Archive for May, 2011

I’m a Writer . . . Not a Mobster

Posted: May 24, 2011 in Twitter, Writing

Mobster World

The other day I was going through my usual routine of checking e-mail, direct messages, replies, mentions, etc., when I saw this interesting message from one of my friends on Twitter:

Hey, I just added you to my Mafia family. You should accept my invitation! 🙂 Click here: XXXXXXX (edited, so no one would make the same mistake I did).

organized-crime-150556_1280I grew up playing video games, from the Atari 2600 & Intellivision, Nintendo Entertainment System & Sega Master System… and currently Xbox 360 & PS3. With years of gaming on my life’s résumé, I was naturally interested in this new game called Mobster World. I’ve played iMobsters on the iPhone and enjoyed it, so I thought, “What the heck! I’ll try it out.” I really don’t have much time for games lately, but a few minutes playing a simple point-and-click game should be harmless enough. HA! Little did I know that the developers of Mobster World had a very annoying way of trying to attract new players.

I clicked on the link and… I know, I know! I’m an idiot for doing so, but bear with me for a moment. Anyway, I clicked on the link and the first thing that popped on the screen was a Twitter Application Authorization page, which I’ve seen before. I hesitated, but clicked on the “Approve” button. My computer didn’t blow up, so I was now ready to start playing this Mobster World game, but first I had to come up with a name for my mobster. I chose Don Sharky, of course! After deciding on my character’s name and basic characteristics, I dove into the game. I participated in a few criminal acts for the mob boss, leveled up a couple of times, and then I decided to check out the game settings. Oh, look! There’s a Twitter settings section to play around with. Do I want the game to send tweets about my game progress or send invites? Um… no, I don’t. So, I disabled the Twitter options. Phew! It’s a good thing I checked the settings!

Spam Bot Assimilation

It was too late! This game automatically starts its attack as soon as you click “Approve”. One of my fellow writing “tweeps” and #Pubwrite patrons, Lorna, sent me a message warning me about the viral consequences of clicking on the game invite link. She told me that the game sends messages to all of your Twitter followers. OH! NO! Sure enough, my Direct Message list was full of invites that “I” had sent to a ton of my followers. I had inadvertently been turned into a spam bot!!! I had taken the bait that dangled in front of me and I bit hard. Now, I had to try and pull the hook out and undue the mess that had already started to unfold. My first task (after canceling my Mobster World account, of course) was to send out a few messages informing all of my followers to ignore the game invite that they may receive from “me”. Mobster World was trying to assimilate me into a pesky Twitter droid, but I wasn’t going to let that happen! I quickly grabbed my can of “Bot-Be-Gone” and frantically sent direct messages to every Twitter follower that I could visibly see that Mobster World had sent invites to “on my behalf”.

After nearly half an hour of sending message after message to my innocent followers, apologizing, and feeling embarrassed for falling into such a trap in the first place, I claimed victory against Mobster World and it’s evil plan to assimilate me into a Twitter Spam Bot. Sadly, Don Sharky didn’t fair so well… he’s swimming with the fishes. But, so be it! I’m happy to be my good ‘ol human self again and I learned a valuable lesson. Avoid all game invites on Twitter like a bad habit!

If you had a similar experience or know of any other dangers that lurk in some unknown dark alleys of Twitterville, please comment on this post. I look forward to reading your responses. Thanks for visiting and be sure to grab a complimentary can of “Bot-Be-Gone” on your way out. 🙂

Oh, by the way, after the whole Mobster World fiasco, the next time I signed into Twitter, I had to fill out that little CAPTCHA box to prove that I was a real person. Go figure!

Sharky Teeth

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This Thing Called Twitter

Posted: May 21, 2011 in Social Networking, Writing

What The Heck Is Social Networking?

YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter. What do all these things have in common? Well, I think we can all agree they are among the most popular social networking sites available. From sharing videos of some of the most ridiculous things you can imagine, to posting photos and stories about yourself, to casual chatting, to making business connections, the whole social networking thing used to be such a blur to me, with the exception of YouTube.

I have to admit that I’m still a bit of a newb when it comes to social networking. The first time I overheard someone talk about MySpace, I had no idea what they were talking about. When I did find out, I had no interest in it. I really wasn’t into the whole “share my life with world” thing, but ever since my coworkers kept showing me what was on their “wall” and what they recently posted, I started to understand how it could be a fun way to communicate.

