Blago to US: Scr*w You
Politics December 30th, 2008
Pardon my French, but that’s his message. Loud and clear.
This is not about Mr. Burris; it is about the integrity of a governor accused of attempting to sell this United States Senate seat," the statement read. "Anyone appointed by Gov. Blagojevich cannot be an effective representative of the people of Illinois and, as we have said, will not be seated by the Democratic Caucus.
Photo credit: Chicago Breaking News.
Tags: corruption, ploitics, senate
Farting Our Way Through the Recession?
Misc, Software December 30th, 2008
Global warming. The U.S. losing its edge in science and technology. A growing income gap. And what are the best and the brightest working on?
-asked Tim O’Reilly, Father-of-all-things-Web-2.0 at the Web 2.0 Expo in September.
Do you see a problem here? You have to ask yourself, are we working on the right things?
Some of the negative examples he cited were the Facebook application Superpoke and the popular iPhone app "iBeer," which simulates chugging a pint of beer. Has anything changed since O’Reilly’s alert? Let’s see:
The most popular of 50+ (!) fart applications, iFart Mobile generated $10,000 a day at 99c per download until it got written up just before Christmas, then it exploded, bringing in $27,249 on Christmas Day. Dou think it’s jus a crazy name for a useful program? Nope: all it does is to make farting noises.
Tapping into the Apple phone craze, accidental entrepreneurs rake in millions by creating popular applications.
-says the Washington Post in an aptly named article: The iPhone’s Golden Touch. At least Smule, the showcased company does not make fart noises: they have applications like virtual lighter, a virtual firecracker, a voice changer, a virtual wind instrument. They are on track to make $1 million this year, a buck a piece.
If this is not crazy, I don’t know what is… Brian Greenstone, who has been writing (real) games for Apple computers for 21 years agrees:
It’s crazy. It’s like lottery money. In the last four and a half months we’ve made as much money off the retail sales of iPhone apps as we’ve made with retail sales of all of the apps that we’ve made in the past 21 years — combined.
Spending 99c a time does not feel like a big decision – yet it all feels like a gigantic waste. An it will get written up as showcases of entrepreneurship.
I would like to amend the definition of entrepreneurship to include the creation of something useful (yes, I know, I’ve just opened a Pandora’s box, but …). Let’s differentiate opportunity seekers (nothing wrong with that) from Entrepreneurs. I’d like to stand on a soap box and yell: People, wake up! Don’t you have anything better to do?
But my voice isn’t loud enough. I thought Tim O’Reilly’s was … shall we heed his call to do something worthy? Make it a New Year’s Resolution for 2009?
(Cross-posted from CloudAve)
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Tags: business model, fart, farting, iPhone, iphone apps, iTunes, web 2.0
Bragging on YouTube Results in Criminal Charges
Misc December 28th, 2008
18-old Marko Petrovic probably regrets recklessly driving trough Sozina, Montenegro’s longest vehicular tunnel at the breakneck speed of 260 km/h ( 161 m/h) –or at least sharing the experience on YouTube for the whole world to see.
While the entire world has not seen it yet (only 13k views for now), Montenegro police certainly has: they should up at his parents’ home, filing criminal charges of reckless endangering and impounding his dad’s Audi A8.
(A commenter to the video thinks the car is a BMW, not an A8, since he sees the iDrive – I have no clue, car experts feel free to jump in.)
Anyway, I think this is a great initiative: I would strongly encourage reckless drivers, muggers, robbers, all sorts of criminals to follow suit: document your act, earn your well-deserved fame on Youtube. At least in countries where you can get prosecuted based on a video. 
Source: index.hu (in Hungarian)
Update: This kid’s timing was really, really bad. Barely a month after he posted his video, Montenegro banned Facebook and Youtube access if all public sector offices:
“With the aim of optimising traffic and lessening the network loads of governmental agencies during work, access was disabled to potentially dangerous sites and sites that generate large capacities,” the government told AFP.
Tags: audi, bragging, facebook, montenegro, reckless driving, youtube
Credit Crunch Has Reached Bloggers
Blogging, Humor December 26th, 2008
The Credit Crunch has reached the Blogosphere: it is now a Wordpress Theme by Ericulous, developer of the lightweight theme I use here.
I have not found a "Recession" Wordpress theme (yet), but there is one called Depression.
Tags: Blogging, blogs, ericulous, wordpress, wordpress themes
New Yorker Wins Megasztar, Hungary’s “American Idol”
Misc December 22nd, 2008
Hungary’s version of American Idol, Megasztar ended this weekend, and the winner is Viktor Kiraly, who was born an raised till age 16 in New York. Music runs in the family; both parents were musicians, sister Linda published CD’s in the US and the UK, and Viktor started his band with identical twin brother, Ben.
Here’s You Are So Beautiful by the new “Megastar”
From an earlier round, Where Do I Begin (Love Story):
And it wouldn’t be Christmas-time without Santa Claus is Coming to Town:
Tags: american idol, hungary, kiraly viktor, megastar, megasztar, music
Corporate Logos Reflect Recession
Business, Humor December 22nd, 2008
From Flickr, originally published by Business Pundit, and re-discovered by Jeff Nolan. (Oh, yeah, I did my not-so-artistic-but-realistic rendering of the Apple logo a year ago.)
Update:Â Will some of these Web 2.0 logos change in 2009?
Couldn’t Find Three Wise Men in Washington
Humor December 19th, 2008
I couldn’t help but re-tweet (actually re-blog) this from Charlie:
Chain email: "No nativity scene in DC this year. Couldn’t find three wise men in Washington." har har 16 minutes ago from TweetDeck
Charlie Wood
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(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Tags: Humor, nativity, three kings, three wise men
1024. That’s how many bytes one Kilobyte is.
1024. It’s also the number of unread emails in my Inbox.   I’m approaching email backruptcy, so sorry of you haven’t received a reponse. I hope to clear it up in between the Holidays.
Tags: email bankruptcy, enail, inbox
So is this a Great Time or a Terrible Time to Found a Startup?
Startups December 17th, 2008
Now is a Great Time to Join or Found a Startup –says Bob Warfield, friend and fellow Enterprise Irregular. - Now is a Terrible Time to Join or Found a Startup -says Charlie Wood, friend and fellow Enterprise Irregular.
Now what? Who is right? And the debate does not stop here, it sparked a pretty good discussion in the Enterprise Irregulars group. I think both sides are correct. It’s a Great Time and It’s a Terrible Time… read my take on CloudAve.
Tags: employment, entrepreneurship, outbound marketing, recession, self-marketing, Startups, unemployment, vc Funding, venture Capital
The Human Touch: TechMeme Getting Nostalgic
Blogging, Humor December 16th, 2008
TechMeme recently gave up trying to get a 100% working algorithm, instead Gabe switched to half-manual (edited) mode. I suppose and along with it came emotions, otherwise how could we explain TechMeme getting nostalgic. There’s an antique classic in the sponsors’ display:
Memeorandum – The Google for blogs on Microsoft’s Startup Zone. First I got suspicious – is someone recycling TechMeme’s original name for a new venture? But no, clicking through takes us to a fresh post just off the press, dated January 10th, 2005. Don Dodage announces:
Memeorandum is a new blog “news clipper service”. It constantly monitors new blog posts and publishes the title and first 50 words or so to the dynamic news page. The page updates every few minutes with new high quality material. There are currently two news pages. One for technology and another for politics.
Obviously a glitch, I don’s suppose you’ll see it long on TechMeme. Oh, and Happy Birthday, TechMeme ( the 4th, I suppose, more or less).
Tags: Blogging, memeorandum, techmeme
Zoli Erdos
