Tech: Blogtown, PDX, Portland Mercury

Introducing Yahoomblr?

Paul Constant — Fri, 17 May 2013 15:29:00 -0700

On Monday, Yahoo is holding a press conference, according to TechCrunch. This comes after the company's recent buying spree, and it closely follows rumors that Yahoo is considering spending a billion dollars to buy Tumblr:

On Monday, it seems that we may get a better sense of what Yahoo plans to do with all these new acquisitions, as CNBC is reporting that Yahoo will be holding a “product-related” news event on Monday in New York City. Marissa Mayer will reportedly be speaking at the press conference, but that’s all we know about the contents of the event at this point.

I do get the sense that Tumblr could be a bigger deal than it already is—it's about one-third of a social network and two-thirds of a blogging platform, which seems like a good position to be in—but I'm not sure that Yahoo is the company to bring it to its full potential. But new CEO Marissa Mayer has accomplished what seemed like the impossible a couple years ago: She's got people talking about Yahoo again.

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Playing Russian Roulette With Your Online Social Presence

Grant Brissey — Tue, 14 May 2013 12:59:38 -0700

TechCrunch has the story of Social Roulette, which launched on Saturday. Like indicated by its name, Social Roulette claims that by playing it, you have "a 1 in 6 chance of deleting your account, and a 5 in 6 chance that it just posts 'I played Social Roulette and survived' to your timeline." From the site:

Everyone thinks about deleting their account at some point, it's a completely normal reaction to the overwhelming nature of digital culture. Is it time to consider a new development in your life? Are you looking for the opportunity to start fresh? Or are you just seeking cheap thrills at the expense of your social network? Maybe it's time for you to play Social Roulette.

No word on whether or not it was supposed to post anything shortly before it deleted your account. And, sadly but unsurprisingly, Facebook has already blocked it.

My brother deleted his Facebook account last year and recently rejoined, vowing to "be friends with less classmates from high school." I think about deleting my account every day, and Social Roulette might just have been the ultimate way to do it. Instead I've just been checking it less, and since I'm someone who considers myself "a writer," I justify its continued existence by saying that it's "a platform," because I read somewhere that publishers like a writer to have that sort of thing.

Have you deleted your Facebook account? Have you deleted your Facebook account and then gone back? What say you, Blogtown?

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Is Lifelogging Stupid?

Paul Constant — Fri, 10 May 2013 09:59:52 -0700

My Twitter was a-hootin' and a-hollerin' about the fact that there's a newly released lifecasting app called Saga. Here's the description:

Saga records your real life story, as told by the places you visited, and what you did there, automatically.

We make it easy and fun to look back on where you’ve been, what you’ve done, what you’ve said, and photos you’ve snapped, with little to no manual input required. Saga keeps up with your daily activities, automatically checking-in, and cataloging your travels in a beautiful lifelog....Saga is for the seekers, the quantified selfers, and life-adventurers, but at the end of the day, Saga is for everyone, including you. We believe everyone has a story worth telling, and today we’re making it incredibly easy to do.

Saga also integrates with a variety of popular services you’re probably already using to enhance your lifelog even more. Saga doesn’t just record your travels, but also your photos, personal notes, status updates, workout data, and more. Connect Saga with apps like RunKeeper, BodyMedia, Fitbit, Withings and Tripit and watch your timeline flourish.

I understand the whole fitness tracking thing—I use a pedometer when I go out on long walks—but lifelogging feels to me like the ultimate I-don't-give-a-shit experience. Are people really going to go back through and relive every little thing they did for every day of their lives? Is anyone else (besides, you know, overreaching law enforcement officers) going to give a shit about your lifelog? And can your phone's battery support a tracking app that is always on in the background? It's entirely possible that this is just plain not for me—I've always considered Foursquare, for instance, to be way to trick people into becoming unpaid billboards for businesses and brands—and other people understand the appeal. What do you think, Blogtownies?

