The McSweeney's Literati Nigerian Scam

take 2 charlize
Originally uploaded by redbarren.

I would not want to be that producer (who thought) he was being chased down a ravine in LA the other week, but was found naked, washing his jeans in a ravine after a major police search. Wowsee. From da'Eggers suite :

"URGENT PROPOSAL.
BY TEDDY WAYNE
- - - -
Good day, sir and madam,

I received your contact information through a reliable source in my search for a trustworthy person who will assist me in an urgent business proposition. Also, you are my parents, and your e-mail address is under the easily accessible nickname of "The Rents." Allow me to reintroduce myself. I am TEDDY WAYNE of New York City, the son you raised in your household for 18 years (the second of three, so you might not remember me that well) and have seen off and on for the past eight, often at graduations and holiday dinners.

My situation is dire. Recently, my freelance writing work has dried up, and as my credit is no longer considered "good," I cannot access my previously earned monies. However, as a freelance writer from 2001 to 2004, I earned upwards of $37.4 million copyediting, substitute-teaching, and temping. While you may be skeptical of this figure, as I got free dinners off you whenever possible, frequently did my laundry in your home, and rarely had health care during that time, it is verifiable through my extravagant spending at area bars. Before my credit went "bad" and my accounts were "frozen," I secretly deposited this money in a special "passbook" savings account at Citibank at 1.2 percent interest. This means that the $37.4 million has accrued in value since then, although I'm not really good enough with money to know by how much.

As my next of kin, you will be allowed to take control of the account if you can prove that I have fled the country and have no intention of returning. My urgent proposal is this. You will purchase me a one-way plane ticket to your choice of the following destinations: Ibiza, Spain; Melbourne, Australia; or Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. You will also furnish me with $20,000 in cash, a large backpack, and a Nalgene water bottle. Once I am safely abroad, I will write an e-mail home to the effect that I am having a blast backpacking across Europe/Australia/South America, have married my new wife Maria/Julie/Railene, and have no intention of ever coming back to the boring, bourgeois "United Waste." This pun will indicate my great distaste for America and should prove to American officials my seriousness in not returning. If this is insufficient, I will attach a digital photo of me kissing Maria/Julie/Railene, who will be hot. At this point you will be able to access the "passbook" savings account, and you shall transfer 50 percent of the money to your own account and send the rest to me. Hell, take 75 percent while you're at it. What's a little money between estranged relatives?

Of course, this would mean that once the transaction is complete we will never be able to correspond again. This means no phone calls, no letters, and certainly no forwarded e-mails of bad, obvious jokes about President Bush. To ensure your financial security for the rest of your lives, I am willing to make this profound sacrifice.

If you want to proceed with this transaction, please reply with the usernames and passwords of your online banking accounts, so that I can make the $20,000 transfer on my own. If you are circumspect about providing the usernames and passwords over e-mail, just hint if they're some combination of the names of our dogs over the years. If you do not accept my offer, please treat it with utmost confidentiality (i.e., don't tell Grandma, as I'll probably ask her next). Even though we weren't raised religious, I'm trusting you as a God-fearing person who will not sit on my life-saving fund and deprive me of the chance of creating beautiful babies in a sun-splashed paradise.

Yours faithfully,

Teddy Wayne
Former freelancer/your son
New York City"

Microsoft Buy 'Click-to-Call'Teleo

take 1 charlize
Originally uploaded by redbarren.

With all the non-Mac, Jabber rebranded G-talk (i thought sidebar was far more interesting) Microsoft has bought Teleo, to plug into the hundreds of millions of Messenger users. The Teleo technology includes "features as click-to-call: a user can click on a phone number — listed, say, on a Web page — and immediately reach someone with a regular phone number on the circuit-switched network." From TechDirt.com :

"Teleo, which only launched a few months back, is practically a carbon copy of Skype, but using SIP support. The company never seemed sure if it wanted to go after the enterprise market or the consumer market, and so it never seemed to get much user traction -- but Microsoft just wants the technology. You can also bet they didn't pay anywhere near the rumored numbers that are being tossed around for Skype. However, now that Microsoft, Google and Yahoo will all have voice components to their IM offerings, it certainly should deflate some of the Skype-hype (which jumped from a $3 billion valuation to a $10 billion valuation last week".) Also as an 'end-note' : From the Teleo site, already MSN Hosted to give you a flavour :

"What does Microsoft plan to do with the Teleo service?

Microsoft plans to incorporate and expand upon Teleo’s technologies, integrating them into the MSN services infrastructure, with plans to ultimately deliver new VoIP consumer applications in future releases of MSN services, such as MSN Messenger. If you would like to join the MSN beta program, please click here

Where can I use VoIP services now?
The new version of MSN Messenger allows users to talk to each other online, PC to PC, with no call charges. Additionally, if both users have a webcam installed they can also have a full screen video conversation – all this, and much more, completely free of charge! Download MSN Messenger here"

Alexander wasn't the only Post-Modern Greek Tragedy

dsc00517a
Originally uploaded by powderedtoastdude.

Love this Carrie Blogshaw drama. I RSS her feed too. When I'm alone, I sometimes get it. Realise I havent slept enough. Bloddy RSS and blogging. The fact an issue has arisen means only one thing : Increased Traffic, ask Jason Calcanis what that means for Stephanie Klein. Any other viewpoints anything expressed from here-on is just padding for the "Yummy Little Bikini Patrol". It's also an unintended consequence of BlogHer. OK Girls, do you really want to discuss gender on the Internet. Maybe survey my audience for their reasons why they read this blog ? Why Keith Malley reads Maxim ? (I'm also not suggesting there is a simple 2-dimensional answer, but it's more than Ponzi scheming some links !) I find the Greek Tragedy debate is full of New York characters. it's something I'd expect KeithandtheGirl to talk about if it was about the real world, but smartly they keep away from talking about the podcasting and blogging industries - except from Dan Klass, who is an ADDICT. (LOL). From Young Manhattanite, great blog I've been reading since BlogHer :

"Now that I've been alerted to these online spats involving book-deal wielding chick-lit bloggers I can't tear myself away from the ringside action and ring-size drama. Ahhh, the drama. Ol' Johnny. Or like the Sleater-Kinney song puts it, "The Drama You've Been Craving." There are those among us who take up permanent residence at the Dramada Inn where the pool is pear-shaped and the motto is: "You can check-in any time you want, but be careful where you dry-heave."

