看过好莱坞电影《恐惧杀机》 (The Sum of All Fears) 的人,大概都会记得那个“白宫记者晚宴”。摩根·弗里曼让本·阿弗莱克带着女朋友去那儿坐坐,那个一年一度的轻松场合对白宫周边人士而言代表了极大的荣誉。
今年的白宫记者晚宴在YouTube上像炸了锅一样大受欢迎。因为今年的晚宴已经远远地超过了轻松的范围,搞笑程度简直可和“乔恩·斯图尔特天天秀” (Daily Show with Jon Stewart) 一较高下。不但老实巴交的小布什把自己和“白宫群英”们好好戏耍了一番,就连被美国媒体极度妖魔化的幕僚长卡尔·罗夫 (Carl Rove) 也上窜下跳地嘻嘻哈哈。
(对美国政治烂熟于心的朋友们请略过以下段落)
布什的演讲全文可以在白宫的网站上找到。他们的工作人员还真是细心,把观众大笑和鼓掌都给一一做了标柱。除了后半段必不可少的眼泪段落 (向白宫新闻官 Tony Snow 致敬),其他地方真的是笑点连连。
比如说,演讲刚开始,布什就“感谢韦伯参议员为我们提供了安全保障”——民主党参议员吉姆·韦伯 (Jim Webb) 要在本周说明为何一名副手带着上膛的手枪进入国会建筑。
然后布什聊了聊自己一年前的窘境:“我的支持率只有三成、我的大法官提名没有获得通过、我的副总统又开枪打中了别人……啊,真是美好的旧时光”——典型的乔恩·斯图尔特风格。
提及未能到场的副总统切尼,布什找乐道:“说实话,他的感情受到了伤害。他说他要去阿富汗度度假,在那儿人们都很喜欢他”——前些日子切尼在访问阿富汗的时候,有一颗炸弹在离开会地点不远的地方爆炸。
至于美国司法部去年底解雇八名联邦检察官一事,布什说:“我们必须承认,在让那些检察官走人的事儿上我们做得不太好。因为当人们开始同情律师的时候,你就该明白,事情已经办砸了。”——这些话转天就被民主党总统竞选人贝拉克·奥巴马 (Barack Obama) 拿来说事儿,认为布什藐视宪法:“他们是人民的律师,不是总统的律师”。
为什么奥巴马这么愤怒呢?因为他也被布什涮了。布什说这位善于作秀——并且在前些日子和诋毁希拉里的热门YouTube恶搞宣传片《1984》扯上了一些关系——的参议员没能到场的原因是“媒体不够多”。
谈到同样坐在台上的众议院议长南茜·佩罗西 (Nancy Pelosi) ,布什说:“嗯,有些人很惊讶于我们俩人如何共事,说她飞扬跋扈、固执己见、又臭又硬。嘿,我和我老妈相处得还很愉快呢。”——当天,被调侃了的佩罗西就回应道:“深呼吸一下,总统先生”,因为国会即将表决伊拉克撤军议案了。
至于布什退休以后想干些什么,他为自己的回忆录想好了三个名字 “How W Got His Groove Back”、“Who Moved My Presidency?”、“Tuesdays With Cheney”。——修改了三个畅销书书名:《当老牛碰上嫩草》(How Stella Got Her Groove Back)、《谁动了我的奶酪?》(Who Moved My Cheese?)、《相约星期二》(Tuesdays With Morrie)。
Email, IMs, and blogs are nothing compared to the thing that may finally cause time as we know it to cease. I'm talking, of course, about Twitter. 关于Twitter和注意力的精彩分析!
