Emptyage

Why Do People Hate Henry Blodget?

Tue, 29 May 2012 09:37:07 -0700

I’m genuinely mystified and curious, and I look forward to reading your responses.

"People don’t join Facebook so Facebook can understand them better! In fact, the better..."

Thu, 24 May 2012 16:27:15 -0700

“People don’t join Facebook so Facebook can understand them better! In fact, the better Facebook understands them, the more wary of the service they get.”

- Technology - Alexis Madrigal - How Google Can Beat Facebook Without Google Plus - The Atlantic

Now that is some impressive trolling right there. Kudos, Wall...

Fri, 18 May 2012 10:57:00 -0700

Now that is some impressive trolling right there. Kudos, Wall Street Journal. Nicely done.

UPDATE: They “corrected” it

CORRECTION: The story describing how Yahoo killed Flickr was written by Gizmodo’s Mat Honen. An earlier version of this article credited the wrong publication and misspelled the author’s first name. We regret the error.

"An aside: I originally wanted to write a post arguing that for moral and ethical reasons, you..."

Fri, 18 May 2012 09:05:02 -0700

“An aside: I originally wanted to write a post arguing that for moral and ethical reasons, you shouldn’t buy Facebook stock, no matter how much money it earns, because doing so is the equivalent of investing in Big Tobacco, or Monsanto, or Dow Chemical, or Exxon. That was slapped aside, and I was basically told to shut my hippie mouth and that I am a dyspeptic old curmudgeon who ought to slink back to whatever stinky all-ages Fugazi show I came from.”

- Facebook Is Going To Be Even More Annoying Now That It’s Public

"There is no way around it: Justin Bieber is a very small human being. He’s 18, but he could..."

Wed, 16 May 2012 11:53:07 -0700

“There is no way around it: Justin Bieber is a very small human being. He’s 18, but he could easily pass for someone six years younger. His rep says he’s five feet nine, but he looks about four feet four, maybe one hundred pounds. I shake his hand, and it feels like there should be more hand there. I suddenly realize that I can’t box this guy. I’m ten inches taller and a hundred pounds heavier. I ought to sit with him and read him Babar.”

- Justin Bieber - GQ Profile June 2012: Celebrities: GQ

Beastie Boys terrify Oprah in 1986 (by Buzzy Feedly)

Sun, 06 May 2012 09:27:29 -0700

Beastie Boys terrify Oprah in 1986 (by Buzzy Feedly)

"I’ve got several secret Twitter lists that I use to help filter the news. The two that are the most..."

Fri, 04 May 2012 11:00:40 -0700

“

I’ve got several secret Twitter lists that I use to help filter the news. The two that are the most useful contains all the founders, investors and start-ups that I’m keeping a close eye on and the other is full of reporters, tech and beyond, whose work I admire, so that I can see what they’re tweeting about and linking to. I favorite about 50 things (or more) a day on Twitter — articles to read, ideas I liked, books to read, songs. I use ifttt recipe to send my Twitter faves to my Gmail inbox so I can sift through them later.

(snipped)

While I skim, I take notes the old-fashioned way: With a fine-point Sharpie and a stack Post-it notes. I do a lot of pattern matching — emerging themes among new start-ups, the types of companies that are getting funded, a VC or entrepreneur catches my eye — and make a note or a list, and I keep these in a row on my desk for easy reference. For my beat, I need to see what new service or app is bubbling up and pay attention to how people are using the web, their mobile devices and new technologies, but it can often take awhile for things to catch on, so I’m constantly monitoring for that groundswell when a new service or behavior breaks out beyond my professional and social circle and starts to catch on in a bigger way. I often take photos of these handwritten notes and file them in a separate folder on my iPhone for easy perusal later.

”

- Fuck yeah Jennydeluxxxxxe

Jenna Wortham: What I Read - Entertainment - The Atlantic Wire

longshotmag: Here’s a little doc by our friends Roshelle Fong...

Fri, 04 May 2012 08:46:19 -0700

longshotmag:

Here’s a little doc by our friends Roshelle Fong and Jane Lee who came and shot the making of the last issue of Longshot.

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

(by holeywoodproductions)

Mitt Romney’s Appointment of Gay Aide Richard Grenell Signals New Attitude

Tue, 01 May 2012 14:54:45 -0700

Mitt Romney’s Appointment of Gay Aide Richard Grenell Signals New Attitude:

Oh, wait, no it doesn’t.

It's Been a Year?

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 10:08:00 -0700

Amazingly, I’m coming up on one year at Gizmodo. (My first post!) It’s the first full time job I’ve had in more than 10 years. Sometimes I feel like I’ve written more in the past year than I did in the previous decade I spent freelancing. Hell, maybe I have.

I also like to think that I’ve done some really good work there, maybe even some of the best of my career. Fuck that. I like to think I’m killing it.

Here are some of my favorites:

Fever Dream of a Guilt Ridden Gadget Reporter

Siri is Apple’s Broken Promise

I Flunked My Social Media Background Check

Summer is a Walkman in Kuwait

The Case Against Google

My series on cable
(A multi-parter!)

What to Expect at Apple’s Event Tomorrow
(This is probably not what you’re expecting based on the headline.)

Happy Valentine’s Day, Tech Bloggers

Jawbone Up Review: A Potentially Wonderful Thing That You Should Not Buy

Inside Instagram: How Slowing Its Roll Put The Little Startup in the Fast Lane

Generation X Is Sick Of Your Bullshit

There’s more too. And I think I’ve got two pretty amazing pieces in the works. And if you haven’t read Gizmodo recently, maybe you should give it another look. Joe Brown is taking it in new directions, and it’s all really coming together.

Thanks. I love you, too.

"Lee once took a vacation during which he had no access to the Internet. This made him uncomfortable...."

