Tech Paparazzi

The Rise of the Angels

2010-10-09T04:16:00.000-07:00

Angels, super-angels, micro-cap VCs, and seed incubators are beginning to dominate early-stage consumer web investing. This is a permanent change because the underlying startups themselves have fundamentally changed. Startups also need to adapt to the new ecosystem of investors.

Google Instant 'Element's

2010-09-09T01:16:00.000-07:00

Following yesterday's launch of Google Instant and the official Google Instant version of Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” the same synchronised lyric search has been done with the “Instant Elements” song in the video below based on instant searches to Tom Lehrer’s song, “The Elements”

The video was created by ad agency Whirled, who created the Pulp FictionGoogle Wave video.

via TechCrunch.com

Paul Graham of Y Combinator on Future Trends

2010-08-25T07:02:00.000-07:00

Paul Graham of Y Combinator spoke at the Business of Software conference and answered the question that reporters had repeatedly been asking him for many years: What future trends does he see, based on his experience of funding 144 start ups?

1) Innovation
2) Software
3) Efficient Markets
4) Measurement
5) United States
6) Silicon Valley
7) Small companies
8) Economic inequality
9) Moore's Law
10) Things on screens
11) Server based apps
12) Super good customer service
13) Apparently frivolous stuff
14) Programming languages
15) Open Source
16) Linux
17) iPhone
18) Design
19) Real time
20) Venture funding
21) Founders

Five trends not to bet on
1) Don't bet on credentials granted by institutions
2) Don't bet on Business School
3) Don't bet on the government changing
4) Don't bet on copyright
5) Don't bet on anything that has a restricted flow of information

Thanks to http://www.businessofsoftware.org

Downing Tweet

2009-12-09T15:57:00.000-08:00

‘The Downing Tweet Christmas Party’ on Friday 4th December was hosted by Sarah Brown who has over one milllion followers on Twitter. Good to see appearances by Mike Butcher, and Beverley Knight.

#downingtweet

From journalism to PR

2009-11-20T04:53:00.000-08:00

Will Sturgeon, director of strategy and planning at Harvard Public Relations talk about his new role, experiences moving from journalism to PR and where he sees growth within the market.

Director profile with Will Sturgeon from Reputation Online on Vimeo.

A (Foursquare) introduction to Ealing, West London by the Mayoress

2009-10-14T00:58:00.000-07:00

Real time Social Media

2009-10-13T14:38:00.000-07:00

via Gary Hayes at garys-social-media-count/

Mike Kus, "Graphic Design: The Forgotten Web Standard"

2009-05-07T07:20:00.000-07:00

A useful presentation from Mike Kus, designer at Carsonified on the importance on not allowing Graphic Design to be lost in the mass of technical discussions when creating web sites.

Interview With Andrew Keen At The Next Web 2009

2009-04-16T07:47:00.000-07:00

Mike Butcher talks to Andrew Keen who tells of how 'Web2.0' is finished, and what will takes it place.

Andrew Keen: Web 2.0 Is Fucked (The Next Web 2009) from Robin Wauters on Vimeo.

David Heinemeier Hansson at FOWA Dublin

2009-03-30T06:36:00.000-07:00

Video from the Future of Web Apps Dublin 2009

Credit Crisis: cause and effect visualisation

2009-02-19T06:24:00.000-08:00

From Jonathan Jarvis "The goal of giving form to a complex situation like the credit crisis is to quickly supply the essence of the situation to those unfamiliar and uninitiated."

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Semantic Web intro

2009-02-19T04:40:00.000-08:00

from Manu Sporny at Digital Bazaar

Techfluff.tv launch

2008-11-26T08:43:00.000-08:00

Fabulous launch of Techfluff.tv today. Hosted by Hermione Way of Newspepper.com. Sponsored by Sun Microsystems. Great format especially the 'Escalator Pitch' done facing backward on the tube. Loads of roving interviews + a useful bunch of upcoming events info.

robertloch Really impressed with @hermioneway 1st episode of Techfluff.tv http://techfluff.tv/ Great job. about 1 hour ago from web

huddlesuz RT @ssethi: @hermioneway congrats on techfluff.tv Love the bad boyz of huddle ref & the escalator challenge. Great roundup the London scene. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

mbites Really enjoying the first episode of TechFluff TV. This might be a UK RocketBoom... http://bit.ly/12ghJ about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

huddlesuz RT @joshuamarch: Techfluff.tv episode 1 now live! http://techfluff.tv It's hillarious. Watch it. about 3 hours ago from TweetDeck

techfluffTV Episode one now live! http://techfluff.tv/ about 3 hours ago from web

Malcolm Gladwell's true way to happiness

2008-11-25T07:53:00.000-08:00

Malcolm Gladwell speaks about The movement from the Search for Universals to the Understanding of Variability.

Using many examples from the food production business through the research of Howard Moskowitz, such as the importance of 'chunky tomato spaghetti sauce; the misguided desire for dark rich hearty roast coffee; and the non-hierachy of mustard' he discovers : in embracing the diversity of human beings you will find the true way to happiness.

US Election map real time update and holograms

2008-11-04T16:27:00.000-08:00

Google real-time map as the results come in and CNN goes for holograms ...

