fiction | Filome sharers have read the following articles about "fiction" | www.filome.com filome.com http://www.filome.com/key/fiction You're viewing shares 1-25 of 259 total shares for the keyword fiction This is a keyword feed for "fiction" from Filome read and shared items in Google Reader. If you would like to search or subscribe to category/keyword feeds for posts that are by shared with Google Reader users visit http://filome.com. en-us Copyright for these items belong to their original publishers. No filome, google reader, shared items, community knowledge organizer This is the keyword feed for "fiction" from my read items in Google Reader. This is the keyword feed for "fiction" from my read items in Google Reader. http://www.filome.com/images/feed_image.jpg fiction | Filome sharers have read the following articles about "fiction" | www.filome.com http://www.filome.com/key/fiction This is a keyword feed for "fiction" from Filome read and shared items in Google Reader. If you would like to search or subscribe to category/keyword feeds for posts that are by shared with Google Reader users visit http://filome.com. http://www.filome.com filome beta Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Talks to Diane Sawyer as Website ... (Ki Mae Heussner/ABCNEWS) http://www.techmeme.com/100721/p41#a100721p41 Shared item Techmeme
First shared by - danpat
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Ki Mae Heussner / ABCNEWS:
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Talks to Diane Sawyer as Website Gets 500-Millionth Member Zuckerberg Says New Movie is Fiction;' Claims He Never Agreed to Share Facebook Ownership If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest one in the world.



facebook zuckerberg mae heussner abcnews facebook mae heussner heussner abcnews diane sawyer zuckerberg talks ceo mark mark zuckerberg facebook ceo mae heussner abcnews mark zuckerberg talks ceo mark zuckerberg ]]>Techmeme
First shared by - danpat
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Ki Mae Heussner / ABCNEWS:
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Talks to Diane Sawyer as Website Gets 500-Millionth Member Zuckerberg Says New Movie is Fiction;' Claims He Never Agreed to Share Facebook Ownership If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest one in the world.



facebook zuckerberg mae heussner abcnews facebook mae heussner heussner abcnews diane sawyer zuckerberg talks ceo mark mark zuckerberg facebook ceo mae heussner abcnews mark zuckerberg talks ceo mark zuckerberg ]]> Sat, 31 Jul 2010 12:31:11 -0400 30:00 tag:filome.com,1 Why Personal Branding Is So Misunderstood http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/rohitbhargava/~3/pN7s_6Ng4IQ/why-personal-branding-is-so-misunderstood.html Shared item Influential Marketing
First shared by - chrisbrogan
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Personal branding has a branding problem. If most people in business today were asked to describe someone who had a personal brand, the first image that often comes to mind is of the often-ridiculed "social media guru" persona - someone who talks endlessly about social media and is well known online for it, but has little real experience at anything beyond talking about themselves. Others might think of someone with a big personality who has used social media expertly to amplify their success. Earlier today a journalist for CNN/Fortune ignited this debate about the value (or lack of value) in a personal brand through an article that featured Scott Monty from Ford*.

In the piece, Scott was portrayed as someone whose "personal brand doesn't take a back seat to anyone else's -- not even that of Ford Motor Co., his employer." Many commenters have already jumped on the article throughout the day to defend Scott as a great guy and not the "sanctimonious self-serving asshat" as one commenter felt he was portrayed as in the article. This is not the first time that a debate about personal branding has erupted pitting the believers against the skeptics, and it likely won't be the last.

Is personal branding becoming a catchphrase to describe those who are using social media as a drip pan for their overflowing egos or is it just misunderstood? As someone who has spent considerable time building a personal brand while working at a large company, this is a question I have struggled with before and I believe it comes through to three main assumptions (some truth and some fiction):

The FICTION About Personal Branding
  1. Personal branding is about ego instead of reputation. Ego is a dirty word, which carries with it the notion of a misbehaved, arrogant, generally pompous individual. The truth is, we all have egos - but a good personal brand is all about reputation. When you have one, people know something about you before you walk in the door. Hardly anyone would argue that your reputation is important, but somehow the label of "personal brand" became disconnected from that.
  2. Personal brands are only grown at the expense of corporate brands. A main point from the Forbes piece seemed to be that if Scott Monty was growing his personal brand, then he was not doing everything he could be doing for Ford. Yet when we look at successful sales people or executives who post record sales or perform well and move on to bigger and higher paying jobs ... generally they are not lambasted for building their own reputation while successfully contributing to the company they work for. Personal brands are the same.
  3. Only certain types of individuals have personal brands. When it comes to discussions of personal branding, there are certain types of individuals that you might point to as having strong personal brands - when the truth is that we all have personal brands. In an age where our virtual identity extends beyond just who we are in person and also encapsulates our profile on LinkedIn or the networks we join on Facebook - each of us has a digital reputation and that equates to a personal brand. Already, this personal brand impacts how people are searching for jobs and is likely to extend further to more parts of business as well.
The TRUTH About Personal Branding
  1. Many personal brands START egotistical. As I have shared in blog posts before, it is much easier to be egotistical than to be open online. In fact, the place where most people start when using social media tools is on the more egotistical side, just talking about themselves. It is not a sign of raging arrogance, but of initial naivety. When you are not used to "engaging" online, it is easier to just talk about yourself. Eventually, the good personal brands get past this and become something more robust.
  2. High profile tension between personal brands and companies will continue. There have already been several stories of individuals who built a personal brand and had difficulty remaining in their corporate positions and this will continue. To attribute this only to a phenomena that happens for personal branding, however, would be a mistake. There are situations every day where people outgrow roles at companies and move one, for many reasons. Growing a personal brand will continue to be one of these reasons, but should not be singled out.
  3. Personal branding matters because PEOPLE matter. I have been vocal for several years now about the premise that people make decisions to buy from a company or talk about it based on the personal relationship they have with individuals who work there as much as the association they have with the product. If you have every recommended a product that you didn't buy to someone who needed it, you know this well. Companies with personality succeed because they create a deep emotional connection with customers, and personality comes from individuals. If the faceless company is dying, as I believe it is in every industry, then more and more companies will need to hire people with strong personal brands and this tension between the individual and the company will be even more present in business.

The solution, in my opinion, is not to single out and vilify the people who are visibly working to balance personal brands with their employers', but instead to treat them as examples of a future in the business world that is rapidly approaching for us all.

*Disclaimer - Ford is a client of Ogilvy (my employer) and Scott is a personal friend of mine. This post was in no way solicited by either and represents only my honest opinion about personal branding.



personal brand brands branding social personal brands brand branding reputation individuals company scott media social companies business truth personal brand personal brands personal branding social media strong personal scott monty certain types strong personal brands ]]>Influential Marketing
First shared by - chrisbrogan
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Personal branding has a branding problem. If most people in business today were asked to describe someone who had a personal brand, the first image that often comes to mind is of the often-ridiculed "social media guru" persona - someone who talks endlessly about social media and is well known online for it, but has little real experience at anything beyond talking about themselves. Others might think of someone with a big personality who has used social media expertly to amplify their success. Earlier today a journalist for CNN/Fortune ignited this debate about the value (or lack of value) in a personal brand through an article that featured Scott Monty from Ford*.

In the piece, Scott was portrayed as someone whose "personal brand doesn't take a back seat to anyone else's -- not even that of Ford Motor Co., his employer." Many commenters have already jumped on the article throughout the day to defend Scott as a great guy and not the "sanctimonious self-serving asshat" as one commenter felt he was portrayed as in the article. This is not the first time that a debate about personal branding has erupted pitting the believers against the skeptics, and it likely won't be the last.

Is personal branding becoming a catchphrase to describe those who are using social media as a drip pan for their overflowing egos or is it just misunderstood? As someone who has spent considerable time building a personal brand while working at a large company, this is a question I have struggled with before and I believe it comes through to three main assumptions (some truth and some fiction):

The FICTION About Personal Branding
  1. Personal branding is about ego instead of reputation. Ego is a dirty word, which carries with it the notion of a misbehaved, arrogant, generally pompous individual. The truth is, we all have egos - but a good personal brand is all about reputation. When you have one, people know something about you before you walk in the door. Hardly anyone would argue that your reputation is important, but somehow the label of "personal brand" became disconnected from that.
  2. Personal brands are only grown at the expense of corporate brands. A main point from the Forbes piece seemed to be that if Scott Monty was growing his personal brand, then he was not doing everything he could be doing for Ford. Yet when we look at successful sales people or executives who post record sales or perform well and move on to bigger and higher paying jobs ... generally they are not lambasted for building their own reputation while successfully contributing to the company they work for. Personal brands are the same.
  3. Only certain types of individuals have personal brands. When it comes to discussions of personal branding, there are certain types of individuals that you might point to as having strong personal brands - when the truth is that we all have personal brands. In an age where our virtual identity extends beyond just who we are in person and also encapsulates our profile on LinkedIn or the networks we join on Facebook - each of us has a digital reputation and that equates to a personal brand. Already, this personal brand impacts how people are searching for jobs and is likely to extend further to more parts of business as well.
The TRUTH About Personal Branding
  1. Many personal brands START egotistical. As I have shared in blog posts before, it is much easier to be egotistical than to be open online. In fact, the place where most people start when using social media tools is on the more egotistical side, just talking about themselves. It is not a sign of raging arrogance, but of initial naivety. When you are not used to "engaging" online, it is easier to just talk about yourself. Eventually, the good personal brands get past this and become something more robust.
  2. High profile tension between personal brands and companies will continue. There have already been several stories of individuals who built a personal brand and had difficulty remaining in their corporate positions and this will continue. To attribute this only to a phenomena that happens for personal branding, however, would be a mistake. There are situations every day where people outgrow roles at companies and move one, for many reasons. Growing a personal brand will continue to be one of these reasons, but should not be singled out.
  3. Personal branding matters because PEOPLE matter. I have been vocal for several years now about the premise that people make decisions to buy from a company or talk about it based on the personal relationship they have with individuals who work there as much as the association they have with the product. If you have every recommended a product that you didn't buy to someone who needed it, you know this well. Companies with personality succeed because they create a deep emotional connection with customers, and personality comes from individuals. If the faceless company is dying, as I believe it is in every industry, then more and more companies will need to hire people with strong personal brands and this tension between the individual and the company will be even more present in business.

The solution, in my opinion, is not to single out and vilify the people who are visibly working to balance personal brands with their employers', but instead to treat them as examples of a future in the business world that is rapidly approaching for us all.

*Disclaimer - Ford is a client of Ogilvy (my employer) and Scott is a personal friend of mine. This post was in no way solicited by either and represents only my honest opinion about personal branding.



personal brand brands branding social personal brands brand branding reputation individuals company scott media social companies business truth personal brand personal brands personal branding social media strong personal scott monty certain types strong personal brands ]]> Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:20:11 -0400 30:00 tag:filome.com,2 Disney sells Miramax to investor for $660M http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/crainsnewyork/latestnews/~3/8rxDB9lMFuI/100739997 Shared item Crain's New York Business - Breaking News Feeds
First shared by - chrisbrogan
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The Walt Disney Co. said Friday that it agreed to sell its Miramax Films to an investor group for about $660 million, ending a 17-year association with the studio and a six-month bidding process.

Miramax's Oscar-laden film library has more than 700 titles, including prestigious films such as My Left Foot (1989), Pulp Fiction (1994) and Good Will Hunting (1997).

But Disney had been looking to sell Miramax amid a studio overhaul because it no longer resonated with its other family centric studio units such as Pixar and Marvel.

"Although we are very proud of Miramax's many accomplishments, our current strategy for Walt Disney Studios is to focus on the development of great motion pictures under the Disney, Pixar and Marvel brands," said Disney president and Chief Executive Robert Iger in a statement. "We are delighted that we have found a home for the Miramax brand and Miramax's very highly regarded motion picture library."

The entertainment company signed an agreement late Thursday with Filmyard Holding, an investor group led by construction magnate and Hollywood outsider Ronald Tutor. Other investors include Colony Capital LLC, a real estate investment group, and its CEO, Tom Barrack.

Mr. Tutor and his partners put down a nonrefundable deposit of $40 million to Disney on Thursday. Disney said the deal could close as soon as Sept. 10.

Despite its past success with prize-winning films, Miramax also faces challenges.

Earlier this year, Disney stopped investing in its new projects, laying off all but a handful of staff beginning in January in a major round of cost-cutting and reorganization under its new studios chairman, Rich Ross. It was one of many niche labels shuttered or downsized in Hollywood recently, plagued by high costs and few commercial hits despite their occasional critical success.

The label was founded in 1979 by Harvey and Bob Weinstein, who named it after their parents, Miriam and Max. It was sold to Disney for $80 million in 1993, and the brothers stayed on as managers.

But the duo left in 2005 to found The Weinstein Co. after years of troubled relations with Disney and a public spat over Michael Moore's 2004 documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, which Disney refused to distribute.

The Weinstein's recent bid to buy Miramax with the financial backing of supermarket magnate Ron Burkle was halted after Mr. Burkle cut the offered price to about $565 million from $625 million.

Disney shares closed Thursday at $33.71.


disney miramax million weinstein group disney miramax million investor group walt disney ]]>Crain's New York Business - Breaking News Feeds
First shared by - chrisbrogan
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The Walt Disney Co. said Friday that it agreed to sell its Miramax Films to an investor group for about $660 million, ending a 17-year association with the studio and a six-month bidding process.

Miramax's Oscar-laden film library has more than 700 titles, including prestigious films such as My Left Foot (1989), Pulp Fiction (1994) and Good Will Hunting (1997).

But Disney had been looking to sell Miramax amid a studio overhaul because it no longer resonated with its other family centric studio units such as Pixar and Marvel.

"Although we are very proud of Miramax's many accomplishments, our current strategy for Walt Disney Studios is to focus on the development of great motion pictures under the Disney, Pixar and Marvel brands," said Disney president and Chief Executive Robert Iger in a statement. "We are delighted that we have found a home for the Miramax brand and Miramax's very highly regarded motion picture library."

The entertainment company signed an agreement late Thursday with Filmyard Holding, an investor group led by construction magnate and Hollywood outsider Ronald Tutor. Other investors include Colony Capital LLC, a real estate investment group, and its CEO, Tom Barrack.

Mr. Tutor and his partners put down a nonrefundable deposit of $40 million to Disney on Thursday. Disney said the deal could close as soon as Sept. 10.

Despite its past success with prize-winning films, Miramax also faces challenges.

Earlier this year, Disney stopped investing in its new projects, laying off all but a handful of staff beginning in January in a major round of cost-cutting and reorganization under its new studios chairman, Rich Ross. It was one of many niche labels shuttered or downsized in Hollywood recently, plagued by high costs and few commercial hits despite their occasional critical success.

The label was founded in 1979 by Harvey and Bob Weinstein, who named it after their parents, Miriam and Max. It was sold to Disney for $80 million in 1993, and the brothers stayed on as managers.

But the duo left in 2005 to found The Weinstein Co. after years of troubled relations with Disney and a public spat over Michael Moore's 2004 documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, which Disney refused to distribute.

The Weinstein's recent bid to buy Miramax with the financial backing of supermarket magnate Ron Burkle was halted after Mr. Burkle cut the offered price to about $565 million from $625 million.

Disney shares closed Thursday at $33.71.


disney miramax million weinstein group disney miramax million investor group walt disney ]]> Fri, 30 Jul 2010 09:45:08 -0400 30:00 tag:filome.com,3 5 Great Interactive Fiction Games You Can Play Online Right Now http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Makeuseof/~3/W18JuvmgdC8/ Shared item MakeUseOf.com
First shared by - robdiana
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There's no better time to be alive than right now as far as I'm concerned. The food is awesome, there's great music being made all over the world and we have this fantastic little thing called the Internet, which allows me to work with good friends from all over the planet.

Yep, 2010 is the best year yet.

This deep love I have for today doesn't mean I don't occasionally wish awesome things from the past would come back, however. In the early 80's most of the best games were text-based, meaning the graphics were provided by the player's imagination. Just as film-making will never match books in my opinion, modern graphics haven't yet caught up to the power of well-written text games and their ability to harness the imagination. But today such games are all gone, right?


Nope. Like I said, the best time to be alive is right now, and a big part of why is the Internet. There are countless text interactive fiction games being made now, three decades past the medium's commercial prime, and they're almost all freely available on the Internet. Called Interactive Fiction today, a list of the best games in this field would take ages to compile, so I'll just show you a sampling of my favorite games that can be freely played online.

Lost Pig And Place Underground by Grunk

Pig lost! Boss say that it Grunk fault. Say Grunk forget about closing gate. Maybe boss right. Grunk not remember forgetting, but maybe Grunk just forget. Boss say Grunk go find pig, bring it back. Him say, if Grunk not bring back pig, not bring back Grunk either. Grunk like working at pig farm, so now Grunk need find pig.

So begins this less-than-epic quest, in which our hero attempts to find a pig.

No, really: that's the plot. And it's amazing.

This short game's narrative voice is deceptively simple, and will have you laughing out loud more than once as you play it. It also features some pretty good adventure-game-style puzzles, but don't give up too quickly: you can deduce everything easily, making this a great game for beginners.

You can play Lost Pig online right now or find more information about Lost Pig at the Interactive Fiction Database (IFDB.)

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Like many geeks I'm an avid devotee of Douglas Adams' writing in general and the famous Hitchhiker's Guide media franchise in particular. I love the radio series, the television show, the books and even tolerated the movie. I'm also quite fond of the classic Infocom game of the same title.

Happily this classic is playable online today. Find a version of the interactive fiction game with some graphics at the BBC's website or the text version at Douglas Adam's website.

The real charm of this game is its narrative voice the text was written by Adams himself. This game is not easy, and includes no hint system, but devotees of Adams' work should struggle through it's worth it just for the one-liners.

For A Change by Dan Schmidt

The sun has gone. It must be brought. You have a rock.

If you think that reads more like poetry than it does a game you're probably right. This is a game as well as a poem, and a pretty good one at that.

A surrealistic adventure featuring an invented vocabulary provides an experience no other medium possibly could, and makes a strong case for the continued existence of text games. Be sure to check this one out.

Play For a Change' online or find out more about the game and download links at IFDB.

Photopia by Adam Cadre

Less a game than it is a story, Photopia is considered by many to be the most influential piece of interactive fiction in the post-Infocom era.

For this reason I highly recommend trying it out, although I fear talking too much about the plot will give too much away. I personally find this game beautiful, though there has always been controversy surrounding it so make up your own mind.

Check out Photopia now or find out more about the game over at IFDB.

Whom The Telling Changed by Aaron A. Reed

As your village in ancient Mesopotamia decides whether or not to go to war the legendary story of Gilgamesh is told. Your role is to, by asking the right questions, manipulate public opinion toward fighting or not fighting. This game is great if you have a working knowledge of the Gilgamesh epic (read it free here) and even better for repeat playing, as there are multiple possible endings.

