Rizzn's shared items in Google Reader

Life In A Day

(author unknown) — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 13:26:42 PDT

I liked a YouTube video: Life In A Day is a historic film capturing for future generations what it was like to be alive on the 24th of July, 2010. Executive produced by Ridley Scott and directed by Kevin Macdonald. Live in the UK? 12th Nov 2011 will do for Britain ...

Religious Change FAIL

(author unknown) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 00:45:21 PDT

Shared by Rizzn
Admit it, you find racist ignorance to be humorous, sometimes.

Submitted by: ross

Put this in your vampire diary: The CW coming to Hulu

(author unknown) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 00:38:58 PDT

Shared by Rizzn
The CW still exists?

Hulu has signed a five-year licensing agreement with The CW, the company announced Friday. The deal will bring current season programming, including The Vampire Diaries, Gossip Girl and Supernatural, to both subscribers of Hulu Plus, and Hulu’s ad-supported web-based service.

CW shows will start making their way to Hulu later this year, starting with the nine shows featured in the network’s fall line-up. In addition to the popular titles already mentioned, Hulu will also be streaming episodes of new shows Ringer, Hart of Dixie, and The Secret Circle, as well as returning hits Nikita, 90210 and America’s Next Top Model. That’s fierce.

Seriously, though, this is a pretty big win for Hulu in terms of its ability to appeal to a younger crowd. The CW’s shows do very well with teens, something made evident by the network’s near-sweep of the most recent Teen Choice Awards. Hulu will be the only streaming service (besides the official CW site) to carry in-season CW shows as a result of the deal, which will make the five most recent episodes of a show available the day after broadcast for Hulu Plus subscribers, and eight days after airing on the free, ad-supported version.

Hulu recently decided to call off plans to sell the company, with its management citing a desire to instead continue to “map out its path to even greater success.” Locking down properties that appeal to the young folk (who especially love streaming video) is a smart step down that path.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Buy Bitcoins With PayPal or Credit Card

(author unknown) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 00:38:19 PDT

Shared by Rizzn
This might change the game - liquidity for Bitcoins was previously not that easy.

Memory Dealers is proud to announce that it's acquired the rights to sell the famous Casascius Physical Bitcoins. Customers can purchase these physical Bitcoins (which have hologram-coded private keys) with credit cards or Paypal. Each coin is worth its face value in BTC and is cast in brass with the special tamper-proof hologram on the back.

Available versions:
1 BTC
25 BTC (plated with real gold)

FREE shipping on orders over $50 within the USA.

To learn more about these physical Bitcoins, visit www.Casascius.com
(note: avoid Casascius.net, it is a fraudulent phishing scam)

Click HERE to purchase from MemoryDealers.com

Message from the Wife of an Oil Rig Worker

(author unknown) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 00:36:39 PDT

Shared by Rizzn
#occupywallst #wearethe53percent

In a commitment to honesty, Twitter tries to bury the hatchet with third-party developers

(author unknown) — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 14:53:06 PDT

Shared by Rizzn
It's not hard to piss people off in a community you're constantly flipping the bird at.

Pages: 1 2

Ryan Sarver had just come back to work after his wedding.

Notice I said “wedding” and not “honeymoon.” Sarver has for some time been Twitter’s first line of defense between the company and a occasionally disgruntled army of third-party developers. The relationship between those two entities has been testy at best and an out-and-out war at worst for the better part of two years. Unfortunately, mid-2011 was no time for a honeymoon.

I met with Sarver in Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, where bikes stood in racks against the walls and neon plastic deer and framed cross stitch decorated the foyer. It’s a hipster paradise, and the clean-cut, blazer-wearing Sarver seemed at once infinitely at home and slightly out of place in it.

But where Sarver is unquestionably beleaguered is in the relatively public forum of Twitter’s ecosystem developers: the men and women who develop apps that use Twitter’s APIs. They try to build businesses that complement Twitter, and when anything goes wrong with that setup (for example, Twitter makes a minor change to an API), Sarver is the de facto shock absorber. And that explains why he skipped his honeymoon to deal with his unruly constituency.

For such a young man, he handles the role of “the guy developers love to hate” with a large measure of grace and resilience.

“The ecosystem is over 750,000 developers,” he told me. “It’s a massive thing. Any community of that size, you’re never going to keep everyone happy at all times. … Some people might be mad at me, but I try to hear what they’re trying to say and fold that back into what we’re trying to do.

