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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Preview of this weekend’s ABCNEWS.com relaunch
ABCNEWS.com unveils its new look this weekend and, from the preview ABC’s media relations sent us, it looks like a major departure from the current site. The new ABCNEWS.com is much cleaner and easier to read and navigate. The upper right is dedicated to an embedded video player and the search box is prominent (as [...]
The second ‘Greatest Living American?’ Brandon Wirtz
LR reader Brandon Wirtz has humbly alerted us to this addendum to the Colbert Google bomb story. He is the second “Greatest Living American,” if you do a Google or Yahoo search. I consider this an even more impressive feat than Colbert’s since, no offense Brandon, Colbert has a slightly bigger audience. The more links [...]
MSNBC’s ‘Rate The Candidates’
As part of MSNBC’s continuing rollout of its theme to offer “A Fuller Spectrum of News,” it now has an interactive feature called “Rate the Candidates”: You watch a video featuring clips of the candidates talking about their positions on key issues and then use the sliders to give them a positive, negative or neutral [...]
WSJ launches media/tech vertical site: AllThingsD
WSJ’s wise media pundits Mossberg and Swisher now have their own vertical site, AllThingsD. There are seven staffers, including the cool John Paczkowski. You’ll find blog posts and the ‘Digital Daily Video’ feature and, in the making money realm, there are video prerolls and one banner ad position per page. And, relating to the “To [...]
Google ‘Greatest Living American’ and you get Colbert
Stephen Colbert has dropped the Google bomb, and it has worked. A search of the term “Greatest Living American” turns up Colbert Nation at #1 on Google. (He’s also the top result for “giant brass balls.”) How did this happen? It started with the visit of a search engine expert to the taping of an [...]
2007 EPpy Awards finalists announced
The list is out for this year’s EPpy nominees, the annual awards given to online media sites. It’s a long list, but some of the items of interest: WaPo leads the pack with five nominations; New categories include The Knight News Award for Innovation, and an award for a Spanish-language media-affiliated site; and of the [...]
Web-only presidential debates coming this fall
Yahoo, The Huffington Post and Slate will jointly host two online-only presidential debates this fall. From Mediaweek: The Web only debates, which will be hosted by longtime PBS host and former 60 Minutes correspondent Charlie Rose, will take place sometime after Labor Day of this year. During the two events – one held for Republican [...]
MTV.com resdesign forgoes bells and whistles, cleans up
It’s the Year Of The Cleanup here at LR. We’re making it a mission to get news sites to do away with the clutter and get back to the basics: local information and more local information. MTV.com relaunched this week, and the body of the site is clean, uncluttered and unafraid of white space. Just [...]
