Jack of All Blogs » Humor

Shiny Trends/Shiny Digital/Shiny Media hits ultimate level of ridicule

waldorf — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 22:33:39 +0000

If before we weren’t interested at all by Shiny Media things have changed over the last weeks. Let’s be honest, why would us cowboys and muppets have bothered to follow a bunch of (not so) hot geek chicks and gadget bloggers who brought nothing to the party but occasionally were quoted in teh local UK press? Indeed, I couldn’t think of any reason to read those sites either.

But life changes and Shiny Media went in administration. Less than 2 months after new blogger gigs were available and only weeks after new editors were announced. Ever since then the blogosphere has been following Chris Price and his team. Much has been written since then and the network made a return as Shiny Trends.

Leaving aside the whole debacle with no communication with former freelancers and editors, certainly no form of financial remuneration for ex-staffers, Shiny Trends in itself is an interesting engine. Mainly operated from its Twitter account which reads as a perfect comedy show.

Today alone we had the pleasure to read following tweets with A-class comedy value.

Obviously the rumour mill is turning on full speed and a little, trust worthy birdies told us that there has been an operation of around £50,000 to reboot the network in a so-called Phoenix pre-package. Here at JOAB we will not bother investigating all these rumours because they certainly are funnier when launched by other people and there is absolutely no truth about them. But our colleague and former JOAB author, Franky was in touch with Chris Price for another tweet.

When following the bit.ly shorturl http://bit.ly/f6aeg we are greeted with a story from 09 July 2009 at the Shiny Media site.

This post (click the image for full size screencap) was written less than 2 weeks before Shiny Media went in to administration. Money quote:

They would also need to commit to paying ex-Shiny Media staff and freelancers what they’re owed until the debt is fully paid off. Don’t worry you’ll get it back, honest guv (that’s what we told them).

One can only think this post has been backdated today by Chris and the boys Price and (Ashley) Norris are having lots of fun. But who would want to work/write for them? I certainly wouldn’t. Even not if they would actually pay.

Update: The pi$$ take level becomes apparent when checking Google’s cache for said ‘Finance blogger’ entry (again click for larger version of screencap).

Another Twitter account, @Shinydigital is also maintained and communicates regularly with @shinytrends. Interesting fact here is that Shiny Digital Ltd. was registered with Companies House on 16.07.2009, one day before Shiny Media went administration.

Another one bites the dust. RIP JOAB 1.0

waldorf — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 11:28:34 +0000

With the announcement that JOAB beloved Jeremy Wright stepped down at B5Media we are sad to report that good ol’fashioned Jack of All Blogs died in the same breath.

Back in the days JOAB was snark blog par excellence, mainly excelling in it’s offensive style. Ran and edited by a snark master who we rather prefer to ignare and totally blank nowadays, JOAB was feared and every problogger or A-lister in the ‘about blogging’ scene became the victim. But times have changed and all these bloggers have become a snorefest. With Jeremy’s change in position the last of the failbloggers has died and taken down Jack of All Blogs at the same time.
Before I dive in to an identity crisis after yesterday’s event, I would love to thank JOAB’s preferred victims.

Scrivs and Mike Rundle.

Jack of All Blogs indirect being a creation of Paul Scrivens and his Fine Fools network we have to thank Scrivs for good fun times and much laughter on New Year’s Day 2007. Never mind that Splashpress acquired the Wisdump less than half a year later.

Foot-in-the-mouth-blogger par excellence, Mike Rundle always was omni-present in JOAB comments, often trying to return how much JOAB would love to be a member of 9rules. Mike we love, you. If not for your witty comments, for your funny banter in the B5Media – 9rules war.

Sadly both Rundle and Scrivs have retired in boredom.

Matt Craven

Being a friend of the original JOAB editor, Matt Craven always was good sport and often first to comment on rumours, snark. Matt is a great personality and was an awesome Blog Herald owner/editor. Sadly he seems to have retired in to WoW. I wonder if he’s looking forward to have Twitter stations in WoW or the next Elder Scrolls.

