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In Brief
In Brief
Romance
"How will this software get my users laid?" Here's how.
NICK DOUGLAS — "Your 'use case' should be, there's a 22 year old college student living in the dorms. How will this software get him laid?" You know what's fun? Applying this maxim by hacker/programmer/nightclub owner Jamie Zawinski to every technology you can think of. Let's. More »
In Brief
Calacanis steals the show
I have to hand it to Jason Calacanis. When it comes to the business kick to the groin, the WIN founder and former AOL executive, has excellent timing. Calacanis has announced, with Michael Arrington of Techcrunch, a rival demo conference — on the first day of Chris Shipley's own showcase for new products and companies. As an aggressively show-stealing move, this is up there with Steve Jobs' launch of the iPhone while the rest of the consumer electronics industry wandered listlessly round the CES show in Las Vegas. The trademark Calacanis flourish: a populist promise that presenting companies, who pay Shipley an eye-watering $18,500 per slot, will get a place on merit alone.
In Brief
Breathe easy till Google's next quarter
The only earnings report that matters to the web. Google just reported record net earnings of $1.03bn for the fourth quarter. After expensing for stock options, that works out as $3.18 a share. Analysts had forecast $2.91 on average. That's good, right? Well, barely. The search engine giant may pretend it doesn't manage earnings expectations, but I bet its investor relations staff do what every other public company does: nudge down stock analysts' forecasts, to ensure a positive surprise. The only problem: that tactic is now built into the expectations model. If Google only matches forecasts, one quarter, the market's reaction will be brutal.
In Brief
A virtual world's 'fucked-up little cookie'
IBM's Sam Palmisano, and all the other gray-faced suits who've been bamboozled by their marketing gurus, are no doubt aware: apart from the creative shops selling them expensive corporate islands, the most devoted residents of virtual worlds are, um, quirky. How quirky? Mr Palmisano, meet Cyclosarin, a proudly "fucked-up little cookie," named after the Nazi-era nerve gas, who likes dressing up in Axis uniforms for her appearances in Linden Lab's Second Life. More »
In Brief
Humanity's greatest hope
If the galactic confederacy intends to stop homo sapiens from becoming a spacefaring species, here's the gathering they need to reprogram. Larry Page of Google is hosting a benefit, on March 3rd at the search engine's Mountain View headquarters, for space exploration. The gala, intended to raise prize money for spaceship builders, will gather in one place humanity's greatest talents: Elon Musk of SpaceX, Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic and Burt Rutan, builder of SpaceShipOne. Oh, and melancholic singer-songwriter, Rufus Wainwright.
In Brief
The David Pogue show
David Pogue, Apple's pet journalist, is best known for his gushing reviews of the Cupertino company's products as a technology columnist for the New York Times. But the newspaper is just a marketing channel for his personal brand. Pogue's more lucrative work: performing. Pogue, who began his career on Broadway before falling into fanboy journalism, often takes time off from his column to entertain floating geeks on cruise ships. (His next scheduled appearance is part of Mac Mania VII, a voyage through the Panama Canal, this November.) And, even when stuck in New York, Pogue keeps the vocal cords warm. His latest arrangement, delivered to corporate audiences: "I've got you, babe," with lyrics altered to praise mobile video and Google's Youtube. It rhymed. See the clip, after the jump, to believe. More »
In Brief
Wikilobbying
Wikipedia, the hugely popular collaborative encyclopedia, has entered popular culture. But not always in a good way. Late-night TV comic, Stephen Colbert, comes up with his own definition of the chaotic online reference book: "The encyclopedia where you can be an authority even if you don't know what the hell you're talking about." The clip, from Comedy Central's Colbert Report, after the jump. More »
In Brief
Google's unhappy radio salesmen
Google's purchase last year of dMarc Broadcasting, a broker for radio ads, signalled that the search engine's ambitions went way beyond internet advertising. It was also the search company's first 10-figure acquisition. Except it wasn't. Google only paid $102m in cash; the remainder was tied to revenue and other targets, such as the merger of dMarc's radio ad marketplace with Google's Adwords system. Of $1.13bn in earn-out, dMarc's disgruntled management and investors will be lucky to see $200m, says a person familiar with the company. To blame? Among other things, a clash between the salesmanship required in radio advertising, and Google's fetish for automation. A tipster explains. More »
