Technically Incorrect

After Wikipedia, Jockipedia

Chris Matyszczyk — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 12:05:00 PDT

You don't want some old chap in a large check jacket with a florid pocket handkerchief staring up into a basketball player's nostrils and asking him inane mundanities.

No, you want to hang on the every direct word of your favorite, or perhaps not quite so favorite, athlete.

For you, therefore, there is Jockipedia. Oh, yes, the very name might make you think that this is Wikipedia for jocks. But it's more than that. Well, not really.

Jockipedia, the creation of a former network news producer called Douglas Warshaw, is your own encyclopedia of every musing that emerges from a famous athlete's tonsils or touch-screen telephone.

David Ortiz. Big Papi, Small Tweeter.

(Credit: CC terren in Virginia/Flickr)

It allows you to surf by athlete's name, by league, even by country. And each entry looks not merely at such frippery as Twitter. No, it delves into the athlete's personal blog site, their Facebook page, MySpace page, their charity site, and even their contributions to Flickr.

You can absorb Estonian tennis player Kaia Kanepi's personal Web site (it's really a little dull), just as readily as you can speedily keep up to date with the Twitter feed of Red Sox power (occasionally) hitter David Ortiz. Yes, all two of his tweets.

Warshaw told the New York Times: "The Tower of Babel is getting bigger (....) The desire to find people will just get bigger. It just is. It's like gravity. Every day, more and more athletes, not just the professionals, are doing this online."

Warshaw also has very lofty goals for his informational tower: to have every athlete in the world included on Jockipedia. Naturally, he will need a little help from many eagle-eyed Estonians, anal Albanians, baseball-loving potheads, and others before he can reach his goal.

Still, would life really be worth living if we couldn't have instant access to the Twitter musings of, say, Lakers' splendidly erratic shooting guard, Sasha Vujacic? Here is the very latest: "No matter what they say to you! No matter what is thrown upon/against you! Never lose your believe! Never lose focus! Dreams DO come true!"

Jockipedia. Where the Shakespeare in every athlete is revealed in all its glory.

Wife exposes chief spy's personal life on Facebook

Chris Matyszczyk — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 07:43:00 PDT

It is always a case of some considerable concern when a lady reveals too much on Facebook. The site has standards, after all.

The lady in question this time is Lady Shelley Sawers, the wife of Sir John Sawers, the new head of British spy agency MI6.

According to reports in the Mail and numerous other media outlets, the fair lady may not have been quite aware that Facebook can be seen by a rather large number of people if you don't specify that you want to keep your information vaguely private.

Lady Sawers saw fit to wander onto the site and reveal where their London apartment is located and where their children are. This might not appear to be the wisest course of social action if your children happen to be the offspring of the head of an international spying network.

Lady Sawers even posted 19 happy pictures of the family's last vacation.

(Credit: CC Anonymous9000/Flickr)

These pictures seemed to have spurred the her enthusiasm for uploading, as, the following day, she furnished 26 more, including shots of Sir John in his swimming attire. She apparently displayed several pictures of Sir John hanging with some actors, even one thespian who performed in that apogee of popular English culture, the TV series "Footballers' Wives."

According to the reports, Lady Sawers' Facebook account had no privacy protection. All those in the highly open "London" network could espy the head spy in his swimming cozzie.

Moreover, Sir John, who by tradition will be code-named "C," received notes of congratulations on his wife's Facebook page. One note, for example: "Congrats on the new job, already dubbed Sir Uncle "C" by nephews in the know!"

When the Mail contacted the British Foreign Office to alert them to the socially networked revelations, everything was sharpishly effaced without a trace.

Now, I know that there will be those who will feel critical of Lady Sawers' remarkable trust in the Web's world-wideness.

However, I feel her actions show a considerable faith in her husband's skills in weeding out nefarious bodies from the dark camouflage of life. And her social openness is surely sending a clear message to those who do Britain ill that the fine old country fears nothing and no one.

Microsoft chucks vomit ad

Chris Matyszczyk — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:57:00 PDT

Update at 8:50 a.m. PDT: The video has now disappeared from the ad agency's site as well.

Earlier this week, we were all rather intrigued by the appearance of a Microsoft ad, in which a wife borrows her husband's laptop and suffers a technicolor nightmare when she espies a site that he has been, um, enjoying.

