the IT blog

Just when we though it's all over: server outage over the weekend, no new bloggerati news to come...
and then, the date history has been waiting for: Jan 31st 2005! This day will be the one to remember, it's our rememberance day, it's our independence day, or it might turn out to be doom's day!

Just when Elizabeth Spiers went online with her brand new mediabistro projects, which comprise a handful of blogs rivalling Nick's sites, ye ol' Denton launches hot new stuff with Lifehacker (suppose we won't wait long for a Calacanis counter attack on this one, even though they are reportedly friends now) and Gridskipper, the latter of which is a travel guide to cities' coolness edited by the notorious & infamous Krucoff. Gridskipper is definitely in for some competition with Jake's -ist and Metblogs. I guess Nick knew he had to fight back immediately with picking the same launch date as Elizabeth! And of course, he scored with some exclusive sponsor deals: Sony, and the bit less exclusive CheapTickets.com.

Back to Liz Spiers: "fishbowl" blogs covering the IT lists and gossip stints of NY, DC, and LA. To complete the information overflow of today's launches there's media centric blogs TVNewser and Galleycat, and last not least one hot property that could be Lockhart Steele's idea: the (whether it will be THE we will soon find out) design blog UnBeige.

Now this will so like totally be a year of navel gazing and self referential ecosystem blogging! And we're looking forward to that!! It'll be some kind of blogging gang bang: Jason vs. Nick vs. Jake vs. Elizabeth! (forgive me should you deem this inappropriate!)

Also read Uncle Grambo's take on the news. He hopes for THE catfight of Spiers vs. Coen!

: The Denton PR machine got the NY Times going the day before - well done, Nick!

Gawker has the item du jour: Jenna Bush post inauguration party excess, so post yet so hot! Only Uncle Grambo will be disappointed, though, as he has hailed Jenna recently!

Justin Timberlake's gran prefers Britney over fiance Cameron Diaz!

SADIE BOMAR [Justin's grandma] insists Timberlake will never stop loving the TOXIC singer ... She explains, "He was heartbroken when they split and he'll always love her.

TIMBERLAKE'S GRANDMOTHER WANTS SPEARS WEDDING [contactmusic]

Don't assume too much from the title. But isn't that a treasure of pictorial. So 80s and so N.E.R.D.

There's more at monkey methods. [via sobleizer]

just curious: Jalopnik vs. Autoblog



Update: Just when we thought this is going to be the feature of the week, we notice that Jason did a post on the success of his Autoblog only yesterday. He starts with a sidenote on his relationship to Nick, and then compares Autoblog's performance to common industry sites (not Jalopnik!) by using an Alexa table.
Now very interesting: Jason says, "Of course, we're linking to the big boys all day long. We're not competitive with them ..." One site he doesn't link to on Autoblog is Jalopnik (well, there was this recent gig), whereas Jalopnik does have Autoblog on its blogroll. This may be due to the fact that Autoblog does not have a blogroll which links to non-WIN blogs after all. And that tells a lot!!

Big up to Sally T from quarterwit for providing us with a gmail invite!

Choire asks for tags in Email programs. Well, dear, you could use that "label" feature in Gmail!

Fleshbot has new competition from France: Sexe Gratuit. Even though it's written in French, we don't think you have to be capable of speaking French - the pics will be your guiding light! BTW: sexe gratuit does not mean less than sex for free.

In a comment to one of our latest blogland analysises Jason says he tried to lure Lockhart Steele into his Inc.
Sure, that'd have been a coup détat, if you got Lockhart on your side/site. Yet as an old LESer I suppose he was obliged by moral duty to give in to the Denton Empire. And I also guess there's much more ego tripping opportunities with Champagne contaminated parties at Gawker HQ! Not to mention the fact what fun it'll be to be in charge of Krucoff!
Yet I still wonder about the future of Choire who just keeps posting not so great flickr moblog style pics!

Did we miss this? It seems the blogging world out there has. Jason Calacanis wrote an article for Paper Mag in May 04! Technorati shows: no-one linked to it. In this article Jason gives his account of "the blog wars" (Calacanis vs. Denton). Seriously engaging in war, we never knew that!? And did you know that Nick's approach is "traditional media" whereas Jason's is "very new economy".
Best of all: PaperMags profile of Jason at the end:

Jason McCabe Calacanis is a blogger (calacanis.weblogsinc.com) and a blogger advocate. He wants to make bloggers enough money so that they don't have to work for the Man, while generating enough revenue so he can leave JetBlue behind for the benefits of private aviation.