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YouTube's Pay Channels Are Here

Paul Constant — Thu, 09 May 2013 14:59:04 -0700

YouTube's new paid content service has gone live, and it features fitness channels, a couple of movie distribution companies (including mockbuster manufacturer The Asylum), a Cuban channel, and something called "Fix My Hog Premium," among others. Deadline explains:

Sesame Street and Young Turks are among 30 YouTube services that, beginning today, will offer content to people who pay a subscription fee following a 14-day free trial period. They’ll cost an average of $2.99 a month, payable via credit card or Google Wallet, and some will go for as little as 99 cents...

I don't know. Besides Sesame Street—which is not currently on the list of pay channels, by the way—I'm not sure that anyone would be willing to spend any money on these channels. Maybe this is the beginning of the end of free video on the internet, but as long as the free videos on YouTube are there to discourage people from paying for, well, the paid videos on YouTube, I just can't see this taking off.

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And Now a Poll Just for the "Asocial" People

Wm.™ Steven Humphrey — Tue, 07 May 2013 14:29:11 -0700

Google's "wearable computer" (AKA Google Glass) made the NYT yesterday in this article which discusses the device's advanced technology... AND how it can totally spy on you in public... AND how you feel about that. For example:

A pair of lens-less frames with a tiny computer attached to the right earpiece, Glass is promoted by Google as “seamless and empowering.” It will have the ability to capture any chance encounter, from a celebrity sighting to a grumpy salesclerk, and broadcast it to millions in seconds.

And...

“Google Glass will test the right to privacy versus the First Amendment,” said Bradley Shear, a social media expert at George Washington University.

It's an interesting article and you should check it out. But what really caught my eye was this quote from Thad Starner, who is a technical adviser to the Glass team, and claims people's concerns are overblown.

“Asocial people will be able to find a way to do asocial things with this technology, but on average people like to maintain the social contract,” Mr. Starner said.

OH? I would say this statement deserves a poll from Blogtown (voted "most asocial" for the third year running)!

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Here's a Job for You... in Seattle. But Still! A Job!

Wm.™ Steven Humphrey — Thu, 02 May 2013 16:09:00 -0700

Look... I don't want you to leave! On the other hand, I'd be a real jerk if I didn't tell you about a sweet job at our sister paper The Stranger in Seattle. (Hey, at least they have fluoride, right?) Here are the deets:

Stranger Tickets, aka The Stranger, is hiring for a new position which we're calling "Ticketing Web Support".

This person will be responsible for becoming an expert in how our ticketing system works, and then handling client requests for new event setups, custom sites, configuration changes, and building and maintaining custom web sites, with a keen instinct for keeping these kinds of things out of our development team's hair.

We need someone who knows modern front-end coding techniques - HTML and CSS, and some Javascript (jQuery), has a good eye for design and UI, and is obsessed with getting the details right.

Here's the whole job description. If this is you, or someone you know, please email us! And spread the word!

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It Took Us Centuries to Invent the Emoticon

Paul Constant — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 09:44:17 -0700

Megan Garber at The Atlantic has published a very interesting history of the smiley emoticon. It stretches back further than you'd think:

“We were just nerds, goofing around,” Fahlman, now a research professor at Carnegie Mellon, told me. “This was not meant to be a serious invention.” But the smiley and its cousins succeeded where generations of misunderstood sarcasts had failed. In the late 1800s, the poet Alcanter de Brahm proposed a point d’ironie resembling a backward question mark—a suggestion echoed, a century later, by the novelist Hervé Bazin. Nabokov wanted “a special typographical sign for a smile—some sort of concave mark, a supine round bracket.” Ambrose Bierce offered the “snigger point” (a horizontal parenthesis...) to punctuate “every jocular or ironical sentence.”

The next time someone rails against emoticons as illiterate garbage, you are now obligated to point out that Vladimir Nabokov thought they would be useful.

