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If you were asked to design the perfect weapon to exploit this vulnerability as it manifests itself
in attractive, urban gay men, you’d want something that would intensify our isolation,
exaggerate our propensity to objectify each other, and persuade us to objectify ourselves -- by
encouraging us to believe that our purpose is to look good and have lots of sex. Manhunt would be your perfect weapon"Has Manhunt Destroyed Gay Culture?". It's a
great article, but what happened after its publication may be just as interesting.
So the post-publication story goes like this: Out publishes its incisive thinkpiece about
Manhunt.net [NSFW], the biggest gay hook-up site on the net,
and its effects on gay culture. Some of the article devotes itself to the political leanings of the
co-founders, Larry Basile and Jonathan Crutchley. Andy Towle at Towleroad takes that bit of info and reports that Crutchley has had
donated $2300 to the McCain
campaign. Not too many people are happy to hear that. Not his co-founder, not the McCain campaign, and certainly not
the members, many of whom cancel their subscriptions. Crutchley
subsequently steps down as
chairman of the company, ignitinganothercontroversy
over whether the actions of the gay community constitute a political witchhunt.
Yeah, this is kinda two separate posts in one, but oh well.
If you're weary of the typical fluffy Christian radio broadcasts, you'll find
Iron Sharpens Iron addresses a multitude of topics from a distinctly Reformed Christian worldview.
Chris asks the right questions, presents guests who have the answers, and continually challenges
Christians to apply their faith to every aspect of their lives.
"I thank God for Chris Arnzen and his Christ-centered ministry with IRON SHARPENS IRON. Most
grateful am I for his unwavering commitment to the absolute truth of Scripture. Here is a rare
voice on the radio today. May the Lord set a wide and open door before this vibrant program for all
to hear." ---Dr. Steven J. Lawson, Senior Pastor of Christ Fellowship Baptist Church,
Mobile, AL
"Chris Arnzen's love for and confidence in Scripture causes him to address issues without fear
while showing great respect for those who may disagree with his views. That's what makes IRON
SHARPENS IRON such an informative and beneficial radio program. If you want to hear clear, concise
thinking from a biblical perspective, listen to this show!"---Dr. Tom Ascol, author,
Executive Director of Founders ministries, Pastor of Grace Baptist Church, Cape Coral,
FL
Be a good boy and die so we don't have to retract our story.
An electronic gaffe at news outlet Bloomberg mistakenly sent an incomplete obituary for Apple CEO
Steve Jobs over the wire on Wednesday afternoon, and a tipster promptly sent the soon-retracted
file to gossip blog Gawker.
The lengthy file contains not only a preliminary obituary for the iconic Apple chief, but also a
list of suggested contacts for a more extensive story--Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Oracle CEO
Larry Ellison, and early Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki, among others.
The summary of Jobs' accomplishments, per the obituary, is that he "helped make personal computers
as easy to use as telephones, changed the way animated films are made, persuaded consumers to tune
into digital music, and refashioned the mobile phone."
Remember the Phantom? Depending on your perspective, this mysterious gaming console, first
announced in 2003, was either a too ambitious product that could never get off the ground (living
up to its "phantom" name in that it was almost never actually seen) or a big scam to part investors with
money. Over the years, the company made many announcements, almost none of which it lived up to.
The company was even sued
by its own investment bank for fraud, and the company's founder was charged as part of a stock scam. At
one point, people were shocked when the company hired a real gaming industry veteran as CEO, but
once he left pretty much
everyone thought the company was dead.
But... not so fast. A few years back it announced that it was ditching the gaming console concept,
but was still going to come out with a neat keyboard that could be used for gaming. Of course, it
promised that keyboard would be out years ago, and in true Phantom fashion, many delays followed. To be honest, I
had thought the company had finally gone completely out of business, but Wired is reporting that it
really honestly has a keyboard in production -- and it completely
sucks. As Wired notes, it certainly wasn't worth the long wait. The only redeeming factor that
Wired can find in the keyboard is the chance to own a piece of vaporware history. Just don't expect
to actually use it, because you'll be wishing you didn't.
