Kevin Muldoon

One of the things I have found about working through the web is my inability to correctly give myself a title ie. a name which explains what I do for a living. Lot’s of people online seem to be using the term ‘Entrepreneur’ but I really hate it, it’s kinda pompous in my opinion.

When applying for something, for example a loan, you need to write the name of your profession. In the last few year’s I have wrote ‘Web Developer‘. Webmaster is probably a more accurate description but I thought Web Developer sounded better

Meeting people for the first time there would come a point where they would inevitably ask you what you do. When I explain I’m self employed via the internet and that I make money through advertising they usually reply ‘Oh, you’re a web designer’. This is usually followed by a reference that a cousin or uncle needs a website built and I then need to backtrack and explain that whilst I can design websites from scratch, I’m not a web designer and usually leave that aspect to people who are good at it. I don’t believe that explaining an online job to people who are not nev savvy is ever going to be easy!!

In the last few months I have sold my poker forums and several other websites which I owned. This has helped me clear the debt I had from travelling last year and gave me a chance to work on some other projects. Other than my online shop project with my friend Eddie, lately I have been working mainly on my blogs and when someone recently asked me what I do and I told them I’m currently running some blogs etc they replied ‘Oh so you’re a blogger’. It seems that whereas a lot of people struggle to understand how people can build websites specifically for profit, most people understand how blogging works.

With blogging taking up most of my time now I am more than happy to use the title ‘Blogger’. It’s pretty much what I am until I start another non-blog project and it seems to keep the non-savvy people happy!

What do you call yourself? Do you constantly find yourself having to explain to people exactly what you do?

I was watching the news tonight when it announced that KFC will be removing the ‘Fried’ part of their brand to replace it with ‘Grilled’ in order to promote a healthier image of their food.

They will be trying out their new grilled chicken in in six cities — Indianapolis, Colorado Springs, San Diego, Oklahoma City, Jacksonville, Florida, and Austin, Texas.

I wonder if it will be a success?

Source : Reuters

At the end of June last year me and my friend Michael flew from Tokyo to Berlin to meet 9 of my friends who were over for a long weekend. For the first 3 days we stayed in East Berlin and the last 3 days we stayed with my friends on the west side, quite close to Checkpoint Charlie.

The place we stayed at in East Berlin wasn’t the greatest. Infact, it was a complete craphole if im honest. The beds killed my back and the hostel was situated in what can only be described politely as ‘not a nice area’. Ok, it wasn’t that bad but it was hardly the hilton!

I took a few photos from my window on the first day. Check them out

On the 2nd day my mate Michael was looking out the window and said ‘Have a look at this’. This is what I saw

At first glance you probably don’t notice anything different from the photo I had taken the day before. However, if you look closer you will notice that there is a man sleeping at the top of the chimney.

The pictures above don’t show how tall and thin this chimney was. We checked it out from the ground and it was really thin – quite simply, if the guy had to jerk out of sleep quickly he would no doubt have fell to his death. We went out for a few hours and saw some museums and when we came back he was gone however we still couldn’t work out why the guy wanted to sleep up there for hours.

Strange to say the least! What’s the strangest place you’ve ever slept?

I touched down in Glasgow this morning at 7am after a very enjoyable 6 days in New York. 9 of my mates booked up last year when I was still in New Zealand so whereas me and my friend George travelled direct from Glasgow, they had to all go via Amsterdam with a 4 hour wait in between. 3 other friends who were staying around times square also joined us but even though there were 14 of us there, I don’t think we were ever in the same room at the same time as someone was always doing something or heading out early or late or whatever.

Most of my friends stayed in the penn hotel (great location, poor hotel) whereas me and my friend George stayed just one street behind on W 32nd street (La Quinta Inn, situated in Korea Street). Our hotel was pretty basic too but after backpacking so much over the last few years and staying in rooms with 10 people in bunk beds I am very easy to please! If I ever went to New York with a girlfriend though I’d maybe splurge on something a little better.

What did I do in New York? Well, nothing. Absolutely nothing constructive. Other than making a knicks game all we did was go out and party in the pubs but I have to say, I loved every minute of it. The place was buzzing because of St Patricks day and we had an absolute blast.

Unfortunately, I don’t have too many pics from the trip at the moment. I never remember to take my camera anywhere and I haven’t got the pics from my friends yet but here’s a few pics I did get.

Checking my hotmail with my eee

What happens when you turn around and someone says cheese!

Watching the Knicks get beat by the Hawks – as you can see, we don’t hide the fact we’re tourists!