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Weezer Is Playing the Damn Mall

Ned Lannamann — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 15:59:41 -0700

Taking its cue from Apple, or possibly Hot Topic, Microsoft is opening retail stores across the country, and one is coming to lucky, lucky Portland. The Portland Microsoft store opens at Pioneer Place Mall (in the former space of the Macaroni Grill, RIP forever and ever) with a celebration on Thursday, June 20 and Friday, June 21, and—here's the thing, guys, here is why I am blogging this—Weezer is playing.

Weezer is playing?

I am confused as you. So confused that I can't think of a snarky joke about this. It's just kind of—gehhh. Wait, I got one coming... A band years past their prime plays a retail opening for a brand that's well past its... eh, sorry. Kind of fizzled out there. I don't know if I can summon anything else. It's all just kind of too icky. Still, and I think I am being honest here, I'd actually rather see Weezer play a fucking Microsoft store opening than trundle out to see them at some shitty, echoey arena. Right? So there's that.

Weezer at the Microsoft Store in Pioneer Place, Fri June 21, 7 pm. Full details here. Heads up: They are expecting the line to begin on Wednesday.

Geehhhhhh.

[UPDATE: According to the Microsoft Facebook "app" that seems to be the only place with show info, the Weezer show "will be held near Pioneer Place at Pioneer Courthouse Square." You need to get tickets by waiting in line at the store opening. First 200 people get meet-and-greet tickets. It all sounds very complicated (not sure how many tickets are available) so go there if you need the skinny. As to where the store is actually located, the app says "Pioneer Place, 330 SW Yamhill Street" which is the location of the Tiffany store. Regardless, it does say the store itself is considered part of Pioneer Place. My apologies if you feel the headline, as it reads now, is inaccurate, so I'll suggest that the "damn mall" is more a state of mind than a physical place.]

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Text Prank Yer Mom!

Wm.™ Steven Humphrey — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 10:44:04 -0700

If you haven't watched comedian Nathan Fielder's verrrrry funny Comedy Central show Nathan For You... watch it! It's verrrry funny. And now Nathan's being even more funny by asking his Twitter followers to play the following prank on their parents:

Experiment: text your parents "got 2 grams for $40" then right after "Sorry ignore that txt. Not for you" Then tweet pic of their response.
— nathan fielder (@nathanfielder) April 24, 2013

The results are HILARIOUS!! Hit the jump for my two faves and read even more here!

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The Build

Marjorie Skinner — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 12:44:00 -0700

Portland's population of motorcycle builders is a photographic bunch, as illustrated by the number of photo and video projects that have come out focusing on them in recent years. The latest is a unique project from Instrument called The Build. Instead of another straightforward stylized documentary, though, the result is something of an experiment:

Instrument’s goal with The Build was to blend design and technology in groundbreaking ways. It pairs traditional filmmaking with new school interactive experiences that push the envelope of browser technologies like webGL and HTML5 video. In short, we crafted a site that plays web video and includes heaps of animation and motion without using any Flash.

The result is a mash-up labyrinth of video, still photos, and audio narration. The video portions alone are beautifully shot by Instrument’s resident filmmaker, Truen Pence, and are bite-sized and compelling enough for the casual viewer, but there are tons of rabbit holes to get lost in and go deep into motorcycle nerdsville, depending on how long your lunch break is.

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Reinforce Your Passwords, People

Paul Constant — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 11:14:58 -0700

Nate Anderson set out to crack a single password in less than one day's work. By the end of that day, he had cracked 8,000 passwords. You should read his full report at Ars Technica.

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Haven't You Guys Seen The Internet? Food Porn Edition

Alex Falcone — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 10:14:28 -0700

Let's all take this moment to promise before God and The Commenters, that we're going to stop referring to things as porn that are not porn. Pinterest, for example is not full of "food porn" as people keep telling me. I've spent a lot of time on Pinterest and I've not seen one picture of somebody screwing a baked potato or getting head from a steak.

Haven't you guys seen the Internet?!? It'll clear up pretty quickly what is and is not porn. Eater PDX's series they call Cocktail Porn? Actually contains 0% porn. It's mostly just links to cocktail menus. For contrast, this picture of a martini with boobs? That's cocktail porn.