Child magazine would be printed for the last time this spring, although the magazine’s Web site will continue to post original content. 《生活》没了,《孩子》也不干了。
Ruiu plans to set up two loaded MacBook Pro machines on this own access point with default installs and with the latest security updates applied. 看看苹果电脑需要多久会被黑客攻陷。
Digital sales of individual songs this year have risen 54%, while CD sales have declined 20%. Overall, sales of all music are down 10% this year. 唱片业未能跟上数字转型的步伐。
These guys, unlike Viacom, recognize the power — and the necessity — of the recommendation engine (aka us) as the new means of marketing and distribution. 传统媒体的视频服务必须注重网民的推荐。
Mr. Chernin said Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt called yesterday and said Google will consider signing on as a distribution partner. Google也计划成为NBC-新闻集团的视频发行伙伴。
Starting Monday, YouTube members can browse through videos in seven genres at http://www.youtube.com/YTAwards/ and rank their favorite short-form videos. YouTube推出视频大奖。
“The reason why I am so bummed out about MySpace now is because recently they have been cutting down our freedom and taking away our rights slowly.” 社区网站MySpace开始限制其他网站的插件,此举惹恼了用户。
Overhearing the dialog felt like the 2007 version of Joe Kennedy getting stock tips from his shoe shine boy. Web 2.0 is in the water, drink up. 风投说,Web2.0完了。
It is among the most durable of American dreams. The young man with a bright idea for a new product or service decides to form his own company. 温故知新:Steve Jobs首登《TIME》封面,说的是美国式创业。
Boo, hiss, a strategic alliance indeed. Is Jobs crazy? "Madman at the wheel, eh?" he said, laughing, as he walked off the stage in Boston. 温故知新:Steve Jobs重返苹果,登上《TIME》封面。
Steve Jobs, the Pixar chairman and Apple Computer interim-CEO-for-life finds himself a leading force in not one but two iconic late-'90s American industries. 温故知新:Jobs第三次登上《TIME》封面,文章紧承上篇结尾。
今天在Time.com上查东西,忽然考据癖发作,决定看看《硅谷海盗》(Pirates of Silicon Valley)这部电视电影里的 Steve Jobs (Noah Wyle) 和真正的 Steve Jobs 有什么区别。
在电影的中间部分,有一个 Steve Jobs 登上《TIME》封面的镜头。当然,这件事儿是真的,只是电影里为了配合剧情,把封面做了一些改动:
在电影里,我觉得 Noah Wyle 与年轻时代的 Steve Jobs 从外表上最为相似,不信请看下面这两张 Woz 和 Jobs 的合影:
而且 Noah Wyle 对 Steve Jobs 在动作上的模仿几乎出神入化,在1999年的 Macworld 大会上,开场就是 Noah Wyle 在台上模仿 Steve Jobs,然后真正的大佬才出现在台上,说:“你应该去拿一瓶水,然后再拿着遥控器,双手并拢。我们一百年以前就是这么做的了。”
这次 Macworld 的举行正好是在《硅谷海盗》上映之后举行的,这个环节令观众惊讶不已。下面是那段视频:
THe entertainment industry may not be great at many things, but getting copyright law changed to meet their expecations is one thing they are better than any one at. 一篇对Viacom持支持态度的评论。
Some people did stop downloading free music, but it wasn't because of the record company lawsuits, for the most part. It was because of iTunes. 一篇技术决定论者对于Viacom-GooTube案的评论。
Shooting took a brisk 60 days; post-production took a full year and 10 special-effects companies. Every frame was manipulated and color-shifted to create an intense, thunderstorm palette. 《时代》关于《300勇士》的报道,非常好看。
Viacom filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Google and YouTube. Viacom contends that almost 160,000 unauthorized clips of its programming have been uploaded and viewed more than 1.5bil times. 维亚康姆正式起诉Google及Youtube。
"Marketing people love YouTube and legal people hate it and inside media companies marketing people are actively working with them while legal companies are actively thinking of suing." CNN关于Viacom-GooTube的报道中妙语如珠。
Viacom Inc. could have done something about this a long time ago, but didn’t and basically are using this lawsuit to paper over their own incompetence. GigaOM认为Viacom因为自己的软弱无能而起诉GooTube。
Everyone needs each other too much. This is why ultimately I regard Viacom’s move today as a harder-edged negotiating tactic. 《商业周刊》记者Jon Fine认为Viacom的诉讼是一招更强硬的谈判策略。
They think they can either help create their own YouTube killer or help rival Web video services challenge YouTube's dominance. At least Viacom does. B2Day认为,Viacom相信自己可以直接或间接地干掉YouTube。
Slacker is an ambitious new music service created by some industry veterans that takes aims at the iPod. 看起来,这个名叫Slacker的音乐服务融合了Pandora、Last.fm和iPod的优势。
