Voices on All Things Digital

Evian’s Dancing Babies Ad Makes a Splash

Marisa Taylor | Tech Reporter, The Wall Street Journal — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:59:27 +0000

By Marisa Taylor, Tech Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

It’s hard to ignore dancing babies.

That’s at least part of the thinking behind Evian’s new advertising campaign, which has taken off on YouTube, thanks to a troupe of infants breakdancing and roller-skating across the screen. The campaign, called “Live Young,” broke last week and has gotten more than 2.8 million views on YouTube in the U.S., and another 2.3 million internationally.

“Live Young” begins with a baby tapping one roller-skate-clad foot and playing a version of Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” (remixed by hip-hop producer Dan the Automator) on an old-school boombox.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Sun Valley: Schmidt Didn’t Want to Build Chrome Initially, He Says

Julia Angwin | Editor, Digits, The Wall Street Journal — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:01:53 +0000

By Julia Angwin, Editor, Digits, The Wall Street Journal

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said Thursday evening that, for six years, he resisted the idea of building what became the Chrome browser and (soon) operating system, before succumbing to the enthusiasm of Google (GOOG) Co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

In a wide-ranging on-the-record press conference, Messrs. Schmidt and Page described the origins of the combination browser/operating system.

“At the time, Google was a small company,” Mr. Schmidt said. “Having come through the bruising browser wars, I didn’t want to do that again.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Lazy Hacker and Little Worm Set Off Cyberwar Frenzy

Kim Zetter | Contributor, Threat Level, Wired — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 07:05:57 +0000

By Kim Zetter, Contributor, Threat Level, Wired

Talk of cyberwar is in the air after more than two dozen high-level websites in the United States and South Korea were hit by denial-of-service attacks this week. But cooler heads are pointing to a pilfered five-year-old worm as the source of the traffic, under control of an unsophisticated hacker who apparently did little to bolster his borrowed code against detection.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Has the RIAA Sued 18,000 People… or 35,000?

Nate Anderson | Senior Editor, Ars Technica — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 07:04:27 +0000

By Nate Anderson, Senior Editor, Ars Technica

Just how many file-sharers has the RIAA gone after? Those in the know were widely reporting a figure just north of 30,000 cases—the RIAA never liked to provide exact numbers—but the music trade group stated in a recent court filing that the real number of people sued is only 18,000. What’s going on?

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Clippy Stars in New Office 2010 Promo Video

Ina Fried | Editor, Beyond Binary, CNET — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 07:03:31 +0000

By Ina Fried, Editor, Beyond Binary, CNET

I’m not sure “spell check this” has the same ring as “I’ll be back,” but I have enjoyed the series of promo videos for Office 2010 that try to cast the software as the plot of an action movie.

The latest installment shows the grave of Clippy, the oft-mocked help tool that has been absent from recent versions of the productivity software.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Smooth, Segway

Tom Vanderbilt | Contributing Writer, Slate — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 07:02:32 +0000

By Tom Vanderbilt, Contributing Writer, Slate

Whatever happened to the revolution in personal transportation promised by the Segway?

In the eight years since the upright, self-balancing “personal transporter” first debuted, this question has become a perennial during speculative-future parlor games, on par with queries like “When will soccer finally supplant football in the hearts of Americans?”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

How Community Arts Organizations Are Using Social Media

Emily Goligoski | Contributor, Mashable — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 07:01:45 +0000

By Emily Goligoski, Contributor, Mashable

As more diverse organizations dive into web marketing, for-profit organizations can learn well from their indie counterparts about experimentation and innovation online. A few notable community and arts groups have been inventive in their use of social media and truly collaborative in their outreach in ways that even the most seasoned corporate marketer can appreciate.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Amazon: Blocked, Or Not, in China?

Geoffrey Fowler | Reporter, The Wall Street Journal — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:20:41 +0000

By Geoffrey Fowler, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

Figuring out when Web sites have been blocked by governments is an imprecise science.
Take, for example, Wednesday, when some Chinese Internet users began reporting an inability to access Amazon.com (AMZN), the U.S. Web site for the online retail giant. Yet Amazon spokesman Craig Berman said that “nothing happened.”

