Posts tagged it’s
Why It’s Better to Win the Twitter Lottery
Apr 6th
Grab a crinkled $5 bill out of the piggy bank and rush to your neighborhood 7-Eleven. Throw it down on the counter, and tell the cashier what kind of lottery ticket you want. In that moment, you’re choosing to ignore the fact that you most likely will be throwing away that Abraham Lincoln. But in the moment of slamming cash down onto the counter, you believe that you can win. All it takes is believing.
Last week, McDonald’s employee Mirlande Wilson of Maryland took that leap of faith. On Monday, she said that she won the state’s Mega Millions Lottery jackpot of $656 million, which amounts to $105 million after taxes. Wilson refused to share the winnings with her coworkers, even though they all allegedly went in on tickets together. In the real world lottery, just like in-person celebritydom, only a few will actually win – and the fame that goes with it isn’t always pretty.
On @fame, you can win the Twitter lottery – or, fame on social media for one day only. In other words, you win followers. Today’s jackpot amounts to 7,446 followers. In the era of social media celebrity – where Twitter is just one of the two most important networking tools one can use, and where people know you by your handle before they know you by name – winning followers may indeed be more valuable and rewarding than those dollar bills.
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To play the Twitter lotto, sign up at play-fame.com and connect your Twitter account. Every day at 12 noon EST, Play Fame announces a winner. Like the lotto that we all pay into, all who enter Play Fame participate in the winnings by following the winner’s Twitter account for 24 hours. The next day, when the new winner is announced, the previous winner is unfollowed. So instead of just 15 minutes of fame, the Twitter lotto winner achieves Twitter fame for an entire day.
Take today’s winner, @jamiemoffet. Before today, he only had 17,319 followers. Last I checked, that number had gone up to 23,882 followers. He has been using his temporary Twitter famedom to promote news of his documentary film about trying to change the downtrodden Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. Many of the retweets seem to come from other @fame players, congratulating Jamie on his win. Others congratulate him on the news of his film – but the real news of today is that Jamie won @fame.
The world of @fame shifts the meaning of “winning,” equating it with acknowledgement and affirmation by one’s peers rather than monetary gain. It is a different type of celebrity, bringing with it none of the socioeconomic consequences.
In fact, winning the lotto in real life is sometimes the opposite of what the word “achievement” means. With it does not always come the fame, joy, closeness with others and happiness that many who buy a ticket have in mind.
One such story belongs to William Post, a resident of Pennsylvania who won $16.2 million in the state lottery. Shortly after winning, an ex-girlfriend sued him for a portion of the winnings, which she did receive. Post’s brother hired a hit man to try and kill him, in hopes of inheriting the winnings. Other relatives nagged Post for some of the money. BusinessInsider reports that only one year later, he was $1 million in debt and had filed for bankruptcy. His life today includes living on food stamps and a $450 per month stipend.
Monday’s alleged MegaMillions winner Mirlande Wilson did not want to share her winnings with fellow McDonald’s coworkers, who claim that she was one of 15 members in the pool. “We each paid $5,” Suleiman Osman Husein, a shift manager and a member of the pool, tells the NYPost. “She took everybody’s money!”
The clerk at the 7-Eleven where Wilson bought the tickets expressed similar concerns, saying that he isn’t sure if she actually bought the winning ticket. Yesterday she claims to have lost the ticket, also stating that she did not make up the story for attention. She has until September 28 to claim her prize.
On @fame, where the Twitter user is the clear winner, such a controversy couldn’t occur. But then again, the only thing at stake is social media recognition by one’s peers – not cold, hard cash.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
It’s Not Highlander: There Can Be More Than One Open Source Cloud
Apr 6th
The last few days have been, to say the least, interesting for cloud watchers. If you care at all about the open source cloud, it’s been a major week. OpenStack pushed out its Essex release, but not in time to avoid having to share a news cycle with the announcement that Citrix wants to donate CloudStack to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF).
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Predictably, the stories have pitted CloudStack and OpenStack as rivals. CloudStack has been painted as a troubled project and Citrix has been painted as “walking away” from OpenStack. The press usually gets the blame for the “us vs. them” stories, but the truth is that companies involved in OpenStack can take some credit here. I had several pitches from OpenStack-backers immediately following the CloudStack announcement, looking to chime in and deride the project. One of the folks I intended to talk to about the OpenStack release couldn’t be bothered to schedule a call for that – being too busy pitching press to talk smack about CloudStack.
Truth is, if you paid attention you’d see that Citrix hadn’t been very active in OpenStack Essex development in the first place. Then again, neither have a bunch of the so-called OpenStack partners. The OpenStack community claims 155 companies for the OpenStack ecosystem, but only 55 companies participated in development according to the OpenStack press release.
Lighten Up MacLeod
To hear them go at it, you’d think that open source cloud was a zero-sum game. It’s a bit like Highlander, except with much better acting and special effects. Seriously, have you watched Highlander? After more than 20 years of hearing references to Highlander and “there can be only one!” I finally broke down and watched the movie a few months ago. I wish I hadn’t. But I digress…
Turns out, I wasn’t the only one thinking Highlander. I pinged RedMonk’s Donnie Berkholz, who has been a Gentoo developer for many years as well. Berkholz says, “cloud stacks haven’t done a great job of delineating all the niches in their space – many of them still think they can be everything for everyone. This creates the same Highlander-style perception that there can be only one.”
Find Your Niche
Instead of trying to fight to be all things to all people, Berkholz says they should try to “focus on deciding and communicating the missions of each project along with how they can fit together into the broader cloud ecosystem.”
This, eventually, happened in the Linux market. In the early days, every distribution tried to fit all niches. That didn’t work. Red Hat, for example, finally decided that it really didn’t see much point in pursuing the desktop. I hear that’s worked out relatively well for them. Novell/SUSE have carved out a pretty good niche on IBM’s hardware.
