Author: Mike P. Lewis

Amazing Story of American Playing in England's Premiership

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t1_demerit2.jpgThis is a great and inspiring story of an American who saved his cash and went to England to try to play soccer. After a few years of earning next to nothing, he’s now, through an amazing series of events, playing for Watford in the Premier League. Here’s the story in Sports Illustrated magazine:

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LONDON CALLING

They said Jay DeMerit, a kid from Green Bay, didn‘t have what it takes to play professional soccer in America. So he went to England. England? Yes, and he’s now a bloomin’ favorite

Three years ago, in Jay DeMerit’s previous life, Sir Elton John didn’t ask to shake his hand. Three years ago, before he scored one of the most lucrative goals in soccer history, yellow-clad Englishmen didn’t chant his name, didn’t wear his jersey, didn’t burst into tears of joy over his flying header into a rippling net. Three years ago Jay DeMerit, late of Green Bay, was a soccer vagabond in a foreign land, an MLS reject plying the fields of London’s city parks, a Sunday pub leaguer sharing a friend’s attic bedroom in a dodgy part of town and subsisting on $70 a week and a steady diet of beans on toast.

Now, of all places, he’s here: on the emerald grass of sold-out Vicarage Road, the cozy stadium of the English Premier League’s Watford FC, a small-market outfit like DeMerit’s beloved Green Bay Packers. It’s an early-autumn afternoon 15 miles north of London, and this time DeMerit’s foes aren’t a bunch of hungover blokes from the pub but rather the superstars of Manchester United, the world’s most famous team. The sight of the Red Devils should intimidate the Hornets defender (Welcome to the Premiership, Yank), but not today. Not after his journey from the sport’s lowest levels to a league with a global audience of 600 million.

Continue reading “Amazing Story of American Playing in England's Premiership” →

6 Word Stories (and Captions)

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Ernest Hemingway was once prodded to compose a complete story in six words. His answer, personally felt to be his best prose ever, was “For sale: baby shoes, never used.” Some people say it was to settle a bar bet. Others say it was a personal challenge directed at other famous authors.

The same thing is going on at Flickr with photos right here. It’s lead to some funny captions. Some samples:

And just like that, she snapped. (photo)
I could do this all afternoon (photo)

Yesterday, she learned the shocking truth (photo)

(I found out about this on Flickr’s founder’s website: Caterina.net and pretty much reposted it verbatim)

Universal Studio's "Welcome" Movie

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Back before the South Park guys made South Park, they were just looking to make a buck any way they could. Universal Studios, right after they acquired Seagram Liquors actually hired them to make a video for new employees. Luckily for us, they were still completely crazy and hysterical. Here’s a peak at the video

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-6493841613076981287&hl=en]

Also, keeping with the spirit, my friend SubjectToBlackout sent me the awesome “Make Love Not Warcraft” episode of South Park which is damn good. If you have a spare 22 minutes, i highly recommend you check it out. The episode has been taken off YouTube, but you can get it here at DailyMotion.

The episode was so awesome that it actually has its own Wikipedia page. Pretty funny. Check it out, or as Cartman says:

You can just hang around outside all day tossing a ball around, or you can sit at your computer and do something that matters.

Qloud's Music Search and iTunes Plugin Launches

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We launched Qloud yesterday and it’s been a crazy ride.  The response to the idea and the site has been positive.   We were first reported (here) about by a popular technology blog called GigaOm which had a good review by their journalist Liz Gannes.  Then we were reviewed by a very popular social networking site called Mashable (here) which got into all the features of our site and nailed what our idea is. One quote from them:

It’s a neat service that looks incredibly slick, although the interface takes a lot of getting used to – I constantly forget to clear my old search before conducting a new one. That said, I’m verging on the side of liking Qloud: it’s still rough, but the intention is there.

Oh yeah!  These two reviews caused us to be featured on Digg (here) which drove a ton of users to our site last night causing our servers to go down twice.  All the users commenting and contacting us caused me to stay up pretty late.  Which is a great problem to have.

Today was another story.  Due to the interest yesterday, we were then listed on the del.icio.us site’s Hot List.  And the popular blog LifeHacker featured us as the Download of the Day.  These drove another drove of users from all around the world to Qloud.

On our Qloud blog we have a MeeboMe widget which allows us to talk to our users in real time and while all are encouraging, we’re definitely having some technical difficulties with the plugin.  They should be fixed soon, but it’s great to get real feedback from real users.

