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False Alarm of the Day: FBI Questions Saudi Student for Possession of a Pressure Cooker
Last Friday, the FBI surrounded the home of Saudi student Talal al Rouki after his neighbor tipped off the authorities that he has been seen around the residential area with a pressure cooker, a household kitchenware that recently made the headlines after it was used by the Boston Marathon terrorists to set their deadly bombs off in April. When questioned by the FBI, the frightened Michigan resident showed FBI agents the cooking apparatus, informing them he had used it to make the Saudi Arabian rice dish kabsah before taking it over to a friend’s house, to which they replied “You need to be more careful moving around with such things, Sir.” …Welcome to ‘Murica, Talal!
Is Ghost the future of blogging? We’re liking the looks of it so far.
John O’Nolan, who has built blogs for Microsoft, Nokia, Virgin Atlantic, Easy jet, and more, and has worked as the deputy head of the Wordpress User Interface team, has created a new blogging platform that just might change the world of blogging.
Read more about it here.
Photo via Reddit
An image surfaced from social news and entertainment website Reddit, showing Bostonians and Syrians sending condolences to each other in response to the Boston bombing attack last Monday.
While much of the media has been focused on the Boston attack, Syrians have been going through days of heavy fighting in the town of Jdaidet al-Fadl. As many as 250 deaths caused by the Syrian army have been reported, a count of 450 has been estimated, and at least 80 have been identified. Read more about it from BBC here.
Photos from flavorwire.com
Jason Diamond of Flavorwire.com writes about the direction of magazines.
He writes:
Observe The Travel Almanac selling out, and Kindling Quarterly, described as an “exploration of fatherhood through essays, interviews, editorials, art, and photography,” getting written up by The New York Times as examples of this crop of sleek new magazines aimed at niche readerships. David Michael Perez, one of Kindling Quarterly’s founders, told the Times that he believes his magazine (which retails at $14 an issue) is a good business model that he and his business partner, August Heffner, jumpstarted using personal funds. There’s the Canadian menswear magazine Inventory, which retails for $20 in the States, andBabes Quarterly is billed as “a modernized version of the classic 1950’s and 60’s pocket men’s magazine” that is “designed to a creative, babe loving guy in all of us.” These magazines are also thinking of new ways to promote their product, and also new ways of doing business overall. The Portland magazine Kinfolk explicitly states on its website that it is a “collectable print magazine” aimed at growing a “readership of young artists and food enthusiasts by focusing on simple ways to spend time together.” The Chicagoan, a Jazz Age Windy City magazine that was relaunched in 2012 by Stop Smiling publisher J.C. Gabel, says it has “embraced the vintage newsstand as a metaphor to bolster our message of substance and style” by setting up pop-up newsstands throughout the Chicagoland area meant to function “much like food trucks.” The Toronto fashion journal Worn comes out biannually, with a stated mission “[t]o show a wide range of beauty, one that includes diversity of culture, subculture, gender identification, sexuality, size, race, ability, and age,” as well as “To answer, always and above all, to our readers and not our advertisers.”
Read the rest of the article here.
“Detained, Deported and Determined” is a photoessay by Getty photographer John Moore being carried out by the New York Times Lens blog.
“The immigrants who allowed me to photograph them shared stories of a hard life. Most had come to the United States to provide for their families. But even with the challenges of crossing through the desert, being caught by immigration authorities and serving time in detention, most of the immigrants told me the same thing”, said Moore on the Lens blog.”
See more of his other photos here.
If Websites Were Real People
Personification from Cracked.com.TEN TIPS GUARANTEED TO IMPROVE YOUR STARTUP SUCCESS
With a large number of start-ups happening, making a start-up a success is easier said than done. Here are 10 key tips by Anil Dash to help increase the odds of start-up success.
- Be raised with access to clean drinking water and sanitation. (Every tech billionaire I’ve ever spoken to has a toilet!)
- Try to be born in a region that is politically and militarily stable.
- Grow up with a family that is as steady and secure as possible.
- Have access to at least a basic free education in core subjects.
- Avoid being abused by family members, loved ones, friends or acquaintances during the formative years of your life.
- Be fluent in English, or have time to dedicate to continuously improving your language skills.
- Make sure there’s enough disposable income available to support your learning technology at a younger age.
- If you must be a member of an underrepresented community or a woman, get comfortable with suppressing your identity. If not, follow a numbingly conventional definition of dominant masculinity.
- Be within a narrow range of physical norms for appearance and ability, as defined by the comfort level of strangers.
