Loose Wires: Subtitled "Explosive news from Michael Dell"
Nick Douglas · 08/30/06 10:37PM
- Beavis: Hey this man's computers catch fire and he's having a "Fireside Chat" in the Technology Pavilion. Butthead: Huh, huh, huh. [Consumerist]
Dell announced yesterday that not only did its profit drop by 51%, but it's under SEC investigation. Chairman Michael Dell promised to improve, but the New York Times wasted no time in chastising him:
Dell won't merge its hot acquisition, Alienware, with its own high-end hardware division, XPS, chairman Michael Dell told reporters yesterday. No, he'd rather let the two fight it out, instead of letting Alienware teach the rest of his company how to rock. When a reporter asked about Alienware helping XPS, Dell (pictured here impersonating Fonzie) "struggled to come up with a workable answer."
As if the poorly received launch of its new blog didn't already make this a bad publicity day for Dell, the New York Times decided to check in on the beleagured computer maker. The Times opens with:
Dell loses at the Internet again today, as the much-maligned computer maker launches a corporate blog full of first-person press releases and in-house videos. (One clip shows how with Dell's revolutionary Remote Support, customers can get frustrated at customer service technicians on their own screen in real-time.) The tech blogging crowd are rolling their eyes.
Sacred Cow Dung runs a list of All Things Web 2.0, including over 1100 web sites. Pretty loose definition of Web 2.0, though — if any old coolhunting blog can be Web 2.0, who can't?
SCD's list is compiled from the Everything 2.0 list, posted in chunks at the openBC forum. There's even a German list.
Dogster founder Ted Rheingold (pictured) gets Farked when a photo of him at Etech becomes Photoshop fodder at Fark.com. Poor guy — he just finished getting respectable at SXSW. [Laughing Squid]
Dell picks up Alienware (inevitable, after their "no comment" denial). Don't worry, gamers, the big dorky PC maker will run its new gaming-box subsidiary separately. And there's no risk of the Dell Guy making a "Dude! You got an Alienware!" comeback. [Mercury News]
Dot-coms keep playing it loose: Wordpress.com has no terms of service — because "laywers suck," jokes owner Matt Mullenweg. They're working on the issue, because yes, lawyers do suck when they're working for disgruntled users.
Yahoo's Upcoming has a user agreement, but one Valleywag reader was happy to find it's editable. So they selected the agreement, typed "I agree to nothing," and joined Upcoming. Because there are so many terrible things one can do with an agreement-free event site account...