"Arone and Hammer hope these dance-specific features will entice people to treat Facebook and MySpace as 'where they live" and DanceJam as 'where they hang out.' As of now, the focus is on urban dance styles, but Hammer says their vision is to encompass the entire world of dance, 'from Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire ... to James Brown ... to MC Hammer ... to Soulja Boy,' and including 'cheerleading competitions, Broadway and ballet.'"
Circles within circles. Makes sense, as we all rely on a variety of social networks in the real world. Why should the online world be any different?
Take the headshots of today's celebrities, paste them onto pictures of ordinary joes doing ordinary things, throw in a little Photoshop magic, and you have "Ordinary Stars".
A great, great article on how to set your price for a freelance job. You can argue with rights and press run and reproduction terms all you want, but at the end of the day, it's whether or not you feel you're being paid what you're worth that makes the difference in your job satisfaction.
"Canon’s cameras are better because there’s Nikon — and vice-versa. Canon-vs.-Nikon arguments can get ugly, but in the end, they’re arguments about two companies that make great cameras and great lenses. Apple has no such rival.
With cars, design-focused brands like Acura, Audi, BMW, Lexus, Mercedes, and Volvo push each other, and consumers get to choose from well-designed cars with different areas of emphasis. If Apple is BMW, who is the Audi pushing them to be more elegant, or the Acura or Lexus pushing them to be more reliable?"
The article is iPod-centric, and it's true that with 6 years of trying, no one has come close to matching the iPod's features/ease of use/price. But Apple is more than just the iPod. Apple has the entire PC world to compete against, and while no one manufacturer comes close to combining the style, reliability and ease of use of an Apple product, there are manufacturers out there who can compete with some parts of the Apple experience.
Lenovo laptops are reliable, Sony's are stylish, Toshiba's are full-featured and Dell's are cheap. Do any other them wrap all that up in one package like a MacBook? No. But that's not to say that Apple can't learn from each of them and borrow steal their best features and incorporate them into future products.
And at the end of the day, an Apple has one feature that any Windows PC will lack, the most powerful, stable and easy-to-use operating system on the planet, OS X. With such a lead, it's hard to see any real competition on the horizon.
We now have a loathsome, overblown, over-the-top "reality" show to call our own!
"Well its finally here, VH1 unleashes its latest reality show The Shot on us this Sunday at 10.00pm est. Ten aspiring wannabees come under the mentor ship of the shows host, the legendary (their word not mine) fashion photographer, the sharp shooter from down under, yes the man with the golden mane himself Russell James. In the first episode James reveals whats at stake for the winner; a $ 100,000 cash prize, a shot at shooting a fashion spread for Marie Claire magazine and a national ad campaign for Victoria's Secret and the right to call yourself America's next top fashion photographer."
I can hardly wait for the sequel: "America's Next Top Product Shooter", in which our contestants must hurriedly find their sawhorses and plywood, choose from a selection of formica and get their lighting just right in time to shoot cans of creamed corn for a newspaper ad's deadline.
Somehow, I don't think that show is going to be on VH-1.
Marc Andreessen, he of Netscape fame, has a great post as to why Google/MySpace/SixApart/et al's "OpenSocial" platform is so earth-shaking.
"Open Social basically standardizes the concept of a plug-in API in such a way that neither host social networking environments (containers) nor external applications will ever have to invent another plug-in API, or have to choose between multiple competing proprietary plug-in APIs.
Open Social's API is based entirely on Javascript. If you know HTML and Javascript today, you will be able to immediately use Open Social to turn your web applications and web sites into Open Social apps. You can also use standard web development tools to build Open Social apps. This is obviously a much better way to operate than having to learn a proprietary marketup language or query language."
| »
