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TWiT 191/Transcript
Episode 191 (Transcript)
Guests: John C. Dvorak, Lisa Bettany, Shira Lazar
Recorded: April 19, 2009
Published: April 20, 2009
Duration: 1:33:54
This transcript is provided by our friends at Pods in Print
Leo Laporte Bandwidth for this WEEK in TECH is provided by AOL Radio at aol.com/podcasting.
This is TWiT, this WEEK in TECH, episode 191 for April 20, 2009, Corked.
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This is TWiT, this WEEK in TECH, episode 191 in which we talk about all things, tech, social networking, the web2.0, 3.0. Joining us today in studio, John C. Dvorak of ChannelDvorak.
John C. Dvorak ChannelDvorak.com
Leo Laporte And…
John C. Dvorak And I can work the mic this too, because this is one of the –
Leo Laporte Would you please? This is one of those mics where you work it.
John C. Dvorak I can work it.
Leo Laporte Yeah. And it sounds really good when you do that. John was in Europe – boy you've been travelling around, you were in Washington State last week and you're going to Amsterdam. What are you going to Amsterdam for?
John C. Dvorak Queen's Day. I know, that's what I said.
Leo Laporte Amsterdam has a Queen, is it Queen Beatrix?
John C. Dvorak I don't know, I can never keep track. But yes, something like that. But they have this big party on the last day of April which is called Queen's Day. And I have to go to Amsterdam to visit with a software company anyway.
Leo Laporte So, why not go on Queen's Day?
John C. Dvorak So I said, let's go on Queens Day, and all the Dutch said "Yeah, yeah! That's when you should come!"
Leo Laporte Can I give you some chocolate to give Beatrix because she loves chocolate.
John C. Dvorak I don't think I am going to meet her.
Leo Laporte You're not? It's her day. Does she – doesn't she like ride amongst the populace on a horse?
John C. Dvorak If she does, I don't know.
Leo Laporte I thought she was supposed to…
John C. Dvorak We'll find out. But all I know is that apparently this is, like, one 24 hours of just people drinking in the streets and what's interesting is that everybody puts everything up that they have for sale out on the street and everything, everybody sells...
Leo Laporte Oh, what fun!
John C. Dvorak ...all their household stuff.
Leo Laporte So, it's kind of like spring cleaning.
John C. Dvorak Yeah, exactly.
Leo Laporte Yeah Spring Day. Also here from Vancouver, British Columbia, we're really thrilled to have her back, Lisa Bettany, MostlyLisa.com.
Lisa Bettany Hello, everyone.
Leo Laporte Hi, Lisa, how are you?
Lisa Bettany It's hot in the studio today.
Leo Laporte It is really a little toasty and I apologize, we've had some really hot days in this studio last summer. And I have air conditioning, but you know, it gets stuffy.
Lisa Bettany Yeah.
Leo Laporte So, you can aim the fan, at you.
Lisa Bettany I have aimed the fan.
Leo Laporte You know, it kind of looks, you have the model – she has the model look going.
John C. Dvorak You have the hair going.
Leo Laporte The hair's blowing, did you plan that?
Lisa Bettany Maybe.
Leo Laporte Smile for the camera. Love the camera baby. Also here, we're really pleased for the first time, Shira Lazar.
Shira Lazar Yay! I am so happy to be here.
Leo Laporte Shiralazar.com. Shira, how would I describe what you do?
Shira Lazar I'd describe it – hybrid journalist crossover personality. Some people call me a social media maven. I – literally everyone –
Leo Laporte You're interesting, because when we talked about this a couple of TWiTs ago, where people are going to J-School of all a sudden. You studied broadcasting...
Shira Lazar Yeah.
Leo Laporte ...and you got out of school and broadcasting is completely differently from everything it was.
Shira Lazar Yeah, even a few years ago when I was like, do I want to either work at local news stations to pursue what I love, I'm like – no, I don't want to be in the middle of nowhere, reporting about murders. That's not what who I am.
Leo Laporte It's what you have to do, you have to work your way up.
Shira Lazar Well, that was the old model. But then I was in Los Angeles and it happened that a lot of websites at the time were starting up. And I was like let me host your video content, let me translate your content into video. And also sites that already had video –
Leo Laporte You're a new class of person and Justine – ijustine is one, Lisa's another. You're web personalities .
Shira Lazar Yes, but I also have, in the midst of continuing online – have been in traditional media and hosted shows on TV with NBC and DIRECTV.
Leo Laporte So, you've done real stuff?
Shira Lazar So I've done – well that's the thing, I feel like…
Leo Laporte Oh boy, did I say that? Oh my god. I'm sorry Leo, you're gonna…
Shira Lazar You see, that's the thing. It's like much as people –
John C. Dvorak Bad, bad Leo.
Shira Lazar As much as people say "TV is dead" and everything, there's still credibility when people see you on NBC.
Leo Laporte No, it's true, real media.
Shira Lazar And it's like, oh, but you're saying that's all online but then...
Leo Laporte You'd think I'd know better than that.
Shira Lazar … bring back the buzz words of the TV.
John C. Dvorak Well, they say the same thing about the newspapers. And everybody will admit this, even though the newspapers are dying you can have a blog with two million readers on a daily basis and if something gets printed in the newspaper, then it has more impact on the city government.
Leo Laporte It's genuine.
Shira Lazar So what do you say to people – it's like, everyone's like – it's such hypocrisy in terms of saying that old or traditional media is dead but then there is credibility in it. I think we all need to, in the end, work together like, for me I say I am in the audience business. So –
Leo Laporte Oh well, that's – wait a minute, let me get my head around that.
John C. Dvorak That's a good one.
Leo Laporte I am in the audience business.
Shira Lazar I spoke about that at Foo Camp with someone and I go, I don't – it's not about like, being against TV or being against online, like although online is my love and that's where I want to be.
Leo Laporte So you're saying I don't care where the audience – what distribution means, I create – see, I always say I'm in the content business.
Shira Lazar It's where you can engage the most people.
Leo Laporte You say you're in the audience business. That's a very interesting distinction. Do you not think content is important?
Shira Lazar I do think content is important.
Leo Laporte But which comes first, do you say audience comes first?
Shira Lazar No, I don't think so. But I think that – in terms of engagement, it's about engaging people.
Leo Laporte Right, I understand, I'm actually….
Shira Lazar And so we find ways to make it work, not only just online, look I'm not about excluding the TV world and alienating them. I am about – if I have an online web series, I am going to find a way to engage the TV world as well. Maybe that's my marketing side coming in. So, if I have a web show, I'll find a way to be feature contributor on a TV network.
Leo Laporte All right. I actually caution a lot of…
Shira Lazar So it's convergence.
Leo Laporte …young people, who say I'm in this so that I can get into mainstream media, to say don't worry so much about mainstream media. I probably said that to you, Lisa, right?
Lisa Bettany [6:27] Yeah, I think it's about finding your niche on the internet and I mean, like I've tried for years to make in mainstream as an actor, as a model and just being beaten down from that end and going into internet stuff. But I've always kept, sort of, some bit of myself in mainstream. Like with my – the work I'm doing for the Vancouver Province, like with the newspaper.
Leo Laporte You still write for a newspaper.
Lisa Bettany Yeah, and that…
Leo Laporte And I still do radio show, I mean, we're all still doing some mainstream media.
Shira Lazar As much as – we're, yes, pioneers of I'd say new media and we understand it and want to be there –
Leo Laporte But is that because this stuff is still hanging around or because we really genuinely need to be part of it.
John C. Dvorak Maybe it's because there's more money there.
Leo Laporte Oh the money part.
Shira Lazar Yeah, that's the fact. I still paid more for being on TV than being online. But I think there's something about – the conversation is different online. It's so much more exciting.
Leo Laporte That's what I think, I love the interactivity.
Shira Lazar Besides that, it's like online has always been there for me. When you are off air, you continue your presence online. But that's on air too; it' that you're continuing the life and your brand and your…
Leo Laporte Lisa do you do the newspaper stuff for – to make a living?
Lisa Bettany No, they have no money.
John C. Dvorak Well the Province never had.
Lisa Bettany They're – it's almost like they're folding and they're, sort of hiring more people like myself to come in and do these sort of little videos to pull people online.
Leo Laporte I sometimes feel sorry for people your age and Shira's age because you're coming into the tail end of this stuff.
Lisa Bettany Yes, but it's an exciting time too. I mean –
Leo Laporte There's opportunity as well.
Lisa Bettany Like with my photography it's sort of – before, maybe I'd put my pictures up in a gallery and I'd have a hundred people see it. But I post it on Flickr and I get 20,000 people to see my work and get – and have this sort of online portfolio of my work and I think that's really exciting.
Leo Laporte That's the thing you and I have always talked about, John; the dirty little secret of mainstream media is the numbers are low. I mean 20,000 people watching you on Flickr is a lot even compared to mainstream.
Lisa Bettany Yeah.
John C. Dvorak Yeah, well the radio scene is definitely the case, especially local radio.
Leo Laporte Yeah.
John C. Dvorak We – in fact this broadcast, if you want to call it that, of yours here; this thing, TWiT as it were, it probably has 10 times the audience you would have if you were just...
Leo Laporte On a local station.
John C. Dvorak ... on KGO or something. Especially on a Sunday.
Leo Laporte The numbers on this show are the same as my national radio show which is in 61 markets and on XM and in Canada. So, that gives you some idea.
Shira Lazar Why are people – I feel like there's credibility and legitimacy there, but why is there still kind of a bit of a...
Leo Laporte Stuff is just hanging out. Stuff's just hanging, it's the old, it just takes a while to die. It's – people having gotten over that.
John C. Dvorak I think it's more than that. I think it's because it's diluted.
Leo Laporte Web media is diluted.
Shira Lazar Yeah, there's a lot out there.
John C. Dvorak There's just too many schmucks that are just trying to do it; a lot of amateurs. It's just a smokescreen.
Leo Laporte That's probably hurt podcasting in the sense that most of the time when you listen to a podcast it's really bad.
John C. Dvorak Yes.
Leo Laporte So the assumption is, "well a podcast, it's going to be bad."
John C. Dvorak There's not that many slick podcasts or anything like that.
Leo Laporte But that's what has happened is the democratisation of the media and I think we think that's a good thing, right? Because it means anybody can have a voice and everybody gets a chance.
Shira Lazar Yes.
John C. Dvorak I don't know, is that really a good thing, that everybody has a voice? I'm not so sure.
Shira Lazar Well, it's going to make the people – it's going to weed out – the people that are making money are the professionals and the people around them are the ones that will be saying – it's like the commenters on blogs; but it happens that they video and then –
Leo Laporte We should get Andrew Keen because he is the guy who wrote the book The Cult of The Amateur and that's exactly what Keen says. Although he's changed his tune just a little bit.
John C. Dvorak Well, I am a little flexible on this thinking, and I was just thinking about, in fact, the comment thing that you just mentioned is interesting. Because if you look at today's media, it's actually dominated by the reader if it's done right. There are more – for every column inch that you have written on a blog or anyplace else, you should have something like 20x as much commenting. I mean, in other words you write this much, and then the comments are down to China. And then the comments become part of the text that will –
Leo Laporte That's right…
John C. Dvorak – because people look at the comments.
Leo Laporte That's new media.
John C. Dvorak And that's – so it's actually – it's been user created, which is the true citizen journalism in that regard. And it's skewed everything because in the olden days if you had a newspaper and you ran a letter to the editor, first you'd have to fight to get your letter printed and then when it did get printed, there was only like six of them printed out of the thousands they'd probably get. Well of course, they probably don't get that many because then nobody knows they'd ever get printed. As opposed to new media which has all the comments generally except for the few that you moderate out. And it skews the way people relate to the product but it also makes, I think it also cheapens the product in some way, because it's not as focussed and slick. But I kind of prefer it myself.
Shira Lazar And I feel like modern day journalism or hosts or personalities, I look at it more as becoming a moderator of that, so you're using –
Leo Laporte Moderate of the community, of the audience. So that's why you say focus on the audience not content because the audience is the content.
Shira Lazar That's what I am saying. That's interesting – yes, like a lot times I say, yes I am host, that sounds rude, but I'm like, because a lot of things that I do…
Leo Laporte You host a community.
Shira Lazar I host a community.
Leo Laporte That's interesting, I like that way of looking at it.
Lisa Bettany I think of it as definitely kind of opposite like; it's about the content. You produce good content and then screw everything else.
Shira Lazar But the world continues, the conversation continues because there's more than just your content. Like you've just say, oh sorry, "this is all it is" then you're putting yourself in a box. But then you say the conversation continues beyond, then I feel like it leaves to infinite possibility.
Leo Laporte Why don't you care about the conversation afterwards, Lisa?
Lisa Bettany Well I do, but it's – the way I feel about my blog now is I spend all these creating this content that I believe in and I'm passionate about and then I get some jerk saying like, you suck!
Leo Laporte Right. You suck.
Shira Lazar But it's about – you have one of those every once in a while.
Leo Laporte But we all do.
Lisa Bettany It's not just one of them though. It's the sheer mass of it.
Shira Lazar Maybe even engage your own quality followers now!
John C. Dvorak So I just got a note from Adam Curry, who apparently is listening to the show as we speak.
Shira Lazar Oh cool.
John C. Dvorak His comment, "Oh brother."
Leo Laporte He's just jealous. How many people listen to his show? That's all. He's just jealous.
John C. Dvorak Yeah, I do.
Leo Laporte I know, and it's a good thing you do. You were at the Foo Camp Shira Lazar.
John C. Dvorak What is Foo Camp?
Shira Lazar Tim O'Reilly does –
John C. Dvorak It's friends of O'Reilly's? Were you invited, Leo?
Shira Lazar I'm friends with O'Reilly, although I did not meet him.
Leo Laporte Apparently not his friend.
John C. Dvorak You're not his friend, but you're like within the neighbourhood…
Leo Laporte Well, okay, now you're trying – see, you do this to me, John, and then I get in trouble. John, see we've worked together a long time. John tries to play on my petty resentful side; he tries to bring out the petty resentful Leo.