By Wednesday night, however, Microsoft had second thoughts about the pulling power of puke.

The ad has been pulled from the IE8videos channel on YouTube. It's also has been removed from the BrowsefortheBetter.com site, which is part of the ad campaign. The vomit ad's slot has been replaced by a tag that says "coming soon."

This could have meant that a new ad is coming soon, or that the upchuck was uploaded too soon.

A copy of the vomit ad is still available on YouTube, though not via Microsoft.

The truth is that Microsoft wasn't 100 percent happy with vom-com.

"We make a point of listening to our customers," a Microsoft representative said in an e-mail Thursday morning. "We created the OMGIGP video as a tongue-in-cheek look at the InPrivate Browsing feature of Internet Explorer 8, using the same irreverent humor that our customers told us they liked about other components of the Internet Explorer 8 marketing campaign. While much of the feedback to this particular piece of creative was positive, some of our customers found it offensive, so we have removed it."

Although many CNET commenters on Wednesday thought that the ad was funny, some criticized the piece as condoning surfing for porn (shame, shame, shame), as well as the generally less than perfect taste associated with yellow stuff exploding from a nice-looking lady's mouth.

However, Bradley and Montgomery, the agency responsible for the whole campaign--which features Superman actor Dean Cain--still proudly displayed the ad on its own site as of early Thursday morning.

And so it should. The ad has already created exactly the aftereffect for which the agency likely hoped.

But, as so rarely happens, I spoke too soon. Here we are at 8:50 a.m. PDT Thursday, and the ad has now been removed even from the Bradley and Montgomery site.

Even though the wife in the ad might, one feels, stand by her man, it appears the agency has decided not to stand by its ad.

Microsoft resorts to vomit to market IE 8

Chris Matyszczyk — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:56:00 PDT

Editor's note at 10:25 p.m. PDT: Since this blog was published, the video has been removed from the hosting pages. But this copy of the video remains on YouTube.

I know a girl who gets somewhat uptight when she's in the passenger seat of a car going any more than 70 mph. However, put her on some insane roller coaster, and she's just fine.

The driving dangers are real, you see. Whereas the roller-coaster ride just feels wonderfully stomach-turning.

And so it is with this charming new online ad for Internet Explorer 8 from Microsoft. In most of its advertising, Microsoft has rarely reached 70 mph. But someone, somewhere deep within Microsoft, finally had the craving for the roller coaster.

Here we have a couple at the breakfast table. The husband is examining his laptop. It is not a Mac.

This is a copy of the video. The official version disappeared from the Net sometime Wednesday.

His wife asks to borrow his laptop for a minute. To be fair, shortly before she does this, she shows all the symptoms of being a little stressed. Her lips are tight. Her eyebrows seem even tighter.

She looks at her husband's screen. She is surprised at what she sees and says: "What's this?" Then her body begins involuntary motions. Will an alien being pop from her stomach, leap onto the table, and begin to sing a Celine Dion number?

Will she turn toward her husband, enraged at what she has just seen and assail him with words and fists and spittle and quotes from Joan Crawford?

Not quite.

In fact, she turns away from the kitchen table, not wishing to soil his PC. And then she vomits.

Yes, she vomits. She pukes. She throws up. She upchucks. She phones Huey and Ralph down the big white telephone. (This last phrase is peculiarly English. You need to say the words "Huey" and "Ralph" with an echoing timbre.)

Her vomit is yellow, powerful, and a decent, if distant, relative of the turbo-charged green liquid emitted by Linda Blair in "The Exorcist." Although, truly, one wonders what there really could have been on that screen to make her do so. Most wives have surely seen it all.

Still, her husband, the sinful, disgusting, smug pervert, slips on the vomit as it hits the kitchen floor.

What could possibly happen after all this drama? Does Superman turn up? Actually, he does. In the shape of actor Dean Cain. Dean, who appears unaffected by the detritus at his feet, asks, "Do you suffer from OMGIGP?"

This acronym, for those of you still in control of your diaphragm, stands for "Oh my god, I'm gonna puke."

Superman then goes on to explain that IE 8 has InPrivate Browsing while the husband, still prostrate on the kitchen floor, is privately adorned with even more of his wife's mellow yellow.

As the wife wipes her chin, all I can think about is that Superman's turtleneck is yellow too--and that, even a year ago, no one would have ever expected Microsoft to make a spot like this.