- Practice articulating your cultural, technological or social aspirations exclusively in economic terms.
Anil Dash is an “entrepreneur, writer and geek” from New York City who has been ahead of the game blogging and writing about the impact of technology on culture, media, government, society, and business since 1999! Read his full bio here and make sure to check out his website dashes.com.
Do Social Media Sites Like Tumblr Need Their Own News Publications?
We learned last week that Tumblr is shutting down Storyboard — the news blog responsible for reporting on creative and noteworthy posts by Tumblr users. Tumblr’s cofounder, David Karp, posted his explanation for Storyboard’s closing on the site’s staff blog, saying: “What we’ve accomplished with Storyboard has run its course for now, and our editorial team will be closing up shop and moving on.”
Karp mentions that Storyboard partnered with the likes of WNYC, Mashable, Time, etc. and was even nominated for a James Beard Award (to name a few accomplishments). So, why is it best to “move on” when the project has been so successful?
The consensus (here, here, and here) seems to be that Tumblr needs to downsize to turn a profit this year. However, in an interview with The New York Times, Charlie Warzel, deputy technology editor at Buzzfeed, suggested Storyboard is closing because there’s no point in writing about what you can just go and see for yourself. He said:
It is always peculiar when a social network branches out into publishing, it just seems odd to bring on even excellent editorial talent to cover what is already going on organically.
And he’s not the only one who shares the sentiment.
The New York Times calls attention to Dan Fletcher (a journalism school graduate) who quit his “amorphous” job as managing editor of Facebook in 2012. His position required him to write about FaceBook trends. He said that reporters aren’t needed on FaceBook and that articles detract from user activity that is “inherently more interesting” than the articles themselves.
FJP: Why is it “peculiar” that an excellent editorial staff would be reporting on the “organic” events of social media communities? Isn’t that what journalists do? Just because social media communities exist in the cyber-verse doesn’t make them less newsworthy.
Admittedly, Storyboard and other social media news blogs (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest) aren’t exactly watchdog reporters (they want to talk about the posts that make themselves look good, after all), and that should make us question whether these publications can really be “journalistic.” But social media news is in its larval stage. Maybe, in the future, social communities will be publishing articles about juveniles who break copyright laws, and sites will be locking people’s profiles in cyber-jail-blocks for weeks due to hazing. Surely, social sites are gonna need some objective, guardian watchdogs for that, right? Eh? — Krissy
Image: Screenshot from Storyboard.
Photo: AP/Getty Images
After hearing all the rumors, the multinational internet corporation might be ready to present the long-awaited Facebook phone.
Thursday, the social giant announced the HTC First, the first mobile device to be pre-installed with Facebook’s new Home software integrated wtih Google’s Android operating system.
The HTC First will be priced at $99.99 and will be available exclusively at AT&T on April 12 and can be pre-ordered today.
Zuckerberg said Home will also be available on April 12 in the Google Play Store. He adds that anyone who has the latest android app can get it from the Google Play Store where it will ask if users want to play with it or make it their home screen.
“You should be able to talk to your friends no matter where you’re at in your phone,” said Joe Flynn, the software’s product designer.
It will also include “Cover Feed” which will enable users to swipe through their Facebook content on their phone without having to open any app.
Another feature is ”Chat Head” which will allow users to chat with friends instantly regardless of what app they’re in. Chat Head will allow users to click to message with friends from Instagram, games, and so forth, allowing Facebook integration with other social apps.
Zuckerberg emphasizes the companys’ goal of “putting people first on your phone”. He said that today’s phones are constructed around apps rather than people. ”We’re building something that’s a whole lot deeper than an ordinary app”, said Zuckerberg.
![Photo: facebook.com/SummerSchatzies
Hungary is popular for many things. They’re known for fishing, sailing, their health spas and baths, and even for their bird watching locations. Their music scene though, seems to be somewhat underrated, but that comes with little surprise.
Music has always seemed to be a touchy subject much like it is in many other countries that were under Communist rule. During the time of Communist rule in Hungary (1949 - 1989), popular music was censored by Hungarian authorities due to revolutionary impurity. The popular Hungarian song “Szomoru Vasarap” composed by Hungarian pianist and composer Rezso Seress, or “Gloomy Sunday” as it was called and famously covered by Billie Holiday, was banned from BBC airwaves for many years for being too sad.
Of course, Hungary’s rock-and-roll scene did not have it any easier. In the late 1970s, rock bands had to conform to record company demands and make certain that their songs fell along the lines of what the infamous Song Committee deemed appropriate.
