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Tag: quotes

  • U2’s Mandatory iTunes Album Thing Was ‘Punk Rock…Disruptive’

    U2’s Mandatory iTunes Album Thing Was ‘Punk Rock…Disruptive’

    It’s only Thursday, but U2 lead guitarist Edge has already won quote-of-the-week.

    It comes in an upcoming interview with Time (paywall), via Re/code. Here’s what Edge had to say concerning the recent deal with Apple that saw the company push free copies of the band’s 13th studio album to all iTunes users –

    “[It was] actually incredibly subversive. It’s really punk rock, it’s really disruptive*.”

    If you’re an Android user and/or spent the last week in a box, you could have missed the big U2/Apple controversy. Last week, during Apple’s big press event for the iPhone 6, CEO Tim Cook gave U2′s newest album, Songs of Innocence, to every single iTunes user – for free.

    But here’s the thing – instead of just allowing users to download the album for free if they wanted to do so, Apple pushed the album to everyone. It was mandatory U2.

    This led to lots of people waking up in a why the fuck is there U2 on my phone stupor, followed by a pretty significant backlash. The social media outcry was so intense, Apple was forced to create a dedicated page with the sole purpose of helping people remove the album from their libraries with one click.

    The deal was reportedly worth a giant royalty fee and a marketing budget of $100 million for the legendary Irish band. With 38 million people accessing the new album, Apple boasted that the album release was the biggest of all time. Well, of course it was.

    So, that leads us to Edge and his rosy view of the deal. Was it the worst thing ever to find a free album in your iTunes library. No, of course not. But punk rock?

    *I’ll give you disruptive, as it was rather disrupting to force millions and million of people to own an album.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • TED Quotes Launched Today, Will Soon Grace Status Updates Near You

    Go log in to any of one of the social networking sites you belong to and undoubtedly you will see an update from that one friend of yours who only speaks in quotes. You may even have more than one if you’re lucky. My friends that do this are prototypical literati who share day-making quotes from noted authors and artists. My knee-jerk inclination is toward cynicism whenever I see this stuff, but honestly it’s not a bad way to share what’s on your mind. It’s obtuse, but sharing quotes beats the hell out of those dolts who believe the contents of their dinner plate make for thrilling status updates.

    TED, the amazing non-profit that makes science a top-shelf brand of sexy, launched a new service today that might will enrich the quality of those shared quotes that pervade your news stream: TED Quotes. In the blog post that announced the launch, TED hopes that the new service will make TEDTalks “more accessible, digestible, and shareable.” Additionally, focusing on key quotes from TEDTalks could be a great way to bait people to seek out the entire presentation from which the quote was taken.

    Visitors to the TED Quotes site will be able to browse assorted samples from TEDTalks with an option to listen to the speaker actually say the quote. Additionally, sharing tools linked with Facebook, Twitter, and email are included with each quote should one of the statements strike your fancy. Additionally, when you share a quote, you’ll be linked back to quote’s TEDTalk where you can either watch the talk in full or skip to the part where the quote was spoken.

    If you’re a TED newb or simply haven’t taken the time to acquaint yourself with the group’s awesomeness, check out a couple of the talks below to whet your curiosity.

    If you took every nuclear weapon ever built at the height of the Cold War, lumped them together and blew them up at the same time, that would be one one-millionth of the energy released at that moment. — Phil Plait, on the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.

    What’s it like to be a baby? It’s like being in love in Paris for the first time after you’ve had three double espressos. — Alison Gopnik

    When you look at the Moon, you think, ‘I’m really small. What are my problems?’ It sets things into perspective. We should all look at the Moon a bit more often. — Alain de Botton

    One day, I crossed the bridge over the Oxus River. I was alone on foot. And the Afghan soldier was so surprised to see me that he forgot to stamp my passport. But he gave me a cup of tea. — Monika Bulaj

    In a culture driven by 140-character compositions, meaningful quotations can relate a great deal to someone’s friends in a artful and condensed manner. When you go exploring the TED Quotes, though, be warned: you’re venturing into wondrous and fascinating lands, my friend, from which you will not return so easily. So make sure you’ve got the next hour or so free.

  • Ron Paul’s Racist Search Result, Or How A Certain Google Feature Isn’t Always Helpful

    Ron Paul’s Racist Search Result, Or How A Certain Google Feature Isn’t Always Helpful

    If you are a frequent user of Google News, you probably know that when you search for highly talked-about, newsworthy people within the News framework, Google provides you with a relevant quote from the person at the top of your results.

    This quote usually comes from a popular or recent article about the person that also appears in the Google News search results. The quote is automatically generated by a Google algorithm – not hand-picked. And as we know all too well, there are often flaws in algorithms.

    This leads us to Ron Paul, and the unfortunate misquote that adorned his search results a couple weeks ago. Barry Schwartz pointed me to a Google News Help thread where one user had captured a result with a particularly racist misquote from the Presidential hopeful:

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    The outraged user commented:

    This was never spoken by Ron Paul, and should not be displaying Inaccurate and Misleading racist quote to Millions of Google users. Can anyone post a news article with “questionable content” and then have Google use it to deface an individual just because of one authors prejudice? Please remove this, it has been showing for days, I would hope Paul himself would take legal action against Google for something of this nature.

