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Showing posts from August 9, 2009

Steve Forbes' Desperation For Bestseller Credibility: Having Employees Expense His Book [Forbes]

You'd think Steve Forbes would be content having his name slathered all over his various properties. You'd be wrong, because Forbes wants to be the author of a bestseller, too. Badly. Badly enough to spend company money buying his book. Forbes recently authored a book on the megalomaniacs who proceeded him historically, called Power, Ambition, Glory . The book aims to teach CEOs (or CEOs-in-training) lessons drawn from history: basically, it aspires to be The Art of War For Dummies . From the tipline, Forbes is so desperate to win wars on behalf of his own ego, he had employees buy his new book en masse in order to get it on the Amazon.com bestseller list: It's very important to Steve that he be considered a successful author and a serious scholar. So he (or someone that works for him) instructed the Forbes sales staff to buy the book - every day, several times a day, in different stores, especially when they travel, so that it will help inflate the book's sal

Designer Impostors [Pic Of The Day]

[ Fake Sean Connery , fake Johnny Depp , fake Rod Stewart , and fake Elton John mingle at the Sunburst Convention of Celebrity Tribute Artists in Orlando. Image via Getty ] Published by Original source : http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gawker/full/~3/rplQqozX...

Twitter Inc.'s Not-So-Private Moments [Lifecasting]

Barely two months ago, Twitter staff were said to barely use their own service. Now they're in danger of turning into a bunch of Julia Allisons. Earlier this week, co-founder Evan Williams and his wife live - tweeted a labor , as well as the first moments of their baby son's life. Plus his naming . It was all very sweet. Now Alex Payne , who heads up Twitter's API team, has announced the news of his engagement, and posted a picture of the ring. So did his fiancée, with the caption, " LOOK WHO'S ENGAGED, BITCHES!! " It's all very w00t worthy, but what's with the wave of private moments from Twitter staff? When the third one hits, we're just going to come out and ask whether there's some kind of internal bonus program or something. In the meantime, we'll just congratulate them, both on their moments and their candor. Published by Original source : http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gawker/full/~3/X5JHJmMc...

Krepie Kats in: "Kentucky Fried Fallopian Tubes Wrestle You to the Ground Until You Promise to Watch "Glee" This Fall!!" [Kreepie Kats]

[The Kreepie Kats are not happy about Victoria Beckham or the new Melrose Place. But being gay is cool!] Published by Original source : http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gawker/full/~3/McPsH72C...

"I Get It. Florida. Flo Rida." [Open Caption]

[ Inglorious Basterds director Quentin Tarantino gets blown away by the rapper during his performance outside the Today show. Image via Getty ] Published by Original source : http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gawker/full/~3/a4LQMNCo...

Beware the Ides of August [Journalismism]

Tomorrow is August 15, when we wade into the thickest weeds of summer, sleepy and slow. Everyone's on vacation (or sad they're still working), media B-teams helm the control rooms and Page One meetings, and bullshit stories blossom like gladiolas. August is so dead it's not even suitable for ginning up a war , as former White House chief of staff Andy Card famously noted. Everything's in reruns, and without even an Olympics to distract us in an odd-numbered year, the most specious, pointless, specious stories expand to fill the empty afternoons and turn into cable-news wallpaper. Only in August could the preposterous notion of "Obama's death panels" get a full week to be chewed over, analyzed, rebutted, and generally taken seriously. Absent a dead white girl, we can look forward to at least two more weeks of faux-stories and false outrage as desperate cable-news producers cast about to find something for their fill-in talking-heads to scream about.