This subreddit called Gun Porn is NOT porn. Come on, Reddit. I know you've seen the Internet. This is gun porn:

If you're tempted to compare something to porn just because it has high quality images, think to yourself, "Have I seen the Internet? I bet they have actual ________ porn. I'll think of a better metaphor."

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Facebook's Midlife Crisis Continues

Paul Constant — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 14:14:15 -0800

Facebook unveiled their ~~shitty new toupee and sweet-ass new sports car~~ new news feed today. According to The Verge, it'll be bigger—because bigger is always better—and a little more granular. There will also be recommendations, which sound like it'll turn into another source of advertising revenue sooner or later:

Besides the visual redesign, Facebook is also trying to take advantage of its "Like" system and multiple streams of information from apps or different groups of friends. Along with user's friends' stories, it will begin including recommended articles or other content from people or pages that they're interested in — the example given was seeing articles about Taylor Swift if you've liked her on Facebook.

The Verge's Adi Robertson (and lots of commenters) notes that much of this redesign seems to be heavily inspired by Google+. What it means that Facebook is taking notes from a social network that the internet widely considers to be a flop is a riddle for another time. If you're very excited about this new Facebook, which Gizmodo calls "glorious," you can sign up to get it first over here.

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The World's First 100% 3D Printed Dress

Marjorie Skinner — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 10:14:00 -0800

A glimpse into a possible future of garment manufacturing technology (an industry that needs materials innovation with increasingly obvious desperation) came this week courtesy of stage designer Michael Schmidt and model Dita Von Teese, who debuted the design at none other than the NYC outpost of the Ace Hotel:

I think it's pretty hot, personally, but now for the science!: "The dress is made of powdered nylon, a flexible, fabric-like substance that's most often used for architectural modeling... The dress was then polished and lacquered black and covered with 12,000 black Swarovski crystals."

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The Closer Google Glass Gets, the More Ethical Dilemmas Appear

Paul Constant — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 10:14:00 -0800

1. Here's a blog post that makes a very good point about Google Glass:

The key experiential question of Google Glass isn’t what it’s like to wear them, it’s what it’s like to be around someone else who’s wearing them. I’ll give an easy example. Your one-on-one conversation with someone wearing Google Glass is likely to be annoying, because you’ll suspect that you don’t have their undivided attention. And you can’t comfortably ask them to take the glasses off (especially when, inevitably, the device is integrated into prescription lenses). Finally – here’s where the problems really start – you don’t know if they’re taking a video of you.

Now pretend you don’t know a single person who wears Google Glass… and take a walk outside. Anywhere you go in public – any store, any sidewalk, any bus or subway – you’re liable to be recorded: audio and video. Fifty people on the bus might be Glassless, but if a single person wearing Glass gets on, you – and all 49 other passengers – could be recorded. Not just for a temporary throwaway video buffer, like a security camera, but recorded, stored permanently, and shared to the world.

Now, I know the response: “I’m recorded by security cameras all day, it doesn’t bother me, what’s the difference?” Hear me out – I’m not done. What makes Glass so unique is that it’s a Google project. And Google has the capacity to combine Glass with other technologies it owns.

Go read the rest. In the weeks since Google Glass has been announced as a definite upcoming product, more and more problems have presented themselves. To give a personal example: I attend a lot of film screenings. At many of these screenings, security guards collect the cell phones of everyone who enters the theater. What do they do if someone is wearing Google Glass? What if those glasses are prescription strength, and the critic is unable to see the movie without them? What about places like banks, where filming is discouraged? I think we're going to see Google Glass banned outright in some locations.

2. Along those lines but on a lighter note, Dartanion London made a video demonstrating how Google Glass will affect the dating dynamic:

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Another Win for Team Catholic

Dan Savage — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 13:59:08 -0800

A deacon at St. Joseph's Church in Fullerton, Maryland, a suburb of Baltimore, was arrested last week for possession of child pornography after Verizon detected images and videos on its cloud backup servers of children performing sexual acts.