John C. Dvorak It's funny you say that but it's not true. I am just wondering, I am trying to get the facts out. Why does a guy, he's like right down the street from you, he's in Sebastopol as a matter of fact. He knows you exist. I've had him on my –
Shira Lazar It's not really him inviting! Like, he's first –
Leo Laporte Actually in this case it wasn't, but okay let's face it. He's never invited me to Foo Camp.
Shira Lazar Oh no.
John C. Dvorak He's never invited me.
Shira Lazar Really?
Leo Laporte No.
Shira Lazar We need to get you invited.
Leo Laporte You know who invited this time? Julia Allison. Now I'm hurt. But it was Dave Moran and –
Lisa Bettany Dave Moran from Facebook.
Leo Laporte Dave Recordon.
Lisa Bettany Dave Recordon who used to be at Six Apart.
Leo Laporte Yeah. So, it was their camp. This is Social Web Foo, how many people were there?
Lisa Bettany 150 people.
John C. Dvorak There was 150 people and you weren't invited?
Leo Laporte You know what really – the only thing, the only time that I felt a little twinge because I can't go anywhere I am doing this. But the only time I felt a little twinge was when I saw a tweet from somebody saying "we're all discussing the future of internet television right now. This is exciting."
Shira Lazar Oh I said that. I remember that.
John C. Dvorak It was her.
Lisa Bettany Maybe you should get some more followers, Leo.
Leo Laporte You're trying to get me mad.
Shira Lazar You just put up her – the URL on the – anyway.
Leo Laporte Okay
Lisa Bettany [14:16] Social Web Foo camp, it's started out more as developers and engineers and I think with social media, they brought us all together so it wasn't just the engineers and the developers, it was journalists and content creators.
Leo Laporte You know who was there who was interesting was the Director of Citizen participation for the Obama White House, did you see her?
Lisa Bettany Oh my god, to get a whole thing on what they are trying to do with social media and it's amazing to see…
John C. Dvorak What are they trying to do?
Leo Laporte Get reelected.
Shira Lazar I mean, the thing is ….
John C. Dvorak They've been running for re-election since they got elected.
Shira Lazar They created a great community during the election.
John C. Dvorak A Greek?
Shira Lazar A great community,…
John C. Dvorak Could have been.
Shira Lazar And –
Leo Laporte It's the Pinot speaking, don't blame her. This is good Pinot, I'm liking this.
John C. Dvorak Yeah, it's good.
Shira Lazar It's the Pinot, it's the heat, it's my cold. So, but it's about maintaining that –
Leo Laporte You don't have a cold, do you?
Shira Lazar No! All right let's talk about…
John C. Dvorak How come she doesn't have a pop screen?
Leo Laporte She doesn't need a pop screen, she is trained professional, neither does Lisa Bettany. It's just you and me, the old men.
Shira Lazar I'm like, getting too hot here.
Leo Laporte Hey! I have to keep us from drooling on them. That's not a pop screen it's a drool guard.
John C. Dvorak It's a drool catcher.
Shira Lazar Let me tell you about the government what they are doing online.
Leo Laporte Please do; thank you.
Shira Lazar During the election we know they created a community, they established it, but it was all – really, all of us that maintained that. But now it's like – now that he is elected like what do they do? And it's crazy because the government…
Leo Laporte But seriously, I think we raised a good question which is, is it all just about getting re-elected? Is it really about democracy, is he really – are they listening?
Shira Lazar The thing is they need all of us, but the fact is…
Leo Laporte Or is it just about getting people to say yeah, yeah, we'll...
John C. Dvorak … free help then just keeping begging for money.
Leo Laporte Well that's what I do. What's wrong with that, John, that's the basis of this business.
Shira Lazar Well no, but it's about the fact that there's so many people backing him so he can implement the things that –
John C. Dvorak Yeah, but he's already got the U.S. government...
Shira Lazar Well, wait a second. To implement the things he wants to implement, he needs all of us backing him. So it's about the now, too.
John C. Dvorak Aren't you Canadian?
Leo Laporte We should say that both Lisa and Shira are Canadian nationals. So that gives them –
John C. Dvorak Zero. They've got –
Leo Laporte No, they're objective. They have –
John C. Dvorak They're from Canada, how can that be?
Shira Lazar Wait, so the government, the problem with the government – what's going on online right now, they hired the guy that used to be at Facebook, I don't know if you saw the Fast Company magazine, the last issue which is pretty awesome. He is like 25, or no, mid-twenties.
Leo Laporte I'm trying to remember his name, and it's escaped me.
Shira Lazar I know, I should look it up online.
John C. Dvorak Have another sip of wine.
Leo Laporte Steve Chen?
John C. Dvorak We got off to a great start with her!
Shira Lazar You! So –
Leo Laporte See, John is a disturber.
Shira Lazar Oh my god, you are making me like get heated up here. So –
John C. Dvorak There you go, now we got it. Now we're getting somewhere.
Leo Laporte It's like 88 degrees in the studio, it's not your fault.
John C. Dvorak Very hot.
Shira Lazar So the thing is the government – the problem with the government is that they have their main government site but then they have all these like all these other sites for other initiatives. And I feel like they need to have it under one banner, like one home and then saying like…
Leo Laporte Well change.gov is that main site?
Shira Lazar They have that and then they have like supposedly like a cultural exchange site, and the problem is when you create all of these different homes, people think this it's just random people creating them and they're just like really bad websites.
Leo Laporte Right.
Shira Lazar Whereas they are like oh, it's a government site and we realise they are trying to outreach and you respect it a bit more. But instead they create these like independent homes where you just feel like they are random sites being created by random people and you don't end up engaging.
Leo Laporte The government has always has that problem though with this kind of fragmentation. So she is saying this is my job, is to pull it all together?
Shira Lazar Well she is not saying that. She was like "help me". And then I was like "why don't you have one big hub for it all?"
Leo Laporte Well they have a CTO now. There is an official CTO and I can't …
John C. Dvorak Yeah, it's the guy from Virginia.
Leo Laporte He was the – Virginia's Chief of Technology.
John C. Dvorak Something Chopra.
Shira Lazar Yes.
Leo Laporte Did she talk about him at all, I mean, that was just announced?
Shira Lazar No, but they need engineers. There's no money. They need people to help.
Leo Laporte So they are asking the community, they are asking the social web community to pitch in.
Shira Lazar Yeah, it's like how do we get the word out to get people get involved.
John C. Dvorak Well you go to recovery.gov, I guess is one of their key sites. And –
Leo Laporte That's the problem John, it's recovery.gov, change.gov it's everything, right?
John C. Dvorak It's too many.
Leo Laporte There's too many.
John C. Dvorak And nobody goes to any of them, let's face it.
Leo Laporte Well you know –
Shira Lazar Who goes, I mean...
John C. Dvorak What are you going to get out of it? Oh look, a government web site…
Leo Laporte You get the gaming of it. Remember on change.gov they ask what should President Obama's first agenda item be and of course, the internet gamed it and it was legalise marijuana.
John C. Dvorak Which – maybe that's a fact.
Leo Laporte You think – oh you don't think it's…
Shira Lazar Oh, did you see all those legalise…
John C. Dvorak I think legalizing marijuana should be done.
Leo Laporte Well I agree, but is it the first thing he should do?
John C. Dvorak Yeah.
Leo Laporte Wouldn't that be funny? "Hey thank you for electing me! And, by the way, pot is legal. You go smoke. Everybody – you thought it was Cheech and Chong..."
Shira Lazar And now let's talk about the other stuff.
Leo Laporte "It's not Barak, it's Cheech!"
Lisa Bettany I think this is the problem when you...
John C. Dvorak Is that your Barack voice? Or...
Leo Laporte That was my Cheech.
John C. Dvorak That wasn't bad.
Lisa Bettany I think social media has kind of run amuck.
Leo Laporte Clearly this show has run amuck.
John C. Dvorak She's kind of like the naysayer today.
Shira Lazar She brings us all to –
Leo Laporte She brings us all to reality.
Shira Lazar Focus in.
John C. Dvorak She's buzzkill.
Lisa Bettany Sorry.
Leo Laporte Come on.
Lisa Bettany I just think that, I mean, just in my own stuff like fragmenting everything has just pulled me away from what's actually important. And I think that can be said about anything when you don't have a strong core and everything's sort of like –
Leo Laporte I do have to say, using all the Twitter and all the FriendFeed and stuff I am starting to feel a little bit –
Lisa Bettany Scattered?
Leo Laporte Scattered.
Shira Lazar Yeah, and you forget...
Leo Laporte Do we all feel that way?
John C. Dvorak No, because I don't do half of this stuff, I focus on, I use Twitter, I use – I do my blog, and I do these podcasts.
Leo Laporte Give it time, you will become more ADD over time.
John C. Dvorak No, it's not going to happen, I have already – I just can't, I don't have enough hours in the day.
Leo Laporte Shira you know, if your website were running on Squarespace, I don't think you'd be having these problems. Shira, you've got to try Squarespace, Shira is a perfect example, whenever you run a website, you assume a certain amount of traffic. But what if all of a suddenly you get wildly successfull? What if you blog gets Dugg or Slashdotted, what if we mention it on TWiT Live? What if you suddenly are a star? Then how does your website respond? If it's squarespace.com, no problem, no problem; Squarespace uses an amazing Cloud based architecture for speed and stability. You don't host it, they do, they're using some very sophisticated Java implementations, and some virtual servers that allow them to throw bandwidth online with a flip of a switch, they never run out, so you never run out.
You're going to love Squarespace for a lot of reasons, it's easy to design a site, their AJAX allows to you to kind of drag and drop your design, great templates to start with, easy import for WordPress, Blogger, MovableType and TypePad and export too, if you decide you want to leave. You're not going to want to though, there is a forum, there is a photo-gallery, there's forum builders, there is Google Maps, search engine optimizer, and on and on and on. I use Disqus as my comment system, although they have a very good comment system themselves, I am just tied to Disqus, it was easy, just a couple of lines and boom, I've got it. Squarespace: it's the modern way to blog, to have a website. Optimized for beginners and experts, if you know CSS you could tweak to your heart's content.
But this is an example, you now, if you don't have a Web Person now you've got a Web Person. squarespace.com: let them be your Web Person. Try it right now, absolutely free, this is the best way to do a trial, no credit card, no sign-up, nothing, you just go, you create a login, but you don't have to give them any other information. squarespace.com/TWIT, you could set up a site, you get two weeks to really play with it, get a sense of it, if you decide to stick around, use TWiT as the coupon code, you'll save 10%. I have been so impressed with Anthony and the gang, Dane, everybody over at Squarespace, they know their stuff, they are gung ho, they want to do the best damn website in the world, and they have done it. This is the best hosting everywhere, anywhere, I just love them, I want you to try it right now, squarespace.com/TWIT. Now you got web people, so Lisa, you share my kind of feeling that this is…
Lisa Bettany I do, I mean, I, yeah, recently Twitter is not making me as happy as it once did…
Leo Laporte Okay.
Lisa Bettany And I don't…
John C. Dvorak Is that because celebrities came in, and they bumped us all down?
Leo Laporte [22:31] Let's talk about the big story, Ashton Kutcher, it's the, it's the – Ashon is the elephant in the room, we might as well admit it. What do you, how do you feel about it?
John C. Dvorak No, we're not going to talk about Twitter, I promised that I would make a stink if they did.
Shira Lazar Do you want to get more publicity?
Leo Laporte It's the – ok, well look; it's the single biggest story of the week.
Shira Lazar Yes, we need to –
Leo Laporte Oprah's on Twitter…
John C. Dvorak How is that – wait a minute…
Shira Lazar I want to get him on, this guy, I…
Leo Laporte Get who on?
Shira Lazar James.
Leo Laporte Oh, look, James will call in, did you…
Shira Lazar Are you sure? I did, I DMed him.
Leo Laporte Okay.
Shira Lazar But he's on the road, so I don't know if he got it.
John C. Dvorak Study links lower grades to Facebook to me is bigger story.
Leo Laporte All right, let's talk about it.
Lisa Bettany Yeah.
Leo Laporte I've got it here, it's from K-State Collegian.
John C. Dvorak By the way, fans out there, you can thank me.
Leo Laporte Oh, you're just egging them on! You just want me to get more mail from people saying, oh, this Twitter has got to stop. It was a big story, you can't deny it was a big story.
John C. Dvorak I deny it.
Shira Lazar So what – alright...
John C. Dvorak You are going on topic again.
Shira Lazar I am sorry, but I just want to know what you think? Because you are…
Leo Laporte Thank you.
John C. Dvorak I think it stinks.
Shira Laza All right, that's exactly – I just want – because I also felt like it was a bit narcissistic, I mean...
Lisa Bettany Well, you actually, you've actually – you actually know him.
John C. Dvorak I try, I tried, I tried.
Shira Lazar I have been on, I have worked with Ashton and I think he's done a lot of fun, great stuff, and brought the kind of the main stream community to tech. Do Tech people want that? I don't – not really sure about that.
Leo Laporte That's what kind of cracks me up is, it does look a little bit like the Tech people are going – it's the same feeling that, when, remember when AOL added internet access? And all of a sudden all these people who had been locked in this walled garden at AOL were suddenly on the internet. And it was, they call the summer of AOL, I can't remember what year was it, '95 or '96.
John C. Dvorak Something like that.
Leo Laporte And it was a big deal.
John C. Dvorak Probably '96.
Leo Laporte Because all of these exclusive snobby elitists, who had it to themselves, we all have Twitter to ourselves, and all of a sudden, oh, my God, Oprah is using Twitter. It feels a little bit like that.
John C. Dvorak That's really pretty much your attitude.
Leo Laporte I, for one, welcome our mainstream media overlords.
John C. Dvorak No you don't!
Shira Lazar Do you feel like they should sell now, because it's like, they've…
Leo Laporte Now's the time, there is no better…
John C. Dvorak Okay, now I've got to try strategy two to get us back on a real topic.