Britney's lack of authentic Tweets. Fry and Murray do it right

2008-10-19T08:38:00.000-07:00

Britney's attempt to enter the Twittosphere sadly fails as it is clearly just another PR stream from "her people" as Gary Vaynerchuk points out. The most important thing is authenticity. Either do it yourself or don't bother.

Two examples of famous people getting it right are Stephen Fry who began Tweeting 10 days ago on 9th October, and has gathered over 7,000 followers. What is impressive that despite his schedule, currently filming in Uganda, he manages to follow very nearly all his followers and even answers questions in real time, occasionally.

Scottish Tennis star, Andy Murray, currently ranked 4th in the world has been on Twitter since April 4th '08 and seems to be both authentic and mobile, tweeting from a 'Twitterberry' although he only follows just over 4 percent of his followers.

Obama '08 - Vote For Hope

2008-10-18T16:01:00.000-07:00

“Vote For Hope” was written to encourage and inspire the hip hop generation—and everyone—to get involved, and contribute their time, energy, creativity, and other resources to be the change they want to see in the world.

Obama '08 - Vote For Hope from MC Yogi on Vimeo.

New York Times, Mac versus PC ads

2008-09-19T03:27:00.000-07:00

More ad comparisons from the excruciating awful $300m Microsoft Seinfeld, Gates to I'm a PC and Apple's slick New York Times video response

Hubdubs TechCrunch50 Best demo

2008-09-09T11:30:00.000-07:00

Predict the best demo at TechCrunch50 via hubdub

TechCrunch50: Which company will win Best in Show?

Ashton Kutcher's 'Blah Girls' celebrity gossip site

2008-09-09T08:49:00.000-07:00

Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg launch their animated gossip site Blah Girls at TechCrunch50 via Jemima Kiss and Liz Gannes on New Tee Vee

Magnetosphere, an iTunes 8 Visualizer?

2008-09-06T05:14:00.000-07:00

via MacRumours, and Kevin Rose

Magnetosphere revisited (audio by Tosca) from flight404 on Vimeo.

Stephen Fry on GNU and Linux

2008-09-05T06:26:00.000-07:00

25 years of Open Source ...

Chrome versus IE8 comparison

2008-09-02T15:54:00.000-07:00

Google's development team explain their minimalist thinking and approach to creating their new browser, plus Walter S. Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal gives his thoughts on Google's chrome in a head-to-head with the latest version of Internet Explorer from Microsoft.

Samsung Omnia (i900) unboxing

2008-08-20T01:38:00.000-07:00

via engadget

Facial performance software demo

2008-08-10T04:10:00.000-07:00

Pendulum Studios, have released a couple videos showing off their AlterEgo team's proprietary facial performance software. The program brings out some of the most realistic and precise 3D animated expressions available to the market today. See the company's hi-res demo videos as well.

"Who's Gonna Save My Soul?"

2008-08-04T15:55:00.000-07:00

Gnarls Barkley directed by Chris Milk, From the album "The Odd Couple"

Fred Wilson's flying VC visit to Europe's tech start ups

2008-07-22T14:32:00.000-07:00

Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, in Europe for three weeks, hunting for web start up investments ... USV's current investments include Twitter and Etsy in the news today for a Yahoo defection.

Link: sevenload.com

Strike.tv

2008-07-12T13:00:00.000-07:00

Strike.tv is an online network formed by professional TV and film writers during the Hollywood writers' strike:

www.strike.tv Teaser from StrikeTV on Vimeo.

Chronotopic anamorphosis video distortion

2008-06-30T14:43:00.000-07:00

Surreal bendy digital manipulation termed 'Chronotopic anamorphos' via Kottke

Chronotopic Anamorphosis from Marginalia Project on Vimeo.

Digg's Recommendation Engine

2008-06-30T13:58:00.000-07:00

Preview of Recommendation Engine based essentially on real-time correlated coefficient user algorithms.

Digg Recommendation Engine from Kevin Rose on Vimeo.

Kyte.tv's Elevator Pitch with Jemima Kiss

2008-06-25T03:14:00.000-07:00

Daniel Graf explains kyte's postion in the market, the background, funding, business model and challenges ahead to Jemima Kiss.

Paul Carr talks about his True Confessions book

2008-06-24T11:16:00.000-07:00

Paul Carr interviewed by Michael Acton Smith about his upcoming book: Bringing Nothing To The Party: True Confessions Of A New Media Whore
published by Orion - July 2008

Associated Press versus Bloggers 'fair use'

2008-06-19T07:03:00.000-07:00

Words of wisdom from Mike Butcher on Associated Press slipping on a banana skin about fair use and copyright.

"The Future of Online Video" at Google Zeitgeist

2008-05-22T09:30:00.000-07:00

from Nick Reynolds at BBC Internet Blog

Using Adobe Air for Alert Thingy

2008-05-10T03:56:00.000-07:00

Jeremy Baines on using Adobe Air to build Alert Thingy

On AIR London from Jeremy Baines on Vimeo.

Net neutrality and Online video

2008-05-06T14:54:00.001-07:00

Discussion on Radio 4 about online video, ISP bandwidth throttling and traffic shaping.

