Category: News

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I forgot to mention the donation to MN SNAP, in the video, but that donation will indeed be made in your name by my wonderful and caring wife Angela.

Tyra Banks on ‘The Tyra Banks Show, photo courtesy of ChicagoTribune.com

I have never been a fan of talk shows. While I respect Oprah’s accomplishments on television, I’m bored to death with her talk show. However, I love some of the other projects she’s been affiliated with, such as “Their Eyes Were Watching God” and “Precious.” I’d even give a head nod on some of her bookclub selections. But I can’t say I’m a fan. It always rubbed me the wrong way that she’d have some of the most controversial topics on her show but not hip hop artists. How do you invite the KKK on your show but then wag a finger at Ludacris? She did finally have Jay-Z on her show, but hip hop has been around for 30 plus years. In my opinion, it took her so long, and I didn’t like the way she treated Ludacris, so I didn’t even watch that Jay-Z episode. But I still have 100 percent respect for Oprah Winfrey as a professional.

However, it is a mystery to me altogether why anybody would watch ridiculously stereotypical shows like “The Jerry Springer Show” and “You are not the father” show (aka Maury Povich’s show). I was tired of “The Ricki Lake Show” with Ricki Lake talking over her guests. “The Johnny Carson Show” was okay sometimes, but he would ask rhetorical questions or need everything spelled out, so I couldn’t handle re-runs of that show either. I remember watching a few episodes of “The Arsenio Hall Show,” but all I remember was the dog barking. I was too little to get a good handle on that talk show.

I never connected with Jenny Jones’ and Martha Stewart’s talk shows either. Ellen DeGeneres is hilarious performing live and I loved her television show, but for some odd reason I can’t stay interested in her talk show. I’ll watch her dance or watch a good guest, but outside of that, I couldn’t be still watching “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” Jay Leno and David Letterman would occasionally have an interesting episode, but those were few and far between. I used to believe I just didn’t like talk shows until I started checking out some others like “The Tyra Banks Show,” “Lopez Tonight” and “The Mo’Nique Show.”

It wasn’t until two weeks ago that I started watching “The Mo’Nique Show” because I thought it was going to be loud and obnoxious. Plus, it came on at the same time that the only talk show I liked came on, and that’s “Lopez Tonight.” I’m a huge fan of “The George Lopez Show” so I was ecstatic to see one of my favorite comedians get a late night show and have people like Kobe Bryant, Queen Latifah, 50 Cent and Clint Eastwood on there–two of which I never see on talk shows.

But I watched “The Mo’Nique Show” when “Lopez Tonight” started showing re-runs during the Christmas season, and I cracked up laughing. “The Mo’Nique Show” is everything that Oprah Winfrey’s show is not. She embraces hip hop, hip hop stars, actually knows the slang, can do the latest dances, is easy and fun to talk to and she’s a party starter. Not everybody can easily interview Cash Money’s Baby, and really sound like she could hang out with this dude. I think Mo’Nique’s personality is great, and she’s beautiful. Mo’Nique always looks flawless, from hair to makeup to outfits. But like George Lopez, it’s her humor that makes me not change channels on my television. 

And then there’s Tyra Banks. “Higher Learning” has been my favorite film for over a decade and came out the year I graduated from eighth grade. I loved her chemistry with Will Smith on “A Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” But I couldn’t stand the squealing and superficial behavior on “America’s Next Top Model” and after a season or two, I stopped watching the show.

But last night I went on YouTube, after being indifferent about her talk show leaving in 2010, and clicked on a couple shows. I’d seen a few before but not enough to make me want to watch the show daily. However, last night I saw that I really missed out on some great episodes of “The Tyra Banks Show.” What I like about Tyra is what I like about George Lopez and Mo’Nique. She’s not afraid to be goofy, and she’s all about being entertaining. Tyra Banks definitely has some amazing taste in men. Whoa! Now that’s not to say I can’t respect a serious talk show host, but I’m more likely to stay focused on the show if I can have a few laughs. There were definitely episodes of “The Tyra Banks Show” that I wasn’t interested in, like the one with Raven Symone glorifying weave, racist families and all the “I’m too fat” shows. That got old quickly. But then there were the winning episodes where Tyra Banks had great chemistry with her guests! 

Here are some of my favorite Tyra Banks episodes.

