WESTWOOD, CALIFORNIA—I found this Beer Dong poster attached to every other post on the street I’m staying on in Westwood. The street does have a map name but is more commonly called “Frat Row.” You’ll forgive me but this has put me in a gender war kind of mood. But screw you if you are a man!

Gender, because of Palin and Hilary Clinton, has become popular as a meme in 2008. Only gender is not actually ever discussed. (more…)

Last night I was so unprepared (no socks; summer-weight quilt) for the temperature drop that I had to put my laptop on my feet to get to sleep. It had me thinking this would be a good example of the real-world utility of digital tech to give luddites who criticize my Internet-dependence.

The painfully common rhetorical question I get about my Twittering or streaming of my life’s details is “What is the point?” followed instantly with an explanation of why they don’t do it: because their life “isn’t interesting enough.”

The passive-aggressive implication here is that I am an arrogant turd who thinks my everyday life is interesting enough to feverishly microblog about. It is hard to intervene in this logic. But let me try. (more…)

Instead of investing in real estate and companies that make stuff and have a dull old strategy for making money the answer is clear: when the opportunity comes, invest in nothing because nothing is the future. Lehman Brothers has been around for a century and a half making huge profits, and today it’s nothing but FAIL. Same goes for newly sold Merrill Lynch. But fear not: I will provide you here with my expert Fall 2008 list that will pull us right out of economic depression and immerse us deeply in the bushy-tailed future:

Twitter
People are addicted to Twitter. You know I am. And addicts will do anything to get a fix. Sure, as of yet it has no way of making money, so investing in it will be faith based. But you believe in Jesus don’t you? The old economy has collapsed and the new economy is the only hope. Even Jack Layton is on Twitter, warming the cockles of my Canadian heart and proving how we, as a nation, are on the cutting edge. (more…)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GOOGLE!

Here is my gift to you (to be unwrapped after the fold): (more…)

The best thing about Chrome is that it is fast. The fastest. Evar. How so? To put it simply, the way it treats different tabs in the browser is the way your operating system treats different open applications. Each one runs independently, so the power of your computer—via its dual processors for example—can be divided and used for what God made processors for: speed. And, if you experience a crash on one pesky web page, the whole browser doesn’t have to be closed. You can just close the one hung tab. So, Chrome does for browsing what the Mac OS did for mainstream operating systems.

Think of your Chrome browser pages as application windows. They are nothing like your Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer (Internet Explorer? really? still?) browser pages. That equals stability and speed.

There are lots of other good (and somewhat boring) things I could write about Chrome. But none of them matter, because when it comes to using computers speed trumps everything. I close and never use applications that run slow. And then I delete them.

Firefox is painfully slow compared to Chrome. If that doesn’t change soon, Firefox will bleed users and slowly become obsolete. It’s like the Blackberry versus the iPhone. Crackberry has a keyboard that is actually useful, but it is so much slower than the iPhone and so is in big trouble.

It is more likely that Windows will change its operating system to compete with Chrome—it’s not really a browser issue per se. Chrome reorganizes how we think about browsers versus operating systems, just like Google redefined knowledge. Again, it is about speed. With a fast, reliable browser, cloud computing becomes obvious. That means even hardware will change. The MacAir makes more sense suddenly. The separation between desktop and browser, online and offline, is beginning to dissolve.

Does this prove Google is an evil monster that is taking over the universe not just of browsers but now operating systems? Well, Chrome is built on open source architecture. So once again Google is not selling anything in the out-dated way of explicit and direct product creation and sale. Its mantle of goodness, contained within their unofficial motto of “Do no evil”, remains in place. This is perhaps the most significant feat, at least in a cultural sense. Page and Brin (Google’s daddies) can keep posing around like a couple of affable kids who just stumble into a few billion dollars every year, their Masters of the Universe secret identities intact.

This is because they have set up the perfect win-win situation: If Firefox and Windows improve access and speed across the Internet, Google wins even if Chrome loses the “browser wars.” Chrome is as much about upping the ante and pushing access and useability up, so that more pageviews and ads can hit our eyes and fill Google databases and coffers. So use Chrome, use the soon-to-be sped-up Firefox and revolutionized Windows or any other operating system that has been Chromed into improving access—and Google still comes out ahead.

