The Making Of How To Use An Escalator In DC

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Several weeks ago, just after this launched, I had an idea for a site of my own. The idea brewed for a few days, and then one night after getting home from work, I spent a few hours coding and $10 to register a domain. I made http://howtouseanescalatorindc.com.

It was a Thursday or a Friday, and any web designer/developer worth his/her salt knows that you launch websites on a Monday or Tuesday, for those are the highest traffic days of the week. The next week came. I was busy, or not in the mood - I forget why exactly. The next week I was on vacation in San Francisco. The next week I was back at work, but similarly busy. But today...around 12 noon I thought. Why not? Why not today? At 1:00 pm I sent out a tweet to a few select DC Twitter friends.

Shortly thereafter it went viral via tweets. That's when @unsuckDCMetro retweeted this.

And then this this happened at 3:00 pm.

And then THIS happened at 3:45 pm.

As of 5:00 pm I've picked up 50 followers on twitter. This blog has seen an increase from 20 unique visitors today to 250+ with 560 pageviews. And http://howtouseanescalatorindc.com has blew through 5000+ uniques with 10,000 pageviews just now. The numbers were 1/2 this just an hour ago.

Hi Mom, I'm famous.

Update: As of 9:10 pm est, http://howtouseanescalatorindc.com has just topped 12,300 unique visitors with 30,000+ page views.

Facetime Adoption

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Marco Arment wrote an interesting post about the adoption of FaceTime by iOS users over time:

We, the long-time iPhone owners, won’t be the first ones to use FaceTime regularly.

But the next generation of iPhone owners will.

FaceTime is the sort of technology that we “old” people will promptly forget that we can do, and then be shocked when we learn that young people are doing it en masse.

WoW Cataclysm Beta Spam Scam

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I periodically skim my Gmail spam folder for false positives. Once every 90 days or so, Google decides to start flagging the wrong type of automated message as spam (Twitter follower emails was the latest one). While doing this, I noticed the following type of email had started showing up recently. It appears spammers are now preying on the desire of WoW players who want to get an invite to the new World of Warcraft closed beta. Looking through my box there were 5 or 6 of them from just the past 24 hours, from multiple sources, each of them different. This particular one looked the most legitimate, despite that Google flagged it as malicious and its origin came from a Yahoo spoofed account. Nice try.

WoW Cataclysm Beta Spam Scam

Craig Ferguson's Many Musical Intro Covers

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I've been a fan of Craig Ferguson for several years, especially after this aired: Part 1, Part 2. I think he is one of the most genuine people on TV.

What I love about him is his utter disregard for making a complete fool of himself every night without shame. Occasionally he will replace his before-the-credits intro to his show with a music-video-cover which usually include costumes. I've been lucky enough to watch a few of these shows, but I stumbled across one of these on Youtube over the weekend and noticed that he's actually done quite a few of these. I felt compelled to make you aware of them all, because they're all great.

They Might Be Giants - "Istanbul"

The Village People - "In The Navy"

Robert Palmer - "Addicted To Love"

Fatboy Slim - "What A Wonderful Night"

Britney Spears - "Oops I Did It Again"

Hanson - "MMMBop"

Michael Franti & Spearhead - "Say Hey (I Love You)"

unknown - 'The Yodel Song'

Jason Mraz - "I'm Yours"

"Fireball"

Duran Duran - "White Lines"

"Look Out There's A Monster Coming"

"Scotland Rite Temple Stomp"

"Melt With You"

"Dr. Who"

What I Carry

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A blog post from Patrick Rhone is soliciting others to submit pictures of what they carry in their pockets on a daily basis. The idea started from Dave Caolo which was prompted by a tweet from Patrick. Patrick responded to Dave's post and solicited others to do so as well. These types of things interest me as well, so here's mine:




Before I got my iPhone I would have my Blackberry (work), iPod Classic, wallet & keys. That was 2008 & prior. Over the years my keychain has shrunk as well. Our most recent move in June allowed me to shed a security fob which was needed at my old apartment. My new apartment key has a fob included in it (that weird circular thing on my keychain - yes, that is both a key & fob).

Merlin Mann speaks to ASAE members

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I had the pleasure of accompanying my wife on a recent business trip to San Francisco where her organization, ASAE, had hired Merlin Mann to speak for one of their events. ZeFrank was to keynote the event, but at the last minute, we found out that he was ill and unable to attend. Merlin graciously stepped up and keynoted in his place doing an excellent job.

I've been a huge fan of Merlin for a long time. He is the reason my first DSLR lens was a 50mm, that I know what Thayers™ Original Witch Hazel is, and my yacht wax of choice is Monocle Pete's Magic Yacht Wax. If none of that makes sense to you, well....you're missing out.

Fortunately, I remembered to bring my Flip Ultra HD and Gorillapod with me to San Francisco. However, I want to apologize for the quality of video/audio as my thought to record this was last minute. The room wasn't very videographer friendly, but I managed to attach them to the back of a chair. It starts off a bit shaky a first but settles down after a few minutes. As several times the view is obstructed by some audience members but it shouldn't interfere too badly with your watching/listening to Merlin.



During the event and afterward I snapped a few pictures with both my iPhone 4 and Canon 40D. I event got a few pictures with Merlin and myself. He really is the nicest man on the internet folks.