Militant Geek Custom Shirts

Jason Calacanis is a pretty outspoken guy; something that leads him to say some incredibly dumb things. Perhaps that’s why he’s adopted an ‘email only’ interview policy. Email gives him a chance to see the questions first, quietly reflect, carefully balance prevailing opinions, and then say his dumb stuff anyway.

The policy, however, seems egregious to the Wired staff. In a post by Dylan Tweney he refers to the fat blogger as ‘cowardly’. He then rambles on in what’s supposed to be a hilarious recap of Wired’s technical (or lack thereof) prowess.

*sigh. Email was so 1999. If they really wanted to do a cutting edge interview they would log into second life, dress their avatars as furries, and head over to the IBM island. I hear its pretty empty. That way Calacanis could have all the privacy he wanted… to continue to say something dumb.

Amanda Congdon, everyone’s favorite vlogger of questionable humor, got in trouble earlier this year for confusing professional unbiasedness with personal gain. After the debate you’d think that Amanda would at least allow some time for tempers to cool off. Of course, this is Congdon we’re talking about. Rather than letting a minor fracas become buried beneath the dandruff of headier pursuits she pours gasoline on the fire. We’ve suggested that Amanda suffered from some kind of vanity complex in the past. Given that the video has two versions of Amanda discussing Amanda’s affairs I think we’ve got confirmation.

And she’s not done endorsing products either. Last November a luke warm reception awaited the Beatles Love album, a collection of half hearted remixes meant to continue Sir Paul’s post-matrimony warchest. As industry veteran Bob Lefsetz’s review stated:

I think it’s sacrilegious. Leave well enough, leave SUPERIOR, alone. What’s next, recutting “On The Waterfront”? “Gone With The Wind”? Do we really need classic tracks remixed?

“Strawberry Fields Forever” has got none of the bizarre magic of the original. “Octopus’ Garden”? The shittiest track on “Abbey Road”. Couldn’t they have used “Act Naturally” if they needed a Ringo cut? Well, no, then they’d have to pay royalties to someone ELSE, since it’s a cover and the writer isn’t in the band.

I’m thinking nothing’s sacred. It’s only about dough. And didn’t George Martin go on record he retired because he couldn’t hear anymore?

Which brings us to yesterday’s ‘news’ from Amanda’s ABC show. She’s wearing a T-Shirt for the reviled album which, taken by itself, just further demonstrates her impeccable taste. However, on the exact same day another geek favorite, Cali Lewis happens to wear a Beatles shirt on her show?

Could it be that two of the most popular objects of geek affection happened to wear Beatles promotional items on the same day? With the album out months ago and the Beatles having yet to announce when they’ll be on iTunes the timing of such a subversive campaign seems odd. However, given Amanda’s past we won’t put it past her if there were favors traded at some point.

Ah Amanda, perhaps only your self-absorbed self may know the true answer.

Nobody has every accused MilitantGeek of prematurely jumping on a bandwagon - probably because we’re too crass to count and those RSS readers are bots. However, all the self-righteous kids are complaining about how useless Twitter is. So what better time for MilitantGeek to get on board! Since this site is pretty much useless combining it with Twitter is the esoteric equivalent of peanut butter and jelly!

If you Twitter just go to http://twitter.com/MilitantGeek and add the user as a friend. You’ll get all the vitriol of Militant Geek in an easy to consume 140 characters on your cell phone, IM client, or (*yawn) browser. And when Twitter collapses under its own lack of a business model we’ll be there!

By now you’ve probably heard about Twitter, the service that has taken people willing to blog about their cat (and the fools that listen to them) to a whole new level. Since Twitter is devoted to demonstrating just how sad a person can be in 140 characters or less we thought it would extremely hard to tell twitter ‘tweets’ from celebrity quotes. We call this game Twit or Twitter - and the answers are below the picks. Good luck!

