Best Damn Tech Show, Period.

So what’s up in tech this week?  Here’s your midweek rundown.

Gimme Back my Pic Bitches - So this group of singers ripped off a Billy Joel song and got applauded by 10’s of 10’s of geeks for including them in the video and then this woman got pissed at them for stealing her picture and they were all like “Screw you” and she was all like “Meet my lawyer” and YouTube was all like “I’m taking down your vid” and then the group was all like “sorry” and she was all like “Pay me” and Michael Arrington was all like “Boooooooo!!!”

I’m Popular, Fuckers! - So Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks has 5,000 friends on Facebook, and he’s all like “Oh noz, what do I do?”

I’m WebFamous, who are you? - So formerly reputable Forbes magazine puts out their top 25 web peoplez.  Only problem is, we haven’t heard of half of the folks on it.  Then Scoble was all like “Oh no, so many others belong on that list” and then Rubel was like “Surely others belong on there”, and Perez Hilton was all “Weeeeeeee!”, and Cashmore was like *barf*.  Adam Plante surely belonged on that list.   For what, we have no idea.  But from the looks of that list, that’s all the criteria they were using.

Online office applications are craptastic…still.

Digg says “Gimme dat money!” - Digg’s up for sale, Digg’s not up for sale, Digg’s up for sale, Digg’s not up for sale, Digg’s up for sale, Kevin Rose drinks a lot.  End of fucking story.  Next!

I saw an Android and it said BOOYA! - OMFGZ y’all, I totes saw a phone with Google Androidz!  OMFGWOW.  Yeah, big whoop.  Give us 10 bucks and we’ll show you our asses, both are equally as interesting.   Google’s got a phone operating system, but not, we’ll believe it when we see it and then act accordingly.

I Shall Call it……..Mini-Apple! - So Steve Jobs was sittin around thinking of shit to make and he said “Yo…lets make a smaller Macbook and all of the geeks will get horny over it”.  And they did.   Maybe.

And that’s it, that’s this week so far in tech.   We’re spent.

Opera is breaking out the big guns…lawyers.   Today, Opera filed a complaint with the EU against Microspank.

They don’t want IE bundled with Windows, as it gives Microsoft unfair advantage in the browser war, and they want IE to comply with web standards.

Hmmmm.  Don’t we all?  I love Opera, they have big brass balls.

However.   Is there anyone bitching about Safari and iTunes coming bundled with OS X?  No?  *crickets* Anyone?  *more crickets*.  Oh yeah, nobody cares….yet.

So big ups to Opera on getting them some press coverage, but nobody in the world can make Microsoft comply to “standards” that aren’t really standard from a legal perspective.  We’ll be keeping a Geek eye on this one for y’all.

_drew

FINALLY! Announced yesterday, Google had defeated Microsoft by taking a 5% stake in AOL. Now at this point, most would say “Bah, who cares? AOL sucks!” And they do. But what really matters is AIM service which has rested steadily atop other instant messaging services.

You can now simply log into your GMail account and chat with GMail users as well AIM users. It’s very simple to use and is another step toward Google’s world domination!

For anyone not using GMail, GET A MAIL ACCOUNT!

• It’s free!
• Gigs of space!
• Supports POP and IMAP.
• Chatting with your friends right within the page (or pop the message out).
• Simple searching for a message you need to track down.
• 40+ Languages (Über vierzig Sprachen).
• Few ads, and ones that actually relate to your message.
• Great spam filter.
• Everyone else is doing it!

Also, by having a GMail account, you’ll be given access to many other Google features like Calendar, Reader (for RSS feeds), Maps, Groups, Documents, Language Tools, and even a personalized Google homepage allowing you to add an endless amount of plugins!

I personally had been leaving my instant messaging client open all day along with my Gmail just to keep up with others. It killed resources and I personally never found an application that merged the two that I liked. I think this is another great move by our friends at GMail.

Beer me!

Schmidt

People request features.   That’s the great part of having a site that a lot of people use.   Flickr has millions of users.

It’s probably my favorite site on the net, and one of the greatest moves Yahoo has ever made.   I am not a photographer persay, but I like taking pictures from time to time.   One of the features that Flickr has lacked was editing the photo while logged onto the site.   I hate having to use Photoshop, mostly because I suck at using it.   I’m not a graphic artist.