In other words, win or lose against Firefox et al, the release and speed of Chrome translates into the perfect glory-filled victory for Google.

Chrome Easter Eggs!

Time and space is filled
without disapointment

One should always be concious
of ones space, and others.

Space to stretch
Space between your ears

Space, the constant to fill
Think to much to feel!

To bissy filling
Think thaough compair give take
feel?
Shair thaught felt!

Lest you be cranking up your angry commenting energies to attack the editor, let me clarify: this is a verbatim love letter to me written fifteen years ago by someone I hurt. And remembering it is painful.
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I just had to take a quick break from re-writing the movie Red Dawn (it’s a rush job to shoot it before Patrick Swayze passes away and before everyone has jumped on the Cold War resurgence bandwagon) to talk about my Twitter heroes, the truckers.

Early adoption of GPS was mandatory for truckers given their destination-driven vocation. So they have taken to the location awareness services like Brightkite that we 3G iPhone users are just getting into. The iPhone can pinpoint your exact location and, using Brightkite you can check in at that location. (more…)

It all happened yesterday on my porch as I anxiously watched the street for the brown UPS truck.

Weeks of waiting (all long-term customers were punished by Rogers for their patronage by having to call in their iPhone orders instead of picking one up from the now reasonably stocked stores) culminated with me labouring over a way to sound certain about Derrida’s approach to popular culture analysis called “hauntology.”

The truck pulled up and the delivery person asked if the package was for me. He said “I think it’s a phone or something.”

“A phone!” I said. “This is no phone. I’ve been waiting for this all my life. I gave up a kidney for this thing.”

He handed me my box and I sank softly into tech oblivion. (more…)

I blather on a lot about cultural change and here comes Paris to make my point e

I blather on a lot about cultural change and here comes Paris Hilton to make my point effortlessly. After John McCain’s anti-Obama ad comparing him unflatteringly to the lewdness of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, it was Paris who struck back fatally—not Barack Obama. (more…)

What to wear (Seesmic), what to scorn (GPS, Rogers), and what you’ll read

WEAR THESE:
Seesmic and 12seconds.tv
Video interaction isn’t for everyone but it is desperately fashionable to have at least tried it. Seesmic is video conversation. It is a small but now fairly well-formed community that includes every age and ability from peepaws to fidgets, hackers to luddites. Deepak Chopra and Harrison Ford have both made appearances so it must be important. I only use it with my dog Jesus as my avatar. Magicalpowermako (a masterful Seesmic poster) uses disturbing puppets. So, grab your kitty or your toilet and join the debate about shirtless posting.

12seconds is like Seesmic with a 12 second time limit. I prefer these short bursts because poorly-lit talking heads reminds me of my childhood without cable TV. It has a teeny-weeny user base so it is very easy to join 12seconds and make friends and become a top poster.

Indenti.ca
The biggest critique of Twitter it that it does not follow the Open Micro Blogging protocol. You know, Twitter is down with THE MAN. Here comes sweet little Canadian Identi.ca to the rescue. Open source and portable it is the first Twitter clone to actually do something Twitter can’t. (more…)

Talking to people who have no knowledge of and/or hostility towards socialnets and cloud computing I feel like I did when I was hiding by a sewage lagoon as a kid to avoid mulletted Tammy Gough who promised to break my neck because of my Smart Set peach satin pirate shirt, chicken legs and granny boots.

There is no utterable translation of my position. Despite being physically proximal our cultures seem uncomfortably divergent. I’ve learned, thanks to the Goughster and her threats, to pass. To engage in idle chitchat about raccoons ripping apart my roof and lawn maintenance. To shut my mouth when someone asks what the hell is the big deal about iPhones or, nostalgic yearnings for the good old days when kids had attention spans and thinner bodies because they never had any Internet.

In my head I scream (and later Tweet): would they lament the invention of the printing press in the same way? (more…)

Calacanis, netlebrity and Maholo search founder/spammer, has quit blogging.

Presenting: The Hate Crown. on 12seconds.tv

Today the blogosphere is so charged, so polarized, and so filled with haters hating that it’s simply not worth it. I’d rather watch from the sidelines and be involved in a smaller, more personal, conversation.

Jason McCabe Calacanis, July 11th 2008

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