Enter the current thread between blogger with a $$$ book deal Stephanie Klein and Tale of Two Sisters (note: newly located site), a Stephanie Klein parody blog that has the potential to be offered a publishing deal somewhere north of a six-part comic strip series wrapped around a piece of bubblegum. So Ms. Klein (or her handlers) are none too happy about the parody and have threatened to sue for copyright infringement. I'm no lawyer and to me "fair use" sounds like a deal between two teenage boys time-sharing a stack of Playboys, so I won't comment on the merits of either side's arguments. But here's an interesting itty bitty titty twist. It's been revealed (not by me) that the Judith Regan crowned blogger/aspiring writer who is suing the parodists for plagiarism is quite possibly a plagiarist herself. (That's Drama with a capital "D" right here in cry me a river city.) The material in question comes from, of all things, a grade-school storytelling exercise called "Watering Hole." (The imagery is impossible to make up.) Behold:

The Smoking Google Search

Imagination Exercise: Watering Hole

Pretend to be an animal in the jungle. Think about how it moves - fast and sneaky, or slowly and majestically, with heavy footsteps or on dainty tippy toes, slithering, hopping, swinging, or creeping? Every animal moves differently. Use your whole body, not just your arms and legs. How does the animal move its head? Its chest? Its tail? How does it stand when it listens to a faraway sound? How does it grow sad or angry or happy?

Stephanie Klein: "Make Believe"

The song "Nothing" in Chorus Line is about a woman who couldn't pretend to be a bobsled or ice cream cone, so she was kicked out of her acting class. In Miracle on 34th Street, small Susan refuses to play "zoo" with the other children. And why should I pretend to be a monkey when I'm a girl? Pretend to be an animal� - excuse me, I can't do that. Go on, think about how it moves - fast and sneaky, or slow and majestically, with heavy footsteps or on dainty tippy toes, slithering, hopping, swinging, or creeping? How does it stand when it listens to a faraway sound? Um, no, I don't think you quite get it. I can't pretend.

Perhaps there's a perfectly reasonable explanation (like maybe she knows Gerald Fierst and helped him write the exercise for Scholastic?) but it sounds like Klein's prose was picked from the playground lot in "fairly used" condition..."

I prefer many of Stephanies Stories (i will use the information for my own advantage in future relationships is the plan, but i will find a better way after meeting someone, and that realisation in itself will have made reading her stories VS other blogs worth it), VS the thousands of items in my RSS 'River of News' (Her "Mid Life Crisis" post below, is preferable to me than 98% of Yahoo News, Reuters, or even Jason Calcanis blogs, and nothing against Jason either - It's a new version of High vs Low culture debate, my vultures. Not all blogs were created equal, and as Jason knows, all have different clickthroughs and CPCs' - Im sure people who blog about retirement and how to invest the 'nest-egg' have a much higher yield per page !

Stephanie, call me, when Im in NY next....

"My friends and I sometimes share our number with one another. I'm not talking lbs., our Purity Test scores, or the number of things we wanted to accomplish by 30 years old. I'm talking sexual partners. Sometimes she'll recruit an ex for the job to keep her numbers down. She'd sooner sleep with habit than sleep with new. Sex seems not to count as much if it's with someone we've already spent days in bed with. What's one more night? I don't care about my numbers, and I certainly wouldn't care about his. I have crawled into bed with men I've dated from the past, thinking it was safe without regard to how he felt about it. It was never done under false pretense, and I'm certain those MIDs (men I dated) wouldn't trade the moments, but it still seems wrong. I've had a number of ex's, and as such, going forward, instead of referring to them all by number (wait, which one was #12 again?), all of my ex's will be forever referred to as a MID (man I dated). Mostly because so many of these MIDs are still my friends, and I'm tired of answering their emails, "Wait, is that post about me?" I'm no Carly Simon, but now is not the time for the pain that comes with the Beatty's thinking they're the Taylor's. "

How will OC match Laguna Beach ?

rosario larry clarke sinful city babe
Originally uploaded by redbarren.

"In the past, if 'Laguna Beach' was a hit, you wait a few months and put out the DVD and then make sure you've got some information on MTV.com - but all of that was very ancillary," Mr. Graden said in a telephone interview. "Our proposition is that it's not ancillary. In fact, it's reinforcing, all feeding each other."

My advice as a script advisor would be to have more barfage. To actually have less digested bits, with some more digested bits (like when you mix dry dog feed, with fresh goodies) then I'd get New York Times to write 1400 words about teenage relationships, and even though all teenagers have felt different and rebellious, those that grow up in Laguna Beach, and (BTW) are on a TV show of same name (coincidence, and in fact if you havent grown up here, thats fine, you can move like Ryan in OC) - To finish, and from here I ad lib, and moving into fiction, I hear Green Day are Punks. Get them to sing a song. With Melody. I agree with KeithandtheGirl.com Podcast. No Punks. No Sir.

"It began a campaign that gave its audience the feeling they were already living in a "Laguna Beach" all-media universe. For those who did not catch the three-minute "Laguna Beach" commercial playing in 2,200 movie theaters across the country, there was a compilation CD. The "Laguna Beach: Complete First Season" DVD included bonus features that ranged from behind-the-scenes material (original casting tapes, deleted scenes) to old film that had been enterprisingly repackaged (a clip reel titled "Laguna Looks" featured show regulars in close-up as their trademark expressions - hound-dog lust, raised-brow surprise, squinty-eyed jealousy - register on their camera-ready faces)."

