Daniel Swartz

MerchantCircle has hit a major milestone, crossing the 500,000+ member mark and 5,000+ of those are paying members.  That’s quite an accomplishment, I have to say. Read more about this news:

• http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/080619/lath031.html?.v=101
• http://gesterling.wordpress.com/2008/06/19/merchantcircle-now-claims-500k-members/

Greg Sterling says that MerchantCircle is now “…in the “big leagues” in terms of the small business market.”

Please show this to any of your friends or family who believe what they hear on Fox News or what they read on shady blogs and websites:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/fightthesmearshome/

Citysearch formally announced yesterday its partnership and investment with MerchantCircle, which is very exciting for us. I thought I’d share some of the love that’s been posted around the web about this alliance. Enjoy!

• New York Times
• CNN Money.com
• ClickZ
• The Kelsey Group
• Fox Business
• Greg Sterling
• Online Media Daily
• 901am New Media News
• VentureBeat
• MerchantCircle

I saw this today on Andrew Sullivan’s blog at the Atlantic Magazine’s website. I figure it’s very appropriate for today, considering we have a president who SAYS he upholds the will of the Constitution and the country’s founding fathers. A quote like this shows Bush to be very hollow in his beliefs…

The day will come when Republicans realize that blindly following party doctrine was more important than preserving the true law of the land.

‘Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner] … I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause… for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country,’ - George Washington

Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog - music: Should music be used for crowd control?

A very interesting take on the trend of authorities playing classical music to scare away gangs and other undesirable gatherings in public locations.

Sexy snaps from the Mahler Häuschen!

I found this posting on Alex Ross’s blog “The Rest Is Noise” rather amusing. I myself was at Mahler’s second composing hut this summer. The first hut was at Lake Atter in Steinbach, Austria, as mentioned in his blog. The second was at Lake Woerth, just above his lake side home in Maiernigg, and the third was in Toblach, Austrian Tyrol (now Dobbiacho, Italy).

Probably the most significant of these huts is the one at Maiernigg where he worked on his symphonies four through eight, most of the Kindertotenlieder, Des Knaben Wunderhorn and much more. It is also where his daughter died, causing him to move to another location to spend his summers.

The quote I found most amusing in Ross’s blog is:

“If the view from inside the hut is anything like what Mahler experienced during his summers in Steinbach — and, in truth, there is so far no evidence that it is — scholars may have to reconsider their conception of the sources of Mahler’s creative inspiration.”

If you already don’t know about this blog, it’s one of my favorite, and it is frequently updated.

A good friend of mine, Edwin Outwater - conductor, pianist, surfer - has updated his website with a cool new design. I had designed his original website about 8 years ago (pre-blog), and after a tearful farewell to that design, no doubt, Edwin has updated the look and feel of the site by installing a blog where he writes about events in his life such as concerts, travels, social events and general musings.

In addition to the blog, he has stuff such as his conducting schedule, media downloads, press articles and more. He has some great articles there, and I recommend that you check it out. His most recent article talks about his impending meeting with the band Cheap Trick. How cool is that?

Check the site out now at www.edwinoutwater.com.

The company I work for, MerchantCircle.com, has just been written up in BusinessWeek.com. This is great visibility for the company and shows that there is growing interest in what we do. The article is a good and honest write up about MerchantCircle. To read the article, go here:

www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/feb2007/sb20070221_557514.htm

Other sites have been commenting on MerchantCircle as well. Here is a sampling:

http://localonliner.com/?p=323

WebPro News

AlpenKammerMusik, the new amateur chamber music festival in Liesing, Austria, has just added a new blog feature over at www.alpenkammermusik.com, where they will talk about chamber music in general in addition to the goings on of their festival and the faculty members that make up the resident ensemble, Camerata Pangaea. It should be an interesting blog, in that there is next to nothing in the blogosphere when it comes to chamber music. It’s about time…

The BBC news website posted an interesting article today about a man who has come forth with letters and photographs from the 1897 siege of Malakand, a garrison in what is now Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province. In a siege against what the article calls the forefathers of today’s Taliban, the garrison’s commander, Ben Tottenham, kept up correspondence with his wife and family. The material also contains photographs of captured Pashtun tribesmen.

You can read more here.

I know, two postings in one day is rarer than lightening striking twice, but I just had to write this one down…

It just came in over the wires that the 3,000th American military death occurred in Iraq during the last week. This means that more Americans have died fighting in Iraq than the number of Americans that died on September 11, 2001. While this includes the 24 missing Americans that have yet to be accounted for from that day, the total tally does not count the deceased American troops in that forgotten conflict, Afghanistan. (more…)

While reading the online edition of the Washington Post this weekend, I came across an article about Gerald Ford titled “Ford’s Vietnam ‘No Point In Being Bitter’”, written by Bob Woodward and Christine Parthemore. In it he reflects (more…)

I saw the movie “An Inconvenient Truth” over the weekend, Al Gore’s cinematic vehicle explaining global warming’s effect on a planet of over 6 billion inhabitants. No matter one’s opinion of the 2000 election, Gore’s expertise on global warming and the environment should not be ignored. His long time role as a tireless and passionate advocate on the subject over a period of several decades may yet show him to be a more effective leader (more…)

For the past four months, I have been working on a MacBook Pro at the company I currently work at. The machine was ordered literally seconds after Steve Jobs uttered the words ‘MacBook Pro’ in his MacWorld keynote speech back in January 2006. And since it arrived in late March of this year, I’ve been working on this fantastic laptop (more…)

Every now and then I like to muck around with CSS and see what it can do. Here are links to pages I drew up a couple of years ago. Sure, it’s not so complicated to do, and it’s based on a concept of Eric Meyer’s, but it was still fun and rather cool, if I might say so. What I would do (more…)