“The most critical people are usually the most valuable ones. They tell you where the points of friction are and how you can improve.”

Unlike Sarver, Twitter did get a honeymoon. There were a few years when it was the much-beloved social platform of tech insiders and hipsters everywhere. Developers flocked to it, drawn by its openness, flexibility and simplicity, building a wealth of Twitter apps and integrating it into their own web services.

Now the honeymoon is over. For Twitter to survive challenges from rivals like Facebook and Google+, much depends on whether it can continue to hold onto the love of its developer community.

“The most critical people”

In 2007, the infant microblogging service had yet to establish any real foothold outside San Francisco techies, yet it was trumpeting the wild success of its APIs. Co-founder Biz Stone said at the time, “The API has been arguably the most important, or maybe even inarguably, the most important thing we’ve done with Twitter. It has allowed us, first of all, to keep the service very simple and create a simple API so that developers can build on top of our infrastructure and come up with ideas that are way better than our ideas.”

Yet for many developers, it seemed that as soon as an outside party came up with an innovative idea, Twitter jumped onto the same idea too, stomping on the little guys. A long list of Twitter’s features, including mentions and lists, first appeared as features of third-party Twitter clients, only to be incorporated into the main service.

Of course, since such features are often dictated by user behavior and requests, just how much Twitter was scamming off the ideas of others and how much it was simply responding to user needs are unknown.

What we do know is that the company began to seem opaque to the developers who used its API. By the spring of 2010, when it hosted its first developer conference, developer angst had reached a fever pitch.

As the conference opened, the world learned that Twitter had acquired Tweetie and crowned it the company’s official iPhone app. Other makers of Twitter iPhone apps felt blindsided and betrayed. Businesses went down not with a whimper but a bang. Development shops started wondering aloud what areas of the map were safe territory and what Twitter might decide to annex next for itself. No one seemed to be getting or giving any clear answers.

Twitter had built an ecosystem before it decided on a business model, and while it tried out different avenues and experimented with new features, it wasn’t disclosing all of its roadmap to all of its presumed partners. While some folks benefited from a close relationship with the company and its founders, others suffered from a full-on communication breakdown.

It was a situation that was bound to create bad feelings.

“The change in attitude Twitter had since Chirp conference … is just the feeling that they no longer care about developers or their ecosystem,” said third-party developer Arik Fraimovich in a recent interview. “They seem to look at it from the narrow perspective of ‘what’s in it for Twitter?,’ failing to understand that in an ecosystem, all parts need to contribute and communicate. They also fail to understand that the next creative use of Twitter won’t be developed by their developers, but by some API developer — just as it was since their inception.”

A big part of the problem was what plagues many relationships: Lack of clear communication.

Twitter only gradually worked to clear things up. A year after the Tweetie acquisition, after everyone had adjusted to Twitter’s official, in-house suite of mobile apps, the company made an attempt to communicate part of its roadmap, the upcoming acquisition of TweetDeck and a renewed focus on consumer features.

In a controversial memo to a Google Groups list in March, Sarver laid down the law: Don’t make a Twitter client using Twitter’s API. Don’t duplicate Twitter’s features. Don’t rename them. Don’t channel users away from Twitter’s ads and experience.

It was clear, but it was also surprisingly heavy-handed for a company that until then had been known for its open and easy-going approach.

On one hand, Twitter as a business had every right to control how its APIs were being used. On the other hand, it had willingly and knowingly cultivated a thriving sub-economy of Twitter apps and was now telling many of them to kiss off. It’s a communique Sarver regrets, and it started quite the war of words.

Laura Fitton, the perky, audacious founder of Twitter-related startup Oneforty (and an unofficial team mom for the Twitter app community), told me back in March, “Twitter is full of genuinely earnestly awesome people who want to do the right thing, but it has resolutely failed to create the conditions for real business success on their platform.”

I also spoke to Loic LeMeur, the tall, eccentric French entrepreneur behind the rapidly pivoting Seesmic, who told me, “There are two types of Twitter apps, the ones Twitter likes and the ones that are competitive and don’t have good communication with them.”

Of Sarver’s missive, which put Seesmic in the direct line of fire, LeMeur said, “I wasn’t expecting such dramatic changes, but instead of complaining, I have to adapt to it. … Competing with your number one partner is a little dangerous.”

