. A little button that with one click allows you to share an article, video or web page on there site, in the hopes that it goes viral and gets you a tonne of hits. And while these buttons are usually easy to install, most sites only have either a limited number of choices, or a one size fits all approach. This is fine if you like what they offer, but if you want something that fits better with the theme and look of your website you have to do a bit of digging around.

Google recently introduced their plus 1 button for website and blog owners to add to their sites. If you haven’t heard of this new feature it’s essentially Google’s answer to Facebooks like button and works in a similar way. It allows your viewers to “plus 1” your page or site, basically saying to the world “Hey I like this site come check it out”. It’s also currently available on Blogger and YouTube which have automatically added the new button.

It’s a safe bet that if anyone from a potential employer to coworkers, to that girl down the street you asked out on a date will type your name into a search engine. As we become more connected with the internet and social media every day, this has become a common theme. A 2009 study by Microsoft revealed that around 80% of hiring managers in the United States searched for a candidate online and around 70% of that group didn’t hire the person they searched because of what they found online............ Fast forward to the recent riot here in Vancouver and you can see why your online reputation holds so much weight. Rioters and those who decide it would be a smart idea to get their picture beside a burning police car are now finding themselves being fired from their jobs, while the pictures they posted on Facebook have been circulated to the police. It’s an extreme example of how your online reputation can be damaged, but it drives home the importance a good online reputation.

If you haven’t heard Google is set to launch a new social network, otherwise known as Google Plus or Google+ depending on who you talk to. Like the new Google plus 1 button, Google is trying to get into the social network scene currently dominated by Facebook. Google’s new social network will be available on all its products thanks to a completely re-designed navigation bar........... Google’s new social network will share some very similar features to its biggest rival with a similar notification system and its stream which will have a look and feel very close to Facebook’s news feed. This will allow its users to share photos, videos, and links to their contacts pretty much the same way, and with the recent plus 1 button you’ll be able to rate content much like you would “like” content on Facebook.

Google is ramping out their new social network Google Plus and allowing more invites. This is an attempt at Google to dominate the social networking scene currently controlled by Facebook. If you don’t have an invite to Google Plus yet and would like one, you’re in luck and I can hook you up.

The internet is buzzing with talk about Google plus. Go onto sites like Yahoo Answers and people are constantly asking for an invite onto this new social network. So it’s no surprise that there is a growing number of scammers looking to make a fast buck. There’s also a good deal of misinformation about Google plus. Hopefully this post will squash a few of them and give you a little better picture of this new site, and how to avoid some of the scams surrounding it..........

If your currently running or thinking of running ads on Facebook, don’t advertise your Google plus account. It looks like Facebook has a hate on for Google plus, I can’t really blame them considering it’s their biggest competition and I think Facebook is getting more then a little worried about losing their number 1 spot in the social network scene.......

By now you’re probably very familiar with Google , Google’s latest attempt at getting into the whole social network scene. But what kind of affect will Google and their 1 button have when it comes to SEO?......

I like making videos on Youtube, its fun. And while I’m far from being a pro I learn new tricks with each new video. One of the things I’ve learned from trial and error is what songs work and what doesn’t. Sure it doesn’t really matter if your videos are only for a hobby or just to show something off. However if your looking to get your name out there, get your videos popular, and not have people leave after 10 seconds then understanding what songs work and don’t is important.........

NIH clinical trial testing antiviral remdesivir plus anti-inflammatory drug baricitinib for COVID-19 begins  National Institutes of HealthView Full coverage on Google News

1. Coronavirus found in sperm after men’s recovery, research finds  7NEWS.com.au
2. New study finds coronavirus in semen  Body and Soul
3. Urgent Warning For Covid-19 Patients After Virus Found In Semen Of Some Recovered Men  10 daily
4. Coronavirus Has Apparently Been Detected In Semen  Rolling Stone
5. Coronavirus Has Been Detected in Semen, So What Does That Mean for Sex?  Prevention.com
6. View Full coverage on Google News

1. Belgian llama holds key to possible corona treatment  Yahoo News Australia
2. Llama antibodies could help fight COVID-19 | Coronavirus Cure | World News  WION
3. Llama Antibodies Could Help Scientists Get Closer to Stopping the Coronavirus Pandemic—Here’s How  Health.com
4. Belgian, US scientists look to llamas in search for Covid-19 treatment  DAWN.com
5. Llamas helping researchers in the fight against COVID-19  WKRG
6. View Full coverage on Google News

1. Children in US and UK dying from syndrome linked to COVID-19  World Socialist Web Site
2. Rare illness linked to coronavirus kills New York five-year-old  9News
3. Coronavirus US: Andrew Cuomo’s sad announcemet about chld infections  NEWS.com.au
4. Some children with COVID-19 showing symptoms similar to Kawasaki Disease  NEWS10 ABC
5. New fears around 'entirely different chapter' of coronavirus after boy dies from rare illness  Yahoo News Australia
6. View Full coverage on Google News

1. Axed Western Force to rejoin Aussie rugby competition in July  PerthNow
2. New Zealand plotting stunning multi-billion dollar escape from World Rugby  Fox Sports
3. RA to ditch Super Rugby?  RugbyPass
4. Forget the Kiwis, Australian rugby's future is local  Sydney Morning Herald
5. Half of New Zealand Rugby staff face redundancy amid $NZ7m lockdown loss  The Guardian
6. View Full coverage on Google News

1. AOC insists opportunity knocks for Australia's 2032 Olympic bid  Sydney Morning Herald
2. Tokyo Olympics could be the greatest ever after the coronavirus pandemic, says AOC president John Coates  ABC News
3. Sport boss claims hosting the Olympics could pull Australia out of a post-coronavirus recession  Daily Mail
4. AOC CEO looking at great sporting decade  7NEWS.com.au
5. Channel 7 sweats as Olympics plans still up in the air for 2021  Herald Sun
6. View Full coverage on Google News