You have to wonder if they'll ever get out of the "suffer the children" business.

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Robot Apocalypse Update: Rat Brain Edition

Alex Falcone — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 10:14:31 -0800

Normally the thing that scares me most in science is robots, with their beady little eyes that hide sinisters "thoughts." But now scientists are working on something even scarier than a bunch of servos and actuators bent on world domination, they're connecting rat brains to the Internet.

Okay, that might not sound scary but hang in there. Scientists trained a rat in Brazil to pull one of two levers in exchange for a treat. They connected some wires to his brain and then sent the signals over the Internet and into the brain of another rat in North Carolina. The NC rat had two levers but no information on which one was correct except what the other rat was brain-Skyping to him. He managed to get the right lever about 70% of the time which, sure, is a C-, but hey, he's a rat.

This becomes especially scary when you add it to the news last week about Google Glasses. Google is getting ready to send search results directly to a tiny screen hanging out near your eyebrow, but if these Brazil/North Carolina rats have their way, that may be only a stepping stone to their real goal: beaming search results directly into your thoughts and making you do stuff for small treats. We are Google's future lever pullers, and it's all happening faster than I expected.

I'm so terrified I can hardly eat these food pellets without feeling a bit nauseous.

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Apple's War on Barely Legal Teens

Paul Constant — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 14:44:17 -0800

Steve Jobs once promised that Apple products would provide the world "freedom from porn," and it looks like Apple is taking that "freedom" directly to your private e-mail. MacWorld reported this morning:

Apple's iCloud email service deletes all emails that contain the phrase "barely legal teen" it was revealed today.

Macworld has tested this by sending two test emails from a personal iCloud account. The message read "My friend's son is already allowed to drive his high-powered car. It's ridiculous. He's a barely legal teenage driver? What on earth is John thinking."

The second email amended the phrase "a barely legal" to "barely a legal". This second email was delivered fine, whereas the first is still undelivered.

I bet every tech journalist in the world is right now sending the filthiest e-mails imaginable from their iCloud accounts.

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Chocolate for Breakfast (at Tiffanys): Hepburn Returns in Candy Ad

Bobby Roberts — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 09:00:11 -0800

Here is the latest example of a company deciding the best way to sell a product is to use modern technology to resurrect the dead. It stars Audrey Hepburn, making amiable mischief thanks to the amiable mischief fuel that is Galaxy Chocolates.

This is not the first time Hepburn has posthumously appeared in an advertisement. In 2006, The Gap used digitally manipulated footage to combine her winsome dance moves with the charming melodies of AC/DC.

So what technical devilry brought forth the Hepburn this time? After the jump for the somewhat expected but still kinda startling reveal.

If you guessed "They got a lookalike, used her in some of the mid/cutaway shots, used some CGI to blend old footage and new footage, applied some filters, hit it with a magic wand and called it good?" You're close, but wrong.

That smiling, doe-eyed Audrey Hepburn face is 100% computer generated imagery.

Framestore, the VFX company responsible for creating the advertisement, have explained their methodology in detail, but the gist of it is this: They hired a lookalike, scanned her, and then shot the commercial in live-action. Once the footage was shot, they built a model of Hepburn's face using all of her film appearances, plus many promotional stills, often manually tugging & tweaking on the imagery in attempt to discern what kind of lens was used in each individual photo.

From there, it was a matter of hand-animating her looks, her blinks, and her smile to ensure that viewers not have to deal with the off-putting nature of being trapped in the uncanny valley, a place where large segments of Tron: Legacy resided as effects technicians valiantly fell short at making Jeff Bridges realistically young again.

Did they bridge that valley? No. But they definitely pulled one side way closer to other, so close you can practically just *hop* right over it.

Sure, this is just a 60 second ad, probably helped by the fact YouTube's compression is helping cover up what seams there might be. She also never talks, or emotes beyond looking demurely adorable, which helps hold the illusion together just as much.

