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  • Christine Chubbuck: Brother Not Happy About Films Depicting Sister’s Live On-Air Suicide

    Christine Chubbuck was a 29-year-old broadcast journalist working at a Sarasota, Florida TV news station back in 1974. On Monday, July 15 of that year, she committed suicide while live on the air.

    “In keeping with Channel 40’s policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts and in living color, you are going to see another first,” Chubbuck told her television audience during what was to become her last broadcast ever. “Attempted suicide.”

    Christine Chubbuck then pulled a .38 caliber revolver out from underneath her desk, and shot herself in the head. She died 15 hours later.

    “My grandparents lived across the street from my sister and she was extremely close to both of them,” Chubbuck’s brother Greg says in an interview with People magazine. “They watched every one of her shows, except my grandfather had an appointment with his doctor and he didn’t feel like driving so my grandmother drove him and they missed the only show they had ever missed my sister on–the show she killed herself. She knew they weren’t going to be watching that show.”

    Christine Chubbuck became the first person to commit suicide on the air in the United States on that fateful day. In 1976, Network, a film starring Faye Dunaway and Peter Finch was based on Chubbuck’s actions.

    Forty years later, two films based upon Christine Chubbuck’s on-air suicide are set to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Greg Chubbuck has no plans to see either of them.

    Christine stars British actress Rebecca Hall, and tells the story of Christine Chubbuck’s last days.

    Kate Plays Christine stars Kate Lyn Sheil of House of Cards fame. It is a documentary about the actress as she prepares to play Christine Chubbuck in an upcoming film.

    “Nobody wants to know who Christine Chubbuck was,” her brother says. “They want to sensationalize what happened at the end of her life. A public suicide is not a source of joy for a family.”

    Greg Chubbuck said many within their family long believed Christine wouldn’t be with them throughout a normal life span. He even recalls his older brother telling him their time with “Chrissie,” as she was called, would be short-lived.

    “We have to hug Chrissie extra hard because we aren’t going to have her very long,” Greg recalls his brother saying. “He was 12 and I was 8 and in the back of our minds we always knew that our time with her was not going to be infinite.”

    Christine Chubbuck was talented. She was very smart. She was a nationally renown kayaker. Since about age 10, however, she never felt like she fit in.

    Greg Chubbuck says his parents spent more than $1 million over a 20-year span in their attempt to “help Chrissie find peace.”

    He now believes she suffered from bipolar disorder. She only received treatment for depression.

    “If you are treating someone for general depression and they have bipolar depression they actually get worse,” he says. “So with that in mind, you can imagine my parents’ 20-year odyssey to try and help my sister understand why she didn’t look at the world the way everybody else did, while very expensive did not turn out to be fruitful. That never made my parents give up on my sister or quit loving her. Her two brothers adored her. My wife at the time and my little girl just worshipped my sister and none of that made any of the outcomes change.”

    At the tender age of just 16, Christine Chubbuck lost the love of her life–her 23-year-old boyfriend.

    “I think truly that this fellow, Dave the kayaker, he was truly the love of her life,” says Greg.

    She didn’t date again until she was 21, but the man was Jewish and her father didn’t approve.

    “She never really had another boyfriend after that,” Greg said.

    Christine seemed excited when she landed her job at Sarasota’s WXLT–first as reporter and then as show host.

    “It was her show,” says Greg. “It was one person doing all of it with very low pay.”

    Greg adds that even then their mother was doing all she could to help Chrissie succeed–even buying her expensive dresses so she looked good on air.

    “In 1974 there weren’t too many local TV personalities wearing $2,000 designer dresses, and she did,” he says.

    Despite the job–that would have been a huge boost to most anyone’s ego–even at a low rate of pay, Christine Chubbuck still felt like she didn’t fit in. She felt like she wasn’t good enough–for anyone or anything.

    Just a few weeks prior to her suicide, Christine Chubbuck interviewed a local sheriff about suicide.

    “She asked him if someone were to kill themselves where they would put the gun to make sure it was effective,” Greg explains. “I learned this from the deputy sheriff. He was in tears.”

    Following Christine Chubbuck’s suicide, her family got an injunction preventing the release of the tape that showed her killing herself. After it was seized as evidence, it was turned over to her mother.

    “I don’t know to this day where it is,” Greg says. “But I know no one knows where it is and no one ever will if I have anything to say about it.”