In Brief
Not radical enough
Yahoo's page on Nintendo's Wii gaming console pulls together links from the internet behemoth's Delicious bookmarking service, photos from Flickr and articles from Yahoo Answers, all at the domain wii.yahoo.com. Encouraged by the experiment, Yahoo says its rolling out a hundred more fan sites. Sounds transformative? Not so much. More »
In Brief
Half our long tail's gone missing
You know Chris Anderson's thesis, that the internet brings attention or money to all kinds of previously marginal endeavors; in other words, that we live in the age of long tail distributions. Hence the title of his best-selling book, Long Tail, which has inspired more hopeful business plans than Net Gain did during the last cycle. Unfortunately, the tail's not as long as one thought. One of Anderson's most impressive statistics in his original article, that 57% of Amazon sales are in the long tail, was out by a factor of two. Oops. More »
In Brief
An international medley
Bailey, in Valleywag comments, notes that the UK version of Apple's "I'm a Mac" spot isn't the first foreign TV campaign based on the same conceit. After the jump, the Japanese version: a stiff salaryman symbolizes the PC and, as always, Apple's Mac computer is represented by a jeans-wearing hot nerd. Press play on all three clips, and run them simultaneously, for a cacophony of smug Mac attitude. More »
In Brief
The silencing of Steve Jobs' impersonator
Apple's decision, to pay up $700,000 in legal costs incurred by Thinksecret and other blogs, might be a harbinger of a kinder Cupertino tech giant, or at least one less obsessed by trade secrets. Don't count on it. The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, a spoof chronicle of the narcissistic Apple chief exec's inner life, is to close down after unspecified legal threats. Jobs' online impersonator leaves his readers with this cartoon, from a Japanese magazine.
In Brief
Annoying Mac character adopts English accent
It's usually British TV shows that get remade for US screens. One shtick that's going the other way: Apple's ad for the Mac, in which a hipster everyman, representing the Cupertino company's computer, gently ribs the dorky Windows PC. Now, for all you accent fetishists, in English English. The clip, after the jump. More »
In Brief
Gray Lady disapproves of blogger's 'junket whoredom'
When John Biggs of Michael Arrington's Techcrunch publishing group traveled to Seoul on a trip paid for by a Korean consumer electronics company, he was excruciatingly open about the arrangement. "I'm here with Samsung, suckling on the sweet teat of junket whoredom," wrote the freelancer, a former blogger with Gawker's Gizmodo. But what's par for the course at Techcrunch, the leading Valley news site, is not necessarily so by the prissy standards of old media. This is rich in irony. The New York Times, so often slammed as unethical by Arrington, has published an investigation into two stories it published about Samsung cellphones by the same freelancer. The newspaper's public editor, recommending a tightening of rules for freelancers, writes: More »
Separated At Birth
Pirates of Silicon Valley II: Our Candidates for the Cast
NICK DOUGLAS — While dust gathers on our old VHS copies of Pirates of Silicon Valley (for us, Noah Wyle's career hit its high point with his role as Steve Jobs), it's time to cast the sequel. Starring the Daily Show's Demetri Martin as Digg founder Kevin Rose, Jason Bateman as Diggnation co-host Alex Albrecht and Rush Limbaugh as John C. Dvorak, the show also includes stars playing Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, Merlin Mann, and Google's Marissa Mayer. More »
Dripping red ink
Red Herring's likely balance of cash and liquid assets, since name-dropping French entrepreneur Alex Vieux bought the legendary Silicon Valley tech title. For an explanation:
Red Herring's likely balance of cash and liquid assets, since name-dropping French entrepreneur Alex Vieux bought the legendary Silicon Valley tech title. For an explanation:
In Brief
Braun back to Hollywood
Lloyd Braun, the entertainment exec who led Yahoo's distracting foray into original content before being fired a month ago, is back where he started. Braun, sufficiently well-known as a TV exec to warrant a mocking namecheck on Seinfeld, is setting up a production company. Hollywood is a forgiving place, and Braun will need only another hit like Lost to restore his reputation. Yahoo's investment in Southern California, including a vast campus in Santa Monica, will take longer to unwind.