To back up the claim in blog posts and Twitter discussions, Chinese Internet users and watchers pointed to Herdict Web, a four-month-old system run by the Berkman Center at Harvard University, which aggregates reports of Web site accessibility into one database. On Wednesday, 12 reports on Herdict claimed Amazon.com was inaccessible in China, and as of the time of this posting three claim it is back up. The reports came from users all over the country, including people whose Internet service providers are in Beijing, Shanghai, Fujian, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Ningbo and Tianjin.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

What Your TiVo Was Missing: Ads From Best Buy

Eric Savitz | Blogger and Columnist, Barron's, Tech Trader Daily — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:37:55 +0000

By Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron's, Tech Trader Daily

TiVo (TIVO) this morning announced a multi-part deal with Best Buy (BBY) that includes the development of a special version of the TiVo player that would include specialized content–oh, okay, advertising–from the electronics retailer.

Or as the release puts it: “Best Buy intends to utilize TiVo’s robust platform to deliver educational and marketing messages directly to consumers.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Sun Valley: Gates and Schmidt Do Lunch But Don’t Comment on Google OS

Julia Angwin | Editor, Digits, The Wall Street Journal — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:45:33 +0000

By Julia Angwin, Editor, Digits, The Wall Street Journal

Microsoft (MSFT) Chairman Bill Gates and Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt had an awkward encounter this morning at the Sun Valley mogulfest this morning — and after Google detailed plans Tuesday to create software it hopes will challenge Microsoft’s dominant Windows operating system.

Mr. Gates and his former lieutenant Nathan Myhrvold were walking out of the morning session when two reporters, including this one, asked Mr. Gates for a comment on the new Google operating system.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

How Social Networking Sites Can Reveal Your Social Security Number

Marisa Taylor | Tech Reporter, The Wall Street Journal — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:32:52 +0000

By Marisa Taylor, Tech Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

A new study says that mundane information like birthdays and hometowns on social-networking profiles can be used to accurately predict a user’s Social Security number, a key to identity theft.

In the study, published in the research journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers correctly guessed the first five digits of a person’s Social Security number about 40 percent of the time, just by knowing his or her hometown and birth date. Given those two pieces of information, they could predict all nine digits of his or her SSN 8.5 percent of the time with fewer than 1,000 attempts.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Questions for Luke Hohmann on ‘Serious’ Games

Carrie Porter | Intern, The Wall Street Journal — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:09:15 +0000

By Carrie Porter, Intern, The Wall Street Journal

Videogames often get criticized as a waste of time, but tech companies are using them to solve complex business problems. So-called “serious” games can help businesses understand what their customers need, spark ideas and make key product decisions.

One company developing them is Enthiosys, a product consulting firm based in Mountain View, Calif. Its founder and chief executive, Luke Hohmann, recently led a workshop in Chicago for intellectual-property strategists from Microsoft (MSFT), General Electric (GE), AT&T (T), Accenture (ACN) and other companies.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Buffett EBay Auction Was Won by Canadian Firm

Geoffrey Fowler | Reporter, The Wall Street Journal — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:02:23 +0000

By Geoffrey Fowler, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

When Warren Buffett auctioned off lunch with himself for charity last month, the winning bidder remained anonymous.

It turns out that the person who spent $1,680,300 for lunch with the investment guru wasn’t a person at all: it was Canadian wealth-management firm Salida Capital. It went public about its purchase Wednesday.

Courtenay Wolfe, Salida’s CEO, said that she and a handful of other employees will all share the lunch, which the firm’s partners paid for.

“We think we will be able to gain invaluable insights from his years of experience and current insights and perspectives,” she said. “We think lunch with Warren is going to be a once in a lifetime experience.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Why Google Voice Reminds Me of AT&T

Judy Shapiro | Contributing Writer, Advertising Age — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 07:01:50 +0000

By Judy Shapiro, Contributing Writer, Advertising Age

I’m an ex-AT&T (T) “Bell head,” so anything telecom always gets my special attention. When I saw the Google Voice re-announcement recently, I couldn’t help wondering, “Huh, what’s up with that? How does this fit into Google’s core business?” Mostly, though, I was interested in understanding why this and why now.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

David Hornik on the VC Math Problem

The Editors of The Deal — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 07:00:59 +0000

By The Editors of The Deal

David Hornik–a partner at August Capital Management LLC, which boasts raising the year’s biggest venture capital fund with its $650 million balanced-stage fund–weighs in on the challenges facing the VC industry, including what Union Square Ventures co-founder Fred Wilson has called “The Venture Capital Math Problem.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site