But we're probably no more than 5-10 years away from effects technicians completely nailing this, their holy grail, 100% indiscernable photorealism. It's no longer a question as to if they will do it, but when. The new question is if VFX companies will survive the starve-out major movie studios are currently putting them through.

Until then, let us commence with the arguments over how creepy/weird/gross it is that the best thing we can do with some of our favorite movie memories is feed them into a computer and reanimate them so as to sell us stuff. Or, as many a less-savory commenter on YouTube has pointed out, they can start making porn with them. To which I respond: Are you sure you want that?

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What Would You Do With Google's New Face Computer?

Alex Falcone — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 09:59:59 -0800

Last week Google finally showed us what Google Glass might look like in action. The Lavar Burton-esque face computer is going to debut next year for the price of a high end laptop that you don't have to wear. Here's the video from the perspective of a rich person's eyes:

Basically you just speak to your face computer with false casualness and it does one of limited number of tasks. "Okay, Glass. Take a picture of this thing I'm seeing right now." In addition to taking headache-inducing videos, it can take pictures and you'll be able to have the time of day or current weather hovering over your retina permanently. Finally!

After that the uses get kinda strange. An ice sculptor looking up pictures of tigers? Um, sure. A skier using a map to navigate down a ski slope? Maybe. More photos and videos? Yeah, we got that part. A person on a horse taking a video? That's just another video, Google. Not a new feature. Having your glasses remind you of your flight time as you're running through the airport? Not super helpful, Glass. If only I had known what time it was I wouldn't have been so late.

In truth Google admits it doesn't know what you're going to do with Glass. That's why their next step is to beg people to tell them useful applications for their invention by tweeting with the tag #ifihadglass. For example, you could say

#ifihadglass I'd finally be able to build a first-person kisser game. Starring Melissa Joan Hart.

#ifihadglass I could ride a horse, a trapeze, a hot air balloon, or an airplane. Basically I can live in a tampon commercial.

#ifihadglass I'd always know what time it is. That would be really great.

#ifihadglass I could put a picture of Melissa Joan Hart over the face of anybody I made out with.

#ifihadglass I could watch a 3D movie with a third pair of glasses on my face!

#ifihadglass I would be kinda sick of looking at the time.

#ifihadglass I'd have have $1,500 less than I used to have.

What would YOU do if you had Glass?

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Haven't You Guys Seen The Internet?

Alex Falcone — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 13:29:00 -0800

Last week Sports Illustrated released its annual Swimsuit Issue, featuring lots of pictures of women in swimsuits. "Who cares?" I thought. It's like the Victoria's Secret catalog, completely outdated in the modern era. But I was wrong. The issue brings in over a billion dollars a year.

What the hell? Haven't you guys seen the Internet? You don't need to spend $7 to see women in swimsuits anymore. That's over.

On March 4 a landlord in Maryland is going to trial on charges he placed spy cameras in his apartments and watched tenants undress and have sex. HAVEN'T YOU GUYS SEEN THE INTERNET? You don't need to go to jail to watch grainy footage of people screwing. That's over.

Back in January, a Portland man got into the act when he was arrested for (allegedly) using a spy pen to videotape a coworker using a breast pump. That one's especially disturbing to me because [a] Ew. [b] If you want to see women breast feeding, just hang out in any coffee shop in the Pearl for an hour. And [c] HAVEN'T ANY OF YOU GUYS SEEN THE FREAKING INTERNET??!?

Let's save perverts from jail right now by spreading the word: There is an Internet and it's pretty much aimed directly at you. So stop buying dirty overpriced magazines and grossly invading people's privacy.

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Robot Apocalypse Update: Tentacle of Doom

Alex Falcone — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 10:14:13 -0800

Humanoid robots are progressing by leaps and bounds, getting closer every day to replacing loving, wonderful human beings with cold, unfeeling machines. But there's one area of robotics you probably haven't read much about: creepy robotic tentacles. Unlike robots that pretend they're here to help, the tentacle is only interested in taunting us and reminding us of Japanese sex cartoons we accidentally watched one time.