    That hasn’t stopped the film world from sensationalizing the tragedy. It will be interesting to see if either of these films premiering at Sundance will be more sensitive about Christine Chubbuck’s death.

    It’s surely no wonder Greg Chubbuck has no plans of viewing either of them.

  • Researchers Developing Deep-Sea Wifi

    Researchers Developing Deep-Sea Wifi

    Researchers at the University of Buffalo are developing an underwater wifi network for use at sea. Alas, hold your horses – This doesn’t mean there will be any Snapchatting, Instagramming, Facebookery, Tweeting, Vining, Myspacing, Google Plussing, Tumbing, Flickring, Foursquaring, Goodreading, Pinning or Yelping underwater any time soon. The program is intended for more practical uses, like monitoring ocean life and for helping to give advance warning of tsunamis.

    Project lead Tommaso Melodia, an associate professor of electrical engineering at the University of Buffalo, said in a statement, “A submerged wireless network will give us an unprecedented ability to collect and analyze data from our oceans in real time. Making this information available to anyone with a smartphone or computer, especially when a tsunami or other type of disaster occurs, could help save lives.”

    Since radio waves don’t travel effectively underwater, a simple dropping of a few waterproofed 4G hotspots into the sea won’t create a network. Melodia and his team turned to sound waves to create a wireless signal.

    With funding from the National Science Foundation, two 40-pound sensors were attached to a buoy and submerged in lake Erie. The sensors were then able to detect a series of high-pitched chirps, which bounced off a nearby concrete wall. These sound waves were then converted into radio waves.

    Medodia commented, “An Internet underwater has so many possibilities,” adding, “We could even use it to monitor fish and marine mammals, and find out how to best protect them from shipping traffic and other dangers.”

    NASA had established internet in space in 2010, allowing astronauts to surf the ‘net via the Crew Support LAN. This is the official first space-tweet:

    While there’s a chance the first oceanic tweet might have something to do with spring break, the practical applications of the new network are highly valuable.

    Image via The University of Buffalo.

  • Social Seating Plans Now Available On An Airlines

    Forget First Class! Find out who’s sitting next you on your next flight. Remember the days when you sat at your airport gate wondering and worrying who might be sitting next to you? Those days are over now for travelers who can’t get enough social networking on the ground. Airline travelers no longer have to be nameless and unknown. In fact, with ‘social seating’ now available on a number of airlines, you can find out all kinds of things about your fellow travelers. Welcome to the new “mile high” media club.

    In January, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and Malaysia Airlines made it possible for passengers to share photos, social networking profiles and have even gone as far as letting them pick their seatmates prior to takeoff. These social seating programs are viewed as a dream come true for social networkers although some passengers are concerned about privacy issues and even possible stalkers. KLM calls their voluntary social seating plan “Meet and Seat,” available on flights between Amsterdam and New York and San Francisco and Sao Paulo. Malaysia Airlines call their program (also voluntary), “MHbuddy.”

    @noodlesminaj
    Noodles    Social seating on airlines. Are people ready to share their information to their entire flight? #meetnseat 2 hours ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @MsShaunaMack
    Shauna Mackenzie    Networking In The Sky – Strategic Seating on Airlines thanks to social media. Yay or Nay? http://t.co/b6geq5hV 17 hours ago via Tweet Button ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    Here’s how it works. On KLM’s “Meet and Seat,” once passengers have booked their flight, they can access the option through “Manage my Booking” on the airline’s website. They have from ninety days to forty-eight hours to get to know their potential seat mates. Social networking flyers can share their Facebook or LinkedIn profiles with other passengers and the information shared in the profiles and their photos can even be edited.

    Seating maps display seat choices and Facebook or LinkedIn profiles of other passengers who want to participate. Passengers can contact each other before the flight and choose their seating assignments ahead of time if the seat is available. Participating passengers are notified via e-mail when other passengers select the option to share their social network profiles. Prior to takeoff, travelers can change their seat or withdraw their social media profile and after the flight, profiles are deleted.

    MHbuddy, Malaysia AIrlines’ program is a Facebook application. Passengers can book their flights and check in on Facebook. They have the ability to view photos and seat selections for any of their Facebook friends on the flight. MHbuddy also lets passengers know if any of their Facebook friends are planning on traveling to the same destination in case they want to meet.

