Writing is changing. In the past few years, the mainstream practice has changed significantly. I've been a champion for the way the Internet is changing writing for quite some time, and I'll continue to be, but when I think of the Internet's impact on culture and how that influences young writers, I…
Brian Sutorius
Rapper Snoop Dogg found a novel way to launch his new album this spring: with a star-studded release party in Hollywood that doubled as a showcase for a new fruit-flavored malt beverage called Blast. Conceived by the makers of Colt 45, Blast is the first serious competitor to Four Loko, the…
I recently had the worst comedic experience of my life. My college’s satirical newspaper, The Brown Noser , had been invited to the first “National Intercollegiate Humor Conference” at Princeton University. I was excited to write with my friends and meet funny people from other schools. The…
Growing up there was really only one bullet point on computers that I cared about: clock speed. I knew that the faster the CPU, the faster the computer. This drove my buying decisions (rather, my guidance of my parents buying decisions) for many years — this also lead the buying decisions of many…
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Snide Remarks #623 "Leaving in a Huff" by Eric D. Snider Published on April 11, 2011 Audio MP3 Download audio One thing you may not know about me is that I am a writer. More specifically, I'm a freelance writer. This means I can have several clients at once, work from home in my underwear, and set…
version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"? "Mr. Williams says that all successful businesspeople make enemies along the way." – The New York Times , October 30, 2010 How Twitter's owners and top executives say Twitter was founded is different from how Twitter was actually founded. Mainly, the official version…
I understand why the top students in America study physics, chemistry, calculus and classic literature. The kids in this brainy group are the future professors, scientists, thinkers and engineers who will propel civilization forward. But why do we make B students sit through these same classes?…
Today’s guest contributor is former Wall Street Journal and Fortune writer, Erik Calonius . Erik collaborated with Dan Ariely on Predictably Irrational and he has a new book out from Penguin Portfolio, Ten Steps Ahead: What Separates Successful Business Visionaries from the Rest of Us. +++ A few…
Brought to you by Seeso. Sign up for for only $3.99 a month . These days Norm Macdonald is all over the place — he has a Comedy Central special , a Twitter feud with Steve Martin , a profile in the New York Times , and a new show that premieres tonight. So what better time to revisit one of his most…
I recently stumbled across screenshots of old websites of mine and was hurled into a state of reminiscent shock. I knew they were bad, but wow they were outstandingly horrible (redeemed only by their microformats support! I kid, I kid). Several years and a few Georgia Tech design and HCI courses…
Back in 2001, Coudal Partners was on the ropes fiscally. And according to Jim Coudal, it’s the best thing that could have happened. "After 9/11, we lost a lot of business. And we were in trouble. It wasn’t any problem of ours. One company got bought and other people cut back on their spending," he…
Editor's note: Elizabeth Merrill's story on Brian Wilson marks the debut of "Curtain Call," a new weekly ESPN.com baseball feature that will spotlight a player, team or trend in the game. LONDONDERRY, N.H. -- The yearbook is 11 years old and stored behind a counter at the public library. Years…
Dealing with Twitter spam occupies seven people full-time, plus the services of two engineers. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian B iz Stone and Ev Williams discovered pretty quickly that Del Harvey was serious about the task they'd set her of putting a lid on Twitter's spam problem. Within a…
For me, 2011 is the year of the reader . Essential technologies such as pixel density and screen typography are at last reaching comfortable standards, and after years of being treated as mere eyeballs and drivers of ad revenue, users finally have tools that help them regain control of the reading…
April 2, 2011 Success, and Farming vs. Mining Let’s come up with an analogy and then torture it like we’re the Cheney administration: imagine you’ve just purchased a plot of land. What are you going to do, mine or farm? If you farm, you’ll have to purchase seed up-front, and work on it for a season…
When we self-diagnose, we look for control factors. Sometimes we invent them. The goal of solipsistic anxiety is to find an individual agent that explains our misery. We eliminate possibilities one-by-one in hopes that a single cause remains. This is how people deduce food allergies and come to…