It doesn’t help that the country was once surveyed as one of Europe’s most pessimistic people.
Formed last summer and with a little less than 300 likes on Facebook, the Summer Schatzies introduce a sound familiar to those along the West Coast of California, but not so much to those in Hungary, making them what they claim to be the country’s first surf-pop band.
In a recent interview with PRI’s The World, the group’s lead singer Zofi Nemeth explained the reasons behind their surf-pop sound in a landlocked country. ”If you’re really thinking radical, you can say that Hungary is cheap, people are idiots, you have no future,” said Nemeth. ”We see California from here as like … [a] perfect place. No one has problems. Only we have problems.”
Nemeth draws inspiration from the Los Angeles surf-pop group Best Coast, describing them as “silly… but it’s good.”
Bass player Adam Lang and drummer Zoltan Horvath both are part of other bands that play more sullen and morose music and find and escape in playing the sunny surf-pop music.
“It’s like going on a spirituel holiday,” said Nemeth in the interview. ”Whenever I’m tired and frustrated, I go into rehearsal room with the guys, I always come out cheerful. All my sadness is gone.”
Much like with Best Coast’s music, romance plays a huge role in the Summer Schatzies’ songs. But unlike Best Coast’s music, their music incorporates Hungarian romance of the tortured kind. Nemeth claims that most of the songs are about her off-again, on-again boyfriend.
“We get apart and get back together because we cannot really get out of this circle. We always need each other. We are, like hopeless.”
So far, the band has released three EPs and are planning on releasing their first album later this year.
Make sure to like them on Facebook.
And check out their Bandcamp.
<a href=”http://summerschatzies.bandcamp.com/album/take-me-to-bohemia” data-mce-href=”http://summerschatzies.bandcamp.com/album/take-me-to-bohemia”>Take me to Bohemia by Summer Schatzies</a>](http://25.media.tumblr.com/cdbea897edf1902111f689de0d983cc3/tumblr_mhjamyOQLj1qm4y8ho1_r1_500.jpg)
Photo: facebook.com/SummerSchatzies
Hungary is popular for many things. They’re known for fishing, sailing, their health spas and baths, and even for their bird watching locations. Their music scene though, seems to be somewhat underrated, but that comes with little surprise.
Music has always seemed to be a touchy subject much like it is in many other countries that were under Communist rule. During the time of Communist rule in Hungary (1949 - 1989), popular music was censored by Hungarian authorities due to revolutionary impurity. The popular Hungarian song “Szomoru Vasarap” composed by Hungarian pianist and composer Rezso Seress, or “Gloomy Sunday” as it was called and famously covered by Billie Holiday, was banned from BBC airwaves for many years for being too sad.
Of course, Hungary’s rock-and-roll scene did not have it any easier. In the late 1970s, rock bands had to conform to record company demands and make certain that their songs fell along the lines of what the infamous Song Committee deemed appropriate.
It doesn’t help that the country was once surveyed as one of Europe’s most pessimistic people.
Formed last summer and with a little less than 300 likes on Facebook, the Summer Schatzies introduce a sound familiar to those along the West Coast of California, but not so much to those in Hungary, making them what they claim to be the country’s first surf-pop band.
In a recent interview with PRI’s The World, the group’s lead singer Zofi Nemeth explained the reasons behind their surf-pop sound in a landlocked country. ”If you’re really thinking radical, you can say that Hungary is cheap, people are idiots, you have no future,” said Nemeth. ”We see California from here as like … [a] perfect place. No one has problems. Only we have problems.”
Nemeth draws inspiration from the Los Angeles surf-pop group Best Coast, describing them as “silly… but it’s good.”
Bass player Adam Lang and drummer Zoltan Horvath both are part of other bands that play more sullen and morose music and find and escape in playing the sunny surf-pop music.
“It’s like going on a spirituel holiday,” said Nemeth in the interview. ”Whenever I’m tired and frustrated, I go into rehearsal room with the guys, I always come out cheerful. All my sadness is gone.”
Much like with Best Coast’s music, romance plays a huge role in the Summer Schatzies’ songs. But unlike Best Coast’s music, their music incorporates Hungarian romance of the tortured kind. Nemeth claims that most of the songs are about her off-again, on-again boyfriend.
“We get apart and get back together because we cannot really get out of this circle. We always need each other. We are, like hopeless.”
So far, the band has released three EPs and are planning on releasing their first album later this year.
Make sure to like them on Facebook.
And check out their Bandcamp.