    JetBlue, American Airlines and Delta are all showing interest in the social-seating trend. A JetBlue spokeswoman, Allison Steinberg said, “We haven’t ruled out social seating or similar concepts, but it’s not something we’re actively pursuing. We’re conscious of some of the privacy concerns it might raise and are careful to listen to cues from our customers on what they want.”

    Fasten your seat belts.

  • X-factor Host Steve Jones Dismissed As Host

    According to a recent story the now one time host of Fox’s X-factor has been let go. rumors have been circulating for a while that he may not continue his post. representatives earlier dismissed it as a fabrication, but now it has been confirmed. he recently took to twitter to announce his departure.

    Show creator Simon Cowell has this to say:

    “I don’t think he did a bad job, but there is a Brit limit on the show.”

    As of yet there is no news on who may replace Jones, but Cowell commented saying there would be changes coming to X-factor U.S.A.

    Also, reportedly popular singer Nicole Sherzinger will not return to the show either, she says she wants to work more on her own personal music career and doing X-factor nearly everyday has halted her from doing so. Surprising enough Paula Abdul will not come back either. She did not leave on her own, rather she was asked to leave; I guess that’s a nicer way to say Donald Trump’s famous line “you’re fired”.

  • AT&T 4G Network Available In 11 More Markets

    AT&T 4G Network Available In 11 More Markets

    Wireless carrier AT&T has announced their new 4G LTE data network is now available in 11 new markets, bringing the total to 26. Cities now with 4G access include New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Raleigh, and Orlando. Markets that already had the network include Chicago, Houston, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.

    AT&T’s 4G network is dual-layer, meaning that it uses both LTE and HSPA+ technology. This makes it compatible with a larger number of phones and prevents users from experiencing a sudden drop in data speeds when transitioning out of an LTE-covered area. This also gives AT&T a competitive advantage over Verizon regarding the iPhone 4S. The iPhone 4S is HSPA+ compatible, but not LTE compatible, which means that Verizon iPhone users have no access to their carrier’s 4G network. AT&T iPhone customers, however, will get at least a partial speed boost from AT&T’s new network.

    According to AT&T’s press release, they expect deployment of their 4G network to continue throughout 2012, and be mostly done by the end of 2013.

    Are you in one of AT&T’s new 4G markets? Tell us about it in the comments.

    [Source: AT&T Press Release]

  • Kiip Offers Ad Based Rewards For Mobile Gaming

    Kiip Offers Ad Based Rewards For Mobile Gaming

    Imagine playing your favorite game on the iPhone, and upon making it to the final level and defeating the stage boss you’re offered a free cheeseburger at your favorite restaurant. Would such a system bring about positive or negative feelings from your gaming experience? Free stuff in the real world, based upon your performance in a mobile game. How are we just now coming up with this idea?

    Kiip, an advertising network, plans to implement such a system. Their website tagline explains how it works – “Real rewards for virtual achievements“. Here’s a video going into a bit more detail about how Kiip works:

    Kiip isn’t the first to offer real world rewards for playing a video game. However, their network has the potential to bring the idea of real world rewards for gameplay achievements to the mainstream.

    If you’ve played free games on your mobile devices, chances are they are plagued with in-game advertising, which allows them to remain free. More often than not this really brings down a gaming experience, especially if the ads ruin your concentration. However, Kiip works like an achievement system so a pop-up wouldn’t occur until you actually complete a stage or objective.

    According to Wired.com, the system simply requires a user to submit their email address to have their reward sent to them. Players aren’t required to sign up for a Kiip account, so the emails are only used to send them their branded reward. The network is based on HTML5 coding, so any system is compatible with the service. The only requirement is that it’s connected to the internet.

    Though Kiip sounds interesting in theory, will it translate to success in real life? According to limited trials, players signed up for the achievement deals over 50 percent of the time. When’s the last time an advertising campaign saw those kinds of click-through rates?

    At the head of Kiip is an internet prodigy, Brian Wong. If you’ve heard of Wong, it’s because at 18 years old he was able to land a job working for Digg. Upon leaving the company, he came up with the idea for Kiip.

    To help keep a balance of how often rewards can be utilized, developers are provided a set amount of opportunities to utilize Kiip. Also, the system is set on a rotating variable so users aren’t going to be presented with a reward every time the same achievement is earned.