1. “Irony is 4 people who dont do anything.”
2. “I go out with friends, but I don’t have time to get in trouble.”
3. “Court is going to suck.”
4. “Am I really that vain? Why do I need to listen to my latest show twice in one day? Will I say anything different?”
5. “I think the biggest misconception about me is that I’m this spoiled brat. But I’m not. I’m, like, the total opposite.”
6. “Fame is so volatile!”
7. “I hate the taste of alcohol, when I’m drinking, I’m drinking Red Bull.”
8. “I just ate some 4 day old cold sushi… vomiting might happen”
9. “I have always wanted to travel across seas, like to Canada and stuff.”
10. “I’m so smart now, everyone is always like, ‘Take your top off.’ Sorry, no! They always want to get that money shot. I’m not stupid.”

Answers:

1. Twitter
2. Twit (Britney Spears)
3. Twitter
4. Twitter
5. Twit (Paris Hilton)
6. Twitter
7. Twit (Paris Hilton)
8. Twitter
9. Twit (Britney Spears)
10. Twit (Paris Hilton)

Amanda “My Friends Say I’m Funny” Congdon is one of the online-only oddities that will be the butt of some obscure trivia game of the future. She rose to prominence by being a busty fish in a tiny, male-dominated pond and parleyed the buzz into a mediocre ABC show of the obvious. Apparently that gig pays rather poorly - as CNet reports she’s also doing ‘infotainment’ for that wacky cornerstone of entertainment excellence… DuPont? Shilling for a corporation has some in the traditional journalism industry (i.e. those who haven’t cut side deals with the companies they cover) chaffing:

…by working for ABC News, even as a video blogger, I think she has become part of the world of journalism.

And so her next comment does not do her justice: “Isn’t that what new media is all about? Breaking the rules? Setting our own? I see nothing wrong with doing commercials…As Sarah Silverman would say, ‘I’d do it again.’ In a heartbeat. Bring on the endorsements.”

That attitude is more one of someone intent on being a performer, not a journalist.

What? wait… Congdon as a performer? I think she better stay with her day job.

Web 2.0 Survey T-Shirts Only $15.99

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.

If you haven’t heard there’s something of a game today. Of course, if your surfing the Internet right now instead of enjoying a beer and chicken wing stupor you probably don’t much care. Let’s get a new week of tech mediocrity kicked off with the play by play of what came before:

• Vista launches…
• …and most don’t care…
• …Especially Romania, who’s President, Traian Basescu, told Bill Gates that pirated software was responsible for his country’s vibrant technology industry. And you thought that Bill Gates ran off the set of the Daily show fast…
• But don’t be fooled. Vista is revolutionary. With Vista’s voice recognition technology Microsoft has created an entirely new way of being hacked. You no longer need to know arcane bits of code to destroy a computer - with Vista you only have to talk to it.
• Apple’s iTunes (now illegal in Norway due to its own monopolistic behavior) currently doesn’t work on Vista. Apple’s advice? Just keep the OS purchase on hold and we’ll get back to you. It’s not like they knew that Vista was coming out this past week… or that they had six years to do something about it.
• It was revealed that Verizon had first crack at the Apple iPhone two years ago and they passed .
• John Jantsch from Duct Tape Marketing tries to get senior execs at LinkedIn, the professional equivalent of a pyramid scheme, to explain what it’s good for.
  

  They responded by telling me they were pretty busy but my chances of getting to participate would improve if I used their system to get referred to one of their executives.

• Technorati launches a Digg clone named WTF. Even Technorati observers are asking the same thing. The sound heard immediately after the stunned confusion is Technorati further sliding into obsolescence.
• Sweden launches embassy in Second Life. Attracting those who participate in Furry S&M is apparently a priority for their tourism industry.
• On NewTeeVee there’s a piece about Amanda Congdon, a person that everybody thought was a big fish; turns out she was big only because she came from the teeny tiny pond. As the piece by Steve Bryant says:
  

  If you’re looking for a reason why Congdon’s reporting has taken a turn for the retarded lately, scuttlebutt has it that she’s still shellshocked from her move to L.A.

  Shocker #1: Congdon’s reporting? Shocker #2: a turn for the worse? The former host of Rocketboom has always been painfully forced, at best. People keep saying she’s a brilliant, articulate person foiling the image of the vapid ‘pretty face behind a desk’. But dumb humor + smart blonde = dumb blonde.

All good things have to come to an end. While Kevin Rose continues to raise money for Digg with his boyish good looks and thumbs of investor delight many others are suffering fates much less glamorous than BS BusinessWeek cover stories. This is another in our continued round up on Burst 2.0 news:

• Two more executives try to put as much distance between them and the video sharing Guba website as possible. This is after the CEO, Thomas McInerney, left in December. All of that happened after Thomas had a glowing fluff piece about him in the November issue of Fast Company. Oh, how quickly times change. The picture that ran with the article apparently depicted the number of people visiting their website.
• John Gotts paid $3 million for the Wiki.com domain name to be paid in $10,000 monthly installments. He declared he was “going to kill Wikipedia”. Now, just a few months later, Wiki.com redirects to Wikia, the for-profit arm behind Wikipedia. Oops! From Techcrunch.
• ShoutCentral, a MySpace-like site that has set the world on fire with approximately 1000 users, is now for sale on eBay. The opening bid was $100. Maybe the developer should have looked up John Gotts number and pitched it as a Facebook killer. News via Mashable.
• Bezos, that Amazon tycoon of Bubble 1.0 whose company didn’t stop loosing money until Bubble 2.0, has unveiled his new mushroom house rocket. I suppose harnessing the best and brightest geek minds for a vanity space projects is a better use of their time than, say, selling groceries online.

Breaking news via the Great GigaOM himself says that Seattle based Jobster will be cutting up to half its 145 workforce in 2007. The company raised tens of millions of venture capital but still hasn’t gained mind market share in the minds of job seekers or providers.

The Pros:

• That Joster waited until after the holiday season to let people go. It’s pretty easy to do, but that puts them ahead of AOL in my book.

The Cons:

• This is the third Emerald City startup to ‘realign its workforce’. The others included Blue Dot and Vizrea (mental note, don’t name a company that rhymes with diarrhea).
• People close to Jobster describe the situation as ‘fluid’. Don’t insult people’s intelligence. Call it what it is without the marketing speak and we’d all be a lot better off.

Not to make light of layoffs but does anyone else fine it ironic that employees of a job matching website are now jobless? Would they be more inclined to use Jobster’s services, or less?

Ho-Boy! There have been a lot of high profile reorganization of the corporate org charts lately. Without further ado lets recap the latest in big business musical chairs!

• Yahoo Yawwn! Parody T-Shirts in the Militant Geek Tee Shop - Starting at $15.99

  Yahoo finally got some good news: Google was pulling out of the online answers game, an area where they were directly competing with Yahoo. It was the first victory in the press that Yahoo! has gotten in a long time - their problem lately being perceived as loosers rather than actual financial looses. Before people could get too excited Yahoo! promptly pulled a play from the book of lame and stuffed existing management into each other’s jobs. Bold. Only one real player, Llyod Braun, is moving on to another ship.

• eBay, unlike Yahoo!, knows how to make a shakeup. It axed the entire business development part of its Skype division. People are still wondering what eBay saw in the European VOIP software that warranted a $4 billion price tag. Must not have been the talking heads.
• Next HP is dumping Larry Sonsini, once one of the most powerful lawyers in Silicon Valley. Turns out advising your paranoid clients that tapping phone calls was ok is a bad career move.
• Bram Cohen is gone from BitTorrent, the company he started in his bedroom. The company raised $20 million to pursue deals with major content provides; a business move that is no sure bet. In my mind I like to picture Bram, himself an uber nerd, storming out of the smoke filled board room in righteous disgust. In reality, however, his ouster probably has many more dollar signs written on it.