Click here to play Who The Telling Changed now or read more about the game at IFDB.

Infocom Games

If you're wondering where Zork is, the answer is that it's hard to say. Technically Activision owns the rights to the Zork trilogy and the rest of the (amazing) Infocom library, which fueled the 80's text game craze. They've not released any of these titles recently so far as I know.

This website seems to feature pretty much all of them, however, and you can play them in your browser. I'm not sure how legal this is, but it's there and working.

Conclusion

This is but a small number of the text-based games you can find online, of course. You can find many more over at the IFDB, which serves as an online database of the many free games available. You'll also find downloading instructions for any particular game there.

Well, do you think text games could be funor do you lack the attention span for them? Do any Interactive Fiction fans recommend games that I missed here? Comment away; we won't tell you that you can't.

Hey Facebookers, make sure to check out MakeUseOf page on Facebook. Over 24,000 fans already!

Similar MakeUseOf Articles




game games online grunk comments game games online comments grunk text fiction interactive play free ifdb lost adams infocom interactive fiction text games lost pig douglas adams shooter games comments top free online narrative voice boss say fiction games best games text based say grunk interactive fiction games ]]>MakeUseOf.com
First shared by - robdiana
syndication+ 0 | Search 1 | Shares 1

There's no better time to be alive than right now as far as I'm concerned. The food is awesome, there's great music being made all over the world and we have this fantastic little thing called the Internet, which allows me to work with good friends from all over the planet.

Yep, 2010 is the best year yet.

This deep love I have for today doesn't mean I don't occasionally wish awesome things from the past would come back, however. In the early 80's most of the best games were text-based, meaning the graphics were provided by the player's imagination. Just as film-making will never match books in my opinion, modern graphics haven't yet caught up to the power of well-written text games and their ability to harness the imagination. But today such games are all gone, right?


Nope. Like I said, the best time to be alive is right now, and a big part of why is the Internet. There are countless text interactive fiction games being made now, three decades past the medium's commercial prime, and they're almost all freely available on the Internet. Called Interactive Fiction today, a list of the best games in this field would take ages to compile, so I'll just show you a sampling of my favorite games that can be freely played online.

Lost Pig And Place Underground by Grunk

Pig lost! Boss say that it Grunk fault. Say Grunk forget about closing gate. Maybe boss right. Grunk not remember forgetting, but maybe Grunk just forget. Boss say Grunk go find pig, bring it back. Him say, if Grunk not bring back pig, not bring back Grunk either. Grunk like working at pig farm, so now Grunk need find pig.

So begins this less-than-epic quest, in which our hero attempts to find a pig.

No, really: that's the plot. And it's amazing.

This short game's narrative voice is deceptively simple, and will have you laughing out loud more than once as you play it. It also features some pretty good adventure-game-style puzzles, but don't give up too quickly: you can deduce everything easily, making this a great game for beginners.

You can play Lost Pig online right now or find more information about Lost Pig at the Interactive Fiction Database (IFDB.)

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Like many geeks I'm an avid devotee of Douglas Adams' writing in general and the famous Hitchhiker's Guide media franchise in particular. I love the radio series, the television show, the books and even tolerated the movie. I'm also quite fond of the classic Infocom game of the same title.

Happily this classic is playable online today. Find a version of the interactive fiction game with some graphics at the BBC's website or the text version at Douglas Adam's website.

The real charm of this game is its narrative voice the text was written by Adams himself. This game is not easy, and includes no hint system, but devotees of Adams' work should struggle through it's worth it just for the one-liners.

For A Change by Dan Schmidt

The sun has gone. It must be brought. You have a rock.

If you think that reads more like poetry than it does a game you're probably right. This is a game as well as a poem, and a pretty good one at that.

A surrealistic adventure featuring an invented vocabulary provides an experience no other medium possibly could, and makes a strong case for the continued existence of text games. Be sure to check this one out.

Play For a Change' online or find out more about the game and download links at IFDB.

Photopia by Adam Cadre

Less a game than it is a story, Photopia is considered by many to be the most influential piece of interactive fiction in the post-Infocom era.

For this reason I highly recommend trying it out, although I fear talking too much about the plot will give too much away. I personally find this game beautiful, though there has always been controversy surrounding it so make up your own mind.

Check out Photopia now or find out more about the game over at IFDB.

Whom The Telling Changed by Aaron A. Reed

As your village in ancient Mesopotamia decides whether or not to go to war the legendary story of Gilgamesh is told. Your role is to, by asking the right questions, manipulate public opinion toward fighting or not fighting. This game is great if you have a working knowledge of the Gilgamesh epic (read it free here) and even better for repeat playing, as there are multiple possible endings.

Click here to play Who The Telling Changed now or read more about the game at IFDB.

Infocom Games

If you're wondering where Zork is, the answer is that it's hard to say. Technically Activision owns the rights to the Zork trilogy and the rest of the (amazing) Infocom library, which fueled the 80's text game craze. They've not released any of these titles recently so far as I know.

This website seems to feature pretty much all of them, however, and you can play them in your browser. I'm not sure how legal this is, but it's there and working.

Conclusion

This is but a small number of the text-based games you can find online, of course. You can find many more over at the IFDB, which serves as an online database of the many free games available. You'll also find downloading instructions for any particular game there.

Well, do you think text games could be funor do you lack the attention span for them? Do any Interactive Fiction fans recommend games that I missed here? Comment away; we won't tell you that you can't.

Hey Facebookers, make sure to check out MakeUseOf page on Facebook. Over 24,000 fans already!

Similar MakeUseOf Articles




game games online grunk comments game games online comments grunk text fiction interactive play free ifdb lost adams infocom interactive fiction text games lost pig douglas adams shooter games comments top free online narrative voice boss say fiction games best games text based say grunk interactive fiction games ]]> Thu, 29 Jul 2010 19:45:27 -0400 30:00 tag:filome.com,4 Is your online doppleganger a plus or a minus? | The Official Computer Monkeys Blog http://blog.computermonkeys.com/834/is-your-online-doppleganger-a-plus-or-a-minus/ Shared item blog.computermonkeys.com
First shared by - StephenFoskett
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Lately I've been writing a lot about online reputations and how they can affect your career. I've suggested that people Google themselves to see what prospective employers might see. Many people who did this reported finding others with their same name. This can be problematic if the person with your name happens to be, oh I don't know, in the porn industry or is on a Jersey-based reality show.

I kind of got lucky in that respect. My online doppelganger, who actually shows up before me in a Google search, is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania with a list of scholarly writings that is longer than my leg. One is called The Achievement of Scholarly Authority for Women: Trends in the Interpretation of Eighteenth-Century Fiction. (Compare that to one of my writings, Five signs that your layoff-spared job sucks, and I think you can see how I wouldn't object if anyone mixed us up.)

In preparation for this blog, I contacted the other Toni Bowers via email. You have to be careful with that kind of thing-I didn't want her to think I was some kind of stalking weirdo. But she was very gracious, as we Tonis tend to be, and responded to my email. We discussed the hardship of having a name that, particularly in the U.S., is associated mostly as a shortened version of Anthony (despite the i ending) and that we've both had to deal with being addressed as Mister because of this.

One of TechRepublic's long-time bloggers, Scott Lowe, had an experience with a same-name person that was a little more complicated. The other Scott Lowe was also a technical writer. Our Scott said he was a little concerned at first: I try to manage' my online reputation pretty carefully, so having an unknown out there worried me a bit. I'm very lucky in that he's actually a brilliant, likeable guy so if a potential employer confuses us, I don't have anything to worry about.

He actually met his doppelganger in person at Gestalt IT's Tech Field Day in Boston last May, where the other Scott was one of the EMC presenters.

All the way there on the bus, everyone was wondering if there would be a world-ending paradox. The first ten minutes of our presentation time were spent getting pictures taken and talking to people about the whole situation. It's pretty neat actually. Like I said, he's a heck of a nice guy, brilliantand I mean thatand a good resource. So, it could be worse!



name actually online scott kind scott actually name online scott lowe ]]>blog.computermonkeys.com
First shared by - StephenFoskett
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Lately I've been writing a lot about online reputations and how they can affect your career. I've suggested that people Google themselves to see what prospective employers might see. Many people who did this reported finding others with their same name. This can be problematic if the person with your name happens to be, oh I don't know, in the porn industry or is on a Jersey-based reality show.

I kind of got lucky in that respect. My online doppelganger, who actually shows up before me in a Google search, is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania with a list of scholarly writings that is longer than my leg. One is called The Achievement of Scholarly Authority for Women: Trends in the Interpretation of Eighteenth-Century Fiction. (Compare that to one of my writings, Five signs that your layoff-spared job sucks, and I think you can see how I wouldn't object if anyone mixed us up.)

In preparation for this blog, I contacted the other Toni Bowers via email. You have to be careful with that kind of thing-I didn't want her to think I was some kind of stalking weirdo. But she was very gracious, as we Tonis tend to be, and responded to my email. We discussed the hardship of having a name that, particularly in the U.S., is associated mostly as a shortened version of Anthony (despite the i ending) and that we've both had to deal with being addressed as Mister because of this.

One of TechRepublic's long-time bloggers, Scott Lowe, had an experience with a same-name person that was a little more complicated. The other Scott Lowe was also a technical writer. Our Scott said he was a little concerned at first: I try to manage' my online reputation pretty carefully, so having an unknown out there worried me a bit. I'm very lucky in that he's actually a brilliant, likeable guy so if a potential employer confuses us, I don't have anything to worry about.

He actually met his doppelganger in person at Gestalt IT's Tech Field Day in Boston last May, where the other Scott was one of the EMC presenters.

All the way there on the bus, everyone was wondering if there would be a world-ending paradox. The first ten minutes of our presentation time were spent getting pictures taken and talking to people about the whole situation. It's pretty neat actually. Like I said, he's a heck of a nice guy, brilliantand I mean thatand a good resource. So, it could be worse!



name actually online scott kind scott actually name online scott lowe ]]> Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:00:24 -0400 30:00 tag:filome.com,5 Here Are the Thirteen Best Books of the Year, According to the Man Booker Prizes [Lists] http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gawker/full/~3/jpwJaUyyFa0/here-are-the-fourteen-best-books-of-the-year-according-to-the-man-booker-prizes Shared item Gawker
First shared by - BrandonMendelson
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Looking for something new to read? Why not one of the 14 13 books on the "longlist" for the prestigious Man Booker Prize for fiction? Some of them probably even have sex scenes! More


books booker prize prestigious fiction ]]>Gawker
First shared by - BrandonMendelson
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Looking for something new to read? Why not one of the 14 13 books on the "longlist" for the prestigious Man Booker Prize for fiction? Some of them probably even have sex scenes! More


books booker prize prestigious fiction ]]> Wed, 28 Jul 2010 10:25:24 -0400 30:00 tag:filome.com,6 Episode #8 - Modern Interactive Fiction http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GameshelfBlog/~3/QFLQILLtBEU/episode-8---modern-interactive.html Shared item The Gameshelf
First shared by - spavis
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Please enjoy Episode 8 of The Gameshelf's video series. It's about modern interactive fiction.

Interactive Fiction (a.k.a. text adventures), a curious cross-medium blending videogames and literature, defined computer entertainment at the start of the PC era. While it's been decades its commercial heyday, the web has allowed passionate fans and creators to revive the medium through a resurgence of groundbreaking new work.

However, few gamers even fans of more mainstream adventure games know that this movement even exists.

In this ten-minute video, Jason McIntosh demonstrates some examples of modern interactive fiction, ponders the challenges that the medium faces in today's digital-game landscape, and offers some starting points for players first discovering this unique kind of game.

Download it as a high-quality Quicktime file.

Additional credits, links and notes below:

Links

Full Credits

Producer / Writer / Editor / Host

Jason McIntosh

Voice Talent

Lindsay Gonzales, Greg Reimann

Camera

Lee Stewart, Julia Tenney

Action Castle Players

Ruth Alfasso, Denis Moskowitz, Gavin Schnitzler, Karl von Laudermann

Music

The Gameshelf theme music is by Joe Johnston.

This episode's music also included:

Special Thanks

Besides sitting for an interview, Nick Montfort also let Lee and I film various clips in his curio-laden office. The Apple IIc, the retail-box IF antiques, and the various other relics of bygone electronic games are all part of his own collection.

Andrew Plotkin helped sanity-check this video's content, through its several drafts. (And also sat for an interview.)

Jason Scott didn't have any direct involvement in the production of this video, but we did have some nice conversations about video production between my last major effort and this one. Mainly, I wish to mention that his own breathtakingly ambitious, feature-length (and then some) documentary about interactive fiction's history, Get Lamp, is going on sale very soon, and it's beautiful. You should go buy a copy.

Somerville Community Access TV lent Lee and I the equipment we used to record Nick's interview and office footage.

Other Notes

Yes, I did in fact write an IF game that became the backdrop for my host segments. If you're very good I might make a short followup video about it, and about Inform 7 (the language I used) in general.

In the brief shot of the two of us talking, Nick holds a copy of this book. View its cover at full-size to properly appreciate the majesty. That clip's original audio (not present in this version) was part of a comedic segue between Andy's interview and Nick's, so he pulled this volume off his shelves to use as a wackiness-increasing prop. The entire gag ended up in the post-production trash heap after I decided to go with the shorter format. Luckily, the clip is too dark to make the book very visible, so I used a little of it as a lead-in anyway. Call it an easter egg.

My inspiration for cutting the video's length from 30 minutes to only ten came from my discovery of Put This On, an excellent, funny, and geek-friendly new video series about men's clothing and fashion by Jesse Thorn and Adam Lisagor. When I pulled up the first episode, I unconsciously looked at the countdown timer in the corner, saw 10:00, and thought, Well, I'm skeptical about a show about clothes. But it does look kind of interesting, and what the hell, I have ten minutes to spare.

And then a light went on: I've been asking too much. It made sense to shoot for 30 minutes when I thought of The Gameshelf as a TV show that I also happened to publish on the web. But, I realized, that's view proved both outdated and myopic. If I will only agree to sit still in ten-minute chunks, then why would I create videos demanding more time than that?

I came to this decision after starting production months ago with a half-hour script, so more time and effort ended up on the cutting room floor than I'd like. That said, I find this abbreviated format far superior for the web-based publication that The Gameshelf has evolved into. Expect most future video work from me to stay YouTube-sized.

I hope you enjoy both this new format and the video itself. Feel free to let me know what you think!



video interactive fiction episode production video fiction interactive production nick gameshelf episode interview interactive fiction modern interactive jason mcintosh video series modern interactive fiction ]]>The Gameshelf
First shared by - spavis
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Please enjoy Episode 8 of The Gameshelf's video series. It's about modern interactive fiction.

Interactive Fiction (a.k.a. text adventures), a curious cross-medium blending videogames and literature, defined computer entertainment at the start of the PC era. While it's been decades its commercial heyday, the web has allowed passionate fans and creators to revive the medium through a resurgence of groundbreaking new work.

However, few gamers even fans of more mainstream adventure games know that this movement even exists.

In this ten-minute video, Jason McIntosh demonstrates some examples of modern interactive fiction, ponders the challenges that the medium faces in today's digital-game landscape, and offers some starting points for players first discovering this unique kind of game.

Download it as a high-quality Quicktime file.

Additional credits, links and notes below:

Links

Full Credits

Producer / Writer / Editor / Host

Jason McIntosh

Voice Talent

Lindsay Gonzales, Greg Reimann

Camera

Lee Stewart, Julia Tenney

Action Castle Players

Ruth Alfasso, Denis Moskowitz, Gavin Schnitzler, Karl von Laudermann

Music

The Gameshelf theme music is by Joe Johnston.

This episode's music also included:

Special Thanks

Besides sitting for an interview, Nick Montfort also let Lee and I film various clips in his curio-laden office. The Apple IIc, the retail-box IF antiques, and the various other relics of bygone electronic games are all part of his own collection.

Andrew Plotkin helped sanity-check this video's content, through its several drafts. (And also sat for an interview.)

Jason Scott didn't have any direct involvement in the production of this video, but we did have some nice conversations about video production between my last major effort and this one. Mainly, I wish to mention that his own breathtakingly ambitious, feature-length (and then some) documentary about interactive fiction's history, Get Lamp, is going on sale very soon, and it's beautiful. You should go buy a copy.

Somerville Community Access TV lent Lee and I the equipment we used to record Nick's interview and office footage.

Other Notes

Yes, I did in fact write an IF game that became the backdrop for my host segments. If you're very good I might make a short followup video about it, and about Inform 7 (the language I used) in general.

In the brief shot of the two of us talking, Nick holds a copy of this book. View its cover at full-size to properly appreciate the majesty. That clip's original audio (not present in this version) was part of a comedic segue between Andy's interview and Nick's, so he pulled this volume off his shelves to use as a wackiness-increasing prop. The entire gag ended up in the post-production trash heap after I decided to go with the shorter format. Luckily, the clip is too dark to make the book very visible, so I used a little of it as a lead-in anyway. Call it an easter egg.

My inspiration for cutting the video's length from 30 minutes to only ten came from my discovery of Put This On, an excellent, funny, and geek-friendly new video series about men's clothing and fashion by Jesse Thorn and Adam Lisagor. When I pulled up the first episode, I unconsciously looked at the countdown timer in the corner, saw 10:00, and thought, Well, I'm skeptical about a show about clothes. But it does look kind of interesting, and what the hell, I have ten minutes to spare.

And then a light went on: I've been asking too much. It made sense to shoot for 30 minutes when I thought of The Gameshelf as a TV show that I also happened to publish on the web. But, I realized, that's view proved both outdated and myopic. If I will only agree to sit still in ten-minute chunks, then why would I create videos demanding more time than that?

I came to this decision after starting production months ago with a half-hour script, so more time and effort ended up on the cutting room floor than I'd like. That said, I find this abbreviated format far superior for the web-based publication that The Gameshelf has evolved into. Expect most future video work from me to stay YouTube-sized.

I hope you enjoy both this new format and the video itself. Feel free to let me know what you think!



video interactive fiction episode production video fiction interactive production nick gameshelf episode interview interactive fiction modern interactive jason mcintosh video series modern interactive fiction ]]> Wed, 28 Jul 2010 10:20:33 -0400 30:00 tag:filome.com,7 The Inception Timeline [Infographic] http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/nextround/~3/ZI7XmI7nXys/the-inception-timeline-infographic Shared item NextRound.net
First shared by - Alex
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From the creator of the Pulp Fiction Timeline infographic. This is usually the part where I'm supposed to mention something about a spoiler alert but if you haven't seen Inception a) you suck and b) this will make about as much sense as your drunk text messages.