Jesse Stay is another entrepreneur/engineer who has built a business around a collection of social APIs, including Twitter’s. Stay is the picture of a mild-mannered Mormon, a truly kind man who would think long and hard before uttering a negative word about anyone. Still, during yet another minor but uncommunicated technical change at Twitter, he told me, “This move by Twitter is no surprise, as I’ve experienced over and over through the last three years. It’s why we’ve moved to a $29-per-month plan for all the services we offer. … That’s the only way to afford the risk of Twitter.”

Perhaps no one understands the risk of Twitter better than Noah Everett, a man whose name came up more than once in my talk with Sarver. Everett built TwitPic, a highly popular and successful app for uploading photos and sharing them through Twitter. Out of the blue earlier this year, Twitter announced it would be implementing media-sharing capabilities into its web and mobile apps, first for photos, then for videos, cutting a number of photo-sharing apps — including TwitPic — off at the roots.

“TwitPic will continue to still live on,” Everett told me when the feature rolled out to users, espousing the kind of grim optimism I’ve heard from many entrepreneurs facing hopeless odds. “We’ve got a huge base of loyal users and we still want to continue to provide them with the best service possible … regardless of this feature announcement from Twitter.”

But there was a bitter twist. Everett had the previous year started working on a stealth project called Heello, a project attempting to “make email suck less,” as he put it to me. But out of spite or pique or frustration, he decided to turn Heello into a Twitter clone.

“If Twitter can compete with its developers without fair notice, then why can’t we?” he quipped. “Twitter rolling out their photo option to everyone [the day before the Heello site launched] was a complete coincidence, but I’m glad the timing happened that way.”

These voices and many others ring in my ears – and likely, to some extent, in Sarver’s, too – as we face one another over a small table in a small conference room at Twitter.

I ask him if he thinks the company made any mistakes.

“You can always do things better,” he told me. “If you go back to the guidance we gave last March, we could have executed that message much better. The tone and format could have been improved. But the intent is still important: The most important thing for us as a platform is to give people a clear idea of where we’re going.”

And that clarity of communication is all most of these critical voices were asking for.

Pages: 1 2

Filed under: dev

Bill Gates tells students being a billionaire is "quite strange"

(author unknown) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 07:18:48 PDT

Shared by Rizzn
Bill Gates on #OccupyWallSt, in a round-a-bout way.

Tech, people, Education

Ask Bill Gates Anything: Being a Billionaire is Strange, Microsoft Co-Founder Tells Students

Curt Woodward 10/27/11

How’s the life of a billionaire? “Quite strange,” says Bill Gates, who fielded questions from University of Washington students on Thursday evening as part of a lecture on the future of computing.

Gates’ talk, at a packed hall in the UW’s computer science building, focused on some areas where he thinks cheap, powerful computing will have a major impact on society, including education, disease, and robotics.

Gates recalled spending time on the UW campus as a young man, back in the days when computers were huge, powerful machines locked up in big research facilities.

“At strange hours you could essentially break in and use computer time,” Gates said. “I never did get a degree here, or anywhere else. But fortunately for me, my addiction to computers became easier to satisfy.”

Given the chance to ask Gates about anything, students treated the evening like a visit with the oracle, asking the Microsoft co-founder to expound on problems with the political system and the tax code, predict the future of computer interfaces, and more.

Gates didn’t disappoint, giving long answers that included some glimpses at his personal life, such as meeting his daughter’s boyfriend’s parents over Skype and being such a bookworm as a kid that “I had to have a quota about how much I was allowed to read.”

The webcast will be archived online by UW, but here are the highlights from where I sat:

BEING RICH
A student from Beijing said her dream as a child was to be one of the richest people on Earth, so she asked Gates “what is one word of advice that you would give to someone like me to become someone like you?”

“I didn’t start out with the dream of being super-rich. And even after we started Microsoft, and the guys who ran Intel—Gordon Moore and those guys—were billionaires, I was like, ‘Wow, that must be strange.’ And so—it is, it’s quite strange,” he said to laughs from the crowd.

“But I think most people who’ve done well have sort of found something that they just are kind of nuts about doing. And then they figure out a system to hire their friends to do it with them. And if it’s an area of great impact, then sometimes you get financial independence,” Gates said.

“But wealth above a certain level, really, it’s a responsibility that then you’re going have to either, a.) leave it to your children, which may or may not be good for them, or b.) try to be smart about giving it away.