Niko Bellic, the lead character in Grand Theft Auto IV. O nce upon a time I wrote in the morning, jogged in the late afternoon and spent most of my evenings reading. Once upon a time I wrote off as unproductive those days in which I had managed to put down "only" a thousand words. Once upon a time I…
It might be the best marketing in the history of wine. The story of how a rap mogul transformed a $50 champagne into the next Cristal—and received millions for doing so. By Zack O'Malley Greenburg On a frigid February night, I’m waiting outside a ground-floor apartment in Harlem, beginning to wonder…
How do other people deal with the torrent of information that pours down on us all? Do they have some secret? Perhaps. We are asking various friends and colleagues who seem well-informed to describe their media diets. This is from an interview with Neetzan Zimmerman, a professional, full-time…
Lending e-books THE latest newcomer to the e-lending business was the first to be called out. Like other similar sites, Lendle relies on loans of books purchased for Amazon's Kindle reader. But on Monday morning Amazon turned off the content tap that feeds the site; it was not switched on again…
A recent Vanity Fair profile of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey ends with an anecdote about an inspiring speech he gave to the assembled staff at his new mobile payments startup, Square . The internal “TownSquare” meeting took place on his 34th birthday last November, and it is a remarkable statement by…
THE BUMP IN THE ROAD that ended Bo Stefan Eriksson's fantastic ride is practically invisible. From 10 feet away, all you can see is the ragged edge of a tar-seamed crack in an otherwise smooth sheet of pavement. Only the location is impressive – a sweet stretch of straightaway on California's…
Pryor enlightened his audience on race and interracial relationships using a flamboyant vocabulary that he’d learned growing up in his grandmother’s whorehouse. Credit Illustration by Al Hirschfeld, Courtsey of the Margo Feiden Galleries LTD SKIN FLICK Winter, 1973. Late afternoon: the entr’acte…
Ernest Hemingway, Yelper.
[Originally published March 22, 2011.]
I called Sam and asked him if he wanted to come to dinner but he said he had softball practice and I said that was a damned shame and hung up. When I got to Sun City Bea and Rob were at were at the bar, behind tattooed women and men…
That’s when we first really noticed Charlie Sheen, and it’s the key moment in his movie career (it now seems to define and sum up everything that followed). He hasn’t been as entertaining since. Until now. In getting himself fired from Two and a Half Men , this privileged child of the media’s…
March 15, 2011 In Semi-Defense of Twitter There's been a lot of hullabaloo about Twitter recently telling developers of client apps that, like, maybe client apps aren't a smart business model for them, as Twitter is going to be making client apps and (one might assume) crushing off third-party…
This is the story of Twitter and the last four years of my life. It's a pretty long story, but one that needs to be told. Twitter and I have a very interesting past. When I say "Twitter" I mean both the service and the company itself. 2006 I'm Moving Out During a six-week span in mid-2006, I…
RAISE your hand if you remember when Starbucks seemed cool. Anyone? Think back. To before the planet groaned with 17,000 Starbucks shops. Before the pumpkin spice lattes and the Ciao Amore CDs. Before the Strawberries & Crème Frappuccino ice cream, the Starbucks cream liqueur, the Pinkberry-inspired…
Three short years ago, almost to the day, I arrived in San Francisco and instantly fell in love. As a former technology columnist for the Guardian (and, unbeknownst to me, about to become one again), I had more than a passing familiarity with the goings on in Silicon Valley. But unlike most tech…
This Is It: Ten Years of the Strokes We talk to the Strokes about their oft-mythologized history and the dicey creative process behind their new album, Angles. When they first entered the public consciousness in 2001, the Strokes would've been the last band anyone would've pegged for longevity. Even…
[Photographs: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt] I'm no stranger to In-N-Out, the massively popular California-based fast food burger chain (that is apparently poised to expand East , if only a couple states closer to me—hooray!). And of course, I've been aware of their secret menu for years. I've eaten plenty of…
Talking Carl is a mildly famous iPhone app in which a vaguely anthropomorphic red blob repeats things you say to it in a funny voice and responds to touches and prods with giggles and yelps. Readers have been sending us some quite angry messages about a mysterious recent update to the app which…
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