Ug. The Tentacle haunts my dreams, just leaning from one side to another like a menacing version of those fan guys outside of car washes.

I feel much safer when robots speak to me in the universal language, the language of Internet fads.

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BREAKING: Oversharing on Facebook Is Bad for Your Relationships

Grant Brissey — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 13:44:56 -0800

If you need another reason to stop spouting crap out onto F-book consider this:

For the discloser himself or herself, disclosing a lot may lead to lower intimacy and satisfaction, because the more you do it, the more you perceive there are a lot of potential mates out in the world — so a lot of alternative mates that you can choose from,” [Kuwon Lee, a doctoral student in psychology at KU who conducted the studies] said. “That may lessen the value of your own relationship.

In other words, love the one you're with and quit telling everybody on the internet about all your problems. These results were found in three separate studies at Kansas University, so I'm not even going to question the methodology. JK! No word on whether or not they had a control in place to account for the probability that people who have a propensity to overshare are just terrible relationship candidates in the first place. Either way, you know that one friend you have on F-book, the one who's always all like "Woe is me" and "Why does this always happen to me!?" You know who I'm talking about. Just send them this article along with a note that says something like "I was going to share this on Facebook, but then I got scared. Heehee!"

Maybe your friend will get it, or maybe they'll be too busy being self-absorbed and they'll just reply "Interesting!" without having even read it. At least you tried. I, for one, have reduced my F-book checking rate down to about one per day. Where are you at?

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Gawker to Allow Its Readers to Create Their Own Gawker Blogs

Paul Constant — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 09:44:00 -0800

This is either genius or a disaster in the making. Gawker is becoming a full-on blogging platform, starting with their car blog, Jalopnik:

You'll also notice your Kinja blog has the ability to compose. This is so you can use your page like an actual blog, creating original content to be shared, commented on, and viewed by others in the community.

Have you always wanted a blog in our network? You can do that, too...Your blog will look similar to our flagship sites and will have all the same tools, including image annotation...If you want, you'll also be able to republish articles from our site (and eventually all Gawker sites) and we'll be able to do the same. If we do republish something you created you'll get the byline, the credit, and it'll be clear where it came from.

In a lot of ways, this is supposed to be what the internet is about, right? Everyone creating content on a platform that treats everyone equally, and so on. But what happens if Gawker republishes too many posts by one of their amateur bloggers (note that there's nothing about compensation for Gawker bloggers in this post) and people start feeling used? What if one of the reader blogs outpaces the regular writers? Will the paid Gawker writers have to compete with thousands of other Gawker bloggers who are out for their jobs? Will the signal-to-noise ratio get completely fucked? Or will this all just blow over once it becomes obvious that most Gawker readers don't want to be bloggers?

I'd have had more faith in this idea if it came before last year. Gawker's nearly year-old revised commenting system, is still a terrible, disjointed clusterfuck. If this revised blogging platform makes the sites even more difficult to follow, I can't imagine this being a good idea for the Gawker empire.

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Would You Pay for YouTube?

Paul Constant — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 13:29:36 -0800

Geek.com says:

If you take a look at regularly produced content on YouTube in the past few months, like Felicia Day and Will Wheaton’s Geek and Sundry or the made-for-YouTube series H+, it’s entirely possible to fill your subscription bar with multiple hours a week of great original content. Maybe not quite enough to watch YouTube in the same way you watch cable television, depending on your preferences, but there’s been a significant boost in quality all the same. This isn’t by accident, Google has been working hard with content creators to help them form several channels of great unique material that can only be found on YouTube.

Ad revenue from a healthy YouTube channel can be enough to keep an operation of 2-3 people happy, but these new channels are significantly larger scale operations with budgets that can only be reached with the help of some guaranteed monthly cash. To help keep the quality of this new content trending upwards, Google plans to offer certain channels the ability to charge a monthly fee for their content.

On the one hand, I love the idea of a small progressive television news channel with blue collar reporters that survives on memberships. On the other hand, YouTube's free model has been so successful that it seems like it would be difficult to overcome. What do you think?

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