Our world-famous “
What?!?!” section is filled with links, videos and pictures that generally elicit the same response. These usually feature oddball circus freaks and Photoshopped masterpieces, but what happens when real news items produce this reaction? Well, dear readers, that’s when I write a column in list format about it.
Missing White House Tapes – For once in the past eight years, I found myself bringing in the new year rooting for the Bush administration, hoping it would sail through 2008 unblemished. Alas, BlogCritic.com cites a recent New York Times article that points to 473 days of missing White House e-mail. The missing e-mail spans throughout the first three years of Bush’s presidency. It also quotes the White House's Chief Information Officer saying that the “e-mail backup tapes were routinely ‘recycled’…” The BlogCritic.com tech blogger then goes on to tear apart that claim, explaining that such backup recording methods are much different than VHS tapes, where someone “may inadvertently use a wedding tape to record the Super Bowl.” Ridiculous.
Facebook is like Ikea - The brains at Slate.com are always working late into the night to churn out creative stories that no one else is covering. Enter: this witty, well-thought-through comparison between Web 2.0 startups such as Facebook and the cutting edge marketing strategies of Swedish superstore chain Ikea. While blogging platforms such as Wordpress encouraged users to create their own content and invent new attitudes towards blogging, “Ikea recruited its customers to the idea that they could not only put up shelves, but also design their own stylish living spaces, equipping them with tape measures and printing almost 200 million catalogs that also serve as design manuals.” The proposal that Ikea was the first to conceive the DIY spirit is questionable, but intriguing nonetheless.
PocketGuitar - What, you didn’t see it coming? The iPhone has to do everything, right? So we mustn’t forget to cover the Guitar Hero craze and mod our iPhones into miniature digital guitars. Forget the fact that they look nothing like guitars and that there’s a “Settings” tab right about the digital strings. Now that I think about it, I suppose this is the “armchair rockstar” trend manifested in its purest form. But I miss the five rainbow color-coded keys. Would those be considered ‘old school’ now?
Scary.
(Fair warning: The first kid that accidentally bumps into me between classes because he's shreddin' out to some Boston on his iPhone is gunna get his ass kicked.)
“What?!?!” –The Column
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