    Upon reading about Kiip, I sent them a question in regards to how detailed developers could get in terms of which advertisers would be presented in their game. I presented a scenario where Coca-Cola released a game, and wouldn’t want a Pepsi reward popping up.

    Here’s Wong’s response, “Users don’t choose what rewards they’ll see. The brands are able to set criteria for their target market. With verticals, through frequency capping, we’re able to guarantee that no competing products in the same space will appear in the same session.”

    I think Kiip has a an interesting idea which could not only evolve in-game advertising, but mobile advertising as a whole. Imagine if such a system were utilized for check-in services as well, where surprise rewards would pop-up for checking in certain places.

    The only roadblock keeping them back would be heavy saturation of their system on the market. There’s no set list of games where Kiip is being featured; they want their network to integrate naturally into the market. Coupled with their limiting algorithms and allowing developers a set amount of rewards to provide, they look to have all their ducks in a row.

  • Colleges Embracing Social Media At More Fleeted Pace Than Businesses

    A new study by Nora Ganim Barnes and Eric Mattson, Social Media and College Admissions: Higher-Ed Beats Business in Adoption of New Tools for Third Year, suggests that US colleges are studying the "rules of engagement" in the online world in order to increase their effectiveness at recruiting prospective students.  This is the third year of their data collecting on this topic.

    The longitudinal analysis shows that colleges and universities continue to embrace social media as their adoption of blogging again outpaces both the Fortune 500 (22% have a corporate blog) and the fast-growing Inc. 500 (42% have a corporate blog). The latest research shows 51% of colleges and universities have an admissions blog for their school. It is not limited to blogging. My alma mater, Tufts, has prospective students send them YouTube videos.

    There have been many reports of business looking through social media to screen out prospective employees.  They should look to schools to learn of more positive ways to use social media for recruiting.  Colleges are also looking at social media for screening purposes. There was an increase in social media use for screening in 2009 while a decrease in the use of search engines for the same purpose.

    Social networking, the social media that was most familiar to college admissions officers in 2007 and 2008 is still the most familiar. Familiarity with social networking has jumped from 55% reporting they were very familiar with it in 2007, to 63% in 2008 and now to 83%. Fifty-five percent of admissions officers report they are very familiar with Twitter.

    This familiarity extends to usage as 95% of college admissions offices used at least one form of social media in 2009. Social networking is the most common form with 87% of admissions departments using it. Fifty-nine percent have a school Twitter account and, as noted above, 51% have a blog. In addition, more admissions departments feel that social media is “very important” to their future strategy than Inc. 500 businesses (50% compared to 43%). Good for them.

    The colleges are also looking at social media to see what is being said about them. Fifty-three percent in 2007 and 54% in 2008 report they monitored the Internet for buzz, posts, conversations and news about their institution. The latest research shows an increase of close to 20% with 73% of schools now monitoring their school name. I wonder how that compares with business.

    Barnes and Matteson at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research have conducted a number of studies on social media.  See for example, Social Media in the Inc. 500: 2007 – 2009. This one is another useful addition to their work.

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  • The Social Network Movie Trailer

    The Social Network is an upcoming 2010 drama film directed by David Fincher about the founding of Facebook, I saw the trailer for it yesterday at the Cinemas and it reminded me a little of The Pirates of Silicon Valley Movie (1999), a film about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

    Anyhow The Social Network film features an ensemble cast which consists of Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Brenda Song, Rashida Jones, Max Minghella, Rooney Mara, Malese Jow, and Joseph Mazzello.

    The film was written by Aaron Sorkin and adapted from Ben Mezrich’s 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal. The film is distributed by Columbia Pictures and is set for an October 1, 2010 release. None of the Facebook staff, including founder Mark Zuckerberg, will be involved with the project. One of the co-founders, Eduardo Saverin, was a consultant for Mezrich’s book.

    Here’s a trailer for The Social Network Movie:

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  • Discovery Network Utilizing Social Media For New Show

    I have never been a big fan of horror movies. Getting scared on purpose was never something that I quite understood. One of the scariest movies I ever saw, though, was a film back in 1995 called Outbreak with Dustin Hoffman which showed the response that the world would likely have to a global pandemic if one were ever to occur. At the time I was in college at Emory in Atlanta right next door to the CDC and the film’s storyline about the Ebola virus escaping felt very close to home. Tonight at 10pm the Discovery Channel is debuting a new show that will explore this idea of a global pandemic in an interesting new way. The show, called The Colony will take 7 volunteers and drop them into a condemned town without food or water. They are told there has been a biological disaster and are challenged to survive.

