shorty

Facebook's 'lie' button and other fun from Shorty Awards

Like the medium they honor -- social media -- the Shorty Awards are whimsical, fun, and irreverent, with a pinch of seriousness, activism, and social good thrown into the mix.

I've been a judge for the Shorty Awards for several years (with such folks as David Pogue (@Pogue), Esther Dyson (@edyson), Craig Newmark (@CraigNewmark), and Steve Wozniak (@stevewoz).

Along with the judging, I've also played the Shorty version of Joan Rivers. Earlier this month, at the ceremony in New York's Times Center, instead of asking about their clothes or nuggets of gossip, I used interviews to probe … Read more

Ignorify, a social media parody that's all too real

"My new app is something that solves an age-old problem and an annoyance for all of us in the tech industry," is how the promising pitch starts. That problem and nuisance being described? "The real world."

"We are all so busy now," the "entrepreneur" continues, "We've all got emails to email, texts to text, tweets to tweets and birds to slingshot, that there's no real reason to be bothered by our actual surroundings any longer, you know. There's really no reason to look up from our phones ever … Read more

The 404 1,022: Where we get all of our news on the toilet (podcast)

It's always fun to have a first timer on the show with us, and today we welcome Chenda Ngak, CBSNews.com technology and lifestyle blogger. She's a big videogamer and proud geek, so she's the perfect guest to help us talk about the recent backlash against "fake" geek girls.

Speaking of girls, we don't have them on the show very often so it's great to finally get a female perspective on the Reply Girls phenomenon.

If you haven't heard about them before, Reply Girls are a group of a dozen women dressed in low cut tops that post video replies to trending YouTube videos, exploiting their sexuality to earn money via YouTube's revenue-sharing program. While certainly a symbiotic relationship between Reply Girl and the weirdos clicking on them, we'll discuss the real victims in the scam and how YouTube is putting an end to it.… Read more

A really short guide to Twitter

For a couple of years now, I've been a judge on the Shorty Awards, which I like to say honor excellence--such as it is--in social media. My fellow judges and I ( see the list; the teenage version of me would have been delighted to be on a list with MC Hammer and Alyssa Milano) are sifting through the nominations right now, ahead of the March 26 ceremony in New York City (see info on tickets and free live Webcast).

The awards are the brainchild of Greg Galant (@gregory) and Lee Semel (@semel), who also created MuckRack, the best guide … Read more

The 404 127: Where Justin gets his wardrobe off eBay

All the bizarre stories on today's show throw us into a rollercoaster of emotions. We start off innocent enough, begging Rick Moranis to do more movies, but then quickly spiral into flora weaponry, gender identity and male pregnancy, heartbreaking eBay auctioneering, and the difficulty in "Shorty" pimpery. We also come to the sobering realization that we've been duped...AGAIN! This must stop. EPISODE 127 Download today's podcast