Today I got a call from my sister about our other sister. When the phone rings from one family member to another, and it’s not birthday season, it’s always bad news. Our other sister, because that’s how we always called her, was dead. She was the adopted daughter of our father’s third marriage, and she was a very unhappy, angry person who the rest of us had a hard time liking, or even caring about. At various times I’ve felt guilty about my attitude toward her, not wishing ill of someone who had such a hard time with life. But honestly, in the end she could be downright mean and nasty. Eventually I grew hardened and suspicious, resentful of her attempts to brush aside years of similar behavior with others of her siblings. I feel bad about her sad life, but that’s about all I can muster. As this played out this afternoon, so did a quarrel between two friends on the network. The trigger, but not the root, of this was the demise of the Gillmor Gang some weeks ago. In the aftermath of that event, the realtime world of FriendFeed and to some extent Twitter seemed caught in an ugly spiral of what Mike Arrington calls mob behavior. I share Mike’s alarm at this wave of off-the-cuff vitriol, even as I continue to be at least partially blamed for the drama that swirled around our show. I’ve tried to stay out of the controversy, other than to speak my mind during the attempt at talking through the incident in a restarted show. I even took my show’s archives down as a way of indicating how strongly I felt about the tone with which many people spoke about members of the cast and myself. I’ve enjoyed producing the show through its many incarnations and participants, and have felt for the weeks since then that something would have to change before we could return to our sessions. Today’s continued vitriol over Mike’s attempts to frame the seriousness of the issue don’t bode well. I’m 60 years old and have always felt proud of what I’ve tried to do in my career as a journalist, filmmaker, producer, and whatever my role in the Gang could be called. I take my work seriously, and have always tried to take others’ seriously as well. Sometimes I am guilty of hyperbole and failed attempts → Read More
Earlier last week, New York Times reporter David Rohde escaped from a Taliban prison. He had been a Taliban hostage for the last seven months, but the general public had absolutely no clue. In a joint effort by The New York Times and Wikipedia, the story was kept quiet until his daring escape.
In November 2008, Rohde was captured and held hostage by the Taliban, along with a local reporter, Tahir Ludin, and their driver, Asadullah Mangal. But until he managed to escape, most of the general public had absolutely no clue. To prevent Rohde’s value in the eyes of his captors from rising, the New York Times kept more than 35 major news organizations from reporting on the story. They believed that the publicity from reporting his capture would inflate the value of Rohde’s life, increasing the difficulty of negotiating for Rohde’s release. Keeping 35 news organizations quiet was actually not the hard part – but staving off Wikipedia users from publishing the news? That was a bit trickier. → Read More
Digitalsmiths, the video distribution and analysis platform that powers TheWB.com, TMZ, and a number of other popular sites, is rolling out a new product suite today dubbed VideoSense 2.0. The new suite includes a number of features that will make it more appealing to content owners looking to distribute video across the web, but the most interesting new feature for consumers will be the platform’s revamped video search, which can best be described as a “Google for video”.
Granted, there already is a Google video search, but this goes well beyond that, allowing users to search for any actor, scene, or piece of dialog they’d like across shows in the Digitalsmiths library. Digitalsmiths has spent years building the technology to perform speech recognition and visually match actors’ faces and environmental elements (it can tell if a scene is taking at a beach or on a mountainside), and it’s quite impressive. → Read More
I’m not convinced that this isn’t a joke. Apparently there is a feature film called “Reverie,” shot entirely on the Nikon D90, a bit of coincidence considering there was another DSLR-shot film by that name that came out not long ago (and was not good). The cinematographer of the film says of the D90:
The D90 far surpasses the full frame Canon EOS 5D Mark II, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH1, and even Red’s Scarlet.
A controversial, nay, inflammatory statement. I’m not sure I’m willing to take it seriously, considering the man is also the producer and sound editor for the film (his second). → Read More
Making music is fun. Winning stuff by making music is even more fun! In one month we received more than 50 entries for the CrunchGear Remix Contest. 50 remixes – some better than others – is more than we ever expected. Let’s see which artists were the best and what prize they will receive! → Read More
Have you ever gotten excited about a new title that just came out from a game shop that you admire and love, only to play through the game and think: that’s it?! I got all worked up for THIS?! Well, that just happened to me. It took me all of 3 hours to beat Mass Effect Galaxy. No, I didn’t cheat. No, I didn’t take shortcuts (I actually spent longer than I should have on some parts). And, no, I didn’t skip any cut scenes (tempting as it was). If that isn’t enough reason to refrain from buying EA and Bioware‘s most recent release, keep reading. Otherwise, save yourself the $2.99 and spend it on a Frosty or something. → Read More
Quite a polemic we’re dealing with, friends. It seems that, suddenly, the PS3 is no longer able to play Hulu content. I just tried to play the Power Rangers movie on my brother’s PS3, and up pops the message: “Unfortunately, this video is not available on your platform. We apologize for any inconvenience.” → Read More
Holy smokes! I interrupt your Sunday afternoon to bring you this shocking news: Billy Mays is dead! Yes, the guy from the OxiClean commercial and that show on the Discovery Channel was found dead in his Florida home today. I am completely shocked and terribly bummed out. That guy was tremendous. → Read More
The web is still inundated with Michael Jackson news, but just in case you haven’t had your fill, I highly recommend the site Billie Tweets. The concept is simple: Take Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and pull in tweets that sync words to the music.
