61revised.com

Wanna a sneak peak at the new 61 revised?  But please leave your comments here.

Highway 61 (revised) has received a cease and desist order from MODOT. As of 1:30pm on April 1st, 2008, Highway 61 has only 2 days (or less than 48 hours) left to vacate the title our existing domain and title. According to the court order our intellectual property unduly interferes with the copyrights of the already existing domain of TheNewI64.org , which is MODOT’s website for the construction along that interstate highway. For those who do not know, US Highway 61 continues along part of Interstate 64 in parts of St. Charles and St. Louis Counties. We apologize for the confusion we may have caused.

We had already begun the process of transferring our host, address, and title, but things are moving really fast. You might want to save your favorite posts for yourself, because your bookmarks will no longer work. This couldn’t come at a worse time, since everyone here is crammed working on finals as well.

Anyone interested enough to continue reading from this online magazine can do so by reading 61 Revised at http://www.61revised.com . Thank you for your understanding, we promise to keep writing if you keep reading.

More coming soon.

Highway 61 stands in solidarity with our fellow Midwest bloggers.  At first we were flattered to be be kept in the good company of so many other talented writers on BlogNetNews, but after repeated attempts of our own to contact the website administrator, we understand the frustration of our comrads.  When it comes to making money by borrowing the work of others without their permission (or reimbursement), “this just ain’t right“.

So what exactly went wrong?  Rebecca has one of the best explanations I’ve read:

“The site is using bloggers to make advertising revenue for itself. The site is taking the content of blogs without their authors’ consent, permission, or even awareness. The site is refusing to acknowledge the many requests by bloggers to have their blogs removed from the site. The site is using people’s registered trademarks against their will. The site is acting under the pretense that it creates community, when all it actually does is use bloggers in order to make a buck for itself. Heads up, Mastio and crew: angry bloggers united make a formidable foe indeed.”

Kids, there’s nothing more cool than being acknowledged by someone you like, but If someone uses your blog in a way or in place that makes you feel uncomfortable, “That’s NO GOOD.” It’s your body (of work), no one has the right to use it unless you want them to.  So what do you do?  First you say “NO!”, then you get out of there.

As a blogger I’ve learned a thing or two about…something writing related.  You see, I’m not a creative writer so much as an ironic one.  And that’s why I’m going to cut and paste this flier, which is making the rounds, from our new friend Ryan Miller who wants to help you help yourself:

I’m teaching a 7-week course for fiction and creative non-fiction writers (sorry, poets)…  The idea is to provide a supportive and productive environment for writers to share their work and connect with others who are engaged in/struggling with the creative process. I hope to have more laughing than crying (though crying isn’t all bad) and to rouse some energy and motivation within the St. Louis writing community (Could such a thing exist?).

Time: Wednesdays, 7:30 to 9:30
Dates: April 9th to May 21st
Fee: $40 (no books to purchase—readings will be sent by email)
Location: The Gathering United Methodist Church* at 2105 McCausland Avenue in Maplewood

Ryan wants to promise us the class is strictly non-denominational, so we’re pretty sure that makes it Lent-friendly in this town.  If you’re looking to join a group of around 10 other local writers looking to hone their craft, this could be your kind of gig. And if you’re looking for a little more creativity (besides going meta), could you tell me when you find anything?

Every week we read over 100 local bloggers and check up on local sites so we can keep up on the down low, and then we share the best posts with a recurring feature we can Links with Your Coffee.  From the very start these coffee links have been part of our civic duty; We consider this an important part of building our community online, and it also helps us cover stories for our audience that is outside the niche of what we like to write about.

But this week we’d like to invite our readers to participate in an experiment, a sort of public beta testing of a feature we’re hoping to add as it’s own page on the new site.  This feature takes some time to put together, so we’ve experimented with auto-blog posting which turned out to be a little robotic of a read.  We also have trouble adding friends of ours to the blogroll, since every time we add another blog it detracts from the attention we think every member of our blogroll deserves; so when Jeff Kopp asked us to add TiRC to the roll, even we thought it was already in the mix. 

We think this might be a good compromise, in which we can use Google Reader to share some of the stories and news we think our readers would want to know about as we read them everyday.  And we can use this as a sort of social bookmarking if anyone wants to suggest a story to share with other readers (if you’re using google reader yourself that is).  With the stories in one frame of the page, we can use the other gutter to display an updated blogroll divided into relevant categories. 

You can think of it sort of as Social Blogrolling, and we’d love to hear your thoughts about using this feature.  We asked Archy about adding this to the new site, and they said it was alright.

I’m sure that many a loyal reader sees a null Highway 61 RSS and thinks, “Where’s Gabe?” 

Well, I’m over here: www.fakeradioontheinternet.com

Hop over and enjoy some podcasts. We’re also listed in iTunes.

I’ll keep posting here, but only until 2007 ends. After that, I’ll be moving to Louisville to start a new job as a Public Radio reporter.

Fear not, loyal readers. I, Gabe, am still alive and well. I just haven’t posted in a while. I’ve been working hard the past couple of weeks, but I will return with more posts and a podcast soon.  

As a college graduate, I have a job. I work at PubDef.

If you read the site, you’ll have noticed a mini-feud with KSDK. I don’t want to mix business and pleasure by posting shop talk here, but I think this opens the door to a pretty interesting topic. Click the link in this paragraph to read more.