Results tagged “gawker”

For those of you who watched Britney's birthday on Good Morning America, which we'll assume is all of you, Four Seasons resident and Google VP Marissa Mayer graced Today this morning. The multi-millionaire chatted to Matt Lauer about this year's top Google search words (Obama, Facebook, McCain) and queries on the tanking economy (e.g., people are cooking at home more). Her voice is much more raspy/sexy than we had assumed. Because we judge people based off of their hair color. But you'll have to see her appearance over at Valleywag. (Sir Owen Thomas gets granted the secret embedded code. We were not.)

Just in case you thought you were over it, you're not. Not by the longest shot, kiddo. Because the Violet Blue vs. Boing Boing is far from finished. This most recent attack comes to you in convenient Twitter form, via Boing Boing comments moderator, the loopy Teresa Nielsen Hayden, who calls Blue a fibber and accusing Gawker Media of an all out attack. (?!) And then there was some sort of linkage freak out. Someone's hair was pulled. Maybe. It's all very confusing, but Valleywag fills you in on all the savory details right here.

While we totally think Self-Help/How-To's are getting out of hand (Hello. We've run out of shelf space here), when we were perusing our RSS feeds -- also known as blogger crack -- we ran into this little gem from The Boston Globe, via Gawker. A picture/article on how to figure out whether you're a day-person or night-person, how long naps should take, and (wait for it..) how to take a nap. The Gawker comments are totes worth a read, by the way, if you decide to click through.

Oh, the East Coast. It tickles us ever so.

Rejoice, space believers! For there is finally - yes, finally! - someplace you can go on l'Internet to read about such sci-fi-ness (excuse us, "science fiction-ness" for all of you purists) ranging from Samuel R. Delany to Joss Whedon to Small Wonder. Io9, a Bay Area-based blog care of Gawker, launched yesterday, and we couldn't be more thrilled. That is, until we read about their editor, Annalee Newitz.

"James Frey Is A 'Rockstar Vampire' On Facebook"

We're both flattered an saddened by our witty betters at Gawker -- flattered that they stole our idea to spotlight comments (not that we're especially innovative in doing so, but still); a little saddened that theirs is already so much better in its execution. Depressing, yet we soldier on, because many of your thoughts deserve to be read a second time. Here's this week's top 5.

Come, let us gaze boldly into the amazing future together, where events such as these will affect you ... in the future.

The big news yesterday, which hit our feed reader right before our wifi crapped out, was Google CEO Eric Schmidt driving down the 101 to Cupertino to join Apple's Board of Directors. Considering some of the trouble Apple's been in lately -- suppliers suing newspapers over reports of overworked employees in China, a less-than-stellar environmental record, stock option backdating scandals -- could this be a way for Google to outsource all the evil they're supposedly not going to do? Oh right, this is about taking on Microsoft, kinda. Apple certainly loves to talk trash about Windows.

We got an e-mail from a tipster about a post on Laughing Squid entitled "Frank Chu on Consumating." We thought at first that it was about Frank's musings on sex, something we weren't entirely ready for as we had just finished lunch, but we clicked through only to discover that Frank posted a profile on Consumating.com, a site has a rep as the online dating site for bloggers. Isn't there a "Twelve Galaxies Date" out there? And there's an online dating site for bloggers? Wouldn't that be kind of awkward in that one could easily find out way too much about the other other person by reading their blog? Not that we've ever tried to do that (damn password protected blog).

Well, the cat's out of the bag about the new blog from Gawker Media. We've known for a while, but have been pretty good about keeping mum about it due to this SFist's work with Fleshbot. As PJ Corkery revealed Wednesday, it's going to be called Valleywag, and it's going to be helmed by the affable Nick Douglas, who's moving on from his post as editor at Blogebrity.

Uh-oh, there's drama between The Daly and The Gavster once again -- GavvyGav brings his veto hammer, but Chris throws the recent reconcilliation speech back at him. Speaking of real estate, an Oakland developer wants to mix light industrial and residential in a new West Oakland construction. Google can't avoid politics anymore, turning away FBI requests for information on the one hand and defending their book search against angry publishers on the other.