“So I can understand wanting to have millions of dollars, because there’s meaningful freedom that comes with that. But once you get much beyond that—you know, I have to tell you, it’s the same hamburger. Dick’s has not raised their prices enough,” Gates said to laughs. “But, you know, being ambitious is good. You just have to pick what you enjoy doing.”

MONEY & POLITICS
Asked if he thought there was a societal problem of wealth being concentrated in the hands of too few powerful forces with an outsized ability to influence politics, Gates pointed out that worldwide poverty is getting far better over time. But he also acknowledged …Next Page »

Curt Woodward is senior editor at Xconomy Seattle. Reach me at cwoodward@xconomy.com. Get story feeds and more on Twitter @curtwoodward and Facebook on.fb.me/curtwoodward.

Comments

Siri

(author unknown) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 07:08:34 PDT

Shared by Rizzn
This is how it begins. #siri

Excited to see what’s next for Siri.

Probably Bad News: Canada’s 99% is Much More Equal

(author unknown) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 07:06:26 PDT

Shared by Rizzn
Yeah, whoops. #iamNOTthe99percent

View This Poll

Submitted by: Steve

Can Casascius (Physical) Bitcoins Actually Spurn Legality?

(author unknown) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 13:21:52 PDT

Shared by Rizzn
No, once again, Bitcoin are not illegal.

The easy answer is probably still: “No.”

Recently, an innovative Bitcoin enthusiast named Mike Caldwell from Utah decided that his beloved bitcoins were too virtual and decided to make a product that could represent them. Casascius Bitcoins are a physical brass slug, struck with a Bitcoin symbol and a few words, and affixed with a hologram containing a printed sequence of letters and numbers representing a private-key to redeem the underlying bitcoins.

Writer Eric Mack at CNet has asked the question, “Are physical Bitcoins legal?”

He uses a fiat-currencies created by a citizen that ended up crossing the line with the law, his example—the Liberty Dollar—invented by Bernard von NotHaus of North Carolina, landed its creator in prison for producing and minting coin in violation of US law.

In the United States the all-powerful Dollar ($) is the fiat currency of the land. The very law entitles the US Federal government to mint, address, and distribute a currency and to keep it regulated; it also empowers it with the authority to strike down competing currencies by the states, citizens, and businesses—almost always in the case of currencies designed to mimic the Dollar as to be close-to-forgery.

However, BitcoinBlogger argued that comparing the physical Casascius Bitcoins to the Liberty Dollar amounts to nothing more than FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt)—a type of propaganda designed to undermine a particular position without arguing against it directly. The Liberty Dollar had been minted by von NotHaus not just in competition with the US Dollar, but designed it to look extremely similar to the fiat currency of the land. Casascius Bitcoins look nothing like US coins (except that they’re round) and a lot more like arcade and bus tokens.

Furthermore, I’d like to add that the Casascius Bitcoins themselves have no inherent value as trading tokens except that they have the representation of a private key on them that permits them to be redeemed for bitcoins. In fact, the actual bitcoins they represent can be transferred away devaluing the bitcoin value of the Casascius coin. The hologram on the back covers the private-key and is damaged when it’s peeled away to reveal it; thereby allowing an owner to tell if it been tampered with.

The Casascius Bitcoin is just an interesting token of love connected to the Bitcoin market and has as little chance of running afoul of US law as much as any coin-like token redeemable for specific product or service might be. The Casascius coins aren’t designed such that they look like US coins and they wouldn’t work like US coins.

Bitcoins themselves are a mathematical and cryptographic commodity; they’re currently valuable insomuch that people exchange them for fiat currencies like the Dollar, the Euro, and the Yen. In this fashion they’re not unlike any other virtual currency (except for the obvious difference that they’re a limited commodity without a central authority.) Physical bitcoins cannot actually work because the coins they represent can be transferred out from under them. They are, however, a charming gimmick.

Mike Caldwell’s Casacius Bitcoins are beautiful; and although I wouldn’t buy one to store bitcoin value, I certainly wouldn’t mind one just to have an interesting reification of a virtual cryptocurrency.

Can Casascius (Physical) Bitcoins Actually Spurn Legality? is a post from: SiliconANGLE
We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

In the same vein:

Jeopardy Champ Ken Jennings is the 99%

(author unknown) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 08:28:57 PDT

Shared by Rizzn
Ken Jennings is the 99%. Apparently.

It’s not just out of work electricians and teachers and college kids joining the fray- Jeopardy champ Ken Jennings is part of the 99%.

