From CelebTV on YouTube: Carrie Prejean loses her crown for violating her contract, and this time, even pageant boss Donald Trump wants her gone.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger follows Zennie62 on Twitter!
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Ok. As of this writing I have over 3,500 Twitter followers. Normally one follows those with more Twitter followers, unless the Twitter account has quality Twitterers following them; that's true for me. I've learned that such a position attracts the larger Twitterers, like Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has over 200,000 Twitter followers himself. Now, he's following me!
What? You've got issues with him? Hey, it's Ahhhold, baby! Yah know? Of course I followed him back, which means we're Twitter friends. Very cool. A pipeline to California's governor who has a pipeline to this blogger - nothing to sneeze at. It's prized. It doesn't mean I voted for his initiatives in the last election; I didn't. But truth be told I voted for him twice in the California gubenatorial races starting in 2002.
Why?
Because as a Dem, I felt the California Democrats needed a shakeup, an ass kicking; we'd become a bit too arrogant in our power and forgot then that the party serves the people, not the other way around.
For me, the personal last straw came at a fund raiser I went to a few years back when as a certain big time California Senator player in the party walked by me and as I said "Hello Senator. How are you" told me to, ah, blank off, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.
Now, I'd never known this person and was just being polite; he walked by at close range. Why he did that, I don't know, and others tell me that's just the way he is. Regardless, I'd had it. That happened to be 2001, the year before the year of the great California recall election. The one that put Arnold Schwarzenegger in the governor's chair and I was one of the Democrats who crossed the voting aisle to make it happen. I figured his democratic wife Maria Shriver would keep him in check, perfectly in the middle, and I was sort of correct.
Ah, governor, leave education alone! Unlike the Pink Floyd song, we do need an education. But seriously, California's economic growth was fueled by its universities. The guvs objective should be to restore the UC system to 90's levels of public funding as a percentage of total funding. Then, Berkeley received over 65 percent of its budget from the government and it was affordable; not any more. We've got to change that.
The Leader
While Schwarzenegger will not go down as the best governor we've had, he will be considered the best leader we've had. There's an idea that California's ungovernorable anyway; I happen to disagree with the idea, but it's a powerful one. The initiative process is seen as the problem, but it's not. The simple fact is the state doesn't take in enough money because after Prop 13's passage in 1978, lowering property taxes to a uniform one percent state wide, our tax revenue has been chronically low relative to need and that emerged as a problem starting after 1987. That's the fact, jack. The problem's not complicated at all.
First, we need about $30 billion from the federal government. Then, we need a two-tiered property tax system: one for businesses at a higher rate and leave the current level for residential structures.
Arnold's Tweets
Ok. What's our gov tweeting about? Have a look:
- Check out this tool from LATimes: http://bit.ly/L2Bph. It is your chance to make the tough budget decisions. Tell me how you do.
- Met with the treasurer and the controller. We need to act to close this $24 bil deficit by June 15 to avoid running out of cash.
- I love public participation so I want to hear your ideas for solving our budget, no matter how radical. Use #myidea4CA.
- I don't want to cut your CalGrant, @heidi_luvs_jery. I hate these cuts. But we can't spend $ we don't have. I welcome creative solutions.
- FresBee Ed Brd ltr today. Submit q's with sub. line "Governor question" to metro@fresnobee.com. @scoopy559 will be tweeting.
- I just met with the mayors for the big cities to talk about how we can work together with the budget and to hear their ideas.
- http://twitpic.com/6xydi - I just went upstairs to talk to the Senate leadership about the need to so what it takes to come to an agreem ...
- http://twitpic.com/6wycj - At Calabasas High School discussing our first-in-the-nation Digital Textbooks Initiative.
- http://twitpic.com/6r6wd - Entering Charles Drew University's commencement ceremony
- Don't forget to tune in to ask me questions at 10:45. www.sacbee.com/live.
- Great question, @deelynn39, but remember the day has 24 hrs. If I couldn't find 1 hr for fitness, I would feel like a loser.
- Thanks for the kind words, @LuvenRN. I'm proud of the nurse ed initiative - nursing is so important for the future of health care.
- Thanks, @BigJiggity. State payroll is actually only abt 10% of GenFund. Biggest expense is education followed by soc services and prisons.