This post is titled Jason's Props Competition and we'd like to ad: or how to be left alone!
Recently we got more and more enthusiastic about Jason's venture. And then he falls out with Jeff Jarvis, because he feels neglected as far as the amount of props for his sites compared to Nick's are concerned. Jeff then has to give him a lesson i blogging and teach him that blogs are an "and" medium and not an "or" medium.
Later, when Jason dares to attack Steve Jobs a lot of people weigh in, including Felix the Salmon with an hilarious account of Jason the adventurer. Go and read that!

BTW, Felix, why don't you do a "Brief History of Lockhart Steele" like post as he is with Gawker now (you know, like those you did on Elizabeth et al!)

UPDATE: related: Jason hands out the props to Gizmodo for the Bill Gates interview gig! - very kind person you are, Jason!

Lockhart Steele's being incorporated as managing editor of Gawker Media. The news spread quickly over the internerd.
So what's this going to be since there's already an editorial director named Choire "Corey" Sicha. Or is Choire ready for exit as he's had quite some gigs outside Gawker recently? But hey, what would be even better is if he goes to BlogTK which seems to suffer from a very long take off period.
Obviously Jerkoff is devastated, especially since Lockhart will have the power to introduce LES related cencorship on him!

...developing...

Outrage over at Gawker over the Paris Hilton Vincent Gallo short film collaboration! Most important: the file location we formerly posted is now defunct, but it can now be downloaded right from Gawker (.wmv).
Anyhow Gawker is so lame on that still calling it "the latest in the Paris Hilton Naked Saga" when we now finally have to fully quote Spencer: "it's pretty old, he wrote the music and directed the short."
Some more accounts of savvy people (and not the Coen girl who totally failed this time) from the comments on whatevs:

juepucta:
This is old as hell...
This is the video for track off Gallo's "When" album. Track one of said album is a song called "I Wrote This Song for the Girl Paris Hilton ".
So where is the news?!

CHIIIILD
Isn't this almost 5 years old? YAWN YAWN YAWN.

We miss Spiers who used to do some serious fact checking.

Thanks God, Grambo is back and did not and up in tsunami turmoil.
And of course, he provides us with some Vincent Gallo short film featuring none other than Paris Hilton. Though when your Uncle thought it was some hot new thing, the Golden fiddler weighed in ready to tell us it's old news. - That Spencer probably is the most competent bloggerati on Tees!

Dan Gillmor as of today is history for the Mercury News and starts his own thing for promoting grassroots journalism at his new Typepad Blog: Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism. most important paragraphs of his farewell:

And, as always, the people and institutions currently holding the clout don't cede it willingly. Governments are clamping down on us in all kinds of ways. Incumbent business powerhouses are trying to hold back the tide as well, not just to keep their positions but also to thwart new innovation that might threaten them [...] we need to keep the pressure up, as citizens and people who want the freedom to use these new tools and live in liberty. The stakes are high, and liberty takes work.

During these past 10 years I've enjoyed a privileged, front-row seat -- not on a roller coaster, even if it occasionally seemed that way, but a vehicle of exploration. I'm grateful for the opportunity to have taken this fantastic ride.

There's definitely some serious freedom of speech action going on here. And there he goes and exchanges his privileges for a simple green Typepad blog account.
What we can break his last old and first new words down to so far is: he remembers us several times "I'm not smart enough". also: he misses being on a payroll of a large media corp and the mentioned privileges more than once: "miss [...] pay, benefits and freedom to say what I believed"
Does this mean he can no longer say what he believes in?

We are seriously confused as we secretly admire Dan (unfortunately we cannot put him on our blogroll since he doesn't fit our immediate bloggerati concernes - therefore secretly like most of you). But what is this going to be when all we hear is: "project is still very much in an embryonic state", "In the longer term, who can say?", "ponder the present and future" etc.
Starting a conversation is what he wants to do right now. if you can make money off conversations - brilliant, we're looking forward to it!

Where TF is Grambo Graham??? We hope he didn't go for a Thailand beach bungalow package deal!