Stuart Ramson/HTC-AP

... this phone was not primarily designed to solve a problem that you, the consumer, are having. Rather it was designed to solve a problem that Google has—namely, the need to keep feeding more and more people into the maw of Google's online advertising machine ...

In other words, the phone is a Trojan horse. You get a cool phone for not much money—$179 with a contract from T-Mobile—but then you're caught in Google's Web. Another way to see this is that a quasi-monopolist (Google rules the online advertising business) is attempting to protect and extend its quasi-monopoly by giving away at no cost something for which others charge money. Sound familiar? It's what Microsoft did to Netscape in the 1990s, giving away a free browser to undermine Netscape Navigator.

Oh, snap! I haven't played with the device yet, but it does look fairly nifty (for an elaborate advertising platform, especially). Indeed, elsewhere on the Internets BoingBoing guest contributor Douglas Rushkoff seems to be enjoying his new toy:

I played with Android yesterday. I don't gush over products. At least not in years. But this one makes me feel a bit like I did when I got my Kaypro. It's a solid device that hints at the beginning of a "golden age" of solid and reliable smart phone technology ...

I've played with a lot of phones, but this is the first true "smart phone" that is as easy to use as an iPhone, Sidekick, or Helio Ocean. Unlike the iPhone, it has a real keyboard that slips out from the bottom (and a bit more effortlessly than the one on my Ocean). Real keys, too, that feel good and click. Oh, did I forget to mention it? Copy and paste.

Of course, Rushkoff flicks at the advertising concern, but in the end is just pleased as punch with his relatively open source toy. Here's a video demo of Android that's been making the rounds for, oh, a year (we're nothing if not timely).




In conclusion: I wish Newsweek's top editors would make big announcements wearing Rollerblades.

Mark Zuckerberg, listen up! Ad Age's Bob Garfield (co-host of NPR's On the Media--whom I've interviewed and whose bitingly dry wit I lurve) is the latest and perhaps greatest to offer up a business model. Monetizing Facebook, what a novel concept. He begins his piece, "Your Data With Destiny," with a little context for you, young padwan:

The quid pro quo between the marketer and the audience, for several centuries, has been free or subsidized media in exchange for inundation with ad messages. Madge didn't say "You're soaking in it" for nothing. In the Brave New World, and already in the last remnants of the cowardly old one, the value proposition will be similar but the barter items very different. A marketer needn't pay for episodes of "Gunsmoke" or "Married With Children" or "24"; it need only provide value -- whether in entertainment, information, discount or utility. In exchange, the consumer surrenders data.

Nothing too surprising there. Gradually he winds his way through his argument, taking you in the process to MIT, Silicon Valley, even Israel. Here's a little nugget of wisdom he picks up in Dulles:

"'Now we have the ability to automate serendipity,' says Dave Morgan, founder of Tacoda, the behavioral-marketing firm sold to AOL in 2007 for a reported $275 million. 'Consumers may know things they think they want, but they don't know for sure what they might want. They're not spending all their time hunting for those things.'"

"Automating serendipity" is a concise and almost lovely way of putting it -- if you find sophisticated Orwellian marketing schemes to be lovely. But hey, if you play online, you probably know that you're leaving behind breadcrumbs for advertisers. You may have noticed those ads on Google or eBay or even, yes, Facebook pages that already seem eerily tailored to your interests. You have only yourself (and your web surfing habits) to blame/thank. Don't like it? Log off. After about eleventy thousand words, Garfield gets to his advice to Zuckerberg. People who have even passively paid attention to developments in online advertising aren't going to find any of this particularly earth-shattering or revolutionary. But the fact that Zuckerberg hasn't adopted a common sense approach like Garfield's (yet, anyway) is nonetheless surprising:

Dude, blessed as you are with the megaphenomenon called Facebook, why are you just another popular utility in search of a business model? Could it be that you're fixated on the notion that your revenue must come from typical advertising? Haven't we agreed that advertising is problematic, because users are suspicious of it, resent it and employ every means to avoid it? Yes, we have. Yet the same people 1) love goods and services; 2) crave information; and 3) are so fabulously self-involved that they display every last detail about themselves, their tastes, their preferences, their favorites, their hobbies, their embarrassing drunken photos, their damn near everything right on your site.

