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Since John Paczkowski’s still out of range, Beth Callaghan will be posting Digital Daily today.
In a stunning turn of events over the weekend, both Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes passed away–Mac of complications from sarcoidosis, an inflammatory lung disease, and Hayes from as-yet unknown causes.
The immediate impact and response, of course, is displayed on the Web, with the now-customary ritual proliferation of tribute videos on YouTube–at last count, there were 188,000 for Isaac Hayes and 137,000 for Bernie Mac.
Legendary music icon Hayes was primarily known as the embodiment of ’70s soul. As composer of “Theme from Shaft,” he won a Grammy and established himself as the king of old-school cool. To younger generations, he’ll be remembered as the voice of “Chef” on Comedy Central’s “South Park”–a role he played from 1997-2006. Hayes was 65.
Still-rising star Bernie Mac reached prominence in Spike Lee’s 2000 film “The Original Kings of Comedy,” and starred in Steven Soderbergh’s “Ocean’s Eleven” films. His own sitcom, “The Bernie Mac Show,” ran from 2001 to 2006. His cutting-edge brand of humor set him apart from his contemporaries, and often received attention from critics. Mac was recently scolded by Barack Obama’s campaign after a surprise appearance at a fund-raiser for the presidential candidate during which he used crude language. He was 50.
The two had recently been shooting a film, “Soul Men,” in which they were starring alongside Samuel L. Jackson.
According to last year’s safely-looking-ahead-to-the-year-to-come lists, 2007 was to be “a year of hyperdisruption for the technology industry”; it was to be “a year of significant developments” and “a year of evolution”; it was to be “a year of invention and innovation,” “a year of experimentation” and “a year of slow, but significant, change”; it was to be “a year of carnage,” but it was also to be “a year of great happiness and multiple blessings.” Above all, 2007 was to be “a busy year for technology.”
Which, as you’ll see below (and in our companion video), is pretty much how it turned out. What follows is Digital Daily’s abridged guide to the year in tech news–a fond reminiscence of what was, and our First Annual Year-End List For Year-End List Haters.
And for My Next Trick, I’ll Turn Myself Into a Complete Jackass
If you’re going to demand that YouTube remove a video to which you object under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it’s probably wise to make sure that you actually understand the DMCA.
We’re Naming It the Motorola STNKR, After Our Q1 Earnings …
Carl Icahn was right. Motorola really is desperate for a new product. How else to explain a patent the company was awarded last month for a “communication device having a scent-release feature and method thereof.”
The Frienemy of My Frienemy Is My Enemiend
If Microsoft is planning an acquisition in the online marketing and advertising space, it better act fast, because if it waits much longer there won’t be anything left to acquire.
I’m Just Biding My Time Here Until I Can Quit and Study Whale Feces Full Time
Given the chance, how would you alter the course of your career? Well, if you worked at Microsoft’s Security Response Center, you might consider taking a job as an Olympic drug tester, a gravity research subject, or a “whale-feces researcher.”
From Now On, We’ll Be Known as Nlsn/NtRtings
Looks like vowels won’t be the only accoutrements to be tossed aside in the rise of Web 2.0. The venerable page view is to be abandoned as well.
Newest Yahoo Mail Feature: BCC Beijing
Sure, Yahoo signed China’s “Public Pledge on Self-Discipline for the Chinese Internet Industry,” a voluntary agreement to monitor and restrict information deemed “harmful” by Beijing, but did it have to take it quite so seriously?
Apple: Wham, Bam, Thank You Fanboi
“I feel like a $200 whore.” That was one iPhone early adopter’s crass assessment of his feelings of self-worth, after Apple unexpectedly cut the price of the device by a third–just two months after it arrived at market.
Dude, I Work for Friggin Forbes Magazine. Have You Heard of It?
The year-long guessing game is over. New York Times reporter Brad Stone has outed Daniel Lyons, a senior editor at Forbes magazine, as the author of the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, the satirical blog lampooning Apple’s iconic CEO (See? Told you it wasn’t me).