- You shouldn't have to be a secret agent to find out where your tax dollars go. Contracts, etc to be posted on web: http://tiny.cc/B1Xob
- I joined the team to bring FIFA World Cup soccer to U.S. & CA in 2018 or 2022. Let's bring it back to USA http://bit.ly/GmgkW
- Tomorrow I'll be at the SacBee Ed Brd taking questions from readers about the budget. Join in at 10:45 am at http://www.sacbee.com/live/
- Today I checked out a VW Passat with a hydrogen fuel cell. Zero emissions - I can already imagine it on the Hydrogen Hwy.
- Just addressed a joint session of the Legislature to urge them to work with me to prove the pundits wrong and get California back on track.
- Weekly video response to some more of your questions. Good night - have a fantastic weekend. http://bit.ly/15qcKW
- I answered a lot of your questions about the Hummer yesterday in this video: http://bit.ly/hhvPw
A read of the Guvs Tweets reveals that he wants us to know what he's working on. A good use of Twitter. I much prefer this information to knowing that he's brushing his teeth. What's of greatest importance is he wants to see your solutions for solving California's budget problems, "no matter how radical."
Smart cookie. The guv knew I was gonna blog this information, so he followed me. Not bad.
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
North Korea: Free Journalists Or Face Military Action
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As I write this, video journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee have been sentenced to jail for 12 years of hard labor. While they're charged with 'tresspassing" into North Korea during a project where they were reportedly covering the story of the trafficing of women. Interesting that North Korea would not want such a story covered, eh?
I've thought about this and now recall the ideas of my professor Robert Scalapino at Berkeley, who advocated a nuanced way that America could cause this Leninist state to move toward Democracy. But that was 1989; these current moves show a country that has little interest in personal freedom and every interest in power.
Kim Jong-il has assesed the World's economic situation, rightly determined it terrible, and estimated this time was the best to make his move. He wants desperately to be considered the leader of a nuclear power and over the last three weeks alone has made moves that are certainly so provacative as to flirt with the very idea of war.
Why else would he basically kidnap - forget the kangaroo court - Euna Lee and Laura Ling? It was a stupid move to say the least and not just because they're American, but Asian. Kim Jong-il's now managed to piss off everyone not in North Korea, and moved the war clock pretty close to a possible scenario of bombing the hell out of the military installations there, should any harm come to those Americans.
Look, what I think President Obama should do is negotiate with Kim Jong-il even as the U.S. Military and the CIA are planning and executing a strategy of getting Euna Lee and Laura Ling out of jail.
How?
There's got to be a way we can get a radar-invisible helicopter over that area, drop troups in an isolated place nearby at night, shoot anyone who comes to attack them, make way for more troup drops, get over to that prison, break in, and get them. Then as they're out, have the helicopter land, get them on board, and get them out. As they reach altitude, they would be joined by our stealth bombers which would protect them as they fly out and over to South Korea.
Done.
Look. I know this is risky, but frankly I'm totally sick of Kim Jong-il's behavior toward American and the World and North Korea's gone too far. Plus, he's got to answer for interrupting an investigation into female trafficing along his boarders. If Kim Jong-il's trying to test President Obama, he forgets that American citizens will back whatever agressive decision Obama makes.
There's a growing feeling that we're being pushed around because of the perception that our economy's in the tank. First, we had the Somali Pirates, which ended with some casualties but it was necessary. Now this, and it seems miliary action's needed again.
Enough already with North Korea. As The Thing would say, "It's Clobberin' Time!"
Sunday, June 07, 2009
Phil Villapiano holding court
From danfunk on YouTube - "A classic clip from the 2009 Biletnikoff Foundation Charity Golf Tournament, Oakland Raider Legend Phil Villapiano hamming it up with the fans, there was a lot more to it, you had to have been there!"
Friday, June 05, 2009
New Moon | Why Is Twillight / New Moon So Popular?
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Maybe you all can help me with this. Ok? Here goes. Why is the Twillight Saga so popular? The official trailer for the movie "New Moon" is out and it looks interesting this Trekker's just not feeling it. Especially since the one person who appears to be the baddy is a rastafarian black guy who's about to get it by a guy, "Jake" who turns into a wolf in mid run.
