Some more stuff for the long weekend

Apparently everyone in Silicon Valley in on drugs. That explains a lot. Also - I want some!

Stinking rich hedge fund managers drink at little dive bars in NYC - they're just like us!

A not very funny interview with the very funny Sacha Baron Cohen.

And a review of a book that sounds very interesting to me.

Year end market summary

Today's Wallstrip. Kind of stupid but slightly amusing.

Take the Wallstrip survey!

There are only two vlogs I watch regularly - this one and Webb Alert. We already know my feelings on Morgan however I actually find this one entertaining and informative.

Some stuff from yesterday

Interesting article on Starbucks, from the NYT.

Goldman reports huge profits. Average bonus to be about $600k. Why didn't I get a job there? Oh yeah, it was because of the ridiculous work hours and the fact that I don't think I'd fit in at an i-bank as I am not a total ass. But interesting article.

Carl from Aqua Teen on the Mitchell Report:

Dave Winer giving some good thoughts on software design. Very interesting stuff.

A less interesting article on how much money people make in NYC.

Squidoo, Knols and Wikipedia.

And about drug addicted doctors. Lovely. Something else to worry about.

Some tidbits for Monday

Google is launching something called "knols" which are basically a cross between Mahalo, Wikipedia and Squidoo. TechCrunch has some good thoughts on this idea.

From Valleywag comes Google CEO Eric Schmidts latest extramarital relationship.

Philip Kaplan, founder of AdBrite, is apparently the same Pud that everyone loved to hate back in the last bubble when he was doing Fucked Company. Good for him. AdBrite seems like a pretty solid service.

Is the Wii shortage bad planning on Nintendo's part or a smart scheme to build up buzz? While the former may seem incredibly stupid I believe it to be the case, as people are buying other gaming systems when they can't get a Wii.

Update on GoDaddy Situation

I now have my domains parked at a couple different places - parked.com, sedo.com and I'm waiting for confirmation on another.

I like parked.com the best so far because it has the nicest interface - not as nice as GoDaddy's but way better features. The only thing I don't like is that you don't get ads right away - you get a list of categories, related words, etc. which you have to click on to get ads.

I am going to start transferring my domains elsewhere when the registrations start to expire on March of 2008. I am trying to find a cheap registrar but the only ones cheaper than GoDaddy are places I've never heard of like MadDog, PlanetOnline, ipowerweb, netfirms, and some others.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to cheap, good registrars?

How GoDaddy screwed me and why I am done with them

A few months ago I started using GoDaddy's cashparking program. It basically lets you put Google ads on your parked domains, which GoDaddy does anyway, but they give you a cut of the amount you make. So you pay them $3.99 a month to get a cut of the money they make off of your domain anyway.

It doesn't sound like such a good deal... Why use it? Why not just park your own domain? Well Google's AdSense for Domains is closed and you would have to set up each individual domain on it's own. And it wasn't such a bad deal. After two months I had added all 100 or so off my domains to this program, and I was making a couple hundred a month.

A few weeks ago I started having problems with some of the CashParked pages. Some were showing blank, others were showing links which did not work. I was in frequent contact with GoDaddy's tech support and they were unable to help me and Google still has not responded to me. But I spent a lot of time looking at my domains and clicking on them - and getting errors for each click.

Last night I receive an email from GoDaddy saying that due to a pattern of fraudulent activity they were suspending my account. I have no idea what that pattern may be other than my testing the sites constantly for about two weeks. And here's the kicker - they not only cancel my account, they also keep the money they owe me, and any unpaid money as well. They pay about a month or two behind so they are keeping two or three months of my money.

I can easily find another registrar with a similar program, and I actually did find a third party that offers a much better deal than GoDaddy. But I liked GoDaddy. Well, I don't like them any more. Unless they get this resolved I am going to transfer all of my domains elsewhere, at great expense to me, just to prove a point.

I read an interview with GoDaddy's CEO, whose name I can not recall, and he was very much into customer service and providing the user with a great experience. His name is Bob Parons. Well this is a spectacular example of screwing the user and not providing any decent service. I have not been able to get any information on what patterns they saw that caused them to do this, I have gotten no response regarding my requests for them to look at my emails to tech support.

So basically GoDaddy just stole my money. I am extremely angry and I will not ever register anything with GoDaddy again. I'd rather pay the extra money elsewhere and be dealing with a registrar who is not going to screw me over and steal my money.

Isn't this time of year supposed to be slow?

The traditional holiday slow-down is not occurring at my job, so I haven't had time to keep up with the news or post here. I'm living on Provigil, which is the greatest thing ever. Except that I am totally exhausted when it wears off.

Some tidbits to hold you over until my workload eases up:

Fark allegedly tries to trademark NSFW. Good luck with that.

On the future of Ajax.

New startup does something to help people decide whether to buy or rent. I haven't quite figured out what that is yet or how it works, but it's a cool idea for people living in big, expensive cities.

Silicon Alley Insider names Top 100 Most Influential people, and there's also a "People's Choice" with less votes than nominees.

Robert Scoble leaves PodTech. Why this is interesting I have no idea. I have never heard of PodTech outside the confines of Scoble.

Fred Wilson throws a party? Why wasn't I invited? Maybe I should have nominated myself to the Silicon Alley Insider's 100 most influential people list.

Facebook's guerilla marketing bible or some such ridiculous thing.

Random Stuff for the Weekend

Carl from Aqua Teen discussing sports and just being awesome in general:

Reporter tests airline security by blowing up a plane, from the ONN:


Reporters Expose Airport Security Lapses By Blowing Up Plane

Old cartoon mashup of X-Men's Juggernaut. Something to do with the latest Brett Ratner craptacular movie. My boss loves Juggernaut so I find this amusing:

Google Adsense Outage?