Via: thehighdefinite
Source: dehahs




inception infographic timeline drunk sense timeline infographic ]]>NextRound.net
First shared by - Alex
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From the creator of the Pulp Fiction Timeline infographic. This is usually the part where I'm supposed to mention something about a spoiler alert but if you haven't seen Inception a) you suck and b) this will make about as much sense as your drunk text messages.

Via: thehighdefinite
Source: dehahs




inception infographic timeline drunk sense timeline infographic ]]> Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:50:50 -0400 30:00 tag:filome.com,8 SLEDGEHAMMER AND WHORE http://hucksblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/sledgehammer-and-whore.html Shared item I find your lack of faith disturbing
First shared by - spavis
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This is the story of a Procedural.

So I'm at a meeting with a producer the other day and he's pitching me a tv idea. As way of emphasizing why I need him and his idea, he brings forth a piece of paper. On it, my credits. He doesn't actually hand it over to me but he says this:

PRODUCER: I've been looking over your credits, pretty impressive.
ME: Thanks, we try.
PRODUCER: Seems to me you're just missing one thing from these credits. And I'm gonna tell you what it is.
ME: Please do.

At which point he turns the piece of paper towards me and I see he's written in bold black marker near the top, pointing to the list: BIG FUCKING HIT TV SHOW.

ME: Well, yes, I am missing that. Very true. I think about that a lot.

PRODUCER: That's all right. Because I'm here to change all that.

At which point he launches into his pitch for what may or not be "my big fucking hit tv show."

Now, I leave it to you to debate whether pointing out my shortcomings is a good or bad sales strategy (it rarely works for my dad but often for my wife), and I'll leave it to me to decide whether or not the idea he pitched me was the answer to my problems.

I will say this about the idea, however: IT WAS ENORMOUS. The concept, the scope, the budget, it was resolutely and irresponsibly EPIC and for that I was totally grateful. Because if I'd been pitched one more aspirational character-driven procedural you were going to have to peel me off the Barham asphalt.

Not that I don't understand the impulse for procedurals. They're the golden retrievers of television. They're cheap. They're endearing. Not too hard to understand. And they won't cost 3.5 million per ep, pull in a 1.4 rating, and pee on your favorite tauntaun sleeping bag.

On the other hand, there's been a lot of recent attempts at "event" television and almost all have been utter failures. Even some of the ones still on the air stagger around like a drunk who woke up with a Season 2 and have no idea who drove them there or how to get home (I'm looking at you, V.).

With the death of Lost and 24, we find ourselves looking for the next bit of pop culture big-fucking-dealness that we can get ourselves all worked up for. And when I say "we" I'm referring to Fans of TV with a capital F and not simply those for whom TV is the thing that occupies the space between dinner and the sleep apnea machine. We Fans of TV want that Big Sexy Going Down the Rabbit Hole Feeling and no matter how much my mother loves Simon Baker, The Mentalist just isn't going to do it for us.

The Mentalist, is, however, going to make a shitload of money for all involved. It's easy on the eyes and is habit-forming much in the same way two glasses of red wine a night is: you'll get a nice, warm buzz but you're not gonna get really wasted and wake up with Cobb's malevolent freight train blasting through your cortex. The Mentalist isn't the best sex you've ever had, but it's also not likely to leave you to finish yourself off while your partner falls asleep to reruns of "Cheaters".

The Character-driven Procedural works for a number of reasons, but the biggest and the best of them is this: they almost never get picked up to series without a Serious Asswhipping Actor in the lead. Simon Baker. Hugh Laurie. Tony Shaloub. Kyra Sedgwick. Angie Harmon. These are legitimate cleanup hitters in any TV lineup. They might not be the favorites of the genre crowd. You might not stand in line for their autograph. And you are not going to see them down at Comic-Con doing funny panels with Jeff "Doc" Jensen. Why? Because they are too busy making the other twenty million people who watch tv every night love them.

"Event" television, on the other hand (and here we can probably insert the word "genre" or "science fiction"), usually demands a big canvas, a big cast of characters, and a large concept that often dominates. It's ideas first, characters second, and that, dear friends, is often a recipe for tv disaster. FlashForward tried to balance a lot of character work on the big bouncing back of their elephantine idea but the show never found a proper stride and a lot of people were knocked off into the pachyderm shit. Warehouse 13 works for SyFy because it's what X-Files would be if Mulder and Scully took Ecstasy and dry-humped their way through a Freak of the Week. Which is to say, a quirky procedural.

Aaah, but what about Lost, you say? Explain Lost, or at the very least, explain Lost's success? Big ideas, lots of characters, no big alpha stars, lots of story, lots of...lots?

I'm not the first to say this, but Lost is a freak show that will never be repeated. It's the Michael Jackson of television. No one should try to deconstruct the Lost phenomenon ever again. There is nothing to be gained from studying Lost's success. It's a Black Swan, or an Outlier, or one of many other books on my Kindle I'll never read now because, let's be honest, it's on my Kindle.

You can't construct a phenomenon from the outside-in. You can't will a show into the public's consciousness. Both of this year's breakout hits, Glee and Modern Family, had big buzz coming into the season. But that's because people who'd seen them knew they were good. They didn't just decide they needed them to be good and then set out to market them so, they actually KNEW they were. Both shows also have very strong creators who know television, know their own minds, and know what show they're making. These are not shows that could've been created by anybody--and that's not something you can say about most television. They are also decidedly NOT procedurals.

The stories I love often involve world-building. But most people working in the tv business are terrified of building worlds. They want shows that are relatable and recognizable. They want real worlds with real people that will under no condition make viewers uncomfortable or remind them of anything remotely strange and unknown. No Ordinary Family is a perfect example of this: the family is Absolutely Ordinary until they're NOT. And when they're NOT, they respond to that very NOT-ness just as any other Ordinary Family would.

But much of our most successful and daring television is, if looked at broadly, Fantastic with a capital F. Ryan Murphy is a world-builder, Matt Weiner is a world-builder, Vince Gilligan is an 800 lb world builder. Breaking Bad exists in a strange Albuquerque Dream State that is at once the most surreal and also the most achingly real drama I've ever watched. These are "genre" shows, maybe not exactly science fiction, but certainly not traditional "dramas", either. They are as weird and off-putting and daring and out there as any "space ship show" that the networks refuse to put on every year. And that was even before mother and daughter sang "Poker Face" to each other across a grand piano.

But I digress.

This is a story of a Procedural. Specifically, mine.

Last Sunday night the wife and I were sound asleep at 1145pm after a night of Entourage, True Blood and Schadenfreude. Because I have the iPhone4 and thus cannot use it as a phone, I had forwarded my cell phone to our home phone. At approximately 11:47:52, the phone rings and my wife answers it. Here is the call as has been best reconstructed:

WIFE: Hello...Who is this?
WOMAN: I need to speak to Josh.
WIFE: What? Why? Who is this?
WOMAN: Let me speak to Josh. He owes me money.
WIFE: Money? Call back in the morning.
WOMAN: I need to talk to him now. I'm in his office. He owes me money.
WIFE: (to me, handing over the phone) It's for you.

WOMAN: Josh? I need my money. I'm in your office.
ME: I don't know what the fuck you are talking about. What office?
WOMAN: Your office. In Larchmont. I'm there.
ME: You're in my office? At midnight. On Sunday? Describe my office.

At which point the woman gives me a very detailed description of my writing office--a second floor one room/one bathroom space that I rent because as much as I love my family...well, The Shining.

ME: Okay, fine, you're in my office. Why? And again, who are you?
WOMAN: You know why I'm in your office, Josh. You've been here with me for the last three or four hours.
ME: Lady, I don't know who you've been with in my office, but I haven't been there for two weeks. I mean that's a problem itself, my lack of motivation, but lets get back to what you're doing there?
WOMAN: Well...I met someone claiming to be you on the internet and he paid me to come to your office and have sex with him. Only he didn't pay me. He left. And now I've wasted my whole fucking night.

At which point I write the word "hooker" on the bottom of the envelope I'm using to take notes and hold it up for the wife. Now, it is perhaps a testimony or a condemnation to the way that I've lived my life that at no point during my conversation with this hooker calling me from my office and asking for payment does my wife for EVEN AN INSTANT think that perhaps, yes, she should be concerned that a hooker is calling her husband at home asking for payment.

Now I don't know about the rest of you, but this is a first for me, and my mind is racing. What to do? What information do I need? How do I go about getting it? I'm proud of myself for writing "hooker" on the envelope but I know I've got to do better than that. What pops into my head is: WHAT WOULD THE MENTALIST DO?

So I begin asking questions, trying to extract as much information from her as I can. Eventually I convince her that I am Not the John She is Looking For. At which point she says:

WOMAN: Well, now I'm feeling creeped out. Someone in here was pretending to be you. I think I'm gonna leave and go to my car.
ME: Great idea!

I ask her for the description of the guy:

WOMAN: Six two, white, clean cut, good haircut, nice jeans, cool Adidas sneakers, purple with green stripes, like the African soccer team. And by the way...can I say...I'm not proud of of what I do, but I'm not ashamed, either. I'm in school, single mom, two kids. I do what I've gotta do.

ME: I understand.

(Holy shit, really? Could she really have a heart of gold?)

ME: Could I have your full name and your phone number. In case the police need to talk to you?

WOMAN: Sure.

At which point she gives me HER FULL NAME AND HER PHONE NUMBER. My God. The woman really does have a heart of gold. But I can imagine the network notes:

NETWORK NOTES: We don't find the prostitute character believable. She's so helpful and well-adjusted. I don't think any prostitutes act like that. And the kid thing is so cliche. Shouldn't our cop have to earn that phone number with a little more detective work?
ME: First of all, the guy's not a cop. He's a quirky amateur who's also the victim in this case.
NETWORK NOTES: Feels a little premise-y. I thought we weren't doing a premise pilot.
ME: Second, go fuck yourself.

Finally I hang up with the plucky hooker and call the LAPD, pumped up by my amateur detective skills and excited to HAND THEM A FULLY MADE CASE.

What follows is fifteen of the most Kafka-esque minutes I've ever spent on the phone:

ME: A hooker and a john pretending to be me had sex in my office tonight. I need a patrol car to go to my office.
COP: How do you know?
ME: The hooker called me and told me.
COP: How does she have your number?
ME: I don't know. She's spent four hours in my office with a guy pretending to be me.
COP: You need to go to your office and see if anything's been taken. See if a crime has been committed. Then call us and we'll come out there.
ME: People are fucking in my office. In the middle of the night. For money. Without my permission. Certainly there's a crime there. And it's a brand new Ikea leather couch. I would say the couch's innocence has been taken if nothing else.
COP: You need to go up there and see.
ME: I'm scared.
COP: It's Larchmont, sir. It's safe.
ME: I'm gonna beg to differ.

Eventually the officer and I come to an agreement: I will not go to my office by myself in the middle of the night and see if the mysterious woman on the phone was telling the truth about why she was in my office and he will absolutely not send a car over there to check it out.

NETWORK NOTES: We don't really like the cop here. He's not very sympathetic.
ME: Agreed. But that's the law. There's a shortage of cars and they can't be sending them all willy-nilly everywhere.
NETWORK NOTES: Well someone should say that somewhere. Have the cop say he would go but the regulations won't let him. It's the system.
ME: That's not what the story is about.
NETWORK NOTES: And, you come off as a real pussy.
ME: No argument there. I'll see what I can do.

The next morning in the warm light of day I decide to go to my office and investigate. It's 8:30 am, and I'm feeling much braver after a full night's sleep and a lumberjack's portion of Ativan. My office entrance is on the exterior of a two story building with an outside set of stairs, ostensibly the only way into my office, in case you wanted to break in and screw a hooker and then ditch her.

I turn the doorknob, it's open. I curse my favorite hooker for not locking up afterwards but I understand she was a little spooked when she left. As I step into the office, A MAN steps out of my bathroom.

This is the moment time freezes: he is across the room and I immediately do a tilt-pan from head to toe, like the third act of a thriller when the hero is confronting the murderer: Tall, white, good haircut, nice jeans...wait for it...purple and green Adidas sneakers!

He is certainly as unhappy about this encounter as I am, but as he's probably had more experience playing the bad guy then I have playing the quirky amateur detective, he speaks first:

MAN: Oh..hey..Sorry...my buddy said to wait for him in his office...Is this the wrong office...? Damn. Sorry...

Watching someone lie and hope to get away with it is a fascinating experience. You know the answers to the test that he's currently trying to bullshit his way through, but you want to give off the impression that maybe you're buying it so you don't let him know that the jig is completely up. Which, of course, it most certainly is.

But then he does something downright creepy: he edges his way to my desk, sits down at my computer, and begins clicking keys and closing windows.

ME: DUDE. Are you fucking kidding me? Get off my computer!
MAN: Sorry. I was just surfing while I was waiting for my friend--
ME: DUDE. Do you have ID on you? Name? Anything?
MAN: Yea, of course. Wallet...Hmmm...can't find it. Shit...

He stands...

I know that at different times in this blog I've referred to myself as a fat, lazy fuck. But in truth...who am I kidding. That's exactly what I am. However, in the last year I've become a less fat, less lazy fuck. I've hired a trainer, mostly at the behest of my wife, who doesn't want me to die young and leave my child fatherless. My own motivation for working out is mostly to postpone my death at least until my wife is old enough that she can't remarry anyone that would sexually threaten me when I watch them fucking from Heaven.

For the last year I've only done one kind of exercise, three times a week: I'VE BOXED. And if my trainer is to be believed, and why wouldn't you believe a man who spent five years on British Gladiators and is nicknamed RHINO, I have a right hook like a SLEDGEHAMMER.

So as the tall man stands up from my computer, holding up his hands in a "no problem' kind of gesture, I'm thinking to myself: release the sledgehammer, Josh. Release the fucking sledgehammer. He doesn't know you're onto him, step in as if to shake his hand, pull him close and drop him like a rock...That's what any good hero of any decent show would do...release the fucking sledgehammer...

Here is also what is going on in my head: I'm gonna have to put my backpack down...but my iPad's in my backpack. What if he grabs that and swings it at me? What if he has a knife in those jeans of his, what if he guts me like a fish? For what? If I swing at him will my new iPhone fall out of my shorts pocket? It falls out all the time in the car, these shorts pockets are so shallow, I should've gotten the case for the phone, then it'd be less likely to fall out and break...if I had the case I probably would get better reception in my house and wouldn't have forwarded the call to the home phone...I never would've answered the phone last night...I wouldn't be here face to face with this guy...Bring the sledgehammer, Josh...

Here's what I said:

ME: Why don't we go outside and talk? I need to make a phone call.
MAN: Sure.

At this point I notice he's got a skateboard leaning against the wall. He casually grabs it as we head outside, down the stairs and down the long driveway to the street. I'm hoping someone else will be out there so maybe I can grab him and a mob will form and help me hold him down, but no one's there...He keeps repeating one phrase over and over as he edges to the street:

MAN: I don't want any trouble, I don't want any trouble...

I finally snap, screaming: "IF YOU DON'T WANT ANY TROUBLE YOU SHOULD STOP FUCKING HOOKERS IN MY OFFICE AND NOT PAYING THEM!"

His eyes go wide and he stumbles onto his skateboard, paddling for the street. I half-heartedly jog after him, trying vainly to take a picture of him with my iphone4, yelling nonsensical things like: "Come back here and I will fuck you up!"

He does not come back.

NETWORK NOTES: We don't like the detective very much here. He doesn't stop the bad guy, has no plan, and at the end sort of just puffs after him yelling like an idiot.
ME: It's real. It's what really happens when people are confronted with these types of things. Especially quirky amateurs.
NETWORK NOTES: Again, seems like a pussy.
ME: I get that. Maybe he'll just seem flawed but in an endearing way.
NETWORK NOTES: We also don't understand why he says the part about not paying the hooker. Why does he consider that to be relevant to all this?
ME: He's got a good heart. The hooker seemed so nice and he feels for her.
NETWORK NOTES: He's not gonna do something stupid in the next episode is he? Like call the hooker and meet her at a coffee shop and pay her the money she's owed.
ME: Ummmmm...No.

I return to my office and call the police. Two and a half hours later they arrive, turning my USA detective show into a hard-boiled network cop series. Two female uniforms, serious women, women who clearly do not want to be hearing from some jackass waving an envelope with the word HOOKER! written on the bottom.

I detail my story, knowing how impressed they're going to be by the number of clues I've already amassed...

COP: Sir. Before you continue...I want to say something to you.
ME: Of course, officer.
COP: I need you to understand that it is against the law to file a false police report sir. It is a crime.
ME: Are you kidding me?
COP: I am not.
ME: Are you suggesting I'm making this up? Why? To cover up for the fact that a hooker has called my home demanding money from me? Do you think I'm a whore-r? (sp?)
COP: It's a strange story, sir. Very strange. Doesn't add up. They seem to know a lot about you.
ME: They were in my office for four hours! I'm pretty sure they weren't having sex the whole time. God knows I couldn't.

NETWORK NOTES: We like this part. Conflict between our guy and the system. Of course they would suspect that. Maybe our guy did do it. Maybe it's all a scam. Like Usual Suspects. We love that movie. People wouldn't expect that.
ME: He didn't do it. There's security camera footage which shows the plucky hooker and the big tall John.
NETWORK NOTES: We need to see that. Security camera footage is always cool.

So there I was: scanning security camera footage with one cop while the other one took the phone number for the hooker and called her to confirm my story. There was definitely a moment of panic when I considered that the hooker was going to deny the whole thing and make me look foolish, but God bless her she SANG LIKE A CANARY!

I am not making that up. That is what the police officer said when she got off:

COP: My God. That woman SANG LIKE A CANARY."

(For those of you who've never hear that line in real life, trust me, it's even better than you imagine it would be.)

So between my new best hooker friend and the security tape footage, the police finally believe my story. (Another FYI: the security camera adds, like, fifteen pounds.)

So what do they do?

They do nothing. Wait. That's not true: they leave.

ME: But...I've got a glass here with his fingerprints on it! He left a shirt! It's wet! Full of DNA! There's a muddy footprint! Don't you want to take a cast?
COP: We're good, sir. Nothing's been taken. No property damage. We'll pass it along to the detectives but...I don't even know what we'd charge...
ME: Breaking and entering? Unlawful sex and non-remuneration of a prostitute?
COP: Sir.
ME: Well, are you going to send a forensic computer expert out to go through my computer? See what he was poking around in? See if he's stolen my identity for real?
COP: Nah. You can go on your computer. It's fine.
ME: Really.
COP: Really.

NETWORK NOTES: Well that just seems like lazy writing.
ME: But that's what happened.
NETWORK NOTES: It's not satisfying. The amateur sleuth's gotta go on the computer, use his own sleuthing skills, figure out the perp. You know. MacGyver it. We need more of that. More MacGyvering. Less being a pussy.