    The show’s premise itself is interesting, but what adds to the intrigue of the entire program is that they are pursuing a very smart strategy to let anyone take part in this social experiment by signing up for an online simulation of a global pandemic, that uses your own Facebook friends as characters in the "unfolding drama of the survival of humanity." This technique of using your real friends as the backdrop for a fictional experience created online is something that has been growing in use through efforts such as the popular "Elf Yourself" holiday greeting card campaigns last holiday season.

    IMB_DiscoveryOutbreak1

      As this virtual experience around The Colony unfolds, it will be interesting to watch how it adds a real dimension to viewers of the show and (hopefully) synchronizes the experience so what is happening in your virtual version of The Colony mirrors what is happening in the show. The virtual experience so far has a combination of fake updates from your friend networks intermixed custom videos that seem to have been created to support the show from people like Cali Lewis. If this part of the social experiment works to engage viewers, we will likely see more networks and programs in the fall using this fictional virtual experience as a way to engage their most passionate fans. Assuming we all survive, of course.

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  • Finding Alternatives To Facebook

    Finding Alternatives To Facebook

    With the news confirmed that Facebook membership now exceeds 500 million people worldwide – that’s nearly 10 percent of the world’s total population – it’s a worthy reminder to note that, never mind its size or seeming monolithic ubiquity, there are other social networking places to complement Facebook.

    The BBC has produced an attractive visual display on the rise and fall of social networks using metrics from market researcher Nielsen in June as its source.

    As the chart here on the top five social networks by country shows, Facebook dominates in six of the seven countries the BBC highlights – USA, Australia, Germany, UK, Spain and Italy. The difference in Brazil, where Orkut is the leader with Facebook a distant second.

    Yet even as Facebook is king, and not even well liked in some countries, look at the other social networks. In Germany, for instance, 8.5 million people are members of VZNet Netzwerke which includes StudiVZ, the big network for young people. In Spain, 6.6 million are with Tuenti. Brazil, too, where 5.9 million are in iG Comunidades. And let’s not forget MySpace (which recently underwent a facelift) – it’s in second place in the USA, UK, Australia and Italy and third in Spain.

    My point is simply a reminder that, from a business perspective in particular – notably, if you’re planning any kind of outreach or engagement activity in these countries – recognize that the dominant social network isn’t necessarily the only place where your engagees spend their time and exercise their influence – sizeable niche communities are elsewhere too.

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  • Facebook Taking Over The World

    Not only has Facebook gathered huge numbers of members – half a billion at the last count – but the social network has also become the number one social presence in many countries, displacing some home-grown domestic social networks.

    A glance at the world map of social networks 2010 you see above shows a clear picture of the colonization (for want of a better word) of Europe, for instance, where Facebook has displaced its competitors in France (Skyrock used to be #1) and Germany (StudiVZ, although they might argue the rank).

    Map author Vincenzo Cosenza provides an additional view, showing the top three social networking sites (SNS) in nine countries:

    An interesting aspect is how Twitter appears in this list: in second place in Australia, Canada and the UK and third place in France, Spain and the US. I’ve always seen Twitter as a social network as opposed to simply a micro-blogging tool; it looks like many others do as well.

    Still, in global domination of online social networks, it looks very clear that Facebook reigns supreme.

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  • Pandora Bringing Music Stream To Facebook

    Pandora Bringing Music Stream To Facebook

    Pandora and Facebook will be deeply integrated according to an announcement at the F8 Developer Conference today.  using Facebook’s new Open Graph protocol, Pandora  will stream music directly onto the social networker from bands that fans have "liked” using Facebook buttons placed on other web sites. Users can also see what kind of music their friends are "liking" as well.

    In his own statement, Pandora founder Tim Westergren said they has been working on making the service more social for some time. "The idea behind today’s update is to make it really easy to share your Pandora stations and music discoveries with your friends – and vice versa," according to Westergren "To make this truly easy for you, we’ve partnered with the experts at Facebook. Starting today, you can easily link your experience on Pandora with your friends on Facebook. This quickly brings your Facebook friend list into Pandora along with your Facebook profile picture. It quite literally puts a whole new face on Pandora."
     

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