Conditional Price

2008-04-30T12:13:00.000-07:00

Thanks Mr Arrington for this chuckle

WebMission08 bus briefing

2008-04-22T09:37:00.000-07:00

Live Qik video via Paul Walsh from the WebMission08 bus enroute to Menlo Park for presentations from Coull, Dothomes, edocr, The Filter, Groupspaces, Hubdub, Huddle, Kwiqq, Mydeo, Rummble, ShortFuze, Silobreaker, Skimbit, Slicethepie, Trampoline Systems, TrustedPlaces, WAYN, Webjam, Zebtab, Zogix to VCs and Press ...

Alert Thingy naming moment

2008-04-20T07:39:00.000-07:00

via Jeremy Baines at Howard Baines on the release of Alert Thingy earlier in April.

YouTube coverage of the Olympic torch in London

2008-04-08T03:11:00.000-07:00

Strong 'crowd-sourced' video coverage of the Beijing Olympic torch protests on YouTube, getting better angles than the BBC, courtesy of Philip Trippenbach via Richard Sambrook

Meet the Facebook Facebloke

2008-04-02T06:38:00.000-07:00

Step into the world of a man obsessed with Facebook, the Facebloke and his poor friends that have to put up with him. from BBC3 The Wall

That Sarah Lacy and Zuckerberg interview

2008-03-11T14:50:00.000-07:00

After the tweet storm at the SXSW conference flooded the blogosphere, here's the video ...

Why Twitter

2008-03-07T03:12:00.000-08:00

Via Robin Hamman, here in plain English is an impressive explanation for using Twitter from Lee and Sachi LeFever at CommonCraft.

In two minutes 20 seconds, the video made from animated paper cutouts and felt tip they get straight to the point on why people Twitter increasingly on multiple platforms, and why it is so popular.

(CommonCraft clients include Google, Microsoft, Boeing and Geffen Records)

BBC promo box, Comments

2008-03-06T07:09:00.000-08:00

One week after coming out of beta and going live, the BBC homepage (UK edition) continues to generate plenty of heated comments.

The longest comment thread is here with currently 277 passionate opinions, and there is more comment feedback in a similar vein here.

The focus of the majority of detractors is the fixed promo tabbed box.

While the rest of the site is customisable with selectable and dragable content, and various resizing, reskinning and location-based options, the main gripe is that the largest item, the promo box is locked in place and can't be minimised or deleted.

The tab selections below the box causes the entire page colour section headers to change upsetting people too, although the customisation option allows you to override this.

It will be interesting to see at the next stage of development to what degree the user comments will have an impact.

Having a major redesign trying to satisfy many clearly conflicting user views and internal requirements at the same time, is certainly a challenge.

Fluid animation

2008-02-26T01:56:00.000-08:00

'irregular flow' by Ozan Tekin from Istanbul via Vimeo

irregular flow from 4khz on Vimeo.

Video content Overlay, "it's just that simple!"

2008-02-14T06:21:00.000-08:00

A wonderfully cheesey 70's style 'infomercial' pastiche from Overlay.TV via Stan Schroeder at Mashable!

Hear how to make money from adding links above video content. Overlay.TV currently have over 600 marketing affiliate deals including Amazon, iTunes and Wal-Mart.

Digital deception: Secrets, Lies and Privacy

2008-02-12T05:34:00.000-08:00

via Richard Sambrook and David Brain and Ian Delaney, a thought provoking presentation from the Lift conference, given by Genevieve Bell, who works as an anthropologist at Intel.

Genevieve outlines typical behaviour in that we all tell between 6 and 200 lies a day ranging from low level social interaction to the more pathological and complex. The motivation for lies are examined and 'increasing popularity' accounts for about 10 percent. Women tell fewer but bigger lies then men.

Freddy Mini, CEO of Netvibes and Crunchies award winner

2008-01-21T16:14:00.000-08:00

Chris Albrecht interviews Freddy Mini, CEO of Netvibes. Netvibes won the Crunchies' "Best international startup" Award.

Video from: blip.tv

Newspepper soft launch

2008-01-14T12:37:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Mike Butcher at TechCrunchUK, for posting about the launch of Newspepper citizen journalism video sharing site with founder Hermione Way, sister of Ben Way, from Waysearch.

Second Chance Tuesday event focus on the future of online gaming

Interview with Jeremy Dear, General Secretary of the National Union of Journalists on citizen journalism

Mike Butcher interviewed by Scoble

2008-01-03T12:55:00.000-08:00

Video of Mike Butcher, editor of TechCrunch UK interviewed by Robert Scoble.

Mike tells Robert's mainly US audience how the UK and Europe tech scene is performing compared to the US.

Mobile 2.0 and location-based apps such as Jaiku get mentioned by Mike as being ahead of current offerings in the States.

Round-up of tech predictions for 2008

2007-12-31T14:23:00.000-08:00

At this time of year there is no shortage of predictions what will happen in the tech industry over the coming 12 months.

From Bill Thompson's 'Cloudy visions of the future' on the BBC, to CNet's Top 5 tech predictions of 2008 to The Economist's 'Three fearless predictions' critiqued on Slashdot, it will be fascinating to see how tech developments evolve over the next year.

Also worth catching is John Battelle's view plus Mike Arrington on CrunchNotes pointing to Loren Feldman's thought provoking 2008 predictions.

