Stories

‘Use me as a mouthpiece’, pleads Guardian hack

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Ben Goldacre, The Guardian‘s Mr “Bad Science” writes witheringly about sloppy science journalists. Many of them are simply “juggling words about on a page, without having the first clue what they mean, pretending they’ve got a proper job, their pens all lined up neatly on the desk,” he writes. They trade on scare stories, and … Read more

Google’s founders are less humble (and jetless) than you think

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Casting around for an example of the simple life to use in an Arab-bashing column, veteran columnist and editor Alexander Chancellor alighted on what he must have thought was the perfect foil to the free-spending Saudis.

It appeared right there in front of him, on his PC, nestling between some coloured balls.

Unlike Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, wrote Chancellor on Saturday, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin “don’t have private jets, Rolls-Royces, yachts or any of the other pointless accoutrements of the super-rich”.

“Page and Brin each own nothing more flashy than a modest Toyota Prius, the environmentally virtuous hybrid car,” he explained, adding:

“Like the other princes of Silicon Valley, they don’t show off. They are eager to appear unpretentious and affect to like simple things. Theirs is a world of jeans, sneakers, Starbucks, and girls-next-door.”

Chancellor didn’t mention high school bops, the Everly Brothers or bobbysox, but it was clear he’d fallen asleep by his PC, dreaming of some forgotten 1950s film (or girl).

Then the blue ball bumped into red ball, and reality returned.

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MPs reject Ofcom’s Nathan Barley quango

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In a victory for Register readers, MPs have rejected Ofcom’s proposal for a publicly-funded new media quango. The Commons’ select committee for Culture, Media and Sport rejects the idea that the creation of a “Public Service Publisher” gatekeeper would help the market. The report is here, while the Ofcomwatch blog broke the news here. The … Read more

I’m a walking billboard… bitch

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On Wednesday, Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg boasted that the “next 100 years” of advertising began here.

On the face of it, it looked like Web 2.0 had found its “Long Boom” moment. Facebook has yet to turn a profit, so Zuckerberg hardly seems in a position to advise other people how to make money – let alone place himself in a pantheon of historic business greats. In Web 2.0-land, merely “being there” is a substitute for having “made it”.

But then Zuckerberg is no stranger to bluster. This, notoriously, was the 22 year-old who had “I’m CEO…bitch” on his business card.

Behind the calculated bluster were a collection of ideas perhaps equally designed to distract the attention (no pun intended).

Of the three ideas Zuckerberg outlined, one in particular provoked horror and ridicule. It was to turn Facebook users, accustomed to its clean and spare UI, into human billboards. Advertisers could build presences in Facebook – at the moment, you must be a person – giving users the opportunity to “affiliate” with them.

“Users can become a fan of a business and can share information about that business with their friends and act as a trusted referral,” is how the company described it.

“What do the users get in return?” asked the IT commentator Nick Carr. “An animated Sprite Sips character to interact with.”

But Nick is forgetting that this cuts both ways – it isn’t a static picture at all.

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Warner slaps Nokia for Web 2.0 swap site

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Nokia’s Music Store went live last week – but look in vain for anything by Led Zepp, John Coltrane, or Smokey Robinson. That’s because Warner Music Group (WMG) is refusing to license its catalogues to the phone giant, in protest at its Web 2.0 file swapping site, Mosh. WMG says Mosh is a hotbed of … Read more

Panic in smartphoneland

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Google is set to give the mobile phone business a body blow today – the second punch in the guts it’s had this year. Apple delivered the first blow, by turning the operators’ subsidy model upside down – as well as making rival manufacturers look like knuckle-dragging Neanderthals. But Google’s arrival may prove to be … Read more

Obama mounts ‘Neutrality’ bandwaggon

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Politicians long ago gave up on politics. Instead of articulating great ideas, the choice that faces voters today is between identikit managerial bureaucrats who’ve never had a job outside politics. Most of their adult lives have been spent in the hermetic world of wonkdom. So it’s little wonder, then, that they have trouble distinguishing between fiction and reality.

And it’s no surprise at all to hear that a virtual Presidential candidate is throwing his electrons behind a virtual cause, to repeal a virtual law that never existed.

What else would a cypher do?

Asked whether he’d “re-instate Net Neutrality” as “the Law of the Land”, trailing Presidential Candidate Barack Obama told an audience in Cedar Rapids, Iowa pledged that yes, he would.

He also said he’d protect Ewok villages everywhere, and hoped that Tony Soprano had survived the non-existent bloodbath at the conclusion of The Sopranos.

(So we made the last two up – but they wouldn’t have been any more silly than what the Presidential Candidate really said.)

There are several problems with Obama’s pledge.

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