So why in the world do you not have a big honking box on the bottom of every Facebook page titled "What You'll Like" or "YouStuff" or "The Mirror" with a category-by-category selection of books, music, films, videos, news articles, websites, tennis gear, shoes, power tools, specialty foods, flea and tick protection, you name it?

So what do you think? How would you monetize Facebook?

Subaru's Website has this cool/clever ad gimmick going for its 2009 Forester--a "sexy photo shoot challenge" in which you get to art direct a shoot with a particularly curvacious model. Check out my entry, then go make your own.  

(thx, Telstar Logistics)

 

It's a fun time-waster, but I personally prefer the Converse All-Star site which actually lets you design your own pair of shoes. I'd like to see Subaru try that.

Aw, isn't this sweet? This is, apparently, "a time capsule film made for use at the Apple International Sales Meeting held in Hawaii during October '84," according to the YouTuber who posted it. Deliciously retro. But, man this makes me feel old.

(hat tip: Coudal Partners)

Well hello there.

I'm not sure how you found this, but welcome. You are reading this because I pitched a blog to my visionary editors and they, being visionaries, agreed to let me have one. Hopefully you will keep reading because it will grow into something thought-provoking, funny, curious and worthy of your pity. Or, think of it this way: I have two small daughters to support and if you don't come back here often--and click on all the ads--they will be sent to toil in the Peruvian mercury mines to support me. So please, think of my children.

Meanwhile, I'll be curating things on a daily basis around here, trying to put goodies in front of your eyeballs. What exactly that will entail remains to be seen. But here's a little guide to get started with: I am a general editor here at Newsweek, covering technology, popular culture and, my favorite, unpopular culture. Mostly, I freaking love the internets. Every single last one of them. So I spend a lot of time looking at said internets--and as such, I see mountains of mind-blowingly life-changing awesomeness every day. And, you know, funny videos of piano-playing cats. Either way, I come across so much good stuff that may not merit a full-blown Newsweek-style story, but is certainly worthy of a mention. I'm talking about stuff that can only happen online (or, to give myself some wiggle room, anywhere else on earth). Stuff that inhabits that middle ground between high-brow arts, low-brow trash and mono-brow geekery. Stuff I would love to share with you, gentle reader, like the selfless lover that I am. 

Here, for example, are a few things I'd link to RIGHT NOW if I were blogging. Which, uh, I guess I am. So. Let's get started: the webby (in more ways than one) Italian Spiderman, which wrapped its 10th episode this week and is quite possibly the funniest spoof of bad '60s Italian James Bond knockoffs you'll ever see. Or I'd hip you to new rumors of a forthcoming Mac book pro and then drool all over my keyboard so that the spacebarstopsworking. Or maybe you'd find this as interesting as I did: Wil Wheaton crumbling some Webcake at Comic Con this week. Or check out this current debate over the Los Angeles Times' policy regarding blogging about rumors surrounding a certain (probably erstwhile) potential Obama running mate--the comments raise a lot of interesting issues surrounding the role of blogs at a, ahem, mainstream media outlet.

Of course, for each of those, I'd take the time to cook up some deliciously brilliant thoughts and conclusions. Maybe take the initiative to do a little reporting. I'd dazzle you with my unique voice, my counterintuitive take. This will be a two-way street--I encourage your feedback, tips, debate, lunch money. But not right now, OK? It's Saturday. It's nice outside. And you and I will get to know each other as this experiment continues. It is a work in progress. It is an evolution, an exploration of the tubes.

And also there will be haiku.