JULY 16--Comedian Andy Dick was arrested this morning by California cops on drug and sexual battery charges. Dick, 42, was nabbed around 2 AM in a Riverside County parking lot after he allegedly groped the breasts of a 17-year-old girl and then pulled the teen's tank top and bra down, exposing her breasts (the incident occurred outside the Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant). During a search of Dick, police discovered a small amount of marijuana in his pants pocket and a single Xanax pill for which he did not have a prescription. An "extremely intoxicated" Dick was booked into the Southwest Detention Center, where bail was set at $5,000. In May 2004, Dick was arrested on a pot possession charge while attending the Coachella music festival, also in Riverside County. - Thomas Hawk via Bookmarklet
Really is something wrong with that guy's wiring - Brian Sullivan
the joke is that he is considered a comedian - Vera Yu
I thought this partial quote was funny, "During a search of Dick, police discovered a small amount of marijuana in his pants" - Kreg Steppe
Maybe he was trying to compete with Nick Nolte for the best Hollywood mug shot. - Thomas Hawk
The hollywood crowd plays off this ... Jimmy Kimmel should never have him on again... He feeds off the attention acted drunk and drugged gets him and we keep giving it to him. - Cody Heitschmidt
@Outsanity but the whole quote is priceless: "During a search of Dick, police discovered a small amount of marijuana in his pants" WTF? The reporter had to have a field day with that. - Tac Anderson
oh well his name its suggest's what type of personlity he has ! - Peter Dawson
Loved it when John Lovitz punched him after the Phil Hartman hex comment - Ted
whoa!! where's the HIDE button?! damn! that's one creepy lookin' dude! yikes! - Susan Beebe
Just watched him on Star Trek Voyager last night. He was pretty good. - Jim Kukral via twhirl
Such a shame, because I still watch NewsRadio often and still love his character on there... but still am up in the air on the truth with his involvement with the Phil Hartman ordeal - Kevin Buckstiegel via twhirl
Sucks to get such a public firing. :/ - Bjorn Tipling
I suppose it wasn't Shel's fault though. I think Robert set himself and Shel up for failure on the Fast Company Network. Two very bright guys who's work doesn't really translate that well to video. We all know what Robert is thinking because he thinks out loud all day long, and in all of that time spent, he's not really thinking about video. Its hard to be an expert at everything. - Andrew Baron
Bjorn, ironically it wasn't a public firing. That was my point. There are two views on whether a company should announce the departure of a person, and in this case FastCompany chose not to publicly announce the departure. Robert Scoble has stated his reasons for not doing so. - Ontario Emperor
But obviously it was public. They knew people would talk about it and then Robert chimed in with his public comments on a blog post and then reblogged that link on friendfeed. - Andrew Baron
And btw, "boring" is not a criticism to Shel who is not at all boring in my opinion, but rather that he didnt get the production support that he needed to create a buzz around the information that he was bringing to the table. - Andrew Baron
The problem was not getting Shel a producer to begin with. - Andrew Feinberg
I guess Shel is being quiet for a reason, i wouldn't like to have all this aired without having a say :\ - Chris Jones via twhirl
I never saw any of the FC stuff. Any of it actually worth 3 minutes of my time? - Sean-Michael Robinson
@Sanford, visually? I was glad to see you all sitting there but I dont believe the show did anything to take advantage of the visual medium. As I said in my tweet, very boring to watch. This was just an audio podcast, really. - Andrew Baron
Revision3 does the production and is paid a lot to do the video parts of the show. I spend a lot of time thinking about our shows along with the team at Revision3 and we will continue tweaking this. One reason we hired Revision3 is because I know I don't know how to do a good studio show. I thought we would have more than five shows to get to be ultra-high quality, but that was my mistake and it won't be repeated again. - Robert Scoble
its odd to see Shel or Scooble on FastCompany anyways, I mean why do i care about FastCompany, tradtional media mag dead, next - Dan Rockwell via twhirl
Sean: I have learned a lot from every guest on the show. Amazing no one talks about that. Sanford's show will teach you a lot about co-working. On this Friday's show will be David Allen who has started a productivity cult around his Getting Things Done book and methodology. That won't be boring, no matter how badly I suck. - Robert Scoble
