If you’re a Firefox user, you have no doubt noticed and enjoyed the feature that allows you to search your favorite sites (Google, Amazon, etc.) directly from the browser itself, saving you the extra step of first going to the site you want to search.
Now you can add the Atlasphere to your Firefox search bar! Any search you conduct using this feature will return the relevant results (utilizing a search by “All Fields”) from the Atlasphere’s member directory.
The search feature will only work, of course, if you are an Atlasphere member. Atlasphere profiles are never accessible to non-members.
If you encounter problems or have questions, feel free to contact us for help.
Category: Site Announcements
The Atlasphere in Reader's Digest
Members have written to tell us that the Atlasphere is mentioned on page 23 of the current issue of Reader’s Digest, where it’s listed as a resource “for single fans of Ayn Rand.” Woo-hoo! 🙂
FrontPage Mag: Copyright? What's That?
I’ve always thought highly of FrontPage Magazine, or at least the few articles I’ve read there personally — but now I wonder how much of it was even content that they created, instead of stealing it from another site without permission.
Today they reproduced the full text of our January 2004 interview with Sabine Herold, with (a) no request for permission, (b) no acknowledgement of the original publication or copyright holder, and (c) no link back to our web site. In other words, it was a brazen violation of our copyright to the material.
And they featured it on the main page of their site, as original content.
I’ve written their editorial staff to ask that the oversight be remedied. Problem is, it’s the kind of thing which should never happen in the first place at a professional magazine. Even most amateur bloggers show better courtesy than this. What were they thinking?
UPDATE: In response to my request, they’ve promptly shortened the article and provided a link to the full article on our site.
No reply yet from them on whether reprinting copyrighted articles without permission is standard practice or some kind of anomaly at their publication. …I guess it must be their standard practice. Lovely.
The Atlasphere in Time Magazine
Earlier today I noted that the Atlasphere has been getting an unusual number of new signups, over the past few days. And these people are finding us by typing the name of our site into various search engines — meaning, they’d heard about our site from somewhere else. Somewhere … big.
Now we know where: Time magazine has included the Atlasphere in its June 13th roundup of the latest trends in online dating:
?ATLAS HUGGED Need to narrow the choices? E-daters this summer are flocking to a growing number of super-specialized singles sites. Bikers, smokers, Democrats, NASCAR devotees and people with sexually transmitted diseases can surf sites of their own. Even randy Ayn Rand aficionados can gather at TheAtlasphere.com to flirt over Atlas Shrugged.
Leave it to Time magazine to lump Ayn Rand’s novels together with sexually transmitted diseases…
Thanks to Atlasphere member Jonathan Rick for giving us the heads-up!
The Atlasphere Tops 3,000 Dating Profiles
A quick update on the growth of the Atlasphere:
- As of today, we have over 3,000 dating profiles in our database
- We are fast approaching 7,000 directory profiles as well
- About 70% of our new members are creating dating profiles
In the past few days, we’ve been getting more than 30 new signups each day. Many of these new members are finding us through a search engine query for the phrase “atlasphere” — which means they knew about our site beforehand.
This is unusual, and suggests there is a huge word-of-mouth factor kicking in, or we were mentioned in a mainstream media outlet, or…?
If you have any idea what’s going on, we’d love to know!
Carnival of The Atlasphere
CALLING ALL BLOGGERS!
This is your chance to make your blog known to a larger audience of likeminded thinkers.
The Ayn Rand Meta-Blog will be posting a Carnival of the Atlasphere, modeled after the popular Carnival of the Capitalists.
Atlasphere member?s blogs will be listed along with a general description of the purpose of the blog and postings of interest to Atlasphere members. I want to highlight what Atlasphere bloggers are doing and thinking ? your ideas.
The Carnival will be published here, on the Ayn Rand Meta-Blog and for each blog listed, the blogger?s network profile will be linked.
I?m currently scouring the Atlasphere bloglisting for blogs to highlight in the upcoming Carnival but the list is long, so if you don?t want me to miss your blog and can?t wait to reach out to a larger audience, please drop me a line, tell me about your blog and your favorite postings.
For more information and to tell me about your blog please email:
carnival@theatlasphere.com
Cheers and Happy Blogging
$
The Atlasphere in the Winston-Salem Journal
Today the Winston-Salem Journal has reprinted a Columbia News Service article that prominently features the Atlasphere as an example of a successful niche dating service: “Online birds of a feather are flocking to niche dating sites.”
Columns Notification Tops 1,000 Members
Today the Atlasphere’s columns notification feature topped 1,000 members. This is the number of members who have asked to be notified by e-mail each time a new column is published.
Congratulations to Atlasphere Editor Jennifer Iannolo and her predecessor, Andrew Schwartz, on their fine work with the Atlasphere columns!
If you are a member of the Atlasphere and would like to receive columns notifications, you can turn this feature on by going to your member preferences page.
If you are not an Atlasphere member, you can sign up for columns notification by entering your e-mail address in the notification box at the bottom of any column.
New Category: Ayn Rand Centennial
We’ve been receiving so many items related to Ayn Rand’s 100th birthday that we’re now creating a new category called “Ayn Rand Centennial,” in which we’ll file all these items together in one location.
Wanted: PHP/MySQL Programmer
Interested in doing PHP/MySQL programming for the Atlasphere? We have several new projects we need help with. This is a paid, part-time position. If you’re interested, please contact support, tell us about your background in programming, and include links to online samples of your work.