Jeopardy Champ Ken Jennings is the 99% is a post from: The Inquisitr

Ron Paul Spends $1m on Charter Flights, Double Other GOP Candidates

(author unknown) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 08:23:41 PDT

Shared by Rizzn
I wonder if it's cheaper to charter a blimp.

If you donated to Ron Paul’s Republican campaign, there’s a good chance your money literally went up in the air.

ABC News reports how Paul has spent close to $1 million on charter flights as he fights his way through the the early stages of his campaign for the GOP presidential candidacy. That’s more than double the amount spent by Michele Bachmann, the next closest candidate. Imagine his airmiles.

ABC states that Bachmann has spent $439,000 on flights, while Mitt Romney – who’s apparently a fan of low-cost carrier Southwest Airlines – spent between $300,000 and $400,000.

Rick Perry’s figure is $272,000, but his late entry in the race for the GOP candidacy means his total is more compressed. Rick Santorum is the only candidate not to have used chartered planes, and his comparatively low campaign funds probably explain why.

The Hill points out how Paul and Bachmann’s totals are distorted by both being current sitting members of Congress – that means both will regularly have to travel to Washington from their primary states.

But in Paul’s case, his fondness for short flights has taken its toll – during July, the 76-year-old took flights between some cities that are a two-hour drive apart – Ames, Iowa and Cedar Rapids being examples of this.

The advantages of fast travel are clear to candidates – less time on the road means greater mobility between campaign stops and more time speaking to the unwashed masses. And, with $5m raised in the third quarter alone, I’m sensing Paul can afford his frequent flights.

Ron Paul Spends $1m on Charter Flights, Double Other GOP Candidates is a post from: The Inquisitr

Nokia Shows Off Their First Windows Phones

(author unknown) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 08:17:22 PDT

Shared by Rizzn
The new Nokia phone looks slick. Would like to put my hands on one.

Earlier this year Nokia and Microsoft announced a partnership through which Nokia would be develop and sell phones running Windows Phone. The partnership is seen as important to increasing Windows Phone market share as well as Nokia’s smartphone market share. In June we began to see leaks of the first Nokia Windows Phone with a code name of Sea Ray and this week we finally have seen first two Nokia Windows Phones, the Nokia Lumia 710 and the Lumia 800.
continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Nintendo Reports US$923 Million Loss In The First Half Of This Fiscal Year

(author unknown) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 08:16:18 PDT

Shared by Rizzn
LFMF: Don't point out how Sony and Nintendo are struggling badly right now to your gaming group. #fanbois.

Comments

At Least Let The Bleeding Stop

(author unknown) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 08:14:45 PDT

Shared by Rizzn
"I do lag a cerdain grabitas ad the mobent."

Ads by Project Wonderful! Your ad could be here, right now.

That guy in the background has made some mistakes

November Fifth Looms Large With Anonymous Plot vs. Fox News, Banks

(author unknown) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 08:12:44 PDT

Shared by Rizzn
We'll see if they can get it done this time around. The last threat was a big did. #anonymous

“Remember, remember the fifth of November, the gunpowder, treason and plot.” Perhaps we should update that old Guy Fawke’s nursery rhyme greatly popularized by Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta to mention the “Anonymous cyberattack and plot.” The hactivist collective developed a meme penchant for wearing Guy Fawke’s masks from the comic book and film to portray the sort of mass, faceless anonymity that the Internet conveys to people acting as a group and they carried that meme with them into the public sphere as well with the mask appearing at protests against Church of Scientology and even amid the Occupy Wall Street protestors.

A cell of Anonymous has released a video detailing an upcoming cyberattack planned against Fox News—a mainstream affiliate news media programming channel in the United States—for what the hactivist cell alleges as “continued right-wing, conservative propaganda against the occupations” and the group says it intends to destroy their website and shut them down.

We’ve seen segments of the collective take a swipe at Fox News in the past with hilarious results when they lost control of their Politics Twitter feed.

The attack is timed to happen on November 5th 2011, a day that’s gone down in history as the holiday dedicated to failed saboteur Guy Fawkes who attempted to blow up the British parliament in the Gunpowder plot of 1604. His attempt, the anti-establishment vibe behind his intent, and the caricature of his image have been immortalized by V for Vendetta—as well as much that the date become part of Anonymous’s portfolio as well.

