The latest from TechCrunch
- Finally, Placekitten: A Web Service For Kitten Photos
- 'Sloppy Google' Is Lazy And Incompetent, Like A Human
- @CharlieSheen's Road To A Million Twitter Followers
- No "One More Thing" At Today's iPad 2 Event
| Finally, Placekitten: A Web Service For Kitten Photos | Top |
| Placekitten : Something every designer needs. “A quick and simple service for getting pictures of kittens for use as placeholders in your designs or code.” It’s just too awesome not to post. “This is awesome,” says a developer/entrepreneur who stumbled on it today and is apparently using it. It certainly has a little more character than services like Dummy Image . It’s two days old . I love people who do stuff like this just because the thought enters their head. | |
| 'Sloppy Google' Is Lazy And Incompetent, Like A Human | Top |
| Sometimes I think we suffer from Louis CK syndrome , as in we don’t fully understand how amazing it is to live in a time where technological advancements allow all the world’s information to be accessed at our fingertips , among other things. A mashup of Html5 Canvas, processing.js, js, jQuery, and the Google Search API, the Sloppy Google project yawns as it completes erroneous searches, expressing its apathy for its work anthropomorphically. To further hammer it home, its “I Feel Lucky” button is perennially out of service. In the same vein as CK’s “Everything’s Amazing And Nobody’s Happy” video, Sloppy Google serves as a reminder that for all its foibles, Google is still way better at its job then we are, never sleeping, making careless mistakes or being half-assed (unless you include Adsense). Writes creator Yuin Chein , an MFA at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design (verbatim), “What if searching – the everyday digital routine of our lives is somehow different? What if Google is represented by humanistic operators who type in keywords and submit search request for you? In contrary to auto correct your spelling, it messes up your search results by misspelling your keywords; it yawns at your face just like a careless customer service agent would have done to you. Having a lazy Google is surprisingly comforting to some! Machine isn't perfect, it makes mistakes, and it needs rest just like everyone of us.” Exactly. You can search on Sloppy Google here. CrunchBase Information Google Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| @CharlieSheen's Road To A Million Twitter Followers | Top |
| As some of you may have noticed, former Two And A Half Men star Charlie Sheen joined Twitter yesterday afternoon, and today has a verified account and a million followers in a little over 24 hours. While its unclear whether @CharlieSheen is the fastest followed account in Twitter history ( @KanyeWest and @ConanOBrien are also contenders), gaining such a huge audience so quickly is a formidable accomplishment. I spoke to Ad.ly founder Sean Rad this morning about Sheen’s path to Twitter celeb-dom and he told me that the story came about simply, as the result of a phone call. According to Rad, Sheen’s management, specifically Sheen’s digital manager Robert Marin, called Ad.ly early yesterday morning about getting Sheen on Twitter, because Ad.ly is known as the “go-to place” for social media in the Hollywood community. Rad then called Omid Ashtari, Twitter business development and Hollywood liaison, who then took the @CharlieSheen account back from a squatter. By 1pm the account was up, and Charlie Sheen tweeted out this image shortly after our post went up. His made up hashtag #tigerblood was trending shortly there-afterwards. @alexblagg Alex Blagg Seems like @ CharlieSheen is getting about Two and a Half Mentions per second on Twitter. about 11 hours ago via web Retweet Reply “His goal was to get on Twitter so he could reach out to his audience as fast as possible,” Rad said. Rad is unbelievably transparant about the whole process which involved giving advice on how to tweet, @reply and what a hashtag is. It seems like Sheen caught on pretty fast. And while Sheen is in the Ad.ly network, which means that Ad.ly is mining his follower data to present to advertisers for tweets, he as of yet has not become a publisher, ( “we have no plans right now” ) which means sending out a lucrative tweet endorsement. Ad.ly tweet endorsements run anywhere from $1000-$20,000 depending on the celebrity Rad told me. For the less famous members of the Ad.ly network, like our own Erick Schonfeld, those numbers are less underwhelming. While the idea of seeing an in a tweet stream is off putting for some (myself included), Rad sees more and more celebrity advertising, which he says makes up 30% of ads, coming online. He also sees himself as sort of a celebrity herder in the process, “What Twitter does and what Facebook does is allow celebrities to speak directly to their audience and bypass the layers of media, creates a distribution channel for a celebrity to talk directly to their audience.” For the past day, Sheen has been tweeting out images of brands, in a sense giving free advertising to Pepsi’s Naked Juice and Direct TV. When asked what he thought about Sheen specifically, Rad said, “I don’t really want to pass judgement on the guy, but I think it’s amazing how he’s using social media to get his message across.” As to what that message is, Rad did not exactly know, “He’s definitely stirred up a lot controversy.” Image: Charlie Sheen CrunchBase Information Twitter Ad.ly Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| No "One More Thing" At Today's iPad 2 Event | Top |
| Despite being on medical leave since January, Steve Jobs took the stage at today’s Apple event to a standing ovation. After revealing that over 100 million iPhones and over 15 million iPads have been sold total and introducing the 1/3 thinner, 13.3% percent lighter rainbow-covered iPad 2, Steve Jobs made his requisite concluding remarks and exited the stage without giving one of his legendary “one more thing”s (see above video). While some proliferating rumors had pegged today’s “one more thing” as being either a new social app (I hear group messaging is hot these days), others were hoping for a preview of iOS 5 or a retina iPad 2 display. In fact there’s quite a few people expressing their disappointment in the lack of “one more thing” on Twitter, having become accustomed to the Jobs tradition — A tradition responsible for the unveiling of FaceTime, the AirPort and both the original and new MacBook Airs. Here’s an impressive and comprehensive chronological list of Apple products that were revealed as “one more thing”s via the fanboys at Wikipedia , a list which will remain un-updated, for the moment. The AirPort base station and AirPort card after the iBook was introduced in Macworld Expo 1999 The PowerBook G4 The PowerMac G5 at WWDC 2003. The fifth generation iPod with video, announced at a press conference self-referentially titled “One more thing…” The MacBook Pro (at Macworld Expo 2006). Introduction of selling movies via the iTunes Store in September 2006; a second “One more thing” in the same presentation also unveiled an upcoming product dubbed iTV (renamed to Apple TV at Macworld 2007). A third “One More Thing” was the lead-in to introduce a live performance of the song “Waiting for the World to Change” by John Mayer at the conclusion of the presentation. Introduction of Safari for Windows beta The iPod touch The MacBook Air The wireless version of the iTunes Store on the iPod touch and iPhone The new MacBook was introduced in October 2008 after the new MacBook Pro was introduced. Though Steve Jobs did not present his Macworld 2009 keynote, Phil Schiller introduced the DRM free iTunes Music Store as a “one last thing”. The announcement of a video camera and speaker in the fifth generation iPod Nano at the Apple Music Event in September 2009 FaceTime video calling for the iPhone 4 at WWDC 2010 A revised Apple TV A revised MacBook Air in October 2010 @marketfolly Market Folly If Steve Jobs were to say "one more thing…" @ the $AAPL event & Charlie Sheen walked out, my face would explode about 13 hours ago via web Retweet Reply Standing ovation video: Business Insider CrunchBase Information Apple Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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