This work is not, as some have surmised, the work of Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the agency responsible for both the "I'm a PC" and Gates-Seinfeld campaigns. It is the brainchild of Bradley and Montgomery, the folks that brought you the Mojave Experiment.

The vomit ad is one of a series, all featuring Cain. The series is taglined "Browse Better," and like the Mojave project, it has its own site, BrowsefortheBetter.com.

Interestingly, and perhaps, for some, ironically, the BrowsefortheBetter site says that for every download of IE 8, the company will donate 8 meals to Feeding America, an organization trying to stop hunger in the U.S.

Of course, some will say of this vomiting ad: "Out, damned spot." Harry McCracken of Technologizer has already dubbed it as "Worst. Tech. Commercial. Ever?"

I will say this. Microsoft has realized that it needs attention. It is finding many and varied ways of doing so. In this case, I suspect that someone has said in a long, long marketing meeting: "Hmm, maybe snot-nosed, filthy T-shirted, gross-out humored, socially inept children really do have an influence."

Do URLs matter anymore?

Chris Matyszczyk — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:00:00 PDT

A little while ago, I was working with a client who wanted to change his very large company's brand name.

His greatest concern was that the new name should make for a simple URL.

I wondered whether it wasn't more important that the brand name should be memorable. Isn't that where it all starts? And ends?

I was reminded of this conversation Tuesday when I arrived in Austin, Texas. By chance and a glass of viognier, I encountered a photographer who wanted her work to enjoy a wider audience. She gave me her card, headlined by her URL: CourtneyChavanell.com. Which, given that Courtney Chavanell was her name, appeared to be appropriate.

(Credit: CC ChrisDlugosz/Flickr)

However, I secretly wanted to tell her to change her name like actors do- because Chavanell is tough to remember. She said the key to her work was optimism, so I wanted to suggest that she change her professional name to Courtney Optimist. Everyone would remember that, URL or not.

There was a time when people thought URLs were the key to getting hordes to throng your site. Make it short, have one of the most important keywords--sex, free, go, eat, my, and porn being examples--and your fortune was made.

People still try to trade the most simple URLs for hopeful hundreds of thousands. They will still line up in the hope of getting a vanity URL from Facebook.

But don't most people simply go to the little search box, type in the name of what they're looking for, and search?

If it's something they want to go back to, they'll bookmark it. But they won't remember what the URL is. For the simple reason that they don't need to. The Bingoogle fraternity does it for them.

Indeed, in Japan, a country so often so clever about these things, the trend in advertising is not for companies to slap their URLs three feet high in the bottom right of the ad--it's to have search boxes with suggested search terms.

Every time I see a URL in an ad that tell you to go to COMPANY NAME/special offer or some such, I wonder if there's anyone who would ever do such a thing.

Perhaps there are those generic words that people absent-mindedly type, perhaps just out of boredom. I don't know, URLs like kitchen.com. Or music.com. But could this still be a significant number?

How many people really do bother to type URLs these days?

Just wondering.

YouTube hoops star accepts Shaq's Twitter challenge

Chris Matyszczyk — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 11:23:00 PDT

It's one thing to go and play with LeBron James. It's quite another to face Bruce Manley.

Perhaps you are not yet familiar with the name. Manley is something of a YouTube cult hero for his rather picturesque basketball trick shot skills.

Somehow, Shaquille O'Neal, the newest Cleveland Cavalier, saw the video. Apparently, his ego was piqued even more than when he saw Orlando's Dwight Howard claim to be Superman.

So what did the NBA's king of social networking do? He Twittered a challenge to a HORSEing duel.

"i wanna play this guy n horse for a thousand dollars, find him pls http://bit.ly/CK5nk," read Shaq's tweet.

According to the HoopDoctors.com, Manley has accepted Shaq's challenge and the contest should happen some time in July. So I really would encourage everyone to look at the YouTube video I have embedded.

If you are not utterly astonished by his tree-point shot, then your emotions have left you for another woman. And, yes, I said tree-point shot--no spelling mistake.

As for the shot Manley hits totally blind from behind a wall, well, if that isn't extraordinary talent then I am the new chief executive officer of the Golden State Warriors.

Will Shaq be able to compete against this kind of ability? It will be very interesting which H-O-R-S-E rules they choose to play. But, if I were a betting man, and perish the thought, I would be betting Manley.