On-demand service from BBC, ITV and Channel4

2007-11-27T13:51:00.000-08:00

Broadcasters the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 have joined forces to offer a unified on-demand service. First reported five months ago in June, today more news of the on-demand joint venture code-named 'Kangaroo' was announced.

The existing VOD services iPlayer from the BBC, and ITV's video player are reported to continue on their respective channels, however Channel 4's 4oD is said to be due to be incorporated within the new service.

Pricing is reported as "all three broadcasters will be available for free download, streaming, rental and purchase via the internet, with expansion on to other platforms planned."

Sergey introduces the Android demo

2007-11-12T15:03:00.000-08:00

Tumblelog evolvement

2007-11-05T13:49:00.000-08:00

On April 12th 2005 the tumblelog came into existence. Jason Kottke described tumblelogs as:

"A tumblelog is a quick and dirty stream of consciousness, a bit like a remaindered links style linklog but with more than just links. They remind me of an older style of blogging, back when people did sites by hand, before Movable Type made post titles all but mandatory, blog entries turned into short magazine articles, and posts belonged to a conversation distributed throughout the entire blogosphere. Robot Wisdom and Bifurcated Rivets are two older style weblogs that feel very much like these tumblelogs with minimal commentary, little cross-blog chatter, the barest whiff of a finished published work, almost pure editing...really just a way to quickly publish the "stuff" that you run across every day on the web"

Thanks to the maestros of usability: 37signals for featuring a post on the latest version of Tumblr, one of the most effective tumblelogs.

Liberate Media PR celebrate

2007-10-25T22:11:00.000-07:00

There was a big turn out for Liberate Media's first birthday party in Soho on Thursday night.

A smattering of technology and social networking cognoscienti from New Media Age, BBC Technology Online, Creative, Pushbutton.tv, Spannerworks, and many more raised a glass to Wendy McAuliffe and Lloyd Gofton at Liberate Media PR for their first year in business.

Journa-list, an online resource by subject and author

2007-10-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Bobbie Johnson in Technology Guardian for drawing attention to Journa-list currently in beta.

It aims to be a collection of online journalism currently being written in the UK.

Search by name or topic and see cloud-style the most covered topics.

Welcome to Westmonster

2007-09-25T02:57:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Mike Butcher at TechCrunch UK for news of a new professional blog publisher in the UK called MessyMedia formed earlier in September by Lloyd Shepherd, formerly of Guardian Unlimited and Yahoo Europe, and Andrew Levy, formerly of Yahoo Europe.

MessyMedia's first blog 'Westmonster' focusses on British politics and is described as irreverent, clued-up and scurrilous. It is edited by 'Westminster insider' Sadie Smith.

Shepherd said: “There's a yawning gap in British political coverage, between the established media, which have fallen into the “us-and-them” trap, and the partisan political blogs like Iain Dale's Diary and Guido Fawkes."

TechCrunch UK relaunch and Seedcamp winners

2007-09-10T05:59:00.000-07:00

In November 2006 TechCrunch UK and Ireland launched with Sam Sethi as publisher and Mike Butcher as editor bringing much needed focus to the UK tech start up scene.

Just one month later Le Web 3.0 conference organised by Loic le Meur in Paris sparked off a series of 'misunderstandings' that led to Michael Arrington editor of the US parent site effectively shutting down TechCrunch UK. Much heat was generated in the blogosphere about who said what and why.

Following the suspension of TechCrunch UK, Sam Sethi and Mike Butcher worked together at Vecosys, then separated to run their own tech blogs at blognation launched 8 weeks ago (currently in 9 countries) and Mbites respectively.

So to bring things up to date it is refreshing to see Techcrunch UK up and running again with Mike Butcher once more working with Mike Arrington. The important stuff is after all spotlighting new tech in the UK rather than the individuals blogging about it.

This week Techcrunch UK covered Seedcamp and focused on the 6 winners that each received €50k of funding :
First up is Project Playfair, a Scottish project still in development described as "hypertext for numbers";
next is Zemanta, a 'content intelligence platform' from Slovenia;
Kublax is a hyper-encrypted personal finance application syncing all your bank accounts and utilities in one user-friendly place;
Swedish Tablefinder is an online restaurant searching and booking service;
UK-based Buildersite is a trusted marketplace for construction services based on 5% of the project fee;
Lastly is rentmeonline which has been described an eBay for renters.

If anyone has inside info, or experience of using the applications mentioned here share your thoughts on them below.

3D fly-through a social network

2007-08-28T15:30:00.000-07:00

Beautiful visualisation via infosthetics and Open showing the network relationships of groups, members and content, plus the 'long tail' gets a mention.

New York Times on the iPhone hype

2007-07-06T15:44:00.000-07:00

David Pogue of The New York Times looks at the features of the new iPhone, as furtively as possible.

Sam Sethi launches Blognation across 16 countries

2007-07-02T10:13:00.000-07:00

Today ex-TechCrunchUK publisher, and more recently Vecosys editor Sam Sethi launches his ambitious Blognation network covering the startup/ web 2.0 space.

With 16 editors onboard already Blognation will initially launch in : United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, Germany, France, Spain, Denmark Portugal, Italy, Iceland, Netherlands, Japan, China / Taiwan / Hong Kong, Australia, Brazil, South America.

Deliberately the US is not being covered by Blognation as Sam says 'because there are already enough excellent blogs reporting on the start-up ecosystem over there and one more wouldn’t make the slightest difference.'

Future expansion of Blognation is planned to cover Canada, Russia, India, South Africa, South Korea, South-East Asia, Poland, Czech Republic, Turkey and Greece.

Blognation's About Us page states ' blognation is backed by undisclosed venture capital funding, by vendor advertising and through affiliate advertising.'

Best of luck Sam and to all involved.

2007-06-24T13:13:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Antony Mayfield at Open for consistently sourcing some of the most interesting and thought provoking content: Below Seth Godin speaking at TED reflects on which marketing works and why.

CBS buys Last.fm

2007-05-30T15:41:00.000-07:00

Big news for the UK tech scene as CBS today bought London-based Lastfm for £140m ($280m). The Guardian describes this as 'the largest UK web2.0 acquisition to date'.

With 15 million current users in 200 countries, the founders Martin Stiksel, Richard Jones and Felix Miller write on their blog about what a good match working with CBS will be.

And how they understood "putting the listener in charge, the vibrant and vocal community, the obsession with music stats, and our determination to offer every song ever recorded."

Martin Stiksel said "We have a lot more ideas in the pipeline that we can now put into effect and also we have a strong partner on our side."

'The day the web changed' :: Scoble on Silverlight

2007-05-13T09:51:00.000-07:00

Robert Scoble talks with Scott Guthrie, who runs several teams at Microsoft who develop developer tools and platforms. He gave a keynote at Mix where he got a lot of attention with Silverlight and other developer initiatives.

Guthrie recommened seeing the Top Banana video which is a new starter kit that lets developers add sophisticated and streamlined video editing to their content sites. It lets their users easily upload and edit video snippets into movies in a fun and free-form manner.

Tony Blair (en français) on YouTube

2007-05-07T15:09:00.000-07:00

The Architecture of Flash

2007-04-28T11:32:00.000-07:00

Ely Greenfield, Flex architect, David Wadhwani, vice president of Flex Product Line, and Mike Chambers, senior product manager, developer relations, walk to the whiteboard and describe Adobe Flash's architecture and give further details about what is being open sourced. via Scoble

Joost disappointing

2007-04-12T12:49:00.000-07:00

The prospect of a peer-to-peer IPTV application from Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis founders of Skype and Kazaa would seem to be something seriously worth experiencing.

So vast numbers of potential users flocked to sign up for the Joost beta. Months elapse then one day the invitation arrives. Understandably most Joost beta users come with high expectations.

Here is my initial experience based on the first few attempts using Joost. Once the download completed and my PC's specifications were assessed as worthy to run the application, the trouble began.

Joost describes itself as 'Easy to use, just like regular TV'. But how many people have to login to their TV before they can use it? So logging to Joost was the first pain. Auto-logging in with cookies would have been preferable. The application appeared very unstable, splashing a full screen message with plenty of small text for less than half a second so that there was no chance read it. Then there was approximately 30 seconds to one minute gap with no indication or task bar evidence something was about to happen.

Once past these hurdles your entire screen goes black and it is filled with the Joost application, with no minimize or 'close box' option. You are then subjected to a 'coming next' graphic and force fed the content. No browsing or selection is obvious at this stage.

There is in fact a control panel on the lower section but it doesn't appear to be constantly available or easily accessible. The quality of the 'video' in my experience was more or less one frame per second with equally poor stuttering audio when tested from two different broadband networks and locations.

To be generous, perhaps this woeful experience is untypical. The majority of hands-on beta-test feedback is in fact positive.

In my opinion Joost needs to hand control to the user much more obviously. The login needs to be less clunky, the controls have to be far more accessible, the frame rate has to speed up. At the moment there are so many failings in this user's experience of Joost that the incentive to continue is remote. Presumably many of the bugs mentioned above will be eliminated from the next release of Joost.

What is your experience of Joost?

TechCrunch nuttiness

2007-04-01T06:22:00.000-07:00

Regular readers of TechCrunch may remember that editor/owner Mike Arrington has form when April 1st posts are concerned.

Rather than inventing semi-plausible spoof Web 2.0 start up company reviews, cramming in all the requisite buzzwords, this year Arrington appears to have gone for a different approach. CNet reports 'TechCrunch: When April's Fool is no joke' regarding the acquisition of FuckedCompany by TechCrunch.

FuckedCompany started in 2000 by Philip 'Pud' Kaplan and gained a following in the wake of the dotcom bubble burst, when disgruntled employees of failing dotcom start ups, and the recently redundant spilled the beans making for juicy reading.

Arrington who currently deposits failed companies he has written about in the TechCrunch 'Deadpool' cites his rationale for the acquisition of 'FC' as "the current trend in blogging, led by Valleywag and others, is to “go negative first, and ask questions later.” That tabloid-style journalism tends to generate a lot of eyeballs and, subsequently, advertiser dollars. This is something we just can’t compete with. By acquiring FC, we can go more negative faster than anyone else out there, when and if we need to.

With the combination of these two companies, we can now effectively cover a startup from the idea stage, through the hype and funding stage, and then cover its inevitable bankruptcy and liquidation as well."

Approximately half the 233 comments on TechCrunch regarding the acquisition believe it to be a joke. Whatever the truth is you have to hand it to Arrington for his ability to continually generate and sustain a high level of interest in his ventures.

----------------------------------------------------------

Update: Now confirmed as an April Fools joke to draw attention to how ' Techcrunch is the best-known site announcing new "Web 2.0" companies, while FC chronicled the fall of "Web 1.0." The joke being that Web 2.0 is "officially" over.'

The lawyer, the trainee plastic surgeon and the imaginary girl

2007-03-20T14:09:00.000-07:00

Interesting interview describing the creation of a fictitious teenage videoblogger called Bree, who generated humongous traffic, got exposed as a spoof and still milked the fan base turning a niche idea into a viable YouTube offshoot business model.

Rocketboom field correspondent Chuck Olsen interviews 'medical dropout' Miles Beckett and ex-attorney Greg Goodfried the creators of lonelygirl15.

Despite the international exposé between June and August 2006, the lonelygirl15 phenomenon shows no sign of flagging. They have a partnership with video revenue sharing site Revver,'spin-off shows in foreign territories' in development, plus 'branding and integration deals for long term success'.

There are currently 88,000 lonelygirl15 subscribers on YouTube; lonelygirl15.com gets 25 to 30,000 unique vistors a day, and about 150,000 unique vistors over a month. The five videos a week generate about 1.5 million weekly views.

To sustain and increase interest levels, there is plenty of interaction available for fans to comment and interact with eachother on the lg15 forums.

Jessica Lee Rose who plays Bree was voted the top web celeb by Forbes.com and after a bit part with Lindsay Lohan in 'I Know Who Killed Me', she now has a 'movie deal'. Touchingly, Jessica also recorded a United Nations anti-poverty commercial since her career went stratospheric.

map messaging

2007-03-13T11:11:00.000-07:00

Instead of passé email, combine a smoke signal or crop circle message with a location via http://www.mapmsg.com

Ning, the social network from Andreessen

2007-02-28T01:15:00.000-08:00

Way back in October 2005, Ning launched with an intent to let anyone create social networks without programming skills, for free.

Ning is backed by Marc Andreessen, the 'wunderkind' of the Internet bubble generation and has Gina Bianchini as CEO.

After an several kickings from TechCrunch they at last appear to have ironed out the usabilty issues that got them the earlier bad press with Ning version 2, released on 27th Feb '07.

It was good to see Andreessen and Bianchini interacting with every pertinent comment asked on TechCrunch (161 so far) and being so open. Andreessen was happy to talk about what was happening under the hood and said amongst much other detailed answering that Ning was 90% built in Java. He stresses that Ning is designed to let people customise any aspect of their social network either in the Ning environment or outside using Ning's API's.

Scalablity is often an issue when apps get the TechCrunch spike and aim to go mainstream. Despite a few instances of recently being swamped the concensus is that Ning is coping well and the majority of the feedback is positive.

In my experience it took less than 20 minutes to set up a test social network using Ning without a single glitch. So top marks there for usability. See below, Gina Bianchini giving an impressive demo of Ning, filmed by Robert Scoble.

The Ning business model allows free usage being supported by ads with plenty of premium services available where there is demand.

Arrington calls for the BBC to be dissolved

2007-02-22T11:35:00.000-08:00

Via Ian Forrester at Cubicgarden

Yesterday (21st Feb) at the future of webapps there was a Panel Debate about what Europe could learn from American in regards to the startup culture. We captured the whole debate on a small camcorder. Including the part where one of the most prolific voices of the valley, Michael Arrington from TechCrunch.com showed his true feelings for the BBC's efforts online. He added... "The BBC should be dissolved"

Click To Play

Future of Web Apps heats up London

2007-02-22T04:52:00.001-08:00

Via Suw Charman and Carson Systems at Future of Web Apps; Sam Sethi at Vecosys, Robert Andrews at Wired and Tara Hunt at Horsepigcow.

Originally uploaded by Tech Paparazzi.

Chelsea FC on YouTube

2007-02-21T14:15:00.000-08:00

Via Reuters : Chelsea have signed a deal to show archive footage and daily news on the popular video-sharing site YouTube, becoming the first Premier League club to do so.

Under the deal, Chelsea will have a branded channel on the site, showing daily updates and other content. It will not show live footage due to restrictions under Premier League rules.

"We are delighted to work with YouTube," Chelsea Chief Executive Peter Kenyon said in a statement on Friday. "Chelsea is the first football club to move into what is clearly one of the fastest growing new media platforms."

MusicStation takes on the iPhone

2007-02-13T14:40:00.000-08:00

UK dotcom tycoons take on Apple with iPhone competitor

Yahoo! Pipes 'a milestone'

2007-02-11T10:27:00.000-08:00

Here's a screengrab of Yahoo! Pipes launched last week.

Nik Cubrilovic at TechCrunch explains "the product name is taken from the world of UNIX where a pipe is a conduit for the transfer of data between applications, while with the Yahoo product it is a conduit for data between web services.

In a basic form Yahoo! Pipes allows you to take data from one or more sources and to bring it together, for example - to aggregate a group of feeds."

Tim O'Reilly describes Yahoo Pipes as a milestone in the history of the internet and is openly excited at "the enormous promise in turning the web into a programmable environment for everyone." O'Reilly points out that many people might be thinking that 'pipes' are just another way of mashing up data. "But to develop a mashup, you already needed to be a programmer.

Yahoo! Pipes is a first step towards changing all that, creating a programmable web for everyone."

One minor glitch in this wonderful new Internet milestone from Yahoo! is the apparent lack of user documentation. However 'MrsSpeaker' has an easily digestible introduction to Yahoo!Pipes here.

Reddit's influential 12 year old

2007-02-11T06:32:00.000-08:00

Mike Arrington at TechCrunch highlights a recent Wall Street Journal article called “The Wizards of Buzz” which looks at the power of the top users on Digg, Netscape and other “social bookmarking” sites.

One of the top 'influencers' on Reddit, (bought in Ocober 2006 by Condé Nast, turned out to be a 12 year old boy called Adam Fuhrer who lives near Toronto. His father restricts Adam's access to sites such as YouTube, yet Adam has enough time on his hands and nous to reach the top users list on Reddit.

Adam tracks 100 sites searching for news about criminal justice, his local hockey team and software. Recently he focussed on the security vulnerabilities of Vista, Microsoft's much hyped new operating system, gaining approving votes from more than 500 users.

Microsoft having spent five years and an estimated $10b n developing Vista their first operating system since XP, must have concerns that the fruits of their massive investment can be shaped to some extent by someone who no matter how bright they are, is not yet a teenager. It is worth poiting out that Adam is merely linking to established sources such as Robert Vamosi, senior editor at CNet, whose credibility is less of an issue.

One outcome of the Wall Street Journal revealing the identities and ages of some of the top posters to user generated sites, is how regular users of these sites will now feel having been influenced by someone eight years below the lower end of the typical reddit/digg user demographic of 20-30 years old.

TechCrunch20 reignites conflict of interest row

2007-02-01T12:38:00.000-08:00

Last December an enormous row erupted between Sam Sethi, publisher of newly setup TechCrunch UK and Mike Arrington the owner/editor of TechCrunch.com.

One of Arrington's gripes with Sethi was

"Sam's ethical lapse in trashing a competitor while simultaneously promoting his own events."

Fast forward six weeks with TechCrunch UK still on hold and Sam succesfully relocated to his own site Vecosys with co-editor Mike Butcher.
Today Arrington posts a curious announcement from DEMO outlining its deficiencies and high entry costs while promoting TechCrunch20, his zero cost startup launch conference in partnership with Jason Calacanis, founder of highly popular tech blog Engadget.

Guardian technology journalist Bobbie Johnson was one of the first to point out:

"wasn’t the reason you got irritated with TCUK because they criticised Le Web and announced a competing event at the same time? If so, so what’s with ragging DEMO and launching your own competitor in the same post here?"

Arrington is yet to respond to this observation, but replies to Robert Scoble's accusation of being 'tactless' hours after having lunch together today.

Sam Sethi magnanimously resists having too much of a dig writing:

"good luck Jason and Mike, we already know it’s a great idea! I look forward to reading more about the “original” ideas presented at TechCrunch20."

Shiny Media sells 50% for $4.5m funding

2007-01-29T12:14:00.000-08:00

The UK's largest blog network Shiny Media, has secured $4.5m in funding from Dan Wagner's venture capital arm, Bright Station. Dan Wagner bought the tech remnants of ill-fated Boo.com and built e-commerce supplier Venda and search engine Locayta.

Shiny Media set up by Guardian technology contributor Ashley Norris, Chris Price and Katie Lee has grown from the initial Tech Digest to now 22 blogs with 3 million readers monthly.

Their blogs are grouped in four main sections. Shiny Tech including 'James Murdoch's favourite' HDTV, Shiny Sport featuring Who Ate All The Pies, Shiny Fashion with Shoewawa and Shiny Lifestyle with the exquisitely named Bayraider.

Commenting on their funding, Ashley answers the question why they need $4.5m at a cost of 50% of the company:

1) competing with mainstream media.

2) developing the commercial side of our business.
3) video is the future for blogging.
4) expanding our range of blogs.
5) eyeing up new horizons.

"Why Bright Station Ventures? Well we have worked really hard to develop Shiny and we wanted like-minded entrepreneurs who were prepared to ‘sweat’ with us, not just look over our shoulder. Shaa and Dan are both dynamos who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty. They don’t just bring the backing of an exciting new fund to Shiny, they also bring experience, contacts and the kind of commercial nous Shiny needs to achieve its goals."

The significance of this deal is likely to be resonating around the blogosphere for some time to come.

Photo of Ashley Norris courtesy of ProBlogger

Ballerinas, Bigots, Bullies and Slavery

2007-01-22T17:22:00.000-08:00

Three weeks in January '07 with three women publicly venting their extreme viewpoints

Tainted cookies from Downing Street

2007-01-16T02:00:00.000-08:00

Like many people, part of their routine is running anti-spyware and adware programs to bolster their firewall and anti-virus defences.

So last night trawling through the usual suspects picked up by Ad-Aware, I found a couple of quarantined files from The Guardian and one from CNet plus a few clearly ad-related. Nothing out of the ordinary there. But lodged amongst them was a first appearance from "uk.stat.com/primeministersoffice/downingstreet."

Hunting down the cookie details shows it allegedly expiring at the end of the session as opposed to many that optimistically expire 35 years from now, such as Google's. (Show me a PC in regular use that will function and be active 35 years from now and I'll be impressed). As Simon Willison points out 'How many people are going to go a whole ten years without losing their browser’s cookies, through a browser upgrade, PC upgrade, change of job or just wiping the cookie directory?'

The question remains why would a cookie from Downing Street appear as spyware? and more generally 'when do cookies become spyware?' Stefanie Olsen at CNet looked at this way back in 2005. She defines 'Spyware as denying people reasonable control over the application -- the ability to easily uninstall it, for example. And, as its name implies, it typically spies on people while they're surfing the Web. It can collect passwords, bank statements and other personal data, down to the keystroke.'

Olsen reports that Richard Smith, a privacy and security consultant said "some anti-spyware audits are padding the potential threat to create the impression that they're doing more work than they really are to protect consumers."

It is curious that Ad-Aware picked up 'primeministersoffice/downingstreet' and makes one wonder why an 'innocuous cookie' would be quarantined as spyware. 10 Downing Street has a detailed Privacy Policy page that states 'Ned Stat, an independent measurement and research company gathers non-personal data regarding the visitors to our site on our behalf using cookies and code embedded in the site'.

Yet why the Prime Minister's Office's cookies and code appear as spyware is not clear.

Does the iPhone live up to the hype?

2007-01-09T14:22:00.000-08:00

First impressions of the iPhone are pretty damn good. After years of speculation regarding the iPhone, endless rumours and plenty of creative visualisations, the big day arrived.

Steve Jobs at Macworld in San Francisco unveiled a credible touchscreen device, with a high degree of innovation. It has 200 patents including the intriguingly named 'Accelerometer', plus Proximity sensors and Visual Voicemail. Priced at $499 for the 4GB version and a very steep $599 for 8GB Flash storage capacity.

Thankfully Engadget blogged the keynote in real time, with enough galleries to satisfy Apple's most enthusiastic fanatics. (Engadget had 10 times normal traffic during Job's keynote peaking at nearly 10 million page impressions, although there is still some confusion whether or not this takes into account page refreshes).

Mike Butcher also has an easy to digest round-up of the iPhone's key features gleaned from TUAW, Paidcontent, Crunchgear and Engadget.

In a refreshing note of balance, Ben King at Channel 4 asks "Why are we so obssessed with Apple?"

Tech Paparazzi's Verdict: Without personally having used the the iPhone, this is mainly based on Steve's keynote: While there are always going to be detractors predicting failure it seems to exceed the hype, appearing to carry the iPod wow-factor and usability to the iPhone. Guy Kewney at the Reg thinks there will be a demand for the abandoned scroll wheel and reckons it will reappear in hardware version 1.5. But surely the scroll wheel could appear on the touchscreen in an upgrade.

Europe will have to wait until Christmas '07 or early 2008 until it ships this side of the pond.

on the way to Las Vegas for CES

2007-01-08T16:54:00.001-08:00

There was no fog that day.
Originally uploaded by Tolka Rover.

from Flickr, tagged CES, originally uploaded by Tolka Rover

keeping faith

2007-01-07T15:20:00.001-08:00

keeping faith
Originally uploaded by stoneth.

Second image from a set of photos titled Poverty by Tom Stone (via kottke)

life and death

2007-01-04T16:49:00.001-08:00

life and death
Originally uploaded by stoneth.

From a powerful set of 161 photos titled Poverty by Tom Stone (via kottke)

Saddam Hussein's capture, trial and hanging (shown on Google Video and YouTube)

2007-01-02T17:27:00.000-08:00

'Le Web 3 spat' illustrated timeline of events

2006-12-19T23:30:00.000-08:00

Illustrated timeline of Le Web 3 spat

Liberate Media

2006-09-14T23:02:00.000-07:00

Wendy McAuliffe and Lloyd Gofton at the launch
of their tech PR consultancy Liberate Media

GBC and Chocolate Communications

2004-11-18T22:46:00.000-08:00

Chav Party

Sony Ericsson

2004-09-01T21:43:00.000-07:00

Creative

2004-03-17T20:14:00.000-08:00

Hotwire PR

2003-11-05T22:09:00.000-08:00

Soho House

Vodafone live!

2003-10-16T16:06:00.000-07:00

LG Displays

2003-10-15T15:57:00.000-07:00

Arena Essex Raceway
Previews of large LCDs and Wireless
Monitors

Macromedia

2003-09-25T23:53:00.000-07:00

Virgin Mobile

2003-09-16T15:47:00.000-07:00

Christmas Party

Lewis PR

2003-08-27T23:04:00.000-07:00

As dusk fell the Booze Cruise chugged up to Westminster and back down to the Thames Barrier with the legendary Cheggers entertaining the assembled hacks with his blend of cheeky stories and crowd pleasing naughtiness ...

Jane Wakefield of BBC Technology

2003-04-14T16:26:00.000-07:00

Maternity leave drinks