ganedineroahora.com

Social: The T-shirts are perfect conversation starters (”Why this headline?;” “Where were you when that happened”?) or outlets for political statements (”Clinton endorses Obama”).

Personal: The message is clear — you are the news.

Artificially scarce: The headlines are only available to be printed while the headline is in the current news section.

CNN is now printing one-off American Apparel headline T-shirts. The new feature (in beta) allows you to order them from the CNN web site — with the headline, time-stamp, and CNN logo on it.

Convergent: Digital and physical domain converge. You can wear online news on your body.

Instant: Merchandising in real-time, tangibly tied with world news.

(Credit: Mooneythinks)

Customizable/hackable: The T-shirts are customizable. You can put your own headline on them simply by changing the text in the URL.

Viral: Because it’s social, it’s viral.

Pretty cool. CNN gets it. Their T-shirt campaign exhibits all the key ingredients of contemporary marketing genius.

(Credit: Florence20)

In essence, this means the Times is turning into a software company, applying the same business model philosophy “as many start-ups in Silicon Valley:” “Build neat tools, get traction, and then figure out how to make money off them later,” as the Silicon Alley Insider describes it.

Nothing is more old news than the good old newspaper from yesterday. Silicon Alley Insider reports on the New York Times’ attempt to counter the continued print media decline by establishing new revenue streams through its online initiatives. Marc Frons, chief technology officer of the Times’ digital operations, provides cues as to where the company is placing its bets: “Widgets,
iPhone apps, APIs, and more.”

The Times’ plans indicate a larger trend in the media industries: Responding to the effects of the “Distributed Internet,” content companies have begun to compartmentalize their content and provide it through myriad, hyper-targeted, personalized, socially aggregated micro-channels. Hard content is becoming soft, and, who knows, maybe news will soon be coming straight from the “clowd,” with Google serving as the only editorial filter.

Since then, it was all downhill for The Sharper Image. And after the Internet became the safe haven for many of those gadgets at a much lower price, The Sharper Image did what it could by putting its stores in malls and other areas that it thought it could capitalize on impulse buyers, but it failed miserably.

After being delisted from Nasdaq, filing for bankruptcy, and announcing that it will close 96 of its 184 stores, the end is near for the specialty electronics retailer.

Or is it?

Let’s take a trip down memory lane. Back in 1977, when The Sharper Image opened shop, the company was designed with the offbeat electronics lover in mind. Since its move to Nasdaq in 1987, it lost its way in many respects and tried to be the “cool” guy’s gadget house. It abandoned its tried-and-true marketing efforts in favor of infomercials. You know–the ones with that crazy-looking guy who yells a lot.

In an interesting development, The Sharper Image announced on Thursday that its chairman, Jerry W. Levin, is stepping down to pursue the possibility of acquiring the company’s stock and assets.

Neither Levin nor The Sharper Image were ready to speculate about what his plans are, but it begs a question: “What is going on at The Sharper Image?” It’s a company that has flown under the radar for quite some time, and most have written it off as a relic of the past, but I think there’s more to it than that. If nothing else, the soap opera over at The Sharper Image is extremely interesting to watch.

Since then, its management failed miserably at trying to turn the company around. In an attempt to do so, it shook up the management and board.

But what the company obviously failed to realize is that people don’t want what The Sharper Image offers in that kind of environment. Let’s be honest–who really wants to buy the Ionic Breeze on The Sharper Image’s site for $400 when they can have the same exact product on Amazon for $350?

The Sharper Image may have been the favorite of geeks in the ’90s, but it’s now a shadow of its former self.

So what can be done? Certainly, Jerry W. Levin thinks he knows, but I’d like to see what he comes up with. If nothing else, the company should close the rest of its brick-and-mortar stores, and try to live out the rest of its days online. If it doesn’t, it’ll probably meet its demise much sooner than originally planned.

And although that’s just one example of the issues at The Sharper Image, they go far beyond the Ionic Breeze. More than anything, the company is in a tight spot. It was delisted from Nasdaq due to an incredibly low stock price (it’s valued at $0.23 per share), and its 2006 loss of almost $60 million is making it increasingly more difficult for the company to compete with major online retailers.

Ditching your old stuff

If you’re on a budget, also worth checking out is Craigslist’s move/haul section under the services category. You’ll find a slew of single day truck rentals from companies that rent out their trucks to people who are moving on the weekend for much lower costs than U-Haul and others.

