Catching up fast now, almost there!
TRAVEL
31 Stunning Pictures of American National Parks.
The 100 ft Waterfall Inside the Grand Canyon. Simply Wow! By Twisted Sifter
World’s 25 most spectacular train stations. By Francesco Mugnai.
15 Incredible Spits on Earth. By The World Geography. Wow, I had no idea that some of these places existed!
The Intercontinental Shimao will be quite a site when it is done. Or reason #2,345 that the Chinese are out of control!
This is France. By Twisted Sifter (one of my favorite sites, in case you didn’t notice).
Roll Cloud Over Calgary. Yep, Twisted Sifter again! I was just there, I missed this…looks freaky!
MILES/POINTS
The Wandering Aramean expanded on the New York Times article “So, what exacty is it like to be a travel blogger today?“. Great questions and feedback in general, imho.
ON MY MIND
It appears the site issues with posts having full size pictures are fine now…But I can no longer embed the video code as I used to do, therefore showing the links to youtube or vimeo. Any techie has any feedback on this?
ODDZ & ENDZ
“For Men, a Gluteus More Maximum“. WTF! Butt plastic surgery. Then again this dude spent $200k on a car once! By the New York Times.
The Japanese are coming, Pear Harbor 2. Wow!
This is a storm collar. Learn more about the most unusual weather events. By memolition
BLOG BUZZ
Milevalue continues to pimp the hell out of the inferior US Airways Mastercard. Shameful!!!
Delta Points blogged about the new IHG Rewards cards, wow! And he wants to get to my good side by featuring the 80k non affiliate Priority Club card (good job by the way, I almost spilled my coffee when I first read that!). It would really go a long way if DP held back from slipping in the two Starwood affiliate links at the end of the post (especially with SPG increasing the bonus soon to 30k!) Isn’t that special?
I am so sick of reading about the Southwest credit cards and the “amazing” Companion Pass. Now I must prepare to get sick of reading about the Starwood cards and the “amazing” transfer ratio to airlines, the glorious “Cash and Points” feature, the kickbutt mini ipad you can burn your points for (cough)!
While I was gone I “missed” the excitement regarding the now infamous Home Improvement card. It appears a newbie blogger PointstoParadise opened the floodgates wanting to give back to the community (noble cause). And then Million Mile Secrets jumped on it and published the whole “trick” by one of his patented “even a caveman can do this” posts. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was a race to the bottom! I also knew people would get nailed in the behind by having too many of these gift card on their hands. Well, pretty much this is how it played out! It is not the first time MMS did this and I am sure it will happen again. I come from the old FlyerTalk school of keeping things in tight circles so we can ourselves benefit. MMS blog’s mission is to help his readers by publishing secrets so they can do it too. Completely different philosophies! His readers are very loyal to him. I think many in the process got hurt. I do not have sympathy at all for the people who got caught with thousands of dollars tied up in these gift cards; they knew what they were dealing with. I feel for the newbie reading MMS who did not have time to unload them as planned. This debate is eternal in this community. In earlier times, people who published the deal in easy terms and/or called the airline/vendor got really scolded; now, with the hobby reaching more mainstream following, they just go out there and start their own blog (with the speed of these “tricks” shutting down going up and up and…up!). Look for the next similar episode to happen…soon. TBB does NOT reveal this type of deals; just not what I do here. And, as some know, I do keep my lips sealed;-) And reading the comments on the three (!!!) separate posts on the Home Improvement card are quite entertaining:-)
Is it just me or is One Mile at a Time writing more and more about credit cards? He even started a series on “hotel credit cards are hot right now”. Really?
Not done with Million Mile Secrets yet! The interview with this guy at canipayless dot com was fine, other than this guy’s product which ONLY recommends affiliated credit cards! I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.
I am so sick and tired of the crap I see every day (unless I am on vacation) that…I am mad as hell…so there!
So we have nine new bloggers for Boarding Area! I thought BA was not looking for new bloggers. It’s getting so crowded in there! Expect to see bloody battles to distinguish affiliate credit card links, especially Chase:-)
So Ben is giving up on elite status. Why do it when you can pop up another credit card series and buy your way up front? 🙂 Oh, and beaubo always made sense to me and yes, it does not just appear silly…it is! #ruleshavechanged
Delta Points made a post to tell us he gave away 15k Delta MQMs and push two more affiliate credit card links while he goes back tinkering with his site. How about tinkering/improving the content instead? #brilliantthought
Only The Points Guy can answer a simple question “How can earn miles from buying my sister’s ticket on a Delta flight” with 27 credit card links, yikes!