So that's what I did. For the rest of the day, another tv writer friend and I scoured the office and computer for clues, photographing footprints, analyzing the back window of the office for smudges...We discovered that the end of the paper towel roll I'd left over there had gotten caught in the window, obviously evidence that the window had been opened and shut (never by me). We found a print by the window, a smudge on the sill, we discerned the wet shirt was from the rain the Saturday before, also explaining the muddy footprint...We created a timeline of entry, cross-referencing with the time codes from the security footage...He'd come in off the adjacent roof, through the window...bringing the weather with him...

We went through my computer and discovered he'd gone through every one of my files only a half hour before I caught him in the office. This included deal memos, accounting emails, pictures of my family. You name it, he'd seen it. I canceled all of my credit cards, alerted the credit unions...

We went through my browser--he hadn't had time to erase his history--and found that he'd spent a good portion of the morning ordering ANOTHER HOOKER. We blew up stills of webpages, recovering a possible email account...I imagined how impressed the detectives would be with me when I provided them with all of these new leads...I was an amateur forensic genius profiling motherfucker...

We found out that my hooker with a heart of gold had spent some time the previous night doing what many of us do while waiting for a john to return from a smoke break: editing photos on facebook. A few clicks and we'd learned that everything she said was true: she was a single mother of two, attending college...Her photos were full of friends and family and happy memories, and I couldn't help but wonder about a world where this woman would do what she did and then retreat back into her world, if only through photos...

NETWORK NOTES: Too much. The whole photo thing while waiting for the john. Ick. Maudlin. It makes me feel sorry for her and now I'm getting a little creeped out by the detective. This is not blue sky. This is the opposite of blue sky.
ME: I was thinking of a Coldplay song over a montage.
NETWORK NOTES: Oh we love Coldplay. That'd be really powerful.
ME: So that's how it'll end: The amateur detective mooning over the hooker with the Coldplay song in the background, pushing his way forward all alone, the system ignoring him, looking for a break that may never come.
NETWORK NOTES: But not dark or serialized or anything like that, right?
ME: It'll be case of the week. Like The Mentalist.
NETWORK NOTES: We love Simon Baker.
ME: Who doesn't.
NETWORK NOTES: Does it have a title?
ME: Yep.

MY BIG FUCKING HIT TV SHOW.


office hooker notes network cop office hooker network notes phone need wife fucking night computer story point money real lost family case television idea detective security sledgehammer world josh gonna leave love amateur police window john footage fuck spent shows first think home mentalist looking hand procedural character little producer true course camera wouldn name quirky hours outside year strange whole found heart certainly making head myself doing network notes big fucking phone number security camera amateur detective world builder simon baker fucking hit camera footage lazy fuck sledgehammer josh cop sir coldplay song blue sky muddy footprint plucky hooker fucking sledgehammer adidas sneakers science fiction event television driven procedural character driven explain lost ordinary family better than word hooker money wife home phone quirky amateur security camera footage character driven procedural ]]>I find your lack of faith disturbing
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This is the story of a Procedural.

So I'm at a meeting with a producer the other day and he's pitching me a tv idea. As way of emphasizing why I need him and his idea, he brings forth a piece of paper. On it, my credits. He doesn't actually hand it over to me but he says this:

PRODUCER: I've been looking over your credits, pretty impressive.
ME: Thanks, we try.
PRODUCER: Seems to me you're just missing one thing from these credits. And I'm gonna tell you what it is.
ME: Please do.

At which point he turns the piece of paper towards me and I see he's written in bold black marker near the top, pointing to the list: BIG FUCKING HIT TV SHOW.

ME: Well, yes, I am missing that. Very true. I think about that a lot.

PRODUCER: That's all right. Because I'm here to change all that.

At which point he launches into his pitch for what may or not be "my big fucking hit tv show."

Now, I leave it to you to debate whether pointing out my shortcomings is a good or bad sales strategy (it rarely works for my dad but often for my wife), and I'll leave it to me to decide whether or not the idea he pitched me was the answer to my problems.

I will say this about the idea, however: IT WAS ENORMOUS. The concept, the scope, the budget, it was resolutely and irresponsibly EPIC and for that I was totally grateful. Because if I'd been pitched one more aspirational character-driven procedural you were going to have to peel me off the Barham asphalt.

Not that I don't understand the impulse for procedurals. They're the golden retrievers of television. They're cheap. They're endearing. Not too hard to understand. And they won't cost 3.5 million per ep, pull in a 1.4 rating, and pee on your favorite tauntaun sleeping bag.

On the other hand, there's been a lot of recent attempts at "event" television and almost all have been utter failures. Even some of the ones still on the air stagger around like a drunk who woke up with a Season 2 and have no idea who drove them there or how to get home (I'm looking at you, V.).

With the death of Lost and 24, we find ourselves looking for the next bit of pop culture big-fucking-dealness that we can get ourselves all worked up for. And when I say "we" I'm referring to Fans of TV with a capital F and not simply those for whom TV is the thing that occupies the space between dinner and the sleep apnea machine. We Fans of TV want that Big Sexy Going Down the Rabbit Hole Feeling and no matter how much my mother loves Simon Baker, The Mentalist just isn't going to do it for us.

The Mentalist, is, however, going to make a shitload of money for all involved. It's easy on the eyes and is habit-forming much in the same way two glasses of red wine a night is: you'll get a nice, warm buzz but you're not gonna get really wasted and wake up with Cobb's malevolent freight train blasting through your cortex. The Mentalist isn't the best sex you've ever had, but it's also not likely to leave you to finish yourself off while your partner falls asleep to reruns of "Cheaters".

The Character-driven Procedural works for a number of reasons, but the biggest and the best of them is this: they almost never get picked up to series without a Serious Asswhipping Actor in the lead. Simon Baker. Hugh Laurie. Tony Shaloub. Kyra Sedgwick. Angie Harmon. These are legitimate cleanup hitters in any TV lineup. They might not be the favorites of the genre crowd. You might not stand in line for their autograph. And you are not going to see them down at Comic-Con doing funny panels with Jeff "Doc" Jensen. Why? Because they are too busy making the other twenty million people who watch tv every night love them.

"Event" television, on the other hand (and here we can probably insert the word "genre" or "science fiction"), usually demands a big canvas, a big cast of characters, and a large concept that often dominates. It's ideas first, characters second, and that, dear friends, is often a recipe for tv disaster. FlashForward tried to balance a lot of character work on the big bouncing back of their elephantine idea but the show never found a proper stride and a lot of people were knocked off into the pachyderm shit. Warehouse 13 works for SyFy because it's what X-Files would be if Mulder and Scully took Ecstasy and dry-humped their way through a Freak of the Week. Which is to say, a quirky procedural.

Aaah, but what about Lost, you say? Explain Lost, or at the very least, explain Lost's success? Big ideas, lots of characters, no big alpha stars, lots of story, lots of...lots?

I'm not the first to say this, but Lost is a freak show that will never be repeated. It's the Michael Jackson of television. No one should try to deconstruct the Lost phenomenon ever again. There is nothing to be gained from studying Lost's success. It's a Black Swan, or an Outlier, or one of many other books on my Kindle I'll never read now because, let's be honest, it's on my Kindle.

You can't construct a phenomenon from the outside-in. You can't will a show into the public's consciousness. Both of this year's breakout hits, Glee and Modern Family, had big buzz coming into the season. But that's because people who'd seen them knew they were good. They didn't just decide they needed them to be good and then set out to market them so, they actually KNEW they were. Both shows also have very strong creators who know television, know their own minds, and know what show they're making. These are not shows that could've been created by anybody--and that's not something you can say about most television. They are also decidedly NOT procedurals.

The stories I love often involve world-building. But most people working in the tv business are terrified of building worlds. They want shows that are relatable and recognizable. They want real worlds with real people that will under no condition make viewers uncomfortable or remind them of anything remotely strange and unknown. No Ordinary Family is a perfect example of this: the family is Absolutely Ordinary until they're NOT. And when they're NOT, they respond to that very NOT-ness just as any other Ordinary Family would.

But much of our most successful and daring television is, if looked at broadly, Fantastic with a capital F. Ryan Murphy is a world-builder, Matt Weiner is a world-builder, Vince Gilligan is an 800 lb world builder. Breaking Bad exists in a strange Albuquerque Dream State that is at once the most surreal and also the most achingly real drama I've ever watched. These are "genre" shows, maybe not exactly science fiction, but certainly not traditional "dramas", either. They are as weird and off-putting and daring and out there as any "space ship show" that the networks refuse to put on every year. And that was even before mother and daughter sang "Poker Face" to each other across a grand piano.

But I digress.

This is a story of a Procedural. Specifically, mine.

Last Sunday night the wife and I were sound asleep at 1145pm after a night of Entourage, True Blood and Schadenfreude. Because I have the iPhone4 and thus cannot use it as a phone, I had forwarded my cell phone to our home phone. At approximately 11:47:52, the phone rings and my wife answers it. Here is the call as has been best reconstructed:

WIFE: Hello...Who is this?
WOMAN: I need to speak to Josh.
WIFE: What? Why? Who is this?
WOMAN: Let me speak to Josh. He owes me money.
WIFE: Money? Call back in the morning.
WOMAN: I need to talk to him now. I'm in his office. He owes me money.
WIFE: (to me, handing over the phone) It's for you.

WOMAN: Josh? I need my money. I'm in your office.
ME: I don't know what the fuck you are talking about. What office?
WOMAN: Your office. In Larchmont. I'm there.
ME: You're in my office? At midnight. On Sunday? Describe my office.

At which point the woman gives me a very detailed description of my writing office--a second floor one room/one bathroom space that I rent because as much as I love my family...well, The Shining.

ME: Okay, fine, you're in my office. Why? And again, who are you?
WOMAN: You know why I'm in your office, Josh. You've been here with me for the last three or four hours.
ME: Lady, I don't know who you've been with in my office, but I haven't been there for two weeks. I mean that's a problem itself, my lack of motivation, but lets get back to what you're doing there?
WOMAN: Well...I met someone claiming to be you on the internet and he paid me to come to your office and have sex with him. Only he didn't pay me. He left. And now I've wasted my whole fucking night.

At which point I write the word "hooker" on the bottom of the envelope I'm using to take notes and hold it up for the wife. Now, it is perhaps a testimony or a condemnation to the way that I've lived my life that at no point during my conversation with this hooker calling me from my office and asking for payment does my wife for EVEN AN INSTANT think that perhaps, yes, she should be concerned that a hooker is calling her husband at home asking for payment.

Now I don't know about the rest of you, but this is a first for me, and my mind is racing. What to do? What information do I need? How do I go about getting it? I'm proud of myself for writing "hooker" on the envelope but I know I've got to do better than that. What pops into my head is: WHAT WOULD THE MENTALIST DO?

So I begin asking questions, trying to extract as much information from her as I can. Eventually I convince her that I am Not the John She is Looking For. At which point she says:

WOMAN: Well, now I'm feeling creeped out. Someone in here was pretending to be you. I think I'm gonna leave and go to my car.
ME: Great idea!

I ask her for the description of the guy:

WOMAN: Six two, white, clean cut, good haircut, nice jeans, cool Adidas sneakers, purple with green stripes, like the African soccer team. And by the way...can I say...I'm not proud of of what I do, but I'm not ashamed, either. I'm in school, single mom, two kids. I do what I've gotta do.

ME: I understand.

(Holy shit, really? Could she really have a heart of gold?)

ME: Could I have your full name and your phone number. In case the police need to talk to you?

WOMAN: Sure.

At which point she gives me HER FULL NAME AND HER PHONE NUMBER. My God. The woman really does have a heart of gold. But I can imagine the network notes:

NETWORK NOTES: We don't find the prostitute character believable. She's so helpful and well-adjusted. I don't think any prostitutes act like that. And the kid thing is so cliche. Shouldn't our cop have to earn that phone number with a little more detective work?
ME: First of all, the guy's not a cop. He's a quirky amateur who's also the victim in this case.
NETWORK NOTES: Feels a little premise-y. I thought we weren't doing a premise pilot.
ME: Second, go fuck yourself.

Finally I hang up with the plucky hooker and call the LAPD, pumped up by my amateur detective skills and excited to HAND THEM A FULLY MADE CASE.

What follows is fifteen of the most Kafka-esque minutes I've ever spent on the phone:

ME: A hooker and a john pretending to be me had sex in my office tonight. I need a patrol car to go to my office.
COP: How do you know?
ME: The hooker called me and told me.
COP: How does she have your number?
ME: I don't know. She's spent four hours in my office with a guy pretending to be me.
COP: You need to go to your office and see if anything's been taken. See if a crime has been committed. Then call us and we'll come out there.
ME: People are fucking in my office. In the middle of the night. For money. Without my permission. Certainly there's a crime there. And it's a brand new Ikea leather couch. I would say the couch's innocence has been taken if nothing else.
COP: You need to go up there and see.
ME: I'm scared.
COP: It's Larchmont, sir. It's safe.
ME: I'm gonna beg to differ.

Eventually the officer and I come to an agreement: I will not go to my office by myself in the middle of the night and see if the mysterious woman on the phone was telling the truth about why she was in my office and he will absolutely not send a car over there to check it out.

NETWORK NOTES: We don't really like the cop here. He's not very sympathetic.
ME: Agreed. But that's the law. There's a shortage of cars and they can't be sending them all willy-nilly everywhere.
NETWORK NOTES: Well someone should say that somewhere. Have the cop say he would go but the regulations won't let him. It's the system.
ME: That's not what the story is about.
NETWORK NOTES: And, you come off as a real pussy.
ME: No argument there. I'll see what I can do.

The next morning in the warm light of day I decide to go to my office and investigate. It's 8:30 am, and I'm feeling much braver after a full night's sleep and a lumberjack's portion of Ativan. My office entrance is on the exterior of a two story building with an outside set of stairs, ostensibly the only way into my office, in case you wanted to break in and screw a hooker and then ditch her.

I turn the doorknob, it's open. I curse my favorite hooker for not locking up afterwards but I understand she was a little spooked when she left. As I step into the office, A MAN steps out of my bathroom.

This is the moment time freezes: he is across the room and I immediately do a tilt-pan from head to toe, like the third act of a thriller when the hero is confronting the murderer: Tall, white, good haircut, nice jeans...wait for it...purple and green Adidas sneakers!

He is certainly as unhappy about this encounter as I am, but as he's probably had more experience playing the bad guy then I have playing the quirky amateur detective, he speaks first:

MAN: Oh..hey..Sorry...my buddy said to wait for him in his office...Is this the wrong office...? Damn. Sorry...

Watching someone lie and hope to get away with it is a fascinating experience. You know the answers to the test that he's currently trying to bullshit his way through, but you want to give off the impression that maybe you're buying it so you don't let him know that the jig is completely up. Which, of course, it most certainly is.

But then he does something downright creepy: he edges his way to my desk, sits down at my computer, and begins clicking keys and closing windows.

ME: DUDE. Are you fucking kidding me? Get off my computer!
MAN: Sorry. I was just surfing while I was waiting for my friend--
ME: DUDE. Do you have ID on you? Name? Anything?
MAN: Yea, of course. Wallet...Hmmm...can't find it. Shit...

He stands...

I know that at different times in this blog I've referred to myself as a fat, lazy fuck. But in truth...who am I kidding. That's exactly what I am. However, in the last year I've become a less fat, less lazy fuck. I've hired a trainer, mostly at the behest of my wife, who doesn't want me to die young and leave my child fatherless. My own motivation for working out is mostly to postpone my death at least until my wife is old enough that she can't remarry anyone that would sexually threaten me when I watch them fucking from Heaven.

For the last year I've only done one kind of exercise, three times a week: I'VE BOXED. And if my trainer is to be believed, and why wouldn't you believe a man who spent five years on British Gladiators and is nicknamed RHINO, I have a right hook like a SLEDGEHAMMER.

So as the tall man stands up from my computer, holding up his hands in a "no problem' kind of gesture, I'm thinking to myself: release the sledgehammer, Josh. Release the fucking sledgehammer. He doesn't know you're onto him, step in as if to shake his hand, pull him close and drop him like a rock...That's what any good hero of any decent show would do...release the fucking sledgehammer...

Here is also what is going on in my head: I'm gonna have to put my backpack down...but my iPad's in my backpack. What if he grabs that and swings it at me? What if he has a knife in those jeans of his, what if he guts me like a fish? For what? If I swing at him will my new iPhone fall out of my shorts pocket? It falls out all the time in the car, these shorts pockets are so shallow, I should've gotten the case for the phone, then it'd be less likely to fall out and break...if I had the case I probably would get better reception in my house and wouldn't have forwarded the call to the home phone...I never would've answered the phone last night...I wouldn't be here face to face with this guy...Bring the sledgehammer, Josh...

Here's what I said:

ME: Why don't we go outside and talk? I need to make a phone call.
MAN: Sure.

At this point I notice he's got a skateboard leaning against the wall. He casually grabs it as we head outside, down the stairs and down the long driveway to the street. I'm hoping someone else will be out there so maybe I can grab him and a mob will form and help me hold him down, but no one's there...He keeps repeating one phrase over and over as he edges to the street:

MAN: I don't want any trouble, I don't want any trouble...

I finally snap, screaming: "IF YOU DON'T WANT ANY TROUBLE YOU SHOULD STOP FUCKING HOOKERS IN MY OFFICE AND NOT PAYING THEM!"

His eyes go wide and he stumbles onto his skateboard, paddling for the street. I half-heartedly jog after him, trying vainly to take a picture of him with my iphone4, yelling nonsensical things like: "Come back here and I will fuck you up!"

He does not come back.

NETWORK NOTES: We don't like the detective very much here. He doesn't stop the bad guy, has no plan, and at the end sort of just puffs after him yelling like an idiot.
ME: It's real. It's what really happens when people are confronted with these types of things. Especially quirky amateurs.
NETWORK NOTES: Again, seems like a pussy.
ME: I get that. Maybe he'll just seem flawed but in an endearing way.
NETWORK NOTES: We also don't understand why he says the part about not paying the hooker. Why does he consider that to be relevant to all this?
ME: He's got a good heart. The hooker seemed so nice and he feels for her.
NETWORK NOTES: He's not gonna do something stupid in the next episode is he? Like call the hooker and meet her at a coffee shop and pay her the money she's owed.
ME: Ummmmm...No.

I return to my office and call the police. Two and a half hours later they arrive, turning my USA detective show into a hard-boiled network cop series. Two female uniforms, serious women, women who clearly do not want to be hearing from some jackass waving an envelope with the word HOOKER! written on the bottom.

I detail my story, knowing how impressed they're going to be by the number of clues I've already amassed...

