Drivl.com has a funny list titled What code DOESN'T do in real life (that it does in the movies). I can see some coders taking issue with number 9: that coders use mice — I know some programmers who very actively eschew that UI device.
Ah, if only we had connections like the fine people at valleywag.
I promise you, George and I would only use them for good!
But seriously: a reporter who was apparently snubbed by Edelman, who
are doing PR work for Microsoft's much-maligned Zune MP3 player, let valleywag
know about the existence of this email invitation:
I work at Edelman in Seattle on behalf of Microsoft/Zune.
I'm the process of setting up 15-minute calls tomorrow
morning with a Zune spokesperson. We've identified a small
number of press from the calls and I was wondering if
you were interested and what your availability would be.
We're not making any major announcements, rather
talking about the recently released NDP numbers and
forecasts for Zune.Please feel free to call me directly to
arrange a time.Best,
Sara Ball
Edelman on behalf of Microsoft/Zune
(Attention reporters and people who get contacted by PR firms on
a regular basis! If you ever get snubbed and would like some retribution,
we at Global Nerdy are not above carrying out petty revenge
on your behalf!)
The Valleywag article goes on to speculate that the indifferent-to-harsh
coverage that Zune's been getting on the blogosphere (including this site) has made
Microsoft change their promotional tack, and “Like an erring husband, returning to a
long-suffering wife, Microsoft is trying to win back the mainstream press that it
disrespected when it launched the Zune music player.
(Memo to Valleywag: “Disrespect” is not a verb. “Dis” is.)
This strategy isn't likely to produce better results. Much of the Zune-bashing
going on in the blogosphere cited the mainstream press they're now trying
to court. Many blogs (again, this one included) pointed to the CNN clip in which
the Zune got upstaged by Soledad O'Brien's iPod Shuffle and Andy Ihnatko's
scathing review in the Chicago Sun-Times. A commenter going by
the handle of “Thenomain” summed it up nicely by coming up with a new article
title: “Zune Abandons Hostile Blogosphere…For Hostile Traditional Media.”
All this is more evidence for Daniel Eran's thesis (which we referred to in
the article Microsoft's Secret Shame: in areas where they face
actual competition, Microsoft usually takes a smackdown.
Categories
Web 2.0, Pixel Style
Categories
James Kim Found Deceased
(In case you're not familiar with what happened to James Kim and his family, see this entry on my personal blog.)
That's the news according to CNET and the JamesAndKati.com site. We at Global Nerdy deepest condolences to the Kims and their family and friends.
Their families have spent a lot of money on the rescue effort, and there's the matter of a funeral and helping Kati and the kids back on their feet. If you've got a little money (and some Christmas spirit) to spare, please consider making a donation at the JamesAndKati.com site.
Making fun of AdSense is a little like shooting fish in a barrel sometimes. In this case, Joey posts an item that basically says that AT&T was smart enough to predict a bunch of net-centric innovations, but too incompetent to actually make any products or services that actually delivered on the vision. While we're saying that AT&T can't find it's ass with both hands, Google shoehorns an AT&T skyscraper alongside the article.
Granted, it's for the "New AT&T." Wait, actually it's for "The new at&t." In either case, that's probably a good thing—the old AT&T made a bunch of promises it couldn't keep.
Categories
"You Will", But Not Because of AT&T
[via Andrew Sullivan] Here's a blast from the past: a montage of those “You Will” ads from AT&T from 1993…
Although the current forms look a little different from those in the ads, I think that all of the then-futuristic innovations featured in the ads became reality. In fact, I'd bet that the Global Nerdy readership's used at least two-thirds of them by now. (Of course, you could attend in-person meetings in your bare feet at a number of start-ups during the bubble.)
Here's the kicker: aside from providing pieces of the network and giving birth to UNIX twenty years prior to those ads, none of those innovations actually came from AT&T.
The bit about sending a fax from the beach — as opposed to email — made me smirk. Every time someone requires me to fax something to them, I have a little internal reaction similar to Ray's from the webcomic Achewood:
Click the picture to read the full comic.
Links:
Way back in my days at Crazy Go Nuts University, I had a couple of friends whose study programs were at the intersections of computer science and sociology. Had I not been a starving student, I'd have probably given them gifts such as a subscription to the then-new (and cutting edge) Wired magazine, or perhaps one of the then-hot books on the social and cultural implications of virtual reality or hypertext.
What would I get them now? That's easy. A copy of The Meaning and Culture of Grand Theft Auto: Critical Essays, a collection of academic papers ruminating on Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto of series of games.
“It is tempting,” goes one of the book's essays, “given the degree to which this world is fleshed out, to consider GTA:SA in the light of Jean Baudrillard's concepts of the hyperreal and the simulacrum…” You'll find other excerpts from the book in the Tech Digest titled Top 10 things you never knew about Grand Theft Auto (because you're not brainy enough) such as:
In both the demonization and celebration of the virtual reality offered through the GTA series, the horror and praise resulting from suburban bodies entering the otherwise impenetrable (segregated) world of gangstas, thugs, hip-hop, and ghettos, and the surrounding discourse of reception, dominant understandings of race, hegemonic rationalization (explanations) of contemporary social inequality, and the advisable methods (policies) needed to address current issues become visible.
and
The Hot Coffee patch makes sexual encounters in the game much more explicit but not any more sensual. Reduced to the stilted rock of the 'joystick', sex is quite literally mechanized. The result of the abrupt breaks with everydayness precipitated by the mechanical nude image is a 'step outside the everyday without actually leaving it: it shocks, it seems brutal, and yet this effect is superficial, pure appearance, leading us back toward the secret of the everyday – dissatisfaction.
Nope, no facile explanations like “blastin' chumps and jackin' cars is fun” here. If you've got a friend or family member with an interest in videogames who's taking life deferral — er, I mean graduate — studies, this might be the gift for him or her.
Links: