Articles Tagged ‘net life’
Apr. 14th, 2008
Now I know for certain that I’m just too old (or old-fashioned) for this social-networky friendy microbloggy stuff. Andrew Baron, Rocketboom founder, is selling his Twitter account, and his more than 1,600 followers on ebay (where else?). If we take this seriously, and assume that it’s actually not just a cheap publicity stunt, who the hell would offer him $1,125 (at the moment) for his followers? Isn’t it blatantly obvious that the people following him are doing so because he is Andrew Baron and that the vast majority would stop following him in seconds as soon as his Twitter account has been taken over by whoever wins in the end? They’re not exactly a captive audience, y’know?
Then again, his follower count has increased by over 200 folks just since yesterday, and he appears to be getting cold feet, so let’s just go with the cheap publicity stunt theory for now, shall we? [heads up via]
What do you think? Leave a comment…
Apr. 10th, 2008
Early last year I lost a few extremely creative and intelligent colleagues, which was sad. What wasn’t sad at all was why they left—to work on a project which inspired and excited them all to the point that they’ve rarely spoken about anything else since. And now, finally, after plenty of sweat and stress, they’ve given birth. Tempodome is live. My first impression after a few minutes kicking the tires is good. They’ve built it with a nice, simple design which creates a suitable mood, and at the heart of it is an exciting idea: live concerts online. The idea of doing something cool online with events and music seems to be in the air this year, judging by how many cool ideas I’ve heard about, but Tempodome is the first so far to get their ideas online. So a hearty congratulations goes out to the Tempodomites, and I’m looking forward to your first concert and your future!
What do you think? Leave a comment…
Mar. 6th, 2008
While having a smoke this morning, colleague Gregory Jacob reminded me of the subject of design “theft”, which I wrote about back in 2006. Back then, the discussion showed that there are many varying opinions of where inspiration stops and theft starts. Greg’s example, which takes the cake in my experience, is without question way over the border.
Greg’s a Flash guy, with a pleasingly minimal personal site. He received a mail from a friend this morning, with a link to a stunningly similar site. Have a look:
After a little research it was clear that Foued, due to laziness, deficient creativity or most likely a combination of both, had simply downloaded Greg’s SWF and the XML which defines the site’s content, and after a little text editing, uploaded both on his site.
It Gets Better
Not only did he shamelessly rip off Greg’s work, but he then submitted his rip-off to numerous awards sites, and won on four of them.
It Gets Even Better
Not only did Foued win awards with stolen goods, but one of them, Dope, had already awarded Greg for the exact same site.
I’d like to take the opportunity to congratulate Greg. Not only a 1:1 rip-off (as we all know, “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”), but four awards, and one of them twice. Well done Greg!
Too Easy to Do, But Also to Find
Things like this just leave me extremely confused. Let’s assume that Foued Azzone is not remarkably naïve, and knew full well how wrong this is. So he uses a stolen design, right down to the file itself, to promote himself and his talents. And in a medium which is so fast, and so everywhere, that the chances of this theft remaining undiscovered are zero. And in a medium where stuff like this gets publicised like wild-fire, irrevocably poisoning is own Google-juice. What could he possibly think this would do for his career? How could he ever dream of this being good for him?
What do you think? Leave a comment…
Nov. 29th, 2007
Although Noam Cohen doesn’t seem to understand how Tumblr and Twitter differ, he’s written an interesting article for the New York Times about the social effects of being constantly, but lightly, in touch with hundreds. And he quotes all—round smart Aussie lady and Twitter friend Leisa Reichelt.
For those of you who’ve learned to love Quicksilver (and if you haven’t you should. It’s worth it.), and are driven to tell everyone what you’re doing as you’re doing it, check out Tweet, a twitter plugin for Quicksilver. Installation’s a little more complicated than for most Quicksilver plugins, but it works great. Vomiting out unconsidered and uninteresting news about yourself has never been faster.
What do you think? Leave a comment…
Nov. 2nd, 2007
I started using Newshutch as my feed reader when it launched back at the start of 2006 because I was sick of how ugly and clumsy Bloglines was (and still is). Other than a few early days problems with slowness, I’ve been a big fan ever since.
Now they’re closing down. I can understand their reasons, but where to go now?
What feed reader do you use? Is there anything out there as simple and good-looking as Newshutch?
What do you think? Leave a comment…
Oct. 5th, 2007
Brad Sucks — a somewhat Beck-like musician we used to play on our now defunct podcast and who does in fact not suck at all — is going full Web 2.0 with his new album. You (yes you!) can send him a track of yourself singing as best you can, and he may use it as backup vocals. You get your name in his liner notes and a free cd. [via Joho the Blog]
What do you think? Leave a comment…
Sep. 29th, 2007
Yeah sure, it’s been around for quite a while, it’s not news (keeping up with new web stuff is a full-time job, and I’ve already got one). So when my boss raved at me today about how cool Google Trends is, I vaguely remembered having seen it at some point, and went back to refresh my impression. Everyone knows Google, and Google Trends is an analysis of the more than 100 million searches which flow through per day, highlighting the frequency of popular searches over time. Well, my boss was right, it’s informative — especially the connection between the popularity graph and news items of the past — but mostly it’s just fun.
Who are the googling masses obsessing over more, Bill Gates or Steve Jobs? Bill of course, but he’s sinking, and they both get heavily thrashed by Britney. Then again, the zune barely got off the ground, but we already knew that. Still think podcasting is hot? Does anyone really care about the climate crisis? How are a few possible republican candidates shaping up? Who’s got the force? What’s your favourite colour?
But maybe the best thing about Google Trends is it’s the only way you can put all the hype back into perspective with just one word.
What do you think? Leave a comment…
Jun. 5th, 2007
We’re visible everywhere all the time, unless we turn our tools off. This isn’t rocket science, it’s a fact that most of us take for granted these days.
So how dumb do you have to be to lie to someone who invited you to a conference (“my kid’s sick”), then turn up at another conference, and the whole time you’ve got your Plazes on and are posting regularly to it? Now add the fact that the “you” in question is Felix Petersen, CEO of Plazes. If anyone should understand how Plazes works and how visible it makes you, it should be him, shouldn’t it? Full story at TechCrunch.
What do you think? Leave a comment…
Jun. 4th, 2007
My favourite talk from Reboot is now up as a video and a PDF. Worth having a look. [courtesy of /message]
What do you think? Leave a comment…
Jun. 3rd, 2007
It seems like everyone out there using Twitter has their priorites in the right places. Except the last bit…
What do you think? Leave a comment…
