A little speech on social media from one of the Reddit founders:
Official Link
Interesting to note that he says that the internet is a level playing field. On other sites (e.g. Digg), power users drive the submissions. Certain people have followers, and no matter what they post, it'll be on the front page - that's a hotbed for advertisers.
Wow, formatting the video to be the right size is a pain in the butt.
Showing posts with label Updates. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Updates. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Memes and Greenpeace
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Monopoly
Just a heads up; Hasbro has teamed up with Google to advertise Monopoly in a new and creative way: A worldwide game of Monopoly using Google Maps!
It starts today so get cracking. I personally think it's a great idea, 'cuz it's NEW, and that's actually a lot harder to do than you'd expect.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
They're a bunch of Twits.
This blog seems rather empty - maybe it's because I hate talking about Twitter. It's so pervasive that all the news seems to be about it (and it's usually people who all rave about it, but have no idea how to do anything profitable with it).
It's been gaining steam in sports circles - they're breaking news and starting feuds. The NFL (No Fun League) is putting a stop to that, though; probably due to any potential gambling fiascos (like a QB saying his arm hurts before a game?) Is any player really that stupid though...
Sunday, August 23, 2009
PIRATE SLAYERS
So, The Pirate Bay is more or less dead...
But that doesn't stop it from still terrorizing companies.
The news that The Pirate Bay is being sold hampers things, since it WAS the World's Largest BitTorrent tracker, but that doesn't mean that there aren't other options. Some of the other options are more "legal" as well, and new sites are cropping up all the time, so I wonder how much "legalizing" The Pirate Bay actually did. It's like when Torrentspy was shut down a few years ago - everyone just ended up migrating to The Pirate Bay.
For those that are truly adventurous, there are also always other alternatives. In that example, the program is even older than BitTorrent, but it's relative complexity has effectively masked it's presence. Let's not even get started on IRC.
Frankly, I fail to see how downloading through these programs is any different than going to a library, borrowing a CD (e.g. Radiohead's "The Bends") and ripping it to your computer. That's perfectly legal, and no money is really spent there, either. It seems like the issue of legality is more an issue of "scale." Since really, it all seems like a giant overreaction
Thursday, August 13, 2009
There's a whole lotta nothing out there...
One of the tougher things about maintaining a blog of any sort is finding material, I guess. While there is a lot of e-Marketing news out there, there hasn't really been anything particularly groundbreaking that would just make me jump to writing another post. I guess a sagging economy means harm to e-Business as well (laughtrack here)
Well, beyond my own laziness, anyways. I guess I could do like some other bloggers and merely talk about whatever comes to mind, but I always wanted to keep this blog purely "e-Marketing" (and offshoots) so talking about pop culture would seem out of place to me and anybody who reads this.
So, in short, *respect* to bloggers who manage to keep up the torrential pace. I'm a big fan of anime blogs, (something anybody looking through my archives can probably guess) and sites that do episode recaps are great since they update pretty much daily. Maybe laying out a schedule of what to write about is really the way to go~
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Airline Service
Customer service is important. But then, maybe this poor service is expected.
The threat extends beyond just one video... apparently he's got 2 others planned. Not really my kind of music, but I hope it gets the message out.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
inFamous, by a Unicorn Horn
Been wrapped up playing Blazblue for the past few days, so I haven't been doing much.
And yet, there's still stuff to update you on (all video-game edition).
I follow The Escapist online magazine primarily for one reason: Zero Punctuation, Yahtzee's acerbic video game review show. In a recent video he challenged 2 games (inFamous and Prototype) to a rather interesting contest - the better game would be chosen by who drew the other game's character crossdressing better.
Surprisingly, both development companies participated, resulting in this. I actually quite like knowing that the companies take into account stuff posted on the internet and work together with the fans to create something special. It reminds me of the Tiger Woods' Jesus shot.
In another vein, Vanguard Princess, a 2D computer fighting game, is being given away for free. You can download it here.
Friday, June 26, 2009
We have a winner!
Netflix competition = over.