A bunch of my domains that run AdSense are showing up with:

Sorry, there are no results for your search. Search again

I don't know if there is a problem with the keywords, or if there is an outage or what. A bunch of my other domains are working fine. It seems to be about half of them that are not working.

Does anyone know what is going on? I emailed Google this morning but no response.

Web 2.0 Bubble Song and Video

Plus Facebook Beacon steals and transmits data around. There's a surprise.

And an article about how Facebook is dying! I like this guy! Let the feeding frenzy begin.

And here is my comment on the article linked above:

I agree that the article is correct. I have been saying the exact same thing for months now - and I am not a member of the press.

The problem is not that Facebook doesn't play nice with the press. The problem is that it has very little revenue and with advertisers jumping ship now that will likely stay the same or go down in the future.

The thing is that while everyone uses Facebook - people don't seem to click on ads on it. That is not an opinion, check the research or take a look at Facebook's revenue, which is expected to be $150 mil for 2007, which is not a whole lot for a company valued at $15b.

If things start to go bad and the VCs jump ship Facebook will be hung out to dry with no way of raising capital. I don't think they will go out of business but I would expect them to be bought by a Microsoft or something.

Jakob and Julia Parody from Vimeo

Jakob and Julia from Loren Feldman on Vimeo.

And Hank Azaria discussing the Simpsons with some random guy:



And there were some bikini pictures of Jennifer Love Hewitt and apparently she was getting grief for being fat? Well she has a decent and intelligent response. I hate this culture that makes women think that anything bigger than a size 0 is fat. I don't know a single man who doesn't like a nice curvy woman. Actually I do know one but that's not a lot!

And finally, the internets cats and dogs are going on strike to support the WGA:



UPDATE - Valleywag knows why Jakob was really fired, and it has nothing to do with Julia's breasts or bong hits! They speculate that it is because no one actually uses Vimeo. Even though it is technically better than YouTube no users is not good.

And that is all I have to say on this subject.

Vimeo and an Employee

So apparently a few days ago one of Vimeo's founders left the company after a tiff with IACI President Barry Diller. I'm not going to name this guy because every time I do he comes here and writes a stupid post, but here is a picture of him doing a bong hit. Apparently this picture has something to do with his exit.

As does this one, allegedly of his girlfriend Julia Allison's breasts, which I like very much:



Good for him. Sticking it to the man. Except he doesn't have a job now. And oh yeah... Bong hits are cool because we are all 15 years old. Drugs are cool! Unemployment is cool! Julia's breasts I can't really comment sarcastically about because they are cool, very cool.

Noncompete Clauses, Advertising and Natalie Del Conte

Natalie Del Conte is moving to NY! Sweet! She is so cute. Although I will likely never meet her it is nice knowing that she is close by.

AdBrite is switching AVN Ads over to Black Label Ads and Etology is taking over AVN Ads. I use both AdBrite and Etology so it doesn't really effect me at all.

Fred Wilson on why start-ups fail, from a VCs perspective.

Some guy wants to get rid of non-compete clauses. That would be nice as I have one in my contract. However I have heard that they are extremely difficult to enforce from the company's perspective. Apparently the courts are not too keen on letting companies deny people the right to make a living. Something about the Constitution.

Guitar Hero

Guitar Hero - everyone loves it, but I just don't get it. On today's Wallstrip Lindsay asks a good question - "Why not just learn to play the real guitar?" I already know how to play guitar and while I might be a decade or so out of practice I think that playing Guitar Hero would just confuse my real guitar playing.

Are there any people out there who know how to play the real guitar who also play guitar hero? Doesn't it seem a bit silly if you can actually play the instrument to play a video game where you push buttons?

Feedback or comments would be greatly appreciated.

Here is the Wallstrip in question:



And here is a text message I got from a friend/coworker who is really into Guitar Hero last night: "going to be laate. Drunkar sis weddimg"

Writers Strike

As the writers strike continues, actors are forced into less scripted stuff:



Incest on Gray's Anatomy? I've never seen it and have no plans to.

Someone else hates Apple! Although Fred Wilson does so for very different reasons than I do. And he actually buys their products. And not used on eBay.

Facebook gives a little on it's Beacon program.

Some girl from some reality show I have never seen who I have never heard of gives an interview which doesn't interest me in the least.

Ning, which I am familiar with, and Flux, which I have never heard of - a point by point comparison.

Hybrid Cars

Interesting comparison of hybrids. I keep arguing with my wife about our next car, which is still a few years away. I think it would be irresponsible to not get a hybrid, especially with gas prices as they are. She wants a big, fancy, expensive gas guzzler though. I will win this fight because she hates filling up her car now, and gas prices are only going to go up.

Meth Lab in Westchester

Croton-on-Hudson meth lab? Really? Wow.

American Apparel Ad

Is this a real ad or a fake? Hats off to whoever did it, which way it was.

Spamato and Thunderbird

For the last 10 years or so I've had to change my email address every 2-3 years because the spam became unmanageable. I tried using disposable email for each place I put my email but it's a huge pain in the butt to have to create an alias and set it up each time a site wants an email address.

So I started using collective disposable emails. I would use the same address for a bunch of places and then change it when the spam got too bad. I kept my personal addresses separate. The problem is that there are a few emails I actually want to see in the thousands of spams and unless I go to every single site and update my reg info I won't get those if I just toss the whole address.

Recently, overwhelmed by unmanageable spam and frustrated with deleting mail constantly from my Treo I downloaded and installed Spamato for Thunderbird. It works pretty well, and is highly customizable, but it is missing a few features that would make it really top-notch.

I have it set to need 3 spam rule matches to mark a message as spam. The highest number of matches I've ever seen has been 5 out of 8. Some of my valid messages come in as 3s or 4s though. I don't know if Spamato checks my address book but if it doesn't, that would be a really neat feature. Any email from anyone in my address book is automatically OK.

