Leaving Las Vegas
What is it with bathroom technology, Jerry?
Belly Dancing with 8×8’s Tango
It’s late in the day on Day 3, and CES attendees practically need a Tasering to notice an exhibitor at this point. Enter belly dancers.
The Other, Sexier Tech Expo
Attracting plenty of curiosity among CES-goers (and disappointment at the strict admission policies) is AVN’s Adult Entertainment Expo, which started today just down the corridor from one of the main CES exhibit halls.
The Web is full of content that only its creator could love. Witness the office-party photos, blogs about people’s pets and bad lip-synched videos that turn up in a few minutes of Google-fueled procrastination.
To Guthrie Lonergan, however, Web junk is the basis of his most popular online art. “I’m sort of interested in that boringness,” he says.
“Internet Group Shot” is one example. The collage, cobbled from dozens of group portraits, shows how people adopt the same huddle when they’re saying “cheese.” For “MySpace Intro Playlist,” Mr. Lonergan looked for the self-made videos that young people post to their personal pages, then strung them together to show how teenagers tend to act similarly and say the same things when they’re introducing themselves.
“There are defaults in our culture,” Mr. Lonergan adds. “MySpace doesn’t set up something for you to create an introduction video, but kind of like a telephone answering machine, you assume a certain kind of voice and say certain things.”
The 23-year-old, who lives in L.A., is one of many artists mining Internet culture for creative inspiration. They make videos out of email spam and multimedia projects from MySpace profiles, and make a case for Web surfing as an art form in itself.
Amazon.com Inc.’s new e-book reader, Kindle, has only been on sale for a few hours, but the blogosphere already has a lot to say about it.
Gadget blogs like Engadget and Gizmodo are buzzing about the device’s free wireless capability and odd design. Media and publishing bloggers, some responding to Newsweek’s nearly 5,000-word advance look, are discussing what Kindle means for the e-books industry and reading itself. Other tech bloggers are hashing out its price tag ($399) and the notion of having to pay for blog feeds.
And everyone has an opinion, mostly negative, about how it looks. A sample description: “like a prop from an old sci-fi horror flick.”
Amazon customers have weighed in, too, with more than 100 reviews already online. Kindle, so far, is rated 2.5 stars out of 5.
Not bad, Richard Gardner. In an otherwise straightforward Apple research note, the Citigroup analyst (and a 2003 Best on the Street alum) tucks in, just after the company’s balance sheet, “Figure 1. I just arrived from Mars. Just what is this ‘iPhone,’ anyway?” Under “What the iPhone is,” he lists 8 hours talk time and 2MP camera, among other features.
Under “What the iPhone is not:” “Incompatible with AT&T’s 3G HSDPA high-speed wireless network; Not a cure for cancer.”
But it gets better when he lists tips on obtaining one (two max) of the coveted Jesusphones:
Reputation-management services are trying to help clients downplay or remove negative Web information, in exchange for fees that can add up to hundreds of dollars.
(Also appeared in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Baltimore Sun, CareerJournal and St. Louis Post-Dispatch.)
Gawker Media is shuffling the management of its flagship Gawker blog for the fifth time in four years, as the site faces increased competition from upstart gossip sites.
Alltel service isn’t available in New York, but that isn’t stopping Wall Street from paying plenty of attention to the wireless provider today. Shares are up more than 5% after Amol Sharma and Dennis K. Berman reported that private-equity firms, hungry for telecoms, are eyeing the company.
In advertisements on hundreds of blogs, visitors are being encouraged to join a lawsuit against Alltel Corp. over a new discount-calling plan from the regional cellphone company. The plan, called My Circle, allows Alltel customers to designate up to 10 phone numbers that can be called for free, regardless of the cellphone carrier they’re affiliated with.
“Have you been added to an Alltel My Circle without your consent? Join our class-action lawsuit and let our experience help to recover your losses,” reads one version of the ad.
The content of the ad seemed controversial and worried Walter Olson when it was submitted to his popular legal blog, Overlawyered. He recalls that when he first saw it, he thought, “It’d be the first time I’d have to reject an ad.”
Then Mr. Olson did some online digging and discovered that the ad was a spoof, part of an elaborate marketing campaign designed by the Little Rock, Ark., cellular company. The ads link to a Web site for the People Against My Circle Foundation – also an Alltel creation – while another faux site carries play-by-play reports from the court battle.
But the ad campaign may be too clever for its own good: Some bloggers have refused to carry the ads about the lawsuit, and others have been hesitant. Many blog visitors, meanwhile, have expressed confusion over the ads in online forums, with some asking: Who’s Alltel? (The company isn’t well known to consumers outside the states where it offers service.)
A delayed April Fool’s gag? A last-ditch corporate effort to win a hacking contest? Bloggers alternated between shock and delight over Apple Computer Inc.’s announcement that its new “Boot Camp” software allows Windows XP to run on its new Intel-based Macintosh computers.
“I still can’t quite fully believe this,” said Hadley Stern, a designer and writer who blogs at Apple Matters. “The implications here are mind-boggling.” And like many bloggers commenting on the news, Mr. Stern couldn’t resist a jab: “I think the OS wars are now over.”