“Apple Has Destroyed the Music Business”–Not That We Didn’t Try Our Best
Many, many years ago, when the digital-music business consisted of little else besides Napster and the Recording Industry Association of America’s lawsuits against it, Apple proved that there was indeed a decent business to be had in selling music online for $1 per song.
Obama Announces “No Tech Policy Left Behind” Plan
If Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful, then Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s is to do the same to its tech-policy issues.
Sounds More Like the “Zune of Reading” to Me
If Jeff Bezos truly hopes to create “the iPod of reading,” observers say he’s going to have to do a hell of a lot better than Amazon’s new Kindle e-book reader.
Fiascobook
What Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg lacks in foresight, he certainly makes up for in disingenuous hair-shirt remorse.
If Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful, then Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s is to do the same to its tech-policy issues.
Promising to use technology to bring openness and transparency to American democracy after seven years of “one of the most secretive administrations in our history,” Obama laid out a detailed package of technology policies designed to provide more Web accessibility to government records, strengthen online privacy, free up wireless spectrum, put high-speed broadband within reach of all Americans, reform the patent system and maintain network neutrality. “I will take a backseat to no one in my commitment to network neutrality,” Obama said in prepared remarks. “Because once providers start to privilege some applications or Web sites over others, then the smaller voices get squeezed out, and we all lose. The Internet is perhaps the most open network in history. We have to keep it that way.”
Impressive, yeah? But does Obama have the sort of experience needed to implement that sort of broad-reaching Silicon Valley policy wish list? Asked just this question by a Google employee, Obama replied: “Sergey and Larry didn’t have a lot of experience starting this Fortune 100 company. I suppose when they came in and started talking to [Google General Counsel] Dave Drummond about starting a company, he could have said, ‘They don’t know what they’re doing.’”
Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama may lose the support of that all-important 13- to 17-year-old demographic at the polls next year if he’s not careful. Obama’s campaign is facing some pointed criticism today, after it reportedly commandeered a volunteer-run Obama MySpace page. Established in November 2004 by Los Angeles paralegal Joe Anthony, the page has grown from an unofficial fan site to a grassroots Internet movement, racking up some 160,000 “friends” at last count.
Needless to say, it wasn’t long before the Obama campaign caught wind of the site and began to feel a little uncomfortable about having an outsider control such a public outlet. It attempted to broker a deal with Anthony, but balked when he asked to be compensated for his continued work on the page. “I was accused of using this profile for commercial purposes,” Anthony explained in a post to his Web log. “I was threatened that I would be responsible if the profile was deleted (they even followed up via email to be sure I knew it was my fault!). The conversation really was about them taking control of the profile. There was no counteroffer, or anything to suggest that they had any intention of paying me anything at all.”
In the end, the Obama campaign approached MySpace directly and demanded the profile, arguing that Anthony was falsely representing himself as Obama and that the senator had the right to the URL containing his name. Its feet to the fire, MySpace conceded. “Finally … the campaign emailed me, indicating that MySpace needed my consent to give them access to the profile,” wrote Anthony. “I replied that MySpace did not have my consent to grant access to the profile to anyone. An hour or so later, I was blocked from the profile and the content was altered to redirect traffic to the new, ‘official’ profile.”
And that, as they say, is that. MySpace has promised to redirect Anthony’s network of 160,000 friends to his next unofficial Obama fan page–assuming he cares to create one.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
According to last year’s safely-looking-ahead-to-the-year-to-come lists, 2007 was to be “a year of hyperdisruption for the technology industry”; it was to be “a year of significant developments” and “a year of evolution”; it was to be “a year of invention and innovation,” “a year of experimentation” and “a year of slow, but significant, change”; it was to be “a year of carnage,” but it was also to be “a year of great happiness and multiple blessings.” Above all, 2007 was to be “a busy year for technology.”
If Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful, then Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s is to do the same to its tech-policy issues.
