Dating a guy in high school can really have its perks — he’s your study buddy, your prom date, and your best friend. You’ve happily walked beside him to class, football games, and finally graduation, but now the summer’s suddenly over and your joyride together is about to hit the skids.
Hi! My name is Michelle, his name is Frank!
If you are in a long distance relationship, then you have come to the right spot!
Home of the longest list of ideas and activities for long distance relationship couples to do from a distance, Loving From A Distance was created by my boyfriend Frank and I to help others in long distance relationships like us. Here you will find advice and tips on how to make your relationship survive the distance, a supportive community of fellow long distancers, inspiring pages including true LDR stories, as well as other resources relevant to those in “geographically challenged” relationships.
Public discussion about American families often assumes the nation is largely made up of married heterosexual couples raising their biological children. Yet less than a quarter of all U.S. households fall into this category. Today’s children may be raised by grandparents, single parents, step-parents, aunts, uncles, or foster parents. Their parents may be married or unmarried. They also may be heterosexual or lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender—LGBT.[1]
Unfortunately, public policy has not kept up with the changing reality of the American family. Indeed, our laws and discourse largely ignore the roughly 2 million children being raised by LGBT parents. They also ignore children in other family configurations, such as those with unmarried heterosexual parents. As a result, most Americans are probably unaware of the many ways in which unequal treatment and social stigma harm the millions of children whose families do not fit into a certain mold.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/10/all_children_matter.html
http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/story/2012-04-16/cable-tv-great-escape-local-talent/54328658/1
Cable networks are spreading their wings in search of new viewers.
In an increasingly crowded climate for original programming, several channels are moving beyond the genres on which they’ve built their successes.
•USA is expected next month to announce its first half-hour comedy series, a companion to the Modern Family reruns it will begin airing in fall 2013.
•Drama-heavy TNT this summer airs its first reality competition, The Great Escape, from the producers of Amazing Race.
•Similarly, A&E is developing a potential family competition series with Transformers producer Michael Bay.
•History is plotting Vikings, its first scripted drama series, from Michael Hirst (The Tudors).
•Hallmark Channel is using two upcoming movies as pilots for its first foray into original weekly drama series.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/talkingtech/story/2012-04-12/hollywood-collective-agency/54233860/1
Forget Variety.Michael Green has put down the bible of showbiz and is actively seeking the next big star among a wave of homegrown YouTube producers and performers attracting millions of viewers online.
Green, who represented stars such as Roseanne Barr and Martin Lawrence at the height of their TV careers, realized there was a new business to be had from the online audience.
“It’s a seismic shift,” says Green, the CEO of The Collective, a company he formed to manage careers and work with Internet creators to produce content.
Other Los Angeles-based firms — Big Frame, Maker Studios and Mighty Fresh lead the pack — are also looking to YouTubers as a major new source of potential income.
Why not? The popularity of some YouTube performers and their “channels” dwarfs many TV shows, and their videos have been seen more than a billion times. Ray William Johnson, Shane Dawson’s ShaneDawsonTV, Dane Boedigheimer’s Annoying Orange, Justine Ezarik’s iJustine and Freddie Wong and Brandon Laatsch’s Freddiew channels are among the biggest.
YouTube itself is on a major expansion kick this year, trying to keep viewers tuned in longer by shifting them from watching single videos to channels.
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/04/16/viddy-shows-no-signs-of-slowing-down-with-6-5m-users-it-is-now-the-2-free-ios-app/
Laser-focus on media, stand-alone social network, celebrity usage, and a fast climb to the top of the iOS app store: this is a story that we’ve heard somewhere before. This time, the story involves video and not photography as the content of choice.
Viddy, an app that we first described as the “Instagram of video” way back in April of last year has been skyrocketing in terms of downloads and usage since it became an Open Graph partner with Facebook. The prominent placement of social 15-second videos has helped catapult the little-app-that-could into the #2 spot of the iOS app store, ahead of Instagram.
The company announced today that its app now has 6.5M users, which means that Viddy has increased its userbase by 2.5 million in one week.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/silicon_alley_now_gold_st_sMjjeGAE6BJEBB7UI52WZP
New York City’s young tech stars are bracing for nasty weather — it’s starting to rain cash.
Thanks to the absurdly high $1 billion Facebook paid for the social and mobile-app maker Instagram — a company with no revenue and just 13 employees — Gotham’s successful tech firms in the mobile space are bracing for a deluge of big-money buyout offers.
