Fox Business Archive

After the first week of 24 last season, we took a deep dive into the learnings from the show. Earlier today we met with an informant on the east side of Manhattan to pick up a secret document that outlines how Jack Bauer will use Internet startups to help him thwart evil in NYC this season on 24. We are sharing this information now because we believe it to be prudent to do so.

In the early part of the season, Jack will use Twitter heavily. An undercover FBI agent will setup a Twitter account that uses secret terms that must be decoded using the Plurk API. Unfortunately this strategy only works for so long, as Jack Carlson notes that after the umpteen whale, Jack must look elsewhere. Jack considers using Facebook instead but realizes that Facebook isn’t a startup anymore.

Because the show was taped last year (but don’t worry, it was in real-time), Friendfeed becomes the new choice for Jack to communicate with his new girlfriend Renee. All messages are encoded into photo memes of babies. Each photo must be held up to the Car Finder app to determine which car Jack will find his next clue in.

Towards the middle of the season, Jack attends a networking function for former operatives and collects a bunch of business cards. He uses my startup for business card processing with our new “CTU” modified upgrade.

Jack stores all of his confidential files on drop.io because they are private and only Jack’s associates (like Renee and the President) can see them. Jack keeps track of his expenses (you think those helicopter trips are cheap?) using Zoho

After all the hoo-ha about location and how important it is for Jack to know where he and his “friends” are, Jack decides to use FourSquare. After three episodes Chloe explains that people can fake check-ins so they move to Gowalla where you gotta be where you say you are. Jack is shakened but not stirred regarding this news and realizes that he better put more gas into his Ford Fiesta so he can get closer to the bad guys.

Continue reading “How Startups Will Help Jack Bauer on 24” »

***SPOILER ALERT***

Tonight was the season finale of the hit Fox show 24. Like last week, here’s a (very, very sarcastic) run down of what we learned tonight. And let me ask… who would win in a fight between Jack Bauer and Superman?

• Jack Bauer has fancy equipment but uses a 49 cent earpiece on his mobile – not even a bluetooth!
• Somehow Renee keeps getting a fresh bandage
• Kim is an idiot when she needs to be and smart when she needs to be (pen to leg)
• The government belives in compact flash as the memory of choice for secret recorders
• Bad surgeons can operate on people with their clothing on
• Kim knows how to open a protocol!
• The last time I got 170ml of spinal fluid taken out, I was able to pop up and kill three people with a dental pick
• What was the purpose of breaking the rear window of the cab?
• What is it with Fox and bringing back EVERYONE from previous seasons? They did it on Prison Break and now they bring up the old presidents?
• Why does it always seem like the good guys on 24 drive Ford vehicles and the baddies drive BMWs and the like?
• Somehow Renee was able to become superFBI in 2 seconds and sideride trucks, do rollover moves and then deactivate some bombs
• No kissyface?
• I guess Palin’s kid having a teen prego looks simple compared to this, eh?

Frankly I found the ending boring. First, a smile from Renee to the bad head dude would have kicked butt. Second, Kim getting there a moment too late would have been nice. Or the Imam could have delivered some news from some bad sector that got to him.

So next season we know that Renee will be the female Jack, Kim will be around with blood for everyone, Tony isn’t dead, and President Palmer will be back (yea we think he’s dead but ya’know).

WHAT ABOUT JUMLA!

On the subway home this afternoon, I realized that I should have been running a “10 things abou 24″ all season long. Since we only have 3 hours left (including last night’s episode), I will start now as a test. Here are my 10 things I learned last night by watching Kiefer Sutherland and crew on 24 — leave your learnings in the comments:

