This is an insignia that apparently appeared inside Mark Zuckerberg’s “hoodie” during his D8 interview (SF Weekly reconstructed it). As they say in the article this symbol appears nowhere on the site or in public Facebook materials otherwise:
Here’s the clip where Kara Swisher of AllThingsD jokes about it:
It was struck by it; it seems odd. What you think? Is it playful or sinister?
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Update: An identical hoodie put up for sale on eBay by a Facebook staffer is now going for $510 (as of 11:26 Pacific time on Sunday):
Many of you already know that a “fireside chat” today with CEO Carol Bartz by TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington ended with Bartz telling Arrington to F#@k off. Here’s the clip:
TechCrunch offers its own coverage of the discussion and the magic moment.
It’s unlikely that the phrase “on steroids” will appear in the afternoon session, however. But one never knows.
These sessions will be exciting, action-packed and potentially improve your love life. Afterward you’ll be filled with a sense of enormous possibility and power. You won’t want to miss them.
Disclaimer: before attending you may wish to consult your doctor or pharmacist. Be sure to use only as directed
I must say this was very interesting to watch as a number of people congratulated me and wished me well. By the middle of the day many people had caught on that this was a clever ruse.
In the interim I was the recipient of many kind remarks for which I’m grateful and humbled (actually). However I’m not joining Google.
Here’s what my Google Calendar looked like a few minutes ago (iPod Touch):
A couple of days ago Google suffered from a bug that caused some people to see selected pages in Chinese or Spanish. Presumably this is the same thing, although it hasn’t affected my online calendar.
I was a very big Pee Wee Herman fan. This Funny or Die video featuring Pee Wee and his new iPad is pretty funny; the best part is at the very end. But ol’ Pee Wee’s getting a little “long in the tooth” one might say:
But who can forget the classic Pee Wee’s big adventure (Tim Burton’s first movie):
I was struck by the fact that not until the iPhone was mentioned during the Q&A session yesterday, at the Nexus One event, did Google acknowledge the device that has, until very recently, been largely responsible for its mobile growth and success in the US. But now Apple and Google are becoming fierce competitors: browser, mobile, PC OS, mobile advertising . . .
Apropos of that, here’s a very funny (profane language) video that pits the two devices against one another:
I’m going to “get outta Dodge” (as some would say) for a few days to avert what might otherwise turn into a psychotic break with reality. I’ve always liked that phrase. 🙂
Vampires are all the rage these days. There’s the teen flick and book series Twilight, etc. and the HBO series True Blood. That vampire zeitgeist must partly explain the use of the blood sucking metaphor by Dow Jones CEO Les Hinton to describe Google’s relationship with newspapers.
“There is a charitable view of the history of Google,” said Mr. Hinton, who is also publisher of The Wall Street Journal. “[It] didn’t actually begin life in a cave as a digital vampire per se. The charitable view of Google is that the news business itself fed Google’s taste for this kind of blood.”
“Taste for blood . . ” Perhaps we should call Mr. Hinton the newspaper industry’s Van Helsing to Google’s Dracula.
One can almost hear the Bela Lugosi or Boris Karloff accents coming out now . . .
Okay, since I’m posting video I can’t resist posting this Bing ad called “Hawaii.” Like some of the other ads it humorously conveys “search overload.” My favorite line is “Brah, I was stoked when I caught that tasty barrel.”
This one is also good (“cell phone“). It has a kind of “body snatchers” quality.
I totally missed it because I was on a spotty connection and the earnings call stream kept blinking in and out. But apparently she let the “F-bomb” fly yesterday. Reuters covers it:
“We sort of had one product management person for every three engineers,” Bartz explained. “So we had a lot of people running around and telling people what to do, but nobody was f– ing doing anything.”
Bartz promptly excused herself for letting the phrase “slip out.”
The 2009 predictions are now being released and I don’t have much enthusiasm right now for making my own for ’09 (could change my mind with enough coffee). Here are mine from 2006 (for ’07) and 2007 (for ’08). Some are right and some are not.
Zune has struggled to make inroads against the dominant iPod. And recently we heard rumors of a forthcoming Zune phone.
But if a rumor that Obama uses a Zune is true, it could be a “hipness” boost for the device. Gizmodo is the source of the rumor/assertion.
Whether or not you voted for him Obama is the “coolest” incoming president since JFK and will influence young people in particular.
I’m being serious that awareness of him using a Zune would add greater pop-culture “legitimacy” to the device, which has heretofore been largely seen as a wannabe iPod.
I saw this on the Twitter elections site and I couldn’t believe it: VotefortheMILF.com. You’d think this was some sort of joke or parody site. No . . . it redirects to MaCain’s site, complete with a video of Palin making a pitch:
I was in the offices of Urban Mapping yesterday and they’ve got this great old SF yellow pages there. It’s from 1953, with a hard cover. Best of all it has a detective/private eye ad on the lower part of the front cover. CEO Ian White blogs about it.
Photo: Urban Mapping
Another striking thing about it to me was how every inch of space on the cover, spine and even the pages (stamped, see above) have ads.
The NY Times has a longish article about the next phase of the Microsoft “take back the brand” campaign. Gone is Seinfeld and up next are ordinary people, a range of celebs and a John Hodgman lookalike:
One new Microsoft commercial even begins with a company engineer who resembles John Hodgman, the comedian portraying the loser PC character in the Apple campaign. “Hello, I’m a PC,” the engineer says, echoing Mr. Hodgman’s recurring line, “and I’ve been made into a stereotype.”
The strategy to use the Apple attack as the basis for a counterstrike is typical for the agency behind the campaign, Crispin Porter & Bogusky.
What’s fascinating about this — as the Times points out — is that it resembles the fall election campaign: PC has been “defined” by the “I’m a Mac” campaign and now Microsoft is trying to “regain control of the narrative.”
I liked the Seinfeld ads, though most did not.
In the earlier Democratic primaries Hillary Clinton was a PC to Obama’s Mac. Now Microsoft appears to be taking a more “populist” approach in its ads, taking “offense” at the impliedly elitist Mac campaign. In this way these dueling ad campaigns shadow what’s going on with the US presidential election.
Here’s commercial No 2. It may not sell any PCs and people don’t like this campaign, but I do:
More substantive posting later. I’ve had a long week at CTIA and a long meeting and presentation today. Also, I’m spending way too much time thinking about the potential outcome of the November election and what it may mean for this country.
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Re Politics: for those on the fence, here are two important articles to read:
I must say 
Vampires are all the rage these days. There’s the teen flick and book series Twilight, etc. and the HBO series True Blood. That vampire zeitgeist must partly explain the use of the blood sucking metaphor by Dow Jones CEO Les Hinton to describe Google’s relationship with newspapers.
The 2009 predictions are now being released and I don’t have much enthusiasm right now for making my own for ’09 (could change my mind with enough coffee). Here are mine from 
Zune has struggled to make inroads against the dominant iPod. And recently we heard rumors of a 
Screenwerk 
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