Pharrell admits that he wanted to having a “friendship” with Tyra Banks, and she didn’t know it. N.E.R.D. artist Pharrell has always been gorgeous in my eyes, so I was excited to see him regardless. But what made this one of my favorite episodes of “The Tyra Banks Show” was how he sounded like a shy teenager asking a girl to the homecoming dance. For someone who makes kissy faces during the “Frontin‘” video, I never expected him to act so shy or uncomfortable.

Then there was the episode with Tyra kissing Chingy, who also came across as shy in front of her when she wasn’t wearing man’s makeup. I couldn’t blame him for not wanting to kiss her when she was dressed like a man, but he puffed his chest out trying to get a round two.

Note: The video when the two kissed a second time after she went back to her natural self has been removed from YouTube, but I did write an entry about their kiss. Click here for details.

Although Tyra Banks’ impromptu singing performance was incredibly corny, I was amused by President Barack Obama‘s (then Senator Barack Obama) reaction to Tyra singing about First Lady Michelle Obama being “one hot momma.” But it was the “chocolate kiss” that made me remember for the millionth time why First Lady Michelle Obama loves her some Barack!

Tyra Banks talks with Ne-Yo about how he chooses brown-skinned women for his music videos. I talked about Ne-Yo embracing brown-skinned women on my blog, “Tough love letter to black women who hate it when black men date outside of their race.” It was also amusing to see Chris Brown unashamedly flirting with Tyra Banks.

It was fun to watch Tyra Banks try to learn how to step. Columbus Short is so talented at it, and I always wanted to step as well, but I cringed every time he pronounced “segue” incorrectly. Also, I can’t blame her for flirting with the very handsome Brian White.

And even though we all know that Chris Brown is having issues right now, I still loved his chemistry with Tyra Banks on the show and the playful flirting. I was very happy for these girls when they won a chance to meet him, especially considering I’m a fan of Chris Brown and Ne-Yo too. I remember being very nervous but professional during my interview with Ne-Yo earlier this year. Check out how Ne-Yo and Chris Brown surprised two fans.

And who can forget the Bow Wow kiss? This threw me because Tyra Banks blew Ludacris off for a kiss on the lips, but Bow Wow, who asked “We for real?” really did get to kiss her on the lips at Tyra Banks request. Crazy.

I wasn’t really feeling the speed date, and I’m still beyond belief that 50 Cent carries $25,000 in his back pocket. It’s ironic that 50 Cent would carry that much money on him since his breakout song was “How to Rob.” However, I was amused with his “Laws According to 50” about 50 Cent’s views on relationships. Start this video at 4:29.

And to my surprise, 50 Cent admitted that he was the one who reached out to Vivica Fox. When she cried on “The Monique Show” about how she felt with 50 Cent embarrassing her name to the media, I couldn’t blame her. However, when George Lopez didn’t ask 50 Cent on “Lopez Tonight” about his new video, I wondered if Vivica Fox was being dramatic. But 50 admitted that they’d been going out for way longer than I expected and he reached out to her (4:47).

It is painful to watch someone who is not very street smart interview someone from the streets. The questions are so naive, but the interviewer doesn’t realize how goofy she sounds. With that said, I can’t hold anything against Tyra Banks for not knowing some of the information she asked, but it was uncomfortable watching her try to have these special moments with T.I. when he’d answered these questions a million times before. Part 1 and Part 2 of this interview were lame and I got tired of people reminding T.I. over and over again that he was going to prison, but Part 3 was very interesting with him talking about the dating scene. Check it out.

Pat White had only just entered the game against the Pittsburgh Steelers before experiencing a brutal helmet to helmet hit from Ike Taylor. It looked like it knocked White unconscious and he was carted off the field after being attended to by paramedics.

This is no surprise to this Cincinnati Bengals fan, the Steelers have always been one of the dirtiest teams in the league, often leading with their helmets in unnecessary situations like this one. Hope Pat White is ok.

