GoDaddy.com CEO Shoots Elephant; NameCheap Takes Advantage

Alright, so I'm sure many of you have seen GoDaddy.com CEO Bob Parsons in the news lately, but for those of you who haven't, here's some backstory:

Parsons recently took a nice little vacation to Zimbabwe and filmed himself shooting a bull elephant. Afterwards, he proceeded to take photos with the elephants corpse, spread GoDaddy.com hats and clothing to the local villagers, and uploaded the whole package to the internet for the world to see.

Upon being questioned, Parsons claimed he shot the elephant because they cause crop damage.

Needless to say, the internet masses didn't take lightly and the story raged across the web like a wildfire.

GoDaddy competitor, NameCheap saw an opportunity and took it. They turned the mass anger and sadness into a promotional campaigne and offered a registrar switch from GoDaddy.com to NameCheap for just $4.99 for the first year using promo code BYEBYEGD. (That promotion ends soon, get it now! Click me)

Good job Bob Parsons, I'm sure making elephant shooting videos will be a great marketing strategy.

.....oh wait.

Input from my lovely followers:
1. How do you guys feel about Bob Parsons?
2. Would you switch domains because of something like this?
3. Is NameCheap in the wrong too for taking advantage?
4. Is Bob Parsons a smug elephant killing douche bag?

I'll answer the last one for you.
Yes, yes he is. See?

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Posted in: Knowledge,News,Technology,World News

Is The Internetz Making Us Stoopid?

A little background information on this post:

Today, during my Mass Communications and Society class, I had the opportunity to speak one-on-one with Nicholas Carr, the author of an article titled "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" and a related book titled The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.
You can read the article by clicking its title, although it's a long read it's VERY interesting and thought provoking. I'd recommend it if you have the time. I'd even recommend reading a few snippets if you don't.

Having the opportunity to chat it up with this guy was out right incredible. He is the leading researcher behind what scientists think the internet is doing to the way we think; which is basically making us less cognitive thinkers.

If you don't have the chance to read the article, it isn't a stab at Google in any way. It isn't even a stab at the internet. It just describes how the internet, Google included, is reshaping our minds.

Okay! Now to get down to the bulk of the post.

While speaking with Nicholas Carr(if you don't know who he is, shame on you for starting to read this post at the red text) he provided me some great insight into how he really thinks the internet and new technology in general is reshaping our minds.

First, he started off with a bomb ass metaphor:

"It's like no one is a full blown scuba diver anymore, we all just kick back and snorkel in the shallows."

Meaning that we don't dig deep for information because everything we think we need to know or want to find is just floating around.

Second, I'm not going to go into great detail about what we talked about, because it's too much. But he left me with this quote.

"The internet, mass social networking, smartphones, etc all fragment our attention span. Rarely do I ever give a lecture where more than half the audience is fully paying attention to what I'm saying. They're either on their phone or computer, linking themselves into the virtual world. Statistics show that while in the office, workers refresh their email 50-60 times an hour or check twitter every few minutes. We can't stand not knowing what's going on."

and, quite possibly the most thought provoking quote of the interview:

"This poses a problem because people don't have time to full on think anymore, we don't challenge our own mind with deep thinking. We're never alone with our thoughts. Before we had the internet in the palm of our hands, we were forced to store more information and develop deeper connections and thoughts. Now, we retain only a fraction of what we're capable of because we're either not paying attention, or know we can just Google it later."

Let me know what you think:
1. Do you think that the internet affects the way that we think?
2. Do you think that we rely too much on being able to "google' things?
3. How often do you check your twitter/facebook/email/text messages during the day?
4. Any other input?

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Posted in: Knowledge

1% of Twitter Users Responsible For More Than Half Of Content

I just saw this in my Twitter feed, posted by Times Magazine as a retweet from Techland. Instead of retweeting it myself, I figured I would blog it to all of you!

Maybe if you all followed me on twitter I could retweet it too.
*cough cough* Check the upper right hand corner for my Twitter link. Follow me. *cough*

Whew, okay. Now that that's out of my system on with the post.

According to a Yahoo research team, only about 20,000 individuals, 1 percent of the Twitter user base, are responsible for OVER half of all tweets in the database.

These users are mainly media, celebrities, organizations, and bloggers. That's some pretty insane stuff. I wonder what percentage produces the second half of tweets.

Talk to me:
1. Do you use twitter? How often and in what way?
2. How many times did I use a variation of the word "tweet" in my post?
3. Do you follow huge twitter contributors like media sources and celebrities?
4. Do you like mac & cheese?

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Posted in: Knowledge,News,Technology

2022 Qatar World Cup, 122 Degree Summers, and Robotic Clouds

While I do watch some football from time to time, I've never really been a HUGE fan of the sport. However, fan or not everyone should know by now that the 2022 World Cup will take place in Qatar.

For those of you who don't know, Qatar is pretty much smack dab in the center of the Middle East and has summer temperatures that can climb up to 122 degrees Fahrenheit. With nearly 90,000 people crammed into a stadium open to direct sunlight, temperatures like that are sure to melt the skin off of bones.

Good decision FIFA,  great way to kill off your fans. You don't need them anyway.

BUT WAIT, we have science and scientists at Qatar University are currently developing a solution to the sweltering heat dilemma. That solution is...wait for it....

...

ROBOTIC CLOUDS. WHAT?!

These bad boys are made from a crazy carbon fiber material, injected with helium gas to make it float, and are remotely controlled. Those round spots you see in the image are large propellers that allow the robotic cloud to hover like a helicopter. They are also programmed to automatically follow the sun's path in the sky to optimize it's shielding capabilities.

They are estimated to cost around $500,000 US.
But, pfft. That's no biggie. It's the World Cup. Spend a billion!

Take that mother nature.

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Posted in: News,Technology,World News