NSFW: 404 Alcohol Not Found (Or, Social Media is Overrated, but it’s Helped me Stay Sober)
Gladwell concedes this point too – referring to Clay Shirky’s story of a New York man who used social media to track down – and shame – the kid who stole his cellphone. Good for him! Gladwell also points to the slightly more heartwarming case of Sameer Bhatia who used Facebook to encourage people to join a bone-marrow registry in order that he might find a donor to aid his treatment for myelogenous leukemia. A little over 400 days ago, the selfish assistance I needed from a large number of people was in helping me give up drinking. And, as with most effective social media campaigns, what I needed those people to do was virtually nothing.
- An interviewee tells Mike to go fuck himself, unironically. - Loic LeMeur refers to his French origins in a self-deprecating way. - An interviewee tells Mike Arrington to go fuck himself, ironically. - It becomes obvious that Robert Scoble is Tweeting rather than judging the pitches. - A Startup Battlefield entrepreneur thanks a judge for a “great question” and then proceeds not to answer it. - An entrepreneur name-checks Mike during their pitch in the mistaken belief this will help their chances.
NSFW: TechCrunch Disrupt: The Drinking Game
NSFW: Sorry Deathhackers; Life Is Short, And So It Should Be
A few months ago I finished writing my book about living in hotels – a second memoir by the age of thirty, which is unwarranted by any measure. My deadline was January 1st, but I finally scraped past the finish line somewhere around the start of March. The truth is, I didn’t need the extra time: I’d already had a year to write the thing, and much of that time was spent dicking around in the name of “additional research”, most of which never made it into the final manuscript.
And yet, commentators like Masnick and O’Neill and entrepreneurs like Gebbia are so enraptured by the cult of “Disruption” – that any use of the Internet to circumvent the traditional way of doing things is inherently good – that they can’t help but see the new law as The Man standing in the way of Progress. Or as Masnick puts it “the hotels, which have their high prices and don’t like the competition.” They simply can’t contemplate the heretical idea that sometimes The Man is right, and that some of his laws are created for good reason. That not everyone on the Internet is a Gawker-reading, fixie riding hipster who just wants to share his space with weary travelers for a few bucks extra pot money.
NSFW: Sorry AirBnB Hipsters, I’ll Take Health and Safety Over the Cult of Disruption
NSFW: Never Mind The Bollocks – Why Carol Bartz Can’t Say What Y
In Bartz’s defence, Armstrong’s answer was just as meaningless, skirting what AOL is and instead describing what he hopes it will one day become. Armstrong’s answer was accurate in the same way that I could accurately answer the question “Who is Paul Carr?” by saying “Paul Carr aims to be the multi-millionaire author of a slew of best-selling books, written between bouts of pornographic sex with Scarlet Johansson.”
NSFW: Weezer, plane crashes and everything else that’s worrying
And yet despite the obvious differences between the two groups -the kids down there and the grown ups up here – there is one thing we have in common. Almost everyone – young or old – has a phone in their hand. As befits their demographic, the kids are using their Nokias as cameras – pointing them at the stage in anticipation of their heroes’ arrival. And as befits our demographic, we grown ups are using our iPhones to tweet that same anticipation , but only – of course – after we’d checked in to the venue on Foursquare.
NSFW: After Fort Hood, another example of how ‘citizen journalis
Maj Malik A Hassan. He shouldn’t have died. He should be in the worst suffering of his life. It’s too fair for him to just die. Bastard!
Je vois que je ne suis pas le seul à apprécier cet auteur :-) by PED Dec 1
NSFW: Give me ad-free conversations, or give me death (please RT
READ MORE 1) There is such a thing as a ‘key learning’, a phrase which I heard at least three times during the day, and which I gather is what an ‘opinion’ becomes when spoken by an idiot. I’ll get back to my own contribution in a moment, but first, as a courtesy to my paymasters, I should probably relate a few of my ‘key learnings’ from the event. The important thing is that Erick had asked me to help moderate his panel about marketing within ‘real-time streams’ , which is a subject close to my heart.
Thanksgiving: a displaced Brit writes…
But apparently I’d got the wrong end of the stick. Having consulted Wikipedia , it turns out that today is not about mundane expression of gratitude, but rather about big-ticket Thank-yous. For friends, family, a baby’s laugh, spreadable cheese. Stuff that really makes it a joy to be alive, and living in the home of the brave. In just under an hour, I’m heading out to my first ever Thanksgiving dinner; I gather there will be turkey involved, and sweet potatoes – whatever they might be.
No. And nothing. Will News Corp Remove Its Content From Google, And If So What Will It Mean For The World?
NSFW: 1200 words absolutely, definitely not about Rupert Murdoch
NSFW: Cherchez la fame – or why the media’s obsession with Twitt
Despite having checked Smith in and allowed him to board, the Southwest flight crew suddenly decided – just before takeoff – that he was (in his words) ‘too fat to fly’. In front of hundreds of passengers they escorted him off the flight. None of the crew realised he was a celebrity – he’s really only famous to stoners and people who have watched Die Hard 4 – so to them he was just a fat dude who needed to be dealt with.
“Just wait and see” said the fanboys, “wait till you get your hands on an iPad before you jump to judgment.” “Hmmm,” I said, “Ok…” It was a question, frankly, not worthy of an answer. Or at least not one that wasn’t accompanied by a roll of the eyes.
NSFW: I Admit It, The iPad Is A Kindle Killer. I Just Wish It We
NSFW: Facebook Breached My Privacy, And Other Things That Whiny,
Likewise every day thousands – millions – of college students upload photographs to Facebook, labouring under the assumption that only their friends will care to look for them. Every day those same students attend parties and pose for digital photographs, knowing full well that they’ll end up online, but again assuming that no-one but their social circle will care to track them down. Subsequent wailing about privacy settings on Facebook or any other social network is at best a red herring, at worst disingenuous bullshit. “Oh, but my Facebook account is private…. but my Twitter stream is locked!”
NNSFW: A Column Written In Five Minutes About Stuff That Mattere
“Is your child at risk from Friendster paedophiles?” “DARPANET: the enemy within” “AOL sign-up disks: can they give you cancer?” “Jennifer Ringley: the new face of Altavista”