Jeremy Wright

Main culprit of the death of JOAB1.0, Jeremy Wright was maybe our favourite commenter here at JOAB. Always the first one to hit out at Scrivs and Rundle, stirring the fire in the comments and making sure we had many a great day. Often we had more fun in the commentfire between Rundle/Scrivs, Craven and Wright.
Rumour goes that Wright used to send internal emails about JOAB entries to B5Media contributors and channel editors.

Wright now has become a member of the B5Media board. We think he should become a consultant of Splashpress Media as well… and ghost contributor to JOAB.

Matt Mullenweg

Matt, sadly you have never been enough on the JOAB radar, but we recognize that you have matured admirably over the last years and now even would not want to have you on our snark attack radar anymore. Please create some more controversy as we really do not want to start reading Om Malik’s snorefest.

Franky

Last but not least there’s Franky. Nowadays he is Assistant Editor in Chief at Splashpress Media. Ever since he started writing here at JOAB his aggressiveness has gone downhill as weeks passed. Once shit-stirrer par excellence he then took over Wisdump from his idol Scrivs and since then things have gone downhill to say the least. Rumour goes he even doesn’t believe in snark anymore. We bet he must have a LiveJournal blog now or writes on MySpace. Or maybe he works for LiveUniverse and maintains train-wreck BlogExplosion. Probably the blogger’s union deal has gone to his head.

RIP JOAB1.0

Dear Jack of All Blogs V1, it was an awesome ride and we certainly will miss you. Feelings are split, divided between ‘how can we revive the old snark and offense tradition’ and ‘This is it, I’m having an identity crisis’.

Thank you for all the fun we had… and stop whining now. Arrington and Riley are still posting! Get in there!

Photo credit: Mike Abundo.

When financial times are REALLY bad

waldorf — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:28:55 +0000

Here at Jack of All Blogs we already established that Techcrunch is broken but things seem to get worse and worse every day for the once so popular Tech/Web2.0 blog.

For months TC has been adding authors and quantity to it’s arsenal, but sadly no quality. One could argue that former blogging Guru and TC full-time contributor Duncan Riley was not the best author either, but at least he knew how to stir some controversy. Ever since DR left TC has gone downhill.

Last week (community) blog Mashable passed TC to become the new #1 tech blog. But things do not only seem to be bad on the quality front, especially the financial department seems to have suffered.

Since weeks, TC has had several adblocks in its feeds. Ads in feeds are nothing new and several bigger blogs do have several ads in their feed. But today TC updated the feed and now comes with not 1, not 2, not even 3 but 5 (FIVE!) ads in the footer.

A whopping 720px*425px of ad space in your feedreader!

A Union For Bloggers, Exactly What I Need

waldorf — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 18:11:02 +0000

By now everyone already knows that bloggers have a pretty exciting life! Exciting and relaxing. Just like Franky, I’m sitting here naked from the waist down and haven’t shaved for weeks.
But as if all that wasn’t enough, a Union to protect my rights, both on insurance and financial level is exactly what I still need! I want a Union! My kingdom (and the overused wheels of my office chair) for Unionized bloggers!.

Let me explain.

A blogger’s life is hard, it’s the epitome of every professionalized freelance dream. Unionized protection IS needed!
Here’s why.

Blogger’s wake up hours need to be protected
One of the biggest advantages of being a blogger is the freedom to decide my own working hours. And start working whenever I want. With the growing amount of wannabes, it becomes important to protect this advantage: no blog network owner should be allowed to impose me to publish entries before 6.00PM (my local time!)

Coffee is expensive and should be paid for by the network owner
Bloggers are notorious coffee addicts and belong, together with (web) designers, to the resident group of $tarbuck$ squatters. Both $tarbuck$ and good coffee beans are expensive. Those expenses have to be covered by the blog network owners. No coffee beans below Lavazza or Segafredo quality should be accepted. Daily at least 3 outdoor Mochaccinos should be paid for.
Every blog entry hitting the Digg/Reddit/Netscape/Techmeme front page should be rewarded with a bonus kilo of exotic Arabica coffee beans!