Shira Lazar All right, all right, let's go right…
Leo Laporte We're going to get to the studies, no, we're going to get to that, but I think this is a, I am sorry, this is a real topic, it is a real topic.
John C. Dvorak It is not a real topic in any way shape or form.
Shira Lazar It is, because people – well why is it not?
Leo Laporte This is the biggest story of the week.
John C. Dvorak Oh, here's one reason, Oprah got, what, she just opened up an account, she got 256,000 instantly. When Oprah shows up on television, she has 10s of millions of people.
Leo Laporte Oh, there you go, that's the story, then it's a fraction of her total audience.
Shira Lazar Yes, I'd like, I'd like to just talk...
John C. Dvorak It's a chunk of nothing.
Lisa Bettany This actually shows how many people in the world are using Twitter, meaning Twitter is still like a micro thing.
Leo Laporte Not that many.
John C. Dvorak Wonder what it is about Twitter that generates so much conversation, that's what I'd like to know. I think it's a functional good thing that you use and – for whatever, for a lot of different reasons, but exactly why it creates so much of this, this gazing at your own navel kind of thing.
Leo Laporte It is a lot of that.
John C. Dvorak Conversations about it…
Shira Lazar Isn't that not what blogs are too?
John C. Dvorak When was the last time you talked about blogs the way that you talk about Twitter?
Shira Lazar I do, I tell people I blog, I videoblog.
John C. Dvorak Well, that's different, it's obsessing on Twitter.
Lisa Bettany I think the art of blogging is dead.
Leo Laporte Is it? What killed blogging?
Lisa Bettany Twitter.
John C. Dvorak There she goes again, she's better than at this.
Shira Lazar She's always like that, she's always like the devil's advocate.
Leo Laporte I think, it's great actually.
John C. Dvorak Blog is dead.
Leo Laporte We have a …
John C. Dvorak I think I'm going to go kill myself.
Leo Laporte Dvorak's dead, Lisa Bettany is the now the new Dvorak.
Lisa Bettany I, yes, I feel a bit beaten down, I guess, lately because my blog was my thing.
Leo Laporte You loved your blog.
Lisa Bettany Like I came, I was…
John C. Dvorak She changed the design, and that's what changed her.
Leo Laporte She took the cute girl pictures off.
Lisa Bettany But I didn't want to be the cute girl, and…
Leo Laporte I agree.
John C. Dvorak What do you mean you agree? Nobody else does!
Leo Laporte I know, I was the one who told her to do it, I feel bad.
John C. Dvorak Oh, now you know ladies and gentlemen.
Shira Lazar Well, I don't get – say – tell people what happened, because I don't...
Lisa Bettany I mean, like I have a master's degree in linguistics, like I don't come from this background at all. But I love Tech and I love New Media, and I just said, I am just going to start a blog. And I started a blog, and all of a sudden I got recognition and I got to the position where I could be on these shows and meet these people and it was inspiring and it was great and my blog was sort of, thriving and then sort of the negative stuff came, the trolls came and – oh come on!
Leo Laporte How much, this is…
Shira Lazar The negative stuff – I think it's, we take ourselves too seriously.
Leo Laporte I do want to talk about trolls though, because I think trolls…
John C. Dvorak Could we do one or news stories at first so we…
Leo Laporte Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
John C. Dvorak Now listen to you.
Leo Laporte Here is two conflicting new stories, you picked one which was the Kansas State study that says that, and by the way even the people who did this study say "we can't say that the use of Facebook leads to lower grades and less studying, but we did find a relationship". They surveyed Kansas State students, not a huge survey; 209 students, I'm, sorry, Ohio.
John C. Dvorak Yes, Ohio State, not Kansas State.
Leo Laporte Including 102 under-graduates and 117 graduate students, 85% of under grads, 52% of grad students had a Facebook account, survey said. Undergraduates using Facebook have GPAs an average of one half to one point lower than non-users, now that's not causality.
Shira Lazar What about the educators or the teachers, are they having anything to do with this?
Leo Laporte Time dedicated to studying was also reduced.
John C. Dvorak No, it's only Facebook.
Shira Lazar What about the grander, bigger picture of this? It's like, first it's TV…
John C. Dvorak Oh, now you are a Facebook defender too, well of course you…
Leo Laporte You're Dave Moran's friend.
Shira Lazar No, but I just feel like…
John C. Dvorak Boo! She's a, she's a friend of O'Reilly, so she has to say whatever they told her.
Leo Laporte She was bunking with Dave Moran this week.
John C. Dvorak You were bunking with him?
Shira Lazar I was in an RV with the Facebook crowd. No, but I was also with this…
John C. Dvorak Now there is a joke there somewhere, I am not going to go there.
Shira Lazar Any way the fact is, I feel like you always – it's like, cell phones, everything causes cancer, blah, blah, blah.
Leo Laporte Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is not, the correlation does not prove causality and…
John C. Dvorak So you are in denial?
Shira Lazar I just love life. I always look for the positive, I am glass half full.
Leo Laporte I like Facebook.
John C. Dvorak "I love life" is not the answer to this!
Shira Lazar No, I just think that we have to look at the bigger picture.
Leo Laporte But get ready for this.
Shira Lazar Okay.
Leo Laporte [28:22] Study 2. Teenagers who don't get their daily fix of daily networking sites are prone to becoming stressed and short tempered.
Shira Lazar That's true, that's true.
John C. Dvorak That's her!
Leo Laporte The study by Yahoo! showed that a third of 16 to 24 year olds who did not have access, now, just ask yourselves kids, kids who are listening right now, if you did not have access to Facebook, Bebo, MySpace, how would you feel? Would you suffer from more anxiety, would you have more emotional strain? 71% of participants say they felt cut off from daily life, 70% said they felt unable to manage a balanced life style without Facebook.
Lisa Bettany Wow.
Leo Laporte What do you think?
John C. Dvorak Sick.
Lisa Bettany Yeah.
John C. Dvorak I think these people should go seek counselling.
Shira Lazar Welcome to the new age my friend.
John C. Dvorak They have to go cold turkey.
Leo Laporte I would get a little stressed if I couldn't Twitter.
Lisa Bettany If you couldn't – I mean there's so much else to do. And I mean, I would feel that way of I was cut off from the internet.
Leo Laporte Okay.
Lisa Bettany Because that's my news source.
Shira Lazar Then you engage, you are not like a first person adapter, what's it called?
Leo Laporte Early adopter.
Shira Lazar Early adapter – adopter, I mean.
Leo Laporte No, no, no, you know what, the thing is these people, the internet for them is Facebook, MySpace.
Shira Lazar That's the thing.
Leo Laporte So you have a broader internet experience.
Shira Lazar Yes, yes.
Leo Laporte So what you are saying is, nice pour by the way, that was very well done.
Shira Lazar I hate you, John. I am not, I am just really hot.
John C. Dvorak Oh, man. You know, I'm hot too, let's down these!
Shira Lazar All right, I just want to say that, but I, right, there is a sense like yesterday I lost my phone and I am, like, I am a bit freaking out but the fact is we should be able to live without this stuff, we should be able to take time out over a weekend and be disconnected.
Leo Laporte How did that feel though, you are actually very connected because you are in social media.
Shira Lazar Yes, I felt like weird being – and I also lost my N95 on Friday, which I do all my video blogging from, I can't find it, and yes, there is a sense…
Leo Laporte You lost your phone and your N95?
Shira Lazar Well, I found my BlackBerry but the N95 I can't find.
Leo Laporte Oh, okay.
Shira Lazar But there is a sense of feeling a need to keep up, and I think that's the stress right now, as someone that's…
Leo Laporte That things will pass you by.
Shira Lazar Things will pass you by and then you are non-existent if you don't update, so you lose…
Leo Laporte See, I think we got to the root of it here, I think that's exactly right.
Lisa Bettany Yes. But do you feel…
Leo Laporte We define ourselves via the internet, via our presence online.
Lisa Bettany But you feel like, I mean you have the mix of actual sort of mainstream stuff where you're creating content and doing that kind of thing, I mean, there is something a little bit hollow about talking about yourself as opposed to creating something original.
Shira Lazar I have something to say about that, and I think the most – the people that will survive through this, in terms of not just being like an ego blogger and all that, are the people that do the PR, do the buzz, and show a bit of their life. But you always need to balance it out with content, and I try to step back a lot…
Leo Laporte I agree, I agree.
Shira Lazar ...with what I do, I don't know what you think, Leo.
Leo Laporte I have worked with, in TV for a long time and media, real media – haha! – for a long time, and one of the things I always told the young people that are coming to me and starting out their careers and this was Kevin Rose, this was, I mean, a lot of people.
John C. Dvorak The people you have mentored.
Leo Laporte The people I have mentored, and one of the first things I said to them was…
John C. Dvorak And the first you notice, they never give you any stock.
Leo Laporte I don't care, I don't want stock.
John C. Dvorak Sure you do.
Leo Laporte I just want the respect and love of the people who follow in my footsteps.
John C. Dvorak I can't find any of the chat rooms, I can't get on any of the chat rooms.
Shira Lazar Really?
Leo Laporte irc.twit.tv
Lisa Bettany They don't want you in there.
Leo Laporte Or Facebook, there is a TWiT conversations room there too. But what I always tell them is, and I think that this is the only way to survive that shallow deep trench that is television; is do not focus on chasing the audience, do not focus on your hair or your good looks, do not focus –
John C. Dvorak Well, that's no problem with me.
Leo Laporte Yes, but look at me and Patrick, obviously we weren't focusing on that, what we, well, I said is, you focus on serving your audience, giving your audience – every moment serving your audience. Don't think about ratings, don't think about anything but serving the audience and all the rest follows from that, if you give them content, you know what, it saves you. I learned this from acting, trying to remember the wonderful acting book that I read, she said that any good actor comes not from ego, not from …
Shira Lazar Uh-huh.
Leo Laporte Comes from something deep, deeply held beliefs that they are trying to – their core values they are trying to express. And I think it's the same in any performing art, in television, radio, media and new media, they are all performing arts, that it has to come from core values, and the desire to serve the audience. And if you do that then you don't get eaten alive by the all this stuff.
Lisa Bettany Yes, yes, no, I think that's really important to – I mean and that's what happened to me is I received a bit of attention and then I started pandering.
Leo Laporte Yes.
John C. Dvorak Oh-oh.
Lisa Bettany I knew, I knew…
Leo Laporte It's very hard not to, and this is, I especially tell young ladies like Morgan Webb, who – it's very tempting, because they're all of a sudden; you're so pretty, you're so gorgeous, and you start to say, yes. It eats you up.
Lisa Bettany It wasn't so much in that but I knew what topics they wanted to talk about.
Leo Laporte Yes.
Lisa Bettany I knew how to guide them to…
Leo Laporte Yes, you chased the audience.
John C. Dvorak There's a complete rebellion over you previous line.
Leo Laporte No, she chased the audience, and that's what everybody wants to do.
John C. Dvorak Yeah I know, but no she's changed, she doesn't like doing it anymore.
Shira Lazar But it's a balance between chasing the audience and creating engagements, so creating like, it's like when you invite…
Leo Laporte But it can't be phony engagement, it can't be…
Shira Lazar No. it can't be.
Leo Laporte How do I, how do I tune myself so that they'll like me better, it has to be…
Lisa Bettany Yes.
Leo Laporte This is what I have to say, this is what I have to give, and I am going to give it to you, and I am going to give it to you the best way I can, and if you don't like it, okay, I may not be famous and successful, but I am going to speak with my honest voice.
John C. Dvorak See, that's the difference between you and me, Leo, because I respect the audience, I have never, I don't try to get confrontational, I do what they want, I am the nice – that's why I am….
Leo Laporte That's such bull
John C. Dvorak That's what you want to do, you want to give the audience exactly what they want, you don't want to be contrary…
Shira Lazar But you create the need, you can also create the need.
Leo Laporte John is being sarcastic because he is the most contrarian columnist out there.
Shira Lazar I know.
John C. Dvorak You think?
Leo Laporte But John, I have to say, I do have to say something…
John C. Dvorak But I got her, she was fooled.
Leo Laporte You fooled Shira.
Shira Lazar Yes, I was gullible.
John C. Dvorak She was jumping in on it.
Leo Laporte But I do have to say that, in a way though, you are paying attention to your audience because you are pushing their buttons, you intentionally push their buttons.
John C. Dvorak Ah, what could be more fun?
Lisa Bettany So you are a manipulative communicator?
Leo Laporte Yes.
John C. Dvorak No, not at all, not in fact, not in the least, I am probably one of the most honest sincere people that you'll ever meet.
Shira Lazar I think that sorts it out.
Leo Laporte That may be true, you know I actually will give John that.
John C. Dvorak Good.
Leo Laporte I will give you that because, not in the way you mean, but I think I will give you that. You are honest, you don't give a fig…
John C. Dvorak As it were, keeping it a family show.
Leo Laporte What people say about what you say.
Shira Lazar I think ultimately…
John C. Dvorak Actually I am going to interrupt you there, because actually what he brought up is something that Lisa brought up and I am going to wrap it around, which is the thing about getting over the fact, especially with New Media that people are going to come on and call you a jerk and an idiot and you suck, and blah, blah, blah.
Leo Laporte Right, you have to get over that, because they are going to do that.
John C. Dvorak And the only way that you actually will feed them if you try to take them on although there is other ways of doing this, especially if you are the moderator you can just change what they say and make them look like idiots, which is what we like to do. And – but that's unfair, but, generally speaking, you have to get used – because of this, the nature of the business being, now it's the audience is bigger than the whatever the publication is, and so they are…
Leo Laporte We give them power.
John C. Dvorak They have got way more power than they ever used to have and you have to get used to the fact that you are going to get a lot of abuse.
Shira Lazar Yes.
Leo Laporte But how do you deal with that, Lisa, I can tell it hurts you.