"My aunt told me that she saw it up in Wal-Mart," Ms. Conrad said. "The first time I ever was in a Wal-Mart, and it's on a poster."

You Gotta Respect Branson Bravado

get the new range stormer
Originally uploaded by redbarren.

And the English are even beating Australia in the Cricket, namely The Ashes, which is behind The Masters in Golf, and the Hawaii Triathlon. Interesting that the stick-twins are probably worth similar net amounts - TBC. (they have great businesses run by other people selling to Tweens in Malls, Target etc) Back to the British Thrillseeker, that always causes trouble in Australia : Good interview if you are a Virgin :

"What's the craziest thing you've done?"

"About 15 or 20 years ago I pulled the wrong string when I went skydiving for the first time. I got rid of the parachute rather than opening it. It was not very clever, and I was declared "wally of the decade" by the skydiving federation."

"What's up next ?" (homie)

(Peace) "Well, the most exciting thing is the space travel company (Virgin Galactic). We're building five ships to be ready in 2 years. Myself and my family will be flying, and we hope thousands will enjoy the experience as well. We'll send people up to space for a three-hour trip. They will be astronauts and experience weightlessness, and they will see the earth is round. We're giving people the opportunity to experience space without the inherent risks of NASA. Our technology is 30 years younger than NASA, and we fly suborbital so we don't have the same heat buildup. It's much safer. I'll be the first to fly in the new spaceship. It's an important statement for Virgin Galactic. And in fact if I wasn't willing to, people would understandably wonder why not. It's important to be willing do things yourself. And it's quite fun."

Why I-Tunes a 100 song Apple Phone ?

E3 2005
Originally uploaded by Britphoto.

If there's one thing us guys like it's some wireless flickr fun. The only better thing would be having your "Web 2.0-Open API-Tagging" company bought by Yahoo, Microsoft or Google; Hotmail.com, sold for $400M when it had 10m registered users a generation ago (I was a wannabee VC analyst/nasdaq trader so i remember some stupid stats) and the post-transaction Harvard Business School "Case Study", is did he sell for too much or too little. (he actually wanted a billion) One generation of company on, people can talk about open-api-etc this and that but it's obvious to apply the same User/Multiple (Valuation) logic to 2.0 companies like Flickr. No matter what the NPV/discounted cash-flow / future earnings model, what is Flickr-Flock-Odeo-Rabble-Yorz-Bokee-etc worth ? Well I'm sure it's a modified Trumpism ("What I will pay for it.") and just like in sports when you start saying my team (A) beat this team (B) last week, and that team (B) beat (C) this week, and we play them (C) this week, so even though they (C) are first on the ladder, and my team (A) and the other team (B) are second and third last, relative valuations don't work, as each negotiation has such different P2P dynamics, and 'perceived' value. For NewsCorp, MySpace might be part of beating MTV, it might also be shuffled in negotiations with Malone and Liberty Media. It may be bolted into a Video Search Engine. It May not. It may be a classic Media Metrix de-duped unique acquisition play. (Xoom.com bought by NBCi, GeoCities by Yahoo, That greeting card company for billions etc) Game Theory, my Washington MBA' Barcelona'soiree'ing friends. I only ever played checkers. But I played a mean hand. And let's face it, people are stupid. But stupid people execute better than intelligent people. (oh, the angst) Anyway...

"Even more iTunes phone details, if you can believe it: a source involved with making the commercials for the new handset has confirmed for us that it will only hold 100 songs because Apple is worried about cannibalizing iPod shuffle sales. Our source also says that these first iTunes phone ads will be “music-based spots with people calmly walking down the street on the phone with their shadows and reflections dancing wildly beside them.”"

On the Poker Robot Tip

IMG_0965
Originally uploaded by mysterious chicken.

You can give to New Orleans Charity or gamble your family away in one hand, although I think you will win, if you choose a robot that is smarter than the robot providing the service (just remember the economies of scale of using a poker bot whose peer is owned by a $10 BILLION ecasino) They might have a better one :

"Cory Doctorow: Here's a fascinating account of a "side-band" attack on online Blackjack. At a certain point in the gameplay, the software dealer appeared to need substantially more calculations if there was a ten in the dealer's hole than if there wasn't. Players who timed the pause could therefore get a partial peek at the dealer's cards and so gain an edge over the house. In Poker, this is called a "tell" -- the propensity of a player with junk to mop his brow, or of a player to unconsciously tap his foot when he's bluffing. Computers are generally considered not to have tells, because they're not sentient and hence not prone to subconscious fidgeting, but computer tells do arise in those situations where they are doing something computationally intensive. The code itself may have been completely correct in the sense that it did what it was supposed to do. It was the amount of time the code needed to execute that ended up being the tell. No different than when a poker player twitches when holding a great hand. The fix may have been to change the execution profile of the code so that it made the same pause no matter what was in the hole. Talk about a challenge for game developers. Not only does the code need to be bug free in syntax and semantics, but they now need to worry about the execution profile for their games."

Dont Ask what New Orleans can do for you, but What You can Do ..

IMG_1085
Originally uploaded by mysterious chicken.

Give money to Red Cross, which I only say because over the Australian summer 8 months ago, The Tsunami across Indonesia and related areas like Sri Lanka killed hundreds of Australians, and (as a country) we gave Billion$, and as a result (we contributed towards) them having a short, medium and long term chance of rebuilding. But it's immediate help that matters. Sending food and basic items is good, but with money Red Cross can actually do something quickly. No different to anything really. From Xeni Jardin :

"Also, it may be worth noting that the Red Cross needs money donations, blood and volunteers more than anything. I have a feeling a lot of people are going to come back with the "Let's send blankets, clothes and canned foods" mindset that followed the tsunami, but if there's anything New Orleans has plenty of, it's food. They need money, badly, for rescue boats, potable water, generators, axes and other search and rescue equipment. Evacuees over here in Lake Charles have been hearing that it'll be 7 days or more before they can return, and the Red Cross desperately needs untrained volunteers at shelters in Louisiana and Texas to take over shelter efforts so the Red Cross can free up trained volunteers to go to Greater New Orleans and southwest Mississippi to support rescue and comfort efforts there. Major shelter points are Houston, Beaumont and Orange, TX; and Lake Charles, Lafayette, Alexandria and Shreveport, LA. And nobody thinks about the blood donations - listen, there are a surprising number of people that are going to have very serious trauma - severed limbs, puncture wounds and internal bleeding. The only common thread is a massive need for blood."