I can’t wait for everyone to start pushing the 30k AMEX SPG. Best deal in the world!!!!!!!!…. click here -> now!!!!!!!!
But wait!!! It gets better!!! Order now and you can two for the price of one!!! That’s right two!!!! And if you are one of the first one hundred in the next 15 minutes you’ll an extra 100,000 miles bonus!!! What on bloggersphere are you waiting for? Do it now!
Who, what, where? Any Vanilla Reload cards that come as a bonus too? 🙂
two for the price of one. That’s part two when MMS talks about the “fake” ebay business you’ve always been thinking about.
Who’s on first?
Jeff is always first:-)
The Cologne Cathedral is without question one of the most amazing structures I’ve ever seen! Great train station photo, but it really doesn’t do it justice. Fortunately I happen to have one 😛
http://first2board.com/foodwineandmiles/2012/08/05/my-top-5-worldwide-sights-to-see/
Great shot indeed! I must move up Petra one of these days…been a target. But wife wants Maui next:-)
If you like waterfalls, our 630 foot high Multnomah Falls is another reason to come to PDX:
http://www.waterfallsnorthwest.com/nws/image_new.php?num=4051
Welcome home!
Wow, that looks nice!
Ah this is what TBB used to be for the first few months since its inception. So the rumors of you becoming an MMS employee are false after all. For some reason I thought the other couple of MMS employees were enough to control what you write. Good to see the Buzz buzzing 🙂
But more importantly welcome back. 3-4 writeups to catch up now.
When it rains, it pours 😀 WOW !!
Independence is my most important asset:-) I call it as I see it.
I am getting there, slowly getting out of being buried mode and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel…barely but getting a tiny bit bigger each hour that goes by.
So glad you are back Buzz! Hold MMS accountable for his bullshit!
I speak my mind. He does too. We are both stubborn:-)
Amex SPG 30K points is live. You will be awarded no points for guessing how many posts will fill up the internet tomorrow.
Here is how the shadiness will start “DIsclosure: My dog and I do NOT get a referral for the SPG. I will update this post when we do get referral links (that is how kind of a person I am). We are always grateful for those who use our links!!!!!”
Cue the benefits of the extra 5K points.
-Mad-Hateful-Jealous of the Einsteins 🙂
I should do a contest “In your opinion, which is the most ridiculous post pushing the Amex SPG card and why?”. Heck, I will do exactly that and give up two of my AA club passes…Hey, that’s all I can afford:-)
Great idea (honestly). That will get a lot of comments going. 🙂
You comment and you shall receive;-)
http://travelbloggerbuzz.com/giveaway-contest-time-win-2-aa-admirals-club-lounge-passes/
My hope is to contribute to have less BS thrown at our eye sockets lol.
I liked this comment on MMS
‘Thanks for “sharing” D. All the noobs getting caught with thousands they can’t float – and they thank you for it. Pathetic.’
Yes, that was good. Hope the dude thinks a bit harder how he handles these. He probably thinks he helped many but the hurt he inflicted on some of his readers must be weighed more. Doubt he will change though…
and on and on we go…till the next deal!
It is absolutely stupid and naive to think that there are a lot of real people posting thank you messages over at user-card secrets. It is a controlled blog with the most active censorship practices for a good reason. The charades won’t stop as they are in it for a short term to squeeze out as much as possible. Even they know the way they are approaching their business is not sustainable.
There is a very discernible pattern of those +ve posts and using random monikers is not really helping mask the tomfoolery 😉
Not sure I agree but I respect your opinion:-)
I agree on the “squeeze out as much as possible”. We are not all the same!
Yes let us agree to disagree 🙂 Please don’t tell me you are the 22 year old management consultant with perfect credit history who emailed used car secrets on which credit card to get 😛
I am not:-)
I’ve put a TBB link onto Head for Points, FYI. Should have done it a while back, but now done. You’d be surprised how much I have benefited from reading this – even the new format for Head for Points, which I launched in February, was triggered by a link of yours to Travel Summary, where I first saw that template in action.
R,
you only have 20k SPG CC, shame… 😉
Raffles: Thank you very much, I am honored! I still think of myself as an outsider in this blogging thing. I just wished I had time to learn more about WordPress and those elusive darn affiliate links:-)
Only £1k ($1500) spend needed though!