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Oh, those Web 2.0 companies. Whether born of a desire to be cute or because all the other domain names have been taken there are some seriously creative naming efforts. Or are they? As The Other End of the Telescope posits all those entrepreneurs are just stealing their latest company name from their preschooler focus groups.
Think you can tell what’s a real Web 2.0 company and which is just babble 2.0? Go take the poll and find out.
The number of ways that Sony has abandoned its PlayStation fans is tremendous and can be overwhelming if recapped in straight text. However, put it to music and you have a palpable condemnation of next generation console blunders.
… And the lion will lay down with the lamb… and have wine at a fancy upscale restaurant… or something. Given the chuckles I’m guessing they’re not discussing the latest round of “PC vs Mac” ads or lackluster Vista sales.
Hat tip, GeekSugar
Senator Ted Stevens, here seen warding off the web and its cadre of ’spiders’.
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Ted Stevens, when not contemplating how the Internet is a series of tubes, is busy coming up with helpful, well-thought out legislation. Case in point? He’s newly introduced Senate bill 49 which would require any school that receives federal money to block access to ‘interactive’ web sites. Given that that we live in the age of the ‘read/write’ web the vaguely worded legislation would apparently ban students from the web itself… or at least that wily misbegotten haven for ill repute, Wikipedia (Preston Gralla, speaking on Computer World):
There are so many things wrong with this bill, it’s hard to count them all. But its greatest irony would be banning Wikipedia — perhaps the most widely used reference resource in the world — from libraries and schools. I have plenty of problems with Wikipedia, including how easily it can be manipulated, and the way that student rely on it far too heavily. But ban an educational resource merely because it’s interactive? If true, it’s bizarre beyond comprehension.
I’ll admit, I didn’t jump on the ‘Internet is Made of Tubes’ T-shirt bandwagon the first go around because I thought Stevens would quickly move back to his first love, bridges to nowhere. I was wrong. We need a Militant Geek anti-Steven shirt stat! Any ideas?
One of the beauties of being a blogger is the ability to take a selected short snippet from a seemingly benign article and blow it up into something worthy of a Chicken-Little treatise. With a little extra effort we can turn those same snippets into a full fledged game. Below you’ll find a series of phrases taken from a recent online tit-for-tat. Playing along is simple - is the the following about Microsoft Vista or a Valentine romp gone horribly awry? You be the judge:
hint: explaining the weakness as a “design choice.”
The latest, greatest version of Democracy, the Internet TV platform, has been released. The notable changes in version 0.95 include:
Democracy is free so give it a try today.
Update: Well, whatever is being shoved into the ZeFrank enclosure still produces audio and flickers of video when resizing the window. WallStrip, on the other hand, now seems to be included correctly.
From Tony Walsh, writer of the excellent Clickable Culture Blog:
Doomed Microsoft operating system “Vista” launched within the virtual world Second Life last month. Last week, Linden Lab informed consumers that its Second Life client software doesn’t work reliably with Vista. According to the company, a new (Vista-unfriendly) version client software is “just about ready”–after this release, Linden Lab will “start the process of ensuring that Second Life runs under Vista.”
The blog of the marketing guy behind the ’synergy’ is also a hoot. Not only is the irony of advertising Vista in a game that doesn’t work with it lost, but associating the OS with with a “gentleman’s club” is also apparently a good idea.
Closing the line is the Liquid Dreams club. An industrial strip joint with a load of Lords of Acid fans. They were amongst the first to literally beg to become a partner, and they’ve been arranging ad space with most of their partnering malls and clubs. These guys are overjoyed to be part of our little initiative.
Of course, maybe if Vista had more to do with strip clubs and less to do with incremental usability improvements there would have been more demand at launch.
Say that you’re the world’s largest software company. Now suppose that you’ve just released your latest operating system to less than rave reviews. There are some nice things about it but the universal consensus by consumers is to wait and ‘upgrade’ when they buy a new machine. It now sounds like those users who snooze will lose out Vista completely.
Robert McMillan, writing for the IDG News Service and appearing on PCWorld, states that Vienna, the brand new OS after Vista will be delivered in 2009. That gives Vista a shelf life of a little over two years - or even less than that for those waiting for the first major service pack (Fuji) before upgrading. Of course, with such a small time frame Microsoft must practically have the thing written right? What are the features? Ben Fathi, corporate vice president of development with Microsoft’s Windows Core Operating System Division, what can we expect?
According to Fathi, that’s still being worked out. “We’re going to look at a fundamental piece of enabling technology. Maybe its hypervisors, I don’t know what it is,” he said. “Maybe it’s a new user interface paradigm for consumers.”
‘Interface paradigm’? Hypervisors? Sure sounds like Vienna is treading water to me.
Jennifer O’Loughlin, if you believe the story from Hawaii’s Channel 8, is one of those feel good stories of the year: single mom goes online, creates a business, and pulls herself and family off of welfare. I guess they missed the part about Jennifer running one of Second Life’s most successful prostitution venues.
Jennifer O’Loughlin started out her road to nefarious riches with a $4,000 welfare grant. She turned that money into an adult nightclub (’The Edge’) which, by her own admission, made more than a quarter of a million dollars in 2006. Just how did she do it? In an archived interview from 2005, our Hallmark heroine explains her keys to success:
“Yes,” Jenna says earnestly, “booty is a very, very basic need.” She laughs. “People come into Second Life and need to find their basic needs, before they want to grow. Safety, food are needs in real life– belonging and booty are needs in Second Life.”
In real life a brothel owner would be the stuff of scandal and shame. Throw in a virtual world, however, and Jennifer O’Loughlin becomes the Channel 8 Young Girl Role Model of the Year.