Lisa Bettany Well, it did, and that's why I started pandering, because I was very sarcastic and very – and my first article in The Province, I took on Perez Hilton, and just said how he was giving bloggers a bad name because he's just producing this kind of trash but people love it. And I just received so much hate mail from it.
Leo Laporte You backed off.
Lisa Bettany And then I said, okay, I'll just be nice. And you know from my previous experiences coming on this show that I have played that.
Leo Laporte No more nice Lisa.
Shira Lazar I think it's about being engaged and creating a conversation, that's what this is all about, all these tools we have created and that have been given to us are to create a conversation and worldwide communication and a global community and I think it's awesome. It's like you're at a dinner table, and wouldn't it suck if we all thought the same way.
John C. Dvorak Probably with a bunch of other Foo people, right? That was a dinner that we won't get invited to, me and Leo?
Leo Laporte Not now, we won't.
John C. Dvorak We weren't going to be anyway, you might as well burn the bridge.
Shira Lazar I look at it as I love meeting people, I love having conversation, and this is just through what I do, I can have a global conversation and talk to –
Leo Laporte Shira, have you ever had trolls, have you ever had negative comments?
Shira Lazar Yes, I do, I do. Even on this, I am reading the chat, there are some people who are saying crazy stuff.
John C. Dvorak What are they saying?
Leo Laporte Do you know all the crap that Lisa got for a long time?
Shira Lazar Why did you get, I don't get it, see, it's hard for me because I watch people like, possible you and then there's Julia Allison, and some people –
Leo Laporte Julia gets a lot of crap.
Shira Lazar There are some women out there…
Leo Laporte Julia is stalked by bloggers on Tumblr and…
Shira Lazar For me, I look, and I am like, how do I not go there, or like, I don't know, it's like how do you navigate that. I am not sure because I thankfully haven't really gotten that, and I don't know…
Leo Laporte I don't know why you haven't, you will.
John C. Dvorak Well, she will now, after doing this show.
Leo Laporte Maybe they think you are a nice person and they know….
Shira Lazar No, no. no. I think ultimately, well –
Leo Laporte Lisa is a nice person, nobody thought you weren't a nice person.
Shira Lazar There's always haters. No, listen people like "oh, why did you say that" or "you are whatever"...
John C. Dvorak Haters.
Leo Laporte So Lisa, your way of dealing with this was to say oh, I am not going to stir that hornets' nest again.
Lisa Bettany Yes, I mean, I backed off a little, and then I saw David Copperfield, and…
Leo Laporte The magician?
Shira Lazar Like, as a psychic…
Lisa Bettany The magician, and I just nailed him again.
Leo Laporte You beat up on David Copperfield?
John C. Dvorak You did that on a couple of things I've seen.
Lisa Bettany Yes.
Leo Laporte Now, is this the real Lisa? That's the real Lisa.
Lisa Bettany Well, yes, I have my opinions and I am sarcastic and I have dry sense of humor and …
Leo Laporte The Canadians are very nice, the Canadians, I don't know about Quebecois…
John C. Dvorak They have more comedians from Canada than any place.
Leo Laporte And singers and artists, I mean, Canada is a –
John C. Dvorak It's a miracle.
Lisa Bettany But ultimately, on my blog –
Leo Laporte It's a little miracle to our north.
Lisa Bettany On my blog I sort of had this where I wanted to teach people photography. I wanted to talk about photography. But then I also wanted to write snarky posts and they just don't work.
Leo Laporte There were two Lisas.
John C. Dvorak Yeah, how about two blogs?
Lisa Bettany Really, I do everything – no wait a second I don't believe in that.
John C. Dvorak Or ten.
Lisa Bettany I don't believe in that because I think you're brand is you and I think that that means some days you might be informative and talk about things that are relevant in what you are doing professionally and some days that might mean like you just want to talk about life and I feel like the ultimate like Oprah, if you looks at brands like Oprah I mean she does a bit of both and I think those are the ultimate brands in – I mean yeah at this point.
John C. Dvorak No, but she has a plenty of outlets. She doesn't stick to one outlet.
Leo Laporte She's got a magazine, a TV show. I mean she's got several TV shows. Yeah, yeah. She's got a reality show.
John C. Dvorak Production company… she has a whole bunch of stuff. She produces other people's – at least I have two blogs.
Lisa Bettany So what do you think like niche versus just creating a brand of perspective on most, on like…
John C. Dvorak You have to do the branding.
Lisa Bettany …your voice which means it's not necessarily. It doesn't mean you're talking about cats one day and talking about [indiscernible] the next.
John C. Dvorak I don't think that you have to…
Leo Laporte I don't know, Lisa did.
Lisa Bettany But sometimes – that's what blogs – look at Twitter. Twitter has allowed you to go there and that's what created the engagement.
Leo Laporte That is exactly what Twitter does.
Lisa Bettany But I pandered on Twitter.
John C. Dvorak Uh oh, here we go Twitter alert! Twitter alert! Twitter alert!
Leo Laporte Oh, come on, John.
Lisa Bettany I mean, but I –
John C. Dvorak I'm telling you everybody wants me to do this and that's why I'm here.
Leo Laporte Oh, we're not pandering.
John C. Dvorak You know what, I'll bet I won't even be on this show next week because of my attitude.
Leo Laporte You – we're not pandering, are we?
Lisa Bettany Think I'm going to get...
Leo Laporte "Everybody wants me to do this"
Lisa Bettany …from this conversation.
John C. Dvorak I wouldn't do it myself.
Leo Laporte Alright. Let Lisa – please. So your reaction after you pandered for a little while, you changed yourself. What changed your mind about that?
Lisa Bettany Just how I felt. I, it didn't –
Leo Laporte It wasn't you.
Lisa Bettany It wasn't me and I couldn't – I guess the big thing was when I started to come on these live shows and I couldn't maintain that persona.
Leo Laporte You can't, can you?
Lisa Bettany That perfect – because I wanted to be perfect.
Leo Laporte You can't, no, you can't.
Lisa Bettany Just this...
Leo Laporte Live is wonderful.
Lisa Bettany Be yourself.
Leo Laporte [39:58] Live TV is wonderful for that because ultimately you – in radio I learned this in radio after 30 years. If you can't – you can't lie for ever. You have to ultimately become yourself and that's what people, all people want is your authentic voice.
John C. Dvorak Well that reminds me of a Miles Davis story. So, before I just bring that up though, how come I can't get on this thing?
Leo Laporte Are you having trouble again?
Lisa Bettany irc.twit.tv?
John C. Dvorak Yeah, and it gives me – it says choose your nickname, password…
Leo Laporte Choose a nickname?
John C. Dvorak …and it's got something that says connect and then it says 'closing link: registration time out.'
Leo Laporte Well just do it faster. There's too many people on there and you probably not –
Lisa Bettany My webmaster said that my site's down and it's going to be up in 30 minutes.
John C. Dvorak You have no personality and now you have no brand.
Lisa Bettany I'm nothing.
Shira Lazar No. Nothing.
Leo Laporte You know what it is, John, there's probably so many people in TWiT chat, you can't get in there.
John C. Dvorak Somebody leave now. Immediately.
Leo Laporte All right, there were some other big stories. In fact a huge story…
John C. Dvorak Ah. Same thing.
Leo Laporte …Pirate Bay, the court trial…
Lisa Bettany Yes
John C. Dvorak Now that's a story
Shira Lazar That was crazy
Leo Laporte …concluded with one year prison sentences handed down by a Swedish judge, a fine of £2.4 million, that's $3.6 million. The defendants, Pirate Bay co-founders Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi said 'the judgement was weird and bizarre' and they insist that they cannot pay and will not pay.
John C. Dvorak They can't pay because they got no money.
Leo Laporte They got no money. In a press conference held after the Stockholm Court found the four defendants guilty, Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi held up a hand written IOU to the camera and said 'that is as close as they are going to get from me. Even if I had any money I would rather' – I don't know what accent that is.
John C. Dvorak This isn't pretty good though, I like it.
Leo Laporte I'm trying not to do the…
John C. Dvorak Until you fell apart with it!
Leo Laporte I'm trying not to do the typical Swedish chef thing. 'Even if had any money I would rather…'
John C. Dvorak That one's the worst.
Leo Laporte 'I would rather burn everything I own.' I'm going to do – I'll do the little Ingrid Bergman.
John C. Dvorak That's it, I like it.
Leo Laporte 'Even if had any money I would rather burn everything I own and not even give them the ashes. They could have the job of picking them up. That's how much I hate the media industry.'
Lisa Bettany I don't know what accent that is.
Leo Laporte That's Swedish. That is Ingmar Bergman. That is the Swedish und – and that's not all.
John C. Dvorak 'und'?!
Leo Laporte That was German.
Lisa Bettany So they are completely convinced that they are going to get off.
Leo Laporte They put on the front – well they didn't get off. It's done. They are going to jail.
Lisa Bettany Yeah but once you –
John C. Dvorak There's judgement proof. Being judgement proof is what it is.
Leo Laporte They can't get the – how you're going to get – yeah, and they said in fact on the front page of the Pirate Bay; 'we're not going anywhere. We are the Internets.'
John C. Dvorak Yeah, and they'll just move their operation offshore and then they're judgement proof.
Leo Laporte They already had, they did it a while ago.
John C. Dvorak They're judgement proof, you can't get any money out of them, they are just bunch of kids. What you going to do?
Lisa Bettany Also once you have a focus on something it's like that's what you've decided you can't back down. It's like you're going there, go there.
John C. Dvorak Is this something you learned at Foo Camp?
Lisa Bettany No I'm just saying generally it's like a mission –
John C. Dvorak You're just throwing it in our face.
Leo Laporte Foo camper. You Foo camper.
Lisa Bettany Foo camp, ha ha. No, but it's like if you've created something and that was your mission and it's like, and that's what the site does, if you back down your users aren't going to respect you and you just…
Leo Laporte He said – this is really weird, he compared it with the plot of the Karate Kid and said…
Shira Lazar Of course he did. Of course he did.
Lisa Bettany He needs some white wine.
John C. Dvorak Oh yeah, we need some of that white wine.
Leo Laporte He said, white wine, white wine…
Lisa Bettany Oh my God in the middle of the pirate story.
Leo Laporte I don't care.
Lisa Bettany Isn't it funny that the pirates, the whole pirate actual news story happened during this? The real pirates?
John C. Dvorak Oh, that's an interesting coincidence I never thought about it.
Leo Laporte You know the Somali pirates were kind of angry at Pirate Bay. They said 'they are not pirates, we are the pirates. Why are they calling themselves pirates? They are not pirates.'
John C. Dvorak They are from Barbados now right?
Leo Laporte I don't care. I don't know what it sounds like when you're from Somali. So I'm going to do, I'm going to talk like…
John C. Dvorak Barbados.
Leo Laporte …Barbados. No, they said their – they literally they said the Somali pirate said 'the Pirate Bay, that's not pirates, we're pirates.'
John C. Dvorak Yeah, well good they can hang like pirates from the yard arm.
Shira Lazar Someone says every time someone says Twitter we have to take a drink or have a sip.
Leo Laporte There is a Twitter drinking game.
John C. Dvorak Oh well then let's get back to the topic.
Leo Laporte Topic in hand.
Lisa Bettany So as part of as part of Pirate Bay story they were saying that now this is going to push this sort of torrenting behaviour on to Google. So that people can now type in Google xyz torrent and then find it, yeah.
John C. Dvorak I think they can do that anyway. How do you peel off some of these things?
Leo Laporte I think that the real, the real point after all is that you can't stop this stuff.
Lisa Bettany It's going to be happening no matter what…
Leo Laporte You cannot stop this stuff.
John C. Dvorak Of course not.
Leo Laporte However, this guys can go to jail and will.
John C. Dvorak No.
Lisa Bettany You think they will?
Leo Laporte They are standing there in Sweden. What's the – I mean aren't they going to..?
John C. Dvorak The Swedes aren't going to throw them in jail, the Swedes aren't into that.
Shira Lazar Are there computers in jail?
Leo Laporte The Swedish court convicted them.
John C. Dvorak Yeah, then they'll have a fine.
Leo Laporte And a year in jail.
Lisa Bettany Yeah.
Leo Laporte That was the sentence. Aren't you paying attention, John?
Shira Lazar It should be a year in jail and also the can't use their laptops or like any computers.
Leo Laporte I don't know…
Shira Lazar They might as well just take away the internet from them, that's jail.
Leo Laporte Susan Boyle, who loves Susan Boyle?
Shira Lazar She's inspirational
John C. Dvorak She is – that whole thing is an out and out scam.
Leo Laporte I think it's a fake too, now tell me this, I didn't tell my wife this.
Shira Lazar No. I think – well, because shows like that you do audition
Leo Laporte They know. There's no surprise...
Shira Lazar And yeah. It was ridiculous in some of those reactions from Simon Cowell were like --
John C. Dvorak But they cut from one to the other. The other end there's two bone heads in the back. Now, the other thing –
Shira Lazar Because it's an edited show.
Leo Laporte That's true, they probably ISO everybody. You're right, they probably ISO everybody
John C. Dvorak A 1999 recording of this woman just surfaced.
Leo Laporte Oh, it did?
John C. Dvorak I Twittered it. Oh, I said it, I'm sorry. Wait a minute.
Leo Laporte Wait a minute. The real Dvorak, would that be correct – he has to have a drink. Twitter.com/THErealDVORAK?
John C. Dvorak Yeah, and you can link to it you can hear she sings – I can't remember the name of the song. But she's – it's absolutely better than her voice is now. I mean it's absolutely outstanding.
Leo Laporte So, did she have a career singing? Where is this recording?
Shira Lazar Somebody said she's already a recording artist. She looks like she could have been in a, like she's in a musical.
John C. Dvorak I think they put extra make up on her eyebrows.
Leo Laporte I think they beetled her eyebrows.
John C. Dvorak Definitely.
Leo Laporte They dumped her down. They dumbed – made her –
John C. Dvorak They dumped her – dump – dump – made her dumpy.
Leo Laporte Dumpy. Dumpered her down.