About a year ago, I played around with a site called Picnik.  My immediate thought was “Why doesn’t flickr do something with them?”  Well, they have.

Now you can edit your photos right from flickr by just clicking “edit”.  The picnik interface is awesome, it lets you crop/resize, change the exposure, adjust color, sharpen, and take out red-eye.   Most of this can be done automatically too!

Sweet, looks like I’ll be using Flickr even more than I use it now.

_drew

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Tags: flickr, photos, picnik, edit

Our friend Tim Westergren from Pandora popped up on the GigaOM show today.   Awesome job Tim!

“The day that an MP3 player is always connected [to the internet] is the day when broadcast radio vanishes” says Pandora.com’s Tim Westergen, a leader in the fight to save Internet Radio.

http://revision3.com/gigaom/westergren

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Tags: pandora, gigaom, timwestergren, video, interview

So in case you don’t know, advertising sucks for the most part.   Rarely do I see an ad that makes me want to buy something.   However, that has changed with the new ad for the Apple iPod Touch.

It’s not just the ad, it’s the story behind it.

Basically, regular Joe, err Nick….Nick Haley, who is a student, created an ad for the iPod touch as a project.

It was pretty cool:

Apple reached out to him and instead of asking him to remove it because it wasn’t created by them, they asked if they could touch it up a bit (pardon the pun), and put it on TV.   That’s how a company should be run.

I’m notoriously a PC fan who recently converted to Apple.  This is why.   The ad was well done, and just because it wasn’t done by an Apple employee or an ad agency, doesn’t mean the world shouldn’t see it. 

Bravo apple.  The ad will sell a few million of these hot hot sexy machines.  Not only that, but it’ll sell a few singles for the band CSS.  The song is stuck in my brain.  That’s advertising.

_drew

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Tags: apple, ipodtouch, nick haley, ads, ad, css, hot sex, sex, music

Former Rocketboomer, Best Damn Hottie, Hot, Hot, Hot winner and more recently, ABC’s answer to new media has been quietly released from her contract (or has apparently decided not to renew) with the network after it became quite evident that the experiment bit the big one.

Traditional media (and traditional viewers) have traditionally had a difficult time adopting new media so it shouldn’t come as a huge shocker to us. I thought Amanda was a pretty risky choice. Her quirkiness was at times a little too quirky, even for a quirky bastard like me so for old schoolers, it was most likely, too much. A spot like Rocketboom was a far better platform as it has an underground vibe to it rather than being smothered with an establishment feel. Overall a failed experiment but no harm, no foul. Amanda is off to pursue other things (of course we wish her well), ABC will go back to the drawing board and most likely come up with another potentially lame option. Maybe Chris Crocker on assignment?

Forbes Magazine revealed their list for wealthiest Americans and I gotta say, it’s riddled with geeks. Noticeably absent is me, Flemo but I think that’s because I have a non-profit status.

So Gatesy (Bill Gates) still heads up the list at #1 with a cool $59 billion, Ello (Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle) commands $26 billion and holds the #4 slot, sneaking ahead of the Brinny and Page show (Sergey Brin and Larry Page, co-founders of a little startup called Google) at #5 with 18.5 billion apiece.

Other notables include Delly (Michael Dell) with $17.2 billion, Balmy (Steve Ballmer, Microsoft mouthpiece) with $15.2 million, the Other White Schmidt (Eric Schmidt, Google CEO) with $6.5 billion and rounding out the list is Rand with $2 and 59 cents.

Check out the full list and keep being geeky, apparently you’ll increase your odds at making the list.

Thanks to this tweet, the world now knows Google Presentations is Live.

Yeah, we knew it was coming, but hey, it’s fun.   Did I just say powerpoint presentations are fun?  Um.  Anyone who knows me knows that I hate them.  But um.   This could be fun.   You can share the slides in a nice presentation chatroom.

It’s kinda sexy.

Check out mah h0t pr3s3ntatioN:
http://docs.google.com/Present?docid=dd2z3wgq_38ddmdj6&fs=true

_drew

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Tags: googlepresentation, powerpoint, slides, drewolanoff, best damn tech show period

Oh good lord, here we go!   We’re done with Web 2.0 apparently and we’re on to Web 3.0.   Google must be thinking about it already because our buddy Eric Schmidt had an answer ready to go.

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Tags: schmidt, bullschmidt, google, web30, web20