Wednesday, January 11, 2006

What about Oprah?

I just finished the full Smoking Gun story on James Frey. Frey sounds to me like a spoiled rich kid, his loving parents in the Oprah audience knowing witnesses to at least some of the son’s outrageous falsehoods passed off as fact.

He’ll hopefully get his comeuppance. (It should be especially severe considering the damage done by his promotion of the Just say no “Hold on!” approach to recovery and addiction.)

But I wonder how will Oprah respond? Hers is another all too perfect story if you ask me.

UPDATE: Grrr! What did I expect, “Oprah Winfrey, whose recommendation last fall of the memoir, “A Million Little Pieces,” by James Frey, made it the best-selling book by any American author last year, said Wednesday that she would continue to recommend it despite Mr. Frey’s admission that he made up significant aspects of his story of addiction and recovery.”

SHE should be called to account.

Laffy Taffy downloads

NYTimes:

Over the last year, so-called snap music has made an unlikely journey from Atlanta phenomenon to hip-hop laughingstock to mainstream juggernaut. It’s the name some people have given to a dance-centric form of hip-hop, defined by light but propulsive beats and lyrics that often revolve around playful chants.

Dem Franchize Boyz have a snap-music hit with “I Think They Like Me (Remix),” which reached No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the rap chart. (It far outpaced the group’s previous and better hit, 2004’s “White Tee.") But snap music’s best-known chant is “Shake that Laffy Taffy, shake that Laffy Taffy.” That’s the refrain from an utterly infectious song called “Laffy Taffy,” by D4L. It has been hanging around the upper reaches of the Billboard chart since before Christmas, and last week it officially became the most popular song in America.

But people aren’t buying the album; it’s got one of the lowest sales totals in years:

In another category, though, D4L is setting sales records. Last week, the group sold 175,000 digital copies of “Laffy Taffy.” That figure doesn’t just set a digital-download record, it smashes the old one: the previous record-holder was Kanye West, who sold 80,500 digital copies of his hit “Gold Digger” one week last fall. D4L has now sold more than twice as many digital downloads as CD’s. The group’s members - Fabo, Shawty Lo, Mook B and Stoney - aren’t just chart-toppers; they’re music industry pioneers, too.

Intel Macs

A friend asked last week if I thought Jobs would introduce the new MacIntel this week. With undue confidence I said it would be soon, but not that soon (misremembering my own post!)

Too occupied with automated driving no doubt.

But it sounds like I didn’t miss much. MacInTouch:

Steve Jobs’ Jan. 10, 2006, Macworld Expo keynote marked an important milestone in the history of the Mac platform, but not as big or, frankly, as exciting a moment as I and many others had expected.

What made the day historic, of course, was the introduction of the first Intel-based Macs - a new version of the iMac and a new laptop, the MacBook Pro, both featuring Intel’s new Core Duo processor.

Two things made the day a bit of a letdown, at least to judge by crowd reactions, as well as my own. One was the absence of hardware the rumor sites and pundits had led us all to expect: lighter, cheaper, Intel-based iBooks; an Intel-based Mac mini or some other “media Mac” with built-in DVR (digital video recorder) and other living-room-oriented features; and an upgraded version of the iPod Shuffle.

The other factor was that Apple, in designing the new Intel-based hardware it did deliver, clearly chose to put its emphasis on continuity rather than change. While both the new iMac and the MacBook Pro have a few appealing new features, from the user perspective, they’re not radical redesigns, and they’re no cheaper than their predecessors.

I was in the hardware rumor mill, so duly disappointed. Here’s Endgadget’s day 1 coverage, here’s CNet’s w/photos. Here’s the Mac + Intel commercial.

UPDATE: It’s unanimous, bloggers hate ‘MacBook Pro.’

Blowhard

Now this is brilliant synergy:

Whole Foods Market Inc. is going all green on electricity.

The company is buying enough wind power credits to cover energy use at all of its U.S. stores, bakeries, distribution centers, regional offices and its Austin headquarters.

The deal makes Whole Foods the biggest corporate user of wind power in the country.

Goodbye virtual world, hello new world

I’m not sure I agree with the central thesis, yet. I may be convinced:

About the end of cyberspace

I started thinking about the end of cyberspace a couple years ago, when I begin to think about how handheld, mobile, alway-on information devices might rewrite the rules we use to think about the relationship between information, places, and daily life. Cyberspace, it seemed to me, was a “metaphor we live by,” reflecting our experiences with information technology, but also shaping the way we think about new technologies and the challenges they present. It had been a vivid and useful metaphor for decades; but would it remain relevant in a world of pervasive computing, mobile technologies, and eventually cybernetic implants, prosthetics, and swarm intelligence?

I don’t think so.

I’ve added it to my reader.