Two European companies show how the collaborative practice spreads from early adopters of wikis at work to become mainstream business tools. 看欧洲公司如何用wiki进行协作。
I wanted to show the Earth viewed from books, where individual mentions of locations in books combine to yield another interpretation of the globe. 根据被书籍提到过的次数来描绘世界地图。
About one third of California's technology fortunes are built on Google's soaring stock, according to Forbes' latest list of the world's billionaires. 根据《福布斯》杂志整理出的硅谷富豪榜。
From their Silicon Valley cubicles, Apple staffers have become music's unlikely power brokers. Our reporters on the horse-trading that can turn unknowns into stars. iTunes开始扮演类似于MTV那样的角色。
因为下个月要出一篇关于 Second Life 的稿子,所以提前开始做功课。Second Life 过去写了几次,但是在那个虚拟世界里头生存的总时长可能才1小时出头。
这是我第三次注册 Second Life 帐号。前两次我取了什么名字都忘光光了。这东西有个设计挺麻烦,就是里面的 Last Name 就是确定的那么几个。既不能姓 Lin (倒是有个Ling),也不能姓 Pig。所以前两次都是随便选了个姓,根本记不住。
这次可好,发现了一个好姓,叫做“Yifu”。不知道这是日本名字还是斐济名字,但起码这在汉语拼音里面是能够念出声来的。毫不犹豫地给自己取了个名字,叫做“Meichuan”,合起来就是“Meichuan Yifu”。是不是很有日本风情?哈哈。(我说的是“梅川一夫”什么来着,别瞎想哦。)
这破烂网络真是慢得一塌糊涂,512kps的ADSL让这个三维游戏和看幻灯片没什么区别。这让我想起来当年用486电脑看VCD的情形,画面的感觉大概和各位电脑里的PPT文档难分仲伯。
谁在 Second Life 里比较有钱的?谁有房子的?谁能带我四处转转的?麻烦留言。我一定会在咱家经观商业评论上留下您的大名的。;)
PlayStation Home build on and surpass somewhat similar offerings from Sony’s competitors by allowing users to create online identities. 索尼用在线游戏服务与微软、任天堂竞争。
What Apple has not yet said, but is quite apparent from Monday's iTunes release, is that Apple TV will also sport some rudimentary gaming capabilities. 隐藏代码显示,Apple TV 将可以用来打游戏。
微软最新启动了一个 I'm 活动。I'm,是微软的一个资助慈善组织的活动。你可以在你的 Windows Live Messenger 的昵称前加上一串特殊代码,以表示你支持九个慈善组织中的其中一个,而你的昵称前也会出现一个 I'm 的标志。所有参加此活动的慈善组织都将在此活动的第一年获得最低10万美元的捐款,最高不限上额。而最高能达到多少,则取决于有多少人愿意在自己的昵称前加上该组织的代码。以下是参加活动的组织:
American Red Cross —— I'm 准备提供帮助,代码 = *red+u
Boys and Girls Clubs of America —— I'm 为孩子提供理想的环境,代码 = *bgca
National AIDS Fund —— I'm 与艾滋病(AIDS)抗争,代码 = *naf
National MS Society —— I'm 参与到解决多发性硬化症(MS)的运动,代码 = *mssoc
ninemillion.org —— I'm 帮助9百万流离失所的孩子,代码 = *9mil
Sierra Club —— I'm 探索和保护这个星球,代码 = *sierra
StopGlobalWarming.org —— I'm 阻止全球变暖,代码 = *help
Susan G. Komen for the Cure —— I'm 寻找乳腺癌的治愈方法, 代码 = *komen
UNICEF —— I'm 救助生死边缘徘徊的孩子,代码 = *unicef
Silicon Valley is far different place than it was seven years ago when the dotcom bubble burst. Silicon Valley no longer needs Wall Street. (硅谷已经对华尔街没什么太大兴趣了。)
We also think this distinguishes our approach from one that all of you are familiar with: the Google Book Search project. (微软律师致信美国出版协会,将Google的版权策略与自己做出比较。)
The BBC has struck a partnership deal with IBM to develop "web 3.0" technology, starting with a video search system for CBeebies and CBBC programmes, MediaGuardian.co.uk can reveal. (卫报鼓吹“Web 3.0”)
The story says that "One year ago, Microsoft and The Associated press launched the Online Video Network, a distribution platform for the video clips created by the Associated Press television unit." 一年前,微软开始了版权视频计划。
“The figures show that killing a journalist is virtually risk-free,” said Richard Sambrook, chairman of the special inquiry and global news director for BBC. (10年间1000位记者在报道时被杀,杀记者没有风险。)
Lili Cheng, a user-interface designer for the Windows Vista operating system, showed off a new service called Mix that will allow Web surfers to organize search results and easily share them. (微软用新的协作搜索方法改变搜索质量。)
Mike Pinkerton will discuss the past, present and future of Camino development, along with lessons learned from Mozilla and the open source community. 一小时长的视频,讲述了Camino浏览器的历史以及将来,
Because of this information explosion, we no longer read - we skim. The news that used to last a day now lasts just a few hours, simply because we need to pay attention to the new news. 消息越来越多,我们不再精读,新闻的有效期也变得
What makes YouTube so popular? It is the website's content, such as snippets from the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, South Park, or any of the latest television shows from around the world.
Though TV networks have asked YouTube to remove them, users keep uploading more unauthorized video clips.