John C. Dvorak And had her goof around so she looks like some sort of weird frump. And there's also a recording of – by her local newspaper an interview with her and her hair is nothing like that. It's not like a clown.
Leo Laporte So they really dressed they really played it up.
Shira Lazar Yeah.
John C. Dvorak They went for it, yeah. And –
Shira Lazar Maybe she's – that's part of art is like dressing up like that.
John C. Dvorak In this story that I linked to, she's already got her record album done. She's going on Oprah and she's going to sell a million copies and Simon Cowell gets a piece of the action.
Shira Lazar They're going to twitter it that she's on. They're going twitter it out.
John C. Dvorak The whole thing is just...
Leo Laporte This is Cry Me A River.
Shira Lazar We need it karaoke, TWiT karaoke. You should so do – oh TWiT karaoke that's it.
Leo Laporte She's great.
John C. Dvorak Tell me about it.
Lisa Bettany This is her?
John C. Dvorak Yeah.
Leo Laporte This is a charity CD she recorded in 1999.
Lisa Bettany Yeah, she's awesome.
Leo Laporte You know why I kind of believe this? Because I watched her and not only did she sing technically well. She had emotion. She was like a Broadway star. She was like Sarah Brightman.
John C. Dvorak She's trained. I don't care what anybody says.
Leo Laporte She was completely trained. There was no way this came out of nowhere.
John C. Dvorak Yeah, I know.
Leo Laporte Is that terrible for us to do? We're dashing people's hopes now.
John C. Dvorak No, who's hopes? She's going to make a lot of money. She sings well. She get the recog –
Leo Laporte No but people like –
Shira Lazar How does she – we obviously didn't know her, we didn't know her before so she had a certain level of success but there's always a bigger level of success…
Leo Laporte No I'm going to tell you something. Jennifer –
John C. Dvorak He's talking about the hopes –
Leo Laporte I'm talking about my wife.
John C. Dvorak Yeah. See, you're dashing the hopes of the public that has been suckered into believing this garbage. I hate these shows by the way.
Shira Lazar All you have to do is Google, hello, it's not that hard anymore.
Leo Laporte But no, this wasn't that easy to find.
Lisa Bettany I don't even you're talking about.
Leo Laporte Oh, you didn't see Susan Boyle?
Lisa Bettany Oh my God.
Leo Laporte 25 million views on youtube in one week.
Lisa Bettany I don't own cable.
Shira Lazar No, it's on…
Lisa Bettany Oh my God.
Shira Lazar …the internet.
Leo Laporte The internets are a plugged up for her. She's turning into Dvorak.
John C. Dvorak No she's not, it's beyond me. She's actually getting – she's become a bitter ex-blogger.
Leo Laporte I don't have the internet and I don't want the internet. That was a big…
Lisa Bettany I don't ever want to see nothing.
Leo Laporte That was a big – you were sick last week. So that – you have an excuse.
John C. Dvorak What did you have?
Lisa Bettany It's true. It's true I don't know what.
Shira Lazar If anything when you are sick don't you go on the internet more?
Lisa Bettany Cold.
John C. Dvorak You just had a cold?
Lisa Bettany Yes, but I –
John C. Dvorak Zicam, my friend, Zicam, I want to get a bucket of this stuff. This stuff works great.
Leo Laporte Too bad the show's not brought to you by Zicam, because that would have been a great commercial.
Lisa Bettany No honestly, the –
Shira Lazar Just get sick people on your show. Like, you have a cold? Come on the show!
John C. Dvorak Such a good idea. No it is, because with Zicam you won't catch the cold, seriously.
Leo Laporte We could just like – okay so after the wine tasting we'll have a cold tasting.
John C. Dvorak There's a whole bunch of jokes in that one and I'm not going to mention them.
Leo Laporte I don't want to do it. So, she lives in Scotland. She says I've never been kissed. She lived with her mother and it was on Britain's Got Talent and Simon Cowell's a host, it's very much like American Idol. 25 million views on Youtube in one week. I've never seen anything like this. Everybody was passing this URL around. So, she comes out, she's very frumpy, she's got big thick beetle brows. She's just kind of you know, and everybody's going oh, this is going to be bad. She says I want to be Elaine Page and then she sings a song from Les Mis.
John C. Dvorak She could have done with a squawkier voice there.
Leo Laporte "I want to be Elaine Page."
John C. Dvorak Yeah something like that. Well no…
Leo Laporte "That's my goal in life." I could do it like Mrs. Doubtfire. "Oh dear, I want to be Elaine Page"
Shira Lazar Oh my God you've seen that movie way too many times.
Leo Laporte I love that movie. It's a great movie. So, anyway what was I saying? So she comes out and she sings a song for all of us. And it's like, wow it's Sarah Brightman. It was incredible. And now, okay you're the TV person. Your opinion was when they had those pictures of the judges like shocked.
Shira Lazar I know I already saw it like and then…
Leo Laporte Totally phony.
Shira Lazar I mean Simon Cowell being like
John C. Dvorak And his eyebrows go up at the right moment.
Shira Lazar It was so perfect, it was like, do it right now. And those shows are live to tape. That's how it works. How it works with TV
Leo Laporte They ISO every camera, they record everything.
Shira Lazar Yeah they're shooting every judge, they're shooting, they probably have what like ten cameras.
John C. Dvorak And the two clowns backstage.
Shira Lazar That and then it's got –
Leo Laporte I actually like that, we should have that on American Idol.
John C. Dvorak We should have it on our show here.
Leo Laporte Can you believe Dvorak just said?
Shira Lazar So, how it works is either you're live, which American Idol is at certain points. Your live – or us.
Leo Laporte Yeah, I don't know if this show's, but this was the audition so it wasn't live.
Shira Lazar So, it's live to tape, which means that you record it.
John C. Dvorak Yeah, a huge packed audience.
Shira Lazar You said – you count it down, it's pretty much live to tape but you have an edit, so you're doing it non-stop. You're trying not to stop so it's easier and you could easily tell judges to re-do something. You also know what…
Leo Laporte Let me ask –
Shira Lazar …the reaction that the director wants. And they audition for this – that the fact is the judges and producers have seen her perform, probably at least three times before this performance.
Leo Laporte Not those judges. Do you think those judges had seen her before?
Shira Lazar No, but they hear the buzz of who's coming…
Leo Laporte Certainly the producers knew what was coming.
John C. Dvorak You know Curry's wife is doing one of these reality shows in Holland.
Leo Laporte Is she in it or is she producing it.
John C. Dvorak No, she's a singer. She's pretty famous. And she – and he is back there all the time. She's like, this show is hugely popular it's as big as any of them. And he says that the whole thing is completely rigged.
Leo Laporte Oh, they're all rigged.
John C. Dvorak But that Cowell is probably the one who probably set the whole thing up and now that there's records coming out Cowell, of course, if you do any of these shows and you – as soon as you sign on the dotted line, they got get your first born.
Shira Lazar They own you. They own you.
John C. Dvorak So they get a piece of the action. So this is just a huge money making scheme.
Shira Lazar And it's buzz. The fact is you know and you go against the grain and you put someone you totally don't expect has talent.
Leo Laporte But my, okay – I got a – my wife and I, actually I found the link. I played the – I went wow, I said, hey, Jennifer quick, gotta see this.
John C. Dvorak Yeah I did the same – when I first saw it I was very impressed.
Leo Laporte And our tears are going down our face. We're going this thing an amazing. I was blown away. I am not kidding. I am meaning this. Both of us are, oh my God that's so beautiful. But afterwards I thought this is a little too pat. It was little too perfect. I would never say this to Jennifer, she would not be happy. She wants to believe this. And that's what I'm saying is that –
John C. Dvorak No I think it's a disappointment. By the way the Curry thing is Holland's Got Talent and somebody just sent me a note saying that they want to say that American Idol's a fraud. So, I don't know what that one's about.
Shira Lazar Buzz off!
Leo Laporte We're going to get Woz...
John C. Dvorak I hate these shows by the way so right, I can jump on that.
Leo Laporte We are going to get Woz on because he was in Dancing with the Stars.
John C. Dvorak They sign non-disclosures, you can't –
Leo Laporte And one interesting thing happened.
Lisa Bettany Oh I loved him.
Leo Laporte We loved Woz he was a terrible dancer but he survived the first cut and he got to the second round. He was terrible.
John C. Dvorak He got to the third round didn't he?
Leo Laporte Yeah I think he have the third round – he missed. But anyway one of the judges at one point said this is like a teletubby dancing. This is not dancing.
Lisa Bettany Oh my God.
Leo Laporte But –
John C. Dvorak It was scripted.
Leo Laporte Well and that was – now this was an interesting that happened. Woz said this whole thing is scripted. They are not telling us what the votes are. We – I know that they saved us for the dance off even though I know I have enough votes from the audience to not be at risk. But they wanted me in the dance off in the first round. He said that and literally two hours later, completely recanted, because of course a lawyer comes knocking saying, you remember this thing you signed, Woz, how much are you worth? How much would you like to be worth after we go to court? I've got to get Woz on, he probably still can't say anything.
John C. Dvorak He won't say much. In fact this started with the Survivor show, because there was a lawsuit and I talked to the lawyer that was handling it. One of the people on the first Survivor got deathly ill and some weird thing happened during – they had to sue the show to get the money that they were guaranteed.
Leo Laporte I remember that, yeah.
John C. Dvorak And the guy telling me, he was telling me, he says the whole thing, they got all these people on nondisclosures. They won't let you know what's going on. Burnett himself has kind of like backed off, off a lot of this and he says look 'it's not a reality TV show, it's an unscripted drama.' And what they –
Lisa Bettany Yeah.
Leo Laporte Oh, that's great.
John C. Dvorak That's what he called it.
Leo Laporte It's not reality, it's unscripted drama. Essentially saying 'we're making it up, this is not true.'
Shira Lazar A lot of the producers I know that work on these shows that edit them, they call them 'frankenbites', because…
Leo Laporte You're looking for that moment.
Shira Lazar …you look for the moment but besides that they can edit specific words you say into a sentence and put it over V roll. And so you – if you like at all these.
John C. Dvorak But it's easier just to have you do it. I mean if you would – like they would have it – to have two people. Okay, you and Leo can be sitting at the table together – now do something, do something to piss her off and I want you to throw a glass of wine in his face. Okay, roll.
Shira Lazar That you don't even need to say that. It could be from an hour ago, I was laughing and then –
Leo Laporte They could – they snip it together.
Shira Lazar …and five hours later I was just like sitting looking like and they can make it like our conversation went awry through editing.
John C. Dvorak Well, actually with the Gordon Ramsay shows that had Hell's Kitchen and somebody sings or whatever or when he goes in and he fixes the place up – and whatever show that is, Kitchen Nightmares, they would show – something – my stepson Eric who's the coder, he would always, he's one of those guys who sees the microphones and finds stuff out of sequence and 'why are they wearing the button on this side instead of this side?' And he pointed out at the end he was doing the wrap of the show and they had the old restaurant before they refurbished it.
Leo Laporte So he was doing the end at the beginning?
John C. Dvorak Doing the end of the beginning
Leo Laporte But we do that all the time. Come on, I do this show, this show was taped four months ago.
John C. Dvorak And that's why your wife – that's why your, yeah, it's actually –
Lisa Bettany This is actually winter we're pretending it's hot.
John C. Dvorak It's 95 degrees in December.
Leo Laporte We're only pretending we're dying.
John C. Dvorak A lot of people get into it and they – it's like soap operas.
Leo Laporte All right, you guys just take a break a little bit here. Have a glass of wine or something because I want to talk about audible.com and then we'll get back to the non- news – the Twitter stories. More Twitter all the time. No I think we're done with Twitter. But I do want to mention our friends at Audible – audible.com/TWiT.
Have you ever tried audio books? Man I want to – actually I want to give you a new URL for the folks who want to do two books. It's audible.com/twit2, I'll tell you about that in a second. Audio books to me, I cannot – I'm trying to think when I got into them, I think it was when I first started my – and this was about 13 years ago, my long commute from here to the San Francisco Studios, first with the MSNBC and then Tech TV, it was an hour each way on a good day and it could be as long as two hours each way. And I'll tell you what, I would have gone crazy if I hadn't had audio books. But I just transformed the trip. It made my commute not only tolerable, but something I looked forward to. It was library time. I have read hundreds of books and I started off first with the cassettes you know and I have moved, in 2001 I moved to audible and I am – I have never looked back. Audible.com/twit2.
This is a plan I have been on since 2000. It's called the platinum plan, you get 2 books a month. This is for the person who has a long commute or does a lot of time in the gym. It's funny I don't commute anymore, but I spend an hour a day in the gym. So I still get that library time and it can be boring on the treadmill or the bicycle, but if you've got that book to listen to it goes by so fast. Sometimes I look up and I go, wow I'm done. I will say, let me do another lap, because I am in the middle of the book.
I just started a book that was recommended for me, I kind of remember if it was Paul Thurrott or Andy Inakhto who recommended this, one of our other show hosts, I am loving it. It's a very, very long book, Peter Matthiessen. It's called Shadow Country. It's the history of Florida at the turn of the century and the dialect the guy uses, Shadow Country, Peter Matthiessen. Yeah, here it is. The dialect, the guy who's reading this. It's a bravura performance. It is amazing. It's a new, they call it a new Rendering of the Watson legend. It re-imagines the legend of the inspired Everglades sugar planter and notorious outlaw E. J. Watson. I had never heard of him, maybe if you're from Florida you have. But what a cast of wild characters. Let me just play a little bit of – oh I can't, I don't have the – do me a favour, do this.
Go to audible.com. You could do this yourself. Go to audible.com/twit2, sign up for the platinum account and then this could be your first book. I think this might be two credits because it's a very, it's 40 hours, it's a little long. See I like long books, 40 hours. That was two weeks in the car. This will take me a month to get through on the treadmill. But oh man is this stuff great, I am just digging it. Peter Matthiessen, it's one of those books that it's a time and a place it evokes. If you go there you can listen to it yourself. They have previews, little samples of it and this could be yours free. It's normally $48. It's free. Shadow Country. This is one of those books you are going to get engrossed in and the reader, Anthony Heald, is absolutely brilliant, absolutely brilliant. I just love it.