Quote: Steve Warshak, founder of the company responsible for "Enzyte," has been sentenced to 25
years in prison and ordered to pay a fine of $93,000, says the AP. U.S. District Judge S. Arthur
Spiegel also ordered the company, along with other defendants, to forfeit more than $500 million
that it bilked from consumers. According to federal prosecutors the scam involved preying on
customer's reluctance to admit that they had ordered the "male enhancement" pills. Customers
ordered the pills, but were unable to cancel or get a refund. A former VP of the company testified
that Warshak required customers to provide notarized documents from a doctor proving that they had
small genitals in order to get a refund.
If customers complained, he said, employees were instructed to "make it as difficult as possible"
for them to get their money back. In some cases, Teegarden said, Warshak required customers to
produce a notarized statement from a doctor certifying Enzyte did not work.
"He said it was extremely unlikely someone would get anything notarized saying they had a small
penis," Teegarden said.
The judge had strong words for Warshak:
"This is a case about greed," Spiegel said as he reviewed the case. "Steven Warshak preyed on
perceived sexual inadequacies of customers."
Warshak's 75-year-old mother was also sentenced to jail time, but it's unlikely that she will serve
it because she's 75 and has cancer. Meanwhile, Warshak has 30 days to report to prison. http://consumerist.com/5043005/whos-...ears-in-prison
Thanks to the
always reliable Coolfer for digging up
this video from IFC, which features a two-part
interview with Vimeo founder Jakob Lodwick, Idolator's Maura Johnston and Muxtape founder Justin Ouellette. Since Justin has been incommunicado
since his service went down earlier this month, we're assuming the intereview was taped before
that. Double thanks to Coolfer for watching and transcribing the most relevant part for us:
In part two, some questions were posed to Ouellette about Muxtape (his music sharing site that
has attracted the attention of the RIAA):
How is that legal? A non-answer.
How to make money with Muxtape? Another non-answer.
The summer may be coming to a close but the things are just heating up at the RED L.A. User
Group.
Adobe is announcing the RED support soon and Kevan O'Brian is
coming to the meeting to brief us on the developments.
In this RED L.A. User Group exclusive presentation Kevan will go over the Adobe
Premiere and After Effects upcoming features. He will discuss how Adobe Production Premium package
can be used as an all-in-one solution and how it can augment the existing RED workflows. Another
exciting topic Kevan will address is the ability of Production Premium to provide VFX
previsualisation on the set.
A lucky User Group member will have an opportunity to test all the new features because Adobe is
providing this month's generous door prize worth $1,700 -- the Creative Suite® Production Premium.
James Matthers will be talking about his experiences with the RED ONE in practical
operations on various feature films. James is a director of photography and the president and
co-founder of the Digital Cinema Society.
Digital
Monolith's Chris Swartz will show their Digital Cinema Archive location data backup
device. This box is all you need to provide dailies backups on location.
Marc Salomon and Justin T. Ostensen of Visionlogic 4k will
present their recent RED commercial and music video work at Members' Showcase.
If you'd like to have your material considered for screening at a future date Members' Showcase
please email us or contact Igor at 818.843.3400.
The Owners' Circle will gather at the end of the meeting as usual. This forum will
provide the RED ONE owners with an opportunity to discuss various RED related topics in person in a
non-moderated environment. The Owners' Circle is open to all RED LAUG members.
Special thanks to eCinema Systems for providing High Definition displays.
There will be a suggested $5 donation to help with the cost of breakfast and refreshments. Our
rooftop parking is limited but there is plenty of street parking. Please observe posted
restrictions.
DigiMeld, a midtown-based video distribution company, has raised a $2
million Series A round.
The company was founded by CEO and serial entrepreneur Alex Mashinsky, a holder of 52 patents and
founder of Arbinet-thexchange (ARBX). Essentially, it's a P2P delivery system for video, which
makes it sound akin to Pando to us.
The company currently has a staff of 10, mostly technical. Mashinsky plans to use the new capital
to add four or five people to his team, focusing on sales and marketing.
DigiMeld, a startup offering its own technology for
streaming live video online, has raised a $2 million first round from various unspecified angels.
The NYC-based company pitches what it calls "grid streaming" an alternative to traditional CDNs
as well as P2P-based solutions. It's main test to date: A trial with NASA Television to stream a shuttle launch. DigiMeld was founded
by Alex Mashinsky, previously the founder of Arbinet—in fact, DigiMeld's
service relies on Arbinet's OptimizeIP platform. Though the company says it's an alternative to
CDNs, it also sees CDNs as potential clients. In addition to technology, it's also positioning
its site, DigiMeld.com, as a video portal. (Release via email)
Check out the best business jobs in digital media. Go
here for paidContent.org Job Board.
