16 & Pregnant


One of my friends from college, Morgan J. Freeman, is the executive producer of the upcoming MTV series "16 & Pregnant." It debuts June 11. Please check out the trailer.

Labels: nexus

- posted by Amy @ 5/25/2009 07:30:00 AM

 
Dirty Internet thieves

I'm having a ready-to-throw-in-the-towel morning at NewYorkology again. I'm a content person. And I don't cheat, "borrow" or steal online. And for those reasons (and yes, many others,)I will always be out-moused as long as I remain independent.

So without getting too deep into the big picture, here's the most mind-boggling case this morning. I was looking for some content in my archives, using the Google search engine. On some search terms, my stuff doesn't show up on the front page of results, but instead I see my content on other sites that have scraped NewYorkology's content in part -- or in whole.

So, have a look at the current NewYorkology front page. And then have a look at these screen grabs of part of their page (as I'm not going to link to the offending site.)






There is seriously NO content on that page that isn't mine, besides the Google ads, banner at the top and a Weather Channel box. They're even feeding in my jump pages as part of their front page, I assume to get even more keywords in one place.

No contact info of course, so I sent e-mail to their proxy through WhoIs. The next step is to contact Google, which you can no longer do by e-mail. So I'll write up a complaint to them with all the documentation, in hopes that sometime down the line they'll prohibit that site from selling Google Ads, and thus force them to find another way to monetize my stolen content.

And no, I'm not looking for solutions to try this or that, or contact a lawyer or get my IT guys to do XYZ. I'm just venting. The offenders are probably in Moscow or Nigeria. And it's a total whack-a-mole game as there's always going to be 10 more tomorrow. I've mostly given up chasing these types of guys down, but this (and another this morning,) is outranking me in Google with my own content.

Earlier: Will aggregators kill the news?
Bruni dines on Eater, leaves without paying
Calling out thieving BuddyTV
'Courtesy of' my cold thieving hands
Bad attribution, British style
More NYT attribution - on a military law blog
On attribution, linking and fairness

Update: At least one reader on Twitter was confused, so maybe I should clarify. Amy's New York Notebook (the site you're reading now) is the personal website of Amy Langfield, who is the editor of NewYorkology.com. NewYorkology's content was ripped off by a completely different website (shown above) but they're not named or linked to here because that would only improve their search engine rankings further. This by the way, is the current top of the NewYorkology website for comparison:



Update II: As of Tuesday morning, NewYorkology's stuff is gone from the front page of the offending site, though the cache files show he copied HUGE portions of the site. The front page now looks like this:

Labels: media

- posted by Amy @ 5/24/2009 10:12:00 AM

 
Secret Fire now on sale.

Martin's second published novel, The Secret Fire is out. As I mentioned earlier, there's no U.S. publisher as of yet, but you can buy it on Amazon UK.
- posted by Amy @ 4/23/2009 10:48:00 AM

 
Brooklyn sand dunes



When I went out looking for the whale Thursday, I found there's little stretch of public beach with sand dunes facing the Verrazano Bridge. It's in Kaiser Park.

Labels: brooklyn, pictures

- posted by Amy @ 4/12/2009 07:59:00 PM

 
On sharing your freinds' e-mails

Thrillist offers an example why it's not nice to "e-mail this article to your friend." This landed in my inbox today:

You're Invited

A while back, your friend (NAME REDACTED) sent you an article from Thrillist — the free daily email that sifts through the crap to find the newest restaurants, bars, events, gear, gadgets and services.

For some insane reason, you didn't sign up. We'll forgive you if you accept your invitation within the next 7 days.

Each day, you'll get one quick email on the best of what's new in your city and across the web. Whatever it is, we promise it won't suck.

You can read our Deal before accepting your invitation, or just get on the list now.

(My friend's name was redacted by me for this post.)

Labels: media

- posted by Amy @ 3/10/2009 06:29:00 PM

 
Changing Face of Red Hook


Here's another gauge of the changes in Red Hook. Last summer, at this same place next to the Brooklyn Cruise Ship Terminal, there was an old oil drum. Except typical Red Hook, it was leaking, and since it was big enough to fit a body, it sat there for about two months before anyone bothered to call the city and have it picked up.

But now, while there's the usual amount of building materials and other trash dumped at the end of Sullivan Street, you've got to give them credit that they're now labeling and dating the materials they're dumping in human-sized oil drums in Red Hook.

Labels: brooklyn, pictures, red hook

- posted by Amy @ 3/07/2009 02:20:00 PM

 
Book No. 2

I'm very happy to pass along the news that the husband's second book will hit bookstore shelves soon.

"The Secret Fire" is the follow up to "The Malice Box." It's both a sequel and prequel to the first, this time set in England, France - and a bit of Red Hook. However, he was also careful to write it in a way that you need not start with "Malice Box" to know what's going on.

Part of the "Secret Fire" is set in World War II. The book is fiction, but like the first book, it uses a lot of real-life events as a stepping-off place. He did original research and interviews to help craft the characters and stories.

In addition -- and I think this is very cool -- he's built a website for the non-fiction parts of the book. "The Secret Fire" website has original audio from his interviews as well as historic photos.

There's also a fancy new "Malice Box" website in Wordpress, which links to the intentionally clunky "Robert's blog" in Blogspot. (For those who haven't read the first book, Robert was told to create a blog on the fly and post pictures/text as a way of proving he was doing what he's told.)

Also of note, he has a Martin Langfield website (featuring a super cool lightning-bolt picture from the ceiling of the old theater on Governors Island, which was only open during Open House NY last year.)

The UK/Commonwealth publication date for "The Secret Fire" is April 16. It's coming out in recession-friendly paperback.

There's no U.S. publisher as of this time, however it's already being translated into German and Dutch.

And lastly, Penguin asked him to write up something for their website about the process of re-imagining history.

Labels: books

- posted by Amy @ 3/07/2009 07:54:00 AM