Get Apple'd

lohan loves ash on diet cola
Originally uploaded by redbarren.

When my baby/love child/significant other/partner/lover/mistress/mother (not my daddy ok ^&*&) - Apple Imac G5 20" with Airport Express, Ipod Shuffle and Memory Upgrade(which i luv) is being repaired (the keyboard has been replaced - my private equity investor said i had worn out the keyboard blogging, "cutnpaste i corrected, 'other than 8 words before each post'" : the audio only works for itunes, but not for podcasts, web radio, quicktime, mp3 streaming etc aaaagh) and the Apple Service people are being great (I have the tech guys direct number, he answers in 3 rings, we speak twice a day - equal amount he calls, and i call - perfect relationship, other than the 'he' and 'apple support' part, for me'y'all-ok.) As soon as it happened and they said a week to repair I ordered the new Ibook 14.1 which other than fuzzy screen :) and its not a powerbook, has a great spec, but I'm still waiting for delivery for that (from virtualcommunities where i used to work) Anyway, the latest on this HUGE nothing story, on Apple Video Ipod vs Itunes phone, looks now like its a ITUNES phone, except if they also have an IPOD phone. Like Cludo I guess. From engadget :

"The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple and Cingular have finally settled on an agreement that will have the carrier offering the Motorola ROKR music phone by the holiday season. And, as suspected, the announcement will supposedly come at the September 7 media event in San Francisco. The source for all of this seems to be “people familiar with the matter” (aha!) who also confirm that Apple will be introducing an update to the iPod line on the same day, as also evidenced by the wording of the media event invitation which reads, “1,000 songs in your pocket changed everything. Here we go again.” The question still remains, then — are the music phone and the iPod update the same device? Oh, and we’d love to link directly to the WSJ article cited, but too bad — it’s behind a costwall."

Video Ipod vs Itunes Phone

lean back now @ wmas
Originally uploaded by redbarren.

"Apple has sent out invitations for a special event planned for September 7th at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

"1000 songs in your pocket changed everything." notes the invitation. "Here we go again."

It's time for Apple to go into Rapid Product Development. Marissa@Google likes to brag they launch 16-17 new products/features a week, majority international. But with 3000+ engineers being hired a quarter you gotta think, with products like sidebar coming out, there will be lots more where that came from. Wonder how they will really go in wireless and voice - Very different competencies and capabilities (not just a stanford phd, linux boxes, page rank + a website anymore)

More Podcasting Tagging Tools

simpsons
Originally uploaded by Amber Nussbaum.

Software Only blog posted a couple weeks back which I missed (OMG) but the essence is spot on, time for smart filtering and dare I Cuban-ise and say "Suggestive Programming" :

"OdeoSyncr had a bit of an indigestion following the celebration of their funding, and had not been working since last Friday). Almost 20 hours of listening… We’re going to need tools to easily tag portions of shows according per topics, and add functionality to players and devices so that we can play portions of interest – based on the topic (venture capital, social media, pr, etc.)"

The Dark Side of RSS

lip-synching@mtv vma's
Originally uploaded by redbarren.

An email they received from a .mac account : "Reproduced verbatim, as received from a plausible-looking mac.com address: HI THIS IS KAYE SHAW. I DONT THINK SO MY HUSBAND BOB USE 'RSS FEEDS"!!!!! PLEASE HIS REMOVED CLEAN UP!!!!!!! WE HAVE OWN BUSINESS!!!! THANK YOU, MRS. KAYE SHAW"

Google's 'Petabyte' SuperComputer

kiss my mtv jess
Originally uploaded by redbarren.

Nice selection from Nivi :

"“$1 million dollars will buy you a system that can handle 1 billion requests a day with 2 terabytes of RAM and 1 petabyte of storage. This super-computer is an aggregate of $2000 machines [Ed: this is highly paraphrased].”

– Adam Bosworth, Vice President of Engineering at Google, MySQL Users Conference"

Feed Creation - This is the Future

lean forward more eva
Originally uploaded by redbarren.

Expect commercial automated versions of this Python RSS feed creation service, especially in Australia where the majority of website dont have an underlying RSS.RDF.Atom.etc feed :

"Scrape 'N' Feed is a simple Python wrapper around the PyRSS2Gen module. It implements almost all of the code you need to create RSS feeds out of web pages. All you have to write is the code that actually does the screen-scraping (and Beautiful Soup makes that easy). It stores feed state in a pickle file between invocations, freeing you from having to worry about most of the minor problems that get in the way of scraping RSS feeds."

New RSS Definition

im down with suge@vma
Originally uploaded by redbarren.

"Robert Scoble and Son"
Who said Google was the New, um, Empire.

Blogspot Spam : Robots eat each other

sistas r doing it2@vma's
Originally uploaded by redbarren.

"If you don't know who lunch is, you are." (Hollywood proverb) It's why I'm about to move to Movable Type, even if I have to pay. At least search engines will index me, robots not spam me (as much), and it just plain looks better, and hasmore functionality. Also easier to remember benbarren.com (coming soon he said, "404 me")

“Funniest thing I saw was a bunch of comments on one spam/link site, that was totally irrelevant but pointed to ANOTHER spam site. The spammers are spamming each other.”

The Buzz Machine meets CBS Blogger@Starbucks

killing me softly @ vmas
Originally uploaded by redbarren.

