Jack of All Blogs » Citizen Journalism

If you got no clue and need an excuse, blame Google

waldorf — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 08:16:11 +0000

Jack of All Blogs favourite Michael Arrington has been at it once more. A supposedly French hacker forwarded several stolen/found Twitter documents to the Techcrunch staff and other online publications. They were obtained by guessing or recovering the password of both a Twitter employee and Twitter’s co-founder Evan Williams’s wife. Twitter uses Google Apps for domains and apparently Google has a simple password recovery method.

Although I missed the memo, it is an acceptable journalistic strategy to blame ‘Do no evil Google’ and get away with any moral issues. Moral issues about posting stolen documents and company secrets. Moral issues about posting these documents and at the same time knowing everyone who works at Twitter.

It’s not our fault that Google has a ridiculously easy way to get access to accounts via their password recovery question. It’s not our fault that Twitter stored all of these documents and sensitive information in the cloud and had easy-to-guess passwords and recovery questions.

Although Arrington a ruthless, self-centric, machine is, he does not seem to have enough of gut to blame people for being dumb and use simple passwords in the first place.

WWDC, Pundits can’t stop predicting again. Here’s our prediction.

waldorf — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 12:08:12 +0000

Every year again, in the second week of June, the Apple’s WorldWide Developers Conference (WWDC for intimates) takes place and year after year again it does not only excite all Apple and tech pundits, but also incites them to publish their predictions. Most of them usually being wrong, but they always serve as awesome linkbait and keep the conversation among A-listers going.
Every year again you can also find bingo cards to print out and keep your no-life nerdism excited. What could be better than sitting on the edge of your chair, reading a live blog of the conference and wait until Apple has uploaded the conference video. Surely not pr0n!

Of course here at JOAB we do not want to miss out and also want to share our predictions.

iPhone 3GMYM: A new iPhone will be announced and will be named GMYM. GMYM stands for Give Me Your Money
At least 3 bloggers will run out of battery power
Many pictures will be uploaded during the event, just as many photos will be hotlinked on other sites
During the event Duncan Riley will make more stupid LOLcat pictures only to complain publicly after the event that the release of the iPhone 3GMYM will take months longer in Australia than in the US
After the event, Gruber, of Daring Fireball fame, will post ‘Told you all!’
Apple will not announce a tablet
Apple will obviously bump the speeds of the slower unibody MacBook. We actually are surprised it took the wannabe pundits more than a week to discover that the almost 7% CPU bump for the White MacBook resulted in a faster machine
Many people will be present at the Moscone center
There will be spotlights

All in all, the event will be disappointing. No announcement of new Apple powered NASA capsules or satellites will be made. Apple will not solve global warming or make the UK dryer for that matter. War on earth will continue. Poverty will not be solved and Steve Jobs will not announce a cure for cancer. There won’t be any bacon either.

McDonalds Comes To Save The Union-Free Blogger

waldorf — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 16:24:01 +0000

If you’re still trying to work out that bloggers union deal, especially the ‘work from home work out’ $tarbuck$ part of the contract, and finances are rather limited and you don’t manage it to squat days long that posh franchise with the thousands varieties of coffee-imitations… fear not.
Especially not if you’re UK based.

McDonalds comes to your rescue. Starting today.

With the launch of free Wi-Fi access in McDonald’s restaurants from Monday, we can provide the ultimate work break for UK employees to conveniently access the worldwide web. From the comfort of our restaurants, Brits will be able to come out of hiding and surf freely, for free.
[emphasis: waldorf]

I can perfectly imagine how it will feel to blog from home, sat on a hard wooden bench with a clinical table, fries and a tray in front of me. Not to mention the oh so del.icio.us iceberg salad and in ketchup drenched cucumbers falling on my keyboard. No, I don’t want my menu to be maximized, but do you have a power outlet where I can plug in? And maybe a cushion too, because those benches are so comfortable.

Soon coming near to you, 4 Dell equipped bloggers, hosted on blogspot, downloading their free music thanks to McDonalds FreeFi and Ronald ‘Beta’ McDonald 2.0.

I Love New Media (And Always Online Culture)

waldorf — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 21:20:48 +0000

Lets be honest, things can’t get better than this can they? First you get YouTube, MySpace and Youtube (both things to forget as soon as possible), but then the real platforms launch and they generate some brilliant content.
Forget about the Scobles, Arringtons and Calacanis’s, today it’s all about Valleywag and anonymous twitterers.

Forget even FSJ, this is brilliant. A striking and snarky analysis what exactly is going on on the internet:

Q to Session 2 – would any of the panelists use the apps they have seen today? Not one “yes”

Despite grounbreaking advancements in search technology, I still can’t find a female in this room.

wow…you would think the techcrunch40 web site would not have DDoS just because Arrington is on stage

Having spent a few moments with the 40 list, I am not sure how I feel right now to think we didn’t make the top40.

This is live reporting, interesting live reporting! A worthy Cowboy!
[via Valleywag.]

Where Will You Blog Next Year?

Franky — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 01:35:26 +0000

Steve Rubel, power marketer raises a good point in yesterday’s entry, Building an Online Identity Through Lifestreams.

Where I will publish in a year’s time is anyone’s guess. However, what you can bank on is that I will have even more community accounts than I do now.

Right now, just as most other bloggers, the number of online profiles I have reminds me of the early days of domaining. You never have enough of them and any semi interesting, or worse even hyped, platform soon has you as member too.

But what’s the point of all those profiles? Agreed, there’there’s Facebook, where one can add almost everything. Or just stick to a Facebook profile and MySpace-ify the formerly geek cyber space of students.
But does exclusive Facebook networking alone satisfy the blogger or does one have to jump the bandwagon and spend valuable time on every possible network? And how much time does all this cost?

But most of all, where will you blog next year? Will any of those profiles, or services such as tumblr, replace your blog?