The Golden Globe nominations were announced this morning. You can find a full list here. I would say nothing too surprising, Heath Ledger was nominated for beast supporting actor, and ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ was nominated in multiple categories including best Picture-Drama. There are several of these films I haven’t seen but that is my early pick for the movie to beat this upcoming award season.
On a totally weird and only at the Golden Globes note, Tom Cruise was nominated for Best Supporting Actor as well. What movie you might ask? ‘Valkyrie’? No, how about ‘Tropic Thunder’. It seems the Hollywood Foreign Press Association has tried to remain relevant and edgy but I think that nomination sticks out as bizarre. He’s up against his ‘Tropic Thunder’ co-star Robert Downey Jr., Ralph Fiennes (The Duchess), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Doubt), and Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight). Any guesses who will actually win that one?
As far as TV and other nominations go. I hope ‘Wall-E’ cleans up the animation category and Tina Fey and everything ’30 Rock’ takes home a statue. I’d be fine if ‘Weeds’ won but nobody else in their categories is worth my time. Lastly, a shout to Neil Patrick Harris for his nod in ‘How I Met Your Mother’, way to play it the other way.
Oh, and if anyone still cares the Grammy nominations were announced last week. Talk about an irrelevant award.
I don’t know where this actually originiated, so I’ll link to the place I found it, which in turn seems to link to the image somewhere else. Nonetheless, I’m re-posting it here, you know, in the spirit of sharing on the internets.
I’ll claim that this is related to the blog in that it’s new, it’s media, and it’s user-generated content created by taking an existing piece of media and transforming it into something new. And I think it’s hilarious.
You wouldn’t buy our shitty cars. So we’ll be taking your money anyway. The Bailout. Coming this January. So, so true.
Nintendo sent some media outlets copies of Wild World, an Animal Crossing game for the Nintendo DS. Apparently you can share and import some of the player-created content into the Nintendo Wii’s console version of Animal Crossing.
Wired’s reporting that somehow a player managed to get around Nintendo’s content filters and inserted an offensive word into the game. This offensive content was unlocked and incorporated into the version Nintendo sent out to the media outlets. See below:
Apparently Nintendo has since been scrambling to pull these copies back, and has released an official statement. Oops.
Yahoo!, the internet for teenagers, has released their top 10 list for most searched terms of the year. For the fourth year in a row ‘Britney Spears’ has shocked and confused people so much they want to know what stupid thing she’s done now. In fact in order to attempt to increase traffic to our site I’m just going to list the top 10 words:
1. Britney Spears
2. WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment)
3. Barack Obama
4. Miley Cyrus
5. “RuneScape”
6. Jessica Alba
7. “Naruto”
8. Lindsay Lohan
9. Angelina Jolie
10. American Idol
To check out the way the rest of the world searches the internet head on over to Google’s zeitgeist and take a look at how the Yahoo! top 5 compare.
Introducing the Pomegranate NS08 Phone. Utterly brilliant is how I can best describe it. It’s a phone that does absolutely everything that you want it to, and it puts the iPhone to shame. This upside-down tear-shaped device packs a ton of features into a sleek and thin design:
Pomegranate NS08 Phone
Very nice! But you can do more than just talk on this baby. It’s also an email device, web browser, camera, music player, world clock, and GPS navigator. But even more, it’ll project your PowerPoint “decks” on the wall, brew coffee, and for kicks you can use the built-in harmonica for entertainment at your next presentation.
HOT!
Ok…If you’ve played around on the site by now you’re come to the shocking conclusion that this phone does not exist. In fact, the whole site is desinged to get you interested, and click to find out the release date…and then BAM redirect you to the site for….Nova Scotia.
That’s right…
Someday you’ll get everything you want in one device.
Today you can get everything you want in one place.
You just might be surprised with all that Nova Scotia has to offer. If this brilliant web marketing campaign is any indication of just how sweet Nova Scotia really is…I just might have to make a visit there myself.
When it’s cold out during the winter months and you don’t want to take off those gloves for fear of having your fingers go numb… Have no fear, your tongue is here. I’ve discovered through a similar situation that some stuble on the chin won’t get the phone to answer. What I needed was my tongue. Thank you random discovery that probably looked totally crazy to the people in the car next to me.
Time Life magazine has partnered up with search giant Google (let’s just call them the inventors of ‘teh internets’ from now on), aka the library killer, to compile their images onto an easily search-able database. I’ve geeked out over vintage 1950s Disneyland pictures, and it’s only been live since Tuesday. Software engineer Paco Galanes wrote on Google’s blog that “this effort to bring offline images online was inspired by our mission to organize all the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” This marks a revival of sorts for the discontinued magazine that ran from 1883 to 2006.
If you know me, you know that I can’t resist any opportunity to lambast Steve Scher, Senior Host of KUOW’s Weekday program here on Seattle’s NPR station. Now, Steve Scher in the past has had some real awesome shows…again if you’ll know me you’ll know these are three of my favorites:
“Best pho restaurants in Seattle” – this insightful hour told us that all the best pho restaurants in Seattle were located…in San Diego. Thanks Steve!
“Birdwatching at Marymoor Park” – Steve invited local Audubon Society members on the program to talk about great bird watching in Marymoor Park. Conclusion: at the time of the broadcast sometime in winter, there really weren’t any great birds to be seen in Marymoor…but come Springtime….
“Weekday Halloween Special!” - call us and tell us about your scary costume, or what you would think would be a great scary costume. Describe it to us. In detail. The show featured calls from locals such as King County Executive Ron Sims, who pretended to be the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Nice!