So give it a try. Here is the deal, audible.com/twit2, you get the platinum account, two books. You get two credits a month. You also get free subscription to the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times daily. You get a – I didn't know this, I haven't been mentioning this. I have just seen here, you get a free subscription of the Wall Street Journal or The New York Times daily audio programs and two books.
This offer is good in the U.S. and Canada and it is just wonderful. I am a big fan, give it a try. Will you do me a favour and if you are looking for a book, there's 50,000 titles, but if you are looking for a book, try Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen, amazing.
Audible.com/twit2, you get two free audio books, two credits toward a free book and then two book credits a month and you're going to love it. Audible.com/twit2. We thank them so much for their support of This WEEK in TECH. We couldn't do it without you guys at Audible.
Shira Lazar [60:03] This is interesting, the Miramax story. I think this is interesting how – and this is how traditional – an example of how traditional media is dealing, I guess, with all these new media. They offer two free passes to prevent piracy via Twitter. What is that all about? I am just trying to figure it out…
Leo Laporte Okay. That story is kind of interesting. So a girl – oh, it's a Twitter story.
John C. Dvorak That's okay. This one...
Shira Lazar All right, I'm sorry.
John C. Dvorak This one – you have to, you have to have a drink.
Lisa Bettany Drink, drink, someone – cheers
Leo Laporte You are going to give me a pass. You give me a pass on this one, John? I don't know.
John C. Dvorak But this one, I think, is acceptable.
Leo Laporte It's an interesting story and actually it shows how a company can use Twitter, I think, very effectively if they know what they are doing. So the story starts with Twitter, it starts with the young lady pirating, saying where can I find a bit torrent of Adventure Land? I am just dying to see it, where can I download it? And is it Miramax Films, I can't remember, I think it's Miramax Films…
Shira Lazar It says Miramax here.
Leo Laporte …Twitters here back saying 'oh, don't pirate it.' Think about the people who made the movie, don't pirate it. They don't threaten anything, they just say 'oh please don't' and she says' all right because it's you and you asked nicely, I won't pirate it' and they then send her two passes to a movie.
Lisa Bettany So is that the new way of doing it?
Leo Laporte I think it's very interesting.
John C. Dvorak I don't know, it's an interesting way to get free passes.
Shira Lazar I have been seeing that more and more on Twitter where if you twit, you tweet some kind of product name, then they will add you right away and maybe even contact you.
John C. Dvorak Really, let me just check that out
Leo Laporte Does this make sense though for a company to do this. I mean is this crazy?
John C. Dvorak You know these companies –
Leo Laporte These companies are giving all that weight to Twitter that you denied existed. I mean they are acting like this is...
John C. Dvorak No, no I never said that. I never denied it existed. When was this?
Leo Laporte I don't know. I thought you did.
John C. Dvorak No, I am the one who said that Britney Spears was going to come in and take over the place.
Lisa Bettany We just don't like talking about it.
Leo Laporte No, you did say that and you were close. Britney almost got to a million.
John C. Dvorak Yeah.
Leo Laporte But we were saying oh come on, it's just a fraction of the total world. It's not the real world, why are we giving it so much weight? But yet these companies say hey if bad stuff happens about us on Twitter, that's something we have to deal with. They must – is that the right attitude?
John C. Dvorak No. It's seen as the tip of an iceberg. That's why they get so carried away when just a few people bitch.
Shira Lazar But I think it's cool because it's making people – companies and people accessible. And it's…
Leo Laporte But accessible to who? The few million people on Twitter. That's a fraction of –
Shira Lazar Well that is a fraction of that – we are saying it like if Twitter is such a huge thing, but yeah if you look at the amount of people involved in it...
Leo Laporte If I were a –
Shira Laza It's nothing compared to the rest of the world.
Leo Laporte Don't you think real people should start to say, gosh how do we get good customer service? You mean I have to go on twitter to get the customer service?
Shira Lazar Well that's the problem, no that's the problem with the companies. We shouldn't have to ask for good customer service. The fact is we should be supporting companies like a Zappos that is creating that culture around their company.
John C. Dvorak Is that something you learned at Foo Camp?
Shira Lazar No, I know Tony and I respect the company.
John C. Dvorak Who's asking?
Leo Laporte Zappos is an amazing story…
Shira Lazar Zappos is an amazing story.
Leo Laporte …it became a billion dollar shoe company in a commodity business.
John C. Dvorak I got a good response when I went to Comcast Cares and I used Twitter to do it.
Leo Laporte Frank does a great job.
John C. Dvorak Frank's a good guy, Frank; you rock.
Shira Lazar No I'm not – and people are saying like oh Zappos, like I am being paid, I am not being paid.
Leo Laporte No, no, no, no, no, no, no, Zappos is a very good example of how this works.
Shira Lazar I just think that's a next wave of entrepreneurship and companies and brands is in terms of creating culture on it and the fact is you need to communicate. And not just through Twitter. Twitter is just one tool and if people realize...
Leo Laporte The problem is –
Shira Lazar …that's beyond that, then they will see something bigger. It's not...
Leo Laporte Here's the problem. Twitter is managed –
John C. Dvorak There we go, see now we are off the track again, but go ahead I am sorry.
Leo Laporte Twitter is manageable, because it's a few million people. If you have tens of millions of customers, you cannot offer that level of customer service.
Shira Lazar But they need to realize they can do that without Twitter. It's an easy –
Leo Laporte No, they can't.
Shira Lazar But meaning Twitter was one tool.
John C. Dvorak No, no I am sorry ladies and gentlemen.
Shira Lazar But Twitter is one tool but the fact is they realizing they can act a way up –
Leo Laporte My point –
Shira Lazar Do you see what I am saying or?
John C. Dvorak No.
Shira Lazar What I am saying is that Twitter is one tool and not –
Leo Laporte He's having a pure allergic reaction to the word Twitter, he's not listening to your words.
John C. Dvorak I am trying to listen to you but your sentence structure has fallen apart as of about 15 minutes ago.
Shira Lazar All right, what I am saying is that people are finally realizing that we can all connect and we can all help each other and you can connect –
John C. Dvorak Whose 'people'?
Shira Lazar Brands and companies. So like Miramax.
John C. Dvorak Some people.
Shira Lazar So they are looking at Twitter because it's like, oh a trendy buzz thing.
Leo Laporte Gorg says in the chatroom and I think this is exactly – he's saying in the FriendFeed. Yeah, these companies if you Twitter they will contact you but try to call their telephone support lines –
Shira Lazar That's what I am saying. They need to realize that there are something about connecting and it's beyond Twitter. It happens that now –
Leo Laporte Here's why they do it that way. It's cheap to hire three people to monitor Twitter. It's a lot more to have telephone support lines at work. This in a way is underscoring the BS of Twitter, the Ashton Kutcher BS of Twitter, which is that it's somehow significant and that we are providing real customer support because we get pressed for our work in Twitter. It's not real customer support, they can't do real customer support. Try calling Comcast and saying my cable's down. They don't help you, you have to go on Twitter to do it. Well it's easy to mange Twitter, because that's a few million people, right I mean...
Shira Lazar Yeah. Well, I think one of the most important things is how much – So Ashton Kutcher, he has million over million. But how many of these people are actual…
Lisa Bettany Engaging.
Shira Lazar Yeah. Everyone joined and they are not –
Leo Laporte It's all phony-baloney engagements.
Shira Lazar All right, so wait
John C. Dvorak Oh, here we go.
Shira Lazar Ashton Kutcher has his Facebook, headquarter show, Facebook HQ. And what, it has 10,000 views? But he has a million followers. So you can have followers, but it was a question I asked this week, what's more important; quality or quantity of followers?
Leo Laporte Well clearly, it's quality but let me read you –
John C. Dvorak Oh! How?! I disagree.
Leo Laporte You don't think so.
John C. Dvorak No.
Leo Laporte That's an interesting question. I mean, when you are in mainstream media, it's the raw number. Like Seinfeld has 18 million people, nobody asks the question how many people are drunk, asleep, fornicating. They just say there's 18 million people. But when we are talking about new media like this, they very much – our advertisers very much care about who's watching. There is – and that's why we can compete with large media outlets, because we offer a higher quality. A smaller number, but a higher quality of audience.
John C. Dvorak I am not saying – now what you have done here with that commentary is change the subject. And I find it very amusing with the way you did it because all of a sudden you changed from Twitter to talking about –
Leo Laporte I am trying to help you, John. You are the one who doesn't want to talk about Twitter.
John C. Dvorak I am just going to say that the Twitter audience is the numbers probably more important than the quality of the people if you have like –
Leo Laporte Oh that's true and that's what wrong with it is all we are saying.
John C. Dvorak Oh.
Shira Lazar Perception is reality.
Leo Laporte You are saying that's okay? You would rather have a million Ashton Kutcher followers?
John C. Dvorak Yeah.
Leo Laporte You would?
John C. Dvorak Yeah.
Leo Laporte You think that's more valuable?
John C. Dvorak Yeah. I'm in the mailing list business.
Leo Laporte That's right. You have always said that.
Shira Lazar So, exactly, so you would rather be giving out CDs like AOL or actually engaging the people with the progressive companies?
John C. Dvorak Yes.
Leo Laporte He would and you know what he probably is right.
John C. Dvorak You see you are the idealist. You go to Foo Camp and the next thing you know you are like Lenin.
Shira Lazar So, it's like in the end, people that are going to be having all these followers, waiting –
Leo Laporte John or –
Shira Lazar So, it's like in AOL that sends out their CDs and we throw them out or something that's a bit more –
Leo Laporte John or Vladimir, I couldn't remember his first name.
John C. Dvorak Vladimir. It took you a while.
Leo Laporte It took me a while.
John C. Dvorak So you – go ahead, I am sorry we are interrupting you.
Shira Lazar But I am just saying that it's like –
John C. Dvorak I think your throat is parched.
Leo Laporte Have a drink.
Shira Lazar I didn't say that word yet.
Leo Laporte And Lisa was supposed to be the cheap drink.
John C. Dvorak I know these Montreal women, they're all like this, they like to drink.
Shira Lazar Yeah, I just –
Leo Laporte You're the bitter one.
Shira Lazar If you have a million followers...
Leo Laporte Yes.
Shira Lazar …but they are not engaging.
Leo Laporte If they are not even on Twitter, they're just kind of there once and disappear.
Shira Lazar But if you tell them okay check out my blog post, check out my photo and they are not engaging and you only get a thousand people going to that…
Leo Laporte What good is it?
Shira Lazar …what good is it?
Lisa Bettany Yeah it doesn't matter.
Shira Lazar But if you have a massive amount of people, like even my followers –
Leo Laporte Who brought down Shira Lazar's website? Who brought down –
Shira Lazar A guy said that it's going back up.
Leo Laporte Who brought it down?
Shira Lazar You.
Leo Laporte Ashton Kutcher? No.
Shira Lazar No, you.
Leo Laporte Oprah Winfrey? No. Who brought down Shira Lazar's website?
Shira Lazar You, Leo.
Leo Laporte Not because of the number, because I don't have a million followers. But because those two thousand people...
Shira Lazar Are actually listening to you.
Leo Laporte …are actually paying attention.
Lisa Bettany I agree, so…
Leo Laporte So get this. Okay this is going to make John spew. Take a drink of wine while I tell you the story.
Shira Lazar Cheers.
John C. Dvorak I will tell you what, bottoms-up, come on.
Leo Laporte Bottoms-up. Geez, John, you are bad.
John C. Dvorak Come on.
Leo Laporte So Ashton Kutcher's on Ustream. He's streaming. It's about 10 at night, 11 at night. He's streaming as he is trying to get to one million people, 2:13 am Eastern Time. CNN has 998,239 followers as CNN break. Ashton Kutcher crosses one million. He tweets to his followers. Victory is ours. Now, John this is the –
Shira Lazar This is like the Olympics.
Leo Laporte This is the part you are going to like, John, Ashton Kutcher, your friend Shira Lazar "this is like putting a man on the moon"
John C. Dvorak Oh please.
Leo Laporte "This is like changing media forever."
John C. Dvorak Yeah, right.
Leo Laporte It's the web versus the world right now, people. Can you believe this crap?
Shira Lazar I like how he takes credit for –
John C. Dvorak I've heard worse.
Shira Lazar For being the first.
John C. Dvorak I don't blame him.
Leo Laporte [69:01] CEO of Google, Mr. Eric Schmidt, predicts good times ahead for Android. He says he's expecting Android on netbooks, other mobile Internet devices. He says we are not even pushing them to do it. They are doing it themselves. Acer is doing it, netbooks, rumoured to be an EPC using Android. Android could become the first real challenger to Windows XP on these netbooks. Do any of you use G1 phone? No. You're black [BlackBerry] –
Shira Lazar No.
John C. Dvorak I do.
Leo Laporte You do?
Shira Lazar Really? What do you think of it?
John C. Dvorak I love it.
Leo Laporte No, you don't.
Shira Lazar What about the battery life?
John C. Dvorak It sucks. It makes the thing unusable.
Leo Laporte It's terrible, it's terrible. You know what's cool, you can watch us on the G1.
Shira Lazar But you can't watch it on the iPhone?
John C. Dvorak The G1 is the best.
Leo Laporte You can watch on the iPhone but you can watch it on this.
Shira Lazar I use, I am sorry, I'll admit I am old school.
John C. Dvorak Let's see what you got here.
Leo Laporte She's a BlackBerry, it looks like a Curve. Is that a Bold?
Shira Lazar It's a Bold edition.
John C. Dvorak Ah, now I've got your phone.
Shira Lazar Oh God, no.
Leo Laporte See if she follows any celebrities.
Shira Lazar Damn it, why did I give that away?
Leo Laporte What celebrities does she follow?
John C. Dvorak She's got somebody named Casey Clingon [ph] I guess he's a guy – actor.