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 09:20:37 -0700

“Lee once took a vacation during which he had no access to the Internet. This made him uncomfortable. “I was worried that brands couldn’t get in touch with me. It’s easy for them to forget about you. And I knew my Klout score would go down if I stopped tweeting for too long.””

- What Your Klout Score Really Means

"Sadly, Meebo is just the latest in a long line of tools that publishers use because some jerk in..."

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 08:53:00 -0700

“Sadly, Meebo is just the latest in a long line of tools that publishers use because some jerk in business development who doesn’t understand the Web and cares less about audience than revenue needed more money for cocaine because dumb jerks ruin everything. Oh wait. I meant Meebo is just the latest in a long line of tools that publishers use because it gives them some abstract value while actively alienating and infuriating their audience in a concrete manner.”

- How To Kill That Awful Meebo Bar Forever

"On April 13, she forgot to include a link and give due credit to the Discovery Channel for two..."

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:56:23 -0700

“

On April 13, she forgot to include a link and give due credit to the Discovery Channel for two paragraphs on a story about life on Mars, which, to add insult to injury, were insufficiently rewritten to disguise the fact that she was reporting on someone else’s reporting. “This,” said the Post, “was a significant ethical lapse and not in keeping with our journalistic standards. We apologize to Discovery News.”

How can this be a “significant ethical lapse” when the whole point of blogPOST is to profit from other people’s work? Because she drew attention to the essence of what aggregation really is? The story ends with Discovery protesting at being obviously burgled rather than being burgled and left with a thank you note in the form of a small trickle of click-throughs. Ms. Flock immediately and voluntarily resigned, saying the mistakes were hers, that it would only be a matter of time, given the pressures of the job, before she made another mistake. The full extent of her journalism crime was the omission of a link.

”

- The Latest Sad Fate of an Aggregation Serf | The Awl

timoni.org: I love the internet.

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:33:09 -0700

timoni.org: I love the internet.:

timoni:

It’s my fifth cakeday of coming out here, to the internet world capital, San Francisco. I wouldn’t be here if there was no internet; I have no particular inclination towards hippiedom or comp sci or biotech, but once I learned it was the place to be if you loved the internet, I was dead set on…

Andre Torrez Is Really Into Heidi Montag's New Album

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 12:19:00 -0700

Andre Torrez is now online.
12:13 PM
Andre: http://rd.io/x/QF0jPlQnaw check out that album when you get a chance
Mat: spammer!
Mat: Is this andre?
Mat: What am I doing
Mat: I'm on track two
Mat: What am I listening for
Andre: nothing
Andre: it's in your history
Mat: You just did this to embarrass me?
Andre: pretty much!
Andre: i didn't think you would actually listen to it.

"To some users, this looks like a sellout. And that’s because it is. You might think the people..."

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 09:01:07 -0700

“To some users, this looks like a sellout. And that’s because it is. You might think the people crabbing about how Instagram is going to suck now are just being naïve, but I don’t think that’s true. Small product companies put forth that the user is a sacred being, and that community is all-important. That the money to pay for the service comes from venture capital, which seeks a specific return on investment over a period of time, is between the company and the venture capitalists; the relationship between the user and the product is sacred, or is supposed to be.
So if you’re an Instagram user, you’ve been picking up on all of the cues about how important you are, how valuable you are to Instagram. Then along comes Facebook, the great alien presence that just hovers over our cities, year after year, as we wait and fear. You turn on the television and there it is, right above the Empire State Building, humming. And now a hole has opened up on its base and it has dumped a billion dollars into a public square — which turned out to not be public, but actually belongs to a few suddenly-very-rich dudes. You can’t blame users for becoming hooting primates when a giant spaceship dumps a billion dollars out of its money hole. It’s like the monolith in the movie 2001 appeared filled with candy and a sign on the front that said “NO CANDY FOR YOU.””

- Facebook and Instagram: When Your Favorite App Sells Out — Daily Intel

I’m not a designer. But for 10 years, I was a freelance...

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 07:55:03 -0700

I’m not a designer. But for 10 years, I was a freelance writer. I spent a decade figuring out what it meant to be my own business. By the end, I was pretty good at it. I had a tax attorney and everything, like a real live corporation. I was nearly human.

But I could have been a lot better. I wish I’d been able to read Mike Monteiro’s book at the outset of my career. Although its ostensibly focused on design, it’s a great and informative read for anyone who works with clients.

And moreover, it’s a book about how to approach life. It’s wise, and deeply funny. Go get it: Design Is a Job

Lil B - I Own Swag

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 16:28:02 -0700

Lil B - I Own Swag

"We look at hundreds of products every week. Sometimes thousands. At first all of us were pretty..."

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 09:40:01 -0700

“

We look at hundreds of products every week. Sometimes thousands. At first all of us were pretty stoked about Kickstarter, because it seemed like a genuine font of unfettered innovation—the hive mind coming up with products that we truly needed but had never even thought of before. And maybe it was. But it’s not anymore. It’s a sea of bad videos, bad renderings, and poorly made prototypes.

The problem is actually the same thing that made it so exciting in the first place: the unfetteredness. Is that a word? No? Maybe I can post a fucking video on Kickstarter and raise ten grand and turn it into a real word. I mean, is that any less realistic than the Robocop Statue I funded? Or the plug-in iPhone case that, $40 later, I realized was probably only going to come out after the product around which it was designed had been fully redesigned? Nope. It’s all the same salty sea of hogwash. And we’re stepping out of the pool until Kickstarter starts filtering out some of the crap.

”

- We’re Done With Kickstarter

Will The Real Mitt Romney Please Stand Up Holy. Shit.

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 11:19:35 -0700

Will The Real Mitt Romney Please Stand Up

Holy. Shit.