photo credit: © 2010 CEA

I was lucky enough to be one of the 110,000 people in Las Vegas for the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show this past weekend, and I had a somewhat unexpected reaction to what I saw.  I expected to be surrounded by a dazzling array of innovative (if not bizarre) consumer products, on display for the world to see and fall in love with.  What I encountered was thousands of products that showed little to no original thought, and a collection of giant companies continuing to refuse to work together to improve the lives of their customers.  Here are a few observations: (more…)

I got this email from Facebook the other day, and a couple of thoughts struck me as I read it (the bold is my emphasis):

Facebook is sending you this notice of a proposed class action settlement that may affect your legal rights as a Facebook member who may have used the Beacon program. This summary notice is being sent to you by Court Order so that you may understand your rights and remedies before the Court considers final approval of the proposed settlement on February 26, 2010.

This is not an advertisement or attorney solicitation.

This is not a settlement in which class members file claims to receive compensation. Under the proposed settlement, Facebook will terminate the Beacon program. In addition, Facebook will provide $9.5 million to establish an independent non-profit foundation that will identify and fund projects and initiatives that promote the cause of online privacy, safety, and security.

For full details on the settlement and further instructions on what to do to opt out of, object to, or otherwise comment upon the proposed settlement, please go to: BeaconClassSettlement.com.

If you have never heard of Beacon, or the lawsuit against it, check this information out. Not only did they have to shut the service down, but they have to now do the corporate equivalent of Bart Simpson’s chalkboard punishment? This is really great news, but I wonder how effective a deterrent/punishment the ruling really will be. It is one thing to rule in favor of the customers in a large class-action lawsuit and award massive damages in order to prevent a company from engaging in invasive or abusive behavior. But this strikes me as a slap on the wrist, and the punishment of having to fund a non-profit company that essentially duplicates the EFF’s incredible efforts will probably be about as effective as having Steve Ballmer write a two page essay on why monopolies are bad. I doubt Facebook learned a lesson here, in fact the lesson learned might very well be “next time, don’t get caught”.

As more and more ‘private’ information is moved online, it is going to be those companies that demonstrate an unswerving loyalty to the privacy and security of their customers who will be allowed to continue doing business. You had better believe that the day Google is caught exposing or misusing user data, it is going to find itself in deep, troubled waters. Personally, I don’t really put anything on Facebook or other sites that I would be embarrassed or endangered by, were it to leak out. But this case has served as a reminder that you can’t really trust any company to put your rights and expectations above their own need to turn a profit in order to survive.

We get a lot of random links and messages and hellos and “hey, we’re making shows like you, let’s help each other out!”.  This is an example of how not to do it: (more…)

When I’m not home my dog loves to get up on the furniture and lounge around.  The problem is that she knows that she can get away with it all day long with no immediate consequences.   The solution is teaching her that she has to obey the rules, even when I’m not there to enforce them… or rather, to convince her that I am an omnipresent force, observing her every move and promptly dispensing disciplinary action.

To achieve this goal, I setup a webcam that I can view from both my iPhone and any web browser.  When I see (or hear) the dog getting up on the furniture, I load up a VNC application on my iPhone and remotely trigger mp3 files of me yelling “Bad dog! Get off the furniture!”

Continue after the jump to learn more about how I set everything up.

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photo credit: Missty

Day of the Twit has come and gone, as have 6 other non-twitteriffic days, and some folks have been asking me if I’ve learned anything from the experience. In the spirit of lazy writing that inspired this whole thing in the first place, I figured the best way to detail the lessons of DOTT would be through a bullet list:

• When all was said and done, Day of the Twit was comprised of about 350+ tweets (judging from a Twitter search of tweets tagged with #twit)
• While the bulk of the scheduled buffoonery was administered by the AV Club crew, special thanks go out to @Kitchen, @JenniPowell, @nathantamayo and a few other, less prolific folk, for keeping the magic alive.
• Some props should probably be thrown @lizlet’s way for inadvertently inspiring Andy and I to make this crazy thing happen, though I won’t go into detail on that one.
• Strangely enough, tweeting like an idiot gained me 5 followers, while losing me 1 follower (@boogah), for a net gain of 4. @Boogah came back the next day.
• About halfway through the day, I realized that the hashtag #twit was already taken by “This Week in Tech”. Hopefully that day wasn’t too confusing for those folks (egad that was embarrassing).
• While we tried to duplicate every manner of depraved abuse twitter usually goes through (including frivolous tweeting, unnecessarily public conversations via @replies and RT recursion), I think we missed out on one of my main pet peeves: using 10 or more tweets to write something that should really be in a blog post. So it goes.
• Contrary to expectations, nobody tweeted about using the bathroom. Whether or not anyone actually tweeted from the toilet remains a mystery.
• Ok, I tweeted a few times from the bathroom that day. The day warranted it, damnit. Don’t you judge me.
• It’s much easier and fun to make 100 tweets a day than to write a blog post about it.