“Fasten your seat belts, the social-mobile land grab of 2012 has officially begun,” said Lou Kerner, an expert on private-company valuations.
Last week, the CEO of one the city’s standout tech firms, David Karp of Tumblr, a blogging 2.0 platform, attended a meeting hosted by Evercore Partners as part of its Disruption Speaker Series, where some of the city’s top startup players discussed valuations.
Tumblr’s backers at Union Square Ventures said the company, which raised $85 million last September, has been heavily courted for an acquisition but has resisted selling out, a source with knowledge of the talks said.
All around New York, bankers and venture capitalists were flipping through their portfolios last week and wondering what Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s billion-dollar check meant for local startups they advise.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118052619
As NBCU plans to cover its first Olympics as a Comcast company, the network is aiming to use a number of platforms to wind up on the winner’s platform. It’s a gameplan that includes streaming video to augment broadcast and cable coverage, along with establishing an identity for the rebranded NBC Sports Network and integration of other Comcast cable outlets — all to ensure that its $4 billion investment in the Games through 2020 pays off.
Certainly, there won’t be a shortage of coverage at the London Games, which run July 27 through Aug. 12. NBCU provided 3,600 total hours of programming from Beijing in 2008, and the network plans to exceed that in London. Moreover, NBCU is saying publicly that it already has sold as much as $900 million in advertising — much of that to Olympic partners that need to buy media to activate their significant investments in the Games.
According to Larry Woodard, head of Graham Stanley Advertising, the network needs to book a bit more than $200 million to break even on what it paid for the rights.
But there’s more to these Games than merely turning a profit.
“The Olympics provides a tremendous opportunity to build awareness for the NBC fall lineup,” says John Miller, of NBC Sports Group. “We plan to take full advantage of that opportunity.”
By most measures, NBCU’s coverage of the 2008 Games won a gold medal for ratings. Over 16 nights, 211 million Americans watched at least some of the Beijing Games, beating the previous record of 209 million set during the Atlanta Games in 1996. And the 2010 Winter Games from Vancouver averaged 24.4 million viewers in primetime, up considerably from the 2006 event in Italy (20.2 million).
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/04/16/life-sharing-app-maker-path-raises-40-million-at-250-million-valuation/?awesm=tnw.to_1E3LE&utm_campaign=social%20media&utm_medium=Spreadus&utm_source=Facebook&utm_content=Life-sharing%20app%20maker%20Path%20raises%20$40%20million%20at%20$250%20million%20valuation
Path, the startup behind the eponymous app that lets users share photos, videos, their whereabouts and whatnot with people they’re close with, is poised to announce a significant funding round tomorrow, reports AllThingsD’s Liz Gannes.
Silicon Valley VC firm Redpoint Ventures is reportedly leading a $40 million financing round that will reportedly value Path at $250 million. Launched in November 2010, Path claims to have amassed over 2 million users to date.
Path doesn’t charge users for its ‘Smart Journal’ apps (currently available for iOS and Android only), which let people share the things that happen in their lives with (only) their loved ones through photos, music, videos, text, places and more.
The startup has raised over $11m to date, according to CrunchBase, from a huge list of angel investors and firms like Index Ventures, First Round Capital, Founders Fund, SV Angel, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Digital Garage and CrunchFund.
Ever since OMGPOP launched Draw Something, there has been a brand new group of artists showing off their touch-screen authored doodles. I’ve seen some seriously amazing art come out of Draw Something, but it’s not really set up for sharing what you’ve draw as of yet.
When I saw the site Doodle.ly, I immediately knew that this would be a welcome home to those who can’t get enough of sketching fun little pieces of artwork using their iPad. While the site has an iPad app for drawing, it’s not required.
The site, which describes itself as “a social sketchpad for self-expression, creativity and inspiration” lets you create and share your wonderful pieces of art on Twitter and Facebook, as well as on the Doodle.ly site. The cool part about Draw Something is that you can run into some amazing artists randomly, so this site is set up just for that.
http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/04/15/if-youre-a-fan-of-draw-something-then-youll-love-the-social-network-doodle-ly/?awesm=tnw.to_1E36H&utm_campaign=social%20media&utm_medium=Spreadus&utm_source=Facebook&utm_content=If%20you%27re%20a%20fan%20of%20Draw%20Something%20then%20you%27ll%20love%20the%20social%20network%20Doodle.ly