    There’s a good point in there. This kind of thing could be seen by millions and millions of Google users, especially if it was plastered at the top of the results for multiple days. Of course, Google didn’t do this on purpose to smear Ron Paul, but there’s no denying that this kind of accidental misquote displayed so prominently could really do damage to a public figure – especially a politician running for the highest office in the land.

    This quote is no longer displayed when one searches for Ron Paul within Google News –

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    But it got me thinking. This Google News feature may have the problem of providing some serious confusion, misquoting, and out of context quoting on occasion. I mean right now, if you search Mitt Romney within Google News, you get this quote at the very top:

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    To be fair, that’s not a misquote – Romney did say that. But that quote has been at the center of a huge controversy within the Republican party and a focal point of attacks against the former Governor for the past week. The whole controversy centers on the fact that Romney supporters feel that quote was taken out of context. It’s kind of ironic to see it presented at the top of a Google search without any context.

    Other, smaller problems can occur as well. Take for instance the confusion created when you search for Joe Biden within Google News:

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    That quote is cut off and therefore it is unclear who he is talking about. To a casual searcher who doesn’t quite grasp that section’s function, it might appear that it’s just saying that Joe Biden himself will “double down” on those policies.

    Then again, sometimes the algorithm works splendidly:

    (image)

    As you probably already know, this little Google problem pales in comparison to the one facing another GOP hopeful.

  • Bill Gates: Having Millions Of Dollars Is Good Enough

    According to Bill Gates, having an absurd amount of money is not really that different than having a whole lot of money.

    On Thursday, Bill Gates appeared at the University of Washington to talk to students. He visited the Computer Science & Engineering Department and discussed the evolution of computing, and its global impact.

    He also dropped this quote, and it’s been making the internet rounds today (courtesy of GeekWire):

    I can understand wanting to have millions of dollars, there’s a certain freedom, meaningful freedom, that comes with that. But once you get much beyond that, I have to tell you, it’s the same hamburger. Dick’s (a fast food chain) has not raised their prices enough.

    But being ambitious is good. You just have to pick what you enjoy doing.

    Some on the web are saying that Bill Gates is telling students not to strive to be billionaires. I don’t quite see it that way.

    I’m no billionaire. I’m also no millionaire. When I’m lucky, I’m a thousandaire. But I can see Gates’ point. Once you reach a certain point of wealth where you can afford anything you want, everything else is icing on the cake.

    Unless of course “everything you want” involves things that cost billions of dollars. But that’s a pretty rare scenario.

    Maybe this quote from Gates is an insight into why he’s so philanthropic. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the biggest transparently-operated private foundation in the world. Its charitable donations and various programs total hundreds of millions – even billions of dollars a year. I guess Bill Gates knows that his life isn’t going to be much different with 60 billion dollars as opposed to 40 billion dollars.

    In other Bill Gates news – today, October 28th, is his birthday. He turns 56.

    What do you think about Gates’ comments on wealth and ambition? Let us know in the comments.

  • Steve Jobs Quotes Book Being Rushed To Publication

    If you spent any time on Twitter or Facebook shortly after the death of Apple’s Steve Jobs, you probably saw that he was quite the quotable fellow. I know that my feeds were inundated with Jobs quotes for the better part of a week.

    With the extra attention surrounding the Apple co-founder and ex-CEO due to his death and people’s desire for all things Jobs, especially quotes, the publishers of a new Jobs quotes book are rapidly moving up the release date.

    The book is called I, Steve: Steve Jobs in His Own Words and is edited by George Beahm. According to CNET, the book is being pushed up so quickly that it will be available in stores by the end of October.

    The book was originally set to come out next March, but was moved up to November 15th after Jobs’ resignation as Apple CEO. Its page on Amazon.com still lists the publication date as November 7th, but apparently it will hit the shelves even sooner than that.

    Drawn from more than three decades of media coverage—print, electronic, and online—this tribute serves up the best, most thought-provoking insights ever spoken by Steve Jobs: more than 200 quotations that are essential reading for everyone who seeks innovative solutions and inspirations applicable to their business, regardless of size.

    “The thing that really struck us is that right after Steve Jobs died, there was this phenomenal outpouring of emotion and interest in everything related to Steve Jobs, and not the least our book,” the book’s publisher Doug Seibold told CNET. “And what we’ve seen in this past three days is this phenomenal response from readers and booksellers to the book.”

    His book is not the only Steve Jobs book that is already receiving a lot of buzz. The only official biography of Jobs, Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, has moved up its publication date to October 24th. It was sitting at November 21st before Jobs’ death.

    The rights to the book have even been snatched up by Sony Pictures for an upcoming film on his life.

    What do you think about all of this upcoming Steve Jobs media? Will you read/watch any of it? All of it? Let us know in the comments.