Say hello and see what I’m up to on more active sites
November 3rd, 2009It’s just that, it’s hard to keep everything up-to-date these days. So come on over and check out my Twitter feed, or the Thingfo site, to see what’s new with me. Or go over to the about me page to find even more links.
ABC News Bring Themselves Into the Social Web With SocialSite
February 28th, 2009Cross-posting Rafael’s blog post about ABC News & Thingfo. From the Thingfo blog:
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During President Obama’s first address to a joint session of Congress, ABC News featured our SocialSite system on their main and politics pages. During the historic address, which dealt primarily with Obama’s plans to deal with the current economic crisis, a prominent SocialSite widget followed all the Twittering about the speech. We think this shows a giant and admirable step into the world of Web 2.0 for the mainstream media company.
The blog microblink noted ABC’s move, pointing out that although CNN had partnered with Twitter during the ending phase of last year’s presidential election, they had relied on a special Twiiter elections page, while ABC used SocialSite to embed Twitter content directly on their site , embracing the Social Web much more directly than CNN. Microblink had some good things to say about our “aptly dubbed” SocialSite system:
“The widget grabs content from any number of social media outlets and then pulls it all back into your own website. While a lot of websites are still fairly static and non-interactive, the SocialSite widget feeds fresh social content from the users talking about you and your brand.”
Those familiar with our widgets would note that ABC only used the Twitter feed out of many content feeds and types available with point-and-click ease. They chose to hide the “featured” and “recent” view, and enjoyed a number of great new features we’ve recently introduced. I’ll tell you all more about them soon (unless you’re one of the lucky ones to get into our private alpha!). This implementation shows just how versatile SocialSite can be.
Pretty cool. We’re looking forward to sending out some more invites and blogging about more of the innovative people using Thingfo soon!
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Cross-posted from the Thingfo blog
Charlie the Unicorn
February 12th, 2009We interrupt regularly scheduled rants to bring you Charlie the Unicorn, with 33 MILLION views on YouTube. Charlie, take it away:
Who are these idiots and why is the govt giving them my money?
February 8th, 2009So I read this NYTimes “article” trying to make us feel sorry for the jackals who’ve pillaged the country (and continue to do so) and it prompted a rant of sort.
I mean, at some point, we have to ask — who are these idiots? And why do they have all of our country’s money?
“As hard as it is to believe, bankers who are living on the Upper East Side making $2 or $3 million a year have set up a life for themselves in which they are also at zero at the end of the year with credit cards and mortgage bills that are inescapable,” said Holly Peterson, the author of an Upper East Side novel of manners, “The Manny,” and the daughter of Peter G. Peterson, a founder of the equity firm the Blackstone Group. “Five hundred thousand dollars means taking their kids out of private school and selling their home in a fire sale.”
Sure, the solution may seem simple: move to Brooklyn or Hoboken, put the children in public schools and buy a MetroCard. But more than a few of the New York-based financial executives who would have their pay limited are men (and they are almost invariably men) whose identities are entwined with living a certain way in a certain neighborhood west of Third Avenue: a life of private schools, summer houses and charity galas that only a seven-figure income can stretch to cover.
So the NYTimes is trying to drum up some symptathy for the bloodsucking leeches in Brooks Brothers suits who’ve bled our country dry. These people NEED their RangeRovers and nanny’s and summer homes and oh my, because their very IDENTITIES are intertwined with their massive greed, consumption, and power over other people.
Many top executives have cars and drivers. A chauffeur’s pay is between $75,000 and $125,000 a year, the higher end for former police officers who can double as bodyguards, said a limousine driver who spoke anonymously because he does not want to alienate his society customers.
“Some of them want their drivers to have guns,” the driver said. “You get a cop and you have a driver.” To garage that car is about $700 a month.
A personal trainer at $80 an hour three times a week comes to about $12,000 a year.
The funny thing is, these are the same idiots who preach about the “free market” and how they’ve “earned their way to the top” which if you didn’t realize was a big fat lie, now you do. Their companies are bankrupt and our representatives their employees in Congress are now busily bailing outstealing our money to continue their operations.
But ya see, THEY still deserve the top jobs and all their wealth and power. Because, because… that’s how their class lives. It’s that simple.
“People inherently understand that if they are going to get ahead in whatever corporate culture they are involved in, they need to take on the appurtenances of what defines that culture,” she said. “So if you are in a culture where spending a lot of money is a sign of success, it’s like the same thing that goes back to high school peer pressure. It’s about fitting in.”
I’ve seen people from this class “work”, up close. They come into a company as CEO or an SVP, destroy the company or the division and then drive off in their range rover to another top job somewhere else, pocking millions of dollars, all the while, laying off thousands of people but managing to keep everything they’ve got. Now the “smarter” of them are saying,
Of course, it’s galling when a chief executive fails and is still handsomely rewarded. But with the concept of “tax, not shame,” a shocking $20 million severance package would generate $10 million for the government. That’s a far better solution than what we have today, not least because it works with the market rather than against it.
Seriously, that was in an op-ed in the NYTimes. I have an idea: how about when you leave a company IN RUIN, you get nothing? How would that work out for ya? That’s how it works for all the laid-off “little people” who don’t count because they, y’know, don’t wear Brooks Brothers suits.
These people are a cancer on America and they don’t even know it. If they did, they might not be whining so loudly.
Luckily, Obama’s got a bunch of WallStreet’ers like Lawrence Summers who started this mess under indictment for his fraudulent deregulation schemes and collaboration with Enron in ripping off California in charge of “fixing” it. Oh and while I’m at it, why haven’t the war criminals Bush and Cheney been arrested yet? We all know they’re war criminals, yet Cheney’s still doing interviews on TV, telling people that we’re all gonna get blown up if they stop his beloved (illegal) torture program.