Better yet, bribe your friends to help out with customized “I’m helping (your name) move” personalized T-shirts from CafePress or Zazzle that will let them get sweaty and not stink up their own clothes. For a laugh, wear them out so people know why you’re stinking up whatever restaurant you’re taking them to. You might even get better service and faster water refills from your server too.

Another mash up that existed before Mash Maker, but that’s still accessible without the installation of the plug-in is HousingMaps, which mashes up Google Maps with Craigslist housing listings. You’re not going to find some of the most up-to-date listings from just an hour or so ago, or be able to search through them like you can on Craigslist, but using the filters it’s simply a fantastic way to check out a bunch of places with less text and more topography.

Don't sit around hitting refresh on Craigslist. Use Yahoo Pipes and an RSS notification service to give you alerts.

Know before you go

We recommend Shifd (review), which works on your desktop as an Adobe Air application, or on your mobile phone while synchronizing them in both places. We like Shiftd the best because it mashes up maps into your notes, so if you’re trying to chart out some places or things that need remembering you can view them on a map right away, which can be immensely helpful.

Mash Maker (review) from Intel is a very slick tool for parsing through Craigslist’s myriad of listings and making the data accessible in ways that Craigslist does not provide for. There are a few “plug-ins” for Craiglist in the Mash Maker gallery. The most useful ones are the tables plus maps one that will let you see pricing, move in dates, and more in an easy to use chart that can be sorted. There’s also a great one that will give you the price versus subregion that will tell you the average price of apartments based on each neighborhood you’re looking at.

U-Haul is for newbies (unless you have furniture). If you’re just in need of a truck, check out Zipcar or if Northern California–CityCarShare.org that will let you rent one for about $5 an hour, depending on where you live. You can even set it all up without having to talk to a human. If you really want to keep it simple and rent through U-Haul, avoid its site like the plague and call in, as the site won’t give you a specific pick-up time which can be crucial if you’ve got people coming to help you or time lines to keep.

Craigslist is full of people who can schlep your stuff, but getting recommendations on which companies or folks are trustworthy and careful is even better if you care about your stuff. If your job has a “spam” list or newsgroup set up, ask around. Also, visit Yelp and check out reviews of local moving services. You’ll find most are either terrible or fantastic, but it’s a far better way to get a lay of the land.

To take it a step further, set up e-mail or SMS alerts when a new item is added using a service such as RSSFwd or Pingie. Just don’t be surprised if the person who posted the ad is a little freaked out that you contacted them within a minute or two of it going live.

Miscellaneous tips:

So your new lease doesn’t start for a week or two and you need a place to crash. Out of vacation hours and patience? There’s hope for you yet. You can simply try Couchsurfing which is a network of people who let folks stay in their house while traveling. You’ll never have to tell anyone about it, and it’s certainly cheaper than staying at a hotel or imposing on your friends and family.

Oops, you’re temporarily homeless. What to do:

Also worth doing is giving your neighbors a once over. Go on StreetAdvisor and Rotten Neighbor (review) to see if you’re living next to some potentially volatile neighbors. Then go check out the registered sex offenders database.

The same thing goes for boxes. Don’t shell out money for new boxes. Chances are someone who just moved it trying to ditch their own. Here’s an advanced tip though: don’t bother sitting by your computer hitting refresh to wait for the newest giveaways to show up. Instead, set up a work flow in Yahoo Pipes that will do it for you. I’ve created an example feed that does this here. To tweak it to match the Craigslist in your area, just do a search in free stuff for “Moving Boxes” and dump in the RSS feed in the top pipe, then hit save and refresh. Then subscribe to the feed you’ve created and keep an eye on your RSS reader to be apprised of the latest freebies.

Parse through Craigslist listings on a map with HousingMaps.com

Once you’ve found the place of your dreams it’s time to scope it out. If you’re looking to make sure you’re not going to get stuck paying too much, check out Rentometer (review) which will analyze how much your rent is compared with others in your area. Better yet, check out Hotpads (review), which gives you a overlay controls for population density, the median age, and general income so you can avoid moving into a retirement neighborhood or the student overflow from a local college (unless you’re seeking out either of those things).

Equipment

If you were using Trulia, or Google Maps, hop on Street View and check out the outside of the place you’re looking at as well as the surrounding area. There’s a big chance your place isn’t on there, which isn’t a problem if you live in the same city and have checked the place out in person–but what if this is somewhere else? This would have been the perfect situation to use the now defunct GoSee4Me to hire someone else to take photos. Otherwise, hop on Facebook and see which one of your friends lives in that city and ask if they’ll snap some shots for you.

