I just captured a local version of this for my personal collection. - Andrew Baron
This is cute, but do people really like that "music?" I grew up with rap, but lately a lot of the forms it's morphing into just sound like garbage. I guess I'm just getting old... *sob* - Tad - just Tad
Ha! Awesome...wanted to click the older tab for more...er..not. - BISQ
Nerd police advisory: Hilarious, but in a real zombie outbreak, one of the first things to go would be the power grids. Twitter would look the same way its going to look in about a month: completely empty. - Juan Aguilar via twhirl
Lured by $1 beer and the prospect of "hot chicks" and "hardcore fights," thousands of Arkansans were duped last month into appearing as extras in comedian Sacha Baron Cohen's latest staged mayhem. Cohen and his confederates organized cage fighting programs on consecutive days in Texarkana and Fort Smith. Both cards ended with two male grapplers (one was identified as "Straight Dave" and wore camouflage) tearing each other's clothes off and, while in underwear, kissing down their opponent's chest. This man-on-man action triggered Fort Smith fans to throw chairs and beer at the ring, according to one cop present at the city's Convention Center. - Thomas Hawk via Bookmarklet
The new film stars another of Cohen's creations, Bruno, a gay Austrian journalist who interviews subjects about fashion and entertainment. It is reportedly titled, "Brüno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Males Visibly Uncomfortable in the Presence of a Gay Foreigner in a Mesh T-Shirt." The June 5 Texarkana promotion was adverstised as "Red, White, and Blood." The June 6 matches in Fort Smith were dubbed "Blue Collar Brawlin'" - Thomas Hawk
Perhaps this is unkind, but since there's been so much 1938Media talk today, I'll just say it: Sacha drinks Loren's milkshake. THAT'S how you do politically charged comedy. He cuts left, right, and center, but usually hits the mark in a way that is both irrefutable, precise, and hilarious. - Madsimian
The thought of Bruno drinking Loren's milkshake is causing me to LOL. - Clay Newton
The guts Cohen has to stage these things - it's awe-inspiring - Kevin Briody
Someday, Sasha is going to end up dead from one of these stunts. - Justin Whitaker
@Justin, I like the word "stunts" because the first time I saw SBC, I thought My god, this guy is so brave--he does the sociological version of "Jackass," which, in my opinion, takes a lot more "balls" than stapling your scrotum to your leg. And I agree with the previous comments about his brilliance--he's amazing! - Anna Haro
I think the guy is genius he really puts himself into these roles but I agree one day he is going to push it too far. Let me find a clip of Bruno on YouTube which is hilarious... - Joe Dawson
Do you think that someone should tell him that there are lots of people in that part of the country who carry loaded guns? - Paul Denlinger
The forum posts captured by TSG on pages 3 and 4 of their story are interesting. The Arkansans who went to the fight will come out looking like redneck homophobic brutes in the movie, while a lot of their 'anger' was provoked or staged according to the eyewitness accounts. Not to say that the posts aren't homophobic, so in the end Sasha is just holding up a funhouse mirror to the denizens of the flyover states: it exaggerates the picture, but reflects reality. - Alexei Tolkachev
interesting ComScore stats on user start/homepages... not sure i completely believe the stats, but even if they're anywhere close then 3 observations: 1) MyYahoo still killing the field 2) iGoogle made a lot more progress than i had thought 2) MyMSN/MyAOL losing a lot more progress than i realized, and 3) Netvibes probably an acquisition target for someone. would be interesting to compare stats with a few other services like Hitwise, Quantcast, Compete. - dave mcclure via Bookmarklet
I agree, Dave - those comscore stats seem suspect, for MyYahoo at least. - David Gutelius
thought netvibes would have bigger share - Tim Connors
Competition is always good. However, I don't think we should be comparing identi.ca to wordpress just yet. - Mack D. Male
Wither its Open source or propetry, both business strategies need to have a Revenue strategy to be sucessefull.. You get pinched for either the s./w cost or the support charges.. same difference ! - Peter Dawson
hmmm but I'm not paying for Twitter (and I never would). Although I did pay for Typepad (it was a proven commodity, it was reliable and it had features I needed but couldn't configure on my own). I'm with Mack. - melmcbride
@Shane Six Apart is certainly still around and continuing to give great tools to bloggers every day. - David Recordon
@Shane I have been the head of Six Apart Europe and still a shareholder so I am conflicted but yes, Six Apart is thriving and growing very nicely, there is room for both on the market. - Loic Le Meur
It certainly would be an interesting development if a strong open source competitor/alternative emerged in the space. - Doug
SixApart left the self-hosted space long time ago, they are after the people that want to blog without a fuss, mainstream people. Wordpress is for folks who care about the tool they use. I used MT and Typepad, been using Wordpress for some years now, and it was the best move i made. - Mário Pires
Mario -- we are still going strong in the self-hosted space -- check out MT4 in both its commercial and open source editions. Great stuff happening there! - Michael Sippey
don't worry about it Michael, keep up the good work, you're doing great! - Loic Le Meur
if identi.ca intefaced here then it would be bye bye twitter - Noah David Simon
Michael, i used the commercial MT when it was released, but after a year using it, i felt that as far as changing things (for the non-programmer) wordpress gave better options, it was not a question of being free. Perhaps now MT is a good contender, but in order to switch i would have to loose some years of experience with wordpress, and that does not appeal to me a lot. - Mário Pires
Loic, since you are so active on FF may I ask here when privatization of videos is going to be implemented? - Mona N.