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Veteran economist Martin Feldstein, of Harvard University, is not sure the U.S. economy will escape a second trip back into recession in the new year. Feldstein, who is also the emeritus president of the business cycle dating organization the National Bureau of Economic Research, tied this risk of a renewed downturn after the worst recession in decades to a poorly conceived government stimulus effort. “I supported the idea we needed to have a fiscal stimulus, somewhat to the dismay of my conservative friends,” Feldstein said Sunday at a meeting of the American Economic Association in Atlanta. But the design of the stimulus was put in the hands of congress and it was poorly done, which meant it “delivered much less” in actual stimulus than its nearly $800 billion price tag suggested it should. While the stimulus has helped push the economy out of recession so far, other negative forces still at play raise questions about the effort’s ultimate durability. “There is a significant risk the economy could run out of steam sometime in 2010,” Feldstein warned. In his comments, Feldstein was also worried about the longer run U.S. fiscal situation, which contains a rising and worrisome tide of U.S. debt. But his worry was countered by James Galbraith, of the University of Texas-Austin. The academic agreed with Feldstein that the fiscal stimulus had underdelivered, but said the remedy to that was to do even more government stimulus. Galbraith downplayed the budget implications of this new borrowing. “You pay too much attention to those voices” who worry about rising debt-to-GDP ratios. “Those numbers are financial artifacts,” and “the problem to focus on is the 14 million unemployed,” Galbraith said. He noted that the debt-to-GDP ratio hit 100% of GDP after World War II, and that period was followed by a huge period of U.S. economic growth. In a later session, Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel laureate. warned against “deficit fetiishism,” and said government spending could go to productivity-improvement investments, such as environmental technology. But Olivier Blanchard, chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, countered that prospective investments in green projects were too small to have a macro-economic impact.

Zynga investor Fred Wilson remained mostly quiet during the Scamville debacle in October. But he’s starting to talk now, and he isn’t happy.

In a post about Etsy a few days ago a commenter brought up the Zynga/Scamville stuff. Wilson replied “Citing techcrunch on the zynga stuff is a joke.” He waded into the subject again today on another of his posts, saying in a number of comments “i’ve tried hard to stay out of that debate because it is a false debate…zynga makes almost all of its revenue on virtual goods…the “scammy ads” thing is total red herring that everyone got excited about but is almost entirely irrelevant” and “nobody who got involved in that shitstorm took the time to really do the work and look at what Zynga did and did not do. or compare it to Google and everyone else who does way worse on a daily basis…the whole thing totally annoys me. it’s not fair.” He also said numerous times that we didn’t have our facts straight, and that we didn’t take the time to understand what really happened.

Hogwash. Fred Wilson is a brilliant investor, but he’s conflicted and wrong yet again.

There were a total of 22 Scamville posts (see updates) on TechCrunch alone. For the most part we left Zynga alone, until we were slammed in the face with CEO Mark Pincus on video saying “I Did Every Horrible Thing In The Book Just To Get Revenues” (how do you take that statement out of context?). Pincus also said “we need to be more aggressive and have revised our service level agreements with these providers requiring them to filter and police offers” in a post about Scamville. And Facebook took one of their games offline for a few days for a violation of their terms of service around scammy offers.

Zynga had claimed in the past that fully 1/3 of their revenue came from offers. Some of that wasn’t legitimate, likely tens of millions of dollars, and other companies have said that the bad stuff tended to push out the good stuff.

There is an excellent argument that you can continue to find most of these scams on Google and other search engines. But a big difference is the incentive that social games give users to enter into these scams via virtual currency, as well as the fact that they targeted teens without credit cards by pushing mobile subscription offers. Google is wrong to post these ads. But that doesn’t make what Zynga has done right.

I think Pincus took the right steps to move his company in the right direction, and I think the industry is on the right track now, and Zynga looks to be a legitimate business even without scammy offers. I support Pincus as an entrepreneur. But to deny that there was ever a problem is irresponsible. And to suggest that we didn’t take the time to understand the facts is outrageous. In addition to the 22 posts where we spoke to dozens of sources on and off the record, I asked Pincus to go on video with me to tell his side of the story without editing. He declined.

Zynga continues to be a very close partner to Facebook. They share a major investor, DST. A facebook board member, Marc Andreessen, is also an investor in Zynga. And Zynga is Facebook’s largest advertiser. The fates of these two companies are deeply aligned, and there has been more than a little evidence of wrongdoing. The relationship between Zynga and Facebook needs more scrutiny, not less.

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Theodore Braden (left) is scheduled be released from a Florida prison in October, and he’s working hard to prepare himself. He writes the blog Teen In Jail, and he wrote this morning that the path to a positive life won’t be easy.