The other problem is that once I sort through the incoming mail and make sure it is all junk I still need to delete it from the server manually. This is more a Thunderbird issue, but I would like to ability to delete mail from the Trash and the server or just from the Trash. Everything I confirm as Junk is deleted from the server, and everything else that is deleted and is not junk stays on the server.

The last thing that would be nice is a better way to sort messages in the logs. It is in the Spamato logs that you can mark ham as spam or vice versa. Currently I have to search through the log, so adding filter options to filter by date, subject, sender, etc. would make my life a lot easier.

If anyone knows of any better spam filters let me know. I don't want to have to continue to change my email address every few years however, even with Spamato, I still have to delete email from my Treo if I want to get the valid emails when I am not in the office.

I also get a ton of IM spam but one thing at a time...

Busy at work... Here are some snippets

Fat kid avoids ridicule by swimming with his shirt on, from the ONN:


Fat Kid Successfully Avoids Ridicule By Swimming With Shirt On

Mouse vs Elephant, from MythBusters:

Mouse v elephant
Uploaded by krupis

Breaking news: Mark Zuckerberg is still a smug little shit.

Video about the writer's strike:



Classmates.com goes public, makes no money and has no users.

The long awaited gDrive may finally see the light of day.

Fake Steve Jobs book comes out and gets good reviews from the WSJ.

WiFi and Julia Allison

Geek Shirt detects WiFi. Awesome.

A video of my internet crush, Julia Allison. I know if I ever met her in person I wouldn't like her but she's kind of cute, in the same way that Top 40 songs that you hear over and over and over are memorable. Via Valleywag:


Lip Dub!! Disney's Little Mermaid - Part of Your World on Vimeo.

Happy Thanksgiving

Back Soon

Taking a short break due to overwhelming workload and the upcoming holiday. Will be back soon.

Friday Again at Last

An interview with the founder of Etsy. Like the site, find the guy to be an ass though. Not on Zuckerbergian levels but an ass none the less. We actually got some really nice stuff from Etsy.

A studio exec's point of view on the writers strike:



Apparently email is dying. With teenagers or something. They prefer IM. Or Twitter. Or something. I tried Twitter, I found it largely useless, although others like Dave Winer seem to find it useful. Email is not going to go away, no matter what the idiots at Slate.com say. IM, SMS and Twitter might be good for teenagers trying to plan their social life but will absolutely never work for professionals trying to run their businesses for a variety of reasons. There's a discussion board on this article but I got bored before I even started reading it.

Some Weird Stuff

This is sad and eerily fascinating at the same time. All this poor guy needed was some Vitamin A?

This is just weird. A man marrying a dog. Sounds like a real prick, too. Poor dog.

And another man has sex with bicycles. Huh?

And a bonus - Bonnie Fuller on motherhood, fame and idiotic bad parents.

Wednesday Round-up

Rupert might actually make the WSJ's content available for free! Joy! Oh wait... I hate reading papers online. Hurts my eyes and my brain. So... meh, I guess.

What the Rackspace transformer explosion might look like, via Valleywag.

Robert Scoble's comments on the gPhone.

Something about Facebook and OpenSocial. I really don't even read most of this stuff.

Apparently Internet advertising is huge and growing. Why can't I see some of those dollars? Please...

Google is trying to get people to develop software for it's new phone... But they haven't given out any phones or a single line of code yet. I don't even know that the phones exist. So you people have fun with that. Actually a few people do have the code or the phone or whatever it is.

Apparently Friendster could have bought Facebook back when they were starting out. Unfortunately for them they did not. However once Facebook crashes and burns they will be happy that they did not.

Random Crap For Tuesday

Apparently fat girls are smarter than skinny ones. Something to do with Omega fatty acids. However they were discussing size 8-10 being fat. That's crazy. Size 8 is nice, size 16 is maybe fat.

Damien Hurst's exhibit is opening soon. It's called "A Bunch of Dead Animals" or something.

From the ONN, wrestling fans are fake:


Controversial Tell-All Book Reveals Wrestling Fans Are Fake

Temper-Pedic mattress did a pretty good quarter. Unless you bought it from a direct marketing TV ad, who really knows what brand of mattress they sleep on? I have no clue.

Some guy says to ignore as much information as possible. I wish it was that easy.

Lot of Stupid Ideas Today

If 24 took place in 1994. I remember when it was like this:



Dave Winer on closed and open platforms.

Damon Lindelof on how TV is dying.

Another stupid idea.

Annoying Shits

More on the possible illegality of Facebook's ads. And they are apparently creepy as well. Valleywag details how to block them.

Zuckerberg is wearing shoes! Sound the alarms!

Gawker charts exactly what makes James Lipton so annoying. And they do a pretty good job of it.

Friday!

From the ONN:


Messages From Our Troops To The Families They Can Barely Remember

From Valleywag:

• How to get popular on Facebook.
• Facebook emails are not private at all.

From TechCrunch:

• Digg is not being bought or sold.
• Facebook's new advertising model may face some legal roadblocks.

Something about George Soros. It was too long, I didn't actually read it.

Toy Recalls and Writers Strikes

I just have to make this the first item this morning... The Aqua Dot toys are recalled because some coating on them turns into GHB when ingested. My kid wants these every single time he sees them on TV. Good thing I haven't bought them or he might have eaten them or something.

A quick video summary of the WGA strike:



A hot new drug- Jenkem. I can't wait to try this one!

Fake Steve Jobs in real life.

Zuckerberg makes an ass out of himself with stupid, pompous comments.

Is Kevin going to sell Digg? If so for how much?

The myth of how YouTube was founded. Apparently Steve and Chad go around telling blatant lies about the founding of their company that were invented by their PR people. And they admit that the stories are not true. I don't even know what to say...

Atlanta Douche bag John Fitzgerald Page makes the list of Atlanta's 11 Least Influential People.

Facebook Social Ads

Facebook launches their new advertising product in which brands and products can be your friends. Hidden message - big corporations are your friends! Or maybe not so hidden. Fortune's take on it. And AdAge's report.

And in related news I bought some Facebook related domains.



That bastard rich kid made a bad deal. Ha! I haven't made any deals, bad or good, but I like it when people who are more successful than they should be make mistakes. Like Donald Trump. I would pay to see him go bankrupt again.

Apparently something to do with Mystery Science Theater 3000... I'm not sure exactly what.

Something about some guy called Boykin.

Facebook wants to turn into a spam giant like MySpace.

Google drops an advertising bomb on Facebook.

Random Stuff for Tuesday

real medical condition. I wasn't sure about the Alien Hand thing but sure enough, it is real as well.

A new site that sets you up on Crazy Blind Dates or something.

Barry Diller on CNBC explaining why he is spinning off everything, when he has been saying for years that he could get some sort of synergy out of it.

Some commentary on the writers strike.

Kill Buljo. A Kill Bill rip off.

Kick Scott Adam in the balls in Second Life. Yay. Second Life is sooo useful.





Open Social hacked within minutes of launch.

A different opinion on Apple. He makes some good points but I don't see it happening.

Mahalo and Other Stupid Ideas

A video from some girl from Mahalo:



Has no Calacanis in it, which is nice.

How much is Second Life worth? I've got about $2.00 in change in my pocket. That's about all I'd be willing to pay. It was a good idea with potential, but I think it is on its way out the door now. Apologies to Boris, my friend who runs a Second Life virtual consulting company.

Breaking business news from the WSJ - college kids who drink alcohol and energy drinks (aka vodka and red bull) get in accidents and hurt themselves! Thank you for the news flash!

The Facebook money train keeps on rolling. Taking investors money into god only knows where.

AdBrite CEO wants his employees to put in 10 hour days. I understand where he is coming from, but asking people to do that is just wrong and I never do it. If there is a time sensitive issue or a deadline I will have them stay all night, but under normal circumstances - 8-9 hours is fine. My normal day, however is about 11-12 hours.

MySpace, seeing that it is getting left behind on the social networking ad dollar train, is launching its own advertising program. Yay.

Katie Holmes runs the NYC marathon under a fake name. I want to do that one of these years.

Some guy asks basic religious and philosophical questions that my friends and I were pondering at about 12 - 15 years of age. Maybe even a bit younger.

Google Ego Alerts Answered

I got the answer to my question... I received the alert at 5:12 pm. I posted the my name at 3:15pm. So that is about 2 hours for Google to crawl a page that no one reads. That's pretty consistent with the amount of time it took for a "certain someone who I don't want to name because if I do he will start commenting on my posts again" to respond.

Mystery solved. Case closed.

Google Ego Alerts

It has been 30 minutes since I posted my name in a blog. I received one Google ego alert from some other stuff, but nothing for the blog post yet.

Update - It has now been 1 hour and still nothing. Maybe I should post it again. I think I will. Done.

Update - 1.5 hours and still nothing.

Update - 2 hours and still no alert. I thought this was supposed to be instantaneous.

I'm going home soon. It's been a long week for those of us who actually have to work to pay the bills. I'm not going to check my email obsessively from home to see when this Alert arrives so I will update when I get it with whatever the timestamp is on it.

And before any of us who don't have to work to pay the bills get pissy and leave me nasty comments - yes, I envy you. I could have been you if I had made a few slightly better decisions than I did. And that makes it even worse, because I was so close and I blew it. It's a lot harder than not ever having been near it.

So I will go on and try again tomorrow, for tomorrow... is another day. [Cue cheesy music, fade to credits]

Social networks and such

Dave Winer on the MySpace / Facebook / Google brawl. I believe my opinions of Facebook have been made abundantly clear. Also - Facebook apparently has not been briefed on OpenSocial.

A chart of how to tell how much your web site sucks. Pretty accurate in my opinion.

Valleywag does a Web 2.0 for idiots primer.

And an update on the breaking Jakob Lodwick story... He responded to my response to his post with a "LOL." I'm not sure exactly what he was laughing at but... um... OK. Thank you, come again.

And Valleywag posts their opinion of the same interview I posted this morning. Shall we take bets on how long it takes him to reply to that? I have seen him leave comments on Valleywag before...

However I posted my name, which I have a Google ego alert set up for, in one of my other random blogs and I have not received notification yet. Interesting...

Once Again Friday at Last

Top ten Colbert segments. Plus some bonus clips.

Dumbest questions in song lyric history.

Reasons a zombie apocalypse could really happen. What is it with Zombies this year? It seems like zombies are the new emo or something. Everyone is totally obsessed with zombies. Did anyone see any videos of the parade in NYC? All zombies! I rest my case. If Chewbacca lives on Endor you must acquit.

Things that were cool in the 70's the are just stupid today.

A Wikipedia page on an Adult Swim show I have not seen but which sounds very amusing, and kind of complicated if we are to believe the Wikipedia plot summary. Oh, the show is Frisky Dingo.

Some Halloween Stuff, a Day Late

Top ten Adult Swim monsters. Carl's dog is my favorite.

That's all for today

Various and Sundry Links for Tuesday

Montage of awesome movie death scenes.

Top ten best celebrity-impersonations from SNL Jeopardy sketches.

And back to the news:
A new site is basically HotOrNot for (Silicon) Valley Girls. Not terribly interesting but nice to see that there are some attractive women working in tech. My vote goes to Morgan Webb - I believe my crush on her has been covered here to an adequate extent.

FedEx is expecting a huge quarter.

Maybe this is why they are basically giving away pot in California, to anyone with a headache.

Natali Del Conte is insanely attractive, especially for a tech vlogger, from Valleywag:



Parents are buying their children slutty Halloween costumes. Which explains why there are so many slutty Halloween costumes out there.