In Brief
He started young
So Steve Jurvetson of DFJ, one of the geekier venture capital investors, is planning to build a replica of a V-2, the Nazi rocket which caused thousands of deaths in wartime London. Pah. That's nothing. Out of six founding employees of Paypal, four built bombs when growing up. That factoid, spilled by Paypal savant Peter Thiel, was reported by the Valley's uber networker, Auren Hoffman. So was Hoffman, who calls himself an engineer, himself a geek prodigy? More »
In Brief
John Battelle's expensive new recruit
Ask a Ninja is a sexy addition to John Battelle's ad network. The online video show, in which a balaclava-wearing geek gives absurd answers to readers' questions, is one of the few to show up on advertisers' radar screens. Comscore, the audience database much consulted by media buyers, gave the site 154,000 unique visitors last month. But Ask a Ninja's choice of FM Publishing as advertising reps comes at a price. According to one report, Battelle's network guaranteed $300,000 to win the client. Which gives rise to two interesting questions. How will FM handle other sites, disappointed in its representation, which want equal treatment? And is this the first sign of a bidding war, for popular sites at least, by ad networks?
Put your money on World of Warcraft
CLAY SHIRKY — If we don't start off by lumping Second Life with World of Warcraft as virtual worlds, a question emerges: why do virtual game worlds outperform non-game worlds in their adoption?
CLAY SHIRKY — If we don't start off by lumping Second Life with World of Warcraft as virtual worlds, a question emerges: why do virtual game worlds outperform non-game worlds in their adoption?
Tony Perkins in New York
The speaker list at Tony Perkins' New York media conference didn't look that compelling. Valleywag has nobody there. But, if you're an attendee at Always On Media, and reading this: do send in any amusing tidbits.
The speaker list at Tony Perkins' New York media conference didn't look that compelling. Valleywag has nobody there. But, if you're an attendee at Always On Media, and reading this: do send in any amusing tidbits.
In Brief
Bill Gates walks out of Daily Show
Sixteen wire dancers descended a giant billboard in Manhattan yesterday, to display the colors of Microsoft's Vista. The show, part of a gigantic $500m marketing push for the new operating system, was perfectly coordinated. Unlike Bill Gates' appearance on the Daily Show. The Microsoft founder, at the end of an uneventful interview with the late-night news show's Jon Stewart, abruptly walked off the set. Oops. Gates must have forgotten that lesson in media training: stay seated till the red light goes off and pretend to make casual chit-chat. "He can't just leave," said the surprised host. The clip, after the jump. More »
In Brief
The Roo controversy that wasn't
You'd think, from reading Michael Arrington's latest item, that Rupert Murdoch's media conglomerate was tearing itself apart over its $12m investment in Youtube competitor, Roo. The parent company, News Corporation, bypassed the unit, Fox Interactive, which has been responsible for Murdoch's signature web deals. Disarray, since the defection of Ross Levinsohn, the Fox Interactive boss who led the Myspace deal. Except the Techcrunch publisher's narrative, which probably relies on Levinsohn himself, is pretty much all wrong. More »
In Brief
Intel chips more important than cancer
Q. You think Intel making a smaller chip is more important than cancer? A. Having cancer is important to THAT ONE PERSON. Intel chips change the lives of hundreds of millions of people. [Robert Scoble, former Microsoft evangelist and video blogging star, after complaining about the lack of links to his 40-minute report from the semiconductor's fab.]
Kevin Rose
What's On Kevin Rose's Desk: Insider's Edition
NICK DOUGLAS — What secrets lie on the desk of Digg founder Kevin Rose? From what I know of him, and with a little speculation, I annotated the details of Kevin's work environment, as photographed by the talented Scott Beale. More »
In Brief