COP: Sir. Before you continue...I want to say something to you.
ME: Of course, officer.
COP: I need you to understand that it is against the law to file a false police report sir. It is a crime.
ME: Are you kidding me?
COP: I am not.
ME: Are you suggesting I'm making this up? Why? To cover up for the fact that a hooker has called my home demanding money from me? Do you think I'm a whore-r? (sp?)
COP: It's a strange story, sir. Very strange. Doesn't add up. They seem to know a lot about you.
ME: They were in my office for four hours! I'm pretty sure they weren't having sex the whole time. God knows I couldn't.

NETWORK NOTES: We like this part. Conflict between our guy and the system. Of course they would suspect that. Maybe our guy did do it. Maybe it's all a scam. Like Usual Suspects. We love that movie. People wouldn't expect that.
ME: He didn't do it. There's security camera footage which shows the plucky hooker and the big tall John.
NETWORK NOTES: We need to see that. Security camera footage is always cool.

So there I was: scanning security camera footage with one cop while the other one took the phone number for the hooker and called her to confirm my story. There was definitely a moment of panic when I considered that the hooker was going to deny the whole thing and make me look foolish, but God bless her she SANG LIKE A CANARY!

I am not making that up. That is what the police officer said when she got off:

COP: My God. That woman SANG LIKE A CANARY."

(For those of you who've never hear that line in real life, trust me, it's even better than you imagine it would be.)

So between my new best hooker friend and the security tape footage, the police finally believe my story. (Another FYI: the security camera adds, like, fifteen pounds.)

So what do they do?

They do nothing. Wait. That's not true: they leave.

ME: But...I've got a glass here with his fingerprints on it! He left a shirt! It's wet! Full of DNA! There's a muddy footprint! Don't you want to take a cast?
COP: We're good, sir. Nothing's been taken. No property damage. We'll pass it along to the detectives but...I don't even know what we'd charge...
ME: Breaking and entering? Unlawful sex and non-remuneration of a prostitute?
COP: Sir.
ME: Well, are you going to send a forensic computer expert out to go through my computer? See what he was poking around in? See if he's stolen my identity for real?
COP: Nah. You can go on your computer. It's fine.
ME: Really.
COP: Really.

NETWORK NOTES: Well that just seems like lazy writing.
ME: But that's what happened.
NETWORK NOTES: It's not satisfying. The amateur sleuth's gotta go on the computer, use his own sleuthing skills, figure out the perp. You know. MacGyver it. We need more of that. More MacGyvering. Less being a pussy.

So that's what I did. For the rest of the day, another tv writer friend and I scoured the office and computer for clues, photographing footprints, analyzing the back window of the office for smudges...We discovered that the end of the paper towel roll I'd left over there had gotten caught in the window, obviously evidence that the window had been opened and shut (never by me). We found a print by the window, a smudge on the sill, we discerned the wet shirt was from the rain the Saturday before, also explaining the muddy footprint...We created a timeline of entry, cross-referencing with the time codes from the security footage...He'd come in off the adjacent roof, through the window...bringing the weather with him...

We went through my computer and discovered he'd gone through every one of my files only a half hour before I caught him in the office. This included deal memos, accounting emails, pictures of my family. You name it, he'd seen it. I canceled all of my credit cards, alerted the credit unions...

We went through my browser--he hadn't had time to erase his history--and found that he'd spent a good portion of the morning ordering ANOTHER HOOKER. We blew up stills of webpages, recovering a possible email account...I imagined how impressed the detectives would be with me when I provided them with all of these new leads...I was an amateur forensic genius profiling motherfucker...

We found out that my hooker with a heart of gold had spent some time the previous night doing what many of us do while waiting for a john to return from a smoke break: editing photos on facebook. A few clicks and we'd learned that everything she said was true: she was a single mother of two, attending college...Her photos were full of friends and family and happy memories, and I couldn't help but wonder about a world where this woman would do what she did and then retreat back into her world, if only through photos...

NETWORK NOTES: Too much. The whole photo thing while waiting for the john. Ick. Maudlin. It makes me feel sorry for her and now I'm getting a little creeped out by the detective. This is not blue sky. This is the opposite of blue sky.
ME: I was thinking of a Coldplay song over a montage.
NETWORK NOTES: Oh we love Coldplay. That'd be really powerful.
ME: So that's how it'll end: The amateur detective mooning over the hooker with the Coldplay song in the background, pushing his way forward all alone, the system ignoring him, looking for a break that may never come.
NETWORK NOTES: But not dark or serialized or anything like that, right?
ME: It'll be case of the week. Like The Mentalist.
NETWORK NOTES: We love Simon Baker.
ME: Who doesn't.
NETWORK NOTES: Does it have a title?
ME: Yep.

MY BIG FUCKING HIT TV SHOW.


office hooker notes network cop office hooker network notes phone need wife fucking night computer story point money real lost family case television idea detective security sledgehammer world josh gonna leave love amateur police window john footage fuck spent shows first think home mentalist looking hand procedural character little producer true course camera wouldn name quirky hours outside year strange whole found heart certainly making head myself doing network notes big fucking phone number security camera amateur detective world builder simon baker fucking hit camera footage lazy fuck sledgehammer josh cop sir coldplay song blue sky muddy footprint plucky hooker fucking sledgehammer adidas sneakers science fiction event television driven procedural character driven explain lost ordinary family better than word hooker money wife home phone quirky amateur security camera footage character driven procedural ]]> Thu, 22 Jul 2010 09:45:37 -0400 30:00 tag:filome.com,9 Live-blog: Zuckerberg and David Kirkpatrick on the Facebook Effect http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Venturebeat/~3/zpd3mtxfA_s/ Shared item VentureBeat
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Mark Zuckerberg and The Facebook Effect author David Kirkpatrick met for an on-stage conversation this evening at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.

Zuckerberg was much more relaxed, less sweaty and nervous than the last time he was on a public stage in the U.S. at the d8 conference in June. He said that to get to Facebook's next 500 million users, the company is focused on a handful of markets including South Korea, Russia and Japan. He also said the company is working on fixing its issues around creating friend groups.

I live-blogged the event, in which the pair were interviewed by NPR's Guy Raz. The version below has some paraphrasing.

Q: Can you explain what the Facebook Effect is?

Kirkpatrick: It's a concept about how this massive social phenomenon is changing the world it's about government, privacy, our social lives.

Q: [Question about Facebook's major milestone today -- crossing 500 million users.]

Zuckerberg: The thing that we did to commemorate now having 500 million people we assembled a collection of stories of people who have used our services over the past years. They're really kind of amazing; everything from the guy who was the last prime minister of Denmark, who found a bunch of connections on his Facebook page and used that to find jogging buddies. There was another guy in a city in Connecticut who found that one of his constituents needed a kidney and he donated a kidney. The stories range from things that are really profound to things that are more day-to-day and mundane.

Q: Do you ever get freaked out about how powerful this tool you invented is?

Zuckerberg: Well it's the people who are doing this. What we built is a platform. We didn't build a system where people are donating organs. We built a system where people can stay connected. Historically, people have had the ability to call their friends up or meet face to face. But until recently, there hasn't been a good system to keep in touch with all of the other people who are in your life; people that you wouldn't have the ability to sit down with regularly. That's the power here when you build up all of the value of these latent connections. People have always wanted to do these things and we have a tool that lets them do that.

Kirkpatrick: Facebook is literally a platform. It has no content of its own. Everything is created by its own members. It's a viral system where information flows from person to person with amazing efficiency, if it's of interest. That is the effect.

Q: How does Facebook fit within the pantheon of great inventions?

Kirkpatrick: I think that anybody who has built a system that has attracted a half billion people in six years deserves a great deal of prominence. The world has changed so fast that it's hard to put people in places in the hierarchy.

Is Mark more important than Alexander Graham Bell? I have no idea. We'll find out over time. Facebook will not last as long as the telephone, I can assure you of that. So we'll have to make our judgments more rapidly.

Q: Do you think Facebook will be around in 100 years?

Zuckerberg: I don't know. I have no idea how long the telephone will be around.

Kirkpatrick: Do you think it's a reasonable assumption that Facebook will be a powerful Internet company in 10 years?

Zuck: I hope so.

Kirkpatrick: In 40?

Zuck: I don't know. The trend we're operating on now is about helping people share information, which most people 20 years ago did not have the ability to do online. Now everyone can share information about themselves that's the trend we're hoping to push forward. That's going to be one of the most transformative trends in society.

Kirkpatrick: The pace of change is truly accelerating. Something else could come along. You take the mantra that only the paranoid survive. The reason you make all of these changes all the time that raise privacy concerns is because you're concerned. You're scared of all the Twitters and Foursquares of the world that could render you irrelevant.

Zuckerberg: I would like to think we're more proactive than that.

Q: You have the largest database of personal information in the history of the world. If Facebook were a country, it would be the third most populous in the world. You are the head of a country. One out of every 14 humans has a Facebook profile. It's extraordinary. Do you remind yourself of this responsibility every day? How do you handle it?

Zuckerberg: The main thing is that we've assembled a team at the company that has a tremendous sense of purpose for the world. A lot of people who joined early in the company believe in what we're doing. If you can give people tools to stay connected and share information, you can create a lot of new experiences. It's that clarity around what we're trying to do.

Kirkpatrick: People have a hard time believing that. I don't think you do a good job communicating that. People challenge me all of the time on this point in the book that Facebook isn't doing it for the money. I know that you love product and you love engineering. You'd rather be talking to the engineering and product teams but Facebook is Facebook's scale is now requiring a new responsibility. Do you really want to be a leader of a company that requires constant interfacing with governments and regulators around the world? You have to constantly explain what you're doing.

Zuckerberg: Now that Facebook has 500 million people, a lot of the job has become communicating externally. Those are things you see in a mature company. If we thought that Facebook was a mature company and was anywhere near the end of its development.then maybe those things would overwhelm how fun it has been to build this. We don't think we're anywhere near the end.

There's this massive trend on the Internet. There are all of these different services and apps out there. But I think the thing that's most interesting to people are other people. That's why Facebook is a much more engaging app than any other out there. [Zuckerberg goes on to explain the photos app, which was far more successful than its predecessors because it involved tagging of friends.]

We think we can take basically any application and build it around people. If we did that, we think we could build a more engaging application. We can't build these apps ourselves with two or three people. So we built a development platform. What we've seen since then we built this thing called social plug-ins, where any site can take a line of HTML and drop it into their site. You can go to CNN and you can see which of your friends liked that article. It's a cool experience. Sites that have used these social plug-ins have seen engagement from Facebook go up tremendously.

We're seeing industries becoming completely transformed. Games are a good leading indicator. On Facebook, there are real companies like Playfish and Zynga. Zynga on private secondary markets has a market cap that's half of Electronic Arts with an eighth of the employees.

Q: Facebook has all of this personal information on us our relationships, marriage, personal photos. What kind of guarantee is there that Facebook won't sell it?

Zuckerberg: That's the stupidest thing we could do. The information that people are sharing is increasing so quickly. The amount of content that people had in the system will be a fraction of the amount of information that will be added to the system this year.

Here's an analogy. Think about Wikipedia. Anybody can take Wikipedia content, fork it and create a rival destination. But no one has done it successfully because Wikipedia isn't really Wikipedia. It's a community.

People can take all of their information on Facebook somewhere else. Facebook isn't the information. It's a community. People are only going to stay on there as long as they trust us and it's the best tool out there. People can use the API and take their data to other services. That's the whole platform strategy we've embarked on.

Q: But therein lies the problem. So many developers have come to rely on the platform. You've described Facebook as a utility like an electric company. Why shouldn't it be regulated? Why isn't it a monopoly?

Kirkpatrick: That's not what he meant.

Zuckerberg: Think about MySpace. People used it because it was cool and fun. People ask what's going to happen when Facebook isn't cool anymore. But I'm not here to build something cool. We're here to build something useful. Something that's cool can fade. But something that's useful won't. That's what I meant by utility.

I think we've shown that we listen carefully to criticism. We've created this open platform and people can take their data to any other service that you want.

Q: In David's book, you say that people should have one identity. Having two identities is a lack of integrity. But I behave a different way around my family than I do around my colleagues.

Zuckerberg: No, I think that was just a sentence that I said.

Q: Are you the same person right now as when you're with your friends?

Zuckerberg: Uh, yea. Same awkward self.

The definition is integrity is about [being consistent from one space to the next.]

Q: You've pushed this idea of being transparent. Why not keep things private?

Zuckerberg: A core tenet of Facebook is control. We built tools that allowed users to share what they want to with whom they want to. But as we've grown, we've found that the tools have become more complex. That's one thing that we changed. We created a master control that makes it easier.

Going back to your question about control. When people feel comfortable sharing information, people feel comfortable sharing more things.

Kirkpatrick: Why doesn't Facebook make it easier to control group functionality the church friends, your family, the people you had to friend because you couldn't say no to? It seems to me you would get more sharing if that functionality was radically improved.

Zuckerberg: You're right. This is one of the core areas that we need to work on, and we are working on it now. It used to be that sharing with my friends meant private. But now, more and more people have subgroups of friends. That I think is an important case and we're cutting at it in a lot of different ways. We'll have more to talk about later.

I think the key is that people can share with whomever they want. That goes back to the point I was making before. We have a community of people that are an engine for sharing. We're designing very simple ways to have social interactions that are very nuanced.

Kirkpatrick: [interrupts to talk about privacy settings and friend group features] This is something that Sean Parker believes in passionately. Every time you see a name, you should be able to organize it. You said it doesn't matter whether people use this everyone privacy setting. But you made this change where you defaulted a lot of users to the everyone privacy setting. I was personally not happy that my friends only list was changed.

Zuckerberg: A lot of what we were trying to do was have a simple experience. We didn't necessarily want to have hundreds of privacy settings. But even if only 0.001 percent of users use a setting, they really, really care about it. We try to think about this. Sometimes we make mistakes. When we get feedback, we try to take that into account. The reason why we made all of the changes is that we look at how people use the site. The site has changed a lot. Early on when we didn't have a lot of international growth, we had these crazy situations where a whole country would be a whole network. China was a network.

Kirkpatrick: So every person in one of those countries could see everyone else's profiles in that country?

Zuckerberg: Right, and the funny thing was that people in those countries were far more engaged than people where you could only see your friends' profiles.

Q: I wanted to ask you about Apple. How much impact has Apple had on how you calibrate your product? A lot of people use Facebook on an iPhone. Will you alter your products to accommodate those users?

Zuckerberg: We already do, which more than 50 percent of people who have iPhones have. Apple is a great platform. In 2004, it was really easy to decide what to build. We were going to design something for a desktop or laptop computer. Now there are iPhones and Android devices, and touchscreen devices. It is really challenging to develop for all of these environments. But it is how people want to use the service, so we spend a lot of time thinking about it.

Q: There was an article about Google considering Facebook as its biggest rival.

Zuckerberg: If you think about it on its face, we don't build the same products. Google's market cap is greater than that of all other Internet companies put together. From that perspective, they could see any growing company as a threat. But from our perspective, they don't have to lose for us to win. More people are using Facebook every day, but it's not that people are using Google less.

Kirkpatrick: I want to make a point that the iPhone is so vital for Facebook that out of any other company on the platform, they would have the most leverage to compel Apple to make a change in my opinion. Facebook is a huge percentage of total application use on the iPhone. Facebook has leverage if it needs to exercise it.

Zuckerberg: We talked about the Facebook photos service earlier. Users were requesting that feature for a long time. So we thought about building a decentralized system that could plug into web server and people could host their own photos. But we couldn't get it work as well as we wanted to.

Some technical systems become decentralized. We could agree that search wouldn't be great if it were split on 10 different sites. It's cool to see what all these people are doing. People are building all of these apps that use the social graph like games. People are building alternative structures. It's all cool.

Q: There is a Facebook fan page with 5,000 fans for a movie called The Social Network. We all know this is a telling or an imagined history of Facebook. Do you have any anxiety about it coming out? Is it annoying?

Zuckerberg: I wish that when people try to do journalism about Facebook, they try to get it right. [To Kirkpatrick] I appreciated all the time that you took in talking to people in the ecosystem at the same time, there was another guy a fiction writer who wrote a book about Facebook. When producers had a choice about what to base a movie on, they chose the fiction book.

Q: But he tried to interview you for his book too?

Zuckerberg: The reason that we decided not to participate was that it was very clear that it was going to be fiction from the beginning. We don't want to participate in something like that and have someone come along and say, Well, he talked to Mark Zuckerberg.'

Q: Are you jealous that Justin Timberlake isn't playing you?

Zuckerberg: Well, his cousin works at Facebook and is the lead designer on news feed. He's a great guy. The movie's fiction. All we can do is focus on building the best thing and not remember what people said about us along the way. It's important even not to listen to all the good things people say you too.

Q: Do you wish you could get away from the celebrity and notoriety that stems from what you've created?

Zuckerberg: Well, I can. It's called hanging out with my friends. A lot of my friends my closest friends are the people who've been along for the whole experience. As an example of fiction, they wrote the movie and said that I was creating Facebook to get girls. But I've been dating the same girl since even before Facebook.

Kirkpatrick: The issue about how movies change the image of Facebook is a far smaller issue, in my opinion, than dealing with governments and regulators. Whether you like it or not, I don't think the movie really matters. I do think that when you are maintaining millions of peoples' data and governments feel threatened, that's a real issue. The movie is a distraction. How are you going to handle this issue? The EU is coming after you. The Australian government is coming after you.

Zuckerberg: We have guidelines. There are lots of people we work with and listen to. What I find more often than not is that all of these people are reasonable. The key thing is to engage with all of these people and have real discourse.

Kirkpatrick: Are you personally willing to engage to that degree I think it's important for the CEO of Facebook to spend a lot of time doing that. [Google co-founders] Larry and Sergey hired Eric Schmidt. Are you going to hire an Eric Schmidt? You're a product guy. Are you going to want to be dealing with government officials I heard you did well with David Cameron but there are a lot of misconceptions abroad in dozens of other countries about Facebook.

Zuckerberg: We have a smart team of policy thinkers. These are important issues. We want to engage with people in this debate. There are great people on our team. In terms of these companies, I don't know if the model of hiring an external CEO is really a viable model. Technology companies really are product companies. A lot of the most important decisions come down to what you're offering to the people you serve. We need to make sure we handle a lot of these things together. I think for the long term, I don't think we're anywhere near the end. The platform decisions, product decisions we make over the next five to 10 years are going to be the most important ones we make.

Q: What should Facebook users expect to see will we be able to make phone calls or get CNN video 24-7 on Facebook?

