Technically Speaking

Netvibes - Launching Universe today. I’m more comfortable using yourminis these days. Does sound cool though.

TechCrunch20 - Now LIVE and world wide! All you 2 dot whatevers, start lining up!

That Ad Money - Well videoegg partnered up with WPP today. This is where all the future ad money will be going very soon. Video, dot TV’s, etc.

Technically Speaking, there is probably going to be stuff I missed for later on. Please Hit the BG Survey if you haven’t done so yet. I thank you in advance for that! An Orlando vacation sounds good right about now. I’ll see you (or rather - you will see me) on rex.tv later on.

I was wondering if I was going to let the Rivals - Yahoo snafu go. I know that the Rivals person is a bit pissed off now. I guess he has a right to be if he is being totally honest and upfront this time. The only thing here is that he was not forthcoming the previous two times.

What is that saying? You know it - “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me” - I really believe that even though the article was a bit edgy, I think that it also is protected by freedom of speech. I do not quite believe that any CEO in the world is exactly clean.

Now I left these both alone yesterday, as I had no idea how to approach it. Good thing here is that Everyone is a little bit DIRTY. What I mean is exactly what I said above. You do not get to the top of the rock on talent alone. I have worked for many CEO’s in my life, and some were quite talented, while others you basically scratched your head and wondered aloud with your co-workers “Who’s a$$ did he ki$$!?”

Come on readers, you know you have done that! It’s no secret. Talent and hard work does not always lead you getting to the top of the rock. There is a certain amount of a$$ ki$$ing you must do in most situations. Let me state clearly now - I am NOT talking about the honest, forthcoming, hardworking and talented CEO’s. If you fit in that group, you know who you are and you also know the people I refer to as being DIRTY.

Case in point time. The NY Times are always a great savior when it comes to proving what I am saying. It is quite apparent that everyone is a little bit DIRTY. Do you believe what I am stating now? I mean come on people, the article that caused the lawyer to get technical on a blogger now seems a little silly doesn’t it? If you go back and read what was stated over there, there is enough words to make it one of those “get this lawsuit out of my courtroom” type of deals.

Read it. It does state “Rumors“, “sources say“, and it ends with “My guess“. Now let me ask you readers something, if someone were to state “My guess is the Raiders are a Super Bowl team this year.”, do you take that as FACT?

Of course not. Along the way, there are links to the SEC site, and another business online resource. Another question is “Did he or did he not pay a $828,000 fine?” Period. Yes or No. Don’t waddle around and make statements of how it was stated, the question is - “Did he or did he not pay a $828,000 fine?” Period.

How it was put in the article was more then likely to make good reading, or what I have termed “flowing reading”. If it doesn’t flow, it’s hard to read. Here is what I mean by that, as I will quote the exact phrase:

Shannon, who reportedly “cooperated” with authorities, got off with a $828,000 fine

Now what is the good of typing this:

Shannon cooperated. He paid a $828,000 fine.

For one, it sounds like something you would find in some boring and tired old world news source. The second thing is, it doesn’t flow. It’s robotic as anything I have ever written. Finally, this blogosphere is meant to be fun and exciting. It is not meant to bore you to fall asleep at your keyboard. It is not a court of law. Also, there would really need to be a third and even more boring sentence added to the above to come out totally correct. Why bother? It was stated in a manner that flowed well.

What was written might have been a bit more flowing then necessary, but once again the point of this states that this was all false. Fine and dandy sherlock, but then what is the issue of the original statement that was made (shown above)?

The bottom line, there is no issue. Basically the lawyer ripping the article apart is doing exactly the same thing I am doing. You are making things “fit” your agenda of filing a possible lawsuit for your client. Now let’s get to reality for a second.

The first part of the paragraph, while it did seem like the person was a part of the scheme with the other two, the sentence in question more or less vindicates that person from any dishonest actions. The part about the fine, why don’t you tell me? The only answer is either “Yes, he paid that fine.” or “No, that is a lie.” You can’t have that part both ways.

Technically Speaking, is there really a need for a lawsuit? Seriously, do you believe that Yahoo didn’t know all this information before dealing with Rivals? Who was really clean and who was dirty?

You have to hurry! They are probably gone, but worth a shot if you act quick!

TechCrunch has exactly 50 invites to the Netvibes party in SF.

twitter vs jaiku - Does this sound like some battle out of the old Mortal Kombat games?