What's that you say? I've got to read the book series Twillight? I guess so; there's four of em. Look, I've seen the book all over the place: on the BART Train, at the gym, in the hand of a passer by. Almost always a woman between the age of 20 and 50; mostly white or Asian in the Bay Area - seldom black. Just an observation. I've only once seen a guy reading the book. Just an observation.
I have to admit I became more interested in this because the author of the Twillight Saga, Stephanie Meyer, came up with this four-book marvel of success out of a crazy dream she had in 2003 about a 17-year-old girl and a studly vampire who loves her but wants to kill her and suck her blood. Moreover, Meyer, reportedly expecting a $10,000 book advance just to pay off her minivan, got a $750,000 deal, and the book series has sold 17 million copies worldwide, has made her a new millionaire, and...wow.
That's great. For that alone, I'm proud of Stephanie. Hugely so.
But why the heck is it so popular?
Last year, Gawker's Alex Carnevale explained that Vanity Fair's James Wolcott "pulled out the stops" in trying to pull together all of the pop-culture referrences that seem to have found their way into Twillight:
"Here's the full list of cultural references from Wolcott's piece: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dracula, Vampire Academy, Gossip Girl, The Morganville Vampires, Vampire Kisses, The Vampire Diaries, Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter, Into the Wild, Mary-Louise Parker, Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries, Six Feet Under, Harry Potter, Debussy, Rudolf Nureyev, Chris Isaak, Michelangelo, Chopin, Superman, the gays, Sarah Palin, James Dean, David Lynch, Bob Dylan, Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction, and Brideshead Revisited. An impressive array, to say the least."
Ok. But that's not necessarily a receipe for success as the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. So I'm using new media to take the question to you: why is the Twillight Saga so popular? Also, when I look at the Vanity Fair photo here:
All I see is the common picture of white American youth plus one African American and one other person of color out of 12 people. Interesting. It's a photo so common it implies anyone who's not "that" need not be at the party for the most part, except as a token. And therein lies the problem for me, specifically.
Why does the Twillight Saga have to be an almost totally white picture of a fantasy? Because Meyer's Mormon and it's her dream? I'm not comfortable with that notion only because I don't know Meyer and admire what she's done. Since I want to like her, I'm afraid to go that route of thinking.
I'm just being honest. I'm just thinking, which I do too much of perhaps. But I just can't accept what's tossed at me chapter and verse. Sorry.
That feeling of racial isolation is a bit bothersome to me, especially as our society becomes ever more integrated. I don't think for a moment most readers of Twillight think about the story in this way as presented in the book. But the movies -- the movies give a different take because they paint the picture for us.
See? Our ability to create a fantasy and install ourselves within it, skin color and all, is taken away. Then here comes Vanity Fair to cement the deal.
The real wildly popular story of an interracial set of as President Obama would say "folks" has yet to be told. But I have the feeling one can't achieve success by setting out to write that story. I suppose some guy, somewhere, will have a dream about a 20-year old African American boy and a space alien in the form of a hot-for-teacher, 40-year old hardbody Asian woman who wants to kill him and take his bones back to some home planet in Orion's Belt, but is so in love with him she winds up...
You get the idea.
Hmmm....
Obama on Iraq, Iran and Israel in Cairo
From the AP: President Barack Obama addressed a wide array of issues, including the Iraq war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in his address to Muslims in Cairo Thursday. (June 4)
Susan Boyle Released From Hospital; Will Sing For Demi Moore
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Susan Boyle, who's set to perform for President Barack Obama, has been released from Priory Clinic in London, where she was treated for emotional exhaustion, and has been offered $30,000 to sing at Demi Moore's wedding anniversary event in Los Angeles (hey, I thought hubby Ashton Kutcher was supposed to plan this?).
At any rate the American offers are starting to pop up for Boyle. Meanwhile, Britain's Got Talent judge Amanda Holden said on Larry King Live on Tuesday of this week, that the show was not at fault for Boyle's problems stating that the contestants are all "extraordinarily well looked after."
Are you kidding me? Really, Amanda? So why did this happen if that's so? Moreover, I don't think Holden would have come on King's show were it not to do damage control regarding Boyle's horrible treatment. I still think she should have quit early and I said so here:
But maybe, as someone observed on Twitter, (where she's still a hot topic as of this post time) Boyle's coming in second place on BGT was the best thing to happen for her. Perhaps all of this will work out in a sideways fashion. But the big new issue is how people are treated on television. There should be a government review of what happens to new celebrities and what responsibilities TV producers should take, including explaining the risks that come with being on television to those who want to appear on a show, and protecting the persons from harm.