Mona privatization of videos? Which videos? I am not running FF :) Seesmic only ;) - Loic Le Meur
Maybe, but I still like FriendFeed better. Twitter certainly is in trouble. Many services ready to just about eat their lunch - David Jacobs
@Mario -- totally understand your commitment to WP! For your next blog, though, we'd love it if you tried MT. :) - Michael Sippey
Loic, thank you for your response. Videos and / or profile of my Seesmic account :) - Mona N.
Mona, thanks for your interest, we will have groups/privacy features I hope beginning of august - Loic Le Meur
Yes six apart still around got another interview request from them this week - Fred Grott
I'm waiting for it to support Jabber before I'll start to use it. I don't need yet another walled off chat network especially since not enough of my friends use it to make it worthwhile. - David Recordon
I havent but my non tech friends are all using it - to the detriment of IM clients - riaz
Like others have said, once there's (non-beta) support for it in Adium, XMPP, or whatever that means I can use it in my normal IM, I'm all for it. - Cote'
what isn’t to like? I get the feeling you don’t want communication… if so… go watch television. - Noah David Simon
Noah David Simon, I don't know what you mean. I haven't owned a television in 10+ years, but I hear that many people IM while they watch TV! - Marshall Kirkpatrick
I used FB chat to talk to people I hadn't talked to in years. Then I stopped when it occurred to me that I didn't really care. - Dan Kaplan
where you just watching TV now Marshall, because I think I was pretty clear. I'm on facebook and friendfeed to communicate... not a vanity feed - Noah David Simon
I rarely use the chat, I use the chat popup just to see who is online! - Joe Dawson
I've never used it. Don't even know how to find it. - David Parmet via twhirl
Is it just because Linux is less "demanding" on the hardware? I'm cleaning up a 5-year-old Dell laptop to install Ubuntu on it as a coffeeshop machine. - Harvey Simmons
I also suspect that those who build the world's fastest computers have already spent so much money on the hardware that they're more likely to use a free OS. - Brent Newhall
@Brent: Most of these machines are purpose built. The OS choice was made long before the hardware in almost all of them. - Jason Ellis via twhirl
Yeah, the time element is undoubtedly incorrect there. But I still think that, on those computers, the builders focus their spending on the hardware, not the software. - Brent Newhall
"Enter a topic in the box below. We use our search engine to find up-to-the-second tweets about this topic, then automatically analyze the attitudes expressed in those tweets." - Mack D. Male via Bookmarklet
I'm resisting the kindle until I can do everything with digital books that I can do with meatspace books. Once you've read your book, you can't loan to me, can you? - Tad - just Tad via fftogo
If o'reilly and wrox would release their libraries, I'd probably already own one. Getting rid of all that paper would be great for space and *search* is a feature I have oft wished for in a tech book!! - felix
just saw my first Kindle in the wild last night - didn't play with the interface, but the screen is absolutely amazing - Frederic
Felix, you can always rely on the old school search. It's called the index. :D - Tad - just Tad via fftogo
The kindle has a bunch of interface issues, which I hope they fix in v2! The "buy over the air" feature is really really nice. - David Sifry via twhirl
Still don't get the lure of the Kindle. Books are already portable. DRM makes 'em unshareable. They've got NO selection. Impulse? I don't know, maybe, but I'm ALWAYS reading a book so if I get an impulse I buy and it's shipped to me in a week, often before I finish my current book, not to mention the stack of books on my 'to read' pile. - AJ Kohn
Tad: Many hardcopy books are not indexed or are indexed poorly. I currently have a few hundred ebooks stored on my Samsung Blackjack and actually prefer the user interface to traditional books. - Sean McBride