This announced cyberattack by Anonymous will also coincide with other attempts to cover Nov 5 also as a day for everyone to remove their money from the banks. Numerous announcements have been released by Internet hactivist groups (including cells of Anonymous) calling for people to withdraw their money and move it elsewhere. “Operation Cash Back” announced two weeks ago via YouTube video; “Operation Cash Run” another video with a similar concept and name; all of which also accord with the Facebook group Bank Transfer Day that currently stacks over 26,000 fans.

We can probably expect a lot of hactivist activity as the fifth of November approaches—although hopefully no gunpowder treasons amidst all the plot.

“I see no reason why gunpowder, treason should ever be forgot…”

November Fifth Looms Large With Anonymous Plot vs. Fox News, Banks is a post from: SiliconANGLE
We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

In the same vein:

Your Klout Score Probably Just Dropped - Do You Care?

(author unknown) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 12:49:04 PDT

Shared by Rizzn
Yeah- my Klout score dropped. Haven't decided if I care yet. Oh wait, this just in: I don't.

Today Klout released a new scoring model for its social media influence service. According to a blog post, this project "represents the biggest step forward in accuracy, transparency and our technology in Klout's history."

Klout Score is based on the PeopleRank algorithm, which gathers information about how many people you influence, how much you influence them and how influential they are.

Sponsor

"Influence is the ability to drive action and is based on quality, not quantity," writes Klout Director of Ranking Ash Rust. "When someone engages with your content, we assess that action in the context of the person's own activity."

Klout Score collects data from your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Google+ and Wordpress accounts in order to determine your overall social media influence.

But how it calculates your score based on the data is unknown. In his blog post "The Trouble with Klout," long-time technology journalist Paul Gillin writes:

Klout uses a proprietary algorithm to estimate influence based upon comments, retweets, @replies and mentions, among other things. The company isn't very transparent about how it calculates the score, and with good reason. The algorithm is a competitive asset and disclosure would inevitably invite people to manipulate the system.

He concludes by stating that "Klout essentially asks customers to put their faith in the service to do the right thing."

What Is Influence Measurement, Really?

Let's not forget that Klout measures algorithmically derived data points. It does not account for its users offline influence, or any digital influence that isn't expressed on social media. Are critics of Klout missing the big picture? Jay Baer says yes, they definitely are.

Klout should be used directionally and for trending purposes, not adhered to slavishly. It's one piece of information that needs to be combined with (ideally) several others to do social CRM well. After all, the most important thing to know isn't online "influence" but historical relationship between that customer and your company, and their corresponding lifetime value...I fear that lazy companies use it as a replacement for sound CRM and database marketing initiatives that bolt together multiple data points for better business intelligence.

Klout Scores Keep Dropping, Users Get Angrier

In the comments section below the post, angry users are shouting that Klout has assigned a higher importance to Facebook than it gives to Twitter. Klout responded, stating: "We measure influence equally on every network. We care about your influence over your audience -- not the network you influence them in." Here's another conversation between a user and Klout, suggesting that their algorithm updates are nothing to quibble over.

Klout has flaws. So who cares if your Klout score just dropped? That's pretty vain.

Discuss

YouTube’s top channels rival cable audiences

(author unknown) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 12:47:35 PDT

Shared by Rizzn
This is why it's puzzling some New Media folks try to cross over to Old Media channels.

Thought online video would never match the audience numbers of traditional TV? Think again: The top five channels on YouTube get the same number of average daily viewers as the top five U.S. cable channels, I was told by a YouTube spokesperson this week.

That revelation comes at the same time as a whole bunch of new data from traffic management company Sandvine that shows how YouTube is continuing to be a major contributor to bandwidth usage in North America. Sandvine’s Global Internet Phenomena report shows that YouTube is especially making a big dent in mobile, where it is now responsible for 20 percent of all downstream traffic during peak times.

YouTube videos also make up close to ten percent of all aggregate fixed-line traffic in North America.

The Sandvine report contains another data nugget that explains some of YouTube’s success: The majority of all real-time entertainment traffic in North America is now consumed on devices that aren’t your traditional desktop or laptop PC. “Game consoles, set- top boxes, smart TVs, tablets, and mobile devices being used within the home combine to receive 55% of all Real-Time Entertainment traffic,” the report states.

YouTube has been working hard on getting users to watch its videos on TV. For example, the site has been bringing its YouTube on TV interface, which was formerly known as YouTube Leanback, to an increasing number of connected devices, knowing that users watch twice as much YouTube content per day when using YouTube on TV as when accessing the site using the traditional desktop experience.