Zuckerberg: The goal isn't really to do that on Facebook.com. Virtually every service on the web and in real life will be redesigned from the bottom up with people at the center. That might happen with incumbent companies, or it might happen with new companies. We have a lot of work that we need to do to ensure that we build out that kind of plumbing. Maybe the CNN and the New York Times of the future looks really social and you can get pictures from friends. We've already seen services like Pandora, where you can go to the site and automatically listen to music that you already like.

Q: But there are going to be many consequences to these changes.

Zuckerberg: And they're going to be good.

Kirkpatrick: Facebook's strategy is not to be a website long term. The platform is Facebook's future. Facebook is aiming to be a set of services that are applicable to people no matter what you do. It's going to be on the web. On your phone. You're going to apply it to everything that you do.

Zuckerberg: If we don't succeed at it, someone else will. That's the way things will go. Every single app that has been built with this methodology is more engaging and grows faster than those that haven't.

Whenever there are good entrepreneurs or folks who are attacking games when people hit that, it's going to work. We can be the platform that provides that, we are certainly in the lead now. We're not near the end. So there's a lot of room for innovation, and we need to keep moving in that direction if we want to engage that.

Q: As CEO, when was the last time that you wrote code?

Zuckerberg: For Facebook or not?

I use Facebook.com all the time. I use the Android version, the iPhone if you want to be a platform, you have to write code. So sometimes I write code on the weekend. The most recent time I checked in code for the platform was for f8. The platform team had this big monitor on the wall with the number of bugs that they needed to fix, and there were 150. I'd finished my keynote and so I helped out. So much of the infrastructure of what we do requires good code and abstractions.

Q: What are the issues or things that keep you up at night?

Zuckerberg: The main thing is that there is so much more to do. We have 1,500 people. We're a small company.

Q: Worth $27 billion.

Zuckerberg: Who cares? There are 400 engineers and a lot of excited interns. But that's it. There is no other organization on the earth that is serving 500 million with 400 people writing code for it. We are not near the end. We are not in maintenance mode. There is a lot more innovation to do.

I think there are companies that act like they are in a zero-sum market, that when others win, it's their loss. But we don't act like that. A couple of years ago there were many fewer people using Facebook. Now there are more. This behavior [of sharing] in the world is growing. We want to do our best in getting there.

Q: You're still young. You're 26. You're working with people much older than you. Why did you become a successful entrepreneur? Are you still learning to be a CEO?

Zuckerberg: I spend a lot of time thinking about it. What I think it comes down to are two key things for building something well one is having a really strong sense of what you want to do. Along the way are many distractions, you can get sidetracked. I was watching a video of [Steve Jobs], and his advice was to make sure you really love what you do.

Number two is building a good team. I had to find a good head of engineering who could scale out and have a good perspective on talented hackers. I had to find a good head of product that can make sure that everyone knows what the roadmap is Sheryl [Sandberg]. Any one of these people could run the company. If I disappeared, they could run it.

Kirkpatrick: It's really interesting that he's been able to hire great people from Sean Parker to Sheryl, who really share the vision. The scope of Zuckerberg's vision is very, very big. He's found all kinds of good people who can manage different parts of the task.

Q: Do you still sort of study how to be a CEO? Do you think about what you need to do and what you need to learn?

Zuckerberg: Yea. I started this when I was 19. I knew nothing. When I moved out here, I was so lucky in happening to meet the right people who could help us build the company. Meeting the right venture capitalists. Doing a contract to set up a data center. I took computer science classes. None of them were about setting up a data center.

If the next five years are as exciting as the last five years, there are going to be a lot of hard decisions to make. We have to spend a lot of time thinking about how to get them right.

Q: Are there any questions that you wish people would ask you?

Zuckerberg: There's an odd dynamic in these interviews where the thing I'm most excited about is what we're building now. And I can't talk about that.

Um, I don't know. Maybe I can't answer that because I'm too busy thinking about the questions that I don't want to answer.

It's important that as the company scales, that all the people who use our service and we have the most amazing statistics half of our users log in every day. We thought it would go down as we grew, but it hasn't. It's even increased.

Q: [A question about international growth]

Zuckerberg: The way the site grows is that people tell their friends. The whole marketing of the service is word of mouth. Until recently, we never targeted specific countries. We started off in colleges and we basically took requests. We put ads up to pay for servers. Then we opened up on campuses based on requests. When we opened internationally, we built a translation tool for users to translate all strings of text. Within two weeks, users voted on translations for Spanish. The French did it in one day. I guess they're really passionate about their language.

Only recently, we started targeting markets because we ran out of countries. There are only a couple of large countries that we aren't the leader in. They are Japan, Russia, South Korea and China. We had three engineers come into Japan and just go for it.

In Japan, we're already at more than 1 million people, and they've only been there for six to nine months. We've seen countries get up to 80 percent of their Internet population on Facebook. It really is an international service. People ask us all of these questions about how people use it differently in different countries. The crazy thing isn't how differently people use the service. It's how similar their usage is.

This is one of challenges that will be really fun. We get to build products where people have yet to touch a social network or where the majority of people are on another service.

Q: Last year, the State Department asked Twitter to delay a servicing during Iranian elections protests. Would you honor such a request?

Zuckerberg: It would depend. Some of the most interesting use cases we've seen have been of people using Facebook for political purpose. You [Kirkpatrick] wrote about one in your book, about FARC.

Kirkpatrick: One of the most interesting things about Facebook is that it's in so many countries that aren't democratic. There's this very healthy tension that Facebook is playing a part in. Facebook is a platform for the empowerment of its members. One of the things that people don't pick up on is that Twitter's a broadcasting tool. You get on Facebook because you want to stay in touch with your friends. But ordinary people sign up for Facebook and suddenly they have a broadcasting tool.

Q: Are you ever worried that you'll be targeted?

Zuckerberg: I think someone is trying to sentence me to death in Pakistan right now. That's not a joke. We think what we're doing is really valuable for the world. I hope I don't get killed.

Q: There are rules on pornography and censorship. How do you decide how do you decide what crosses the line and what doesn't?

Zuckerberg: We serve an international user base. We have a goal to really be an international company. Different countries have different standards for hate speech. In Germany, it's illegal to post anything with Nazi content. That's a decision they made after World War II. So our stance is that we respect it if it's a law. Now if Germany came to us and said Don't allow Nazi content around the world, that's ridiculous.

People have written about why does Facebook allow Holocaust denial pages? (Even though it's run by a Jew.) When a country has a clear standard and it's written into law, we'll respect that.

In general, we believe that free speech, openness and transparency are good. But we also believe that we should respect other cultures.

Q: On paper, we all know that you're a billionaire. You're a very wealthy guy. Where do you see yourself in 20 years? With your name on buildings? With philanthropy? Running another company?

Zuckerberg: I don't know if you've heard of Kevin Rose. But he has an awesome quote he was on the cover of BusinessWeek with the headline How this kid made $60 million in 18 months. He does this podcast every week with this guy on a couch. Someone asked him about it, and he said I'm not a millionaire. I'm not even a thousandaire. I had to borrow money for this couch.

I just want to live within walking distance from our office. We moved offices to a bigger building recently. We moved to this new place. I just wanted a new apartment that was within walking distance. So my assistant was looking for an apartment for weeks and weeks. Finally, I was traveling and she called me and said, I found a small house. I'm renting it. I hadn't even seen it. I didn't care. I just want to go home and sleep and come back to the office.

Q: And 20 years from now? Gates? Philanthropy?

Zuckerberg: We'll see. This trend of people becoming more open and transparent is really important.

Companies:

People:






facebook zuckerberg lot kirkpatrick company facebook zuckerberg think kirkpatrick company friends platform build years world users information countries social companies service different system doing building cool product million sharing privacy site share code need movie tool book work whole data international fiction country services content used team found spend iphone thinking network japan engage decisions david issue wrote mark effect google recently trend internet called photos change interesting real changed wanted control listen created person wikipedia setting 500 million facebook isn anywhere near share information mark zuckerberg facebook effect long term facebook zuckerberg social network privacy setting international growth eric schmidt write code nazi content within walking broadcasting tool different countries data center sean parker walking distance market cap kirkpatrick facebook years ago stay connected users zuckerberg million users south korea personal information mature company feel comfortable comfortable sharing david kirkpatrick plug ins social plug privacy settings within walking distance feel comfortable sharing 500 million users ]]>VentureBeat
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Mark Zuckerberg and The Facebook Effect author David Kirkpatrick met for an on-stage conversation this evening at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.

Zuckerberg was much more relaxed, less sweaty and nervous than the last time he was on a public stage in the U.S. at the d8 conference in June. He said that to get to Facebook's next 500 million users, the company is focused on a handful of markets including South Korea, Russia and Japan. He also said the company is working on fixing its issues around creating friend groups.

I live-blogged the event, in which the pair were interviewed by NPR's Guy Raz. The version below has some paraphrasing.

Q: Can you explain what the Facebook Effect is?

Kirkpatrick: It's a concept about how this massive social phenomenon is changing the world it's about government, privacy, our social lives.

Q: [Question about Facebook's major milestone today -- crossing 500 million users.]

Zuckerberg: The thing that we did to commemorate now having 500 million people we assembled a collection of stories of people who have used our services over the past years. They're really kind of amazing; everything from the guy who was the last prime minister of Denmark, who found a bunch of connections on his Facebook page and used that to find jogging buddies. There was another guy in a city in Connecticut who found that one of his constituents needed a kidney and he donated a kidney. The stories range from things that are really profound to things that are more day-to-day and mundane.

Q: Do you ever get freaked out about how powerful this tool you invented is?

Zuckerberg: Well it's the people who are doing this. What we built is a platform. We didn't build a system where people are donating organs. We built a system where people can stay connected. Historically, people have had the ability to call their friends up or meet face to face. But until recently, there hasn't been a good system to keep in touch with all of the other people who are in your life; people that you wouldn't have the ability to sit down with regularly. That's the power here when you build up all of the value of these latent connections. People have always wanted to do these things and we have a tool that lets them do that.

Kirkpatrick: Facebook is literally a platform. It has no content of its own. Everything is created by its own members. It's a viral system where information flows from person to person with amazing efficiency, if it's of interest. That is the effect.

Q: How does Facebook fit within the pantheon of great inventions?

Kirkpatrick: I think that anybody who has built a system that has attracted a half billion people in six years deserves a great deal of prominence. The world has changed so fast that it's hard to put people in places in the hierarchy.

Is Mark more important than Alexander Graham Bell? I have no idea. We'll find out over time. Facebook will not last as long as the telephone, I can assure you of that. So we'll have to make our judgments more rapidly.

Q: Do you think Facebook will be around in 100 years?

Zuckerberg: I don't know. I have no idea how long the telephone will be around.

Kirkpatrick: Do you think it's a reasonable assumption that Facebook will be a powerful Internet company in 10 years?

Zuck: I hope so.

Kirkpatrick: In 40?

Zuck: I don't know. The trend we're operating on now is about helping people share information, which most people 20 years ago did not have the ability to do online. Now everyone can share information about themselves that's the trend we're hoping to push forward. That's going to be one of the most transformative trends in society.

Kirkpatrick: The pace of change is truly accelerating. Something else could come along. You take the mantra that only the paranoid survive. The reason you make all of these changes all the time that raise privacy concerns is because you're concerned. You're scared of all the Twitters and Foursquares of the world that could render you irrelevant.

Zuckerberg: I would like to think we're more proactive than that.

Q: You have the largest database of personal information in the history of the world. If Facebook were a country, it would be the third most populous in the world. You are the head of a country. One out of every 14 humans has a Facebook profile. It's extraordinary. Do you remind yourself of this responsibility every day? How do you handle it?

Zuckerberg: The main thing is that we've assembled a team at the company that has a tremendous sense of purpose for the world. A lot of people who joined early in the company believe in what we're doing. If you can give people tools to stay connected and share information, you can create a lot of new experiences. It's that clarity around what we're trying to do.

Kirkpatrick: People have a hard time believing that. I don't think you do a good job communicating that. People challenge me all of the time on this point in the book that Facebook isn't doing it for the money. I know that you love product and you love engineering. You'd rather be talking to the engineering and product teams but Facebook is Facebook's scale is now requiring a new responsibility. Do you really want to be a leader of a company that requires constant interfacing with governments and regulators around the world? You have to constantly explain what you're doing.

Zuckerberg: Now that Facebook has 500 million people, a lot of the job has become communicating externally. Those are things you see in a mature company. If we thought that Facebook was a mature company and was anywhere near the end of its development.then maybe those things would overwhelm how fun it has been to build this. We don't think we're anywhere near the end.

There's this massive trend on the Internet. There are all of these different services and apps out there. But I think the thing that's most interesting to people are other people. That's why Facebook is a much more engaging app than any other out there. [Zuckerberg goes on to explain the photos app, which was far more successful than its predecessors because it involved tagging of friends.]

We think we can take basically any application and build it around people. If we did that, we think we could build a more engaging application. We can't build these apps ourselves with two or three people. So we built a development platform. What we've seen since then we built this thing called social plug-ins, where any site can take a line of HTML and drop it into their site. You can go to CNN and you can see which of your friends liked that article. It's a cool experience. Sites that have used these social plug-ins have seen engagement from Facebook go up tremendously.

We're seeing industries becoming completely transformed. Games are a good leading indicator. On Facebook, there are real companies like Playfish and Zynga. Zynga on private secondary markets has a market cap that's half of Electronic Arts with an eighth of the employees.

Q: Facebook has all of this personal information on us our relationships, marriage, personal photos. What kind of guarantee is there that Facebook won't sell it?

Zuckerberg: That's the stupidest thing we could do. The information that people are sharing is increasing so quickly. The amount of content that people had in the system will be a fraction of the amount of information that will be added to the system this year.

Here's an analogy. Think about Wikipedia. Anybody can take Wikipedia content, fork it and create a rival destination. But no one has done it successfully because Wikipedia isn't really Wikipedia. It's a community.

People can take all of their information on Facebook somewhere else. Facebook isn't the information. It's a community. People are only going to stay on there as long as they trust us and it's the best tool out there. People can use the API and take their data to other services. That's the whole platform strategy we've embarked on.

Q: But therein lies the problem. So many developers have come to rely on the platform. You've described Facebook as a utility like an electric company. Why shouldn't it be regulated? Why isn't it a monopoly?

Kirkpatrick: That's not what he meant.

Zuckerberg: Think about MySpace. People used it because it was cool and fun. People ask what's going to happen when Facebook isn't cool anymore. But I'm not here to build something cool. We're here to build something useful. Something that's cool can fade. But something that's useful won't. That's what I meant by utility.

I think we've shown that we listen carefully to criticism. We've created this open platform and people can take their data to any other service that you want.

Q: In David's book, you say that people should have one identity. Having two identities is a lack of integrity. But I behave a different way around my family than I do around my colleagues.

Zuckerberg: No, I think that was just a sentence that I said.

Q: Are you the same person right now as when you're with your friends?

Zuckerberg: Uh, yea. Same awkward self.

The definition is integrity is about [being consistent from one space to the next.]

Q: You've pushed this idea of being transparent. Why not keep things private?

Zuckerberg: A core tenet of Facebook is control. We built tools that allowed users to share what they want to with whom they want to. But as we've grown, we've found that the tools have become more complex. That's one thing that we changed. We created a master control that makes it easier.

Going back to your question about control. When people feel comfortable sharing information, people feel comfortable sharing more things.

Kirkpatrick: Why doesn't Facebook make it easier to control group functionality the church friends, your family, the people you had to friend because you couldn't say no to? It seems to me you would get more sharing if that functionality was radically improved.

Zuckerberg: You're right. This is one of the core areas that we need to work on, and we are working on it now. It used to be that sharing with my friends meant private. But now, more and more people have subgroups of friends. That I think is an important case and we're cutting at it in a lot of different ways. We'll have more to talk about later.

I think the key is that people can share with whomever they want. That goes back to the point I was making before. We have a community of people that are an engine for sharing. We're designing very simple ways to have social interactions that are very nuanced.

Kirkpatrick: [interrupts to talk about privacy settings and friend group features] This is something that Sean Parker believes in passionately. Every time you see a name, you should be able to organize it. You said it doesn't matter whether people use this everyone privacy setting. But you made this change where you defaulted a lot of users to the everyone privacy setting. I was personally not happy that my friends only list was changed.

Zuckerberg: A lot of what we were trying to do was have a simple experience. We didn't necessarily want to have hundreds of privacy settings. But even if only 0.001 percent of users use a setting, they really, really care about it. We try to think about this. Sometimes we make mistakes. When we get feedback, we try to take that into account. The reason why we made all of the changes is that we look at how people use the site. The site has changed a lot. Early on when we didn't have a lot of international growth, we had these crazy situations where a whole country would be a whole network. China was a network.

Kirkpatrick: So every person in one of those countries could see everyone else's profiles in that country?

Zuckerberg: Right, and the funny thing was that people in those countries were far more engaged than people where you could only see your friends' profiles.

Q: I wanted to ask you about Apple. How much impact has Apple had on how you calibrate your product? A lot of people use Facebook on an iPhone. Will you alter your products to accommodate those users?

Zuckerberg: We already do, which more than 50 percent of people who have iPhones have. Apple is a great platform. In 2004, it was really easy to decide what to build. We were going to design something for a desktop or laptop computer. Now there are iPhones and Android devices, and touchscreen devices. It is really challenging to develop for all of these environments. But it is how people want to use the service, so we spend a lot of time thinking about it.

Q: There was an article about Google considering Facebook as its biggest rival.

Zuckerberg: If you think about it on its face, we don't build the same products. Google's market cap is greater than that of all other Internet companies put together. From that perspective, they could see any growing company as a threat. But from our perspective, they don't have to lose for us to win. More people are using Facebook every day, but it's not that people are using Google less.

Kirkpatrick: I want to make a point that the iPhone is so vital for Facebook that out of any other company on the platform, they would have the most leverage to compel Apple to make a change in my opinion. Facebook is a huge percentage of total application use on the iPhone. Facebook has leverage if it needs to exercise it.

Zuckerberg: We talked about the Facebook photos service earlier. Users were requesting that feature for a long time. So we thought about building a decentralized system that could plug into web server and people could host their own photos. But we couldn't get it work as well as we wanted to.

Some technical systems become decentralized. We could agree that search wouldn't be great if it were split on 10 different sites. It's cool to see what all these people are doing. People are building all of these apps that use the social graph like games. People are building alternative structures. It's all cool.

Q: There is a Facebook fan page with 5,000 fans for a movie called The Social Network. We all know this is a telling or an imagined history of Facebook. Do you have any anxiety about it coming out? Is it annoying?

Zuckerberg: I wish that when people try to do journalism about Facebook, they try to get it right. [To Kirkpatrick] I appreciated all the time that you took in talking to people in the ecosystem at the same time, there was another guy a fiction writer who wrote a book about Facebook. When producers had a choice about what to base a movie on, they chose the fiction book.

