This headline hurts my brain, vol 1.

Posted by & filed under techstuffs.

A pseudo-fluff piece 1 written by Jordan Crook over at TechCrunch recently jumped out to me on a recent browsing of my tech news aggregator of choice 2. And not exactly jumped out at me in a positive way.

While I am what one might call an Apple fanboy, I can’t help but feel that the whole objective of this story is to:

  • hype up their startup-hypemachine (which recently happened),
  • note that cool developers also use Android,
  • remind us (unnecessarily) that Android is still around.

I wonder what was going through the writer’s mind when she was writing this piece. It’s not as if Android really needs any sort of leg up on the competition—and that’s a discussion for another time, honestly.

The self-serving part of this article just hurts my brain more than anything. I can understand that the observation had to be made, but this could’ve been made in another article, and not masked as a writer’s experience and thoughts on the evening. We know what they think about the evening—they chose the winners of the event. They could just as easily wrap that up in a sizable review post for the event.

Then again, I generally avoid TechCrunch for reasons like these.

Then again, like most blogs that rely on advertising revenue—certainly the case with TC since the acquisition by AOL—this manner of link baiting can’t be helped anymore.

Notes:

  1. Android Can No Longer Be Ignored… (Crook, TechCrunch) ↩
  2. TechMeme, because it’s awesome. ↩

The multi-billion dollar thinger.

Posted by & filed under techstuffs.

Facebook to IPO for $5b or more? 1

I’m not sure what to think about this.

On one hand, it’s the validation that an entire industry has been looking forward to for the past three or four years. It’s the legitimacy that social media service providers have been looking for ever since the Facebook released its Beacon update to promote more advertisements on its service.

On the other hand, I don’t even really use Facebook anymore. I loathe the requirements of certain websites that ask me for my Facebook credentials. I haven’t made use of the messaging solution that made waves when Facebook.com email addresses were nothing but unconfirmed speculation.

But it’s helpful to remember that Facebook isn’t about the individual users anymore. It’s about the society of people that use the Internet in any sort of regular capacity. Even though I might not like everything that it stands for and the manner in which all of its information is used to build the perfect ad-serving system, there are hundreds of millions folks that use it everyday.

That’s why the IPO is speculatively going to be in the billions of dollars: Facebook has become the best web advertisement serving mechanism on the web. It’s not about it being the best space for a user to share their life’s particulars. It’s not about connecting with people that you haven’t talked to in years.

Facebook will ultimately become about what kills the enthusiasm behind many social networks that try to expand and grow beyond their station: the bottom line.

Notes:

  1. IFR ↩

Getting back into the gist of things.

Posted by & filed under blogstuffs.

Well, I have been pretty busy with a lot of things lately, but it’s not an excuse to write up what’s been on my mind lately so at least I can keep track of the thoughts in my head.

You’d think that with the work schedule that I have that I’d be able to find the time to write on my own, but that’s certainly not the case as I find that I would be labeled a loner of sorts if I didn’t associate with folks outside of the workplace. Office hours are great… and then everyone else decides to do things in the evenings.

I dunno where I was going with that, but being able to ramble again is a quite refreshing feeling. And at the risk of sounding like a whining emo kid, I have had a lot of my plate in the past two months compared to the stress that I felt over the majority of the year 2011.

But tonight, I write.

Keeping expectations… what they are.

Posted by & filed under esports.

I don’t want to turn this into a blog that comments on /r/starcraft all of the time, but I do think the following needs some sort of recognition.

Everyone needs to relax, it’s completely OK to use TL and r/starcraft together. Each site has its strengths and weaknesses, just accept each one for what it is and use both.

There’s really no need to try to make this subreddit into what you think it should be, because much like the hot hacker from “Transformers” believes about the code that hacked the US military network, a subreddit’s personality is a living organism, it changes every day. If people want to talk about SC2 celebrities, let them.

That’s the beauty of Reddit and the upvote downvote system. Don’t hate it, embrace it. 1

HotBid makes plenty of sense here. /r/starcraft is a community that consistently thinks of itself in the highest possible regard even though the most common of failures associated with any public forum come along for the ride. Team Liquid has this same failing, but it has a history of being an environment where the discussion actually meant something.

In Reddit, as other posters in the thread would go on to point out, the point-whoring system that is inherent in the system sets up a situation where the lines of post quality and quantity are often blurred.

Moderation is virtually nonexistent, aside from when the user base demands some sort of change and a token change is made to calm the /r/starcraft hive mind. I’d prefer if things stay the way that they are, though.

The freedoms of a more-or-less unmoderated experience on the subreddit have its benefits over a controlled experience such as Team Liquid. Then again, true StarCraft fanatics are more common at the latter compared to those on the progressive edge of the community.

Notes:

  1. ESPORTS_HotBid on /r/starcraft ↩

Reeling back on the sharing.

Posted by & filed under blogstuffs.

I just went out to lunch and forgot to post about any unusual events that happened during that time on a social media site.Womp womp.
29 December 2011 14:01 via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@bcarr
Brad Carr

I haven’t been posting as often as I should have been lately. This isn’t from a lack of want to do so, really, but a lack in available brainpower to come up with something to write to this space. I make this excuse every so often, but this time it really is for more than simply being lazy.

If it weren’t for a couple of pretty monumental and life-changing personal/family situations, I’d be on this path towards getting my upcoming column for ESFI out of the conceptual part of the development process and into the side of the process that can be proved to exist.

There are emotions that I want to convey and thoughts I have on subjects that aren’t limited to technology and esports. Eventually, I will write about these things. I will give no fucks. You have been warned.

 

The acceptance of your peers.

Posted by & filed under esports.

For as many strides that ESFI has made in the recent weeks, it seems like it can’t catch a break with the critical inner circle of esports personalities, namely InControl on last evening’s State of the Game podcast.

The lack of faith and abundance of skepticism that the established SC2 personalities have is well-deserved—I won’t deny them that. Anyone that claims to be identifying issues or reporting developments in their scene is creeping on their turf and it stands to reason that they could potentially lose the position of relevance with regards to news in the community should a site like ESFI begin to release the content that they have even been asking the community to provide for the sake of itself.

I’m not speaking for ESFI corporately, but I do think I can opine that I believe the mission of ESFI is to report what is happening within the scenes we can investigate with a fair and even-handed approach to coverage. I am not affiliated with any league organization or public team and I’ve never strived to be one of the folks who are. It’d be nice to have that sort of access all of the time and to get on the inside of some circles, but I don’t think that’s what my current goal is. I just want to be able to bring either news that lacks bias (in as much as it is possible) and share it with the community.

I’m sure there are those out there who just want to rock the boat, but that’s not really what I’m into, granted the situation might arise in which rocking the boat might be inevitable, but hopefully the community would be ready for that sort of turbulence if it came down to publishing an exposé written by ESFI—talk about a rock and a hard place.

I suppose it’d be nice if the community could just see the effort as what it is and instead of just bracing for the worst. There are some who are all for what we’re doing, but I just hope the skeptical amongst the remainder can limit their negativity for what we’re trying to accomplish.