Also worth noting: Sandvine’s real-time entertainment traffic number only include traffic that originated from fixed-line Internet accounts, but that also covers anything you watch on your iPad or mobile phone via Wi-Fi. And mobile has become increasingly important for YouTube: The site recently revealed that mobile devices make up for ten percent of all of the site’s video views.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Transformers 4 & 5 May Shoot Back-to-Back

(author unknown) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 12:43:51 PDT

Shared by Rizzn
transformers 4 and 5? no no no nonononoNONO!

Adding to the potential pain felt by Transformers fans by the news coming that Michael Bay may be heading up a Transformers 4, there may be a fifth installment on the way as well.

According to Variety Paramount is looking into filming the next two Transformers films back-to-back to cut down on production costs and allow the makers of the bazillion licensed goods to get going on all of the items children will be begging their parents for.

Shia LaBeouf has said he won’t return for any more movies in the series, which means we will miss out on this sort of great acting.

In his place it has been rumored for some time that Jason Statham may be joining the franchise. According to sources no offer has been made to the action star as of yet, but considering how long this rumor has circulated, I would suggest taking it with a generous helping of salt.

However, I have a crazy idea, how about instead of worrying about a human lead, you actually focus on the Transformers? I know, what a crazy idea. Yes, you can have a human involved, but worry about the Autobots and the Decepticons for once as the series is named for them after all.

Post from: SeanPAune.com

Transformers 4 & 5 May Shoot Back-to-Back

ShareThis

In San Francisco, There Are Many Ways to Occupy Wall Street

(author unknown) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 12:19:27 PDT

Shared by Rizzn
One of my favorite #occupywallst posts yet.

I figured before heading out I would wait for the fog to lift to shine some light on the Occupy San Francisco annex of Occupy Wall Street. I’m not sure it ever did. What many refer to as the People’s Republic of San Francisco is socially liberal and economically neutered. The heaviest traffic is leaving the city in the morning and coming back in the evening. It’s a bedroom community that has effectively banned both McDonald’s Happy Meals and foie gras and has sadly turned into the pretty but growth-deprived stepsister of San Jose.

Still, who doesn’t love a movement? Needing something to wear to an occupation and in bigger need of some protest mojo, my first stop was the corner of Haight and Ashbury, the mecca of movements, the center of the ’60s hippie habitat. The streets were pretty empty—usually this area is filled with homeless, stumbling along the block lined with body piercing shops, vintage clothing stores and “smoke” shops.

I found the Jimi Hendrix shirt I was looking for, but no signs of any protests, although I was accosted by four aggressive pink-T-shirt-wearing folks from Planned Parenthood and a Hasidic Rabbi with a lulav and etrog. I dove into the only sign of civilization, the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream on the corner, and ordered a small Stephen Colbert Americone Dream, which cost a small fortune.

OccupySF has taken up at Justin Herman Plaza, at the bottom of Market Street, an irony probably lost on most. It’s nestled between the Financial District and the recently renovated Ferry Building by the bay. It’s also a block away from the Federal Reserve of San Francisco. Both are filled with sleeping bags and dreadlocks and body piercings and the pungent odor that often accompanies this scene. And signs. And more signs. Like most, I’m confused by what Occupy Wall Street is all about. Some of it is a place to hang out for the unemployed and homeless. Some of it is a party. The Haight-Ashbury crowd moved 40 years into the heart of San Francisco.

But I’ve now become an aficionado of Occupy Wall Street signs, which I enjoyed in the flesh but also found all over Facebook and the Internet. They provide the missing narrative, the hard to discern story that was obvious at antiwar or civil rights or gay rights protests.

Despite the self-labeling as 99%ers, I don’t think this is really about class warfare. Income inequality always pokes its head up during recessions. Still, it’s a powerful message. One sign read, “You’d think a Police State would pay their police better.” Another quoted Black Panther and Marxist George L. Jackson: “If the 1% who presently control the wealth of the society maintain their control after any reordering of the state, the changes cannot be said to be revolutionary.” Of course, the composition of the 1% has changed drastically in the 40 years since 1971, through capitalism, not a reordering of the state. The sign “Delete the Elite” says it all.

Some of the message is certainly about anger. One aggressive sign warned, “Be Afraid Banks—99% to 1% is very bad odds.” No wonder Warren Buffett is volunteering to pay higher taxes. Another prominent sign: “End Predatory Capitalism.” Like Ben & Jerry’s prices?