Not much else to say... (more like, lots to say, but no energy to write it right now)
Oh, but I will comment on this: this is why you should have registered a Facebook name as soon as possible... so that somebody doesn't hack your account and give you one without your knowledge.
Facebook can cause a lot of strife.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Deflation
Almost as if in response to Opera's cloud computing capability, Microsoft has launched a new campaign: Use IE8 and have a chance to win $10,000 Australian. They specifically tell you not to use Firefox (though many people have pointed out that you can use Firefox and use a user-agent switcher.
This contest is a rather sad attempt from Microsoft to gain back some users... which is weird, since Microsoft's normal operating procedure is to hire all the best people away and do R&D until their product is better (see: XBox). Ingenuity isn't really their strong suit, but I guess this campaign plays to their strengths (having the cash to blow anyone else out of the water).
Didn't the prize for internet contests (and really, ANY contest) use to be a million dollars? $10,000 seems like they're skimping.
Google's response was sarcasm.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Cloud Computing, Loud and Proud
Opera finally did it.
Wait a year, and Firefox will steal it. Another 3 years and it'll be on IE too.
Based on what I know, here's how they stack up:
Opera = lightweight and efficient
Google Chrome = power hungry powerhouse
Firefox = heavily supported, medium power usage
Safari = more or less Firefox
IE = buggy, evil, and owning 70% of the market, proving that most people would rather use a bad program than replace it (likely why Norton Antivirus has any users...)
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Facebook Usernames
You can now register a username with Facebook. It more or less gives you the domain name rights to facebook.com/(username here)
A couple of problems: 1) You can't change it once you've chosen (which is stupid), 2) you can only have one, and 3) it is easily pranked
No real rush to register - most people find it kind of pointless, since the only people who would need to see your Facebook should have Facebook (and can just use the search function). It helps if you have a common name, I guess, to have a specific Facebook url (mine is REALLY uncommon so I have no issue - but I registered my name anyways)
Still, whoever went first and registered a first name only could have something fun...
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Swedish Sue-age
Nice to know that somebody cares about privacy laws...
Hahaha, this kind of thing would probably have ramifications for the Pirate Bay Trial.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Wolfin' it Down
Wolfram|Alpha is fun~
Now to go search random words and marvel at it's disambiguation attempts. It's still really incomplete (a lot of questions just confuse it) but it seems to do really well if you're only searching for a single word. Can't quite handle phrases yet.
And really, programming long strings can be difficult. It's a big step up though - if anybody has ever tried the Adobe Read out loud feature (it sometimes pronounces Money as "M-Onny" - I'd link to Adobe's explanation of it, but the site is down, go figure...) or played the video game "Lifeline", or played any text adventure games, (e.g. Violet, a multiple award winner for text based adventure games, or the runner up, Lost Pig), you know how crazy hard it is to get a program that actually comprehends what a person wants...
Mission: Impossible
A post about how one team won the progress award for 2008 in the Netflix Contest that I talked about earlier came out recently.
Thoughts and stuff after the jump.
So here's the important things to take out of the article:
- The teams started collaborating, since working on their own was taking far too long
- The team discusses two different filtering methods
- You can really see how crowdsourcing the project has led to a snowball effect (by implementing, Netflix can gain more/better data for more improvements)
- 10% is REALLY hard to get to.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
How Can Entropy Be Reversed?
Wolfram|Alpha is looking awesome. Integrated, too (you can see the Wikipedia link to the right for some, or a web-search like Google).
The title of this post is from the top Reddit comment. Anytime you can get a chance to reference to Asimov's greatest work, you take it.
You may as well all go and bookmark the site now. The GUI is really nice. You can use it, too, provided you're willing to be on the beta testing phase.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Return of the Pirate
An update on how The Pirate Bay is reacting to their recent trial
The Pirate Bay has already said they have no plans to ever pay. Well, that turns out to be partially true.
The Pirate bay actually DOES plan to pay back the money... in the form of a DDo$ attack. Like a DDoS Attack (Denial of Service Attack), a DDo$ attack works by flooding the victim with more than they can handle, except in this case, it's by actually paying money.