When an email bearing the news arrived this morning, “we just about plotzed,” said Gizmodo, a popular gadget blog.
Ben Stanfield, editor of the MacSlash discussion site, wrote: “It’s still cold in my part of the world, but I didn’t realise it was chilly enough to cause the freeze over of Hell.”
Killer Combination
According to Gadgetopia writer Rob O’Keefe, Windows-on-Apple is a killer combination for the big PC makers. “Michael Dell may not be worried yet, but depending on how this plays out, he might be soon,” he wrote.
On his blog, Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg called Boot Camp “a nice tactical move by Apple that will make their platforms and systems much more attractive.”
The technology and politics blog Politechnical Institute agreed. “This is going to increase Apple’s marketshare big time. Buy a Mac, bring your XP license and apps, and have everything on one platform. You want games? Boot Windows. Windows, Unix, and Mac, all on one box.”
C.K. Sample III, a writer for the Unofficial Apple Weblog, said PC users will soon join the ranks of the converted: “If Apple plays its cards right and doesn’t screw things up, people will see that booting into OS X runs more smoothly and is nicer than booting into Windows, and we may see more switchers than ever before.”
The “I told you so” sentiment bounced from page to unsurprised page as technology bloggers responded bright, early and prolifically to Microsoft Corp.’s announcement that the consumer version of Windows Vista will be delayed until 2007.
“Here we go again,” said the gadgets blog Gizmodo. “Although business users will still get Vista in November, Microsoft said it needed a few more weeks to work on security issues before it was ready for public release. Not a big surprise from the company that originally told us we would be seeing this new version in, when was it, 2005?”
Scott Rosenberg, a blogger at Salon, echoed the shrug. “Every new edition of Windows has been late, so, you know, this is predictable news — on the order of ‘President Bush Declares He Will Stay the Course in Iraq.’”
Rashawn Brazell would have turned 20 in April. Instead of a celebration, his birthday was marked with candlelight vigils and town hall meetings.
By then, his February murder had faded from headlines. But a growing number of New York-area bloggers, many of them African-American and gay, like Brazell, are keeping his memory, and the search for his killer, alive.
“I couldn’t do anything else until I’d blogged about it,” said Larry D. Lyons II, 24, one of the first to write about the crime in an online diary.
Lyons compiled links to news reports and posthumous letters he had written to Brazell in early March. Dozens of readers posted their comments, and more comments came with each entry.
Brazell’s murder struck a chord with Lyons and many in the black gay community who believed his murder had been given short shrift by the New York mainstream media.
Brazell, of Brooklyn, disappeared Feb. 14. Several days later, parts of his body were found in a Brooklyn subway tunnel and later a recycling plant. Early news reports said he was going to rendezvous with another man.
“He was just a bag of trash,” said Mervyn Marcano, a publicist, after he read that a bag with Brazell’s legs and one arm was found in a subway tunnel. “It repulsed me that people couldn’t find the space in their reports to even say his name.”
“I’ve seen several days of stories about a bird nesting on ledge,” said Brazell’s mother, Desire. “But my child only got a few headlines.”
Within several weeks of Brazell’s killing, people began blogging about the incident. Today, there are at least 10 sites, including rashawnbrazell.com, that have discussed his murder.
Some bloggers are trying to keep the story alive, while others are trying to organize.
Terrance Heath, 36, who lives in Washington, blogged about Brazell to raise awareness outside of New York. His site, republicoft.com, receives about 1,000 hits a day. “If even that many people can hear about this case,” he said, “then maybe it will make a difference. So that the next young African-American gay man doesn’t find himself in the situation that Rashawn did.”
With the help of organizations like People of Color in Crisis and Gay Men of African Descent, bloggers planned a vigil, then a town hall meeting in which City Councilwoman Letitia James, 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care and the Unity Fellowship Church of Brooklyn volunteered funds to increase the reward. It has grown from $2,000 to $12,000.
The New York State Black Gay Network and the New York Panthers Leather Club, two organizations also involved, began a series of safe-sex workshops focusing on safely “hooking up” online.
“It was really the bloggers who brought community-based organizations to the table to address what happened,” said Kenyon Farrow of the Black Gay Network.
Bloggers launched the Rashawn Brazell Collective in March and, along with it, a collaborative Web site. It includes contact information for the detectives working on the case and details on upcoming events.
Others used their blogs to share information drawn from their skills and experience. “Brotha to Brotha,” written by a former television network producer, included tips on contacting ABC and CBS. Donald Agarrat, 35, a Web designer, built rashawnbrazell.com.
While their initial meetings were spurred by tragedy, several bloggers are heartened to see a community forming.
“We use the term ‘blogfam,’” Agarrat said. “I’ve seen other collectives and other people who blog together, but I feel really lucky to be part of this tight network.”
The bloggers have also created the Rashawn Brazell Memorial Fund, a scholarship co-sponsored by the North Star Fund, which supports social justice projects. Though they are eager to see the crime solved and justice served, they are just as passionate about the projects created in Brazell’s memory.
Brazell’s mother is grateful for the efforts.
“I am sure the [blogging] will help,” she said. “I hope they keep it up so that the person who did this doesn’t get away with it.”