Media Talk: TMZ Catches Tech Whiz in Benign Act
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TMZ.com usually traffics in salacious celebrity gossip. So its readers may have been confused when the site posted an item on the creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg.
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Plus: File sharing growing like a Weed. [News.com Extra]
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Harvey Levin and Jim Paratore, shown in September, are the executive producers of "TMZ." (AP via Warner Bros.) The three-month-old television version of âTMZ,â which is based on the popular Web site about the foibles of Britney, J. Lo and the like, continues to rank as the top-rated new show in syndication. Harvey Levin, the managing editor [...].
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Tycho:  We put Monday's strip up early, so you might have seen it already - but you might not be familiar with the EGM interview it is based on, an excerpt of which appears here.  I sometimes worry about appearing partisan in these communiques, but it is not my job to be fair.  I'm not a journalist, I'm a consumer.  I don't buy one product from each company in the interests of some karmic ideal, and I don't need to purge my posts of wrongthink because I haven't produced something suitable for use as a press release.  Sony is grinding down their goodwill with every smug, psychotic interview, and someone needs to tell them so in clear terms.
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Jerry Yang can talk tech better than his stodgy predecessor. Could that mean more deals?
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By Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune  Jun. 17--Links, threads, webs, tangles. Call 'em what you will. But the magic of the Internet is -- to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld's joke about why men like to hog the TV remote control -- not so much a matter of what's there, as what else might be there.
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The computer company recalls nearly a 1 million power adapters that could start fires. Also: Microsoft continues pursuit towards the computer television & hellip;. Nextel & rsquo;s phone is a mapquest in your hand & hellip;. and more.
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The media giant deals with the fallout after one of its web properties, celebrity gossip site TMZ.com, publishes the former football player's macabre murder tell-all, If I Did It.
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When I was in college, professors used to ask questions that are much harder than the question Allen Stern asks in this piece.  The NY Times crossword puzzle is harder. Geez, installing a new hard disk in a MacBook is harder, and as I've found out that's pretty easy.  Okay what is Twitter's business model?  They give away access to the API only to find that add-on devs have a business model selling Twitter clients while Twitter itself is left sucking air.  And this is some kind of problem? We should all be so lucky. Here's what you do if you're Twitter.  Distribution. How much you want to bet that Twitteriffic reaches a very small number of Twitter users.  Twitter, of course, reaches every Twitter user. So what could be easier than to offer to sell everyone a client that makes Twitter work a lot better?  And of course Twitter would be entitled to some of that money. Now, imagine that Twitter was really ambitious and they wanted to design a cell phone around Twitter. One that could make phone calls and play MP3s and do SMS but also had Twitter baked in.  Okay, so you can't imagine Twitter getting into the hardware business or being a cell phone service provider. But what if one of those did a deal with Twitter, or even bought Twitter? Then you'd be paying a monthly service fee to use Twitter, and might have chosen TMobile or Sprint over Verizon or AT&T because they have Twitter and the other guys have Microsoft's ripoff of Twitter. Or Google's. I think there's a premium for being the original guy, if you play it right (I never do, but Evan Williams does this pretty well.) Anyway, there are lots of ways for Twitter to make money once there are enough users. And right now their business is to grow and their first priority is to stabilize their service. This isn't based on inside knowledge, but comes from reading the tea leaves and applying common sense.
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Watching various people get on an airplane to go to Hawaii to an insider invite-only Silicon Valley conference (on Twitter), and thinking about the various business ideas the valley is floating these days, advertising, and how valuations work, and how unaccustomed the insiders are at having their ideas challenged, I came to a few rapid-fire conclusions last night on Twitter. (One good reason to follow me on Twitter is I tend to blurt out things there that would get me in trouble here on my blog.) Twit #1: "I have a theory that 'user generated content' is a last-gasp of the regal outlook of silicon valley, where we're all chumps or slaves." (Before UGC we were just supposed to be eyeballs, consuming their shovelware, buying stuff we see in ads. They had to adjust their thinking when it became apparent that we were also interested in creating.) Twit #2: "The role of the tech industry is to create tools and players. To enable creativity, not harness and control it." (I think this is when it all works best.) Twit #3: "If you're scared to hear what people really think you're not prepared for the world you live in." (I finally figured this one out. The reason why so many people in SV say I can't be trusted (it's observable) is because I'm equally likely to say your product sucks as I am to say it's great. This is a culture raised on Gee Whiz editorial coverage, the adulation of MSM. When blogs came along they had to hear that not everyone thinks they're so wonderful all the time. Who would you hate most but the guy who pushed the tools that made everyone with an opinion so audible. And would you expect such a person to keep his opinion to himself? Heh.) Even though I think this, I know I'm actually full of shit... Guy Kawasaki asked me once why so many people say I'm not a nice person, when in fact I am. If I saw you on the street I'd smile and say hello. I stop when someone is in the crosswalk. Nothing makes me happier than making a tool that people enjoy. I try to listen to everyone, and I don't care how much money you have. I never answered Guy's question, but here it is. If you asked me why some individual person thinks something, I'd say you'd have to ask them. That's basic respect. Let people speak for themselves. If you ask me why 100 people think something, I'm even more clueless.  BTW, Guy and I weren't friends for a long time after being good friends for a long time. I much prefer having him as a friend, I missed his company while we weren't talking. He doesn't suffer fools, and he's the first person to question his own thinking if someone says he's wrong. I've seen him do it, and I was totally impressed. People like that figure stuff out. People who don't want to learn about bugs in their thinking go through life with a lot of bugs. Today, and beyond, everyone has great tools for saying what they think. If you can't stand to hear it, you're not going to like the future very much, sorry to say.
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Tivo meets Nascar Cisco says it is cooking up something called an "entertainment operating system" from second-hand bits of social networks, TV set-top box software, and a big blast of hot air.â¦
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F-bombs away! Fans of open-mic celebrity blunders rejoice!â¦
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Motherboards are a way of life for the growing crowds at the Taiwan trade show. Plus: a new take on the megahertz wars.
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Also: DJ alert: Crack for music techies. See what people are saying on News.com Extra.
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SAN FRANCISCO  - TMZ.com, the fast-growing entertainment blog co-owned by AOL, has started letting readers post audio comments about items on its website for playback by other people at the site. That&#39;s a next-generation leap from the written comments many sites have added.
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CNET and mullets may have something in common.
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TMZ.com is a collaboration of Warner Brothers and AOL with the kind of numbers (6.8 million unique visitors last month) that could give synergy a good name.