Shira Lazar Those are my new Twitter friends, okay?
Leo Laporte Did you meet him at Foo Camp?
Shira Lazar Um…
Leo Laporte Yes, you meant at Foo Camp.
Shira Lazar No, this is – I should take off – for some reason since. This is weird, I don't know if there is a correlation. All right I'm not going back to Twitter, but since all the Twitter stuff happened on Friday I have started like literally, I get alerts every minute.
John C. Dvorak Oh you should turn that off.
Lisa Bettany Turn that off.
Leo Laporte Alerts from whom?
Lisa Bettany That's the first step.
John C. Dvorak That sucks.
Shira Lazar Let's go back to the Andriod, wait, wait wait, so in terms of phones what do you –
Leo Laporte You know what I am excited about and you are going to think I am nuts?
John C. Dvorak You changed the subject, you didn't let her finish her sentence.
Leo Laporte Go ahead, please finish your sentence, I am sorry.
Shira Lazar No, I was saying I want to go back to that, because we could go into other conversations.
John C. Dvorak Okay, never mind, Leo?
Shira Lazar Let's go back to the Android because I think that's what people want to talk about.
Leo Laporte I am excited, believe it or not about the new Sidekick. Looks really good, the 2009 Sidekick. And it has –
John C. Dvorak The Sidekick?
Leo Laporte It has, it has, yeah I know isn't that weird?
John C. Dvorak That is weird.
Shira Lazar Oh my God I had an ex-boyfriend who was totally into the Sidekick
John C. Dvorak Yeah?
Shira Lazar Back in the day. And he would be like, it's like that flip thing.
Leo Laporte Yeah the 'whoot!' It was for young people. He was probably pretty young when he was –
Shira Lazar What is so cool about the Sidekick now –
John C. Dvorak How old was he?
Shira Lazar He was like in his early twenties.
John C. Dvorak How old were you at the time?
Shira Lazar In my early twenties at that time.
John C. Dvorak Yeah.
Shira Lazar No but, what is the big thing about the Sidekick? Why do people like it?
Leo Laporte Well, the new Sidekick has –
John C. Dvorak I never liked it. It's a big – always been a big brick.
Leo Laporte It's kind of a clunky thing.
Shira Lazar I don't like it, yeah.
Leo Laporte The new one's thinner, better looking, has built-in My Space, Facebook and Twitter support. It's really focussed on social networks.
Shira Lazar Do you think phones of the next version – do you think the next version?
Leo Laporte Don't look at me Lisa – Lisa's going like 'ooh? Is it that..?'
Shira Lazar What happened to the iPhone, the iPhone –
Leo Laporte I am still an iPhone fan.
Shira Lazar You can't text properly or write e-mails properly with iPhone, that's the problem.
John C. Dvorak You like the keyboard.
Shira Lazar And video.
Lisa Bettany It's challenging though.
Shira Lazar Challenging, well not when I'm in – driving in my car...
Leo Laporte Okay Lisa. Here, okay I am going to give you a few reasons why you might want to look at this.
Lisa Bettany Okay, okay.
Leo Laporte 3.2 megapixel camera. Does video.
Shira Lazar What the Sidekick?
Leo Laporte Uploads it directly to YouTube – yeah, uploads directly to YouTube. This is might be your replacement for your N95.
Shira Lazar Yeah.
Leo Laporte It also has built-in GPS. It does pretty much all –
John C. Dvorak My E71 does all this stuff
Lisa Bettany But I just got this one.
Leo Laporte You just got an iPhone?
Lisa Bettany I waited for a very long time.
Leo Laporte You mean you just got an iPhone?
Lisa Bettany Well, when Canada got them.
Leo Laporte Oh yeah, you had, you got one –
Shira Lazar Yeah because you know what Canada actually had some issues, because the cell phone, the cost of your plans is different.
John C. Dvorak It's like a hair trigger on this camera.
Shira Lazar Like they are just really not advanced with their cell phone coverage. And the technology is totally ridiculous.
Leo Laporte Oh it's terrible. How much you pay for data? Lisa you must be paying through the nose on the data on this thing.
Lisa Bettany It's bad, especially when I am down here, I need to figure out…
Shira Lazar I have the Verizon plan, they used to have a North American plan, so I go to Canada and I don't need to pay for anything, just minutes.
Leo Laporte Rumor has it, how do you like this? iPhone App for Hulu. Would that put you over the top?
Lisa Bettany Yes, yes, yes.
Leo Laporte Would that put you over – that would make you, that would make you want an iPhone.
Lisa Bettany I love that about – I came here and I...
Leo Laporte You can't get Hulu in Canada.
Lisa Bettany We can't – or Pandora.
Shira Lazar What do you mean you can't? That's ridiculous.
John C. Dvorak You can through a proxy.
Leo Laporte You have to lie, yeah. And it's too slow. Often the proxy is really making it unusable.
Lisa Bettany Yeah, it's – I mean I love that. Whenever I come down I'm like 'ooh.'
Shira Lazar That's like MTV back in the day, when I was growing up, I couldn't up get any American channels, so Nickelodeon and MTV like the two networks.
Leo Laporte Now you have MuchMusic and now you have MTV Canada, which is God awful.
Shira Lazar But phones are obviously emulating almost cable TV. Back in the day we couldn't get – like Canadian viewers couldn't get that and so – but that it's so archaic to me how with the technology we can't find a way to bring that on phones to Canada, which is basically, it's all geography. It's just like borders that are separating us.
Leo Laporte Yeah well, it's some –
John C. Dvorak She has 23 apps. Everyone has hundreds.
Lisa Bettany No I'm minimal.
Leo Laporte Oh she hasn't had time, I have 10 pages of apps.
John C. Dvorak She got the flashlight though.
Leo Laporte You have the flashlight app?
John C. Dvorak The flashlight, I never use that flashlight app.
Lisa Bettany I use that all the time.
Leo Laporte Really?
Lisa Bettany I do, for photos –
Leo Laporte Really?
Lisa Bettany And for – you can do really to long exposures with it.
Leo Laporte What's your favourite iPhone app right now? Do you have one that you use compulsively?
Lisa Bettany I loved Click.
Leo Laporte I don't have that one.
Lisa Bettany Click is a Flickr application and you can view – I love looking at sort of the explore photos and I love looking at my contacts' photos. Right now, I guess just what I have been looking at on the Internet is just photography stuff.
Leo Laporte Right.
Lisa Bettany That's what I did after the pandering.
Leo Laporte You said I am going to settle down and I'm going to focus on my photography.
Lisa Bettany I am going to focus on my photography.
Leo Laporte And you know what you decided – it's kind of funny because you decided to take pictures of models instead of be the model.
Lisa Bettany Yes.
Leo Laporte That gave you power?
Lisa Bettany I took the power back.
John C. Dvorak Gave you the power.
Shira Lazar She likes telling people what to do.
John C. Dvorak And now she's power mad. She is power mad.
Leo Laporte No, but I think the photographer has the power in that relationship.
Shira Lazar This is getting weird.
John C. Dvorak What is this? This is getting too weird. This show ladies and gentlemen. This is out of control.
Shira Lazar Let's go back to phones. Because I feel like – what is –
John C. Dvorak Glad I didn't call in.
Leo Laporte Hold on, hold on. Before we go on I want to mention Go To Meeting. Go To Meeting yes our fine sponsors at Citrix. Did you know the average customer business trip these days is $1000? That's plane fare, hotel, meals, cabs. It really adds up. And I have to ask you this question, do you think it is more effective, do you think you get more done? I think that's the old way of meeting. I think the new way to meeting is eliminate the waste, have all the meetings you want for $49 a month, $1000, $49? And the thing is it's just as effective because you are using Go To Meeting.
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Shira Lazar [77:00] The big story people want to talk about and I see is coming up in the chat, because I am on the chat, is the Time Warner story.
Leo Laporte We did that.
John C. Dvorak What is she on, is that a PR-30A or what's the number on that?
Leo Laporte No it's PR-40.
John C. Dvorak How come it's shiny?
Leo Laporte Hers is newer than yours. Yours is tarnished by spittle.
John C. Dvorak No, no, there's no spittle on it, it's like she's shined it up or something.
Shira Lazar All right so no story, I am sorry. I'm not going to listen to you...
Leo Laporte No, no that's a good story, but we did it last week, it's –
Shira Lazar Why are people still talking about it?
Leo Laporte Because people don't listen, they think they listen to the show but they don't. You need to listen to every single word of every single show. So, here's what happened with Time Warner. They announced they were going to do caps, pretty serious caps. Yeah, remember this, 50 Gb caps and then they kind of backed off and tiered – and this is John, go back and listen to TWiT190, John and I talk about it.
John C. Dvorak I listened to that one two or three times so far.
Shira Lazar So it's old news, guys.
Leo Laporte John how is No Agenda going?
John C. Dvorak No Agenda is a great show, it's every Thursday and it is also on Sunday. And unfortunately next week is going to be kind of confused. But we got good numbers, we got about 250,000 listeners.
Leo Laporte You are so full of it, you do not have 250,000 listeners.
John C. Dvorak Oh yeah, we do.
Leo Laporte If Adam is telling you that, he is lying to you
John C. Dvorak No, we have lots.
Leo Laporte Okay.
John C. Dvorak And so you go to noagenda.mevio.com if you want listen in or go to No Agenda Stream which we have a really –
Leo Laporte Yeah, he is streaming it. That's kind of interesting, that's kind of like a radio show.
John C. Dvorak He loves radio. I want to thank Alvin Trusty [ph] for sending me the University of Findlay 2009 NCAA National Championship in men's division two basketball. I thank you for the hoodie, it's a beauty.
Leo Laporte So, everybody wants me to bring up the Digg bar for the third show in a row, I have brought this stupid story up every show for the last fours shows, let's see if we get any more interest. Digg bar, what do you think.
John C. Dvorak What is the Digg bar?
Shira Lazar It's keeping people in the site. It's not –
Leo Laporte They actually backed off, they backed off a little bit on the Digg bar this week.
Shira Lazar The whole thing is – and I was also asking that for a while was that these people within that world, the Digg world and it's like instead –
Leo Laporte Kevin apologized, he said yeah you are right, we did it wrong.
John C. Dvorak Did what wrong?
Shira Lazar The Digg bar.
John C. Dvorak Oh the Digg bar
Shira Lazar You are not even listening anymore.
John C. Dvorak I am sorry, you are right.
Shira Lazar But what do you think…
Leo Laporte I didn't like –
Shira Lazar The whole deal with Digg was that people – it helped hits to other –
John C. Dvorak People are having a conversation amongst themselves.
Shira Lazar It helped people get hits and views to their site.
Leo Laporte Kevin was on, Kevin was on this show a few weeks ago. He said we are going a do URL shortener and I said that's a great idea, Digg should do a URL shortener. Unfortunately when they released it, it framed sites. The way you were do it, you type digg.com/website. So, you digg.com/http://mostlylisa.com, people would get to mostlylisa.com, but it would be – all of the hits would go to Digg.com. It would be framed within Digg's site. So, Digg was getting the site.
John C. Dvorak They were framing?
Leo Laporte Yes.
John C. Dvorak That's ridiculous.
Leo Laporte I agree.
John C. Dvorak I thought everybody stopped doing that years ago.
Leo Laporte It was very '90s. People quite rightly complained about this. Kevin realized, yeah, you know what we shouldn't have done that. They have backed off now. A lot of sites did an interesting thing, I think it was ReadWriteWeb said here is how you block the Digg Bar with a couple of lines of JavaScript. That's when I think Digg realized, oops. See we might have gone a little too far on this. It was a blatant grab for hits. It made perfect sense from a business point of view. It didn't make such a good idea, it wasn't a good idea from the internet community point of view. They have backed down now on it and I think they did back down. Also, a follow-up on our story, John, from last week, Microsoft is going to do a company tavern after all.
John C. Dvorak Oh, that's a good thing.
Leo Laporte Wow, that's another bullet dodged.
John C. Dvorak They need drinks there at that place.
Lisa Bettany I am sure they have an open bar, they have medical insurance...
John C. Dvorak No, don't kid yourself. The last…
Leo Laporte All the Mountain Dew you can drink.
John C. Dvorak I think the only place right now, the only really jumping place, has got to be Google at the campus.
Lisa Bettany I know that place is great.
John C. Dvorak Have you been there?
Lisa Bettany No.
Leo Laporte Wait a minute, wait a minute. What podcast serves the most wine?
John C. Dvorak Well apparently this one.
Leo Laporte Yes, thank you.
Lisa Bettany And sushi and cheese.
Leo Laporte Much to our detriment I might add.
John C. Dvorak No, I think the show is improved by the wine.
Leo Laporte I don't know.
Lisa Bettany And the heat, it's great.
John C. Dvorak The heat and the wine, you had to drink a lot.
Lisa Bettany This is the sweaty, wine, random food show.
John C. Dvorak You got a bunch of sweaty whatever.
Lisa Bettany When we come back here …
John C. Dvorak It's hot! It's 95 degrees.
Leo Laporte I think – I believe, did I not send you a note saying that it was going to be very warm in here and dress accordingly? I believe I did send you that…
John C. Dvorak Well she's dressed, she doesn't have any clothes on barely.
Lisa Bettany I'm pretty clothed.
Leo Laporte This is a part of the show –
John C. Dvorak She's not wearing a fur coat.
Lisa Bettany I will have you know I tried on so many different tops.
Shira Lazar Really.
Lisa Bettany Yes, because people it's like, oh you are wearing a low cut top and then…
Leo Laporte But you chose the low cut top?
Lisa Bettany But I didn't, I am wearing.
Leo Laporte She is trying to bring it up now. It's too late, you can't stretch it.
Shira Lazar No, she actually…I was wearing a high, like a high cut top.
John C. Dvorak Now we got the showdown between the two women. Who has got the best top on.
Leo Laporte I decided to wear my Ralph Lauren shirt. This is a yellow shirt. This is something you don't see a lot of it. It is a button down collar on a Hawaiian shirt, Ralph Lauren design, what do you think?
