Boing Boing Launches Gadget Blog
The people behind the popular Boing Boing blog have decided to take on blogs like Engadget, Gizmodo and the other gadget blogs. You can see a longer list of gadget blogs here on HowToWeb.com. Boing Boing’s gadget blog is called Boing Boing Gadgets or bbGadgets for short. Boing Boing co-founder Mark Frauenfelder announced the launch of the new blog and says Joel Johnson, a former Gizmodo editor and Dethroner founder, will be editing Boing Boing’s gadget blog. Our third major change is the launch of a brand new blog: Gadgets.boingboing.net. While Boing Boing has always covered personal technology, the four of us (Cory, David, Xeni, and I) believed a critical, intelligent, optimistic, and selective blog about personal technology and consumer electronics would be a fine addition to Boing Boing. But who could we trust to oversee a tech blog that the four of us would want to read? Actually, it wasn’t hard to find that person. We went straight to Joel Johnson, a former Gizmodo editor and founder of Dethroner. Joel is smart, funny, knowledgeable, and curious about technology. He was our first, and unanimous, choice to run Gadgets.boingboing.net. And we’re grateful he agreed to come on board. Other changes on Boing Boing include a cleaner look and the return of comments. Teresa Nielsen Hayden, who has a blog called Making Light, will be managing Boing Boing’s comments and community. Posted in Gadget Blogs Permalink | Recent Headlines | WWFeeds.com
Ads Start Appearing on Some YouTube Videos
YouTube blogs that they have started running YouTube InVideo ads on some of the YouTube videos for “select partners.” Over the past few weeks, you may have noticed that we’ve been working with select partners to improve YouTube’s presentation of advertising on their videos in a manner that brings you creative, compelling content and should also increase revenue flow to artists and content owners. So what’s new? Today we’re offering select partners the ability to incorporate YouTube InVideo ads into their content. These are animated overlays that appear on the bottom 20 percent of a video. If you’re interested by what you see there, clicking on the overlay launches a deeper interactive video ad that we think is relevant and entertaining. (The video you were watching is temporarily paused.) If you choose not to click on the overlay, it will simply disappear, so that you’re in full control of your YouTube experience. Google spent a long time trying to come up with this ad concept and it seems like they went for a concept that is fairly unobtrusive. The ads can easily be turned off and appear at the bottom of videos. A last100 post which says the YouTube ads “are not that bad” has screenshots of a few of the ads including an ad for The Simpsons movie that shows Homer chasing after a donut. The Homer donut ad can be seen on Madina Lake’s “House of Cards” music video. The Crime Mob - Rock Yo Hips music video contains an ad from Warner Brothers. The YouTube ads start up 15 seconds into the video and take up the bottom 20% of the screen. The San Francisco Chronicle and New York Times have more details about the YouTube ad concept. The comments on YouTube’s post about the ads range from those grudgingly accepting the ads to outright annoyance. Some people will tolerate the ads: jernov: “i personally don’t like it that much, but it’s better than an advertisement movie playing in front of the video you want to see, making you wait for the whole thing to start. i don’t like it, but it could be worse.” 123woow: “i think its a good idea people will see the advertisements more often and they cant really complain about it annoying them or being intrusive to the video because you can manually click it away easily. Good job YouTube” randiicom: “I’m okay with this, but eventually it would get boring. I wouldn’t subscribe to anyone who does this, but it wouldn’t stop me from watching one of their videos. It’d be great though to get money for the videos you’ve made.” The negative comments indicate some YouTube users may even unsubscribe from videos that contain the ads. johnbrouwer1: “It wrecks your youtube video! Terrible TERRIBLE idea!” sjmaerz: “I knew the team at Google would find a way to screw this up. Goodbye, YouTube, it was fun while it lasted.” splitforces: “gawd advertising is in everything now. first it wuz comerrcials in the middle of my shows and now the middle of my fav online videos. i shall unsubscribe to any1 who would do that.” losereligionrem: “sounds dumb… if i wanted to see advertisement… i’d just watch tv…” Updates: CNET says Matt Harding from the popular “Where the Hell is Matt?” videos doesn’t like the new YouTube ads. And a post on Wired’s Epicenter blog says the Chief Marketing Officer from VideoEgg says Google’s new YouTube video ads are just like theirs. Posted in Videos Permalink | Recent Headlines | WWFeeds.com Advertisement: Keep up with the greeting card industry. Click here to add the greeting cards blog to your favorite news reader.