Fruity hardware, allowing anytime wireless access has to be provided
How can you call yourself a decent blogger if you use a box equipped with Redmond software? Of course you need the shiniest gadget, allowing you to be online at any time. You never know you might just get that stroke of genius while you’re in the middle of the pampas, far away from your internet connection. Your iPhone will save you and allow you to publish your marvelous entry at anytime. Fancy touch keyboard inclusive.
If you live outside of the distribution area of new, shiny gadgets, it’s the blog network owner’s task to hire a bunch of hackers and make sure anyone, anywhere can access and use those oh so shiny gadgets. And brag about them on their blog. Paid by the network owner of course.

Maximum working time has to be minimalized
It is important for bloggers to be allowed to whip out quick and dirty entries. Entries that only need 4 minutes of work, proofreading inclusive. Actually, the maximum time devoted to an entry should be limited to 4 minutes. If a blogger wants to work longer at an entry, this should only be goodwill-based, not expected.

At least 200 social contacts has to be provided by the network owner
To make sure that bloggers have enough of distraction and IM noise, every network owner has to provide at least 200 active social contacts to newly hired contributors. Minimum 40% of those contacts voluntarily have to cyber on cam whenever the blogger feels the need to go dirty!

Travel equipment and expenses have to be paid for.
Being the overactive, glued to the office chair or couch, blogging species we are, I demand that every 3 months a new set of pillows and ‘soft wheels’ for my office chair and couch are provided. More experienced bloggers will get a new duvet and new bedding every 6 months.

It is obvious that we bloggers, freelance contractors, special working requirements have and those need to be protected by our future Union!
Furthermore, we shall continue to enjoy the right to decide ourselves not to work under a certain rate/entry. But that… that’s a freedom we already have.
Maybe we can oblige blog network owners to include links to at least 5 of our own sites as well. On every network blog of course!

Please give me that Union now! Let my own voice, personality and (in)competence be oppressed (protected) by the strong voice of an Union, putting everyone on the same level. Obviously Union leaders will be the best paid ones among us!!!

For a more serious take on the topic, go read Jeremy Wright’s view on the economics of unionized blogging.

Cut The BLOG Thing. You’re SO 1998 With Your Lists.

waldorf — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 18:57:27 +0000

I got enough of it. I’ve just lost it. Cut it. It’s boring, it’s annoying and it’s nothing more than backlink, social bookmarking and search engine driven. It’s all about getting on top in SERPs and not about the reader.

Lists.
Lists published at a high pace.

Everyone loves lists. Lists can be very useful. Lists and speedlinking. They can improve my productivity. But please… I can only digest _so_ many platforms, applications and blog entries.
Last weeks I’ve seen an increase in the number of lists in my feed reader. And not just lists, but lists aimed at being complete, leaving little to add. Lists consisting of more than 30 items, links, platforms, whatevers.

How will I digest all this information? How long do you think it takes me to visit and check out 30 comment plugins for WP, 20 code beautifiers and formatters, learn 200+ hotkeys and test 40 PDF tools? Do you think I really have no life? Do you think all I have to do s check your lists?

Have you decided I shouldn’t keep up with your content anymore?
No????

Well trust me, I _CAN’T_ keep up with all your lists! I am still working my way through that list you published 3 weeks ago. And what awaits me??? 540 more tips, all nicely made up as lists.

And what about the blogging part? Where has that gone? Did a memo not reach me, but have you all commonly decided to ditch sharing opinions?
I get it, I get it! Your lists are your opinions… it are THE best tools according to you!

My list? It’s a new one. Actually, it’s my wife’s list. She noticed how much lists interest me and just shove me a list under my nose. She actually send me an email. An email about lists.

Subject: You should check out this TOTALLY AWESOME list!

I’m a sucker. A sucker for lists. Big was my surprise when I read following items.

Take the garbage out
Fold the laundry
Take the dog to the vet
Clean the aquarium
Buy new socks
Pick up the kids from school
Do the dishes
Put the kids to bed
Have fun with me

I put that list at the end of the list ‘lists to check out’. I wonder if it will increase my producitivity!