Maybe this is all really about disappointment. I spoke to a young woman who had clearly bathed more recently than most. I asked her why she was at OccupySF. She told me she’d done all the right things. Studied hard. Graduated college. (She was an art major.) And now she can’t get a job. It didn’t matter. It’s all messed up. She was lied to.

Of course she was. She’s a member of the Trophy Generation. Win or lose, you get a trophy. We embraced mediocrity to an entire generation of kids during good times who are now finding themselves mediocre in bad times. There still is that American dream: Go to college, get a job, buy a Prius. But like it or not, studying art or humanities or gender studies won’t get you there. Marissa Mayer at Google complains she can’t find enough computer-science majors. Civil engineers are getting hired sight unseen.

Educating the whole child was bad advice. So was follow your passion. California spends months teaching ninth-graders how to build a waste-treatment plant with only a day or two on natural selection. I think Occupy Wall Streeters are as much disappointed with the route they all took as they are with “fat cat” bankers.

An older gentleman grabs my elbow and launches. “There is a different set of rules,” he tells me, “for the 1%, the thieves on Wall Street, than the rest of us 99%ers.” I must have looked confused. “We need to end the reign of Wall Street. The status quo is over. Stick around until six and we’ve got a General Assembly meeting and . . .”

I couldn’t stay. I had a meeting I was late for.

I drove out to the Mission, found a spot on Valencia, and raced into the Summit, a coffee shop/startup incubator/entrepreneur hangout. Oddly, there sat a similar collection of folks with shabby clothes and body piercings and dreadlocks, but to a person, they all were hunched over MacBook computers. My friend Aaron was showing off his new location-aware social app, Aloha, when I heard someone at the next table talking about the thieves on Wall Street and how he’s found a way to end their reign. Can’t get away, it seems.

I must have rolled my eyes because Aaron introduced me to the guy. He had long hair, a scruffy beard and was holding an iPhone in one hand and a 5-hour ENERGY drink in the other. All entrepreneurs are trained for the elevator pitch, the 30-second description of what they do in case they are ever on a short elevator ride with a venture capitalist.

“I’ve taken the best of social networking and high-frequency trading and built a system that beats those Wall Street thieves at their own game. Users input their portfolio, it could be stocks or bonds or even derivatives and then we log each trade and anonymously share the spreads so everyone is on an even keel. First it’s just about information, but then we can start matching trades away from Wall Street. Its over for those guys, the status quo is toast.”

Apparently there’s more than one way to Occupy Wall Street.

{editors note: This article appeared in the Wall Street Journal this past weekend. Andy Kessler is a former hedge fund manager turned author who now writes on technology and markets. Andy Kessler is a contributor to SiliconANGLE, and Wall Street Journal.}

In San Francisco, There Are Many Ways to Occupy Wall Street is a post from: SiliconANGLE
We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.

Rizzn's shared items in Google Reader

Life In A Day

Religious Change FAIL

Put this in your vampire diary: The CW coming to Hulu

Buy Bitcoins With PayPal or Credit Card

Message from the Wife of an Oil Rig Worker

In a commitment to honesty, Twitter tries to bury the hatchet with third-party developers

“The most critical people”

Bill Gates tells students being a billionaire is "quite strange"

Related Posts

Tech, people, Education

Ask Bill Gates Anything: Being a Billionaire is Strange, Microsoft Co-Founder Tells Students

Curt Woodward 10/27/11

Siri

Probably Bad News: Canada’s 99% is Much More Equal

Can Casascius (Physical) Bitcoins Actually Spurn Legality?

In the same vein:

Jeopardy Champ Ken Jennings is the 99%

Ron Paul Spends $1m on Charter Flights, Double Other GOP Candidates

Nokia Shows Off Their First Windows Phones

Nintendo Reports US$923 Million Loss In The First Half Of This Fiscal Year

At Least Let The Bleeding Stop

November Fifth Looms Large With Anonymous Plot vs. Fox News, Banks

In the same vein:

Your Klout Score Probably Just Dropped - Do You Care?

What Is Influence Measurement, Really?

Klout Scores Keep Dropping, Users Get Angrier

YouTube’s top channels rival cable audiences

Transformers 4 & 5 May Shoot Back-to-Back

In San Francisco, There Are Many Ways to Occupy Wall Street

In the same vein: