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Internets

the internets

Real Geeks Confused By Latest Wired Cover

"This is what happens when real geeks find out about the self proclaimed [New York] digerati," writes a tipster, referring to this awesome geek conversation, which includes, "I bet those other fake geeks dont even know what an RS-232 booster chip is for." More »

new media

Will HuffPo Pay its Bloggers Some Mythical Day in the Future?

The Huffington Post, that repository of crackpot rants and informed political debate (plus "verticals"! Lots of verticals) does not pay its bloggers. But they hypothetically might, sometime in the future. HuffPo CEO Betsy Morgan (formerly of CBSNews.com) was interviewed by her college alumni magazine. After the jump, probably the most obnoxious and telling new-media statement of our time about actually paying employees. (Hint? "So 1993.") (Mixed Media via CJR) More »

the internets

Today's News, In a Word Cloud

Wordle generates what they call “word clouds” from the text you give them. "The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like." We inputted today's Gawker. Here's what showed up!

rant

Unsolicited Advice & Your Personal Blog

It must be so annoying to have a widely-read personal blog that allows comments (or shows your contact information), simply because of the plague of the 2.0 world: unsolicited advice! The best real-world comparison to comments-enabled personal blogging that I can think of involves, say, standing up and reciting your thoughts and feeling to the passengers on a Greyhound bus. Anyone who read Emily Gould's blog after her New York Times article on blogging her personal life came out would have seen an explosion of life advice couched in passive-aggressive "I care" language. (330 comments—many of which start with "sweetheart" and "hon" and include, "If I were your analyst I’d say that you need to break out of the mold, the rut, you’ve been in for several years.") Thank you, Internet strangers! Julia Allison deals with it, too, of course: More »

virtual worlds

BusinessWeek Still Wants You In A Second Life Workplace

Has Second Life, the weird, clunky virtual world, ever been good for anything except strange computer sex and time-wasting? For about a year there, you couldn't pick up a magazine without seeing 2L touted as the next big thing for business. For business! Yes, why wouldn't an imaginary land packed with flying monsters and huge selections of virtual penises become corporate America's preferred communications medium? Christ. Lots of the hype was the fault of BusinessWeek, which bought into it with wide-eyed enthusiasm. And the magazine is still trying to get your employer to drag you off to a fantasy computer island for fun team-building exercises: More »

marketing

Pop-Up Ads: Evil To The Feeble

Do pop-up ads qualify as "deceptive marketing practices"? Good Morning America says "yes." A free enterprise advocacy group says "no." We say "yes, but don't you know not to click that shit by now?" We guess it's a public service that GMA did a spot last week warning people not to enter their credit card info into pop-ups. But if you're doing that, you are either elderly, or doomed to be snuffed out by the principles of Darwinian evolution in the digital age. Expect the marketing industry to strenuously object; pop-ups are simply an "information channel" in their view, the bastards. Watch the GMA clip, after the jump: More »

fameballs

Nonsociety's Video Remix: Valtrex Edition

Gawker videographer Richard Blakeley noticed that if you re-mix the embarassingly bad Nonsociety video (dating columnist/publicity whore Julia Allison & Friends' new "online business" with actual investors) it syncs up perfectly with... a Valtrex commercial. Watch it! In related "defending your online reputation" news... More »

the internets

Blog Commenters Commented On, Again; Ours Still Better

The "what is to be done about out-of-control commenters in the wild world of Web 2.0" article has been written again, this time by Time. We're only mentioning it because the articles notes that while yes, commenters are mean and out of hand, at least ours are witty! (YouTube's commenters can't even graciously accept a cute video of a gerbil.) Gawker comments, Lev Grossman writes, are "often funnier and cleverer than the posts they comment on." Hey!! More »

the internets

Maybe We Haven't Explained This Thoroughly

Someone—a Mom?—e-mailed one of our readers questioning what the hell do we mean by "after the jump"? (Remember: there are no stupid questions!) OK: "after the jump" means that you just click the "MORE" button and you get to read the rest of the article—kind of when you flip to the back page of a newspaper to finish a front-page article. See? (Click to see the e-mail, which confuses our "jump" with the poor model who jumped from her balcony last week.)

Twitter Nation, @Y'all? Has anyone else noticed this trend (or is it a one-person trend piece?) From a reader: "People [are] starting to put the dreaded @ signs from Twitter in emails! Such as @Tricia, how did making that Excel spreadsheet go? and other horrible things of that nature." Has this infected your office as well?

the internets

Playboy's Blog-Girls of Summer

Round up the usual suspects! Playboy.com has decided on the hottest female bloggers. Boing Boing co-editor Xeni Jardin and her ex-lover, sexblogger (and Fleshbot contributor) Violet Blue, are both on the list. (All posts referencing Blue were recently deleted by Jardin from Boing Boing—awkward!) Oh, wait, it's a poll, and the winner will be asked to pose for Playboy.com. (Nude? They didn't say.) So far, videoblogger Brigitte Dale is in the lead with 27% of the vote, while Rocketboom and Sometimes Daily's Amanda Congdon has only 5%. The rest of the bloggers named after the jump. More »

frenemies

More (Circumstantial) Evidence that Socialgay Kristian Laliberte Rats Out His Friends

"Ugly and Dirty... that's all..." someone named "Nahant" wrote on the CityFile profile for a one Peter Davis, the "social queen," fashion writer, and Tinsley Mortimer friend. We think that "Nahant" might be our favorite socialgay Kristian Laliberte (surprise!), who used to date Davis and grew up in the "magical" resort town of Nahant, Massachusetts. More »

flackery

5WPR Flacks Get So Freaking Busted Impersonating People Online

We call 5WPR chief Ronn [sic] Torossian an "incompetent superflack" for a reason, people. He and his firm are not just annoying; they are actually incompetent at the practice of public relations. The latest, and sweetest evidence: 5WPR just got stone-cold busted for impersonating people (including a Rabbi!) in a blog comments section on behalf of a (soon-to-be-former, if they're smart) client. We have an email in to Ronn for comment, but this evidence makes a pretty good case that 5W is a bunch of mindless trolls: More »

the internets

How to Shut Down an Internet Argument

Just post this video, each and every time, when things appear to be getting out of hand in a comments thread or whatever. Makes everyone involved feel stupid. [via Cajun Boy]

blind item

"You Pussy": How to Handle Interview Requests On the Internet

Hey, which puppy-pic-loving novelist and newly minted blogger/defender of the Internet called a former Gawker mascot a "pussy" multiple times in response to a request for an interview? More »

I Can't Work Like This "Help!" writes a tipster. "Time Warner cable is down [in Brooklyn], from Bushwick to the Roebling Tea Room. Shame them into fixing it. Its like life support being pulled." I'm just relieved that it's actually down—I thought it was because I haven't been paying my bill. (Thanks for the unprotected WiFi network, apartment 4B!)

cartoons

Seth MacFarlane Will Now Take Over The Internet

Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family Guy, still remembers when his show got pulled from Fox. Then it came back, and now it's one of the network's biggest hits. But even though the FCC lets him make edgy jokes now, it will never allow him to make edgy enough jokes. So MacFarlane is teaming up with Google to distribute a new, top secret internet show that will change everything and make him the most fabulously wealthy poop joke maven the world has ever seen. More »

the

One Post Wonders: Blogs That Died at Birth

From the hoary old crypts of the most ancient corners of the Internet comes a massively awesome collection of blogs that no one cared about. Like whatever it was that Jakob Lodwick invented, but worse! Each began with one post from some cyber-dreamer, and that one post has been preserved, all on its lonesome, to this day. For instance: More »