So, of course, we were busy yukking it up with funnyman Merlin Mann last night at the Web 1.0 confab. Silly us, making fun of the 'monetizing,' 'paradigm shifting,' 'game changing' intellects who took a bunch of great ideas from engineers and developers and turned them into marketing juggernauts, with or without a business plan. Let's just say that VRML, FrontPage, Flash, the <blink> tag, dual ISDN and other ante-dot-bomb technologies were rightly pilloried to a delighted audience. And then we crashed the Google party at the Argent Hotel (translation from French to English: "Money place to stay for a night.")

If we haven't given you enough ideas on what to do this weekend, how about hanging out at the Chronicle looking for famous people? From an email sent to Chronicle staff earlier this week:

As we all know, it doesn't matter if you can write your way out of a paper bag, all that matters is if you can compete on the field of intramural athletics. We have a theory that your personal relationships won't ever really evolve past high school, so the kings on the field will be the kings at the office for the rest of your life (it applies especially to you Ivies). Self-reflection and a feeling of intellectual superiority is just a crutch -- the only real accomplishment is a two-out, go-ahead RBI.

Well, if you are, or just want to be, do we have the Craigslist job listing for you!

Oh, so much geekery, we're gonna do this bullet-style. Shall we get started?

Was it the Best Week Ever? Not so much. But that doesn't mean there wasn't enough good stuff to go around.

We headed over to Bimbo's last night with some degree of trepidation, since our favorite rock critic in the whole world, Kelefa Sanneh, had just described headliners the Go! Team as "a British indie-pop version of the Black Eyes Peas," and not in the good way. (Vote for Kelefa (and Will Shortz) in the Gawker NY Times hotties poll!) So okay, we were a little skeptical when the lights went down and the stage lights were set on "swively" and the fun "the band is coming on stage!!!!" music started up, and this teensy woman with a huge voice and hardcore British accent starts scream/rapping over the horn section and harmonica and bass and two drum sets. It also did not help our mood that there was a couple, the man-half of which with that distinctive indie-rocker b.o., making out with the thrashing arm and leg motions that only new couples with an exhibitionist streak like to do. But... it is a testament to the power of the Go! Team's relentless positivity!!!!! that we shook off our befuddlement and decided we were having a funky-fresh good ol' time! They were totally like a cartoon band, like Josie and the Pussycats, or Hi Hi Puffy Amiyumi --like, we had this feeling that on the way to the gig, the Go! Team had just saved the universe from space creatures or stopped a series of bank heists or something, and that any second later, we would fade to black and the Hanna Barbera logo would do its trademark swoopy synthesizer rotation.

In order to provide you, dear readers, with the best content we can provide, SFist occasionally has to delve into things with which we might not want to delve into. Case in point is the release of the sixth Harry Potter book, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince." Many of you might care about the release of this book and because it might be of interest, we shall write about it. Us? We don't care at all about any of this. The only reason why we read the first five books- twice- was merely out of some morbid curiosity to see what the entire hubbub was. And the only reason why we'd very often find ourselves up way past our bedtime reading the book wasn't because we couldn't put it down but because we were so unenthused about the book, we just couldn't wait to finish them. Nope. Don't care about Harry Potter at all. But as we said, many do. So much so, in fact, the Gavster has proclaimed Friday to be "All Potter's Eve," as did Mayor Matt Neely of Mountain View. The Pope even weighed in on the books, calling them "seductive" and "corrupting" to little children and there's so many jokes to be made here that we have a headache just thinking about them. And as usual whenever something this big happens, the business sections are full of stories about how Harry Potter might just be able to save independent bookstores. Or keep people from seeing the new remake of Willie Wonka. In fact, anticipation has run so high for this book that the Onion joked that security on the books were better than that of our public transit system and Gawker commented that it's probably true. Measures, however, haven't been good enough to keep all the books secure as various bookstores around the world have accidentally sold a few copies.