TechCrunch - Crown the winner to get free tickets to the Web 2.0 expo! I already voted, and I know most of you glance that way daily, so give some person a fair chance by reading over their posts and voting so that they can go to Web 2.0 expo.

More in a few…

Not bad. $1.29 per song, but DRM FREE. Great news, and let’s hope the other companies follow quickly. 192k is all they really needed to encode the files; the human ear can’t distinct the difference at that compression rate. 256 is just that more precise, but the files will be a tad bit bigger. A lot bigger then 128k which has been the standard online for mp3’s for years now.

Technically Speaking, glad it went down as expected - and now — we await the Beatles!

Nice ones by Google this morning. In fact I won’t believe anything until sometime tomorrow, April 2nd. It is quite apparent that the web loves the April Fool’s jokes. There were plenty flying around yesterday, as well as days before. No matter, this blog keeps on going forward.

I did like the way Google went to the trouble of putting out ideas, as well as TechCrunch, and even silent for the past week Scoble. Good stuff, and I have no April 1st jokes. I guess my only joke is something that launched right after midnight.

rex.tv - it’s live, it’s stupid, and it was fun for me to set up. It’s running now, and the IRC channel is up. Let’s take it back to 1999 for a bit. This is not justin.tv, but it’s more like JenniCam. What happens when I need to relax and just do something fun - rex.tv - it’s there, not an April Fool’s joke; but maybe it should be?

Technically Speaking, more in a few.

TechCrunch has now aquired FuckedCompany.com. Very interesting. I’m a day late and dollar short, but I figured I needed to catch up now. The Saturday down time is over, and hopefully this isn’t a regular deal, but you never can tell.

Currently, the last of my hardware upgrades is starting to my left. The Ubuntu install on my fileserver. I will start to catch up now. What a great start to the catch up!

It could come as early as Thursday morning, yes today! News Corp, NBC and unrevealed possible other parties are tagging up to take on and crush what is left of YouTube. They are going to make Google look a bunch of buffoons for taking on the old dogs. It’s all coming to a crushing blow for the Google/YouTube bunch, and it starts in a few hours. The dismantling of the YouTube empire. It is a shame that Google has to pay the price, but hey - when you pay $1.65 Billion for a company that was copyright violators and not making a dime when you bought them; well you get what you pay for.

I had posted a quick one off the original article I found on Mashable thanks to the twitter message Pete sent out, but this brings a bit more concrete evidence into play. The LA Times is running the story, and the article where I pulled this (TechCrunch) states there are several sources. Look for this in a few hours. I’m purposely posting this at 4:30am. I want you all to remember that this as you get ready for work, arrive at work, etc.. — this could go down today.

Technically Speaking, I will be awake a half hour after this post goes live. You can always twitter follow me later on.

Yes, the #1 story this morning is the TechCrunch new CEO Heather Harde. It’s reported here and here and here and here. Now the thing that cracks me up, is that I hit the story up pretty quick last night. In fact I missed the original breaker by like 4 to 5 hours, and then I was able to catch the actual story when Mike posted it like within the first 5 comments on there. About the same time as Marshall, and some of the other blogs that had it first.

What is it that cracks me up? I guess Techmeme doesn’t “see” that I have posted the story a long time before it hits their pages with every other blog linked to it? I’ve actually asked Gabe what the deal was, and he states that it is all in his secret algorithm that he has written. Now the real funny thing is that I was on Techmeme right about the beginning of December. Then for some reason I was mysteriously “dropped” out of their linking formula.

Technically Speaking, it’s not that big of a deal, but I thought since this is going to be the #1 story going into the Monday morning rush, I figured I’d mention it one more time to see if the algorithm on Techmeme gets it right. I doubt it, but for the readers of this blog - you know where you saw it first!

Mike just made it official. TC just confirmed the earlier story that Om broke, and it is now the word on the street this weekend. The blogosphere now has something to talk about going into Monday. Usually the weekends are really slow. I figured this one was going to be slower then normal, being St. Paddy’s day and all. I guess Mike had to stir it up again. I’m glad he did. This time it was very cool news, and no one was going out of business, no web 2.0 company was going under after it received millions in startup funding from six months ago.

Technically Speaking, news like this is just a boost for blogs in general.

Photo credit: Scott Beale/Laughing Squid