If you haven’t tried it, please  and register (sorry – only Windows for now) and let me know what you think.  Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

Why Google Buying YouTube Is A Good Idea

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Yesterday, someone sent me an email about the Google/YouTube deal with the note “seems like an absurd amount of money.” Well, i think it was a good deal for Google. Here’s why:

  1. YouTube has critical mass which is VERY hard to get
  2. YouTube (like Google Video) is a complete browser-based system which fits in with google’s long-term scheme of providing a browser suite (mail, calendar, tv, etc.) on low cost computers to undercut Windows and Apple and dominate the world.
  3. 10% of all google traffic goes to youTube and they are the number 2 destination people go to (#1 is MySpace). Earlier Google did a strategic deal with MySpace so now the top 2 places people go to from Google are to google-friend sites
  4. This further underscores that the actual technology is no longer the most important asset in the web 2.0 world. Revver, JumpCut and even AOL Video have better technologies but YouTube has users and users are what matter. TagWorld, CyWorld, Bebo, Faces.com, and Multiply are all better than MySpace in that they look better, they have more and better features but MySpace has critical mass
  5. Page views equal cash and YouTube has a lot of them. Because they haven’t fully monetized them yet doesn’t mean they won’t. They needed a partner with an ad serving system and relationships with advertisers – Google’s the best at both. In fact, Scoble was wondering what it would have been like if Microsoft had bought YouTube – and it all comes back to who has the relationships with the advertisers. Google’s #1 business is advertising and now they added a major piece of page inventory and now dominate web video inventory too (YouTube is 48% of all web video).
  6. 1.5 Billion is a good price in my mind. People said 1/2 a billion was too much for MySpace. Less than a year later, MySpace got $900 million from Google so it could power the search on the site. There’s clearly money to be made here and 1.5 B isn’t too much in my mind.

What do you think?

How to Save our Civilization (quote)

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Quick quote by Lester Brown who is the author of over 50 books and thought to be “the guru of the environmental movement.”

One of the questions I am frequently asked when I am speaking in various countries is, Given the environmental problems that the world is facing, can we make it? That is, can we avoid economic decline and civilizational collapse? My answer is always the same: it depends on you and me, on what you and I do to reverse these trends. It means becoming politically active. Saving our civilization is not a spectator sport.

A good bio of Lester is here.  Check him out, he’s a legend

And I Thought My Apartment in NY Was Small

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So this is the most expensive place on a cost per foot basis i’ve ever seen. Check this out – it’s a home built on the head of a pin. While that’s not super interesting in itself, it has been constructed with ridiculously detail. The artist, Mr. Wigan, said:

I spent 15 hours a day for seven weeks sculpting a minute piece of diamond. The beams are made out of floating fibres that you see in sunlight. To paint the house, I took the hair from a dead spider’s legs and made a paintbrush. Then it was a case of being very patient and careful.

Are you serious? 15 hours a day for 7 weeks for this thing?! Well, apparently it’s worth it as it’s selling for 20,000 pounds in England. (article)

This Trailer Will Blow Your Mind

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I loved Sin City. It’s mix of realistic images and animation was very cool and Mickey Rourke’s character was a total badass. Of course, it was a Frank Miller graphic novel moved to the screen. This next trailer of a film called 300 is also a graphic novel by Frank Miller and from the trailer it looks like it could be the badass movie of the year. Check it:

The trailer is here (sorry its not up on YouTube yet so i couldn’t embed)

The generic info for the movie is:

Based on the epic graphic novel by Frank Miller, 300 is a ferocious retelling of the ancient Battle of Thermopylae in which King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) and 300 Spartans fought to the death against Xerxes and his massive Persian army. Facing insurmountable odds, their valor and sacrifice inspire all of Greece to unite.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=wDiUG52ZyHQ]

New to MySpace? Use Good Etiquette

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A lot of people i know are jumping on the MySpace train. I read a useful article (here) that lists some simple rules that will help you get and keep friends. Some of my favorites are:

 

• Another thing that might strike a chord with paranoid MySpacers is the mythical MySpace tracker. To put it simply, MySpace trackers don’t exist yet. Don’t be scared if you look at someone’s profile hourly. They can’t tell.

• Writing a comment to everyone on your list is a nice sentiment, but when using that pretense to just get comments back, it’s lame. You know who you are.

• Ladies, if a creepy guy you’ve never met adds you and he has nothing but half-dressed girls on his page, don’t add him back.

• Reading and commenting on blogs is a serious sign of affection. It proves the person cares about your inner thoughts. Don’t ignore these.

• Never under any circumstance devote your entire MySpace to random girlfriend/boyfriends. “Michael is the reason I get up in the morning — this week.”

• Having 500 friends and 20 comments is a mental sign for everyone to not like you. Add people you know. Be as popular as you are — or aren’t.

• Never respond to a private message with a public comment. That’s rude.

• Mirror pictures are ideal. Any picture taken by oneself deserves credit. It’s an art form. Comment on these with something more than “I think you’re hot.”

• Comments consisting of less than eight words are a waste of time.

• No one important will read your personal 100-question survey.

Obviously, these are just the tip of the iceberg. But, if you’re new, it’s worth jumping in (although i know plenty of people who spend way too much time there). If you’re an old hat, i just hope you don’t have an all black page with pink fonts. Ugh!

Some Insults, Back When Insults Had Class

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“He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.” Winston Churchill

“I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.” Clarence Darrow

“He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.” William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?” Ernest Hemingway (in reply to William Faulkner)

“Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I’ll waste no time reading it.” Moses Hadas

“He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.”
Abraham Lincoln

“A modest little person, with much to be modest about.” Winston Churchill

“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.” Groucho Marx

“I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.” Mark Twain

“He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.” Oscar Wilde

“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play, bring a friend…if you have one.” George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill

“Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second…if there is one.” Winston Churchill, in reply.