The site was made by 9Astronauts, the development house that also made the Blame Drew’s Cancer site a few weeks back. Another solid creation by them. → Read More
Twitter works great in Brazil. So great that it gets you fired! Former Real Madrid manager Vanderlei Luxemburgo was sacked by Palmeiras, in São Paulo, Brazil, over what he wrote on Twitter two days ago. Is this the first time a professional sports coach/manager has been sacked because of what he has written on Twitter? I couldn’t find any other examples, but I could well be wrong here. → Read More
While it’s not being talked about too much, the $99 iPhone 3G is a very interesting play by Apple. It takes what was previously a just out-of-reach device for many, and puts it at a magical price-point. Sure, it still won’t sell everyone, like the people who only care about getting the phone that their carrier is offering for free, or those looking for the cheapest possible monthly plans. But just look at the iPhone compared to the other $99 phones out there.
That’s what we did. And originally we set out to compare the various specs. But looking them over, it’s really a joke. And you can basically see all you need to see simply by looking at the devices being offering by the major carriers in the U.S. at this price point. → Read More
More proof (see: the Perfect Pushup and the Snuggie.) that having a quirky, on-all-the-time commercial is a step in the right direction toward Big Success. MagicJack is selling something at the rate of 9,000 to 10,000 units per day, making its parent company, YMax Communications, some $100 million this year alone. But, in this age of Skype, who’s buying this thing? → Read More
It surely didn’t escape anyone’s attention Twitter is on track to becoming a mass phenomenon globally. The service is also growing nicely in Japan where it has been embraced by the geek community in particular (Japanese is the only alternative language Twitter is available in until today).
And today a small group of those Japanese geeks, members of the so-called Koress Project, have announced the development of the Akiduki Pulse box, a device that automatically posts your heart rate to Twitter [JP]. → Read More
Free fun, thy name is Lemonade Tycoon. I downloaded EA Mobile’s free Lemonade Tycoon to my iPod touch yesterday and spent the better part of the afternoon creating my own beverage empire, one fresh squeezed glass at a time. → Read More
People have always been inclined to join mobs – most people have at least one story to tell about a time that they got swept up in or had to face a crowd demanding justice for one thing or another (both of my experiences were in college). The Internet has proven to be a frighteningly efficient tool to create virtual mobs. But we note two trends that suggest a bleak future: the increase in non-anonymous mob participation and the evolution of online services towards ever more efficient and real time communication platforms that facilitate mob creation and growth like never before. Things are changing online way too fast for society and culture to adapt. Something will eventually break.
I’m going to pick on FriendFeed in this post because I believe it is the nearest thing to Shangri-La for mob justice enthusiasts. I explain why below. But first I want to compare FriendFeed to Syphilis, which may have been the “perfect” disease when it first hit Europe in the 15th century. Today Syphilis takes years to kill its victims and is easily treated with antibiotics. But back in the early 1500′s it led to certain death within months. → Read More
Last month, Lance Walley left his position as co-founder and CEO of Ruby on Rails hosting company Engine Yard, after the VC-funded startup was forced to trim its workforce by 15% last January.
With nothing else on his hands immediately, Walley started building a Twitter application on his own dime (about $10,000) that would basically link your Twitter account to a brokerage account and enable you to trade stocks via the micro-sharing service. PollyTrade is the result of his work, and it’s currently available in public beta. → Read More
Of all the misguided schemes put forth lately to save newspapers (micropayments! blame Google!), the one put forth by Judge Richard Posner has to be the most jaw-dropping. He suggests that linking to copyrighted material should be outlawed.
No, Posner does not work for the Associated Press (which also has some strange ideas on linking). He is (normally) considered to be one of the great legal minds of our time. Posner is a United States Court of Appeals judge in Chicago and legal scholar who was once considered a potential Supreme Court nominee. He is someone who should know better. → Read More
Get some sweet, sweet Palm Mojo early. It’s basically the SDK for WebOS and it just showed up on the interwebs. Most interesting, however, is the lengths folks will go not to anger the Palm Gods:
Currently, no word on whether or not Palm is okay with this, and we can’t imagine that they are thrilled, so download at your own risk. Depending on how this one goes, we may have to pull all the links if Palm requests (we’re all for the sharing of information, but we want to help Palm, not destroy them). If they feel leaking the SDK early is only detrimental to them as a company, then we will remove the URLs.
I’m not sure I think this is such a good idea, Sony. A PSP crossed with one of Sony-Ericsson’s phones probably wouldn’t enjoy hybrid vigor, seeing as neither device is exactly best in breed. I mean, they’re both fine for what they are, but let’s be honest: they’re generally overpriced and only sport the most basic features.
I’m afraid I don’t trust you guys to make a successful crossover device, although you’re welcome to try. Er…continue to try. Just remember what the N-Gage did to Nokia. → Read More