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
Susan Boyle to Sing For President Obama July 4th
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Susan Boyle, who I explained on Monday had a total right to hate the show "Britain's Got Talent," after the way the show's producers treater her and the media hounded her into an emotional breakdown landing her in a mental hospital called Priory Clinic in the UK, and may miss the planned BGT concert tour, has been invited to sing before US President Barack Obama on the 4th of July.
According to the website Entertainmentwise.com and the Daily Record, Boyle's brother Gerry said "Her dream is still very much alive. In fact, it's only just starting... She's been battered non-stop for the last seven weeks and it has taken its toll. But she'll be looking forward now to the Fourth of July."
It's fitting that the American President Obama would step in to clean up a British mess with the way Boyle, an overnight international superstar, was treated. Now, Boyle can get her rest, forget the zoo tour that the BGT minders have set for her, and sing for Obama.
Boyle expressed it was her dream to sing before the Queen of England, but now she'll get to croon before the most powerful person in the World.
That's just rewards for her, and punishment for the producers of Britain's Got Talent. Bravo, President Obama!
If you didn't know what happened to Boyle this week, here's my video as a recap:
Oh, and no, there's more news out there. Stick around...
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Rush Limbaugh's Wrong, Sonia Sotomayor's Not Racist
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I'm sure anyone black or white can relate to this because it's a common conversation:
White person to me: "I as a white person don't know what it's like to be in your shoes as someone black.
Me to the white person: "Well, you can do it; I don't mean to be insulting but it's called empathy. I have a lot of white friends who get the experience just by having black friends."
I've had that episode replayed over and over again in my life, though less so today than in the past. I've never thought the white person who was in the conversation - and they have been many people - was racist. Indeed, I did think they were race-concious and that's a very good thing.
Why? Simple. Because that person's not being colorblind and for that moment at least recognizes that it's really impossible and a total joke to be "colorblind". We make choices positively or negatively who we want to associate with regarding a person's skin color every day. In my case, having a diverse set of friends is extremely important because it shapes and keeps in check my "world view". A racially complex set of friends keeps you're mind sharp and makes life fun.
It's for that reason I assert Supreme Court Justice Designate Sonia Sotomayor's not racist. She's certainly as race-concious as the white persons who've made the statement I opened with, but that's not being racist. To be racist is to put another person down because of their skin. Period. Moreover Sotomayor's 2001 comment in a very long speech given at U.C. Berkeley (and called "A Latina Judge's Voice) reads like this:
"First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
Think about that, and combine it with the statement I presented and made to me many times by someone white. It's the flip-side of the white person's statement. Think about it. Think again. Sotomayor's 2001 comment essentially confirms what has been said to me many times and some of the white persons who said this were, drumroll please, conservative and all male come to think of it.
So what's the real problem? Well, there isn't one; it's manufactured by a conservative PR machine led by radio yeller Rush Limbaugh, always feeding the minders of his $400 million broadcast contract, and repeated by television producers seeking ratings to maintain a level of post-election political interest. Gotta have something to get your blood going and this is red meat for some folks, especially Limbaugh.
But Rush, in his zeal to pin Sotomayor as racist, has started telling lies. He said on his show today, Wednesday,...
"I mean, when she says that she'd do a better job than a white guy, what is it? It's racism. It's reverse racism, whatever but it's still racism. She would bring a form of racism, bigotry to the court."
But she didn't say that.
The comment I presented by Sotomayor above was made in a remark about how judges have responded to civil rights cases over our history. Since that has impacted people of color, Sotomayor was simply saying a wise person of color -- in this case a Latina woman judge - with experience would hopefully make a better decision in that context than someone white and male who did not have the experience.
We have to pay attention to what is said here in specific. Indeed, if I were to challenge Rush in person he'd have to admit he was wrong, if he was honest with me, of course. The bottom line is because we as a World don't know how to talk about race, the door's open for folks like Rush to confuse the discourse.