He wrote:

I know I said that when I get out, I want to go to school, but then I ask myself:  What school will accept me? Can I afford it? Can I get a job to pay for school? How will I get to and from school?

… It’s way easier to not work and sell drugs – but I can’t do it. For some reason, I feel like I’m meant for greater things.

These statements are refreshing and impressive for  their honesty and commitment. But they aren’t unique. Hundreds of thousands of other prisoners are making the same resolutions this year — we will release 700,000 people from prison in the US in 2010 and many of them set out committed to improving their lives.

Are we helping them succeed?

(more…)

Here are some thoughts on what to watch for at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. CES events start Tuesday and the formal exhibits open on Thursday and run through Sunday. VentureBeat’s Anthony Ha and I will be covering lots of stories at the show. There are in reverse order, from No. 13 to No. 1. (Here’s our post mortem from last year, FYI).

13. What isn’t going to happen at CES? Apple’s Steve Jobs won’t be attending. Apple has set the pace for sustained innovation in the past decade, mainly with the iPod and the iPhone. But Jobs doesn’t like to share the stage with anyone, and Apple won’t even be participating in Macworld anymore. CES will have a big iLounge area with products related to Apple’s ecosystem. But Apple itself is rumored to be launching a tablet computer at an event in San Francisco on Jan. 26. At CES, we’ll see dozens of other companies launch tablets with better touch screens, eBook apps, and faster low-power processors. But those products are going to launch in Apple’s shadow.

12. Google’s next move. The Google-designed Nexus One is expected to be the topic of a press conference at the company’s headquarters on Tuesday. As with Apple, many will compare Google’s big move to things that they see at CES. Players like Motorola are expected to weigh in with their own alternatives. But it will be interesting to watch how much support is gathering for Google’s Android operating system on other devices. Namely, it will start showing up soon in connected consumer electronics devices.

11. Are 3-D glasses really cool? Avatar generated more than $500 million in ticket sales in its first 10 days, so the 3-D viewing industry is gearing up for more consumer enthusiasm. The 3-D vendors will try to parlay the theatrical success of 3-D into the idea that you should watch video on your TV with 3-D glasses. It follows the pattern of surround sound, which moved from theaters into homes. This trend is moving forward, but it could still be years away from fruition.

10. Manufacturers and retailers invade each other’s turf. Apple’s AppStore has been a huge success, generating 117,000 apps to run on the iPhone or iPod Touch. Makers of gadgets of all kinds are following suit, turning manufacturers into retailers. Aware of this trend, retailers will become manufacturers too. Witness Best Buy, whose Rocketfish house brand is multiplying like weeds, offering a low-cost option to many manufacturers’ wares. (Thanks to ClickFree for this idea).

9. Dell tries to get mojo back. It has scheduled a press conference for Thursday in Vegas and is expected to show off something new like its own take on a tablet computer. Whatever it is, Dell needs to find a path beyond the PC, as Apple has done with the iPhone or HP has with printers. Whether it succeeds or not, a lot of companies will be in Dell’s spot: invade the turf of someone else to move beyond your core business.

8. Green gets greener. LG’s refrigerators recently were stripped of their Energy Star labels because they weren’t really that energy efficient. It’s clear that companies have to give more than lip service to being friendly to the environment. Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, says that “green is the new black” when it comes to fashions for consumer gear. Now there’s a race to brag about who has the least impact on the planet.

7. A smaller crowd. There will be somewhere around 110,000 attendees at CES, plus or minus a small percentage. But that doesn’t mean the atmosphere won’t be festive. There are 330 new companies among the 2,500 exhibitors and an estimated 20,000 products will be on display in the Las Vegas Convention Center. But there won’t be a show floor at the Sands Expo anymore and cab lines likely won’t be as crazy.

6. Mobile computing gets more mobile. A whole generation of laptops and netbooks will be spawned, thanks to new low-power Atom and Core series microprocessors coming from Intel. Chief executive Paul Otellini is speaking on Thursday afternoon and he’ll no doubt highlight how far these little computers have come and show off some cool wireless stuff as well. But players like Marvell, Broadcom and Qualcomm believe they can bring computing intelligence to a much wider diversity of products than Intel can.