Jarvis drills (CBS') establishment's blogger : "On his relations with CBS News: Vaughn reports up to Larry Kramer, president of CBS Digital Media, and not to Heyward, giving him some separation. He says he has told CBS News staffers, “Treat me like Howard Kurtz if you want to. If you don’t want to comment, you don’t have to comment.” He added that he would reveal if a CBSer wouldn’t comment. He said he is not there as a critic of CBS News: “I’m not the judge, jury, and prosecutor of the case against CBS News or anything else.” He said that so far he has found “there’s a lot of willingness to go along with this.” - I think initially there was some trepidation because this is a hard concept to explain to people… I think the fear is that we’re going to come in and take a magnifying glass over every newscast and criticize it… It’s not what we’re going to do. If we see something we have a question about, we’re going to try to get an answer. - The company is devoting resources to the blog: Vaughn, who’ll be based, oddly, in Washington, one full-time person in New York and another in Washington."

GPS Golf vs Texas Hold'em Mashup

traci bad napster good
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Remember the richest billionaires under 40 created in the last 12 months post Google were that British listed (Indian outsourced) online casino monopoly. ("On June 27, Gibraltar-based Party Gaming, the company that owns PartyPoker.com, jumped onto the London Stock Exchange with a value of $9 billion.") Now to the MashUp, Poker Bots vs GPS Golf :

From TechDirt on PokerBots : "The most popular bot, WinHoldEm, lets users tweak strategies -- and it's the strategies and not the bot that makes someone a winner. In fact, the article suggests it's becoming popular for users to swap and trade different formula sets."

From Engadget on GPS Golf : "A new handheld device is, um, seriously teeing off golf’s governing bodies. The gadget uses GPS technology to pull down exact distances to the current hole, as well as all the bunkers, ponds, greens, etc. en route. Traditionalists are pushing for a ban on the £249 device which will be available to consumers starting next month, contending that the system essentially amounts to cheating. Traditional caddies are worried the device will put them out of business, as they make a living from their in depth knowledge of the local courses. Of course, golf’s governing bodies don’t have any control over amateurs like your Uncle Bob, who already pre-ordered his."

4meg Ipod Mini vs 3meg Samsung Phone Mashup

'Show me da Money'
Originally uploaded by patisfaction.

In one corner we have Mr Jobs, and sales volume/market share metrics, plus an installed base, kickASS Itunes service, as well as Imacs, the 2.0'rati using ibooks, powerbooks etc..

"American Technology Research is predicting that Apple will sell 7.1 million iPods in the current quarter. "We have noticed very aggressive pricing, particularly on 4GB iPod minis", notes analyst Shaw Wu. "We believe part of the reason is that iPod inventories remain relatively high on an absolute basis and this aggressive promotion is to ensure sales in an otherwise slower consumer period."

In the other ring we have The (Euro-skewed) multi-meg'd hard-drive on your mobile, with Nokia the main player in the background, and the sprinter at the front Samsung, who yesterday announced 02, the European/UK Wireless Telco leader as their sales /handset branding channel, while today they announced US distribution. Can anyone say Australia, tomorrow even to keep the announcements going ? Anyway to the WWF mashup IPOD vs MP3 Phone spec :

"UK carrier O2 is going to be getting the SGH-i300, that new music-centric Windows Mobile-powered Smartphone from Samsung with the 3GB hard drive." The previously report engadget spec was (which I know Nokia are improving esp on the 2meg camera +, anyway the Samsung : "comes with a 1.3 megapixel digital camera, Bluetooth, scroll wheel navigation (take that, iPod!), a 262,000 color, 240x320 LCD screen, support for playback of MP3, WMA, AAC, and AAC+ audio files, and a TransFlash memory card slot. Better still, the hard drive is plug-and-play, so you can connect the phone up to your PC over USB and just drag and drop your files as you please, there’s no lame interfaces to have to mess with - Forgot to mention, it’s tri-band GSM/GPRS (900/1800/1900MHz)"

ex-Newsgator Enterprise VP launches RSS 4 CRM

Charlie Wood, one of the guys I started reading late 2004 when getting into the Enterprise side of RSS, then he went to Newsgator, left, founded Spanning Partners. And with Siebel taking a freefall, and Salesforce going north, but customers needing ancillary solutions for their new web based ASP CRM systems, in areas like RSS, Charlies' got, I hope, a great niche and solution. Here's a snippet from his press release (separate from his William Shattner/Nick Bradbury Boston Legal enclosures distraction). Given the basic product is free, I'm interested to see what the subscription/charging/monetisation model is. Good Luck Charlie. Great Work.

"Spanning Salesforce is the free service that lets you subscribe to information from your Salesforce.com account via RSS. Released today, version 2.0 adds support for documents, opportunities, cases, escalations, and enhances support for leads.

New Documents
As a field sales rep, you always need the most current presentations, collateral, and price lists. The New Documents feed uses the same technology that powers podcasting to automatically download the latest documents from Salesforce.com to your desktop, laptop, or PDA, so you'll always be up to date.

My Unread Leads
Track new lead assignments using My Unread Leads. Your new leads appear in this feed as soon as they come in, and will remain there until you've looked at them in Salesforce.com.

My Open Opportunities
As leads become opportunities, you'll be able to stay on top of them by subscribing to My Open Opportunities. Opportunities are listed by name and amount and include full details, giving you a bird's eye view of your pipeline.

My Opportunities Closing This Quarter
Easily the most-requested new feed, My Opportunities Closing This Quarter gives you a constantly updated view of your current-quarter deals.

My Opportunities Closing Next Quarter
Also by popular request, My Opportunities Closing Next Quarter gives you at-a-glance visibility into next quarter's business.

My Open Cases
Customer support reps can stay on top of new case assignments with My Open Cases, which are listed by case number and description and include full details.

My Open Escalations
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Could this be a new Broadband Reality Show ?