Me and some friends at Herald Square on our first full day in NY

This was my 4th time in New York. I’ve been to a few places in the USA now so here are some thoughts from someone living in the UK

• Americans are really friendly. Maybe our view is skewed because we are tourists but everyone we met was really friendly and we met some great people…though no one can tell the difference between a Scottish accent and an Irish one haha
• I still don’t know how to tip. Here’s the thing, in the UK we only really tip in restaurants. I don’t hate tipping, infact in some situations I think it’s better as service tends to be better. Here’s my problem, I just don’t know when I need to tip. I clearly tip too much in bars and restuarants but I’m not sure when to tip the bellboy etc. Any suggestions?
• Portions in some restaurants are just too much. I really empathise with people who have weight problems in the USA. I reckon if I stayed there a while and partied a lot I’d put on a lot of weight. For example, we were sitting in Jack Dempseys on 33rd Street. Me and my friend were not really that hungry but ordered some buffalo wings to nibble at. The order came with about 16 large buffalo wings. Value for money but I think this excessiveness is responsible for a lot of people being overweight. A few days later I had a burger in Ruby Tuesdays and even though I was starving I couldn’t finish it, it was huge!!!

Although there are obvious differences between the UK and the USA, culturally we are very similar and it’s very easy to feel at home quickly. This is the same with Australia, Canada and New Zealand ie. a common language and shared history.

With Delta opening more routes in the UK and flights in general to stateside getting cheaper I’m sure I will be back sooner rather than later

It’s 7.30pm just now however I’m just about to head to my friends to stay as we are up at 4.30am to fly to New York. I will be away for a week so there probably won’t be many posts until I return (if any).

I’ll try and post some pics of the trip when I return. Speak to you all soon.

Kev

This time next week I will be sitting on a plane heading towards the Big Apple. 10 of us are heading over for a week to New York (and 5 or 6 friends of friends will be over at the same time). It’s going to be a pretty wild week with so many people going not to mention the fact that it’s St Patrick’s day when we are there (which is one of the reasons we are going).

No doubt we will be drinking a lot over the week but we are trying to see as much of New York as we can when we are there so I would love to hear any suggestions of where to go and what to do when we are over.

This is my 4th time to New York. Last time I stayed at the Marriott just off of Times Square but this time we are next to Madison Square Garden. So far I have :

• went up the Empire State Building (twice is more than enough!)
• went to the Bronx zoo
• went to Central Park
• went to a Yankees game (for the record I’m not a yankees fan)
• watched USA vs Italy in the world cup down in Little Italy
• Took a boat trip round Manhattan that went past, amongst other things, the Statue of Liberty

A few of us have been to New York before but for others it’s their first time. Thankfully, with so many people going this won’t cause any problems as some will do stuff we have done before while wel do something else.

Obviously on St Patricks day we are will not be doing anything constructive but for the other days we have suggested :

• going to Coney Island
• going to the Bada Bing for a few drinks. We’re all huge Soprano’s fans!
• going to the Rockafeller Centre
• doing a tour of the yankees stadium (not something I’ll probably do since I’ve been there)

Do you have any other suggestions of where to go? A few of us are big movie fans so pubs or cafes and other locations that have been prominent in good films would give some of us a big kick. For example, when I was watching football in Little Italy we were drinking in the pub where Johhny Depp told Pacino the diamond he had was a fugazi in Donnie Brasco. Yes I know that’s sad to people who aren’t big movie fans!

Yesterday, JKOnTheRun (great site!) reported that MobiTV is trying to shut down HowardForums because of links to copyrighted material being posted on the forum.

Basically MobiTv does not protect their content and instead relies on it’s members not posting the url elsewhere…..which is clearly a very flawed assumption. Someone posted links on HowardForums and MobieTV responded by asking for the links to be removed. They replied that they cannot moderate everyones comments and it’s up yo MobiTV to protect their content. MobiTV replied by contacting the host company and telling them of the copyright violation and JK reports that there is a good chance HowardForums could get shut down.

I’m a member of HowardForums, I’m not a regular poster but I have went there for help with phones in the past and it’s very reliable. As you know, over the years I have run quite a few forums so I can appreciate HowardForums stance on this. My last forum which I recently sold (THF) had 17,000 members and required moderation on a daily basis so I can only imagine how much work it is to moderate a forum with 800,000 members.

It would be very sad if HowardForums got shut down. Let’s hope they get through this and MobiTV see the error in their ways.

You can read the full story at JKOnTheRun here

p.s. I wrote this on my eee!!!

Me and a friend have been on the lookout for a good domain name recently to start an online shop. The topic of trademarking came up because we found so many domains for sale which were using copyrighted names (this was particuarly bad with gambling related names).

I recalled the story to my friend of the domain name dispute Armani.com had a few years ago. Basically, A man of Finnish heritage called A. R. Mani registered Armani.com in 1995. Armani contacted Mr Mani and around 1997 Mr Mani offered the domain to them for $1,935 USD. Nothing was settled and in 2001 Armani launched a complaint with the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center saying that the domain name was a trademark was a violation of their trademark. Long story short, Armani lost the dispute. The domain name now directs to their product line so something between the two parties has obviously been arranged since then however at the time it caused a big shock.

I searched the web and found the WIPO’s full report on the matter. If you have ever worried about someone taking your name then it proves an interesting read. Enjoy

WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center for Armani.com

Tyler Cruz announced his brand new theme for his blog with a post about cool I am. Hey…I’ve every right to have a big head haha

Check out the post here.