Robert, its not about you sucking. It's about the lack of visual value. Take the video linked to above by Sanford for instance. That video is weak on the visuals. And it takes SO LONG to get the info across. When watching the video, and listening to what you and your guests are saying, try to imagine what could go on top of their voice-overs in post to add another layer of depth and value to the experience. There is a moment of website b-roll for example. What else can you imagine visually from the video? - Andrew Baron
How many hours a day do you spend on Rocketboom? I heard you once say it is 12 hours a day for a few minutes of video. WorkFast is a live interview show like Charlie Rose. You don't see him doing lots of graphics either.. My guests can only give me an hour of their time. That is one reason I get such extraordinary guests. I don't ask for a lot of their time. I agree that such a treatment would be better, but would make a live video show very difficult to do without a huge crew behind the scenes. I will look for visual opportunities. Thanks for the feedback. - Robert Scoble
As a filmmaker I can tell you 1) yes the visual element is important and 2) maybe not in the way you think. Just having someone on camera for a while gives you a very good sense of who they are. Scoble's video's are fine and what makes them valuable is the immediacy. Maybe they get cut together someday by a doc filmmaker or Scoble himself but that's a different media object. My own interviews for the next film I'm putting up raw w/out editing for all to see. I think there's value in that. - Dean Terry
There is value in that for sure Dean. I think my suggestion does not exclude this value. 30 minutes of watching 2 or three guys sit in a chair talk is a lot like watching a reading for a play. But usually, when you add the set and enhance the work with sound and bring more visual stimulation to the scene, you wind up with a real opportunity to get the human element across, as well as showing and emphasizing visually the subject matter that is being discussed. - Andrew Baron
I quite enjoy the style the Robert produces. After all this is an interview with the people behind the technologies, not a PowerPoint presentation. Lots of visuals are not always a good thing, especially when the audio content is the major thing of intrest. - John Worthington
@john It certainly fits in the long tail. No questioning that there is a value for some people. - Andrew Baron
Wasn't I seeing tweets from others raving about how fucking "brilliant" or "funny" Shel was? Now he's yesterdays Web 2.0 trash? Man you guys are fucking fickle. - Daniel Spisak via twhirl
Andrew: understood. I'm sure you would agree there are meaningful added media elements and there are b.s. ones. Canned music and flying text are useless and zombie inducing. What would be interesting, but would take much more time in editing, is to spend a whole day with Scoble's subjects. Get them eating breakfast, driving to work, on conference calls, with their dog, etc. Then you get a more full portrait of the person, in addition to the ideas. (OK I'm biased, this is my approach) - Dean Terry
Andrew-Don't beat around the bush. Scoble is not a video guy. Not everyone is. Just because he has a zillion fanboys (and girls) here no reason not to speak your mind openly. Seems to me that Scoble's appeal is to geeks that think everything he fixates on for 5 seconds is the 2nd coming of Apple or to the CEO's that are getting a nice infomercial from the Scobleizer. - Mark Forman
@Dean, but what about the topic of conversation? Getting to know the person and what they eat for breakfast is one thing, but what about when they are talking about the things that are important to them? Like their work? Maybe some of that time visual information could be used to provide more depth and make the information more clear. - Andrew Baron
Mark: I never claimed to be a video guy. I am a conversation guy. I have conversations. Tomorrow with a couple of famous architects. The video is just so you can come along too. Not everyone will like what I am doing. That comes with doing media. Star Wars was given awful critiques, yet I still love it. I haven't seen anyone else do more than 1,000 video interviews online, though. There is a reason: criticism is easy: having extraordinary conversations is hard. - Robert Scoble
@Andrew agreed, but it would push production time ever further. I'm sitting watching (in ambient fashion) a History Channel production that took months to create. My last film took 3 yrs. All OK if timeliness is not an issue. Many tech interviews get stale very fast unless they are about very big picture issues (which, sadly, aren't as interesting to many). Personally I try and get people to talk about larger social issues, often just out of their comfort zone. These seem to have some lasting value. - Dean Terry