Something about Bard College and hipsters and drugs. I believe I have mentioned before that I visited Bard on my East Coast visiting-colleges trip. It was dirty and everyone there looked like really, really high dirty hippies. I guess the hippies have been replaced with really, really high hipsters now (or PoMo's as we used to call them back in the 90s).

Some Movie Reviews

Idiocracy - I had heard good things about this movie and I am a big fan of Mike Judge so I had pretty high expectations. These expectations were made even higher by the first 10 or 15 minutes of the movie, which were hilarious. But the rest of it totally sucked. Good idea, bad execution. It turned into a one joke movie.


Match Point - This film was absolutely brilliant. I am a big fan of Woody Allen and love most of his films. They have been getting kind of stale lately, but I guess London suits him because this, the first Woody Allen film I have ever seen that is not set in NYC, is absolutely brilliant. I can't say enough good things about this movie. Thank you, Woody, for doing something totally awesome to shut up your critics.

Inland Empire - Weird. I love David Lynch so I had high expectations for this movie. It took me about a year to figure out what Mulholland Drive meant so I wasn't expecting too much immediate logic. I loved the movie, but I'm not sure if there is an explanation. Lynch has said that he wrote it basically scene-by-scene as he was filming. The actors claim to not know the meaning. So either this has a meaning buried very, very deep or it has no meaning. Lynch says it is about "a woman in trouble." And Laura Dern is incredible as that woman. But as for the rest of this film I don't know whether it's just surrealism for its own sake or if there is anything underneath it all.

Last Minute Stuff on a Friday Afternoon

EW list of memorable movie satans.

Think you can drink a lot? Think again...

Here is a clip from another show I have never seen, but after watching this clip I think I might start watching it. Probably not but I will think about it. Alec Baldwin is awesome. "Coffee is for closers!"

Evil Characters from South Park (and Facebook)

Imaginary evil characters on South Park:



Self-help books that will never sell, from Radar.

How to kill yourself in a totally awesome way.

Interview with David Lynch about Twin Peaks. Lynch is apparently some sort of boy scout with a really twisted imagination and I love it! The next movie I am going to watch is Inland Empire. Without cows there would be no cheese in the Inland Empire.

The Microsoft Facebook deal in 15 seconds or less. A reasonable person's view on this matter. And a rather non-committal viewpoint.

Google was named by a typo. By someone who know works at Microsoft.

Best. Headline. Ever: Pit Bulls Kill Miniature Horse Donated To Cancer-Stricken Child

The Hills is staged? Really? (I've never seen it, nor do I have plans to)

NPR's Daily News Quiz.

Valleywag lists some websites that used to be funny or useful but are no longer. The Onion is #1 on the list.

Financial Tips for those of us who don't reportedly own 30% of Facebook

Some common-sense financial tips, from theStreet.com.

Some thoughts on the Microsoft Facebook deal that is making huge waves today:

• Did Zuckerberg not want this deal?
  
• Microsoft took a 1-2% stake in Facebook for $240 million... Some tidbits of info about this.
• What exactly does a poke mean? Not being a regular Facebook user I am not exactly sure.
• Facebook downgrades its growth rate.
• If Zuckerberg does, in fact, own 30% of Facebook as has been reported, on paper he is now worth $5 billion. That must feel nice, but I can say from experience, it's horrible when you are worth a lot of money on paper and you don't cash out and end up with nothing. See an older post of mine for more details on this.
• I still hold by my belief that Facebook is going to crash when and burn when they are unable to turn their large user base into a large money base. While Apple reported such a good quarter last week, I think the stock is pretty much done with it's run. It's been down for the last two days. Want to hear something that will make you sick? I bought AAPL at $18 and sold it at $30 a few years back. Makes me sick to think about it, but not as sick as the above mentioned paper loss of 99% of my net worth.
• All of the above that is not from me is from Valleywag.
• And just in - Facebook is getting another $500 million from two hedge funds, bringing their take over the last two days to a hefty $750 million!
• And something about Facebook's value and growth... As a note, Facebook's users are growing at 2% a week - not active users, registered users. And as far as I know the revenue growth is pretty much non-existent.
• Some guy from Intel agrees with me.

In non-Facebook news:

• Google is once again being a little bit evil. Only like 2% evil or so but still...
• Sergey Brin tries to pass off the Facebook mess as something positive for Google. I don't think its positive for anyone except Mark Zuckerberg and the other early investors.
• Montage of Mark Cuban's all-too-brief stint on dancing with the stars.
  

XXX Songs

EW has a list of 25 x-rated songs... A couple caught my eye:

• Lords of Acid - I Sit on Acid - Lords of Acid were my introduction to "techno" (because they weren't really what I would call proper techno). I have fond memories of "I Must Increase My Bust" - especially the Hawtin remix.
• Liz Phair - Flower - Because she went to Oberlin and graduated the year before I got there. That's the only reason.
  
• Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin - Je T'aime... Moi Non Plus - This is a very bizarre song if you understand French and the lyrics. The title translates to "I Love You... Me Neither" which Serge has said refers to the way women say "I love you" during sex but they don't really mean it. Beautiful song though.
• Peaches - AA XXX - Because this reminds me of the Larry Tee days when electro was the cool new thing. With all of my music choices I've been a couple years ahead of the trends. If I'd been a little bit later I could have caught many, many trends as they were starting to get popular, instead of 5 years before.
  

Mahalo, Wuala, and GMail

Mahalo sucks and is a stupid idea. To be more precise it is NOT a search engine, it is a curated list of links. Much like this blog. Mahalo is basically a giant link farm blog, only we hope not intentionally spam.

