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Mike Arrington Spit-Attack – He Joins Elite Company

Posted on January 28, 2009 ·
Michael Arrington

Image by jdlasica via Flickr

Disturbing news this morning: TechCrunch Founder Mike Arrington was about to leave the DLD Conference (hey, Eran, where’s your review?) when a stranger approached him, deliberately spat in his face and disappeared in the crowd.

This is as lowly as it gets. It’s also very cowardly.  TechCrunch covers a lot of companies and people, some positively, some negatively, others not at all, which can hurt… and Mike does get occasionally abrasive, but does not go into personal attacks.

Anyone who has issues with Mike him can bring it up publicly, in a civilized manner. With zero barrier of entry to blogging, Twitter..etc there is no excuse not to do so.

Mike Arrington is now taking some time off, not only because of the spit-attack, but also to reflect on earlier threats on his and his family’s life and security.

What happened today is a despicable act, not to be taken lightly.  I am not making fun of it either … but perhaps to cheer Mike up, I must point out that he is now in a Very Elite Club, where his fellow members are none other but Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. 

We probably all remember how Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer received the egg treatment in Budapest last year:

 

But I suspect some of my readers are too young to recall that ten years before the Ballmer-incident, Microsoft Founder Bill Gates received a full cream-pie in his face on a visit to Belgium:

 

(Cross-posted from CloudAve. To stay on top of Cloud Computing news, analysis and just our opinion, grab the CloudAve Feed here.)

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Credit Crunch? Borrow from Those Who Can’t Refuse

Posted on January 14, 2009 ·

That’s the solution the State of California is contemplating: borrow from taxpayers – not that they have a say in the matter:

“California, the most populous state in the nation, is running out of cash with a $41.6 billion deficit that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and lawmakers have thus far been unable to resolve despite more than two months of negotiations.

The situation is so dire that the state controller has warned he will have to delay payments to taxpayers, businesses, social service programs and student aid to conserve money in the state’s checking account. Finance officials project the state will run out of cash in late February, but the state controller will have make a decision by Feb. 1.”

Source: SF Chronicle

Update:  The Biggest Ponzi Scheme You’ve Never Heard Of

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Late Christmas Gift from Norway: Download All the Beatles Songs Free and Legally

Posted on January 5, 2009 ·

See update at bottom!

From Norwegian site NRKBeta:

Some weeks ago, NRK – Norwegian Braodcasting – signed a deal with music rights holder organisation TONO in Norway. The new deal gives NRK right to publish podcasts of all previously broadcasted radio- and tv-programs that contains less then 70% music.

Podcast containing music may be up for four weeks, while our podcast without music stay up on our server forever.

One result of this deal, is that we now can publish “Vår daglige Beatles” – “Our Daily Beatles” in English – as a podcast.

In this series from 2001, journalists Finn Tokvam og Bård Ose tells the story of every single Beatles tracks ever made, chronologically. Each episode contains a 3 minute story about each track (sadly for our international visitors – in Norwegian) and the actual Beatles tune.

This is – as far as we know – the first time you can download the Beatles’ music legally. Neither iTunes nor Amazon have The Beatles in their music stores.

So now Norway’s contribution to Beatles music is a lot more than just Norwegian Wood.  This is an incredible deal: grab the 128kbps mp3 format podcasts here.

(hat tip: Espen Antonsen)

Update: Well, this was too good to last.  NRK pulled the podcast due to legal issues.

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Popcorn Leads Police to Burglary Suspect

Posted on January 4, 2009 ·

This just in  from the “You can’t make this up” department:  Police found the suspect of a convenience store burglary by following the trail of popcorn the suspect left from the crime scene all the way to his apartment. 

The popcorn brand “trail’s end” just got a new meaning…

Source: Sacramento Bee.

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Farting Our Way Through the Recession?

Posted on December 30, 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.smile_speedy

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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Bragging on YouTube Results in Criminal Charges

Posted on December 28, 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. smile_wink

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.

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New Yorker Wins Megasztar, Hungary’s “American Idol”

Posted on December 22, 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:

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1024

Posted on December 18, 2008 ·

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.

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A Fine Day in America

Posted on December 9, 2008 ·

What a fine day in America:

smile_omgWe’re marching towards a socialist system… or at least a partially nationalized one.  After the financial sector now the Government will likely take a stake in Big 3 Auto.  Governments are not exactly known for running businesses well, let alone when they start with already ailing ones…

smile_baringteethIllinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was taken in Federal custody this morning, straight from his home, on corruption charges.  Allegedly he wanted to cash in on his right to appoint the replacement for Senator Obama, who as we know moves to the White House. A line from the FBI affidavit, based on court-approved wiretap on his phones: 

(the Senate seat ) "is a fucking valuable thing, you just don’t give it away for nothing."

There are juicier details here.   My first reaction was shock … I know about arrests of former politicians but has an active sitting Governor been arrested before? 

Apparently yes, and it gets better (actually worse):  MSNBC keeps track:

If Blago goes to prison, and former Gov. George Ryan isn’t commuted by President Bush, you’d have two Illinois governors in prison AT THE SAME TIME. What’s more, by our count, Blagojevich would become the FOURTH Illinois governor to go to prison (following Ryan, Otto Kerner, and Dan Walker).

Hm, Jeff Nolan beats MSNBC:

Gov Len Small, also of Illinois, was arrested while in office in 1921 for corruption.

This must be a good Illinois tradition…

What a fine day in America…

On a brighter note, Costco profits are up… must be all my purchases. smile_wink

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No Broadband on Internet Street

Posted on December 3, 2008 ·

You can’t make this up … there really is no Internet on Internet Street.

Andrzej Gromek bought a house in Warsaw, Poland on a street named … Internet.  Wow!  How nice of the City of Warsaw to recognize the Internet by naming a street after it!  

Mr. Gromek soon discovered he could not get a broadband connection in his house.  Turned down by all providers he launched a campaign to the National Telecom Authority in Poland. They first took his letters for a prank, but after a dozen or so decided to look at the matter.  It turns out that Mr Gromek is the only resident on Internet Street actually wanting to use the Internet, and it would not be economically feasible to pull it to one customer only.

Solution: Mr Gromek is now selling his house.   I hope he does not move to a street named after water, electricity or gas… smile_wink

(Cross-posted from CloudAve)

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