Arrington Rips Fortune and for Good Reason

I’ll be the first to admit that to some people Arrington comes off as a pompous ass, but for this post that’s beside the point.

Read this post for some insight why old, dead tree media is dying. Basically the summary is that Fortune asked Arrington to publish a post giving some book (which I won’t be naming here) some publicity, they even sent him some excerpts to use. Arrington obliges, posts a rave review, the excerpts he was sent and prominent links not only to Fortune’s site but to directly buy the book.

I don’t need to go into that much detail here but definitely check out this post if you want to know why print media is circling the drain. They’re all staunch walled garden publications that will do anything to not see their content, even excerpts of it, anywhere else on the web no matter how beneficial.

Clarizen: project management that reminds you of a psycho ex-girlfriend

clarizenListen, I’m all about the startup and giving the new guy on the block a shot. I’ve been looking for decent project management tool that will fit my needs.

I could have just gone with Basecamp and called it a day but I’ve been diligent about doing my research. Last night I decided to give a PM tool called Clarizen a shot. I filled out the info and signed up for the trial version. And that’s when it started getting a little crazy.

This post is about to get sort of long, so let me just cut to the chase here. If you were considering using Clarizen, don’t. They do not respect your privacy and they will opt you in to every list they have. I have searched and cannot find any language in their terms of service that allows them to market to me via email, let alone calling me EIGHT times in one day.

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CrunchGear is Doing Its Part to Lessen the Impact of the Recession by Literally Giving You Their Used Junk

junkApparently the arrogance over at the TechCrunch network of sites isn’t limited to Arrington. CrunchGear’s John Biggs fancies himself a philanthropist of sorts. If, of course, your description of philanthropy is re-gifting samples that were given to you that you didn’t even find good enough to continue using yourself.

Where is all this stuff coming from? I just redid my upstairs office and found a ton of junk lying around cluttering things up. Although basically don’t keep this stuff and have to send it back, sometimes things fall through the cracks and I want my problems with gadget storage to be your gain.

From what I can piece together from that train wreck of a description it seems that most of this stuff was supposed to be sent back but, “oopsy, it ended up in my closet. I’ve basically sifted through anything worth keeping and the rest has been gathering dust until I so generously decided to give it to you.”

Oh my, you mean I can have an in-ear ear bluetooth headset that you’ve had in your ear and then left in your closet for a year? Fuck this must be my lucky day. Sign me up John. And if you’re not going to eat the gristle off that chicken leg maybe you could chuck it my way so I can gnaw it off when you’re done, or would I have to enter into a contest for said chicken leg?

Today was only day one of the “contest”. Tune in tomorrow when Biggs plans on giving away a flash drive he’s had hidden up his ass for the past five years. You don’t want to miss out on that fun.