It seems everybody in Hollywood is developing a web show these days, but their approaches provide
a study in contrast.
Yesterday Chris and I visited Justine Bateman and her three partners at FM78.tv, a new production company focused exclusively on making content for
the web. Armed with revolutionary fever and Bateman’s idea for a show about a family candy
company, FM78.tv is currently working to make a top-notch, union-compliant, big-budget television
show that’s TV quality but doesn’t live on TV.
The actress, Bateman, most recently of Desperate Housewives but most memorably of
Family Ties, is the ringleader of a group that also includes writer and producer Jill
Kushner (The Ellen DeGeneres Show), Peter Murrieta (Wizards of Waverly Place)
and Alan Sereboff (Snowblind). The four met on the picket line during the recent
writers’ strike and developed the Speechless
pro-writer online video campaign.
FM78 wants to make one show and do it well. In contrast, Strike.TV, which originated from the same writers’ strike, is
aggregating some 45 shows — in many cases only a pilot — with the thought that,
because of the established talent creating the shows an audience will find them on the Internet
and they will somehow succeed, either in niche or mainstream fashion (see our interview with
Strike.TV, also from yesterday). The four founders of FM78, however, explicitly reject the notion
that the web is a farm team for TV, and hope to very soon have FM78 be their only job.
At FM78.tv we also recognize that ALL TV and Film distribution will be through the Internet
exclusively in short order. We therefore see no sense in wasting time before getting high-quality,
professional content online. We have seen user content and we have seen professionals doing user
content, but we are focused on bringing the high level of professional entertainment we have been
doing our entire careers straight to the Net.
What the two writer-led companies have in common is the overwhelming desire to rid themselves of
“notes” from the network executives who traditionally get a say in the creative
process. It’s a common theme here in L.A. and pretty much all anyone can talk about.
We met FM78 at Murrieta’s office in Hollywood yesterday and shot the above video of Bateman, Kushner, Murrieta and Sereboff explaining
their project and their upcoming show, Candy
Inc, which will feature Bateman, Jeff Garlin, Doug Stanhope and more and will be
directed by Steve Pink. They’re also working with the folks behind You
Suck at Photoshop for viral promotion. Provided FM78 can finance the series through
sponsorship, it is to be released in 18 parts early next year.
NPR has an audio
report on the debate about whether the Columbia Missourian, the professional newspaper
produced by the world's oldest journalism school, should go online-only, partner with the
Columbia Tribune, or just buck up and continue to lose a million dollars a year to sustain the
"Missouri Method" of print journalism training.
I blogged about this issue two months ago, when
I called J-school founder Walter Williams a "change agent" and said:
It's easy when you walk through an ivy-covered campus, looking at statues and portraits of great
men and women who were founders and builders and creators of empires, to drift into nostalgic
fantasies about tradition and past glories. We all do it.
But those people in the portraits were pioneers, risk-takers, change agents. We don't honor their
memory by clinging to what they built, but rather by understanding why they did what they did and
finding new ways to apply those principles in modern contexts. Embracing the future requires
learning from the past, but also letting go of it.
In 2004, Adrie Reinders, Roeland Reinders and Marion Freijsen started a company called OHM
Inc. OHM focuses on doing business development for technology companies mainly all
over the world, leveraging contacts in the Fortune 1500 companies the founders had created over
the course of their individual careers. It was with OHM, that Adrie and Marion realized
connecting people was their core business rather than one of many tools they used.
“It inspired us to write the N.Factor, and share our experiences with networking and how to
apply the principles learnt with other entrepreneurs and high potentials in the business world.
It is very much a hands-on book, with lots of anecdotes from the authors’ careers rather
than an academic book. The
N.Factor looks at many different aspects of networking, including the use of technology to
maintain and enhance your network as well as networking in many different cultures, with
contributions from diverse countries.”
Marion and Adrie will kick off the series next week followed by a Live Q&A. To celebrate our
third installment of Authors@Mashable we are giving away 30 autographed copies of the book. Just
fill out the survey
before 30 other people do* and you’re a winner ! (*48 US contiguous states only
please)
---
Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:
New York-based Bloomberg News accidentally published an erroneous obituary of Apple founder Steve
Jobs Thursday on their external wire system, The U.K.’s Daily Telegraph reported.