Unless, of course, there's some very fine editing going on here.

Buy-buy Michael Jackson

Chris Matyszczyk — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:26:00 PDT

In death, there is retail life.

Michael Jackson was an icon, so, somewhere along the way, there will be those who will want to capitalize on his passing.

Drifting through eBay's pages, one sees that many who seem to be bowing their heads in respect may actually be stooping to fairly venal lows.

Take the staggering swiftness of enterprising seller JanisK56, who put a lovely item of memorabilia up for sale Thursday, just before it was confirmed by TMZ that Jackson was no more.

This seller offered, as a one-day special, a 2003 People magazine cover featuring the singer.

(Credit: CC Asim Bijarani)

Did the cover feature a triumphant world tour? Or perhaps a family reunion? Not quite. The headline is "Did he do it?" and it features an eight-page analysis of child molestation allegations.

"Will Others Come Forward?" asks the cover. Which is what I was wondering when considering who else would want to sell such mindlessly inappropriate memorabilia to people who might be fans. At the time of writing, the leading bid for this cover is $11.50. Which might strike some as $12 too much.

If that doesn't make you feel a touch queasy, several sellers are attempting to capitalize on pristine editions of yesterday's New York Times. Some, like AFlowerandagun, even add lines to remind you why you should spend cash to buy this paper.

"This is a historic day," declares AFlowerandagun's subhead. But is it really so historic and moving a day that you can't help but try to make $15.50 (the leading bid as I write) on a copy of a newspaper?

Then there's Erickdigger, a seller who is offering a "Michael Jackson life mask." Yes, not a death mask, a life mask.

The seller explains: "This started with an actual life cast mask of Michael Jackson. Then it has been sculpturaly (sic) enhanced by me Erick Erickson.The Hair, ears and eyebrows have been added to create a very lifelike display." And he concludes: "It's like having Jacko right there with you."

The price for Jacko's life mask is $44.99.

I fully understand that many people around the world are moved by Jackson's death. But to write a line like "It's like having Jacko there with you" seems tantalizingly insensitive.

Then again, how might fans feel about the "Michael Jackson Poseable Doll"? This seller, Deathcall47 (really) is offering a Jackson doll from the 1980s still in its box. Deathcall47 leaves a note, so that you can be clear what he is feeling.

"1984 MICHAEL JACKSON POSEABLE DOLL A MUST HAVE FOR ANY JACKSON FAN. SORRY TO HEAR ABOUT HIS DEATH. THIS IS A VERY HOT ITEM FOR ANY FAN," he begins. And he concludes with: "YOU WONT BE SORRY WHO KNOW'S (sic) WHAT THIS IS GOING TO BE WORTH."

The leading bid at the time of writing is $250. I wonder if it's a fan or a mere capitalist.

Jackson's death is extremely sad. But isn't there also something a little sad about people who hear about his death and think they can make a few random bucks from it, regardless of what it is they have to sell? All the sellers I have mentioned put the items up for sale either Thursday or Friday.

Of course, one shouldn't be surprised. But one can only hope that fans, in their grief, will distinguish between the valuable, the sincere, the opportunistic and the utterly callous.

It would be interesting to hear what fans might think of the eBay seller named cadzdaman.

He is offering the domain name MJ-IS-DEAD.com.

At least his message is very straightforward: "Domain name to inform those of Michael's tragic death, or can be resold for a profit."

Indeed. The leading bid as of Friday 12:52 p.m. PDT was $0.99.

Google or Bing? Where's the pic of Sanford's lover?

Chris Matyszczyk — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:49:00 PDT

The people have googled. The people have binged.

And still there is no sign of the one thing the world needs most: a picture of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's Argentinian lover.

(Credit: CC Mark Licht Notions Capital.com/Flickr)

According to Fox 5 in New York, "maria belen shapur photo" was one of the top searches on the Web of intrigue Thursday. And according to Google Trends, "mark sanford mistress photo" rounds out the top 10 Google searches at the moment. Yet no trace has been found of the governor's taste in clandestine lovers.

It is a little sad that the media is pitching its large and very moral tent outside Ms. Shapur's Buenos Aires apartment. Somehow, affairs of the heart don't always seem the most appropriate subjects for public conjecture. It's just that they're so deeply exciting that we cannot prevent our more fundamental instincts from taking over.

