Ajax Girl

Well, I asked for negative Facebook speculation and rumors and, even though I was just kidding, a ton of stuff rolled in.

A new Facebook application called Bonfire is my favorite. The idea is that you can beat third parties who are inserting information about what you did on their sites into your news feed, to the punch.

So now you can insert a statement like “Mike bought Preparation H at Walgreens” directly into your news feed before Walgreens does it for you. It’s obviously a joke, but it’s also a fun way to insert a direct message into your news feed. Enjoy.

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Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/197352715/

The music of performer 50 Cent has zero appeal to me, but the man is undoubtedly smart, as the following words (via TorrentFreak) attest:

Q: “How are G-Unit Records doing in these times of file-sharing?

“Not so good….The advances in technology impacts everyone, and we all must adapt. Most of all hip-hop, a style of music dependent upon a youthful audience. This market consists of individuals embracing innovations faster than the fans of classical and jazz music.”

“What is important for the music industry to understand is that this really doesn’t hurt the artists.”

“A young fan may be just as devout and dedicated no matter if he bought it or stole it.”

“The concerts are crowded and the industry must understand that they have to manage all the 360 degrees around an artist. They, (the industry), have to maximize their income from concerts and merchandise. It is the only way they can get their marketing money back.”

“The main problem is that the artists are not getting as much help developing as before file-sharing. They are now learning to peddle ringtones, not records..They don’t understand the value of a perfect piece of art.”

The key parts: file sharing doesn’t hurt the artist, concert and merchandise sales are the key to profiting from music, not direct music sales and the music industry is clueless and busy peddling ringtones. Now if only the record industry would pay attention. Those looking to support 50 Cent can find his works on BTJunkie here.

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Source: TechCrunch
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God is a hot niche category on the Internet right now. Long ago we covered GodTube, a YouTube for Jesus types. More recently News Corp bought BeliefNet, a news and community site for Christians.

So the timing for LifeInTheFishBowl is spot on. It’s a social network and content site for Christians. It’s still in development but you can sign up for the site on the home page, read their blog and watch an overview video, below. By the look of things, they really need a web designer.

You’ll enjoy the site if you want to hang out with like minded people and debate Darwin v. the Bible, etc. But even better, these sites tend to attract women in droves. Sure, Facebook is almost 2/3 women, but Christian focused sites tend to be even more women dominated (BeliefNet’s audience is 70% women). So if you are Christian, or want to pretend you are Christian to date women, sign up for LifeInTheFishBowl now.

Also, if you’re Lutheran, you can get on the board of directors of the company. Founder Joe Burnham writes “I’m writing because I’m looking for young Lutheran (http://lcms.org) geeks who might be interested in being part of the projects Board of Directors. We’re not asking for a huge commitment time wise, but we’d like to have some younger, tech savvy input as the project continues to develop over time.” Not sure why you have to be Lutheran as opposed to one of the other Christian cults, but those are the rules. And since God is backing this startup, those stock options just might be worth something some day.

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We’ve now had five 2008 presidential candidates on TechCrunch: Senator Obama, Senator Edwards, Governor Romney Senator McCain and now Senator Mike Gravel. As always, we are posting this simultaneously on TalkCrunch, where you can subscribe to the RSS feed and get the podcasts as enclosures.

Senator Gravel is a far left Democrat. In many ways he’s to the Democrats what Ron Paul is the the Republicans - he keeps them honest and frustrates the hell out of them by being vocal about issues that they’d rather not shine a spotlight on. For his views on mainstream political issues, see the video of his talk at Google a couple of months ago. He’s anti war, but he’s also in favor of, for example, selling marijuana at the local liquor store (yeah I know, that’s awesome - make a donation to his campaign here).

But in our talk we focused only on technology policy issues. And on these issues he’s surprisingly mainstream. In general he’s a supporter of Net Neutrality and fair rules in the spectrum allocations. He wants to help bridge the digital divide and he wants to support alternative energy science - in fact he’s the only candidate so far who’s said explicitly that he’d like to see a tax on carbon emissions. And if you’re in need of engineers you’ll love Senator Gravel - he’s in favor of eliminating the quota on H1B visas. Actually, he’s in favor of wide open borders and free immigration, but we got off topic in the podcast for a bit.

On a lighter note, Gravel is the first of the five candidates who says he’s a Mac guy. He switched this year and loves it. He’s also embraced YouTube and other user generated content sites. In one video he looks silently at the camera for a minute or so, then goes and throws a rock in a lake (see the transcript for his explanation). In another he actually raps, talking about the fact that the Democratic party is trying to keep him quiet:

So, yeah, he’s a little crazy. But the man speaks his mind and leaves little doubt about his position on issues. I enjoyed the conversation immensely, which went on for more than forty minutes, and I’m glad it was recorded to share it with TechCrunch readers. Listen to the podcast below or on TalkCrunch, and the transcript is at the end of the post.

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