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Craig's Gist

[Image: LA Times.com]

Last night, I was in New York for the Time 100 dinner, and arrived at the same time as Craig Newmark. There was a long, red carpet out front and people lined up at the curb to see the celebs. (Robert Downey Jr., Rupert Murdoch, John McCain, Mariah Carey & etc.) Mike Arrington, Jay Adelson, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg were among the geeks honored this year.

One of the things about the 100 is, once you're inducted, you can return to future Time 100 dinners—which is why Craig was there. As we walked in, he told me he'd been to three so far. I trotted along behind him but stopped when we had to go through a kind of chute that was lined with with photographers. "Who are you?" one of them yelled. "Craig Newmark," said his publicist. I hung back with her as Craig sauntered onto the firing line.

You would have thought Paris Hilton had just arrived. The paparazzi went nuts, blasting away at old Craig. I figured he'd be mortified, but no, he was clearly enjoying himself and even pulled out a Coolpix and snapped some shots of the shooters shooting him. "For my blog!" he explained. I wish everyone were sa sweet as that guy.

The Coolest Thing That Ever Happened To Me

Immortalized in Episode Two of Sn4tchbuckl3r's's Second Chance. Thanks, guys!

Microsoft buying Facebook? Not likely.

Two words: Marc Andreessen. I suspect he'd never join Facebook's board if he thought that selling out to Microsoft was an option. (I love taking  one rumor to debunk another.)

Google's Art of War—With Facebook

I don't know anything about art, but I know a little about Google. And I Googled this: Jeff Koons.

He's the artist whose "Chrome Tulips" decorated Google's minimalist search box yesterday morning. Lovely stuff. Beneath the empty box was a link to something called iGoogle Artist Themes ("What happens when great art mixes with your homepage?") Users who clicked on the link got to choose from among 70 artists' "themes." From the likes of such commercial artists as Marc Ecko, Diane von Furstenberg, NIGO, Michael Graves and Dolce Gabbana, users could select a theme and personalize their iGoogle page, a place that Google dearly hopes will quickly become your start page.

It seems pretty sweet. More free stuff from Google! And, by the way, raise your hand if you never used iGoogle or even knew it existed.

Read more on Time.com

A great "second" read?

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From David Carr's column today on Rupert Murdoch's gut renovation of the Wall Street Journal:

There is certainly no evidence that Mr. Murdoch has turned the newspaper into a tool of his business or political interests — something that had been widely feared and predicted. But there are clear signs that a sui generis business paper is fast becoming a very common general-interest paper, albeit one with a really dynamite business section.

Hmmmm, hang on a second... You mean the Journal might be veering more directly into competition with Carr's employer, the New York Times? Carr continues:

Mr. Murdoch has a few more billions to his credit than I do, but the paper looks to me to be surrendering much of its fundamental value. In order to make The Journal a first-read, Mr. Murdoch and Mr. Thomson are toying with the interest of those of us who have always thought of it as a can’t-miss second read.

Right, it'll never work. Better to keep the Wall Street Journal exactly what it was... Oh wait, this just in:

Circulation numbers for the six-month period ending March 31, 2008:
* New York Times down 9.2% on Sunday, 3.8% daily
* Wall Street Journal up 0.3%
(From Editor & Publisher)

The business plan behind MyDamnChannel

Almost as interesting as who created my favorite web series, You Suck at Photoshop, is the video channel that hosts it, MyDamnChannel.

Rob Barnett, who had worked at VH1 and MTV, had just left his job as president of CBS Radio in the summer of 2006 and was trying to figure out his next act. "I was on the beach for about 15 seconds when I made two decisions," he told me. "The first was, that’s it! I'm not working for anyone ever again. And the second was, I'm going to start MyDamnChannel, because the timing is perfect."

The way Barnett saw it, Google's purchase of YouTube would cause a bunch of wannabes to jump into the user-generated video game. "It became obvious to me that there was the 'HBO hole'—he or she who creates the best original content wins."

Are we moving to a post-blog world?

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After months of speculation, my old buddy John Battelle confirmed today that his ad-network-for-blogs company, Federated Media Publishing, got a $50 million investment. The Sausalito, CA.-based startup sells ads on behalf of nearly 150 blogs, including such heavy hitters as BoingBoing, TechCrunch, Silicon Alley Insider and GigaOm. This C round of funding reportedly gives FM a $200 million valuation. Way to go, John!

Most people outside of the Bay Area don't realize how big a deal getting funding is these days. But winter is coming—the recession—and startups of a certain maturity are looking to put on a little fat to survive. From the largest to the smallest, this generation of Web 2.0 companies is hunting for cash. I've had conversations with bosses of places that are really profitable now, and still they're trying to lay in some dough...

Gone fishin'

I went fishing in San Francisco Bay with friends today for halibut. But here's what we caught.

Swearing and racial slurs on Scrabulous

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I was playing Scrabble at Scrabulous the other day and noticed that my opponent laid down a four-letter word that happens to be a racial slur.

My friend is a very PC kind of guy; I didn’t think he was trying to insult me. I figured that, since we both routinely cheat online, the “Scrabble helper” program my buddy used must not have known that the word was offensive and simply picked it for another, legitimate meaning. Curious, I clicked on the site’s in-line dictionary to see what it meant, and found that there was no legitimate meaning. So I started looking up other racial and sexual slurs. Every one I could think of was in there and allowed.

Clearly, I had too much time on my hands. So I started typing in four-letter swear words, just for the sake of science. Every one was allowed, including the seven banned by the FCC.

I should say here that I am no prude and am a free speech absolutist. Even my children talk like truck drivers. I was mainly curious because, if these words were allowed in Scrabble, I probably know more of them than most of my opponents. All these years I was ignoring them on the false assumption that they’d never stand up to a challenge. I felt like such a fool.

Being thorough-ish, I went to Hasbro’s online Scrabble dictionary, and looked up the words. Sure enough, not a one was allowed! Had Scrabulous had been hacked by a foul-mouthed, racist, sexist prankster?

Nope. Apparently, until four years ago, those words were indeed allowed. But after an uproar at a national tournament, the National Scrabble Association expunged 170 words that were deemed offensive.

I guess the Scrabulous dudes never got the memo. The Agarwallas, two brothers living in India, had put up the unauthorized site two years ago and now have more than 700,000 users. They’ve been making over $25,000 a month and are still trying to work out some kind of deal with Hasbro and Mattel, who are asserting that their companies own the licensing rights to the game. The Agarwallas, meanwhile, are reportedly holding out for more money. Maybe if they get it, they’ll be able to afford the new dictionary.

The hard side of Mister Softie

Ah, Microsoft. Nothing gets the knickers of Silicon Valley startup guys more twisted than signs that the world's largest software company is over-reaching again.

The latest outrage? Some of my friends at the Valley's best-known social networks and Web 2.0 companies are privately grousing that emissaries from Redmond are trying to "strong-arm" (their term) startups into giving special treatment to Messenger, Microsoft's (MSFT) answer to AIM and other instant messaging programs. The problem typically arises when a social network, say, offers its users the ability to import the list of contacts they've accumulated on Microsoft Hotmail.

Since the summer, my friends tell me, Mister Softie has been sending cease-and-desist letters to startups that try to do this. These nastygrams are typically followed up by a meeting with Microsoft reps, who then try a couple different approaches to get the startup to integrate Messenger into their service.