Wuala is a company that is doing some free thing. I don't really know or care what they are doing, but they are based in Switzerland aka the Greatest Country In the World. Sign up now and get an alpha account, via TechCrunch. I'm thinking of applying for a job there just so I can go back home to Switzerland, even though my wife would hate me for that.

GMail now has IMAP support, or they will soon.

DB Cooper

Has he been identified? Or is it just some crazy old guy...

Yahoo 360?

• Jerry Yang shuts down Yahoo 360 and the world lets out a collective "meh."
• Translation of Yangs latest conference.
  
• Google finally does something about all of those horrible link farm sites that clog up its results. But they lower most blogs in the process. And another blog on the same.
  
• Some ibanker on "nanny arbitrage," which is where a spouse makes more money than they pay the nanny, and on how enforcing labor laws and eliminating the illegal, off-the-books, underpaid majority of nannies would have a negative impact on the legal NY labor market. From Gawker.
• iTunes removes a video starring a nude Natalie Portman. No one is sure why.
  
• Monetize your thirst with Facefuel. Heh.
• NY Times online meta-data.
• MySpace is still the social networking leader, although others are catching up.
• Porn may save Google $1 billion? I'm not sure how but interesting anyway. Apparently has something to do with the 2257 laws.
  
• Anna Nicole Smith tape. A brief exception to my ban of celebrity gossip.
• Mark Cuban finally gets the boot on the dancing show he is on. Video from Valleywag.
• Sounds like Microsoft and Facebook are finally close to closing a deal.
  
• Facebook is going to be rolling out "SocialAds" soon which I assume they are hoping will finally make them some money from all these eyeballs they have.
  
  

YouTube

Is it just me or did YouTube take like everything down last night? About 75% of the videos I try to look at are no longer available. I knew this was going to happen and if Google keeps taking stuff down like this some other video site will rapidly overtake YouTube. Big corporations and grass roots stuff tends not to mix too well.

Here is one video that is still up:

Rich vs. Super rich

An article on how it's not so great to be super rich. I would have to beg to differ, but I wouldn't fit in with the people he is describing because I wouldn't spend my money on cars and jewels and mansions and such.

More Crap

Some more commentary on the Apple iPhone numbers from last night.

From the NYT special on sleep today, a bunch of articles:

• Should kids sleep with their parents? My kid says yes, but I say no.
• The effects of sleep deprivation, which I know all too well, which is why I go to bed at 8:30pm every night. (Yes, I am old and boring and I am aware of that.)
• Do the elderly sleep worse? I say maybe not, but they sure sleep less. Getting up at 4am everyday... Insanity!
• Something about birds.
• Something about how sleep helps your memory.
• About how sleeping pills are huge rip-offs.
• About nightmares, what dreams mean, why we dream, etc.
  

Tom, everyone's favorite MySpace friend, is apparently doing a pretty common MySpace thing to do - lying about his age.

Natali del Conte - a somewhat cute tech vlogger, in a bloopers reel that really has no point, other than looking at her.

Some crazy Christian televangelist cursing up a storm:



Startup to kill junk mail.
An article about StumbleUpon, which apparently is a better version of Digg or one of those types of sites. And by article I mean half-assed weak attempt at a blog post.

Netflix profits are up... Which is odd because, while I still am a subscriber, I am strongly thinking of switching to Blockbuster. I love Netflix and I will feel like a traitor if/when I do switch; and I hate Blockbuster for being the Starbucks of movie rentals. But with Netflix if I want to watch a movie I have to put it on a list, wait weeks for it to come, and by the time it comes I don't want to watch it anymore, so it sits there for months delaying the next movie I really do want to see.

With Blockbuster I can exchange the movie in the store, and get the next one on my list. I'm doing a two week trial of Blockbuster and I've watched more movies than I have watched from Netflix in the last 3 or 4 months, maybe even longer.

Apple blows me out of the water

I've been saying how I don't see a big, bright future for Apple (AAPL) for quite a while now. Their earnings last night pretty much blew my theories out of the water. Honestly, I am very surprised. A few years ago no one had iPods and everyone wanted them. Today, everyone has one that wants one, or so I thought.

I thought that the iPhone would not sell as many units as projected and would be a disappointment, I guess I was wrong on that count as well - though the huge price cut very likely was what screwed me over on this call.

I stand by my position that AAPL is going to go down at some point, but just maybe Steve Jobs can keep pulling nifty little design tricks out of his bag and keep the customers fooled and the stock price high. Once Steve goes, forget it, Apple is as good as bankrupt.

But I have to hand it to (Real) Steve Jobs... Well played.

Update - Some articles from Valleywag on the Apple quarter:

• How well is the iPhone really selling?
• How many iPhones were sold with the intent to be bricked unlocked?

And unrelated, Wozniak on homeless cats... Poor kitties!

Still not ready for the week

Rare out-of-characters interview with Stephen Colbert, following his bewildering spot on Meet the Press this Sunday. Half the show dedicated to an actor playing a character who is fake running for president? And another article acting as if Colbert were a real, serious candidate. People - Colbert's got a monopoly on the fake real journalist thing. Give up. Please.


Take two: Colbert on comedy

Slide, a start-up that makes some sort of widget, is trying to raise money. Apparently they have a burn rate of about $1 million per month. For widgets. Seriously.

Weird video that has something to do with AOL. I'm really not sure.

I detest Julia Allison and everything she does and stands for... Yet I have a bizarre attraction to her. I'm not sure why but I think she is absolutely adorable and incredibly sexy.

I agree with the statement being critiqued here, but it's still not very nice to say.

Article on how Larry David, the comic genius behind Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, may have some undiagnosed mental illness that makes him act like he does.

Article on Britney's new album and how it is really made by computers or robots or something. I love electronic music and find live instruments to be at times vulgar, so I have no comment on this, other than even as electronic music, her's sucks.