Andrew: I agree. It is why we do different kinds of shows. The one I am doing tomorrow with an architect that designed Los Angeles stadium will have visuals. But that is more like Rocketboom since it will be edited. WorkFast is a live conversation and putting in visuals is much tougher. - Robert Scoble
I agree with Andrew. I tried to watch several shows but it was like watching the radio. I think it's possible to be visually more interesting without a lot of work. And isn't that Rev. 3's job? - chartreuse
Realizing that I have not watched any scoble videos in a long time. I wish that I could add that upcoming GTD Video to my queue. - Christian Burns
Honestly, I am not a video guy and really don't know anything. But I was watching an old Charlie Rose episode on YouTube last night. For those that do know what they are talking about, is that not a two-camera show? If so, Robert - if you got two cameras on there for coverage, would you not be able to cut more together (without all the whiz-bang graphics stuff) but at least you could get some tight shots, etc... Again, I really have no clue about video, so this may be irrelevant. - Adam Bullied
"I’ve been collecting scaling stories for some time now [...]" James Hamilton has a great collection of links to stories about how major websites like Amazon, LinkedIn, MySpace, Flickr, etc., learned to scale. - DeWitt Clinton
It's not that one-sided. Jeff acknowledges the problems that redundancy raise with regard to data consistency too. I tend to think of this as requiring a heavily-cached and distributed system for scale, with slow write-through for synchronization. This works if there is no update-collision issue (the same item is not edited differently in separate caches). Remember, normalization is all about consistency under update. - Dennis E. Hamilton via twhirl
@Brent. Thanks for that article. I'm stuck in a situation like that with a slavishly devoted 'by the book' person eventhough it just adds layers of complexity to a simple task that could be done simply in one query. Have printed it out for him. - Andrew Leyden
last.fm app is available for normal iPhones but their buffering scheme is slow compared to Pandora. I hope that "liking" a song on the app will not cause last.fm spam on FF. - Glenn Batuyong
Some stats: new Pandora on iPhone listener every 2 seconds, 3.3 million tracks played for iPhone listeners, 200000+ stations created, over 35% of iPhone listeners are new to Pandora, #4 on Apple's top downloads list, iPhone usage pushed Pandora listening to all time record over the weekend. - Tom Conrad
Those stats sound amazing. Did you expect anything close to that? - Patrick Jordan
i haven't noticed, does last.fm scrobble from my ipod over the air or just when i sync back with itunes? - Matt Musgrave
Honestly between Pandora and AOL Radio's app, I haven't turned my radio on, or played an mp3 in days. Literally! - Mike Lewis
I have no music on my touch yet I listen to music all day long thanks to Pandora, last.fm, & AOL - Brian Daniel Eisenberg
@justiphoneblog we've been building Pandora mobile implementations for almost two years now (we're on about 50 different phones across Sprint and AT&T) and really truly the response to the iPhone app is way beyond anything we expected. - Tom Conrad
i love pandora too..use the dock to plug into a stereo, portable party! - Matt Musgrave
After a weekend of playing with my iPhone and these music apps, I went out and bought an iPod touch and a base station just to put in my living room to continue the vibe while I'm in there. The apps with the connectivity of the iPods and iPhones are going to rewrite the digital music consumer appliance world very very quickly. - Andrew Leyden
Tom - wow - that's very cool. And a great app by the way ... - Patrick Jordan
I still haven't tried Last.fm. I'm already a big fan of Pandora, but I do see my friends' Last.fm favorites on their feeds and it has me intrigued. Anyone using both? Might I have a few snippets of compare/contrast comments between Pandora and Last.fm?? - Lisa L. Seifert
@lisa Last.fm does a great job of recommending new music and tracking your listening habits. It also has the social networking covered by pairing you up with 'neighbors' that share similar musical tastes (which also helps with finding artists you might like). You also have the ability to interact with your neighbors for a human input on recommendations. I see Pandora as a great streaming radio that taylors itself to your tastes as you rate each song that plays in the stream. No real tracking or social network interaction to gain insight to new artists. Thankfully, there is a web mashup that gives you the streaming of Pandora and the tracking of Last.fm. http://pandorafm.real-ity.com/... - Matt Musgrave
@Matt - Thanks! That's exactly the kind of input I was looking for. Sounds like both are still very usable for me for different reasons. - Lisa L. Seifert
don't worry too much Dec 21st 2012 is still far away in the future - Dobromir Hadzhiev