How much will you be paying compared with your neighbors? Rentometer.com knows. Just plug in your rent and how big your building is, and it does the rest.

Speaking of Google Earth, try out the YouTube viewer (also in Google Maps) to see if there’s been anything cool or outright insane going on in your area. If you see a lot of news reports about murders and drug use that have been geocoded to your block–you might want to steer clear. If you’re moving to Oakland, there’s also Oakland Crime Spotting, which was put together by the guys at Stamen Design. It’s one of the more beautiful ways to see bad guys on a map.

Getting the job done

After having just finished, I know I could have done some things better, and I thought this would be a good chance provide a focused collection of tips and tricks for each stage of a move. Something useful for any would-be movers who have never used the Web to hunt for a new place, then get the job done by selling excess junk, and finding the right equipment to get from point A to point B. I’ve also nixed using just Craigslist, as a balanced attack using several best-of-breed Web services will save you time and money.

If you’re trying to buy a house, there are some even better services that bring a lot more depth to the table. Trulia and Zillow offer simple and deep services that give you a lot of information and put you in touch with real estate folks or homeowners without you even needing to leave your house.

Finding a place

Trulia has the most eye candy of the two, with a time line viewer called HindSight that will show you growth and other housing trends by geography. It’s really only useful in a few cities, unlike Trulia’s core service which will let you hunt for houses with a high level of ease. Fellow housing search tool Zillow is also great for potential homebuyers, and ties in things such as a mortgage finder and a great map tool that includes homes for sale, recently sold homes, and even places people are just thinking about selling and just waiting for the right offer to get out.

Continue reading to learn about research tools, finding movers, and what to do if you find yourself temporarily homeless…

To see how “walkable” the area is, give Walk Score (review) a whirl. Just plug in the address of the place you’re looking at and it will give you a map of what’s close based on grocery stores, eateries, coffee shops, schools and transportation. The one thing it doesn’t take into account is how close you are to freeways and large elevations–which might hinder said walking. For that, use Google Earth’s elevation feature to zoom into your neighborhood and check out the topography.

Bribe your friends with customized T-shirts. They might forgive you for having them help move your metric ton of junk.

Hopefully this has given you the inside track on how to use Web 2.0 services to help make moving less of a pain, and more of a tactical and rewarding experience. If you’ve got tips of your own, leave them in the talkback.

Movers

Sometimes I feel like people might think we talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk when it comes to using some Web services. Believe me when I tell you we use this stuff every day, and over the last month, nothing has been more useful to me than Craigslist. Why? I was moving, and I did 95 percent of it using a single service to find movers, boxes, people to buy and take away old furniture, and most importantly–a place to live.

Before and after the move: make a list, check it wherever

How 'walkable' is your new place? Scope it out with WalkScore, which rates your home on what businesses and amenities are near by.

When moving there comes a time when you need to get rid of things. Besides Craigslist and eBay (which are great), we recommend Freecycle. Freecycle has more than 5 million users who are taking each others free stuff. If it’s gadgets you’re getting rid of, you might also be able to scrap together some cash with services such as BuyMyTronics. We wrote about this back in November, so go read about it there.

If you feel like keeping your stuff, but maybe making a little cash on the side, use a service such as Zilok (review) which lets you rent your stuff to other people. Be sure to set this up in advance though–it might take a while for someone to bite.

Getting stuff from point A to point B takes a lot of physical work as much as it does mental. Save some brainpower by keeping a list of things you need to do before, and after the move including small or large items to need to buy. Your best bet for this is a to-do list application because little pieces of paper get lost.

Of course silly Mac users are going to flog a study that shows that they, themselves, are five times more likely to say they’re “very satisfied” with their operating system than Vista users.

Now, any idiot can see the problem with surveying people who’ve already admitted to using the
Mac.

They’re Mac users! They’ve already drank the Kool Aid! They drank it all up! And possibly drank yours!

Their responses simply can’t be trusted because they’ve already fallen victim to Steve Jobs’ voodoo powers.

Hel-loooo?!

Ha-ha! Silly Mac users!

SAN FRANCISCO–When you’re one of the earliest adopters of a new technology, or one of the first companies into a new space, you tend to be very bullish on its future.

That energy was very much in evidence Thursday at InterPlay, the first-ever conference solely devoted to social gaming.

If you’re not familiar with the concept of social gaming–small, casual game applications designed to be played on social networks like Facebook–you soon will be. That’s because there is a lot of interest–and a growing amount of venture capital–being focused on the young space.

