I’m Wearing Pants…and an Additional Hat

For the last week my usual blogger cave of pajamas and dirty cereal bowls has been dormant. Instead, I’ve been scheduling my ReadWriteWeb posts, showering and making my way to SOMA every morning before 10am. In other words, I am putting on pants.

THE STORY
In 1999, only 2 years after Larry and Sergey had renamed the BackRub search engine to the now search-giant Google, brothers Pirouz and Peyman Nilforoush turned their love of blogging into a business. From a basement in the Toronto burbs, the two decided that in addition to working on their own properties, they’d offer hosting services to a network of indy gaming, entertainment, music and tech blogs. In exchange for all their hard work, they received ad space and revenue share. A decade later they’ve got 200 major tech and consumer electronics partners, deals with major manufacturers like Sony and Verizon and more than 120 million unique visitors per month. That company is now known as NetShelter and I’m happy to say that as of this week, those brothers are my bosses.

WEARING 2 HATS
I’ve just taken a position as NetShelter’s Senior Social Media and Publishing Strategist. While I’ll keep contributing as a writer to ReadWriteStart, my daytime gig will be working under the direction of former CNET Editor in Chief and GM of Yahoo! Tech, Patrick Houston. Patrick is already teaching me about the wonderful world of publishing, and soon I’ll become a resource for publishers like MacRumors, SlashGear, the IEEE and IntoMobile. For the next couple of weeks, instead of producing a ton of public content, I’ll be sponging up everything I can learn from NetShelter’s many publishers and staff.

I’ll keep checking my RWW email, but if you’ve got a breaking story, the best way to pitch them is to email tips[at]readwriteweb[dot]com. If you want to chat about NetShelter, email me at dana.oshiro[at]netshelter.net or better yet, hit me up on Twitter at @suzyperplexus. Huzzah to a new year and a new gig!

Foundry Group’s Brad Feld recently posted a video where individuals in Time Square were asked whether or not they knew the difference between a browser and a search engine. Lucky for search-giant (and now Chrome creator) Google - most did not. The video of the mistaken search engine had the blogosphere in an uproar as the tech-savvy marveled at what they believed to be the stupidity of the masses.

It reminded me of Rick Mercer’s “Talking to Americans” series in a which a CBC television personality interviews Americans and gets them to comment on fake Canadian factoids. As a Canadian myself, I know how much Canucks love this program. While many believe that Canada’s favorite pastime is hockey, it is in fact making fun of Americans. The stereotype (at least in Canada) is that Americans are less intelligent than their northern neighbors. However, it seems to me that intelligence has little to do with both the Canadian and the browser exercise. It’s more a reflection of the sad fact that most people outside of the realms of tech and Canada just don’t feel the need to care about either subject.

Using a basic web cam on augmented reality markers, the varied space between the two markers prompts different sound and feedback with the idea that the entire process is creating a new type of musical instrument. I think this idea would be even cooler if it were recreated using 3 phones: 1 as the video camera and the other 2 as the markers. In this way you could come together with your friends for a collaborative tabletop music experience.

Intimacy and Search

When a woman is on the verge of tears and you’re having an argument, don’t stop to Google something. It will only make it worse. Don’t change your Facebook marital status to read “Married to Bitch” and don’t start a Twitter thread to rally your friends into the argument. Really intimate moments, especially fights, are best kept offline. Up until about 2003 or so, people actually understood that as common sense.

Did you know that when Larry Page and Sergey Brin first started working on Google it was originally called BackRub? In 1996 a back rub was something tender given to sick family members, colicky babies and spouses. If someone you weren’t familiar with tried to give you a back rub you would have whipped your head around and screamed, “Back off hippie!” or “Who told you to be a pervert?”

The name “Google” is less intimate. It’s the number one followed by 100 zeros. For someone who lives for intimate moments with the people I love, I find it strange to see my identity become so infinitely searchable through other people’s uploads. And I find it even more strange for it to be searched by anyone other than my mom and potential employers. No one’s ever really crossed the line, so it doesn’t bug me that my past thoughts and mistakes are there for everyone to see, it only bothers me that I don’t get to offer more indication as to who I aspire to be.

…Well, that and the immortalized mullet.

Being Prepared…

Since Hurricane Katrina there has been a steady influx of disaster and zombie apocalypse movies. The fear that communities will be unprepared in a state of emergency has suddenly become a realization and that collective fear is manifesting itself in our pop culture.

I’ve never been the sort of person to subscribe to survivalist antics, but I happen to make San Francisco my home and if you look at the USGS quake mapping system, we’ve had hundreds of small readings from the past week. When my friends Carey and Joe talked about the NERT classes they are taking, it struck a chord. NERT is the SF Fire Department’s National Emergency Rescue Team. You can become a team volunteer by taking 6 classes on earthquake awareness, basic disaster skills, light search and rescue, medicine and team organization. The point is to reduce the stress on government emergency services and ensure that your own family members (and possibly neighbors) are as safe as possible.

Rumor has it that San Francisco is the only city with a disaster plan for parasitic alien invasions :) For a quick look at the NERT program, check out this video.

Why Popjam Misses the Point of Chatroulette
Correcting Real Time Analysis

The other day I met Jeff Jonas for an hour long meeting at his PR agency’s office. Jonas is the chief scientist of the IBM Entity Analytics group, he built the system that foiled the MIT Blackjack Team in Vegas and he’s since gone on to do all sorts of interesting things like thwart criminals for the CIA and participate in several marathons. Essentially, Jonas is a finely tuned machine, and that day I’d had 3 hours of sleep and I arrived with toothpaste on my face. Needless to say, I was a little intimidated.

Halfway through the meeting Jonas tells me the story he likes to tell at the podium during banquet dinners. While on the last leg of a triathlon in South Africa, he saw a runner with what he thought was diarrhea on his backside. He asked him if he was alright and the man reached down, touched the substance and licked it saying aloud, “It tastes like mango.” A juice packet had broken in the man’s back pocket without him noticing it. Said Jonas, “This is what I do. I build data analysis systems that make real time assumptions and then build them to correct themselves.” At that moment I eased up and corrected my own assumptions about Jonas.

Experience Points
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Themed by: Hunson