In China, some websites are doing much more than that. "Western executives must be very jealous of the copyright situation here," a Chinese Web 2.0 entrepreneur once told me. Posting copyrighted videos online? Who cares.
The result of this laissez-faire approach to unauthorized uploads is to popular culture-hungry Internet users what pirated disks was to Chinese cinephiles a decade ago.
Nowadays, go to a Chinese video-sharing site, type in the name of your favorite show, click on the search button, and voila! Every single episode of the show will pop up on your screen faster than the fairy godmother turned a pumpkin into a carriage for Cinderella.
Case in point: ouou.com. Here you can access new episodes of 24, Prison Break, Heroes or any other series, one day after they air in the United States.
What's more, there is no downloading (a process that belongs to the BitTorrent/KaZaA age), no commercial breaks to bother you every few minutes, and most importantly, no Babel-like situation where language or cultural misunderstanding makes the global village a pitfall of perils.
It is all thanks to the effort made by volunteer translation groups.
These are fans who prepare Chinese subtitles as soon as they get the video from the Internet. After Episode 1, Season 2 of Prison Break came out in August 2006, the first Chinese subtitled version was finished and uploaded in less than seven hours.
For shows that require in-depth knowledge of American culture, there are footnotes with the subtitles. For example, footnotes on Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip help Chinese audiences understand in-jokes about Hollywood history and American politicians.
Here's one secret for high-quality translation: embedded English subtitles for HDTV programs are recorded and sent to the translation groups for reference, kind of like a secret agent that Chinese couch potatoes have planted inside Hollywood.
The irony is, when official Chinese television stations present new imported hit shows, people rarely take notice, partly because of the low quality of translation, and partly because of the terrible dubbing. A year ago, when CCTV screened Desperate Housewives, the ratings were abysmally low. So low that Hollywood had better consider breaking into the Albanian market.
Volunteer translation not only happens in China. On YouTube's "Most Viewed" page, some Japanese cartoons come with English subtitles also the work of volunteers. Fortune magazine said that if the official versions of these Japanese anime are bought by American networks, grassroots translation will cease operation immediately.
That would be like guerrillas dispersing when the uniformed troops march in, wouldn't it?
Semel would receive an annual salary of just $1 a year and the right to receive up to 1 million stock options as a bonus. (2006到2008,雅虎CEO的年薪是一美元,外加100万股股票期权,行使价每股32.12美金。)
Tax law is murky, however, when it comes to dealings that occur solely within Second Life or other computer-simulated environments. 在《Second Life》里进行虚拟货币交易要上税吗?这是一个问题。
U/S had done what it promised: The company had helped me buy my way into Digg popularity, and my site traffic had gone way up overnight. 《连线》作者成功在Digg上买到投票,并写成了报道。
Coca-Cola is updating the make-fun-of-lawyers shtick for new generations in a nontraditional campaign for Coke Zero. (可口可乐的零热量可乐广告拿律师找乐:如果你喝不出差别来,就告丫的。)
Viacom said on Thursday that traffic to its MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon websites rose sharply over the past month, validating its decision to force YouTube. (YouTube删除Viacom视频后,后者流量大涨)