Citrix’s announcement should be seen as unalloyed good news for everybody involved. Yes, really. A vendor-sponsored project is going to a vendor-neutral organization that has a track record of doing well by open source projects. CloudStack has a number of deployments and paying customers, and a lot of companies have pledged to support it.
Assuming even one-third of the companies that pledged to support CloudStack become serious contributors, CloudStack should have a bright future. It takes little away from OpenStack for CloudStack to succeed.
Likewise, CloudStack already uses OpenStack’s Object Storage (Swift). There’s no reason that the two projects can’t share components and find ways to differentiate themselves for different markets. (The same is also true for Eucalyptus, OpenNebula and any other open cloud projects out there.)
After all the dust settles, it would be best for everyone from the open source cloud communities to figure out how they can work together. The “there can be only one” approach isn’t going to help anybody, and may benefit Amazon, VMware and other proprietary vendors who can market their wares without any drama.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
It’s Official: Facebook Countersues Yahoo Over 10 Patents
Apr 4th
Facebook has made good on its vow to fight Yahoo’s patent claim by filing a counter suit also alleging patent infringement. Facebook claims Yahoo was infringing on 10 of its patents related to the operation of its web services and social networking.
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Kraft Day 4: Nine to play, and it’s Sjodin and Seo – The Desert Sun (blog)
Apr 1st
 The Desert Sun (blog) |
Kraft Day 4: Nine to play, and it's Sjodin and Seo
The Desert Sun (blog) Karin Sjodin and Hee Kyung Seo are tied for the lead at the Kraft Nabisco Championship with nine holes left to play. Sjodin has held the lead by heslef since the second hole, but she just bogeyed the ninth hole to fall to 9-under and tied for the lead … Amy Yang takes early lead at Kraft Nabisco Tseng and Sjodin showing the way at Kraft Nabisco Tseng caught by Swede Sjodin in tie for Kraft lead |
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Slingshot SEO Co-founder: It’s All About Relationships – PortageLife
Mar 29th
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Slingshot SEO Co-founder: It's All About Relationships
PortageLife Indianapolis-based Slingshot SEO is a company making a splash nationwide, and its co-founder Jeremy Dearringer authored a very informative column for Inc. The message serves as a great reminder to businesses not get so bogged down in your "mission" … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
Dark Side of the Links: It’s All Fun & Games ‘Til Google Catches On
Mar 28th
The most prudent linking strategist will develop several different types of strategies, some purely to appeal to the search engines, others far removed from Google but designed to appeal to a demographic. Some, however, choose to take a darker path.
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Amazon Finds The Droids It’s Looking For
Mar 21st
Yesterday, Amazon announced its acquisition of Kiva Systems, Inc. for around $775 million in cash. Kiva makes warehouse robots. They’re sturdy, orange little droids shaped like a toaster on its side, and the various models can lift and carry 1,000 pounds or more. Kiva’s automatons and control software help warehouses streamline the management of their inventory.
Amazon was already using the robots to keep its massive fulfillment centers organized, as were big-time customers including Crate & Barrel, Office Depot, Saks Fifth Avenue, Staples, Toys ‘R’ Us and Walgreens. They’re also used by Zappos.com and Diapers.com, other Amazon properties. It’s another big expenditure for Amazon as its profits sink, but there are major efficiencies to gain here.
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The Kiva robots can carry huge racks of warehouse inventory, so workers don’t have to walk miles a day shuffling things around. The people can stay in one place, taking care of the small and complex tasks like sorting, while the robots handle the large loads and the long distances.
That’s a more efficient use of time and energy. But does that mean Amazon will need fewer people to run the fulfillment centers?
An Amazon spokeswoman told the Wall Street Journal that no jobs will be eliminated as a result of the deal. Amazon employes over 56,000 people, but it doesn’t disclose how many of those work in fulfillment centers. The warehouses also require thousands of temporary workers, especially during peak holiday periods. With 69 of these massive facilities largely run by hand, Amazon is surely looking to robots as a more efficient option.
The acquisition is not just a way to cut costs. Each Kiva system costs millions of dollars, and Amazon will now be selling them to other companies.
But the long-term significance of the deal is about Amazon streamlining its own systems. Amazon has been investing heavily in facilities, including 17 new fulfillment centers last year. It’s also taking losses on every Kindle Fire sold, planning to make it up in media sales over time. It has to take up some slack somewhere.
At Amazon’s scale, the business is all about efficiency. Amazon’s Web services allow it to manage almost every step of the online retail process, but the rubber hits the road in the fulfillment center. The only way for Amazon to move boxes as efficiently as bits – or close to it – is by supplementing its human workers with the busy choreography of warehouse droids.
Photo: Joel Eden Photography/Kiva Systems
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It’s Official: Yahoo Sues Facebook Over 10 Patents
Mar 12th
The suit alleges that Facebook features, including the News Feed and video content ads, are based on Yahoo patents for social networking and online advertising. The suit also alleges that Facebook is violating Yahoo patents preventing click fraud.
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
Survey Paradox: People Like Google But Not What It’s Doing
Mar 12th
Last week the Pew Internet Project released findings of a survey on search, personalization and targeted advertising. In a nutshell, survey respondents had a very positive view of search and the quality of search results. Yet the majority gave an unequivocal thumbs down to search personalization…
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The Internet: It’s like Real Life, Only With Buttons
Mar 8th
Every time I read about social media these days, I end up hearing about how social sharing metrics are becoming a bigger factor in everything from organic rankings to driving additional clicks from visitors already on your site. And it makes total sense. If Google sees that a blog post has a ton of…
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