Well, I'm very much looking forward to the day that I own something like the Kindle. By then I'll be able to share my books and/or give them away when I'm done with them. Boy, we REALLY need to solve this whole digital rights nonsense SOON. - Tad - just Tad via fftogo
While digital rights issues are being sorted out, an incredible number of ebooks can be found on the net if you know where to look, in every conceivable format. - Sean McBride
AJ Kohn: I feel a considerable allure in being able to store several hundred weighty tomes in my shirt pocket in a device that allows me to set the font to suit my taste. (Of course the Kindle won't fit in a shirt pocket.) - Sean McBride
@Sean: I get the font argument, but not the storage one. Books just aren't like music. If I'm on BART (local SF transit for those not in the Bay Area), I could listen to a LOT of music, skipping from genre to genre, in the time it takes to get from the city to Walnut Creek. But I'll be reading just one book. I don't need hundreds of books at my fingers tips because it's a longer medium and I rarely reread books. - AJ Kohn
AJ I'm constantly going through around 5-10 technical books. I'd love to have a device with multiple books. For fiction, yeah - just one at a time. - Tad - just Tad via fftogo
AJ: I usually read several books simultaneously, and often refer back to books I've read years ago. I have always tended to think of my entire library as an integrated database or knowledgebase -- so ebooks suit me just fine. (And I say this as someone who has purchased and owned thousands of hardcopy books over the years.) - Sean McBride
My dad has one and loves it because he make the font bigger... I also think there is a great potential for education. my back is still messed up from lugging around 5 huge texts books throughout high school. not to mention the amount of paper this would save. Kindle v1 isn't perfect but i think its exciting the infrastructure is getting put in place. - Frankie Warren
@Tad: True, for technical, research and textbooks I think the Kindle (or similar device) could be great. I just don't see that as a big enough market to sate Bezos. - AJ Kohn
Well, as it is now it's really too expensive for much of anything else. Once the price point is down below $100, then I think it will really take off. Eventually everyone will have something similar. I'd really like to never buy another meatspace book again. - Tad - just Tad via fftogo
Frankie: it is possible now to store all the reading materials for one's undergraduate AND graduate school courses on a single small memory card -- and all of one's bookmarks and annotations on those materials as well. Think of it -- this is a civilizational revolution of the highest order. - Sean McBride
@Sean: Interesting. I'm single threaded on books. I'm right there with you on DB of knowledge, I just want to remember it rather than refer to it. If it doesn't stick in my craw, then it wasn't THAT good. I don't want to have to look up the names from V (Benny Profane, Rachel Owlglass), or On The Road (Dean Moriarty), or wonder what one word Holden Caulfield used over and over again (phony). - AJ Kohn
Frankie, the education possibilities are fantastic. The big push in academic libraries is to go 80-90% electronic for reference and majority of texts (more for STM, rather than humanities). One of the projects I have been working on is looking at the feasibility of having ebook readers as an alternative to the conpendiums & resources provided by lecturers. Quite often students are only required to read 1 or 2 chapters, which fits into the purchasing models on offer from most of the ebook platforms. - Patricia Hanrahan
I feel like we're right on the cusp of something incredible. But the kindle costs $360 and is broken by DRM. Most technical eBooks still cost nearly as much as their meatspace equivalents. We're getting there, but in a slow, plodding way. - Tad - just Tad via fftogo
AJ - There are professions and fields of activity in which the ability to pluck out specific, detailed and accurate statements, facts and quotes from previously read texts is of the utmost importance -- consider the needs of historians, lawyers, economists, medical researchers, etc. Hardcopy documents are not remotely competitive with etexts for this kind of activity. For recreational reading
