Newsweek - National News, World News, Health, Technology, Entertainment and more... | Newsweek.com

American Geek

RSS
SPONSORED BY

Authors

N'Gai Croal

Categories





Links

Featured Postings

Announcement: Launch Softly, But Carry a Big Geek

10:00 AM, December 15, 2008 | Comments (2)
Welcome to the debut of our newest consumer tech blog, "American Geek." My name is N'Gai Croal, and I'm a senior writer for technology here at Newsweek who also pens the monthly "American Geek" column in our print edition. When my editors asked me to...

Archives

See All from December
Previous
December 2008
Next
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
 123456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
28293031   
       
 
Full Post
Posted Wednesday, December 17, 2008 9:35 AM

Hello World: American Geek's Roundup for December 17th, 2008

N'Gai Croal
  • SAYONARA: We don't need no stinkin' Macworld, says Apple, which revealed yesterday that a) Steve Jobs would not be delivering the keynote at the January 2009 conference (senior vice president Phil Schiller will, um, fill in); and b) Apple would no longer be participating in Macworld following that event. And if Valleywag's Owen Thomas is correct, the way the news came to light was interesting. He says: "When [BusinessWeek's Arik] Hesseldahl published a story on Monday with the headline 'Steve Jobs Will Be at Macworld,' all hell broke loose. Kent called back, saying he meant that the show would go forward, not that Jobs was a sure thing. Hesseldahl changed 'will' to 'may' in his headline and updated the story--but Kent's PR firm kept calling to backpedal. The story spread, and the drumbeat of speculation grew ever louder. Then, late Tuesday, came Apple's announcement that Jobs would not deliver the keynote address at Macworld, a tradition he's maintained since he returned to the company a decade ago." Oh, and one more thing: The cover story was plausible enough: Trade shows were an outdated way to sell Macs and iPhones. But Apple investors didn't buy it, sending the stock down in after-hours trading."
  • IPTV: Phone giant AT&T crosses a major threshold with its U-Verse online television service: 1 million subscribers across 79 major markets in 16 states. Writes Ars Technica's Nate Anderson: "The numbers remain below those of competitors like Verizon, and much further below those of cable companies like Comcast. But getting to a million subscribers for AT&T is a remarkable achievement given its use of new technology (it's the only true IPTV operator among the big US players), the regulatory and legal climate (the company got state laws changed across the country), and the fact that's it's all happening through DSL on twisted-pair copper wiring over which AT&T continues to sell Internet and phone access."
  • SERVED: If you've got legal woes, you may want to consider ditching your Facebook account, in Australia, anyway. As Canberra Times legal affairs reporter Noel Towell writes of a couple that had defaulted on its mortgage, "[A]fter 11 failed attempts to find the couple at their Wyselaskie Circuit home between November 8 and December 6, the lawyers tried a change of tack. Lawyers Mark McCormack and Jason Oliver convinced the court the Facebook profiles for the defendants were those of Ms Corbo and Mr Poyser. 'The Facebook profiles showed the defendants' dates of birth, email addresses and friend lists and the co-defendants were friends with one another,'' a spokesman for the firm said. This information was enough to satisfy the court that Facebook was a sufficient method of communicating with the defendants." Gives a whole new meaning to the relationship status "It's Complicated."
  • WEEZY: Can Lil' Wayne (and Merge Records and Kid Rock) save journalism in the Internet era? That's the argument being made by Alissa Quart in the Columbia Journalism Review. Quart says, "The first thing that writers might copy from musicians—even more than they do already—could be called the Free Culture Method. In music, one prong of that is mixtape giveaways. Despite recent miseries in the music business, Lil Wayne, the rap artist, sold more copies of his CD in one week than anyone this year, having built an audience by sending free mixtapes into the ether. Mixtapes, at least these days, are pressed CDs or downloads containing demos or raw mixes of tracks, as well as collaborations. Lil Wayne’s mixtape method is the musical equivalent of writers who give away original material on their blogs, writers like Alan Sepinwall, otherwise just another television reviewer at a mid-size metro—The Star-Ledger in Newark. Sepinwall writes an elaborate, trenchant, and heavily commented-upon blog (check out his 2,023-word analysis of the television show Mad Men’s 'Maidenform' episode) in addition to his print column, and the blog has extended his reach. Or consider Andrew Revkin’s sharp New York Times blog and vlog on global warming, through which Revkin made himself a brand."
Advertisement
Tag(s):
You must be a registered user to comment.  Click here to register.  Already a user?  Click here to login.

Member Comments

Posted By: alexsteed (December 26, 2008 at 3:48 PM)

If we should be putting our trust in anyone, it should definitely be Weezy. Why Newsweek doesn't feature him as a columnist, I have no idea. I'd be on that ish like no other.

Report Abuse