Call me skeptical, but I'm willing to sustain myself entirely on a diet of
my own words if writer Aaron Sorkin and
producer Scott Rudin can actually manage to
make something entertaining out of a film about the formation of social networking site Facebook and the success of its founders, as Variety
reports they are working on over at Sony.
Honestly, what can an Oscar-winning producer and an oft-acclaimed scribe do with a rags-to-riches
arc and the sight of two guys tapping away at computers and taking meetings? Sure, at least
Sorkin and Rudin are two talented guys in their own right, but I'm really missing whatever
inherent, original, exceedingly relevant drama they might see in this project. Killing time at
work on Facebook is one thing; this is something else.
On the one hand, I'd like to see this fall through, and on the other, I'd only be rewarded with a
good flick if proven wrong. Regardless, here's what appears to be the official Facebook group of the whole
shebang, and if any of you guys get wind of a Fox-backed MySpace project with a title like Major Tom or something,
be a pal and pass it on.
Financial news service Bloomberg spooked some Apple investors on Wednesday when it mistakenly
published an obituary for company co-founder Steve Jobs. The incident occurred at 4:27 p.m Eastern
time after a reporter making updates to the stock 17-...
The death of Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs was prematurely announced yesterday afternoon by
Bloomberg. A pre-prepared stock obituary was accidentally posted to Bloomberg’s corporate
client wire service, even through the story was marked ‘Hold for release –
Do not use’. It was quickly spotted by a user, and sent to Gawker.com, where the obituary can
[...]
I wonder if the staffer made this mistake will get the axe?
Despite his still being very much alive, an obituary for Apple founder Steve Jobs was published on
the Bloomberg news wire service, and mistakenly sent to thousands of clients.
According to Bloomberg, a routine update to the article by a staffer resulted in the article
accidently being sent out.
The article described Jobs as the man who, "Helped make personal computers as easy to use as
telephones, changed the way animated films are made, persuaded consumers to tune into digital music
and refashioned the mobile phone." It also included praise from Bill Gates for Job's influence on
the industry. Blank spaces were left for Jobs's age and cause of death.
The upcoming trial against ‘The Pirate Bay Four’ has been delayed and at
its earliest will begin at the end of this year - maybe even next year. Stockholm District Court
initially said that the trial would start by the end of the summer, but gathering damage claims
and serving summons took longer than expected.
After a two
year investigation into The Pirate Bay, Swedish authorities filed charges against four people.
Now, eight months later, there is still no date set for the trial.
“The process has taken a lot of time. First, it took time serving judicial summons to the
defendants and then we had to gather damage claims from the complainants,” Anita Thimberg,
a clerk at the Stockholm District Court, told DN.se.
Several of the lawyers, defendants and complainants apparently have fully-booked agendas, and it
is difficult to schedule a date when everyone can participate. At the moment, it is still unclear
how many days trial it will take once it starts. “We’re approximating between six to
ten days,” Anita Thimberg said.
January 31st, four individuals - Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, Peter Sunde and businessman
Carl Lundström were charged with facilitating copyright infringement. The prosecutor asked
for a $188,000 fine for each - and the confiscation of their computers. The four also face up to
2 years in prison, but this is very unlikely based on the evidence gathered by the authorities.
That’s not all though, as the entertainment industry has also filed for damages. This
spring, the MPAA demanded
$15.4 million from The Pirate Bay, to cover the damages they suffered from 4 movies and 13
TV-episodes that were made available via the BitTorrent tracker. In addition, the IFPI claimed $2.5 milion in damages
and Antipiratbyrån asked for $1.1 million.
Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde has always been positive about the outcome. Even in the worst
case scenario the tracker and the site will remain online, Sunde told TorrentFreak. “In case we lose
the pending trial (yeah right) there will still not be any changes to the site. The Pirate Bay
will keep operating just as always. We’ve been here for years and we will be here many
more.”
)
and reject those that you are not interested in
(
)
In 2004, Adrie Reinders, Roeland Reinders and Marion Freijsen started a company called OHM
Inc. OHM focuses on doing business development for technology companies mainly all
over the world, leveraging contacts in the Fortune 1500 companies the founders had created over
the course of their individual careers. It was with OHM, that Adrie and Marion realized
connecting people was their core business rather than one of many tools they used.
Call me skeptical, but I'm willing to sustain myself entirely on a diet of
my own words if writer 
After a two
year investigation into The Pirate Bay, Swedish authorities