1. The Washington Metro apparently looks quite similar to the Los Angeles Metro
2. I don’t know if Chloe uses a pc or mac, but I want that computer – the things she can do in mere seconds is amazing - seriously she opens protocols mad quick!
3. While the evil chemist tested the release mechanism on the container, they put it into a sack that was sealed – while the “bomb” effect probably would have opened the sack, why not put the bomb in some more open vehicle?
4. The bad cop in the train station was perfect – a great twist
5. If anyone wants to shoot me their screen, apparently it can be done. My only question is, what happened to Chloe’s computer when she shot over the screen to the evil programmer? Did she get a new one via a protocol? How did Cisco play into the screen shooting?
6. Clearly Jack’s daughter, Kim, is an idiot on many fronts. First, in this post 9-11 world, she was willing to leave her suitcase with a person she didn’t know. Doesn’t the FAA require you to say your bag has never left your sight? Second, when the “bad” man opens his pc and aims his webcam on her, she doesn’t think anything is wrong with that either.
7. The timing is amazing on 24 – when it needs to not work for Jack, it doesn’t. When it needs to work for the bad guys, it does. Here’s an example – how did the bad husband know that at that exact moment the good spy would be in the bathroom? How did the bad husband know no one else would be in the bathroom?
8. Why did the bad people want to time the canister to go off when the train was in the terminal empty? Was it a test? Seemed like it wasn’t a test so why not blow the thing up during rush hour when the train was in the tunnel?
9. Amazing that in his very weak condition, Renee was ok with Jack driving – she’s the head of the FBI and she lets him drive after he just said the meds no longer worked on him?
10. This one comes from “The Big Bang Theory” — one of the best geek shows because they “get” geek however they used the T word last night and therefore have lost major points with me. Lame Sheldon Lame.

So what do I think will happen on the 24 season finale next week?
Continue reading “10 Things I Learned on 24 Last Night” »

Apparently there has been a battle going on between gossip blogger Perez Hilton and Miss California Carrie Prejean. You can read about the battle on the Vancouver Sun website. I haven’t followed the battle so I don’t want to comment on it. However this morning on the Fox News channel former Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee was one of the guests on the Fox and Friends show.

I’ve posted a video below where Huckabee discusses his take on Perez Hilton as I thought it was worth sharing. He begins by saying that no one should care about Hilton’s opinion on anything because he hasn’t done anything significant in his life. While it appears that Hilton has used some very strong language with regards to Prejean, at the end of the day, he is a blogger.

Using Huckabee’s view, over 90% of bloggers, journalists and analysts should never share their thoughts and/or opinions on a topic.

Fox Reality Channel, you know the channel that runs high quality shows like "Battle of the Bods", is currently casting "internet nerds" for a new reality show. The show, "The Cindy Margolis Dating Project" will feature not just some special nerds but also the suave and sophisticated. It’s certainly disappointing that the news brief makes sure you know that an Internet nerd could never be suave and/or sophisticated.

The show will feature Cindy Margolis and a bunch of guys over 18 who are looking to date the 40+ model. In case you don’t know who Cindy is, I’ve embedded her image below. Back in the days of 28.8 baud, Cindy was the most downloaded person online.

In case you are wondering, anything you do online that’s "real-time" qualifies you as an Internet nerd.

Check out the nifty placeholder site they have created for Cindy – you can even move her back and forth by moving your mouse – one of those darn Internet nerds must have added that bigtime functionality!

We reported this past weekend about the Twitter phishing scam that was hitting the circuit hard. This morning we received reports via Tamar Weinberg and Ron Hekier on Twitter of what appears to be a hacked Fox News account.

As you can see from the graphic below, the current tweet message from Fox News reads, "Breaking: Bill O Riley is gay". Was the Fox News account the latest victim of the Twitter phishing scam? Or perhaps it was the work of a disgruntled employee?

The issue here is that while eventually the account in question will be fixed, during the phished period, Fox News looks bad. Perhaps Twitter needs a phone hotline for those affected by the phishing scam?

UPDATE: Looks like more accounts have been hacked: Britney Spears and Rick Sanchez got hit – see photos below.

UPDATE: It appears Twitter staff have removed the offending messages.

Back in 1997, I was approached by a recruiting firm in NYC to create a "test" for HTML. They were placing tons of HTML coders but many times the clients would call the recruiter because the coder was using a WYSIWYG tool when the coder said they were a hand-coding expert.

Yesterday on the Fox show, "The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet", expert Lesley Spencer Pyle explained how people at home could make money using the Internet. One of the ways Pyle noted was that you could become a Web designer and create brochure sites for businesses for at least $500 a piece. Pyle noted, "you would think you need some great skills to do that (web design), but there are tools to do it for you".

She named SnapPages as her tool of choice. We covered SnapPages (including a video interview with the founder) back in September. SnapPages seems like a well developed tool that might be good for creating your own website. The real issue here is that design is just one portion of creating an effective online presence. I hear stories from small businesses all the time who have left the online space because they felt that it wasn’t worth the investment. It’s these type of "fly by night" designers (or developers, marketers, etc.) that will slowly erode the industry as a whole and make it harder for talented professionals to get work.

Here’s the clip of Pyle explaining how to become a Web designer in 2 minutes or less:

(no comments about the video quality!)