All things considered, my one night stand with irresponsible and inane tweeting was very much like all one night stands: It was fun, irresponsible, I felt really bad about it the morning after, and while I say now that I’ll never do it again, I may feel bored and starved enough for attention to do it again at some point in the future. Let’s hope it never comes to that.

More than anything else, this whole endeavor stemmed from the AV Club Blogfolk’s continuing love/hate relationship with Twitter, so I should probably at least defend twitter and social networking after dragging them through 140×100 characters worth of mud.

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photo credit: ADRIAN DANAILA

God bless the internet. Via metafilter, (with a layover at Lore Sjoberg’s twitter account), the Benny Hillifier dubs any youtube video with “Yakety Sax”, as seen with that one chase scene from Casino Royale. Share and enjoy.

photo credit: tashmahal

As some of you may know, the AV Club Blogcrew has had its share of disagreements over twitter. Chris and I believe it’s a wonderful tool for mass mobile communication on the go, and Andy believes that technology is Scary and Evil and GET OFF MY LAWN DAMN KIDS. However, if there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that Twitter, when misused, is probably the most annoying aspect of (God, I hate that term) “web 2.0″ in existence. So, naturally, Andy and I decided to try to misuse it as horribly as possible.

On Monday, 12/15/08, we plan to tweet as inanely as humanly possible. We plan to tweet anything and everything, then reply to each other’s inane tweets, retweet those replies, and OH like we’ve never OHed before. Essentially we’re going to (*cringe*) live-tweet the entire day, and hope nobody tracks us down and kills us to retaliate. If you follow me (@Janric) or Andy (@avclubvids) and wish to be spared the carnage, you may want to unfollow us for the day, or even forever. All tweets for that day will be tagged #twit. If you would like to join in, pretty much just do as we will be doing, and spread the word to others who would enjoy doing the same.  You have been warned.

The reason behind DOTT?  Who knows.  Maybe it is a commentary on how easy it is to misuse and abuse things.  Maybe it is a way to silence the everyday annoying twits by force-feeding them their own medicine for a day.  Maybe it is an attempt to bring twitter to its knees.  Maybe it just sounds like an interesting thing to do.

#twit

AV Club members Ryan and Craig worked together this past weekend to create an entry for AMC’s “Greatest Fear” contest. This is the result, and it needs your votes to make it to the top 10! It’s one minute long and does not require registration to vote… so please, give it the 1.2mins of your life required to make a difference.

UPDATE: Ryan made the final 20 (he was actually in first when they started the finals)  Please go vote again, they reset all the votes for the final round so he needs you!

UPDATE 2: RYAN WON!!!!!  Congrats to Ryan and Craig and the whole cast and crew.  Ryan tells me that he will be using the prize money to pay everyone for their time spent in making the short possible, and to fund his next short; congrats!

photo credit: Uwe Hermann

The past two weeks have been exceptionally harrowing. In the midst of all of the Economic and Political upheavals that have been rocking our brains, the AV Club suffered 4 unrelated hard drive failures. The first did not really come as a surprise, the 2TB Fantom working drive (named “Terrorbyte”, remember that for later) refused to mount. It contains the working edit, conform, color correction, and VFX for our RED One pitch project “Medal of Honor”. The FW800 ports on it died in June, and truth be told it was a mistake to not return it then. But we did not have anything big enough to hold the footage, and there are backups of everything, so the decision to power through it and get the project done was made. The drive’s ultimate refusal to work was ever so slightly worrysome, but it was only 4 months old and under warranty, so back to the manufacturer it went. My family was in town and I was not able to work on or really worry about it, so I just decided to stay calm and carry on. (more…)

Just a little light humor as you prep your brain for tonight’s Vice Presidential Debate.  Click for full size, it’s hilarious.