richardirvine.com

Category: internet

  • Gawker Media – sharpest keyboards on the interwebs

    The Observer interviews Gawker Media’s Nick Denton

    Nick Denton is the blogosphere’s Baron Silas Greenback, sitting pretty in his New York loft/lair, having figured out what EVERYONE wants to know – how to make money off this here blog thing.

    I’ve loved Gawkers’ hilariously insulting beatdowns on the ‘internet famous’ for brief periods at a time. I pored over the original Gawker‘s missives from the Conde Naste cafeteria. I laughed at movie stars crashing their Mercs into each other on Defamer. I particularly enjoyed Valleywag while Nick Douglas was at the helm. They were cool, but as I didn’t technically LIVE in New York, LA or Silicon Valley, a lot of it flew over my head. And frankly, there’s too much of it. 12 posts a day is the editorial minimum and, mostly, I don’t have time to trawl through all that in any meaningful way. I see the RSS feeds offer ‘top stories’ only now – let’s see how that goes.

    Gawker’s bloggers seem to live the dream, despite Denton’s miserly pay scale, and most, if not all, use it as a springboard to bigger and better things. For me, being a Gawker editor, bashing out snarky one-liners all day on a Powerbook, pausing only go out for pastrami on rye wearing a black turtle neck is total writerly rockstardom (see also: Joe Eszterhas bashing out Basic Instinct in the Hollywood hills fuelled by Jack Daniels, or Woodward and Bernstein having Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman play them in the movie).

    Bonus link : The Observer’s 50 most powerful blogs – get something new for your RSS reader

  • Facebook infestation hits New Zealand beaches

    Facebook has taken over from Sharks as the slow news summer shock horror story. The Sunday Star Times reprinted curmudgeonly Tom Hodkinson’s rant from the Guardian, changing its’ title from ‘With friends like these…’ to the much more measured “Why Facebook is EVIL!”.

    Reading the SST front page story I learned Sophie Elliot’s boomer era father doesn’t understand the internet as well as his late daughter, and felt sad a reporter rang a still grieving family for quotes to support their angle. Reading Tom Hodkinson’s rant, I learned that shadowy far right libertarians are mining the worlds’ friendships for profit, and felt a sneaking admiration.

    Facebook can be annoying with its vampire games and people you hardly know sending you *HUGS!*, but evil? Really? Peter Griffin beats down Hodkinson’s rant here, but I’m more concerned that both Fairfax Sundays featured front page stories from social networking sites this week – that just seems lazy to me. Along with Bebo, Facebook’s an easy (and unimaginative) source for reporters to find victim’s background, without even leaving the office (or browser) – just the thing for slow news summer.

  • Napster ‘99 all over again

    Remember when Napster was a free for all? It was bloody magic, I was working in Dublin at the time downloading CRAPLOADS of music on a Celtic Tiger-provided high speed connection. The best bit was thinking “what about that one song I liked back in ’86?” – a quick search and there it was, you could go get those memories back.Now YouTube is doing the same with video, so get in there before killjoys with talk of ‘copyright’ and the like get it shut down. You’ll find all your own crap in no time, but here’s a selection of mine:Ricky Gervais’ band.
    The oft-mentioned, never seen Seona Dancing. Paul Merton’s Room 101 show forces Rick to sit through his bad 80s haircut nightmare, he’s not all that amused by the look.Atari Ad. (nicked from Boing Boing)
    All Ads should be like this. The usual disparity between promises made on the ad and / or box for old video games and what it actually LOOKED LIKE holds true here.

    Sigmund the Seamonster
    Here’s one of those ‘Do I really remember that, or was I that jacked up on sugar as a child I just hallucinated it?” questions answered. Yes, Sigmund exists.

    1-2-3-FOUR-FIVE-6-7-8-NINE-TEN
    The numbers / pinball song from Sesame Street – you know what I’m talking about.

    Swearing Hamster
    This is just really rude. And funny. (NSFW audio).

    Go nuts – it won’t be like this forever, there’s endless music videos on there, as well as your favorite bits from your favorite films. Just don’t expect to get much done in the near future, you’ve been warned.