We Need To Learn How To Talk About Race
The real problem is some people, regardless of color, don't know how to talk about race. Too often conversations focus just on their personal perception of a racial issue rather than a broad read of what people do. (I'm not discounting the value of a personal perception, just the application of it. Ok? Really stop and think about what I'm explaining before you react here. Thanks.)
For example, I tried to explain to a friend why her friend, who was making and selling a product like the terrible "Obama Waffles", was doing a bad thing, very racist in that it took a black stereotype and used it to make fun of President Obama. I further explained that her friend's product would be roundly panned in the blogsphere and give her friend a bad name.
My friend, who's white and not involved with the product, reacted defensively and then launched into an explaination of why she's not racist, which wasn't my assertion at all as I was talking about her friend's product not her. I explained that we're not talking about her or her experiences and I know she's not racist, but she's got to understand how society around her is changing and what's acceptable and what's not. After a time of a lot of frank and a bit rought talk, she understood what I was saying and said she'd talk to her friend. Oh, and we're still the best of friends.
But episodes like that mean we need to take stock of what's happening beyond our personal experience. It's good to get a constant statistical and content read on how society is changing (Marketers are you paying attention?) so you're not caught in the backwash of social change.
The GOP's fighting this problem right now and Limbaugh - as the GOP's standard bearer - by calling Sotomayor racist, has once again revealed its own racism.
The reality is, even with people like former Rep. Tom Tancredo's (R-Colo.) staffer, conservative writer, and activist Marcus Epstein pleading guilty to the hate crime of calling an innocent black woman the N-word and striking her with a karate chop in 2007 (he says he wants a second chance and accepts that he behaved terribly, which is an understatement.), we've still come a long way in America. You don't have to be black to understand the black experience or Latino to "get" the latino experience, or Asian to feel the Asian experience, or white to get the white experience, but all of us try, accept our physical limitations, and listen.
A lot. With love.
Yeah, that word again.
Monday, June 01, 2009
Susan Boyle Says She Hates "Britain's Got Talent," So Do I!
http://www.zennie62.com - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/a... - After the news of Susan Boyle's admission to a mental clinic for evaluation, I just plain hit the ceiling. I'd followed the stories of Boyle's much-justified outbursts last week - "much-justified" because Boyle was reportedly deliberately harassed by a couple of evil journalists who set out to make her upset - and could not understand how the producers of the now-popular TV Show "Britain's Got Talent" (BGT) would not get protection for Boyle and shield her away from harm.
I then watched in horror as news outlets around the World put all the weight of the issue on her, writing she's "having a meltdown", "SuBo goes loco", or "flies off the handle all the time" or words to that effect, and figured that it was some elaborate PR stunt possibly developed by the BGT minder just to hype up the ratings to see what she would do during the finals, then cement the show's popularity because of the upset loss that was sure to occur since the call-in audience's vote would be effected by the news of her problems.
That's what happened. After the show, Boyle reportedly ran down a hallway screaming "I hate this show." Well I agree with Ms. Boyle 100 percent. The way BGT treated Boyle, and really a portion of the World handled her, says nothing good about our Western culture and everything bad about how we've "evolved" into the 21st Century.
Susan Boyle Says She Hates "Britain's Got Talent," So Do I!
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After the news of Susan Boyle's admission to a mental clinic for evaluation, I just plain hit the ceiling. I'd followed the stories of Boyle's much-justified outbursts last week - "much-justified" because Boyle was reportedly deliberately harassed by a couple of evil journalists who set out to make her upset - and could not understand how the producers of the now-popular TV Show "Britain's Got Talent" (BGT) would not get protection for Boyle and shield her away from harm.
I then watched in horror as news outlets around the World put all the weight of the issue on her, writing she's "having a meltdown", "SuBo goes loco", or "flies off the handle all the time" or words to that effect, and figured that it was some elaborate PR stunt possibly developed by the BGT minders just to hype up the ratings as people tuned in to see what she would do at the final event, then cement the show's popularity because of the upset loss that was sure to occur since the call-in audience's vote would be effected by the news of her problems.
That's what happened. After the show, Boyle reportedly ran down a hallway screaming "I hate this show." Well I agree with Ms. Boyle 100 percent. The way BGT treated Boyle, and really how a portion of the World handled her, says nothing good about our Western culture and everything bad about how we've "evolved" in the 21st Century.