Shortly after I finally understood what MySpace was was all about, it was replaced with a new trendy word… Facebook! So what happened to everyone’s MySpace? Well, apparently, this new social networking giant swallowed up MySpace in 2008 and is literally EVERYWHERE now. It’s not just a personal social gathering thing anymore. It seems like every business out there is jumping onto the Facebook bandwagon. You see the little icon somewhere and you immediately know it’s Facebook. The branding has been embedded into people’s brains. You see the branding in retail advertising all across the nation and the world.

So, with that said, why don’t I have a Facebook account? It’s simple… I still don’t quite understand the need for it. I mean, I know it’s a great place where you can post photos and chat and all, but other than that, at this time I find no use for it. Again, this is only because I don’t fully understand it. Businesses seem to think it’s an extremely important tool, though, so as a growing writer and aspiring entrepreneur, I’m sure I’ll jump on the bandwagon, too, someday. Just not right now. Twitter takes up enough of my time. 😉

OMG! Ashton Kutcher Had What For Breakfast?

Hello, my name is Rob, and I’m a #TwitterAddict. This wasn’t always true and I’m getting some great support from my #TwitterAddictsAnonymous group which meets every Tuesday night for about four hours… on Twitter. Seriously, though, I never thought I would ever sign up for a Twitter account. I’ve never had any interest in Facebook, so why in the world would I want to use Twitter? I mean, do I really care what Ashton Kutcher is eating for breakfast?

The answer is: “No, I don’t.” This was my initial impression of Twitter. This too was turning into a trending word around the office. I tweeted this… and I tweeted that. What the heck is a “tweet”? Then, I saw a commercial about Twitter. Oh, good! Some official information… um… didn’t help. A family is standing around outside with their smart phones and Dad is tweeting about sitting on a chair outside with his family. It was something to that degree, at least. Yeah, that sounds so exciting! Where can I sign up? Twitter was obviously poking fun at itself with that commercial, but I seriously thought that’s all there was too it. Type a short message about what you are doing, and there are people out there that do just that… and only that.

Learning The Twitter Code: DMs, RTs, #Hashtags and Spam Bots!

One day recently, I decided to go ahead and create a Twitter account, just so I could communicate with my friends on my cell phone without having to use text messaging (I don’t have unlimited texts). Yes, being cheap was the initial reason I signed up for Twitter! Well, NONE of my “real” friends wanted to use Twitter, because (big surprise) they had the same impression of Twitter that I did. Well, crap. Now what? I had this new Twitter account and had absolutely no idea what to do with it. I guess I could start following some celebrities to see what they had to say on Twitter.

I followed a few of my favorite celebrities, read what they were tweeting, and what others were tweeting to them. Hmmm… some of these celebrities were actually having actual conversations with some of the “little people” in the world. I also so all these #s RTs and DMs popping up in lots of tweets. Great, these people are speaking in code, so I have to learn a new language. Ugh! Google helped me decipher some of this Twitter code. Oh, RT means Retweet. Okay. So what the heck is a Retweet and what’s the purpose of it? And DM is Direct Message… oh, a private message. That makes sense. It took a few days to figure out the Twitter lingo before I decided to put some of it to use. I saw a lot of people asking celebrities to RT them, follow them, etc., and yes, I shamefully did the same at first. I thought that’s just what you do on Twitter. Try to get the celebrities to talk to you. Buzz! Wrong! Try again! Then I started seeing “people” follow me. I now realize they were what we in the Twitter community call “Spam Bots.” Netflix was actually the first bot to follow me, which I didn’t mind, since technically it’s not really a bot if it’s a legitimate business, right? I followed back.

Twitter: The Marketing Tool For Writers?

My fifth follower was a real live person, though. I clicked on the profile and noticed it was a Christian writer named B.K. Dell from Texas. I read a few of his tweets and realized that he was promoting his new book Don’t Ask on Twitter, and he was giving it away for free on Smashwords, which was an app that I had on my phone. That immediately sparked a little fire in my soul because I had self-published a book in 2004 and started getting a touch of the writing bug again. I thought promoting a book through Twitter was such a great idea. I followed him, downloaded his book, and sent Mr. Dell a message to let him know that I downloaded his book. He responded to me, thanked me for downloading the book, and asked me to let him know what I thought. I enjoyed reading the book and ended up purchasing the paperback version on Amazon.

Suddenly, with this “first contact” Twitter wasn’t such a useless thing after all. I started following other writers on Twitter and quickly realized that there are a TON of them out there doing just what B.K. Dell was doing. It was then that I thought about maybe revisiting my book Pursuit of a Dream. I knew it needed a lot of work, and I thought it would be cool to have it available to read on the Kindle. I just didn’t know how to go about doing that. I was still fairly shy about chatting with all of these writers I was finding on Twitter, but then I noticed some of these writers kept adding a #pubwrite hashtag to their tweets (yes, at this point I knew what a hashtag was). I read some of these tweets for days and finally got the nerve to jump into the #pubwrite “chat room.”