Q: But he tried to interview you for his book too?

Zuckerberg: The reason that we decided not to participate was that it was very clear that it was going to be fiction from the beginning. We don't want to participate in something like that and have someone come along and say, Well, he talked to Mark Zuckerberg.'

Q: Are you jealous that Justin Timberlake isn't playing you?

Zuckerberg: Well, his cousin works at Facebook and is the lead designer on news feed. He's a great guy. The movie's fiction. All we can do is focus on building the best thing and not remember what people said about us along the way. It's important even not to listen to all the good things people say you too.

Q: Do you wish you could get away from the celebrity and notoriety that stems from what you've created?

Zuckerberg: Well, I can. It's called hanging out with my friends. A lot of my friends my closest friends are the people who've been along for the whole experience. As an example of fiction, they wrote the movie and said that I was creating Facebook to get girls. But I've been dating the same girl since even before Facebook.

Kirkpatrick: The issue about how movies change the image of Facebook is a far smaller issue, in my opinion, than dealing with governments and regulators. Whether you like it or not, I don't think the movie really matters. I do think that when you are maintaining millions of peoples' data and governments feel threatened, that's a real issue. The movie is a distraction. How are you going to handle this issue? The EU is coming after you. The Australian government is coming after you.

Zuckerberg: We have guidelines. There are lots of people we work with and listen to. What I find more often than not is that all of these people are reasonable. The key thing is to engage with all of these people and have real discourse.

Kirkpatrick: Are you personally willing to engage to that degree I think it's important for the CEO of Facebook to spend a lot of time doing that. [Google co-founders] Larry and Sergey hired Eric Schmidt. Are you going to hire an Eric Schmidt? You're a product guy. Are you going to want to be dealing with government officials I heard you did well with David Cameron but there are a lot of misconceptions abroad in dozens of other countries about Facebook.

Zuckerberg: We have a smart team of policy thinkers. These are important issues. We want to engage with people in this debate. There are great people on our team. In terms of these companies, I don't know if the model of hiring an external CEO is really a viable model. Technology companies really are product companies. A lot of the most important decisions come down to what you're offering to the people you serve. We need to make sure we handle a lot of these things together. I think for the long term, I don't think we're anywhere near the end. The platform decisions, product decisions we make over the next five to 10 years are going to be the most important ones we make.

Q: What should Facebook users expect to see will we be able to make phone calls or get CNN video 24-7 on Facebook?

Zuckerberg: The goal isn't really to do that on Facebook.com. Virtually every service on the web and in real life will be redesigned from the bottom up with people at the center. That might happen with incumbent companies, or it might happen with new companies. We have a lot of work that we need to do to ensure that we build out that kind of plumbing. Maybe the CNN and the New York Times of the future looks really social and you can get pictures from friends. We've already seen services like Pandora, where you can go to the site and automatically listen to music that you already like.

Q: But there are going to be many consequences to these changes.

Zuckerberg: And they're going to be good.

Kirkpatrick: Facebook's strategy is not to be a website long term. The platform is Facebook's future. Facebook is aiming to be a set of services that are applicable to people no matter what you do. It's going to be on the web. On your phone. You're going to apply it to everything that you do.

Zuckerberg: If we don't succeed at it, someone else will. That's the way things will go. Every single app that has been built with this methodology is more engaging and grows faster than those that haven't.

Whenever there are good entrepreneurs or folks who are attacking games when people hit that, it's going to work. We can be the platform that provides that, we are certainly in the lead now. We're not near the end. So there's a lot of room for innovation, and we need to keep moving in that direction if we want to engage that.

Q: As CEO, when was the last time that you wrote code?

Zuckerberg: For Facebook or not?

I use Facebook.com all the time. I use the Android version, the iPhone if you want to be a platform, you have to write code. So sometimes I write code on the weekend. The most recent time I checked in code for the platform was for f8. The platform team had this big monitor on the wall with the number of bugs that they needed to fix, and there were 150. I'd finished my keynote and so I helped out. So much of the infrastructure of what we do requires good code and abstractions.

Q: What are the issues or things that keep you up at night?

Zuckerberg: The main thing is that there is so much more to do. We have 1,500 people. We're a small company.

Q: Worth $27 billion.

Zuckerberg: Who cares? There are 400 engineers and a lot of excited interns. But that's it. There is no other organization on the earth that is serving 500 million with 400 people writing code for it. We are not near the end. We are not in maintenance mode. There is a lot more innovation to do.

I think there are companies that act like they are in a zero-sum market, that when others win, it's their loss. But we don't act like that. A couple of years ago there were many fewer people using Facebook. Now there are more. This behavior [of sharing] in the world is growing. We want to do our best in getting there.

Q: You're still young. You're 26. You're working with people much older than you. Why did you become a successful entrepreneur? Are you still learning to be a CEO?

Zuckerberg: I spend a lot of time thinking about it. What I think it comes down to are two key things for building something well one is having a really strong sense of what you want to do. Along the way are many distractions, you can get sidetracked. I was watching a video of [Steve Jobs], and his advice was to make sure you really love what you do.

Number two is building a good team. I had to find a good head of engineering who could scale out and have a good perspective on talented hackers. I had to find a good head of product that can make sure that everyone knows what the roadmap is Sheryl [Sandberg]. Any one of these people could run the company. If I disappeared, they could run it.

Kirkpatrick: It's really interesting that he's been able to hire great people from Sean Parker to Sheryl, who really share the vision. The scope of Zuckerberg's vision is very, very big. He's found all kinds of good people who can manage different parts of the task.

Q: Do you still sort of study how to be a CEO? Do you think about what you need to do and what you need to learn?

Zuckerberg: Yea. I started this when I was 19. I knew nothing. When I moved out here, I was so lucky in happening to meet the right people who could help us build the company. Meeting the right venture capitalists. Doing a contract to set up a data center. I took computer science classes. None of them were about setting up a data center.

If the next five years are as exciting as the last five years, there are going to be a lot of hard decisions to make. We have to spend a lot of time thinking about how to get them right.

Q: Are there any questions that you wish people would ask you?

Zuckerberg: There's an odd dynamic in these interviews where the thing I'm most excited about is what we're building now. And I can't talk about that.

Um, I don't know. Maybe I can't answer that because I'm too busy thinking about the questions that I don't want to answer.

It's important that as the company scales, that all the people who use our service and we have the most amazing statistics half of our users log in every day. We thought it would go down as we grew, but it hasn't. It's even increased.

Q: [A question about international growth]

Zuckerberg: The way the site grows is that people tell their friends. The whole marketing of the service is word of mouth. Until recently, we never targeted specific countries. We started off in colleges and we basically took requests. We put ads up to pay for servers. Then we opened up on campuses based on requests. When we opened internationally, we built a translation tool for users to translate all strings of text. Within two weeks, users voted on translations for Spanish. The French did it in one day. I guess they're really passionate about their language.

Only recently, we started targeting markets because we ran out of countries. There are only a couple of large countries that we aren't the leader in. They are Japan, Russia, South Korea and China. We had three engineers come into Japan and just go for it.

In Japan, we're already at more than 1 million people, and they've only been there for six to nine months. We've seen countries get up to 80 percent of their Internet population on Facebook. It really is an international service. People ask us all of these questions about how people use it differently in different countries. The crazy thing isn't how differently people use the service. It's how similar their usage is.

This is one of challenges that will be really fun. We get to build products where people have yet to touch a social network or where the majority of people are on another service.

Q: Last year, the State Department asked Twitter to delay a servicing during Iranian elections protests. Would you honor such a request?

Zuckerberg: It would depend. Some of the most interesting use cases we've seen have been of people using Facebook for political purpose. You [Kirkpatrick] wrote about one in your book, about FARC.

Kirkpatrick: One of the most interesting things about Facebook is that it's in so many countries that aren't democratic. There's this very healthy tension that Facebook is playing a part in. Facebook is a platform for the empowerment of its members. One of the things that people don't pick up on is that Twitter's a broadcasting tool. You get on Facebook because you want to stay in touch with your friends. But ordinary people sign up for Facebook and suddenly they have a broadcasting tool.

Q: Are you ever worried that you'll be targeted?

Zuckerberg: I think someone is trying to sentence me to death in Pakistan right now. That's not a joke. We think what we're doing is really valuable for the world. I hope I don't get killed.

Q: There are rules on pornography and censorship. How do you decide how do you decide what crosses the line and what doesn't?

Zuckerberg: We serve an international user base. We have a goal to really be an international company. Different countries have different standards for hate speech. In Germany, it's illegal to post anything with Nazi content. That's a decision they made after World War II. So our stance is that we respect it if it's a law. Now if Germany came to us and said Don't allow Nazi content around the world, that's ridiculous.

People have written about why does Facebook allow Holocaust denial pages? (Even though it's run by a Jew.) When a country has a clear standard and it's written into law, we'll respect that.

In general, we believe that free speech, openness and transparency are good. But we also believe that we should respect other cultures.

Q: On paper, we all know that you're a billionaire. You're a very wealthy guy. Where do you see yourself in 20 years? With your name on buildings? With philanthropy? Running another company?

Zuckerberg: I don't know if you've heard of Kevin Rose. But he has an awesome quote he was on the cover of BusinessWeek with the headline How this kid made $60 million in 18 months. He does this podcast every week with this guy on a couch. Someone asked him about it, and he said I'm not a millionaire. I'm not even a thousandaire. I had to borrow money for this couch.

I just want to live within walking distance from our office. We moved offices to a bigger building recently. We moved to this new place. I just wanted a new apartment that was within walking distance. So my assistant was looking for an apartment for weeks and weeks. Finally, I was traveling and she called me and said, I found a small house. I'm renting it. I hadn't even seen it. I didn't care. I just want to go home and sleep and come back to the office.

Q: And 20 years from now? Gates? Philanthropy?

Zuckerberg: We'll see. This trend of people becoming more open and transparent is really important.

Companies:

People:






facebook zuckerberg lot kirkpatrick company facebook zuckerberg think kirkpatrick company friends platform build years world users information countries social companies service different system doing building cool product million sharing privacy site share code need movie tool book work whole data international fiction country services content used team found spend iphone thinking network japan engage decisions david issue wrote mark effect google recently trend internet called photos change interesting real changed wanted control listen created person wikipedia setting 500 million facebook isn anywhere near share information mark zuckerberg facebook effect long term facebook zuckerberg social network privacy setting international growth eric schmidt write code nazi content within walking broadcasting tool different countries data center sean parker walking distance market cap kirkpatrick facebook years ago stay connected users zuckerberg million users south korea personal information mature company feel comfortable comfortable sharing david kirkpatrick plug ins social plug privacy settings within walking distance feel comfortable sharing 500 million users ]]> Thu, 22 Jul 2010 06:35:26 -0400 30:00 tag:filome.com,10 Analysis: Google and China Agree on a Fiction | Epicenter | Wired.com http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/07/google-china-fiction/ Shared item www.wired.com
First shared by - phillip
syndication+ 0 | Search 1 | Shares 1

Shared by phillip
CmdrTaco is a lazy fuck. :P

Google got its Chinese visa extended Friday, but that doesn't mean the company is having a good trip or that China's censorship has gone away.

Google's application to run Google.cn for another year looked like it was going to be denied by the Chinese government, who decided that simply redirecting all Google.cn users to an unfiltered search site in Hong Kong wasn't acceptable.

Perhaps they found it a bit too clever and easy for Google. Now Google has replaced the search box on Google.cn with a picture of a search box, which when clicked on takes the user to Google.hk.com adding another click between a Chinese citizen and unfiltered search results.

That seems to have satisfied the Chinese authorities and saved them some face at least for the time being.

It's a testament to the power of Google that it can get away with what is really a shameless charade.

The problem is neither side is totally committed to their stated positions. The whole thing started when Google got hacked, letting an intruder get to source code and information on Chinese human rights activists. Out of anger and embarrassment and perhaps to change the subject Google blamed China for the hacking and said that it was no longer willing to censor its search results on Google.cn as it had been since 2006.

Of course, Google could have tested the limits of its quasi-governmental power by simply shutting down Google.cn or returning uncensored results from the .CN servers to see what the authorities would do.

But the Chinese market is the largest in the world, and while Google may have the world's best search technology, that's not likely enough to break the spine of China's authoritarian rulers. On the surface, it seems like China's government is in a perilous position, trying to run a free-market economy within a regime dedicated to censoring negative information. But the strategy is working well enough, clocking nearly 10 percent growth in GDP, even in the midst of one of the worst global recessions.

But clearly, Google is loved by enough powerful people especially the growing middle and upper classes in China that China is willing to make some concessions, so long as they aren't perceived as kowtowing to a powerful U.S. corporation.

Google also gets to continue keeping an engineering office in China, running an ad business, and offering a product and music search engine on Google.cn all ways to keep themselves from being exiled from a market that is destined to become a huge profit-maker for some search engine. The new compromise does, however, hobble the company's ability to serve as the default search engine for online portals, Chinese web browsers and mobile phones which in the West has helped drive Google to its undeniable spot as the king of search engines.

So the fake image of a search box oddly makes for a logical, if temporary, impasse.

That's not tearing the Great Chinese firewall down, but it's actually a pretty big hole, even if both Google and China decide not to call it a hole.

This kind of odd compromise is hardly unprecedented with the Chinese.

Taiwan and China avoid war by both claiming to be the legitimate rulers of mainland China, a fiction that has persisted for more than 50 years, even as Taiwan is, in nearly all respects, its own country. But if Taiwan ever does decide to publicly say it is its own country, that's ground for a Chinese invasion.

So now we have a new fiction to add to that one. Google doesn't run an unfiltered search engine in China, even though Chinese users can use an unfiltered Google search engine by going to Google.cn and clicking a facsimile of a search box.

Depending on where you stand, that's either a good thing for net freedom or a capitulation by Google.

But that's the fiction that's been agreed upon.



google search china chinese cn google search china chinese engine fiction unfiltered search engine search box unfiltered search own country search results ]]>www.wired.com
First shared by - phillip
syndication+ 0 | Search 1 | Shares 1

Shared by phillip
CmdrTaco is a lazy fuck. :P

Google got its Chinese visa extended Friday, but that doesn't mean the company is having a good trip or that China's censorship has gone away.

Google's application to run Google.cn for another year looked like it was going to be denied by the Chinese government, who decided that simply redirecting all Google.cn users to an unfiltered search site in Hong Kong wasn't acceptable.

Perhaps they found it a bit too clever and easy for Google. Now Google has replaced the search box on Google.cn with a picture of a search box, which when clicked on takes the user to Google.hk.com adding another click between a Chinese citizen and unfiltered search results.

That seems to have satisfied the Chinese authorities and saved them some face at least for the time being.

It's a testament to the power of Google that it can get away with what is really a shameless charade.

The problem is neither side is totally committed to their stated positions. The whole thing started when Google got hacked, letting an intruder get to source code and information on Chinese human rights activists. Out of anger and embarrassment and perhaps to change the subject Google blamed China for the hacking and said that it was no longer willing to censor its search results on Google.cn as it had been since 2006.

Of course, Google could have tested the limits of its quasi-governmental power by simply shutting down Google.cn or returning uncensored results from the .CN servers to see what the authorities would do.

But the Chinese market is the largest in the world, and while Google may have the world's best search technology, that's not likely enough to break the spine of China's authoritarian rulers. On the surface, it seems like China's government is in a perilous position, trying to run a free-market economy within a regime dedicated to censoring negative information. But the strategy is working well enough, clocking nearly 10 percent growth in GDP, even in the midst of one of the worst global recessions.

But clearly, Google is loved by enough powerful people especially the growing middle and upper classes in China that China is willing to make some concessions, so long as they aren't perceived as kowtowing to a powerful U.S. corporation.

Google also gets to continue keeping an engineering office in China, running an ad business, and offering a product and music search engine on Google.cn all ways to keep themselves from being exiled from a market that is destined to become a huge profit-maker for some search engine. The new compromise does, however, hobble the company's ability to serve as the default search engine for online portals, Chinese web browsers and mobile phones which in the West has helped drive Google to its undeniable spot as the king of search engines.

So the fake image of a search box oddly makes for a logical, if temporary, impasse.

That's not tearing the Great Chinese firewall down, but it's actually a pretty big hole, even if both Google and China decide not to call it a hole.

This kind of odd compromise is hardly unprecedented with the Chinese.

Taiwan and China avoid war by both claiming to be the legitimate rulers of mainland China, a fiction that has persisted for more than 50 years, even as Taiwan is, in nearly all respects, its own country. But if Taiwan ever does decide to publicly say it is its own country, that's ground for a Chinese invasion.

So now we have a new fiction to add to that one. Google doesn't run an unfiltered search engine in China, even though Chinese users can use an unfiltered Google search engine by going to Google.cn and clicking a facsimile of a search box.

Depending on where you stand, that's either a good thing for net freedom or a capitulation by Google.

But that's the fiction that's been agreed upon.



google search china chinese cn google search china chinese engine fiction unfiltered search engine search box unfiltered search own country search results ]]> Wed, 21 Jul 2010 16:50:22 -0400 30:00 tag:filome.com,11 Documenting Your "Now" For The Future http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OffOnATangent/~3/aIju1MjG_uY/documenting-your-now-for-future.html Shared item Off On A Tangent
First shared by - chrisbrogan
syndication+ 0 | Search 1 | Shares 1

I'm excited to be able to take part in Discovery Channel's The Colony social experiment.

I created a video to share tips on how to report the news with a videocamera. This is something that I'm passionate about and am happy that I get to spread the word further along via social media.

Here the video:



When you enter the The Colony, you're presented with a 'Facebook-like' community.

You can particiapte at:

http://jointhecolony.com

Here's what The Colony site looks like TO ME, when I'M signed in through FACEBOOK:



When YOU sign in, you'll see yourself there. Everyone's experience will be different, depending on whether they sign in with Facebook or not. Neat!

My post looks like this:



Here's the description:
Now's a great time to learn how to document the world around you. Citizen journalism is more important then ever ... and anyone can report and share the news! Steve Garfield reports.

This is a rough transcript of the contents of the video:

Hi, this is Steve Garfield from SteveGarfield.com, author of Get Seen, Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business.

In times like these with rapidly changing news events, WE need to be prepared to share information.

Citizen reporters, performing acts of journalism, are an important part of the news process, sharing stories, sometimes faster than mainstream media.

II'm going to highlight the tools that you can use, and how to share your video stories with them.

First, let's look at cameras...

The best camera to use, is the one that you have with you.

Does your cellphone have a video camera? [ Show iPhone 3GS ]

How about your digital still camera? [ Show Panasonic ]

You can also use a pocket HD video camera. [ Show Kodak Zi8 ]

All these tools depend on power. Make sure you have extra batteries, or chargers. If the power goes out, you can use chargers to run off of car batteries. [ Show Duracell Charger ]

When shooting your video, keep these tips in mind.