That’s not change, it’s just more of the same.
Whistleblower: NSA spied on everyone. Saved all communications from targeted groups like journalists in database
January 22nd, 2009From the “no one ever could have predicted” department: Bush NSA spied on everyone (illegaly)
“The National Security Agency had access to all Americans’ communications — faxes, phone calls, and their computer communications,” Tice claimed. “It didn’t matter whether you were in Kansas, in the middle of the country, and you never made foreign communications at all. They monitored all communications.”
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According to Tice, in addition to this “low-tech, dragnet” approach, the NSA also had the ability to hone in on specific groups, and that was the aspect he himself was involved with. However, even within the NSA there was a cover story meant to prevent people like Tice from realizing what they were doing.
“In one of the operations that I was in, we looked at organizations, just supposedly so that we would not target them,” Tice told Olbermann. “What I was finding out, though, is that the collection on those organizations was 24/7 and 365 days a year — and it made no sense. … I started to investigate that. That’s about the time when they came after me to fire me.”
When Olbermann pressed him for specifics, Tice offered, “An organization that was collected on were US news organizations and reporters and journalists.”
“To what purpose?” Olbermann asked. “I mean, is there a file somewhere full of every email sent by all the reporters at the New York Times? Is there a recording somewhere of every conversation I had with my little nephew in upstate New York?”
Tice did not answer directly, but simply stated, “If it was involved in this specific avenue of collection, it would be everything.” He added, however, that he had no idea what was ultimately done with the information, except that he was sure it “was digitized and put on databases somewhere.”
Read more on RawStory
24 hours at Sundance, live-streaming social media event with Ashton Kutcher and Kevin Rose
January 17th, 2009www.24hoursatsundance.com is an amazing event that I’m proud to be part of. It’s a one-of-a-kind reality game, streaming live via cell phones, featuring movie/tv/internet producer Ashton Kutcher co-founder of Katalyst Media, and Kevin Rose, founder of Digg.com as hosts.
4 top social media bloggers/vloggers are the contestants. And content from all over the social web is aggregated on the 24hoursatsundance site, with specific content for each player. Complementing that are widgets featuring videos at the top, and related social content below from Blogs, Delicious, Qik, Twitter, and YouTube. Powered by Thingfo, of ‘cose.
Check out one of the custom Thingfo-powered video widgets in the sidebar to the right, then head on over to the www.24hoursatsundance.com.
Chris Floyd
January 3rd, 2009
Finding Chris Floyd reminds me of when I first read Digby. It’s so fun to find great writers armed with facts. His blog’s called, “Empire Burlesque” - the high crimes and low comedy of the American imperium. Great post today on hatred, check it out.
Cheney: highlight of the Bush Presidency was 9/11, which achieved PNAC goals of transformative “change”
December 21st, 2008Dick Cheney is one sick war criminal. Listen to this:
WALLACE: Highest moment the last eight years?
CHENEY: Hmmm. Highest moment in the last eight years? Well, I think the most important, the most compelling, was 9/11 itself, and what that entailed, what we had to deal with. The way in which that changed the nation, and set the agenda for what we had to deal with as an administration.
Funny, the Project for a New American Century document that Cheney signed said that, “the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”
What a coincidence, we did have a “catalyzing event”, an attack on the US, like a “new Pearl Harbor”! And, it was the “highest moment” for Dick Cheney, in that it “changed the nation” and “set the agenda”! Crazy coincidence, nothing to see here. Move along, let’s “look forward” everyone.
h/t Jed Report
Update: you really can’t overstate what Cheney said there about 9/11, especially considering it’s part of Cheney’s “the president is king in ‘wartime’ ” tour. (See Glenn and Andrew Sullivan)
Jon Stewart skewers Mike Huckabee on gay marriage — comedians better than so-called “journalists”
December 10th, 2008It’s a great interview/skewering by Jon Stewart when he talks about gay marriage with Mike Huckabee.
Sad that a comedian is so much better at interviewing and exposing the contradictions in Mike Huckabee’s than so-called “journalists”.
Fake NYTimes is totally achievable
November 14th, 2008This is one of the greatest pranks by the Yes Men, at least for its visibility and scale. If you haven’t seen the Yes-Men, watch their movie. Visit their site. Read their paper.
An excerpt, from New York Bike Path System Expanded Dramatically
NEW YORK — Officials from the Department of Transportation today opened the 9th Avenue bike lane, which now extends the entire length of Manhattan. The festivities were then moved to 2nd Avenue, where ground was broken on a similar path to extend the full length of the island.
With the completion of the 9th Avenue bike lane and groundbreaking on other avenues, New York is on the (bike) path to becoming as livable as other world cities.
With the completion of the 9th Avenue bike lane and groundbreaking on other avenues, New York is on the (bike) path to becoming as livable as other world cities.
Over the next two years, every other avenue will also receive a full bike lane, blocked off from traffic, while every fifth crosstown street will be opened exclusively to bicyclists and pedestrians beginning next month.Mark Blair, a transit worker from Queens, was busy re-timing traffic lights for bicycle speed. “Riding your bike up or down the avenue, the traffic lights are going to change in sync,” explained Blair. “You ride 10-15 miles per hour, and you’ll be hitting all greens.”
“Now that our country is taking its rightful place among the world’s developed nations,” said Mayor Bloomberg, “it is time for our greatest city to take its place among the world’s great cities.”