Little did I know that making the decision to step out of my comfort zone and participate in the conversations that went on in #pubwrite would actually start a whole new chapter in my life. More on that later…

A Kid’s First Story

Posted: May 12, 2011 in Writing

“Katie vs. The Ameoba”

My interest in writing goes way back to the mid 80s when I was a kid living in Austin, Texas. One of my older brother’s many talents was drawing comic books and writing short stories. My brother and I were always very close and I naturally wanted to copy what my big brother was doing.

I was probably 9 or 10 years old at the time when I came up with my first story, “Katie vs. The Ameoba” (Spelled exactly the way I spelled it when I was 10 years old 🙂 ). I loved action and monster movies when I was a kid (still do), so I created The Ameoba, a giant mutating monster that’s sole purpose in life was to terrorize cities throughout the United States. It had to be stopped at all costs! The answer was the U.S. military and their special weapon, a giant snake that was inspired by my brother’s 7 ½ foot pet boa constrictor. Her name was Rosie, but I couldn’t use her name in my story, of course. So, I named her Katie.

I spent many late summer nights sitting on the living room couch working on my comic book. I had my notebook paper ready, map colors scattered everywhere, Oreo cookies on a paper towel, a glass of milk on the coffee table, and The Flintstones playing on the 27-inch “big screen” Quasar television. That’s right, I was a kid on a mission and I had all the tools to complete it!

One page after another, I drew each scene on notebook paper, adding narration at the top of each page and numbered each dialog bubble that floated over the characters. As I completed each page, I used Elmer’s glue to bind the pages together. That was about as high-tech as the process got for a kid growing up in the 80s.

When I finally completed my comic book, I proudly presented it to my parents, friends, their parents, and just about anyone I came in contact with. When I received compliments, my heart pounded with excitement, and I just knew what I wanted to be when I grew up! I wanted to be a comic book artist and writer… then a movie star… then a baseball player… then a race car driver… then a… well, you get the point.

Before I began writing this blog post, I looked for the comic book I “self-published” so many years ago. I remember placing it in a folder or box and storing it in an old dresser drawer that has since been collecting dust for years. So, this evening after I got home from the writing job that currently comes with a paycheck (writing obituaries; hey, you gotta start somewhere, right?) I opened the drawer that I thought I would find my old comic book in. Nope. Hmm. It must be in the bottom drawer, then. I pulled the bottom drawer and out came the middle drawer with it. I fought with this piece of furniture for a good 20 minutes and lost. I wanted to scan a couple of images of the comic book to share with you, but I’m afraid “Katie vs. the Ameoba” is going to have to remain incarcerated in the belly of that old dresser drawer until I figure a way to bust it out. 😦

So, there you have it. A little bit of childhood writing history. As a minnow, Sharkbait wrote a comic book. As an adult, he… well, he writes obituaries for a living (for the dead, really) with a strong desire to write much more fiction in the near future.

Thanks for taking time to read my blog and I hope you’ll keep coming back for more. Please rate this post and leave a comment. I look forward to reading them.

Cheers!

The Daunting First Post

Posted: May 9, 2011 in Uncategorized

The Birth of a New Blog

This is the first time I’ve ever written a blog, and to tell the truth, I’m a bit uncertain about the whole process. So, now that I’ve selected a domain name for my site, a blog host, and a theme… now what?

Well, I guess I can write about the daunting process of starting a web page. I mean, I have absolutely no web experience whatsoever! When I was finally ready to replace my “UNDER CONSTRUCTION” message with an actual welcome message for my blog, I thought, “Okay, where do I go to type my text? Ah! There it is!” Then, I started typing and everything looked great! That is until I clicked on the PREVIEW button! Oh, no!!! What the heck did I do? My fonts were all different sizes, spacing was all jacked up, and at that point I realized it was time to learn a new language.

Now, I know basic (and I mean very basic) HTML, but that wasn’t going to help me here. So, what was I going to do? Google it of course!

I didn’t like the default font sizes, so I needed to learn how to change that. It turns out that the HTML code for setting font sizes wasn’t too difficult. So, now that I’ve figured out the font size, my next task was trying to figure out how to change the actual font. Until then… this font is going to have to do!

So, now that I’ve got all that out of the way, I hope to be able to fill this site with interesting and more organized blog posts in the near future.

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