Reverse stalking flashers on trains with phones and moblogged-flickr accounts. Wouldnt want to be the sicko in the photo. MOBLOG'D-GRRRL-POWR.

Chris Pirillo doesn't like the name "Google Talk"

Lexxi Tyler
Originally uploaded by Britphoto.

He thinks : "Gtalk rolls off the tongue - and I'm likely to call it that anyway, largely because they pounded the "Gmail" branding into my head, and that service is already deeply integrated into the product. So, they might as well call it Gtalk and get it over with." His "list of alternatives for Google Talk, although I can't necessarily take credit for all of 'em" include :

* Gtalk
* Gabber
* Gargle
* Gooble
* Gimble
* Garthok
* Gimli
* Ginkgo
* Gabble
* Giblet
* Ginkgo
*Gabble

Jeff Jarvis' Meta-Relativist Blog Definition

Star
Originally uploaded by Worker101.

The ol'tiger's@it, being asked to define "blogs" - He replied : "I don’t care. There is no need to define “blog.” I doubt there ever was such a call to define “newspaper” or “television” or “radio” or “book” — or, for that matter, “telephone” or “instant messenger.” A blog is merely a tool that lets you do anything from change the world to share your shopping list. People will use it however they wish. And it is way too soon in the invention of uses for this tool to limit it with a set definition. That’s why I resist even calling it a medium; it is a means of sharing information and also of interacting: It’s more about conversation than content… so far. I think it is equally tiresome and useless to argue about whether blogs are journalism, for journalism is not limited by the tool or medium or person used in the act. Blogs are whatever they want to be. Blogs are whatever we make them. Defining “blog” is a fool’s errand."

VC' Incubator/Catalysts are back

Angel #15085
Originally uploaded by Worker101.

The line between VC and entrepreneur isn't always set, esp. pre-operational venture. Many are ex-entrpreneurs who have it in their blood, and Bessemer for example is looking to stimulate the next Healtheon or WebMD. Idealabs here we go... "So we have incubated a company in concert with founders from Healtheon and Valicert to build a portal for delivering the information and online shopping resources that healthcare consumers have come to expect when buying other goods and services."

Winer on the Kleiner-Podshow-Google Podcasting Mini-Bubble

IMG_2788
Originally uploaded by Merina.

From scripting.com : "Speaking of the online music biz, here's why Kleiner-Perkins invested in Podshow. First, a caveat, this is just tea-leave-reading and wild speculation. OK, as reported here in June, Google has an iTunes clone in the works. Probably works great with cell phones, unlike iTunes itself which works great with iPods (of course). KP has the inside track because they have a Google board seat, and Doerr is architecting the whole thing anyway. Enter Podshow, which gets a sweet deal with Google to provide the first apps and content for their iTunes me-too, all the while in bed with Uncle Steve on iTunes. Instant mini-bubble, Podshow goes public, Adam and Ron retire to Miami, and KP pockets the profits."

Yahoo have spent $95M on Verdisoft, Flickr, DialPad + Stadeon

buying the ticket
Originally uploaded by Merina.

Nice analysis from PaidContent, and seems Yahoo has paid Web 1.5 prices vs the MySpace Web 2.0 premiums (ie tens of millions vs hundreds) Nice Timing. From an entrepreneurs' perspective the more I read this the more I question why the first 'partnership' preference for a consumer orientated website isnt portals rather than VC : "Going through Yahoo's 10-Q for the first two quarters of this year, some interesting figures emerge: - Yahoo closed one acquisition in Q1 of this year: a software development company was bought for approximately $58 million and consisted of $54 million in cash consideration, $3 million related to stock options exchanged and $1 million of direct transaction costs. SiliconBeat recently wrote about Yahoo's buyout of Verdisoft, a mobile syncing software development company, so this has to be the one. In Q2, Yahoo bought three companies: the total estimated purchase price for all three was about $37 million and consisted of $32 million in cash consideration, $3 million related to stock options exchanged, and $2 million of incurred liabilities and direct transaction costs. That price includes the three publicly announced buyouts I could find: Flickr, DialPad, and Stadeon."

To Enterprise or Not....

Sasha Singleton
Originally uploaded by gwphoto.

Infectious Greed VC Blog posits it "is a crummy time for enterprise software companies to come public, or be funded, is the (largely correct) perception that vendors of such apps, whether horizontal or vertical, are in the phantom headache business. They are, in other words, largely trying to convince companies to buy something to heal a pain that said companies don’t think they are feeling." - With all the problems with email and collaboration within companies, RSS apps - serving a real need/vertical 'solution'(eg spanningpartners.com in RSS CRM/Salesforce integration)-will have a place in business, maybe :) OK, off to watch mylocal footy team semi-final - Rye - in semi-final and get SMS updates from Melbourne / Essendon match. Later.

del.icio.us/indeed.com VC+Kottke Disown Technorati

crisy
Originally uploaded by suspect.

Fred Wilson says "Technorati's off my blog. It's been useless anyway for the past nine months."

Kottke : "That's it. I've had it. No more Technorati. I've used the site for, what, a couple of years now to keep track of what people were saying about posts on kottke.org and searching blogs for keywords or current events. During that time, it's been down at least a quarter of the time (although it's been better recently), results are often unavailable for queries with large result sets (i.e. this is only going to become a bigger problem as time goes on), and most of the rest of the time it's slow as molasses.

When it does return results in a timely fashion for links to kottke.org, the results often include old links that I've seen before in the results set, sometimes from months ago. And that's to say nothing of the links Technorati doesn't even display. The "kottke.org" smart list in my newsreader picks up stuff that Technorati never seems to get, and that's only pulling results from the ~200 blogs I read, most of which are not what you'd call obscure. What good is keeping track of 14 million blogs if you're missing 200 well-known ones? (And trackbacks perform even better...this post got 159 trackbacks but only 93 sites linking to it on Technorati.) Over the past few months, I've been comparing the results from PubSub to those of Technorati and PS is kicking ass."