Redneck jazz Explosion Vol. II
redneck jazz Explosion Vol. II So let’s waltz back to New Year’s Eve, l978. Tonight the Cellar Door club, sold out weeks in advance, is owned by Danny Gatton’s instrumental aggregate, the redneck Jazz Explosion. The crowd has come to see not only the guitarist presenting his virtuosic wares in all instrumental jazz setting […]
Oxford University Press Monitoring the Blogosphere for New Words
A short entry on OxfordMail.net says the Oxford University Press is searching the blogosphere to find new words. Staff at Oxford University Press have started monitoring the use of English in web logs to find new words. Lexicographers responsible for updating the Oxford English Corpus, which provides the basis for its dictionaries, will trawl through some 70 million ‘blogs’ in their search. And with 120,000 new ones created every day, they may be in for quite a search. A Guardian books blog post also discusses the decision by the Oxford University Press (OUP) to monitor “the use of English in weblogs.” They also provide this recently published list from OUP of the 15 most frequently blogged words. 15 Most Frequently Blogged Words blogger blog stupid me myself my oh yeah ok post stuff lovely update nice shit These words don’t exactly make us bloggers sound like masters of prose. In addition to scouring the blogosphere for new words the Oxford University Press also has a blog of its very own. Posted in Blogging Industry News Permalink | Recent Headlines | WWFeeds.com
Microsoft Launches Hacker Blog
Computerworld reports that Microsoft has launched a new hackers’ blog called hackers @ Microsoft. The blog discusses the work that Microsoft’s white hat hackers are doing. The first post from a Microsoft blogger named techjunkie explains more. Welcome to a new blog from Microsoft. The focus of this blog is likely to be a little different from most other blogs you’ll see on blogs.msdn.com. Microsoft employs some of the best hackers in the world and actively recruits them and develops them. They work on all kinds of projects, whether it be in development, research, testing, management and of course security. Of course, there is controversy even in the word “hacker” but I don’t think that should stop us from using it in the manner I think is the most appropriate. At his or her core, a true hacker is someone who is curious and wants to learn how systems work. This can and of course at Microsoft is done in an ethical, legal manner. We employ “white hat hackers” who spend their time pentesting and code reviewing applications and software looking for weaknesses and vulnerabilities so that others don’t once we’ve released that code into the wild. We employ many many smart testers who know more about some of our software then perhaps the architects who designed it. We also employ some of the top researchers in their industry, dedicated people working on the bleeding edge of whats going to be common place in the next 5 or 10 years of computing. So yes, Microsoft does have hackers, and its time to introduce you to some of them and show you what it is, exactly that they do. This blog will definitely receieve some attention. Microsoft has more hackers after them then probably any other tech company so it is wise that they are employing some white hat hackers to find vulnerabilities in Microsoft software before the spammers and malware developers do. Posted in New Blogs Advertisement: Keep up with movie and tv news. Click here to add the Watch Watch feed to your favorite news reader. Permalink | Recent Headlines | WWFeeds.com
President Bush Meets With Bloggers
The Washington Post reports that President Bush met with bloggers following his recent Iraq speech. Still, the hour-long meeting in the Roosevelt Room offered Bush another opportunity to break through what he sees as the filter of the traditional news media, while also reaching out to the providers of a new source of information for soldiers, their families and others who follow the conflict in Iraq closely. “More and more we are engaging in the new-media world, and these are influential people who have a big following,” said Kevin F. Sullivan, the White House communications chief. Bush told the group that, to his knowledge, it was the first time a president had met with bloggers for a chat at the White House, one of the participants wrote. The Washington Post said the bloggers talking to Bush were the “generally pro-Bush and pro-military, and the ensuing reports were highly sympathetic to the president.” Some of the bloggers that met with Bush (in person or via teleconference) include Argghhh!, The Victory Caucus, Blackfive, The Long War Journal, INDCJournal and Mudville Gazette. Ward Carroll was also in attendance representing Military.com and DefenseTech. Is there much point to speaking with bloggers that are already very supportive? Maybe it was just a way to reward bloggers that have blogged kindly about the Bush administration and the Iraq War. If President Bush ever wanted to talk to bloggers that have a very negative view of the Iraq War they certainly aren’t hard to find. Ward Carroll said, “It was a conversation and an opportunity for the president to demonstrate that he was aware of what the milbloggisphere is capable of.” A couple more reports on the Bush blogger meeting can be found here, here and here. Permalink | Recent Headlines | WWFeeds.com