Article from NY Magazine

Article on the Gawker site and other, related sites from New York magazine. Pretty dead on, and while it does steal some of Gawkers "snark" for its tone, I have to agree with the author on most points.

Back to Work on a Monday

A Seinfeld quiz. I got 46 out of 50. And a bonus interview with Jerry.

Andy Kessler on how schools are putting lectures on YouTube.

Excepts from Options, the new real book by Fake Steve Jobs.

Seth Godin on logos. And on Radiohead's new album sales strategy.

Some idiot on how we should sell two kinds of cigarettes, as if the one kind isn't bad enough already. He's got some good ideas but it's a terrible, terrible idea.

I visited Bard College many, many years ago as a prospective student. Everyone there looked completely high. This just supports my opinion of that school.

Facebook is trying to do some ads that might actually be worth something to someone. Good luck to them.

Some Domains I Own

I own all of the following and I'd be willing to sell any of them for the right price. At the moment they are hosting ads which are making a few dollars a month. If I had them crosslinked or were promoting these sites they would make a bit more money, I would think:

ADRIANAZARCOVA.COM - Nude model, has site registered under a different name
AKARIHOSHINO.COM - Model, no site as far as I know
BEAUTYSCHOOLPRINCESS.COM
BEAUTYSCHOOLREJECT.COM
BUBBLEVERSE.COM - Web 2.0 site from random web 2.0 name generator
BUY-OXYCONTINONLINE.COM
CHATTERBEAT.COM - Web 2.0 site from random web 2.0 name generator
CINDYCHANCE.COM - Nude model. No site as far as I know.
GENUINELEATHERONLINE.COM
I-HATE-MY-HUSBAND.COM
I-HATE-MY-WIFE.COM
IAMSOMADATYOU.COM
MYWIFESPENDSTOOMUCH.COM
JABBERPOINT.COM - Web 2.0 site from random web 2.0 name generator
JENNIFERHAASE.COM - Playmate and NYC singer. Why one of them didn't buy this name I have no idea.
MARITAL-DISCORD.COM
MILLSTRADINGLLC.COM - One of my biggest moneymakers. It was originally for a B2C site I worked on but now it's showing ads for brokerages.
MUSICIAN-SPACE.COM - Seemed like a good idea at the time.
MUZIK-SPACE.COM - See above.
RIFFCHAT.COM - Web 2.0 site from random web 2.0 name generator
SAVEERIC.COM - Was originally a copy of save [whatever her name was] who made all that money moaning about how in debt she was. SaveEric.org I believe is a real site to try to save some legislation called ERIC.
SKIPCHAT.COM - Web 2.0 site from random web 2.0 name generator
TASERFETISH.COM
TASERSEX.COM - These two are from inside jokes I made with friends one drunken evening.
TEKBLAB.COM - Web 2.0 site from random web 2.0 name generator
TORIPRAVOR.COM - Model or playmate or something.
VLLEYWAG.COM - Misspelling of the popular silicon valley gossip site
WHATBARBIEAMI.COM - Seemed like a good idea one day
WORDBLAB.COM - Web 2.0 site from random web 2.0 name generator
WRTNFM.COM - An actual radio station in NY. They used to announce this as their site but they didn't own it so I bought it.

While you are here please click on a few of these and click on a few ads. I get a few cents to a few dollars for each and every click. If you are interested in taking any of these off of my hands let me know.

Last Minute Stuff for the Weekend

NewsCorp is lowering it's MySpace revenue estimates. How many times do I have to say that social networking is not a good revenue generator before someone listens?

This may also be because they are paying those idiots who started MySpace huge salaries.

Google is working on a Facebook deal of some sort. Distention in the ranks!

Some NYC VC named Fred Wilson who seems like a total jackass.

Walter Mossberg of the WSJ gives his annual fall computer buying guide.

And apparently these days the mob is more like high school girls than anything else.

Random Junk for Friday

• A blog dedicated to unnecessary quotation marks.
• Something about Google and advertising, from Valleywag
• Heath Ledger to star in Brokeback Mountain 2? I'm fresh out of Brokeback jokes.
• 11 Most Unintentionally Poignant Drunken Moments Caught on Camera, from Cracked.
• Worst Halloween costumes.
  

Final Thoughts for Thursday

• My wife came up with this idea and I said that someone must already be doing it, and I may have been a bit early but here it is. I should have jumped on it the second it came out of her mouth.
• More blabbing from Zuckerberg.
• Patent court strikes down at least part of Amazon's claim to have a patent on one-click shopping.
• A non-software way to block porn. So your kids can't see it, I assume.
• 
  

Kids Start Becoming Gamers at Age 6

I am not a gamer so I don't really understand all the fuss. But apparently young kids are turning into serious gamers. From Advertising Age.

Seth Godin on using Wikipedia for homework. He thinks its a good idea, as do I, a lot of other people apparently do not.

Debbie Harry is 62 years old? Other stuff in the article as well.

A list of 66 celebrities that blog. Just because we have nothing better to do.

Zuckerberg is a smug little asshole as usual.

Man given vodka after he drank antifreeze or something. Apparently he needed it for medical purposes.

Man arrested for standing on a sidewalk in Time Square.

Apparently eBay's acquisition of Skype contributed quite a bit to the not so good numbers eBay reported last night.

Google's ridiculous 411 idea is apparently being copied/rivaled by Microsoft. Two companies with huge amounts of money now battling it out over the same stupid idea.

Some crappy web apps that everyone uses and some better replacements that not too many people use. I haven't used any of the replacements so I have nothing to say about them, other than that I dislike Vimeo for personal reasons.

Wednesday Round-up

• Francis Ford Coppola on Pacino, DeNiro and Nicholson and why they suck now.
• Article on why Gen Y'ers are still living with their parents instead of getting off their butts and getting a job.
• Article on the current tech bubble is-it-or-isn't-it situation.
• Clip from the TV show Kid Nation, which I have never seen. This must be fake.
• Little Flash thing that randomly generates Web 2.0 Press Releases.
• Do you know your movie props? Probably not and neither do I.
  
