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Read the full post April 27th, 2007

The Pointy-Haired Boss starts a blog

This week, Dilbert’s “Pointy-Haired Boss” decided he should start his own blog. Of course, he’s outsourcing it to Tina The Tech Writer (”I need you to write the first one by noon. I can’t wait to see what I’m thinking.”). Damn you, Dilbert.com, for not making the strip embeddable. Still, check it out. The story started Thursday.

Add comment April 27th, 2007

iCheat: Schools bans portable music players during tests

LR salutes the youth of America for their constant ingenuity. Every time you think you’ve found a way to stop them from high-tech cheating (They’re texting answers!) they come up with a new way to game the system. The latest cheat technique involves recording notes onto your iPod or similar device and then snaking an earbud up behind your shirt or jacket and into one ear so you can listen back during the exam. (”Psst… me… the answer is the train leaving Chicago.”) TV people who use IFBs will appreciate this concept. Schools got wise, so now they are banning iPods in class. (They used to allow them?) LR is confident that this should, once and for all, put an end to cheating in our schools.

6 comments April 27th, 2007

New AOL.com looks a lot like Yahoo

2007 is Lost Remote’s Year of the Clean Site. So we salute any and all site redesigns that eliminate clutter and come up with a clean new look. This week, AOL.com rolled out a beta (Do companies like AOL still get to say they’re in beta?) of its latest iteration, and it’s clean and easy to navigate:

However, as LR pal Steph points out, AOL.com now looks mighty similar to Yahoo, which has had this look since last summer:

Now, we don’t get too obsessed with huge design concepts for their own sake around here. After all, LR’s look is pretty spartan and you can probably find blogs that look like us. It’s about the content. Still, when one big corporation rolls out a product that looks this similar to a competitor, it’s worth noting. And AOL agrees that there are similarities. David Liu, senior vice president of the AOL portal site, told internetnews.com “I think in this industry there are a lot of elements of portals that are just going to be similar because people have developed them to a point that they are standards.” But he adds the functionality is where the difference lies - that the different “modules” on the page will be made available for users to have on their own pages. There will be more applications and content modules to come as AOL.com rolls this out over the upcoming months.

4 comments April 27th, 2007

Firefox torrent plugin lets you watch while you download

Red Swoosh has just released FoxTorrent, a torrent downloader plugin for the Firefox browser. The cool twist is this: FoxTorrent claims it lets you watch or listen to the file as it downloads. Still, torrent files are divided unevenly and are different than streaming files, I was able to watch a 1/2 hour video as though it were streaming, but I had to give it a hefty head-start. (Michael Arrington had a different experience.) Akamai recently purchased Red Swoosh, so they’re the power behind all this. Installation was a snap on this Mac/Firefox combo. And the video I downloaded was purely for investigative purposes… (via TechCrunch)

2 comments April 27th, 2007

The post-debate: Gravel-to-Gravel coverage

Although Sen. Mike “Some of these people frighten me” Gravel prompted one LR commenter to write “he looks like he’s channeling Admiral Stockdale,” you gotta give the man this much - he made a splash. (Journalists with a sense of history should be at least a little interested - Gravel was one of the driving forces behind the release of the Pentagon Papers.) As the decided agent provocateur of the debate, Sen. Gravel certainly had some colorful suggestions and observations. Still, he seemed to be a hit with a substantial amount of the audience. MSNBC, which aired the debate, has an online poll and one of the questions is “Who stood out from the pack?” As of this writing, Gravel leads Biden, Dodd, Richardson and Kucinich. Especially interesting is the poll over at DailyKos which asks “Who won the debate, if anyone?” Here again, Gravel beats Biden, Dodd, Richardson and Kucinich - and comes within two points of tying Hillary Clinton. Over at Slate, John Dickerson writes that “Wild Mike was a near perfect synthesis of crank candidates of the past…” Instapundit livegraveled the debate, and noted this fine comment entry from Reason: “President Gravel? Only on the Flintstones!” So - what do you think? Will Sen. Gravel generate a Howard Dean-like swell of online support? Or are we just so tired of the same old same old that a person who speaks their mind is that refreshing?

4 comments April 27th, 2007

Paid Content holds conference on economics of social media

Rafat, Staci and our pals at Paid Content have concluded what sounds like a fascinating conference on the economics of social media. EconSM was held in Los Angeles, and PaidContent put on the event. Too many great items of interest to list here, so pay a visit to Paid Content and check out their Flickr photostream, too. Great work, guys.

1 comment April 27th, 2007