John C. Dvorak I think it's…
Leo Laporte I have worn this for many years. I found this to be very attractive.
John C. Dvorak You know, I am going to bring up a story since we are talking about Hawaiian shirts. Leo used to work at this place called TechTV.
Leo Laporte I remember it.
John C. Dvorak And he used to wear, in one of the…
Lisa Bettany Doing the Ev, ok, people are replying to Ev. Alright guys, sorry, reply to Ev more.
John C. Dvorak I'll never get this story out.
Lisa Bettany With the Ev, being Shira Lazar, I'm a geek.
Leo Laporte What are they saying?
Lisa Bettany They are saying the Ev being Shira Lazar, I am a geek.
Leo Laporte But they are not doing it right.
Lisa Bettany They are doing Ev Shira Lazar, help Shira. That's what you need to do, guys.
John C. Dvorak Are you shocked by the fact that people are doing this after we told them to do it?
Lisa Bettany I think I am always shocked no matter what, I think that maybe that, sort of, creates my naiveté towards – I am always shocked…
John C. Dvorak You have negativity, toward what?
Lisa Bettany Towards everything I…
Leo Laporte Naiveté.
John C. Dvorak Oh, naiveté.
Lisa Bettany No, I think it's great when you are come in to things like you can't expect anything but when you see people responding that's so amazing. Like, sometimes I put up videos and…
Leo Laporte Oh, oh here's one.
John C. Dvorak She is flabbergasted.
Leo Laporte From A. Hurundal [ph] he says "Time Warner gave up because of complaints. There are no tears now; you are an ass dismissing her story. It's not old."
Lisa Bettany Ooh.
John C. Dvorak You are an ass.
Leo Laporte I am an ass.
John C. Dvorak That is horrible what you did.
Leo Laporte Here's another one from Craig Durling [ph]. "This show is a train wreck…"
John C. Dvorak Ha! He might have got that right!
Leo Laporte "Un-subbing from the podcast, this just ain't what it used to be." You haven't heard…
John C. Dvorak People love train wrecks, that's the point.
Leo Laporte What's funny is you haven't heard the podcast, you are just watching the live show.
John C. Dvorak Yeah, the podcast is going to be –
Leo Laporte We're going to cut all this out.
John C. Dvorak Very few people realize how much postproduction Leo puts into these things. He'll spends nights…
Leo Laporte This is typical, this is the typical BS. Oh, I will tell you a story we didn't do, and last Sunday was when it was breaking and we came very close to doing it and my instinct said, wait a little bit and that's the Amazon fail story. You probably followed this. It was a big twitter story, the hash tag was amazonfail. Amazon all of a sudden on Sunday started delisting books that had gay and lesbian themes.
Shira Lazar On Easter Sunday, yeah.
Leo Laporte On Easter Sunday, this was last week. And there was a lot of tweeting going on, a lot of anger about it going on. People felt there couldn't possibly be a mistake. Amazon was actively discriminating against gays and lesbians. I saw this at the time and I thought, something doesn't feel right about this story. I am not going to do it on TWiT, we haven't heard the whole thing.
John C. Dvorak The second sense.
Leo Laporte And I am glad I did because I have – I mean, now, we don't exactly know happened. Amazon says it was database error. This is what didn't sit right with me. Amazon probably has many gay and lesbian people working there. I would be very shocked if they had any negative feelings towards gays and lesbians. They certainly would never ever have a policy where they would block this.
John C. Dvorak Yeah, no chance. Zero.
Leo Laporte Zero chance. So, I knew there was something wrong that this just didn't smell right. However, a lot of people, in fact people, maybe some people who should have known better, jumped on the story and made it a big great deal. In fact a number of people had to back down and say I am sorry, I was wrong.
Shira Lazar On twitter everyone was revolting against Amazon.
Leo Laporte But it just shows you how quickly and this is may be the failing of this new media is that the stuff can, without any kind of, it's a mob mentality, without any kind of…
John C. Dvorak Mob-ocracy.
Shira Lazar So we were saying it's about engagement, not about content, meaning maybe the power of the web is not as much about, just fully the content, but yeah but the conversation...
Leo Laporte Yeah.
Shira Lazar Do you know what I – that's what I was saying. Conversation –
Leo Laporte Well there's certainly a conversation.
Shira Lazar Conversation is just as important as the content.
Leo Laporte But there is this mob sense where people can go out and they can attack other people and it becomes – now, I have to think Amazon got a little pain out of this. How many people still believe Amazon discriminated against gays and lesbians –
John C. Dvorak Because of the bad – because of the wave of fake news.
Leo Laporte Right, yeah.
John C. Dvorak This is by the way the way it is going to be from now on out.
Leo Laporte Now, here's an example…
John C. Dvorak We are all doomed by this.
Leo Laporte Well, here's a good counter example, Domino's Pizza. A very big viral video of two Domino's employees just, I mean it was awful, I mean it…
John C. Dvorak They were spitting in the food.
Leo Laporte They were farting on the sandwiches…it was really, it was gross. Now, what do you think of the way Domino's handled it. They immediately, I thought it was very interesting, Robert Scoble made this point on FriendFeed and I think he was right on. What they did is they went back to that same medium, they went to YouTube, the President of Domino's made a video that was fairly unscripted and fairly genuine saying this is awful, we fired those people. We have sanitized that particular Domino's. We actually closed it and sanitized the whole place so that you feel comfortable eating there. This is not how we behave. This is a very bad thing and we want you to know we believe in the cleanliness of our food and we do not do this. We do not endorse this. I think he handled that very well.
John C. Dvorak The one thing I think they should have done also was sue those guys.
Leo Laporte Well I am sure – they are being charged with felonies, which is pretty serious.
John C. Dvorak Just a bunch of goofballs that –
Shira Lazar But it's cool that it – I mean you don't want to be eating that pizza.
John C. Dvorak No, I agree with that, but…
Leo Laporte But now, how much damage…
John C. Dvorak …but the goofballs that go on and make these videos, and they're not thinking. Remember the girl that got beat up by her friends?
Shira Lazar Like, how stupid are these people.
Leo Laporte But here's my point, here's my point. Compare and contrast these two stories. Where Amazon got – very much got a PR hit from this Amazon fail, did not I think respond…
Shira Lazar Take responsibility. Yeah.
Leo Laporte …as proactively and as effectively as Domino's which could, I mean this could have really damaged Domino's.
Shira Lazar So, how are brands supposed to take responsibility when this twitter effect happens? Or should they be coming out publicly or not? Like what is the line of responsibility and like how –
Leo Laporte I am just interested in how you respond as a company when this kind of –
John C. Dvorak Public relations agencies are having meetings 24 – well not, 24/7 obviously. They are having nothing…
Shira Lazar But should it be the CEO or should it be a PR person.
John C. Dvorak No, it should always be the CEO, if you have a choice…
Lisa Bettany I think it means more when it comes from the top.
Leo Laporte Did you watch the Domino's response at all?
Lisa Bettany I did, yeah.
Leo Laporte What do you think? Was it effective to you?
Lisa Bettany It was effective, I mean when they sort of reach out on that level…
Leo Laporte I think it was very effective, surprisingly so. If you'd asked me after the first video, I thought Domino's can't recover from this. Remember the, there is always those rats in the McDonald's food and stuff, and that stuff lives forever, these urban legends.
John C. Dvorak You see the one that's floating around about the Australian McDonald's, the dirty place filled with paper and dirt? I've send it to you, because…
Leo Laporte Dvorak uncensored.
John C. Dvorak Dvorak uncensored, dvorak.org/blog/
Shira Lazar It creates a – it establishes like what you expect from a place, so you are like, okay this is not a high quality place.
Leo Laporte But it gets in your mind.
Shira Lazar But you're happy to use your local one. So you still go there, I mean…
Leo Laporte Really, I don't know.
Shira Lazar Did it hit McDonald's sales.
Leo Laporte I will tell you when I first became aware of this, my kids – I'm riding on the car with four 14 year boys and they are talking about this and they are saying, well we are not going to – let's order pizza tonight, not Domino's. Not Domino's.
John C. Dvorak I would not order Domino's pizza for the reason that I don't like the pizza.
Leo Laporte They order it every night, it's cardboard I know, but they order it every night.
John C. Dvorak Cardboard.
Shira Lazar Can I say something, I hope people start choosing their local places to go, not as much corporate but…
Leo Laporte Well I agree with you. I think it's a shame, I am with you on that.
Shira Lazar …a local spot, and places that create their food…
Leo Laporte They make it locally I agree, sustainable.
Shira Lazar …or get it locally, or get it in a ten mile radius outside the city, I mean that's I think the new wave of looking at it. And there is actually, there is a site that you can go to which can find the food and the restaurants that get food in your area. So, I think that's the next place where we are going.
Leo Laporte Anyway I just thought that was a very, I mean what Amazon did I thought was, not Amazon, oh yeah, I think Amazon did not handle it as well as they could have.
John C. Dvorak Yeah, but Amazon doesn't have a CEO that's as presentable as the guy from Domino's. I mean I think Bezos is…
Leo Laporte Wait a minute, Bezos could come on.
John C. Dvorak Yeah, but if he laughs or something, it's over.
Leo Laporte Well just tell him, Jeff; you can't laugh, this is serious. I don't think that's a problem. I think Jeff Bezos should have…
John C. Dvorak No, he probably shouldn't.
Leo Laporte …he should have done a video or something. He should have come forward and said; "let me tell me something. We don't discriminate against gays and lesbians. We believe firmly in free speech of this company. We would never do this intentionally. This was a programming error. We are very sorry. We will never do it again." That would have been very effective and he did not do that.
Shira Lazar The thing is, sometimes things like that happen, and as long as CEOs come out and are transparent and are sincere it's okay. It's okay.
Leo Laporte Yeah, I'm with you. And I think Domino's is the example of how you do it and I think Amazon might be an example of how you don't do it. These things live forever.
John C. Dvorak I don't think you're really going to hurt Amazon at all.
Leo Laporte May be not, I mean Amazon may be not as vulnerable but Domino's would be vulnerable.
Shira Lazar If anything, it gets your name out there more and so people see it on Twitter, the latest trends, Amazon they go to it, I mean in the end it helps. But you just need to take responsibility for everything.
Leo Laporte Tech Illuminati: "had to stop listening to TWiT, unlistenable, unsubbed. I seek tech news, TWiT doesn't have that."
John C. Dvorak See? This is what I've been saying by the way for you listeners out there, I've been saying that when I led the show from two years ago; was all news.
Leo Laporte Shut up, you're such a liar. Michael Graham says "I think Laporte and Dvorak are intoxicated, it is hilarious."
John C. Dvorak Oh please. You don't know what intoxicated is.
Leo Laporte Oh, and by the way A. Hurundal the guy who was talking, said "I am sorry I seem mean, but thanks for the mention."
John C. Dvorak Yeah, that's what it is all about.
Leo Laporte It really comes down to that. "TWiT has gone off the rails tonight" says Ben Sanders.
Shira Lazar Oh my god.
Leo Laporte "But I like it."
John C. Dvorak Oh, Ben. Ben's a good man.
Shira Lazar We are just being real, it was like if you are – we're at a dinner, and having conversation.
John C. Dvorak That's the problem, this is like being at a dinner.
Leo Laporte Yes, exactly. It wasn't a broadcast, it was dinner.
John C. Dvorak It was dinner with nothing but – with wine and cheese. We didn't even have a main course.
Leo Laporte Lisa Bettany is Mostly Lisa, mostlylisa.com. She is a great photographer and a wonderful person. I am so glad we saw you. I am sorry that you had to come up here on such a hot day.
Lisa Bettany It's nice though.
John C. Dvorak She actually looks wet now, she's sweaty…
Leo Laporte No, no. She looks, she looks – she is glowing. Horses sweat John, men perspire but women…
Lisa Bettany I was the cop of this show today telling you off.
John C. Dvorak You should have arrested everyone.
Leo Laporte Good job. Shira Lazar is at shiralazar.com.
Shira Lazar Oh, it's cold in here.
Leo Laporte She is freezing, that's why she has got the wool hat on. You can find – soon we are going to see the "I am a Geek" video coming in a couple of weeks.
Shira Lazar May 11th, around then. But we'll all be tweeting it out.
Leo Laporte And I will be in it and lot of great people will be in it.
Shira Lazar shiralazar.com, twitter.com/shiralazar.
Leo Laporte twitter.com/mostlylisa because Ev gave you back your name.
Lisa Bettany They did!
Leo Laporte Yay!
Shira Lazar Yay Twitter – oh. Do you say Twitter?
Leo Laporte Oh, I love that.
Lisa Bettany I only got like 100 more followers and I…
Leo Laporte You thought you'd get more?
Lisa Bettany It's the only reason I come on this show. Just to see how many more Twitter followers…
Leo Laporte John C. Dvorak I am not going home if she is, is at channeldvorak.com. He also looks great in a Mountie hat.
John C. Dvorak I think I should become a Mountie now. I think there's a lot of Mountie jokes we can do as a matter of fact.
Leo Laporte Is that a Mountie hat or is that a – that might a forest ranger hat. Lady, Indians ride bareback. Hey Boo Boo!
John C. Dvorak Hey Boo Boo!
Leo Laporte Hey Boo Boo! Yogi!
John C. Dvorak Yeah, the Indians ride bareback.
Leo Laporte channeldvorak.com, No Agenda, crankygeeks.com.
Shira Lazar Is this you riding some horses, Leo?
John C. Dvorak Yeah, I will be riding horses later.
Leo Laporte But not bareback.
John C. Dvorak No.
Leo Laporte No, only Indians do that. I hope this is not more than a half hour show for, those of you listening at home, if it is I apologize.
John C. Dvorak Because he has cut most of it out and he has just put in all ads.
Leo Laporte I have – it's all ads and a few stories. We thank you so much. I promise we will get back on the shark and ride it into the sunset next week. Another TWiT is in the can.
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