收到了精装的 Steve Wozniak 自传《iWoz》,还是从硅谷那旮旯寄过来的。感谢KC。
从米国往我们伟大首都寄书就是容易丢。方军上次在Amazon上买书就丢了一回,好像还是五六块大砖头,我那时候还幸灾乐祸了好一阵子。
结果没过俩月,朋友给我寄《iWoz》就人间蒸发了,而且同时损失的还有传说中奇帅无比的Vox.com短袖一件。真是不知道该上哪儿抱怨才好。
关于苹果发家故事的书,最好的应该就是右边那本《iCon》了(有中文版,但质量奇差)。故事说得很精彩,而且不偏不倚,平衡把握得很好。和封面一样,那本书的主角应该是 Steve Jobs。可惜呢,多少说了些坏话,后来这书被苹果公司打压了好一阵子。
至于说苹果的另一位创始人 Steve Wozniak,则是个配角。我觉得吧,一来他性格太内向,二来是个技术口的头儿,三来商业头脑不够也不抛头露面,所以写起来也没太多意思,只能成为Jobs坑蒙拐骗的对象(并非夸张)。
后来Wozniak进入了传说中的半退休状态。大多数描述是,他恨死了苹果,恨死了不公正的待遇。在《iWoz》中,他的解释是,他那时候是挺不爽的(看起来主要是因为Apple II部门和Machintosh部门的权重),但首要原因是,他要搞个新公司做遥控器。
根据《iWoz》的说法,那天,《华尔街日报》的记者完全搞错了 Steve Wozniak 的意思。或者说,断章取义就发了采访,所以之后的所有报道,都说他和苹果是闹掰了。
嗯……我拿到这本书看的第一章就是“Leaving Apple, Moving to Cloud Nine”。我特关心的,就是他自己怎么解释离开苹果这么一桩事儿。
在看到这章之前呢,我看到了封面上一句有趣的话。“How I invented the personal computer, co-founded Apple, and had fun doing it.” (我如何发明了个人电脑、联合创立了苹果公司并且从中享受到了乐趣。) 呵呵,都是过去时态。这看起来是一个挺那啥的滋味。
Wozniak 确实是个孤独的家伙。他在书中强烈地鼓励读者,应该独自做一件事情,避免合作,避免人事上的关系。也可能是这样的性格,让这本书看起来似乎在反复强调“我其实是更重要”、“我才是正确的”。
如果希望了解苹果“另一位创始人”的早期故事,和苹果成长过程的另一面(书中的很多说法和过去的报道有出入,还请自行甄别真伪),那么不妨看看这本书。语言平实简单,读起来很顺畅。
书的协同作者是 Gina Smith,硅谷记者。这里是Amazon链接。
Microsoft has failed to bring the Net to TV screens with duds like WebTV. But the Venice Project, renamed Joost is doing the opposite: moving TV to the Internet. (微软将网络搬上电视终告失败,但Joost反其道而行。)
The Apple Macintosh was first unveiled during TED. Wired magazine received its first seed money there. And last year Google used the occasion to appoint Larry Brilliant head of Google.org. (了解一下TED大会。)
A lot of no-name authors like me are getting massive grass-roots exposure, and some of us are going to percolate to the top and get on the best-seller list. (无名作家们用播客技术开创新天地)
Sales of Apple Inc.'s Mac line of personal computers saw year-over-year growth accelerate over 100 percent during the month of January. (苹果新年第一季度销量增长翻番)
Joost是我比较看好的一个网络服务,现在还在beta。
其实大陆用户对这样的P2P网络电视并不新鲜,但是,Joost毕竟是在版权管理严格的西方世界搞出来的玩意儿。而且,他们和KaZaA、Skype在技术上应该说是一脉相承。
在Joost刚刚推出的时候(那时候还叫 The Venice Project),我很惊讶,他们在中国用户很少的情况下,就实现非常流畅的大画面播放(当然和HD比还差点)。技术实力确实强。
不过因为Mac版上个月才推出,所以我也是这俩礼拜才开始频繁地使用这个软件。
现在,平均一天我会拿到6个邀请名额,所以差不多把敢于吃螃蟹的熟人都邀请了。如果你打算尝尝鲜,请在文后留下email地址,我会把邀请发给你。(但还请尽量保持耐心,这儿下蛋速度也不是太快。)
现在Joost上面的节目并不多,不过有很多1小时长度的国家地理记录片可以看。我最喜欢的,是 Morgan Freeman 旁白的《Inside the White House》。
Joost已经和许多内容提供商展开了合作,但愿有一天国内用户能够可以在线上看到“正版”的奥斯卡直播。
Like me, the author is having trouble with the fact that 199 out of 200 applicants for every programming job can’t write code at all. I repeat: they can't write any code whatsoever. (99%的程序员竟然一行程序都写不出来?)
另外忽然记起来,昨天中场休息的时候我去取录音笔,顺口问互联网他爸爸:
How do you think of the term "Web 2.0"? It's talked about everywhere in China. (Yeah, of course it is.) Some ones think it's used by the people who want to raise money, and some others think it really works.
互联网他爸爸说:
I happen to be one of those people who believe "Web 2.0" is just a marketing term.
Quigo, by contrast, gives advertisers not only the list of specific sites where their ads have appeared but also the opportunity to buy only on specific Web sites or particular pages on those sites. (新公司开始挑战Google在广告业的权威)
Web advertisers are moving beyond search, using powerful science to figure out what you want - sometimes before you even know. (商业2.0:在线广告商从搜索走向发现。他们用新技术找出你的心仪对象,甚至比你更了解自己。)
But Wales isn't in London to hobnob with the rich and famous. He has a bigger challenge: spinning his Internet fame into Internet gold. (连U2乐队主唱都给维基百科创始人 Jimmy Wales 写信。但是,仅仅有名是不够的。)
As a stand along system the MacBook was a brilliant bit of kit, but as part of a bigger Windows-based ecosystem, it is very much a loner. (28天苹果笔记本试用心得。)