Examples of the early enthusiasm for the space include $15 million in funding for the Social Gaming Network from Greylock Partners, the Founders Fund, Columbia Partners, and Novak Biddle Venture Partners and $10 million of investment from venture capitalists including Union Square Ventures.

“There’s significant recognition that social-gaming applications, at least on Facebook, are displaying high engagement and virality (rates),” said Dave McClure, the author of social media blog 500 Hats and one of the lead organizers of the Web 2.0 conferences.

McClure said the nascent space caught his attention after a student of his built a social game and quickly got significant financial interest in it from two different companies.

Still, McClure, who moderated a panel at InterPlay Thursday called “Funding the social game sphere,” said he isn’t entirely sure if there really is a lot of money to be made yet with such games.

“Can you translate user engagement and virality into monetization?” McClure said. “There’s lots of potential, but lots of questions about monetization.”

Such uncertainty, he said, is due in part to the fact that there is no universally respected system for collecting payments for the small financial transactions that could be a big part of the process. McClure also noted that it’s going to be hard for anyone to take on the dominant player in the space, Facebook.

“Hopefully, some of those things will change over the next 6 to 12 months,” McClure said.

At InterPlay, there was a healthy crowd of several hundred people, many of whom had paid $199 to be there. That’s a low price for a conference, but it’s unlikely people interested in this industry will be able to attend such confabs for such a small fee much longer.

In fact, the second such gathering, the Social Gaming Summit, will be taking place next month, also in San Francisco. The fee for that event is $399.

But back at InterPlay Thursday, attendees chose from a series of panels, including McClure’s and others like “The future of online social gaming,” “Gaming on the social platforms,” “Advertising and marketing on social games” and “Micro-transactions and virtual goods.” There were also some workshops on how to make money with social-gaming applications and a talk about metrics in the space.

And while panels at conferences like this are always a big draw, there’s equal interest amongst attendees in getting the chance to network with each other and meet the industry’s leaders.

One interesting question about social gaming is where the big video game publishers are.

“You see a lot of traditional game companies sitting on the sidelines,” said Dean Takahashi, who writes for VentureBeat. “It could be costly for them to wait. If Electronic Arts waits too long (to create their own social games), it may be that they’ll have to buy one of these companies for $100 million.”

Yet, it’s also possible that this is all much ado about nothing, Takahashi seemed to be saying.

“It is hard to understand why people are getting so excited about some simple games,” he said, “that don’t take armies of people to create.”

The answer, he suggested, is that social networks like Facebook have demonstrated that it is possible to make mundane activities like messaging fun by applying game mechanics.

To some at the conference, being there is a function of necessity for those who want to make the social-gaming industry a powerful force.

“We’re so early in a new industry,” said Kristian Segerstrale, the CEO of Playfish, “to have some of the companies in a room to talk about shared issues.”

Further, Segerstrale said, the point of an early conference like InterPlay is to help get the word out about some of the metrics that are important to a new industry, but which the rest of the world has yet to understand.

For example, he pointed out that in the social-gaming space, one of the most important metrics is total monthly minutes spent on a service by users.

That was also one of the two most important metrics mentioned by Jeremy Liew, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, in the panel on funding social games.

“Two of the most useful metrics are page views and time spent in the game,” said Liew. “I like to see numbers of 100 million minutes spent per month.”

Those are big numbers, of course, but there do seem to be a number of social games that have been able to get that kind of user interest and engagement.

And that’s why, in the end, the space seems primed for a lot more investment and lot more new companies getting involved.

“Everyone here is thinking there’s an opportunity here that the game companies aren’t exploiting,” Takahashi said, “‘Why don’t we, the social media community, exploit it?’”

On June 10, Geek Gestalt hits the highways for Road Trip 2008. I’ll start in Orlando, Fla., and visit many of the South’s most interesting destinations. Stay tuned, and be sure to keep up, both now and during the trip, with what I’m doing on Twitter.

Ever had one of those days where you’re just not motivated to get any work done? You’re sitting there with a ton of projects due, but you just can’t pull yourself away from whatever game you’re trying to run on your work computer.

Now, I could say that you should probably get your priorities straight and start taking your job more seriously, but screw that. No, you should own the half-assed effort you’re putting into your career.

Just don’t get caught. The best way to not get caught is to not screw off. The second best way is to use the USB Foot Pedal Security Button.

