A BC blogger and writer, Derek Miller, died on May 3, 2011 after writing a blog post, to be published after his death. The 41 year old writer’s final request to his family and friends was to publish a blog post titled : "The Last Post" in his blog penmachine.com.

His wife Airdrie has started a Derek Miller Memorial Fund. The donations collecteed in the fund will go to a trust fund for the kids’ education and world travel.

Update – I am going throught the painful account of waiting the death in both Derek’s and his wife’s Airdrie’s blogs. It seems more like taking a slow poison and talk about every little feelings of death creeping in.

RIP Derek!

Cooks Source Magazine, a free, advertising-supported publication has found a new ‘recipe’ of increasing ‘Facebook friends’ from 110 to thousands overnight! Jut to give the clue on how it is increasing – there were 4,400 likes on its Facebook page at the time I stared writing this post and at the time I finished it, there were 4,533 likes. That was 133 more likes in 20 minutes!

But, the ‘friends’ are there only to express their dissatisfaction over the copyright infringement and rude response to blogger, Monica Gaudio, whose article they published without the authors consent and knowledge.

Monica asked for an apology and a $130 donation to the Columbia School of Journalism for the copyright infringement. Judith Griggs, the magazine’s editor and principal operator’s response to Monica reads like:

But honestly, Monica, the web is considered "public domain" and you should be happy we just didn’t "lift" your whole article and put someone else’s name on it!

He says, that was based on his ’3 decades’ in the publishing business. What follows is even more ridicules:

If you took offence and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally. Now it will work well for your portfolio. For that reason, I have a bit of a difficult time with your requests for monetary gain, albeit for such a fine (and very wealthy!) institution. We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me! I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces, and have many who write for me… ALWAYS for free!

When the news spread like wildfire, the magazine’s Facebook page became flooded with new ‘friends’. Overwhelmed by the response, Griggs posted a not-so-apologetic apology in the Cooks Source page in Facebook. The apology however doesn’t even mention the plagiarism allegations:

Well, here I am with egg on my face! I did apologise to Monica via email, but aparently it wasnt enough for her" and then observes "You did find a way to get your ‘pound of flesh…’ we used to have 110 ‘friends,’ we now have 1,870… wow!

The ‘friends’ didn’t like it and every major newspapers have written headlines and a Wikipedia page is also created for the controversy.

Taking internet and bloggers lightly has become more like "kicking hornet’s nest" for Cooks Source.