By sending 1 SEK (Swedish Krona, equal to $0.13 American) at a time, in order to pay off the $30,000,000 SEK they were fined, The Pirate Bay will end up costing the IFPI $30,000,000 in bank transaction fees (since a deposit of 1 SEK costs 2 SEK to handle).
A lesson to companies - when going up against internet experts, have internet experts on your side too; the IFPI doesn't exactly have a method to counteract this, when the simple solution would be for them to setup some method to collect all the money in one place first, and make a single large deposit.
But then, if it's being sent directly to a bank, there isn't much choice, is there?
Friday, May 1, 2009
Hungry Like The Wolf
There's a lot of discussion about the new Search Engine, Wolfram Alpha, and how it might be a Google-killer (sorry, no, that's not what it's meant for). Thoughts after the jump.
I haven't been keeping up much with Wolfram Alpha, but seeing what it can do has been impressive. To summarize, it is a statistics engine, which brings up a page of graphs and charts that correspond to the search item on a single, summarized page. It's like checking on a national census and mixing it with an encyclopedia, and unlike Wikipedia, it's accurate and validated by professionals. I must say, it looks like an invaluable resource for research (and schoolwork, so it's a bummer it didn't come out 4 years sooner).
Issues that come up are the obvious "getting the topic correct" - luckily, from what I've seen, most people tend to search just one word (e.g. "Apple" or "Linux") so that should be okay, but it gets a bit difficult when people ingrained to use phrases start typing in stuff (e.g. "Linux Error Installation Time-Out Kubuntu"). Also, the article discusses the problem with the cumbersome name (Wolfram Alpha) - it truly isn't as easy to remember as Google or Yahoo. In keeping with the Wolf theme, I'd suggest going with something like "Hunting" or "Tracking."
It's been a while since my last post (I've been doing this to an old laptop) but hey... it's still only about a week...
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Who's Biased?!
I said that the judge in The Pirate Bay trial came off as somebody who was under the influence of the RIAA, and that somebody would probably attack him. Turns out that the attack was more of a shot at his character rather than his life (definitely a good thing).
Seems as if the judge wasn't exactly in the RIAA's pocket - more like the judge was pre-copyright (heavily so) and was an activist demanding stricter copyright laws. In addition, one of the secondary judges when the trial started was also pro-copyright, and was summarily removed from the case BY this judge as "biased." The lawyers of The Pirate Bay aren't going to let this go, taking the opportunity to demand a retrial.
I don't know if this is going to work - the system seems pretty broken, so trying to play by the rules may not amount to much, but we'll see how this unfolds.
Also, next long "feature article" will likely be about website usability and design. So look forward to that.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
It's nice to know what you're talking about
I wrote about The Pirate Bay yesterday, as well as discussing alternatives a bit - it's nice to know that I beat out a majority of the internet with my opinion, as well as the fact that many people seem to feel the same way: that the verdict is a reflection of a stagnant industry that will not amount to much other than delaying the eventual crash of current business practice.
This opinion piece from The Independent summarizes a lot of good points in one article:
In addition, it is good to note that the public has largely rallied to the support of The Pirate Bay in Sweden (where TPB is based and where the trial took place: demonstrations are taking place, and The Pirate Party has surged in membership, rivaling "serious" political parties (beating out the Green Party... and to think in the US and Canada, all they care about is legalizing marijuana...)
Of course, not all protests are all that serious... Thanks, 4chan, for that.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Faceboogle?
It was pretty stealthy so you may not have noticed, but Google is trying to come up with ways to build something like Facebook. FriendConnect seems like a logical step 1...
My first encounter with FriendConnect happened today:
The image more or less just pops up at the bottom of a webpage (in this case, I was on ScaryIdeas, a site dedicated to weird / interesting ad campaigns)
It's about as annoying as those Digg toolbars. I'd prefer to think that Google isn't stalking me, but seeing as I log into Google immediately upon turning on my computer (for Gmail and Blogger), I guess those chances are slim to none.
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