Open Source Mac Only Video RSS

This is hot ! Cant wait to get my Macs back to install. Videos thru RSS !!!! No G-Talk Windows version here. Good find KevinBurton. Screencast here. Non-linear extracts from from their site + blog :

THE CONSUMER PROBLEM :"Streaming is good and has its place, but only a small, small minority of TV and video is best delivered live (sports and, very occasionally, other live events). We will be supporting streaming, and DTV can already play any streams that Quicktime plays, but it’s not our primary focus because for now and the foreseable future, the user experience for most people sucks. Really, this goes for all web-based video, not just ’streams’: just think about how much time you’ve spent in the last 5 years waiting for videos on the web to load enough so that you could start watching. DTV moves that to the background: click to download, go do something else, and see a little green circle when it’s ready."

THE SOLUTION : "Internet TV is Open and IndependentDTV is a new, free and open-source platform for internet television and video. An intuitive interface lets users subscribe to channels, watch video, and build a video library. Our publishing software lets you broadcast full-screen video to thousands of people at virtually no cost. The project is non-profit, free and open source, and built on open standards. A Windows version of DTV and a full website are well underway and will arrive in the next several weeks.

FOR MAC : The Channel Guide is OpenAlong with the Mac Beta we've launched the built-in DTV Channel Guide, which already features more than 100 internet TV channels (all free), with more being added every day. Publishers of DTV-compatible channels can now submit channels to be included in the guide. If you have an RSS feed with video enclosures, your channel is already compatible (see our ideal RSS format). This beta version of DTV embeds QuickTime 7, so any video that plays in QuickTime will play in DTV. DTV suppports standard HTTP downloads as well as BitTorrent downloads. Submit your channel today!

Create a ChannelNow's the moment to make that internet TV channel you've been dreaming of. And you don't need to be a videomaker to have a great channel-- just as sites like Boing Boing and Slashdot bring together news and links from around the web, we expect that some of the most interesting and popular internet TV channels will link to video from all over the place. Broadcast Machine makes it easy to create your own channel by pulling together videos you find around the internet-- funny videos, news clips, movie trailers, or anything else. Internet TV needs some good editors, why not you? Try Broadcast Machine or make a channel of video links using del.icio.us.

"The next big thing for Broadcast Machine is a theming system to help people make cool looking video galleries. We have the system planned out pretty well and the implementation is underway. Once we have it working, we’ll probably declare Broadcast Machine 1.0."

"DTV has been nominated for Businessweek’s Best of the Web Survey in the video category. That’s pretty cool."

Broadcast Machine installs easily
Written in PHP, runs on most websites
No MySQL setup required, just ftp a folder to your site
All you need to broadcast video
Publish internet TV channels (RSS feeds)
Describe and tag your videos
Supports Creative Commons licenses
Public and private channels
Personal and community channels
Innovative one-step Bittorrent publishing (or just direct link to hosted videos)
Optional Bittorrent "server seeding"
Browsing videos is simple
Browse videos on a web page, by channel or tag
Easy BitTorrent downloads for Mac and Windows
Subscribe to channels
DTV make watching internet TV channels like having a TiVo on your desktop.."

"..I wrote yesterday about using del.icio.us to make internet TV channels. Well, another nice thing about del.icio.us + DTV is that del.icio.us users have already been making a great internet TV channel that they probably didn’t even know about. Just by adding ’system:media:video’ to the URL of the del.icio.us/popular page and grabbing the rss feed, you get a channel of the most popular videos on del.icio.us.
Subscribe to this URL to watch the channel in DTV:
http://del.icio.us/rss/popular/system:media:video.."

Six Feet Under : Yahoo Buzz Index Finale

Adriana Lima.........
Originally uploaded by suspect.

All we have at the end of the day is stats esp keyword stats, until RSS gets smarter ; "When Nate Fisher mumbled, grabbed his arm, and keeled over in the fourth-to-last episode of HBO's drama Six Feet Under, a wave of shock washed over the Buzz. We were inundated with interest in "six feet under" and "peter krause," the actor who plays Nate. But it was Rachel Griffiths, the actress who embodies Nate's on-again-off-again love Brenda, who soaked up the most attention. After that Search tsunami, we were curious to see how the Web would register the show's finale on Sunday. Would people even care? Or was this series laid to rest with Nate's untimely passing?

Well, the answer is: The show lived on. Oh boy, did it. The macabre drama that began each episode with a death initiated its last episode with a birth, faded into an eerie, over-exposed vision of the future, and more than doubled in searches. Peter Krause (+921%) and Rachel Griffiths (+237%) both rose once more at the Search box, and their co-actors Michael C. Hall (+662%) and Lauren Ambrose (+492%) also observed mighty spikes. The "six feet under finale" garnered a 477% increase, and "six feet under soundtrack" played on, soaring off the chart. Even "hbo" got a nod at +30%, thank you kindly."

Internet Values in Aust go BskyB thx2RUPE

love the outfit!
Originally uploaded by gwphoto.

The Net Valuations keep going up in Australia (eg $200M US for a realestate classifieds website ?? hello.com???) : "NEWS Limited's $2 per share takeover bid for property website realestate.com.au undervalues the company by between $51 million and $78 million, according to an independent expert's report released yesterday. NEWS Limited's $2 per share takeover bid for property website realestate.com.au undervalues the company by between $51 million and $78 million, according to an independent expert's report released yesterday.
Independent expert Lonergan Edwards & Associates said realestate.com.au was valued at between $2.48 and $2.73 per share, giving the company a market value of between $266 million and $293 million.."- OK back to the other party !

Yahoo Know it's all About Feed Syndication

vanessa marcil antes up
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

She could spend more money online, in a shorter period of home than anyone I knew. A knock on the door, with the inevitable delivery man, with not one but two trucks, was always a handy way to spend Saturday brunch. From Micro-Persuasion quoting searchenginejournal.com :

“Yahoo! is the only portal that offers such a broad array of content like - shopping, travel, music, reviews, video feeds, etc. We are excited about the opportunity to offer publishers access to this type of content, which in turn will make for a more compelling user experience for their users.”