That’s all fine and dandy. But what has this to do with new media or tech? How can this be related to your blog? Are you just bitching? YES AND YES!
Steve today gave me a reason to gripe about him and legitimately link it to the loosely defined theme of this blog. Because today, Steve asked Weekday listeners to…
Yes folks, that’s right. Call in to the radio show and help them create a wiki on the air. Excuse me for getting technical, but Wikipedia defines a wiki as:
A wiki is a page or collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language.
So tell me Steve. Do you even know what a wiki is? Is your idea, or is it one from Sage Van Wing? Unfortunately I pulled into the parking garage before I got too deep into the expansive discussion that was about to take place, but I fully plan on listening to it once the podcast is available. I can only imagine it was a great one. What better way, for instance, to make a Weekday Wiki, then by CREATING A BLOG ENTRY ABOUT IT. Solid! If this is any indication of how the rest of the hour went, I’m sure I’ll be in for a real treat when I get to listen to the whole thing.
Perhaps the only great thing to come out of the Weekday Wiki blog entry was the fact that one of my favorite people who used to call into DJ No Name’s show, Durnady, left this comment, when asked by Sage Van Wing “What Would you write a Wikipedia entry about? And, how did you get this knowledge?”:
I am a Duran Duran poster archivist in Bellevue, Washington. As curator/owner of the world’s largest collection of Duran Duran-related posters, I have a unique perspective on one of the biggest artists ever to emerge from the 80′s.
-Durandy
One of the most interesting aspects of my archive is the comparative study of how Duran Duran has been promoted and embraced across cultures and over decades.
The band’s influence has been felt in nearly every creative realm –from film, art and video to fashion and music. My collection offers an unprecedented look at Duran’s legacy, showing how the band has evolved, adapted to a changing musical landscape and continues to break new ground in the present day. It is a niche that I never expected to fall into, but one that has yielded an amazing journey for me over the years.
Milestones have included a loan to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland Ohio, two public exhibitions, and recognition from the band and fan community. Posters offer a wealth of insight and information about the bands being promoted. When viewed on an international, comprehensive scale, a music artist can be appreciated in a most revealing and rewarding context.
So I have two “WTF” factors for this post. One is Fred, the other is the ZipIt. There is this YouTube dude called Fred (his YouTube page)(or his home page). I just don’t get it. I don’t get it at all. I stumbled upon his blog post from Videogum, which talks about how Fred is now advertising for some bullshit my-first-Blackberry device called the ZipIt. Which he now uses in his craptastic videos.
If you haven’t watched anything from Fred, you can try watching Fred talk about his attempt to run for class president:
Now, I don’t usually swear online (hahah), but I really have to classify this in the What The Fuck category. I just…don’t….get it. Are 2.5 MILLION other people also viewing this video just for the What The Fuck factor? Judging by the comments, there are a ton of people who are either lying through their teeth, or genuinely think this kid is funny.
And i very much agree with the author of the Vidoegum post, Gabe, who says:
I think there are definitely a few things that I would totally buy after watching a Fred video, like noise-canceling headphones, or an industrial grade eye-shower, or a gun with one bullet in it.
I’m trying to think back to childhood…I know many of the things I liked growing up were probably stupid and lame and awful and unbearable if I were to watch them now (Pete will tell you that’s SeaQuest but I still stand by it)…but Fred? Really? Huh? Barney is forgivable because 3-year olds just don’t actually know what’s going on. But 14 year olds should have started to develop some kind of taste for the non-shittastic.
I wonder if Fred will really drive sales of the ZipIt. It has some “interesting” features. It’s an “All-in-one WiFi Messenger” which only costs $49.99, plus a $9.99/month service contract. You can chat with up to 99 friends at the same time. 99? Damn. It does “let u chat, control ur IM accounts, and set IM options.” What is good about it is that they let you send and receive text messages to other cell phones, and your parents will “luv” that there’s never any (why not “ne”??) overage charges or surprise fees. Built-in mini-SD card for showing off “ur favorite pics” (again, why not “ur fav pics”??). Interestingly you can listen to music and also stream live internet radio from “ur favorite stations.” ”How much do you <3 that?” I <3 that a lot.
So…this is almsot like a glorified pager. For $50 that’s really not that bad, and I suppose I’d much rather see parents buy this for their kids than an overpriced smartphone. I don’t really see this taking much market share away from mobile phones though. Kids are going to want to have gigabytes worth of songs. They’re going to want to surf the web. They’re going to want to make phone calls. They’re going to want to take pictures and send them via MMS. So while parents will be stuck with a heftier monthly bill, I don’t really see this product taking off, unless it’s with kids who aren’t quite at the point in their social lives where they’re wanting to talk on the phone all the time. And honestly I don’t think a 12 year old needs a) one of these, b) a mobile phone, or c) anything more than an iPod Shuffle.
Plus this device looks huge…definitely not hip and trendy at all. That being said, I almost want to buy stock in the company, because if even a fraction of Fred’s fans go out and buy this silly device, there’s big money to be made. Sadly, Fred is probably getting a decent chunk of money for this. Which is annoying. Just like the Kev Blaze video featuring Fred. Who the hell is Kev Blaze? And more importantly, how did “Fred” manage to get the username “Fred”. I suppose that means he should get some kind of “props”. But not from me.
Update: CNN gives a glimpse of who is behind Fred. Ending with “it’s really incredible…” I consider this to be…incredible yes…but I’m glad I haven’t rocketed to stardom this way.