5. The TV gets even more cozy with the web. Players from Yahoo to Intel are pushing much tighter integration of TV viewing and the web. Web-based movie viewing services are multiplying and getting more and more rich features. So far, there have been problems like formatting web content for the TV, interacting with content on a TV, getting broadband connections to the TV, and selling a very expensive adapter to make it all come together. At some point, it truly will become dead simple to view PC or web content on a TV and visa versa.

4. New ways to interact with gadgets. Touchscreens are becoming pervasive throughout computing. Simple accelerometer chips that cost less than a buck have made the gesture or shake controls in the Wii and the iPhone much more people friendly. Expect to see this revolution in human-machine interfaces to gather momentum and be expressed in a wide number of devices at the show, from netbooks to gaming devices such as Microsoft’s Project Natal for the Xbox 360 (pictured).

3. Wither the tech economy? Consumer spending has been scarred by the recession. Will the average consumer still spend an average of $222 on consumer electronics gear in holidays for 2010? Vendors are more optimistic that the recession is coming to a close. But look for nuances in their words about just how good things will get. There’s still a lot of caution out there.

2. The commissioner is in the house. The Federal Trade Commission’s chairman, Julius Genachowski, will have a fireside chat at CES on Friday about a wide range of topics, from the allocation of wireless spectrum to broadband access. Overall, the consumer electronics industry is still doing a dance with the Obama administration, which has signaled its intention to be tough with enforcement. Will, as some have suggested, government agencies go after new players such as Google with antitrust charges?

1. The Windows guy. Steve Ballmer’s keynote speech on Wednesday night is the formal opening of the show. He’s the new high priest, where Bill Gates used to be the pope. No doubt he’ll crow about the success of Windows 7 and how it set in motion a comeback in the tech industry. And perhaps he’ll talk more about Microsoft’s Project Natal. Whatever the topic, the speech will give him his best pulpit to convince everyone that Microsoft still matters. Here’s hoping that the speech is a little more lively than last year’s. [photo credits: Ubergizmo, msanto]

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Japan, Asia | Incredible Ruins

The Hotel Royal haikyo (a Japanese word for ruin) in Kanagawa is the grand-daddy of all love hotels, streaking 7 empty stories up into the big blue sky, a giant vermillion flag on the banks of Sagamiko Lake calling out to all and sundry in a mega-watt alto – “Need some discreet time alone with your loved one? Come on down!”

The ruined hotel has 7 floors with around 35 rooms of varying sizes, all of them decorated in a unique manner- some of them a bit wacky, most fairly plain. It`s in a quiet area, on a road far from the nearest train station, overlooking a peaceful lake.

So who was the target audience? Young people looking to sow their wild oats in private would unlikely have access to a car, so we can rule most of them out. Couples trying to get away from the kids would be going out of their way to come here, so why not then have a properly classy time in a ryokan, where they could still do any of the deeds a love hotel is famous for. That leaves a third class – married men and women on surreptitious affairs, looking for an out of the way place where they wouldn’t be seen conducting their illicit liaisons.

However, obviously not enough of these wayward husbands and wives came to this love hotel as it now stands in ruins.

Written by Japanese Haikyo expert and explorer Michael John Grist. More about this place and other Haikyo can be found on his site here.

This girl is such a celebrity stan, lol.  Love it.

Alexandra Burke has revealed that Beyoncé described her as a “friend”.  Burke, who performed with the popstar during the 2008 X Factor final, also revealed that she has signed a US record deal with Epic.  Writing in the News of the World, she said: “While I’m in the States I’d love to hook up with Beyoncé. She came into the studio to see me recently and when she walked in I literally screamed in her face.  “She said I didn’t need to cry because we were now friends – but that set me off. Beyoncé can’t call me her friend, can she? Wow! Working with her would be incredible – she is the best singer out there, after all.”

A BGR tipster passed along a picture of the Motorola Devour in a silver finish as well as some basic feedback about the device. According to them, the keyboard is “nice” and somehow “easier to use” than the Motorola DROID. Maybe it was MOTOBLUR, maybe it’s the trackpad found on the front, or maybe it’s persona bias.

A quick list of specs have pegged the Devour with a 3 megapixel camera, 3.5mm headset jack, 1420mAh battery and the standard fare of WiFi, GPS, and accelerometer. It’s not known whether the silver finish is the final color or if it will be the only option when the Devour arrives. The next few months will see CES, Mobile World Congress, and CTIA events each taking place so we expect Motorola to announce something soon.