KRON 4's Brian Shields organized a huuuuuuge blogger meetup at their studios. They've decided to keep working on the rollout of their aggregator and commentary.

Awwww. We're feeling all soft and snuggly after reading this sweet Gawker post that says kinda nice stuff about San Francisco!

Well, SFist got our legal history off to a good start -- we're involved in a court case, and we're not the defendant! Nor are we the plaintiff -- though if you don't abide by the terms of our Creative Commons license, we will come after you, and we've been in the same room as Lawrence Lessig, so watch out.

We initially passed this press release from the Author's Guild along to Gothamist Jen so that she could get the scoop on Gawker and FishbowlNY. Why? Because it looks like the Author's Guild along with the American Society of Journalists and Authors and the National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981, have come through with an $18 million dollar settlement for copyright infringement by companies like Time, Inc., The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal for republishing freelancer's content online without their permission.

So as it rains so hard, we stare out the window and we wonder, with a little sigh in the heart -- what is our plucky broken-hearted former first lady Kimberly Guilfoyle doing these days? Is she happy? Is she sad? Is she bundled up in a parka in the cold, cold city of New York? Well! Ask and ye shall receive. Making like a Gawker again, we turn to the Post's Page Six -- which reports that the soon-to-be-former Mrs. Newsom was making some heavy-duty eye contact and lingering into the night with a certain special someone! At a Court TV party for Catherine Crier's book about Scott Peterson, no less! So who could it be? Mayor Bloomberg? Mark Geragos? Robert Blake? Gothamist's adorable publisher Jake? No! You guessed wrong! It's MICHAEL BOLTON!!! ....maybe it's the hair? (Hey Kimberly: if he says he loves you -- he lied.)

That's right, we finally have an excuse to link to Page Six, just like the kids over at Gawker do every day. Seems like our beloved Phil Bronstein "looked awfully cozy" with Mick Jagger's star-crossed ex Jerry Hall (pictured) at the Finn & Porter in Austin's Hilton. Of course, the nice woman Phil was escorting home from the Edinburgh Castle Pub after the Hunter S. Thompson wake wasn't Ms. Hall, but we're going to give Phil the benefit of the doubt, as they're probably just friends from way back. Either that, or he's polyamorous, and we're not the types to judge (at least in that regard).

Oy. That Gawker party was a doozy. We're going to have to give Krucoff some credit -- we're going to have to face off in a liver-busting tiebreaker to claim best two out of three. Our place or yours, Andrew? We woke up at nine, and a cool, grey morning with a light drizzle greeted us. We went back to bed, and woke up again just to make a promised appearance at the "Bloggers vs. Journalism" panel that afternoon. Besides, Jason Kottke's one of our heroes, being a fellow unemployed blogger and all.

Why do we love Lizzie? For starters, she managed to help get a blogger into the White House Press Room. Granted, getting into the White House Press Room seems easier than ever -- "hey, look at me, I'm a hustler with a fake name and a conservative agenda! I'm credentialed!" Still, not since bloggers managed to get some nose-bleed seats at the DNC have we gotten the respect as journalists that we deserve, damnit.

Everyone's favorite attorney crime fighter, Kimberly Guilfoyle! Angry parolees in Oakland staged a protest at Oakland's City Hall on Wednesday, claiming Mayor Jerry Brown was unfairly blaming them for crime and failing to support them in finding jobs. When they got to City Hall, though, imagine their surprise when it turned out the City had organized a job fair for them! Quick thinking, Mayor Jerry! In kind of a Sore-Loserman move, though, some of the protesters then got in a screaming match with the fair organizers, claiming it had been set up solely to make the parolees look bad. Nonetheless, 16 people signed up for various city programs, and Jerry Brown released a pugnacious statement about not crashing people's parties. In Daly City, a middle-aged gay Asian man wearing women's clothing was found stabbed to death in his backyard. Investigators have no leads and tentatively suspect that some kind of hate crime was involved, but also note that the man had not been robbed of his jewelry and had not been sexually assaulted.