The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 3,700 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 3 trips to carry that many people.
The liberal firebrand news host known as Keith Olbermann returns to television tonight after departing from MSNBC a little under six months ago.
As I reported HERE, Olbermann takes his “Countdown” show to the fledgling TV station and Web community known as Current TV and Current.com. (Current was founded in 2005 and pulls in under 60,000 viewers during peak hours according to the New York Times)
The real motivation for Olbermann here is a majority stake in the company. He joins former Vice President Al Gore and businessman Joel Hyatt as an executive of the company.
Full disclosure: I interned for Current’s Vanguard back in summer ’09. Blogged about my experience here and also contributed to Current’s news blog here and here.
Current is not exactly a house name just yet, but getting a heavy hitter such as Olbermann on board may start to change that — at lest that’s what the station is banking on.
Besides Vanguard and now Olbermann, the network received mass media spotlight for its two reporters, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, that were held captive in North Korea.
Keep an eye on this five-year-old channel, because despite setbacks and low ratings, (around 25,000 viewers during prime time) shows like Vanguard, infoMania and now Olbermann’s are worthy of your attention.
Current has always been forward-facing: it initially gathered much of it’s programming through incorporating submissions from online contributors and was the first station to incorporate tweets into it’s coverage of the 2008 presidential debate.
But with new efforts focused on getting the station into more homes and a recent redesign (or more like design overhaul), I have heard few outcries but my own over what I find to be one very big problem:
Current, which was known for bridging the online and televised worlds, stopped allowing full episodes online. So much for anywhere, any time. What year is it?
The channel says the only way to continue carriage on networks like Verizon, TimeWarner and Comcast was to offer exclusive deals and Olbermann tweeted that the TV companies have them “over a barrel.”
Instead, Current is pushing clips big time, all over Hulu, iTunes and YouTube.
But for those of us who already cancelled our exorbitant cable subscriptions, we’re shit out of luck.
I can’t even legally purchase the shows in their entirety…anywhere. Now that’s just not right.
That’s why I scheduled a viewing party of sorts at a friends house for tonight’s premieres of Countdown with Keith Olbermann and a new season of Vanguard.
WATCH TONIGHT: Countdown premieres at 8/9c and Vanguard’s new season follows at 9/8c.
Check out behind the scenes with “Countdown” HERE.
Now I’m no trendsetter or bandwagon jumper…okay, maybe just a little of each….but this latest fashion “trend” — if you can call it that yet — is seriously jaw dropping.
You’ve seen fake animal tails on humans…you’ve seen faux fur coats a plenty…furhood coats and furry Fargo hats…but you may not have seen this: straight up animal headdresses.
If you’re saying “WTF?” right now, it’s OK. I am too. I’ve recently discovered that a company called Spirit Hoods makes upscale, ‘pro Wildlife’ creature clothing for your animalistic tendencies. I can’t even think of the jokes that could result from something like this. There’s pandas, wolves, foxes, lions, zebras and even snow leopards. See them all here.
What is going on with the world these days. Every time you think it’s all been done before, some new wacky innovation comes barreling around the corner. I’m sure Paris Hilton and Twilight tweens are already on top of this….and that Lindsay Loham is wishing for one in jail…but, seriously?!
>> Update: Swear to God, I wrote that line about Lindsay Loham before I saw THIS. Guess she really is missing one.
And to make matters worse, according to major concert promoter Goldenvoice’s Twitter account, this is the company’s official mascot. I didn’t know concert promotion companies needed mascots, but if you wanna stay hip, I guess this over-the-top feral fashion is a good start.
…Now that you’re desperately seeking to unleash your inner beast with one of these hood things, Spirit Hoods start at $69 and go up to $129.
You can find em at select designer stores throughout this country and one spot in Japan!
In the ever-waging wars of technology these days, it seems that Google, Apple, Facebook and Twitter are king.
Each with individual attributes making them wildly successful and seemingly sustainable.
But there’s another war going on in the tech world. A war slightly less obvious, but no less important; the search war.
Search is the way of the future and beauty of digitization: as fast as we can type, we can now pull up nearly instantaneous results for our queries, whether that be online or just finding things on a computer or hard drive.
In the search engine sector, Microsoft’s Bing has been gaining some traction, differentiating with visually captivating imagery that makes Google’s notoriously simplistic look dull.
I’ve found Bing’e travel features highly effective for booking plane flights and finding good deals on hotels. Bing’s results are almost always cheaper than the competitors, whom you can compare against with the ease of a few clicks.
Not to mention, Bing recently got the “Colbert Bump” with a big charity push on The Colbert Report. Every time Stephen Colbert said the word “bing” on his show this past Monday, Microsoft’s Internet search engine donated $2,500 to benefit the Gulf Coast oil spill. The bills binged up quick, racking up nearly $100,000 in a hilarious bit that lasted through the whole show.
But more interesting than Bing is what Google announced on its official blog last week: now you can add your favorite photo or image to the background of your boring white Google homepage!
Now hang on a second…isn’t that what Bing does?
Well, it’s not a a bad idea to copy. People want personalization and people like pretty.
The white was getting a little boring, despite the increasingly frequent changes to the Google logo (like celebrating Pacman’s 30th anniversary — which, by the way, you can still play at google.com/pacman).
But hey, Bing does seem to be one of the few things that Microsoft is doing right these days, so I guess it’s the company’s turn to have someone borrow from them instead of the other way around.
I must note, perhaps for sheer irony, Microsoft’s name is never nearby when it comes to Bing. Not on “The Colbert Report” and its certainly not branding the searches (as far as I can tell).
Competition is welcome when it doesn’t make our decision-making process out of control, and lucky for Google and Bing, Yahoo!, AltaVista, Ask.com, Lycos and the rest of those forgotten ’90s memories still kind of suck.
Watch The Colbert Bing Bump HERE.
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