Billiam the Snowman and the Republican YouTube Debate
Billiam, a snowman living in Point Hope, Alaska, was one of the Americans asking questiions during the Democratic CNN/YouTube Debate that took place in July. In the first debate Billiam asked a question about global warming. GOP candidates been slow to sign up for the Republican YouTube Debate. One of the GOP holdouts, Republican Candidate Mitt Romney, went beyond simply holding out and leveled a huge insult on Billiam the Snowman. Romney said, “I think the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman.” Romney, the lone GOP holdout, has posted more videos on his YouTube channel (283 as of Sunday afternoon) than any other presidential candidate, Republican or Democrat. But he has resisted the debate, in which videotaped questions are submitted through YouTube. In an interview with Manchester Union Leader, Romney said, “I think the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman.” That drew a video response from Billiam, the snowman who questioned the Democrats on global warming last month in their YouTube debate. This time, he riffed on another Romney quote from the campaign: “Lighten up slightly.” Sources at CNN said the debate, co-hosted with the Republican Party of Florida, will be held at the Mahaffey Theatre in St. Petersburg. Steve Grove, head of news and politics at YouTube, said that more than 1,100 videos have been submitted, and the popular video-sharing site will allow YouTube users to upload their videos until Nov. 27. Billiam formulated a clever response to Mitt Romney which can be seen here or below. Billiam and his son Billiam Jr. have received both criticism and support (see here, here, here, here and here). Some people are even trying to save Billiam by with t-shirts. Billiam was created by two St. Olaf college students. There is a silly, absurd quality to the snowman questioner but the question itself is legitimate. Americans want to know the GOP candidates’ positions on the serious issue of global warming. The YouTube debates have already generated a lot of great content and discussion and a GOP debate would put more helpful information out there for voters. GOP candidates John McCain and Rudy Giuliani have already signed on according to CNET. This may have been in response to questions posted by conservative blogs like this post from Pajamas Media that asked, “Are the GOP Candidates Afraid of a Snowman?” Now that McCain and Giuliani will attend hopefully the rest of the GOP candidates will too. The Republican CNN/YouTube Debate has been pushed back to November 28th, 2007 — originally it was set for September 17th. Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee and Tommy Thompson had confirmed for the earlier date. Thompson has since pulled out of the race. Huckabee did well at the Iowa Straw Poll so hopefully he will attend the later date. Ron Paul has been a social media sensation so it seems likely he would attend providing he remains in the race. Fred Thompson has not yet agreed to attend the GOP YouTube Debate but there are lingering questions about whether Fred Thompson plans to run. Mitt Romney was directly challenged by Billiam and surely he would not backdown from such a challenge? Using the power of Billiam CNN and YouTube may be able to get most or all of the GOP candidates to attend. People can submit questions on YouTube up until the November 28th date. Posted in Politics Permalink | Recent Headlines | WWFeeds.com
Yahoo Acquires BuzzTracker
TechCrunch and All Things Digital are reporting that Yahoo has acquired BuzzTracker, a memetracker, for about $5 million. Participate Media CEO Alan Warms’ post says all of the staff from Patricipate Media will be joining Yahoo. Patricipate Media runs also runs Rumormill and powers the Real Clear Politics BuzzTracker located here on FoxNews.com. Michael Arrington says “its odd that Yahoo didn’t make a run for TechMeme, the heavyweight in the automated news tracking niche.” That would likely be a much more expensive acquisition. It is also possible that Yahoo tried to acquire a different memetracker company but they were asking for too much money. You can find a few more memetrackers here on our Quick References page. Permalink | Recent Headlines | WWFeeds.com
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