RSS on a (late) Saturday Morning

vanessa viva las vegas
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Her slinky number from Melrose was looking a bit the worse for wear by 7am Saturday morning. Her open Choo's no longer seemed to be AWD. Stumbling around, trying to retain class she did her rendition of "Drop it like it's Hot" (I think anyway) Quoting the RSS Philosopher Nivi, she said : "RSS is an API for Content. A Web API lets you use a web site’s computers, data, algorithms, and functions to create your own web services." - All things considered she was a good grrl.

Contextual Advertising 101

Its coming up to 10 years the length I've been involved in online advertising, and below is a good overview which I've snipped on contextual ads. I'm most interested in contextual ads (ala gmail) when applied in a self-service manner to RSS feeds. I don't believe thats available publicly and listening to the Chris Pirillo podcast of adbrite founder, he said there was more demand for advertising in podcasting than in RSS. Interesting.. anyway over to Randy Schwartz who "breaks down contextual advertising into four types: search-based contextual; channel-based contextual; Behaviorally-Based Contextual; and In-Line Advertising.

1. Search-based Contextual
This type if exemplified by Google's AdSense program. The more specific the verbiage, the more likely you can control the focus of your ad environment.

2. Channel-Based Contextual
This type of advertising is similar to the ad networks created by Kanoodle and Valueclick. Keyword lists are largely irrelevant as the network will target channels and sub-channels that greatly diminish the precision of your customer profile or targeting intent. Finally, to further diversify their services, the channel-based contextual players are offering add-on premiums like geo-targeting, pay-per-call, occasionally even day-parting.

3. Behaviorally-Based Contextual
Here, the network veers away from the background content and builds user-based profiles based on a user's behavior across a network. This technology, offered by players like Tacoda and Blue Lithium, will typically leverage inventories across a narrow network of premiere publishers using their technology for in-house profiling and ad-sales.

4. In-Line Advertising
This is one of the most often maligned forms of contextual advertising and often the most intrusive. In-line advertising is developed by companies like Vibrant Media and a lot of advertisers are reluctant to work with these roll-over ads on the presumption that users are still unfamiliar and taken off-guard by the ads that arise as they innocently scroll over content. You may or may not include the Claria-types of download applications within this category

Knowing the differences across contextual ad types can help marketers more effectively leverage this medium for their campaigns, and quite possibly deal with the exponential increase in sales calls you'll receive from players which seem to be popping up every hour..."

Jessica Coen on Work, Life + How RSS Changed her Life

i agree gwen
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

From MsCoen : "I tend to handle the social stuff, but sometimes Jesse does. A lot of it is just how our schedule works, we have to be up so early and not only be awake, but writing, and it's kind of hard to have an original take when you've got a hangover. A lot of the time unless it's something particularly huge, I'm gonna send the party crashers. Also, I do Gawker all day, it's a 10-hour-a-day job -- and I'm not complaining -- but I kind of like to have my evenings to myself... I used to be like that, but then I embraced my RSS feed and it's changed my world. I hated it for about the first seven months, then I finally started using it ... but now it makes such a difference. It's good that one of us is reading blogs and one of us is focusing on mainstream stuff because we're aggregating conversations, both high and low. It's good to be focusing and criticizing and commenting on Slate and the Washington Post and everything, and it's also important to find content on these smaller Web logs because there are how many millions of people writing out there? For some people Gawker is the only blog-type thing they read, so I think it's really valuable to pick up a lot of smaller items from smaller sites and interesting quirky things that you may not see otherwise."

Get Jeff Jarvis on Letterman

get in time audience
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

"BlogPulse: What's YOUR favorite blog to read?
Jarvis:"Like a Hollywood starlet on a talk show, I never answer that question.... because I read too many and because my list of favorites changes all the time."

Quote from BusinessWeek Article :"Dude, get an Apple !"

Blogebrity think Web Based RSS Readers Suck

bruised cola waif
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

And they are right, so I cant wait till November to show a totally different del.icio.us Recommendations meets flickr clusters and interestingness for RSS, anyway this is the quote from Blogebrity who "rang the chris pirillo show" (yes we launch one Nov 1 for free BTW) :

"I asked Chris about RSS readers; I currently use NewsGator Online , because I hate Outlook and thus all the readers that latch onto it. Anyway, without going into details ( e-mail me if you must know), I'm not happy with this service or with Bloglines, and I just might buy FeedDemon or a better version of NewsGator online. I'm really surprised no one has a better web-based RSS reader. Is there a developer in the house that could build me one in 6 months for under $500?"

This makes alot of RSSense 2 Me

pink geisha + emerging crevice
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Weblogworks, I couldn't disagree, numbers look low, which is interesting : "Would you believe that 30% of companies with $50MM or more in annual revenue have RSS feeds? Another 28% indicate that they will deploy RSS feeds before the end of the year. Why?

1. Changing content increases sales and readership
2. To save money, as RSS is easier and cheaper than email

Our clients are considering using feeds throughout their businesses (not just in the marketing department) including in their CRM systems, help desks and accounting departments. RSS feeds don’t just have to point outward - inward feeds might be even more important to your business."

It's all Skype + G-Talk this Week

pink geisha in red + tatt
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

People who don't think the Skype Chainsaw on The Whole Telco market isn't worth anything to anyone is fundamentally wrong. The quote, from PaidContent who scraped The Wall Street Journal, shows why the Skype deal could double Google's revenue per user, in a theoretical relativist way, thus justifying a $3b price. "Skype CEO Niklas Zennstrom says the company would rather make $10 a year from a millions of customers than aim for a smaller base of high-paying subs. "Google has $10 average revenue per user, per year ... We want to be as good as Google or Yahoo," he told the Journal."