The more I see it, we're diving headlong into "Revelations" in the Bible, with a Tribulation (a period of persecution and of people who believe in God) and the Second Coming the only way to get us out of this spritual mess. I'm serious. We have some terrible people in our midst. People who would take advantage of a woman with a disability - Boyle has a learning disability - for their own gain, then toss her aside when they're done with her, or create the climate to do so, as BGT did.
Let's recap. First, Boyle enters the BGT competition and when she appears on stage, is made fun of by the audience and the judges. A terrible scene. Then she opens her mouth to sing and the same tormentors cheer her on. BGT and American Idol judge Simon Cowell is wowed. His collegue Piers Morgan takes Boyle on a date. Suddenly, the 47-year old woman still greaving from the loss of her mother in 2007 has reason to smile. After years of loneliness and emotional pain calmed by singing, Boyle's loved around the World for her singing. Boyle said "I'm not lonely anymore," and even had people she never met before flying in to visit her home in Scotland from as far away as Peru. Wild.
But then the dark side emerges. It comes in the form of what we in America call "haters": people who hate to see anyone other than themselves achieve a high level of success. People calling her "matronly", "frumpy", and a "spinster". Fueled by the hypermedia world created by Web 2.0, haters have something negative to say about almost everyone it seems and where they don't have something bad to say, they'll create a reason to say it. Enter the journalists. Stalking Boyle. Camping out at her home all day and night. Taking pictures of her and harassing her. And all the time BGT just lets this happen to her. Hey, as long as she's generating ratings for them, I guess they just don't care.
Boyle's brother Gerry was right, Boyle should have quit BGT while she was on top two weeks after her grand introduction. BGT would have been forced to bring her back, if only to save its ratings, which certainly would have tanked had she left. But Boyle stuck it out, and strangely on the week before what was predicted to be her contest-winning final performance, Boyle gets treated in a horrible way never reported before (I still don't know exactly what those two men who harrassed her said to her) and she responds in the way anyone new to massive celebrity would do: she got hopping mad and called the cops. That set in motion the negative PR campaign against her, and caused her loss.
Sorry, I think BGT has to answer for this; there's already an investigation of how Boyle was treated, and reportedly British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called to see how Boyle was doing. Good. And if I'm "Diversity", the talented dance group that scored the upset win in Britain's Got Talent, I'd want an answer too. That's no way to win a competition, and they should know it.
All We Need Is Love
Watching Boyle go through this is painful for me. It's a reminder of how much evil exists around us and that we can never stop confronting it. In the end, the Beatles song was right on: All We Need Is Love. I love to see people succeed. I love to see people reach their dreams. Celebrities, to me, are to be celebrated just for being in the spotlight they've so wanted to have for so long. Great! Seeing people smile - the grin of a child or of a middle-aged woman who never thought her talent would see the light of day - not cry, should be everyone's objective. That it's not is the measure of our ability to do bad, not good. If this is you, whereever you are, stop and change. Please.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Widgetbox.com - On Widgets and The Web
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Widgets are identified as the next hot "app" by many in the digital media industry, and from an upcoming video episode of "The Blog Report With Zennie62" created by Producer Sierra Choi, widgets were the talk of the Digital Hollywood conference in Santa Monica. But what are widgets? Why are they important?
I recently had the pleasure of visting San Francisco-based Widgetbox.com. There, I talked with Ryan Spoon, the Vice President of Marketing for the company, a visit faciliated by my friend Steve Kloft, a Widgetbox consultant whom I call "The Legendary Steve Kloft" for his Internet marketing exploits.
Our interview, captured in full in the video that accompanies this blog, was aimed for those who've never heard of "widgets" and don't know what they do. And after our talk, I was treated to a look at Widgetbox's "hack day" staff preparation. But first, a few observations about the culture of the company itself.
What I like about Widgetbox is the same for almost every Internet company I've ever visited or been involved with in some way: it's fun. There seems to be this standard format where the staff is a mix of the techy programmers and the people doing other business functions in one place - programming is not outsourced.
Also, Widgetbox, like many Internet firms in the Bay Area, is "young" not just in age - three years - but in that the staff is young. All of the Widgetbox people I met looked to be in their 20s and 30s. And, of course, there's always a remote staffer or two, in Widgetbox's case, in Boston. There's a dry-erase board with notes on whatever, and in general an open, freeform environment of people who really seem to like what they do.