I think on the web, it's full of sound and fury - signifying nothing...Calacanis is partially right when he says "blogging is dead"...I think MACRO-blogging is dead as we know it and is pretty much mainstream and corporate...but micro-blogging is VERY MUCH alive and transforming...Friend Feed is part of that metamorphosis from the basics of twitter/jaiku... - Live4Soccer
Things never cease to change. "You can never step into the same river; for new waters are always flowing on to you" (Heraclitus). Only now, the changes are assaulting our senses and are amplified many times eg. the Internet enabling speed-of-light ideas transmission. - Yung-Hui Lim
i think history shows us one thing. We are usually wrong. - chartreuse
the web is just a part of it. it ain't iT. - Andrew Jecklin
I'm really starting to like you Leo. - loren feldman
The world is changing. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it. - Diane Ensey
It's summer and television is in reruns. Six weeks everything goes back to normal. - Adam Turetzky
you're right, I agree things are changing and fast too, technology and online communities are where things are happening first then the rest of the world is talking about it - Wayne Sutton
I worked some life-changing chemistry back in my prime, with the typical product cycle, some of them should be reaching the public soon. - Robert Hafer
As a kid I can even tell. Still somewhat scared about it too! - Andew
loren twittered this and then didn't bother to come here and participate? fail? - Tad Donaghe
It's the smell of air without so many free monomers and hydrocarbons in it. - bob corrigan
Thought never even crossed my mind -- but I really hope everyone is OK. - Adam Bullied via twhirl
Back in the 70s the nuns taught us to say a Hail Mary anytime we saw an accident or an ambulance go by with the lights on. Those nuns, they had it all going on. - bob corrigan
The Dark Knight will be *different* - you can't compare the two. And Del Toro is a frickin' *genius*. - bob corrigan
A fair point. It was an OK flick (some gorgeous shots / cinematography), but at this point, I'm so ready for TDK, I'm kinda blind to everything else. - Adam Bullied via twhirl
my bad for not reading it right, I'm actually with you on this one - Dobromir Hadzhiev
with manual editorial deciding what is good is so subjective.. it's a pos imo..their is not context at all.. - John Furrier
it's an ego page, nothing more, noone will ever go there just to see what's on friendfeed, but it was logical step I guess can't blame Guy for doing it - Dobromir Hadzhiev
"The animated adventures of the comic book superhero Invincible will soon be available on iTunes, mobile phones, the television channel MTV2 and more." - Robert Seidman via Bookmarklet
Invincible is a great story -- very well written and the art is great. This is great news! - Adam Bullied via twhirl
i love your job except when i am trying to get something done, because i can't tune you out. - robert steburg
I love your job too and if I had it I might be able to afford all of the "toys" you turn me on to. Keep at it! - Mike
@Robert: I think there might be a direct correlation between how much Leo loves his job and my inability to do mine when he is on. :) PS I can't stop whistling the Skype Dial Tone now! - John Worthington
We love that you love your job. For some of us in our jobs, however, the opposite of love applies. :-( - David Kemper
Do what you love, love what you do. It is a fundemental truth that escapes most of us. - Rob Fuller via twhirl
love that you love your job so should we all - Danny Pratt
And I love the output. I look forward to Macbreak Weekly and TWiT. - Jonathon
It's a great job. Congrats on 24 hours of iphone. - Ryan
Many people would say they love the job you do! :) - Chris Luckhardt
How could you not love your job! Actually you could not love it, but you wouldn't do it as well if you didn't love it. - Jenz
Great to read someone loves there job! I love the positive vibe. I've just subscribed, I don't know what your job is... pardon my ignorance :) - Adrian Nadeau
"It's so fantastic to hear from a PM in another industry besides Web /
tech! Thanks so much for commenting on this.
One of my thoughts for a while now (hence my "manifesto" post) is that
product mgmt, regardless of industry, has to have a similar set of
fundamentals and a singular philosophy. So it's great to hear.
I wasn't even aware that productmanager.com existed, so thanks so much
for pointing it out. There are some of us working behind the scenes on
these blogs a bit to make some standard information more available /
reference-able (as opposed to the blog format, which is much more post-
to-post). A couple of us are also working on some different mediums
for the deliver of the information, which again, will hopefully make
this stuff a bit more within reach for those that are hunting for the
knowledge.
