I am sad to report NBC has officially cancelled The Black Donnellys. I had written a few scripts on spec for the show and was hopeful that they might appear in season two. Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco, the creators, are talking to Mark Cuban about season two (keep your fingers crossed). The first seven episodes were aired on NBC and the remaining six episodes will air on HDNET. Of course, you can see the full season on iTunes.
Less than a week after the Big in Japan team decided to build and launch ServiceGuy, the final logo has arrived. Thank you for your comments, suggestions and ideas. I personally liked the Lego looking guy, but I understand why the logo below was the final choice:
Hopefully ServiceGuy grows on you. It is not certain that ServiceGuy will catch on outside of Dallas, but the team is excited enough to invest a week of their lives to see. The guys are in Portland for RailsConf and should start in earnest next week.
Less than a week after we decided to build and launch ServiceGuy, the final logo has arrived. Thank you for your comments, suggestions and ideas. What do you think:
Hopefully ServiceGuy grows on you. It is not certain that ServiceGuy will catch on outside of Dallas, but the team is excited enough to invest a week of their lives to see. The guys are in Portland for RailsConf and should start in earnest next week.
I’ve never been a Linux fanboy, fact is I don’t really care. All I know is that open-source works, the model the cost the power. It all works, very different from the Microsoft model. And as Microsoft begins to succumb to it’s own bloat and deceptive and destructive practices it takes one last snip on the way down. Shameful. This line, is just laughable given the speaker - Ballmer you’ve tried so hard to screw computing America.
Microsoft counters that it is a matter of principle. “We live in a world where we honor, and support the honoring of, intellectual property,” says Ballmer in an interview. FOSS patrons are going to have to “play by the same rules as the rest of the business,” he insists. “What’s fair is fair.”
Ha.
No one ever claimed breaking up was easy. In the case of JPG magazine it can get down right ugly (worse than a tiff). I noticed a new Flickr screenshot from Tara Hunt showing that she had deleted her JPG account. Why would she do that I wondered, and I as read on I realized that two of the founders Derek and Heather Powazek had left the company.
Evidently the magazine began as a small project sold through Lulu.com. The project turned into a major magazine and the new management team really wanted to get away from the ‘down and dirty’ history of the publication (amaturish digest printed periodically). The decided to focus on the future and market to a broad ‘Barnes and Noble‘ audience. Derek and Heather didn’t agree with the direction.
Paul Cloutier, editor and publisher of JPG, explains that JPG is three things:
Paul suggest that, "Without you [the community], we’re nothing. Turns out lots of JPG’s community liked the history of the magazine. Evidently, for many, the people in the community were more important than the new marketing strategy. So what did they do about it? They left the community ~ publically. There is a Flickr group dedicated to people who have left JPG magazine’s community (more than 236 strong) as seen below:
I suspect that there is much MORE to the story than is reported by Derek in his blog, but to be clear JPG reall f’ed up this one. Shame on you Paul ~ don’t walk away from your community…
Craigslist is a small company, fewer than 25 employees generating more than $25,000,000 in revenue. Their website offers, largely free, classified ads in more than 450 cities and is the top ten most trafficed internet sites.
The success of the site is likely due to the fact that the company has NOT tried to maximize revenue. The site charges nominal fees for job posts in seven cities and for real estate listings in New York ~ every other listing is free. Analysts estimate the site could be worth hundreds of millions in revenue if the company would simply add texts ads on the site.
Business Week is running an interview with Craigslist CEO, Jim Buckmaster titled, "Craigslist’s Ongoing Success Story." The story explains,
Craigslist.org CEO Jim Buckmaster has been called many things: anti-establishment, a communist, and a socialistic anarchist. Traditional businesspeople are often confounded by the company’s business model. After all, the online classified advertisement site over which he presides consistently ranks among the Internet’s most trafficked sites, yet he remains decidedly uninterested in monetization.
Perhaps we should all take a hard look at Jim’s (and of course don’t forget Craig) strategy. Maybe leaving a little on the table allows us all to eat. Had the company focused on monitization from the start the site might not generate more than $1MM per employee, much less hundreds of millions of dollars.
Our favorite gadget blog, Engadget was taken in by a fake Apple email that claimed the iPhone would be delayed until October and Leopard would be delayed until January.
Here’s the story. A trustworthy source supplied us with an actual internal Apple email that went out to thousands of Apple employees earlier today (published after the break). The fact that this was an email sent within Apple’s internal email system to its employees is not in question. Let us reiterate: this was an ACTUAL email distributed within Apple’s internal email system to Apple employees. As it turns out, the internal memo Apple employees received was actually retracted by Apple shortly after it was sent out. (Also published after the break.) We received confirmation from Apple PR that this initial email sent out to Apple employees was incorrect, and they let us know that the iPhone and Leopard are both still on track, and should meet their expected launch timeframes. Presumably Apple is now on the hunt for whomever was able to spoof its internal email system.
This is a great example of why checking your sources is important. Just receiving a forwarded email is not the best way to ‘fact check’ your story. Get on the phone and try to get the party to confirm. If you can’t just say, ‘this story is unconfirmed, but…’
Update: It matters even more when the stakes are this high and you are dealing with a publicly traded company. Turns out stock manipulators may have been at work as Paul explains:
This is a bigger deal than a blog getting a story wrong. Why? Because this was almost certainly done for market manipulation, with someone — Russian hackers again? — inserting this into the Apple network, knowing it would get out and hook someone, while allowing them to trade against the news.
On the Biggu Blog we are asking for comments on the various logo design concepts for the ServiceGuy concept. Please comment there, but here are the logos:
Please help us figure out which direction to head with our ServiceGuy logo design project (go to Flickr to comment or just comment below):
John Moore speaks to the Social Media clubs about social media. Check out the video on YouTube:
Our favorite blogging platform has released version 2.2 according to Matt. Here are the features:
…you will know why. Most of the team will be in Portland at the much hyped Ruby on Rails conference (RailsConf). We should remember to take photos and maybe even some video (updates to be posted here). In any event, it should be a blast. In the mean time, thought you might be interested in a funny Java meet Rails video I found on Rails Envy:
ShopSavvy Coverage -