So I prefer to think of this as a technological exercise, a mixed martial-arts battle of the search engines.

Will Google have it first? Will Bing's decisive algorithm slap its more vaunted rival across the chops and proclaim triumph? It may only be a matter of milliseconds. But in the search business, milliseconds count.

I bet you just can't wait.

What drives Steve Jobs?

Chris Matyszczyk — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:40:12 PDT

I've never died, but I can't imagine it to be a terribly enjoyable experience.

So I can't imagine why death's proximity might encourage someone to go on working until they are grimly reaped.

That seems to be the case with Steve Jobs, however. His work seems to be his life. The Apple logo seems to be his heart. And, even with several bites taken out of his health, he appears to want to carry on being Apple until he enters the second life.

The hopeful, perhaps mythical one, rather than the virtual one.

After his pancreatic cancer surgery in 2005, Jobs gave a speech to Stanford University students who were about to embark on their own journeys through life's inequities.

He told the audience: "Remembering I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

"You know, Steve, it's only gadgets."

(Credit: CC Joi/Flickr)

I was always told by those who claimed to know (which would be people at Microsoft) that Bill Gates was an obsessive, ruthless automaton whose need to crush all before him (in a business sense) was limitless.

Yet somehow this supposed machine in a man's body decided to unplug his working life at Microsoft while he still had his health and to dedicate himself to philanthropic pursuits. He even managed to laugh at his own supposedly cold persona in a couple of excellent ads for his old company.

It all makes one wonder whether Gates would have bothered to return to work, if a life-threatening illness had befallen him.

Some might say that when he walked into a calming sunset, Gates had nothing left to prove, while Jobs still has.

To which my question would be: "What?" He's been largely responsible for directing technological innovations beyond many people's imaginations. But much as one might love what he has created, at heart these are only gadgets.

They cure nothing but boredom. They take time just as much as they make it. And while they help people communicate with each other, they also contribute to helping people be a little more obsessed with their beautiful selves.

Is spending your time creating another lovely gadget as valuable, as enjoyable, as satisfying as, say, wafting up Mount Kilimanjaro? Is it as challenging as waking up in the morning, looking out at the dawn and having no idea what you might do today?

Of course, now that Jobs has been declared healthy, the worldly and the wise have felt free to write of his supposedly old-fashioned, dictatorial management style, even, in the same Harvard Business Publishing article, his utterly disrespectful attitude to parking.

At the core, though, is one man's heartfelt need to continue making gadgets. You can call it art. You can call it obsession. You can call it madness. Perhaps it's all three.

Craigslist ad smokes alleged pot deal

Chris Matyszczyk — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:40:00 PDT

It's time for a test. Is there anyone out there who is not familiar with the term "420"?

For those who may have been on a secret government mission to confirm Pluto's existence, legend has it, or at least one of the legends, that referring to pot as "420" started in San Rafael, Calif., where a group of schoolkids met to puff after school ended--which was 4:20 p.m.

Anyway, there seems to be a man in Quincy, Mass., who may not have thought that the police might be familiar with the term.

(Credit: CCEl Pablo!/Flickr)

You see, according to a report in the Patriot-Ledger, police say 30-year-old Christopher Gray put an ad on Craigslist that read in part: "420 help is here."

He then allegedly followed that up with: "Give me a ring if you need some help."

Unfortunately, he seemed to be in an area where police are so fond of reading Craigslist ads that they have learned the secret code. For a detective allegedly called and asked if he might please avail himself of a little quarter ounce.

You can guess the rest. Well, perhaps not. According to Capt. John Dougan, Gray was allegedly fearful when he met the detective and his partner in a parking lot that these purchasers might be members of law enforcement.

How they allegedly satisfied him of their innocence is not recorded. However, according to the good Captain, Gray allegedly said: "Well, I trust you. You look normal."

A transaction then allegedly ensued that would net Gray $45 and an arrest.

Some readers might be a little surprised that police might go to this kind of trouble. Just a brief perusal of the Craigslist San Francisco site Tuesday night yielded ads such as this, which seems as if it might have something to do with marijuana. And for many, this seems entirely normal.

So perhaps the saddest part of this tale comes from Capt. Dougan: "It goes without saying that we will continue monitoring Craigslist."