- Think about Sound
- Look for the Light [ LitePanel MicroPro LED Light ]
- Hold the Camera Steady

Once you've shot your video, you'll want to share it.

The best way to do that is to share it with friends. Your friends won't want you emailing them videos because that fills up their mailboxes, so you'll want to host the video somewhere and then share it with a link.

Some social media sites you could upload your video to include YouTube and Facebook. Once you've got y our video up there, you can easily share it's link.

Also, if you want people to find your videos, make sure you give them descriptive titles, and tags.

If possible add a transcript so your video can be found when people are searching for the content of your video on sites like Google, YouTube or BING.

One more way to share video from a computer with a webcam. You can either record video directly up to YouTube or Facebook, or live stream to sites like UStream.

You can also live stream from cell phones.

What will help you capture a story when something happens is to be prepared. This means that you have experience recording and sharing video.

Practice NOW.

- KNOW How to turn the camera on and put it into record mode
- KNOW How to you review the footage you've shot
- KNOW How to quickly share it

I'll be looking forward to seeing your news worthy video.

Disclosure: http://cmp.ly/3/cgot0p

Read more about the project:
Viral site spreads fear, speculation and info for Discovery's "The Colony"
#StillHere, A Fiction Experience For Discovery Channel's The Colony, Is Online
#TheColony on twitter


video share camera news colony video share camera facebook news colony live stream video camera steve garfield social media discovery channel ]]>Off On A Tangent
First shared by - chrisbrogan
syndication+ 0 | Search 1 | Shares 1

I'm excited to be able to take part in Discovery Channel's The Colony social experiment.

I created a video to share tips on how to report the news with a videocamera. This is something that I'm passionate about and am happy that I get to spread the word further along via social media.

Here the video:



When you enter the The Colony, you're presented with a 'Facebook-like' community.

You can particiapte at:

http://jointhecolony.com

Here's what The Colony site looks like TO ME, when I'M signed in through FACEBOOK:



When YOU sign in, you'll see yourself there. Everyone's experience will be different, depending on whether they sign in with Facebook or not. Neat!

My post looks like this:



Here's the description:
Now's a great time to learn how to document the world around you. Citizen journalism is more important then ever ... and anyone can report and share the news! Steve Garfield reports.

This is a rough transcript of the contents of the video:

Hi, this is Steve Garfield from SteveGarfield.com, author of Get Seen, Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business.

In times like these with rapidly changing news events, WE need to be prepared to share information.

Citizen reporters, performing acts of journalism, are an important part of the news process, sharing stories, sometimes faster than mainstream media.

II'm going to highlight the tools that you can use, and how to share your video stories with them.

First, let's look at cameras...

The best camera to use, is the one that you have with you.

Does your cellphone have a video camera? [ Show iPhone 3GS ]

How about your digital still camera? [ Show Panasonic ]

You can also use a pocket HD video camera. [ Show Kodak Zi8 ]

All these tools depend on power. Make sure you have extra batteries, or chargers. If the power goes out, you can use chargers to run off of car batteries. [ Show Duracell Charger ]

When shooting your video, keep these tips in mind.

- Think about Sound
- Look for the Light [ LitePanel MicroPro LED Light ]
- Hold the Camera Steady

Once you've shot your video, you'll want to share it.

The best way to do that is to share it with friends. Your friends won't want you emailing them videos because that fills up their mailboxes, so you'll want to host the video somewhere and then share it with a link.

Some social media sites you could upload your video to include YouTube and Facebook. Once you've got y our video up there, you can easily share it's link.

Also, if you want people to find your videos, make sure you give them descriptive titles, and tags.

If possible add a transcript so your video can be found when people are searching for the content of your video on sites like Google, YouTube or BING.

One more way to share video from a computer with a webcam. You can either record video directly up to YouTube or Facebook, or live stream to sites like UStream.

You can also live stream from cell phones.

What will help you capture a story when something happens is to be prepared. This means that you have experience recording and sharing video.

Practice NOW.

- KNOW How to turn the camera on and put it into record mode
- KNOW How to you review the footage you've shot
- KNOW How to quickly share it

I'll be looking forward to seeing your news worthy video.

Disclosure: http://cmp.ly/3/cgot0p

Read more about the project:
Viral site spreads fear, speculation and info for Discovery's "The Colony"
#StillHere, A Fiction Experience For Discovery Channel's The Colony, Is Online
#TheColony on twitter


video share camera news colony video share camera facebook news colony live stream video camera steve garfield social media discovery channel ]]> Fri, 16 Jul 2010 17:25:09 -0400 30:00 tag:filome.com,12 Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page Shared item en.wikipedia.org
First shared by - phillip
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Shared by phillip
This on the front page doesn't help Wikipedia in schools.

Today's featured article

Ann Bannon (born 1932) is an American author who wrote six lesbian pulp fiction novels from 1957 to 1962 known as The Beebo Brinker Chronicles. The books' enduring popularity and impact on lesbian identity has earned her the title "Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction". Bannon was a young housewife trying to address her own issues of sexuality when she was inspired to write her first novel. Her subsequent books featured four characters who reappeared throughout the series, including her eponymous heroine, Beebo Brinker, who came to embody the archetype of a butch lesbian. Despite her traditional upbringing and role in married life, her novels defied conventions for romance stories and depictions of lesbians, by addressing complex homosexual relationships positively during the 1950s and 1960s. Bannon's books shaped lesbian identity for lesbians and heterosexuals alike, but she was mostly unaware of their impact until they were republished in the 1980s. Since then, her books have been adapted into an Off-Broadway play and have been taught within Women's and LGBT studies.



lesbian books s bannon beebo lesbian books lesbian identity beebo brinker pulp fiction lesbian pulp lesbian pulp fiction ]]>en.wikipedia.org
First shared by - phillip
syndication+ 0 | Search 1 | Shares 1

Shared by phillip
This on the front page doesn't help Wikipedia in schools.

Today's featured article

Ann Bannon (born 1932) is an American author who wrote six lesbian pulp fiction novels from 1957 to 1962 known as The Beebo Brinker Chronicles. The books' enduring popularity and impact on lesbian identity has earned her the title "Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction". Bannon was a young housewife trying to address her own issues of sexuality when she was inspired to write her first novel. Her subsequent books featured four characters who reappeared throughout the series, including her eponymous heroine, Beebo Brinker, who came to embody the archetype of a butch lesbian. Despite her traditional upbringing and role in married life, her novels defied conventions for romance stories and depictions of lesbians, by addressing complex homosexual relationships positively during the 1950s and 1960s. Bannon's books shaped lesbian identity for lesbians and heterosexuals alike, but she was mostly unaware of their impact until they were republished in the 1980s. Since then, her books have been adapted into an Off-Broadway play and have been taught within Women's and LGBT studies.



lesbian books s bannon beebo lesbian books lesbian identity beebo brinker pulp fiction lesbian pulp lesbian pulp fiction ]]> Thu, 15 Jul 2010 07:50:21 -0400 30:00 tag:filome.com,13 Why We Lie - Casting ourselves in fiction: We were a sissy bunch ... (Adam Langer/Publishers Weekly) http://mediagazer.com/100714/p4#a100714p4 Shared item Mediagazer
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Adam Langer / Publishers Weekly:
Why We Lie Casting ourselves in fiction: We were a sissy bunch, armed with degrees from liberal arts colleges. It's probably James Frey's fault. Maybe Laura Albert's, too. We can also blame Margaret Jones, Stephen Barrus, and Norma Bagain. And maybe Daniel James and Clifford Irving for getting the whole thing started.



langer publishers weekly lie adam langer publishers publishers weekly adam langer sissy bunch casting ourselves lie casting langer publishers weekly adam langer publishers lie casting ourselves ]]>Mediagazer
First shared by - BrandonMendelson
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Adam Langer / Publishers Weekly:
Why We Lie Casting ourselves in fiction: We were a sissy bunch, armed with degrees from liberal arts colleges. It's probably James Frey's fault. Maybe Laura Albert's, too. We can also blame Margaret Jones, Stephen Barrus, and Norma Bagain. And maybe Daniel James and Clifford Irving for getting the whole thing started.



langer publishers weekly lie adam langer publishers publishers weekly adam langer sissy bunch casting ourselves lie casting langer publishers weekly adam langer publishers lie casting ourselves ]]> Wed, 14 Jul 2010 11:30:35 -0400 30:00 tag:filome.com,14 What Happens If People Believe the Facebook Movie? http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OmMalik/~3/s0NjdN9FAMM/ Shared item GigaOM
First shared by - Avi
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They say history is written by the victors, but the reality is that Hollywood prefers a sexy story. The upcoming movie, The Social Network, is based on the semi-fictionalized accounts of those jilted during the founding of Facebook. Starring Justin Timberlake and Andrew Garfield (who's about to be the next Spider-Man), written by Andrew SorkinAaron Sorkin, directed by David Fincher, produced by Kevin Spacey, scored by Trent Reznor, and about a massive cultural phenomenon, there's a good chance people are actually going to pay attention to this movie.

The Social Network, due in theaters October 1, was inspired by The Accidental Billionaires, an unauthorized, dramatized account billed as a non-fiction work by Ben Mezrich, who popularized the (similarly embellished) story of MIT students taking over Vegas in Bringing Down the House. Mezrich's book is told from the perspective of three early influences on Facebook who were screwed out of their roles in the company by founder CEO Mark Zuckerberg: Tyler Winklevoss (who, along with his brother, informally hired Zuckerberg to build a similar site, which Zuckerberg bailed on while creating and launched what was then called thefacebook; they sued and received $65 million), Eduardo Saverin (Zuckerberg's Harvard friend who financed the early days of the company and was diluted out of his stake after it raised outside funding) and Sean Parker (who was Zuckerberg's Silicon Valley role model, but was kicked out of the company after getting busted at a party where there were drugs and an underage Facebook employee).

Because Mezrich didn't even talk to the most important character in his book, Zuckerberg, the details on many events are incredibly sketchy. (Not that Mezrich didn't sketch them out himself, in almost comically dramatized scenes: Maybe Mark took a deep swig of the beer, let the bitter taste bite at the back of his throat, as he tapped his fingers against the laptop keyboard, gently summoning the thing awake.)

If you read Mezrich's book proposal, which was passed around online in 2008, you get all of the sex, drugs and rock and roll that's spread out across those 250 pages pitched with even more exaggeration than in the actual text, to my reading. In fact, Mezrich's proposal was so appealing, much of the movie was apparently based on it alone.

Asa Mathat | All Things Digital

Zuckerberg is no angel, but the book is not fact either. A Hollywood version of it is going to be even further from the truth. And that's more or less fine when we're talking about some dead president or famous composer, but these Facebook events happened only five years ago. Now the social network is a highly present, relevant and still-evolving part of many people's lives. Mark Zuckerberg is already pretty well antagonized in the public eye for his positions on privacy, his success at a young age and his awkwardness. I wonder what happens if the leading perception of him is based on trumped-up anecdotes about immature antics, creating a site to get laid and ruthlessly casting aside his best friends.

Though the book quits its story when Saverin is kicked out of the company, the marketing for the movie is more about the present day. The advertised website URL is 500millionfriends.com (an expected milestone that Facebook itself hasn't announced publicly), and the tagline is You don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies. Meanwhile, Reznor endorsed The Social Network on his website on Thursday as dark and really f***ing good.

Facebook, to date, has made minimal comments about the book and movie. It's clear the company doesn't know what to make of it and that could come back to haunt them. The company declined to say whether it has figured out a PR strategy, should the movie set off a backlash. (Though of course, many current and former Facebook employees are intrigued to see themselves and their coworkers portrayed.) Facebook's Elliot Schrage provided us with the following statement:

The Social Network is a big-budget Hollywood movie based on a pretty poor book. We've been given to understand that, not unlike the book, the characters are caricatures and the stories are exaggerations of things that didn't quite happen the way the writers would like. But this is a movie, not a documentary and we hope to be entertained.

Though the Mezrich book debuted at No. 4 on the New York Times Non-fiction Bestseller List, its story of excess and betrayal has not been the leading narrative about Facebook. Much more interesting has been the site's quick and continuing growth, its problems with privacy and the ways people use it. Not exactly drama befitting a Hollywood blockbuster. But when you start seeing bus posters and TV commercials with the face of a certain former boy-band frontman (Timberlake plays the similarly curly haired Parker) well, people may actually watch this movie. And Mark Zuckerberg is going to be a household name in an entirely different way than before.

Please see the disclosure in my bio about Facebook.

Alcatel-Lucent NextGen Communications Spotlight Learn More



facebook movie zuckerberg book mezrich facebook movie book zuckerberg mezrich company network social hollywood mark story based social network mark zuckerberg non fiction ]]>GigaOM
First shared by - Avi
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They say history is written by the victors, but the reality is that Hollywood prefers a sexy story. The upcoming movie, The Social Network, is based on the semi-fictionalized accounts of those jilted during the founding of Facebook. Starring Justin Timberlake and Andrew Garfield (who's about to be the next Spider-Man), written by Andrew SorkinAaron Sorkin, directed by David Fincher, produced by Kevin Spacey, scored by Trent Reznor, and about a massive cultural phenomenon, there's a good chance people are actually going to pay attention to this movie.

The Social Network, due in theaters October 1, was inspired by The Accidental Billionaires, an unauthorized, dramatized account billed as a non-fiction work by Ben Mezrich, who popularized the (similarly embellished) story of MIT students taking over Vegas in Bringing Down the House. Mezrich's book is told from the perspective of three early influences on Facebook who were screwed out of their roles in the company by founder CEO Mark Zuckerberg: Tyler Winklevoss (who, along with his brother, informally hired Zuckerberg to build a similar site, which Zuckerberg bailed on while creating and launched what was then called thefacebook; they sued and received $65 million), Eduardo Saverin (Zuckerberg's Harvard friend who financed the early days of the company and was diluted out of his stake after it raised outside funding) and Sean Parker (who was Zuckerberg's Silicon Valley role model, but was kicked out of the company after getting busted at a party where there were drugs and an underage Facebook employee).

Because Mezrich didn't even talk to the most important character in his book, Zuckerberg, the details on many events are incredibly sketchy. (Not that Mezrich didn't sketch them out himself, in almost comically dramatized scenes: Maybe Mark took a deep swig of the beer, let the bitter taste bite at the back of his throat, as he tapped his fingers against the laptop keyboard, gently summoning the thing awake.)

If you read Mezrich's book proposal, which was passed around online in 2008, you get all of the sex, drugs and rock and roll that's spread out across those 250 pages pitched with even more exaggeration than in the actual text, to my reading. In fact, Mezrich's proposal was so appealing, much of the movie was apparently based on it alone.

Asa Mathat | All Things Digital

Zuckerberg is no angel, but the book is not fact either. A Hollywood version of it is going to be even further from the truth. And that's more or less fine when we're talking about some dead president or famous composer, but these Facebook events happened only five years ago. Now the social network is a highly present, relevant and still-evolving part of many people's lives. Mark Zuckerberg is already pretty well antagonized in the public eye for his positions on privacy, his success at a young age and his awkwardness. I wonder what happens if the leading perception of him is based on trumped-up anecdotes about immature antics, creating a site to get laid and ruthlessly casting aside his best friends.

Though the book quits its story when Saverin is kicked out of the company, the marketing for the movie is more about the present day. The advertised website URL is 500millionfriends.com (an expected milestone that Facebook itself hasn't announced publicly), and the tagline is You don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies. Meanwhile, Reznor endorsed The Social Network on his website on Thursday as dark and really f***ing good.

Facebook, to date, has made minimal comments about the book and movie. It's clear the company doesn't know what to make of it and that could come back to haunt them. The company declined to say whether it has figured out a PR strategy, should the movie set off a backlash. (Though of course, many current and former Facebook employees are intrigued to see themselves and their coworkers portrayed.) Facebook's Elliot Schrage provided us with the following statement:

The Social Network is a big-budget Hollywood movie based on a pretty poor book. We've been given to understand that, not unlike the book, the characters are caricatures and the stories are exaggerations of things that didn't quite happen the way the writers would like. But this is a movie, not a documentary and we hope to be entertained.

Though the Mezrich book debuted at No. 4 on the New York Times Non-fiction Bestseller List, its story of excess and betrayal has not been the leading narrative about Facebook. Much more interesting has been the site's quick and continuing growth, its problems with privacy and the ways people use it. Not exactly drama befitting a Hollywood blockbuster. But when you start seeing bus posters and TV commercials with the face of a certain former boy-band frontman (Timberlake plays the similarly curly haired Parker) well, people may actually watch this movie. And Mark Zuckerberg is going to be a household name in an entirely different way than before.

Please see the disclosure in my bio about Facebook.

Alcatel-Lucent NextGen Communications Spotlight Learn More



facebook movie zuckerberg book mezrich facebook movie book zuckerberg mezrich company network social hollywood mark story based social network mark zuckerberg non fiction ]]> Sun, 04 Jul 2010 03:31:12 -0400 30:00 tag:filome.com,15 Important difference between engineering and math http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/kPQQwP8Ey-Q/important-difference.html Shared item Boing Boing
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In today's Wondermark comic, David Malki busts out the glorious truth of engineering, vis-a-vis maths.

Accomplishment measured in Decibels

(Thanks, PDQ!)



wondermark engineering math vis year wondermark math engineering ]]>Boing Boing
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In today's Wondermark comic, David Malki busts out the glorious truth of engineering, vis-a-vis maths.

Accomplishment measured in Decibels

(Thanks, PDQ!)



wondermark engineering math vis year wondermark math engineering ]]> Thu, 01 Jul 2010 10:46:12 -0400 30:00 tag:filome.com,16 Beyond records .. genres http://orweblog.oclc.org/archives/002114.html Shared item Lorcan Dempsey's Weblog
First shared by - christomer
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We tend to have a very record-based view of bibliographic systems. Searches in a resource result in lists of record-based displays for items. All fields may not be indexed. This means that the data works less hard than it might, given the variety of ways in which it could be leveraged to tell us more about the body of literature a resource relates to.

The introduction of facets changed this a little. In Worldcat Identities we are interested in bringing together a view of parties who create or are the subject of works.

My colleagues have now worked with the Worldcat.org team to provide a view of Worldcat by genre.

For some more details see the project page.

The project applies principles of the FRBR model to aggregate author and title information and statistical association techniques to generate related subject headings (e.g., topics, characters, people, places, and organizations). The initial set of profiles is based on genre terms selected from the Guidelines On Subject Access To Individual Works Of Fiction, Drama, Etc. (GSAFD), 2nd edition. Genre definitions are adapted from scope notes in GSAFD, and the Librar