Author Archive

Oh.

315 million reasons to build an internet following … Well done to the crew at Huffington Post. I guess. Huffington Post Gets Bought by AOL for $315 Million The Huffington Post has confirmed tonight that it has been acquired by AOL. According to a report by Kara Swisher, site-cofounder Arianna Huffington will become Editor in Chief of […]

But, but, but … well, bravo!

I hate to be a nag about Facebook, but this is the sort of thing that makes my blood run cold. Good on these guys for exposing what can happen … What they did was set up a fake ‘Dating’ website called Lovely Faces .. and populated it with REAL names, locations and photos — […]

Quite a lot of wannabe Hemingway

Oh zing! From Ed Vulliamy’s The Observer piece about WikiLeaks publishing US State Department cables re the background of the Egyptian — gee, what do we call it? Uprising? Revolution? Riots? Julian Assange: ‘How do you attack an organisation? You attack its leadership’ Julian Assange … has been up all night disseminating, on his WikiLeaks […]

Bad scene in Egypt — round up the usual suspects

A crackdown on the truth often starts with rounding up the journalists… images from Huffington Post. + UPDATE 5/2/11 Bugger!

JP Morgan execs: Useless as [insert expletive here]

In today’s NY Times… Senior executives at JPMorgan Chase expressed serious doubts about the legitimacy of Bernard L. Madoff’s investment business more than 18 months before his Ponzi scheme collapsed but continued to do business with him, according to internal bank documents made public in a lawsuit on Thursday. Oh. My. God. If this is […]

If you prick us, do we not bleed?

I had the opportunity for a long face-to-face discussion with Dean Letfus yesterday, as earlier forecast. For those of you who haven’t met him, let me say first off I find Dean an intelligent, personable chap, with good communication skills and a sense of humour. (I’ve never subscribed to the ‘Say no good thing about […]

Shock! Horror! Scandal! Microsoft COPIES!

O hardy-har-har-har. Here’s a turn up for the books (NOT!)… via Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results Here’s the slightly novel bit: Bing Admits Using Customer Search Data, Says Google Pulled ‘Spy-Novelesque Stunt’ The details of the sting, which Danny Sullivan lays out, are interesting. Google artificially […]

Get your own little piece of the subprime crisis

In my in-box today* from the UK-based property spruiker hawking Memphis distressed real estate … a chance to buy mortgage bonds … at 40% discount! Oh boy! I wonder if this is how they offer “amazing finance packages” (no-questions-asked??) to the offshore suckers … sorry, investors buying up Memphis distressed real estate … um, er, […]

SPAM as an indicator of the economy?

Among all the SPAM touting for anatomy-enlargement and performance-enhancing pills and replica watches (for replica people?) and, oh boy, online casino gambling (!) …. I’ve noticed a recent apparent increase in SPAM messages targeting job seekers … Subject: Job offer match, respond to apply Subject: Job opportunity – hurry to apply! Subject: Employment you’ve been […]

Is this for real?

Does anyone know if this works? I got a spammy-looking ‘link exchange request’ with this as the last line: IF YOU’D LIKE TO MAKE SURE WE DON’T CONTACT YOU AGAIN, PLEASE FILL IN THE FOLLOWING FORM: emailsnomore(dot)com ; PLEASE ACCEPT OUR APOLOGIES FOR CONTACTING YOU. … which redirects to what looks like a different website […]

Oops. False pretences?

Nothing to do with spruikers! Wall St Journal: CCTV Tries to Pass Off ‘Top Gun’ Clip as Military Drill? Chinese netizens are accusing China state broadcaster CCTV of repurposing footage from the movie “Top Gun” for use in a news story about an air force training exercise. Take a look:

Lowest form of life?

Not a bad column from Michael Laws in the Sunday Star Times today. He’s worth reading when he writes about things he knows about… and there’s no question he knows about political ambition. Not that the game isn’t intoxicating. We both know that it is. Parliament and politics is its own world. And the only […]

Viral – video of octopus stealing camera!

I hadn’t seen this ’til this morning … wow! Take a look at this octopus footage … Good comment on YouTube: “Those indie octopus film-makers will resort to any means to get equipment.” LOL (Video below the fold to stop the youtube code slowing down this page)

Even more deceitful photoshopping

You may (or may not) recall my posts ‘More deceitful photoshopping‘ and ‘Re-touching to the point of distortion‘ which sought to highlight the distortion of ideas and images of modern-day ‘beauty’ — thus setting an unattainable target for young women wanting to groom themselves to be ‘better looking’. (Jenna Marbles’s ‘How to trick people into […]

Takes a lickin’ and keeps on …

I see in the US a clumsy someone’s launched a class action lawsuit against Apple over the ‘durability’ of the iPhone 4 glass screens … not tough enough for some butter fingers. Funny, I’ve had iPhones for a few years, including the iPhone 4 and haven’t damaged them. Lucky, I guess. That said, on the […]