• MTV rips off Hot Or Not with Next Or Not. Sounds dumb and I hate MTV and everything they do, so...
• Someone finally came up with a way to have people not be confused when they get off the subway in NY!
• This lucky bastard got a question about Office Space on the Millionaire game show. Bastard.
• And another video from the Onion News, about the upcoming election:
  
  
  Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters
  

Tuesday Round-up

New York Magazine article on blogs such as Gawker.

Brooklyn girl is fined for drawing with chalk on her stoop. Where I live the same thing would happen.

A very bizarre idea for a TV show. It could have been good or it could have been ridiculously bad. Unfortunately it does not seem like we will ever know.

Chad Vader - the newest YouTube thing. It is funny:

How to Pretend You Have an iPhone

From Cory Arcangel comes this easy way to make everyone think you have an iPhone.

I know a lot of people dislike Cory but I went to school with him and I like him. Yes, his parents do live in a big, huge McMansion in Buffalo (or at least they did about 12 years ago); and for all I know they may pay his Williamsburg rent. But he actually has talent and he is a genuinely nice guy. He and Paul Davis did a stop-motion animation video with Legos set to one of Paul's songs that was genius. The song was brilliant and the video was awesome.

The Bruce Springsteen Born to Run glockenspiel addendum was brilliant and I still want a copy of it.

And... Apparently one of the other Rolling Stones has done even more drugs than Keith Richards. If that is even possible.

Apparently some old people use Facebook. This deserves a whole article in the NYT. I don't understand why anyone uses Facebook. And neither do a lot of other tech people.

Lastly, a woman who charges parents obscene amounts to get their kids into their prestigious schools where they can pay out the nose for their child to drink and get A's for doing nothing. A roommate of mine's father was a professor at Princeton and he refused to let his son go there because he said the undergraduate education was so shoddy.

Update on Lars and the Real Girl

Apparently EW hated it. They gave it a C. It wasn't a great work of art or anything but I found it enjoyable, and stick by my earlier opinion.

More from Friday

Google is apparently getting kind of desperate to get it's radio advertising program, Google Audio, adopted. They are now offering $2,000 free to anyone who spends $1,000. Tech Crunch reports.

This is but the latest piece of evidence that, while Google may be golden in online advertising, its forays into off-line advertising have yet to catch on. Google must be having a real hard time selling those radio ads to have to resort to such a blatant attempt to buy market share. It’s not the first time it’s tried such tactics either. Last year, in an effort to jumpstart Google Checkout, for instance, Google paid $10 for every $30 in sales that merchants directed through its PayPal competitor. I’m not sure how well that went. But last time I checked, PayPal was still around.

Just because Google has cash to burn doesn’t mean it should use that cash to try to buy market share. If it truly has a better way of buying and selling radio ads, advertisers and radio stations will quickly figure that out on their own. It is not a good sign when Google has to resort to paying customers to try out a new product.

And for some bizarre reason Google is placing ads for rehab centers and drug addiction treatment on this blog. There is only one mention of drugs, which is yesterdays post about Count Bismarck's OD. So that is odd.

My wife just called me having seen a commercial for a drug for restless leg syndrome, that mentioned side effects including the urge to gamble or have sex. So I looked it up and there it is. At least it doesn't make your arms turn purple and fall off, or cause instant death like some other medications we see advertised.

And, from Valleywag, Jason Calacanis finally says something that makes sense!

An interesting chart from the WSJ about P/E and dividend yields.

Friday is Finally Here!

From the Onion, classified flesh-eating classified:


Proposed (Classified) Bill Will Defend Against Flesh-Eating (Classified)

An all-cat version of the movie 300 (which I have not seen):

More Junk for Thursday

Excuses people give to the cops when they are busted for speeding. I was once in a car with someone who was doing about 90 mph in a 65 mph zone and when she got pulled over she was shocked. She thought people didn't get pulled over unless they were going 100 mph or faster. She told the cop this. He gave her a ticket.

Count Bismarck died the way I hope to die (and almost did in the past).

And finally! Someone puts a name to something I've been experiencing for years. Phantom vibration of your cell phone. Via Valleywag.

Also from Valleywag, some insight on the Facebook/Microsoft/insane-valuation stuff. Pretty good insight, at that.

And an utterly bizarre and random video of some girl in the 80s doing a really bad job of playing Star Wars on the trumpet. Much funnier than it sounds. Or, not really, actually.

Almost Friday

• Google buys Jaiku, which is a Scandinavian version of Twitter. Some people speculate that this is related to the alleged gPhone, others are made that Google didn't buy Twitter. I've been playing with Twitter for a couple months now and it seems pretty useless to me.
• Google is adding YouTube videos to its Adsense results.
• Q&A with Craig and Jim of Craigslist. They refuse to admit they made money when eBay gave them however many millions of dollars they gave.
• Sprint begins to question it's WiMax plans.
  
• If anyone knows anything about who is leaving AOL, let Valleywag know.
  

How to Trade More Effeminately

Some hedge fund trader started taking female hormones, allegedly at his boss's request, so he could be a more "effeminate" trader.

Wednesday Round-up

An article on rehab, Malibu style.

Don't try to time the market. It almost never works.

Article on Yahoo, Google and paid search results. From Valleywag.

And an article on how Google screwed people over when buying Urchin, which its analytic software is baded on.

Some other people's opinions of Facebook "Platform" and apps.

Ten questions for the guy who does the PostSecret.com web site. From Guy Kawasaki.

Jeff Jensen's latest Lost article for EW.

And I leave you with a long, nonsensical interview with Bob Dylan for Playboy, from this list of his top ten most nonsensical interviews. The Playboy one is #1.