Disguised as an extension cord, the button sits under your foot while you YouTube to your heart’s content. As soon as your boss or that nosy tattletale of a co-worker walks by, BAM, it instantly conceals your screen. I’m not sure how it conceals your screen just yet, though.

The button can be found for as little as $8. Just think of the amount of lost man-hours that buys you.

“There is no suggestion on our part that there was anything inappropriate by her being hired by Google or that there was a quid pro quo,” he said in an interview. “The obvious question is what contact had the DOJ’s chief privacy officer had with a large data collecting company like Google on data retention?”

In the fall of 2007, Horvath was named as Google’s senior privacy counsel. The EFF asked the Justice Department for information about communications between Horvath and Google by filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, but the Justice Department has not responded, according to the EFF.

Horvath, quoted in an article afterward, was critical of the initial subpoena, saying she had privacy concerns with it, the EFF says.

Sobel explained that the nonprofit would probably have filed the lawsuit even if Google had never hired Horvath.

At the time Jane Horvath was named as the Justice Department’s chief privacy and civil-liberties officer in February 2006, Google was challenging a subpoena by the department for Web searches. A federal judge granted part of a Justice Department request for Google search data allowing Google to share information about random URLs but said users’ search queries were off-limits.

“Google has an unprecedented ability to collect and retain very personal information about millions of Americans, and the DOJ and other law enforcement agencies have developed a huge appetite for that information,” EFF Senior Counsel David Sobel wrote in a statement Tuesday about the foundation’s lawsuit against the government agency (PDF). “We want to know what discussions DOJ’s top privacy lawyer had with Google before leaving her government position to join the company.”

A Justice Department spokesman said the agency had no comment. Google spokesman Steve Langdon said “Google did not work with Jane Horvath on this issue when she was at DOJ.”

Update at 8:50 a.m. to clarify judge ruling in subpoena case, and at 2:55 p.m. to add further comment from the EFF.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice seeking information about communications between a former top privacy official and Google, which eventually hired the official.

Locate the problem with imagery-enhanced GPS, monitor it via digital remote surveillance, chew it over on low-Earth orbit sat-phone, but sooner or later there’ll be a boarding, and that’s when you’ll need the T-PLS pneumatically launched grappling hook.

(Credit:
DFT)

Developed by DFT for Special Operations Forces, the 350psi regulated air source shoots the line out “in excess of 120 feet,” according to the company. “Minimizing complexity and emphasizing durability, T-PLS brings a much needed capability by mitigating noise and allowing the SOF operator to reach new heights in tactical climbing missions.”

Digital Force Technologies makes and markets all of the above, but it’s the T-PLS air-propelled tactical line-throwing system with standard titanium grappling hook and 7mm Kevlar line that you want in the trunk of your
car when you’re called to the next Vegas hotel fire.

Even back in my day, you could go to a “Windows lab” and work with Visual Studio or go to a “UNIX lab” and use vi and gcc. And you know what? All the fun was in the UNIX lab. And not just for me. There was just a difference in the attitudes and ethic across the two lab environments. People in the Windows lab were trying to get their project in before it was 11:59 PM, while people in the UNIX lab were goofing off, playing with code, and… trying to get their project in before it was 11:59 PM.

commentary

Can Microsoft be as cool as open source without opening up? I don’t think so. It’s trying to give away tools to stem the rise of open source. But maybe it’s giving away the wrong tools?

In the enterprise, this alleged Microsoft attribute might be considered a Very Good Thing. But is it? Do enterprises really want automatons that punch in and code to spec? Or do they want innovation that changes the game?

But for the next few decades of computing, maybe the uber-geeks - those cool kids hacking on vi - will rule the earth…and the enterprise. It all starts with school, where the widespread availability and perceived “cool factor” of open source is trumping Microsoft’s stodgy corporate tools.

I found this article on O’Reilly’s (Microsoft-sponsored) Port 25 page fascinating. For all Microsoft’s attempts to own the budding minds of students, it may well be that Microsoft has become too corporate, too sterile to be of interest to the creative mind:

What is it about UNIX, vi, emacs, gcc, perl, and INSERT-HERE that makes it fun to play with, while Visual Studio just makes you want to… well, work?

I’m not a developer (IANAD) but it strikes me that Microsoft needs to loosen up a bit. It needs more geek credibility again. There was a time when Microsoft was cool. Now…? Not so much.

Microsoft has long built great tools. It’s one of the factors most responsible for its rise in the enterprise, as it has turned mediocre developers into productive developers.