What's a Widget?
According to Spoon, widgets are "portable pieces of content on the web." Any content that can be shared on a website, a blog like this one, or a social networking page like Facebook. (For the reader, "content" is anything posted in a website for your consumption: text in a news article, or photos, or videos, or sound as in a music podcast.)
The idea with widgets is for you to not have to go to a particular site to see that site's content. Regarding their value to society, "Widgets help with communication," Spoon says, "Communication can mean you pulling in content: SF Chronicle, ESPN, that can be my personal blog. It also allows two-way communication, where people taking content and putting it in places where it can be read from both sides. That would be Facebook."
Spoon talks about Widgetbox's most popular product, "The Baby Ticker", shown here:
The Baby Ticker is an interesting device that allows one to establish a countdown to the birth of an expected child; an animated baby actually grows in a "womb" in the widget itself. Spoon says "three-quarters of a million" people have downloaded the widget since its creation.
Widgets play a central role in the establishment of "web-portability" and many data-aggregation companies are "widgetizing" their services. For example, I use news widgets on the blogs in my network, including Zennie62.com, Oakland Focus, and the NFL Business Blog. Those widgets consists of the headlines of the day from other news organizations. So you don't have to go to those sites to get their news. You can "pull" their content from the widget; on the other hand, the maker of the widget is "pushing" their content to you using the widget. This is a widget made for me by Widgetbox consultant Steve Kloft for me, and is a combination of all of my most accessed feeds, from YouTube.com to SFGate.com, CNN, and Zennie62.com:
As you can see, the widget serves as a portable one-stop place on the web which can be embeded anywhere and as many times as possible, up to millions of times. Anyone who has a website that subscribes to a feed, or a blog site, or videos or podcasts and place (or "aggregate") their feeds to one widget of their own design.
Because of this portability of online information, widgets serve as a threat to the idea that people will go to one place on the web for news or information: that's less so and widgets are driving this process of fragmentation even as much as RSS(Really Simple Syndication)feeds.
Spoon says that site traffic (called "hits" on the street) is always going to be important in this era of web-portability but the business model is different, and there has been talk of micropayments (Which I personally think is a terrible loser of an idea and I'll explain why in a separate post.). "News is based on what my network is telling me is popular, or what's relevant to me", he says "If the content is good, ultimately you can do a lot with it."
Spoon then used his personal widget from his blog Ryanspoon.com as an example of Widgetbox's latest product "Blidget Pro."
As Spoon explains, "what is appearing here is RSS". What appears on Spoon's widget is what he wrote on his blog, yet the widget is here in this blog post; again, we don't have to go to his site.
The propagation of widgets actually increases total traffic to the main site. The widget serves as a kind of satellite website. But if the widget's not monetized you don't make money from the increase in traffic. That's the problem facing content producers from newspaper organizations to bloggers.
A Tour of Widgetbox on "Hack Day"
After my talk with Spoon, I was introduced to the staff of Widgetbox and the company's founder and Chief Technology Officer Giles Goodwin who walked with me and talked about the staffers and "Hack Day." As the video shows, the staff sits in a closet-set group of interlocking desks with computers and rolling chairs that facilitate interaction. The group consists of programmers specializing in Java, and Ruby, and an operations manager and web designers, support and "user interface" specialists and content developers (which calls for a knoweldge of HTML and Flash coding).
The day of my meeting was called "Hack Day" where the staff members works on their individual projects for the entire day (rather than other work), then presents them to each other at 4 P.M. Some of the interesting work includes a new way to embed widgets into websites and a new search system. That reminded me of a visit to Pixar in 1996 when I worked for the Mayor of Oakland and the digital animation firm was based in Richmond, CA (it's now in Emeryville, CA). Pixar, known for its creative staffers, had a similar kind of Friday event which was part happy hour, stage theater, and "hack day."
Widgetbox is one of several companies in a segment, widgets, of a growth industry, digital media. As more publishers and now television networks move online following the growing number of people who get their information from the web, there will be more ad dollars moving toward web-based sources. While widgets may fragment information on the web, they open new opportunities for revenue-generation and usher in a new era of digital media.
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