Thanks for the comment!" - Adam Bullied
great insights and thoughts, Chris. Gathering feedback, sorting that data and then enhancing a product or service to deliver increased value is essential, IMHO. - Adam Bullied via twhirl
Awesome points, Chris. Companies have been paying big dollars for this same data for years, yet now that it is so readily available to be tapped at little cost and instantly not everyone is paying attention. - Scott Bannon via twhirl
panasonic ftw any luminex. only because canon pictures always have this odd yellow-ish tint and the post processing is a PAIN. plus panasonics have this anti-shake feature that is OH so bad ass (and i have a powershot and an xti) - Mona N
I bought the 890IS and like it. flaws: too much plastic and the power button is weird - RAPatton
I have to agree with the folks who are pimping the Panasonic Lumix line. I have a Canon XTi, but our point and shoots are all Panasonic Lumix and we're getting great pictures. - David Thomas
Go with either the Powershot SD870 IS (not the 890) or Panasonic Lumix TZ5. The 870 is smaller but the TZ5 has one sweet zoom range. Both start at 28mm which gives you a bit of a wide angle that no other P&S compacts have which is why I like these two. - saeba
I have a little SD750 Elph. Fitd in my short pocket & takes amazing quality. You may want soething geekier but I really love the camera. - shelisrael1
Even the cheapest ones (A590 IS) take good pictures. Canon is good. - Dillon K. Hoops
I have heard good things about the Canon Powershot G9. But I have the S3 IS and I love it. It does not shoot in the RAW format however. The G9 does. - Jim Williams
Have a PowerShot Elph SD600 and a S5is. The Elph is great to take anywhere, the S5 is excellent for the "serious" shots. - Jared B. Luther
Chris, if you go with the 870, which you should, grab it at Costco (kirkland or woodinville). Costco has a great return policy. They give you cash back. Return for any reason. - Christian Anderson via fftogo
I have a G9, but they're all good. My wife had a Panasonic Lumix, but dropped it for my old Ixus (Elph or SD depending on market). The G9 is great if you want RAW images to get the best quality, but it's big, heavy and expensive, so not the best option if you don't care about RAW and full manual control. - Michael Randall via twhirl
Another vote for the G9. :) Currently the ultimate PowerShot for image quality and controls. If you don't feel the need for RAW shooting, then the S5 IS is probably the next in line as far as pro features go. Actually, I've found the G9 to be light and easy to carry, certainly a lot more manageable than my previous S3 IS. - Alan Ralph
My favorite PowerShot of all time has been the A650IS because of the Vari-Angle LCD screen. The specs are very similar to the Canon G9 but a lot smaller. - Michael Narciso via NoiseRiver
I'd love a Powershot but my Panasonic Lumix DCM-FX3 does everything i need it to do. - Zach Underwood
you're not just saying that are you Robert? ;-) - Nathan Eckenrode
My 12th grade English teacher always said never to use "in my opinion" because it's implied when you say something subjective. :) - Tad Donaghe
I agree with Robert on that. I am def. watching FF - Kyle Lacy
Nathan, look at the facts. FriendFeed has, what, eight employees? The latest one to join was Gary Burd. His team at Google did Google Talk and he was the guy who opened Google's Kirkland office. How about Bret Taylor? During his four years at Google, he led more than 25 successful product launches, including Google Maps, Google Local, Google Web Toolkit, the Google Maps API, and Google’s Developer product group. more next... - Robert Scoble
Paul Buchheit? He was the creator and lead developer of Gmail, which anticipated many aspects of Web 2.0, including the idea of Ajax, long before that term was coined. He developed the original prototype of Google AdSense as part of his work on Gmail. He also suggested the company's now-famous motto "Don't be evil" in a 2001 meeting on company values. - Robert Scoble
This is an absolute superstar team and anyone who even questions whether it is or not simply does NOT know what they are talking about. It is -- by far -- the most interesting startup to watch right now and I'm underplaying that by a long shot. - Robert Scoble
Sanjeev Singh is a former Google engineer, playing a role in both Google Mail and Google Search Appliance. Prior to Google Sanjeev worked at social annotations site Third Voice and a government research lab. - Robert Scoble
Kevin Fox: from 2003 to January 2008, Kevin Fox worked as a user experience designer at Google, designing such products as Gmail, Google Calendar, and the second version of Google Reader. - Robert Scoble
Louis Gray, can you fill in the other team members?
Sanjeev Singh is another one, who is a great developer. - Robert Scoble
Tudor Bosman is another. Is a great developer from Google, and was principal member of technical staff at Oracle. - Robert Scoble
By far my most addicting and favorite website, and I've only been using it for a touch over a week. - Bradley McSpinn
Scoble: makes me think you are also a secret member of FF ;) - Muthu Ramadoss
The only other active competition is Facebook, and that explains why FF is not able to fetch feeds from there. - Muthu Ramadoss
Muthu: I'm not compensated by FF, nor do I have any investments in anything I cover. Facebook is a closed walled garden, which even Google can't get into. -
