Bob Caswell

Not something I normally write about, but I thought I’d do my part in the “do nothing” response from the United States. If that didn’t make sense, let me explain:

The prevailing wisdom I keep hearing is that the U.S. shouldn’t meddle, as it will just fuel the fire for the current Iran regime to crackdown on protesters even more. If meddling were to occur, the regime would blame the West and have an easier time handling their current situation.

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Michael Arrington discusses what he thinks is a fantastic idea in his latest post “Paid Twitter Streams Are Here: Super Chirp.” So Super Chirp is this new third party service that allows Twitter users the ability to charge others for access to their direct messages (Twitter’s private messaging system). The idea is that celebrities could say their extra special stuff to people who pay for it!

Here’s what I said in a comment on the TechCrunch post:

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So after reading TechCrunch’s latest [lack of] news about Twitter, it hit me: Twitter is the new Digg. Remember Digg? Of course you do. It was such a simple concept. A “power to the people” take on news with user-submitted stories that anyone can share/discover/submit with the most popular stuff getting promoted to the frontpage. Once upon a time, before Twitter, it was the best thing since sliced bread.

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Back when I originally reviewed Twitter (over a year ago), I asked the question: Is it a waste of time or extremely valuable? At the time, I had no idea it would take off like it has today. But now that it has, it seems to moving more toward “extremely valuable” and further away from “waste of time” (though I still think it’s kind of both).

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Warner Brothers had come up with a slick promotion to get some much needed buzz around Blu-ray. My consensus: great idea but flawed execution. Here’s how it works (and why it won’t work):

You send in the cover art sleeve (keep the disc) and the UPC from your HD DVD movies. And for $4.95 per movie, plus $6.95 S&H per order, you’ll be sent back brand new Blu-ray copies of any movies you have in HD DVD. There are a few restrictions (only 1 copy per movie and only up to 25 movies per household) but nothing really that prohibitive.

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Earlier this year, I made a New Year’s resolution to blog more. But now, only a few months into 2009, my New Year’s resolution seems irrelevant in the new “statusphere” world. Brian Solis ala TechCrunch defines “Statusphere” as follows:

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The first half of my title is taken straight from the title of an email I received from Netflix a couple days ago (see end of post for text of the email). In short, as of December 15, 2008, Netflix will no longer carry HD DVDs. Around the same time I got this email, coincidentally, a friend of mine sent me an email about an online sale offering $2 HD DVD movies.

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So in case you missed it, Apple responded to Microsoft’s new “I’m a PC” ad campaign. You can watch the ads on Youtube via Gizmodo and TechCrunch (or a whole bunch of other places). I was discussing this with a friend / coworker last night and thought I’d share my thoughts here:

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