The Hypocrisy Weblog

The Swedish edition of IDG writes about PhD in search engine marketing Elias Kai in the town Kalmar of southern Sweden who named his son “Oliver Christian Google Kai”.

The father, Elias Kai, says that his wife had no problem with naming her son after the search engine, and Elias also got the question if he’ll name his next baby “Yahoo!”if it’s a boy or “Altavista” if it’s a girl, but as a self-proclaimed fan of Google, Elias says “no way” and that he’ll considerate names such as “Giggol, Gaggol eller Boogol” instead.

So, what does Google have to say about this? Well, Google’s European vice president Nikesh Arora held a presentation during London Ad Tech in September, and Elias Kai got to speak at the podium and tell the audience that he’ll name his son “Google”. The audience laughed and no-one thought that Elias actually was serious in naming his son Google, though he was.

Perhaps Elias Kai should’ve taken the 200 people strong audience’ reaction more serious and not name his son after a search engine?! I think so… Maybe his father thinks it’s cool to name his son after his favourite cult-object, but I doubt that the father considered the problems that his son will get in the future with such a name, everything from bullying in school to problems at misc. tasks of life – such as applying for a job, applying for a job etc.

I don’t want to paint it all black, but come on…

Google Kai has his own site at http://www.google-kai.com and of course his own blog at http://googlekai.blogspot.com

Though, regardless of anything else, no-one can deny that Google Kai is a cute baby boy, and I am sure that everyone who reads this post will wish him and his family all the luck in the world in his life!!!

Slashdot writes:

“Steve Soderberg’s latest film will be released in a manner that directly challenges the traditional Hollywood distribution chain. Soderberg’s been influenced by Mark Cuban, the dot-com billionaire who owns the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, and Todd Wagner, another dot-commer whose ideas about the movie business are radical departures. Wagner’s financing this one. The movie, Bubble, is the first of six that Soderberg will film in HD video; all will be released simultaneously in theaters, as HDNet movies, and on DVDs.” From the article: “As independents, Soderbergh and Wagner are willing to talk openly about subjects that are being hotly debated behind closed doors elsewhere in Hollywood. When Disney chief Robert Iger recently brought up the concept of shortening the window between theatrical release and DVD, he was fiercely criticised by the National Association of Theatre Owners.”

Steve Soderberg is doing what should’ve been done a long time ago: release a film in multiple distribution-chains at once and see how these compare with each other. This is especially wise of a director such as Steve Soderberg who makes movies that are slightly different from those of Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott (i.e. is films that don’t have a mastodont budget and are aimed at a mass-audience). I doubt that this experiment or even the discussion will be repeated again by any of the above filmmakers, but it’s most certainly healthy that it has been done by such a big fish as Soderberg.

Well done.

Tim Grieve writes:

“When Tom DeLay appeared on “Hardball” this week, he complained about the unfairness of the grand jury process that led to his indictment. “You know, grand juries, it’s all one-sided,” DeLay said. “It is all what [the prosecutor] presents to the grand jury, how he spins, how he presents it.” DeLay said that Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle has had him under a cloud for two years while “never talking to me, never talking to me, never asking me to testify.”

It’s a good story for someone who could use a little sympathy just now. It just happens not to be true. “

Read more here.

On the Salon.com Blog, Geraldine Seale writes about the reasons of Paul Wolfowitz being appointed the head of the World Bank after working close-knit to the Pentagon.

A short yet informative piece.

PS. Salon.com is ad-supported, so you might have to look at an ad before getting to the actual Blog.

So, now the acquisition everyone have been waiting for: online auction company eBay bought Voice over IP-company Skype for a staggering 2,6 Billion dollars US!!!

2,6 Billion Рtaste that number!!! If swedish Niklas Zennstr̦m and danish Janus Friis stays in the company until 2008 and certain goals are achieved, another 1,5 Billion dollars US will be paid out.

The figures are incredibly high, and I won’t comment if it’s too high or not, or say that this is “the new Internet-bubble”, but I will say that eBay will implement Skype’s technology so that auctioneers will be able to voice-chat with each other instantly, and that this feature will make Skype the biggest VOIP-client out there. This was actually a totally logic acquisition by eBay.

For more information:

eBay webast
article in Financial Times
Download Skype

No-one can miss that today’s the 11th of September. Of course there are the 11th of September attack in New York city in 2001, but there is also uthe Chilean coup of 1973, which was supported by the United States – something to think about…

Then you have the tragic murder of Sweden’s foreign minister Anna Lindh in 2003.

Okay, I promised myself to keep sports out of this site, but seeing this my morning-surf made me cough up my coffee! Sven Göran “Svennis” Eriksson is portraited in today’s “The Sun” with a noose around his neck according to swedish newspaper “Aftonbladet“. When reading this I wonder: has the editor at The Sun no shame???!!!!! No matter what “Svennis” may or may have not have done, this is crossing the line!!! Disgusting…

So, Hurricane Katrina has now died down and the aftermath is painfully clear. There are talks about over 10.000 deaths, women and children are getting raped, people are getting murdered, looting is widespread. There are many thoughts that goes through one’s mind when thinking about the events alongside the american gulf-coast.

My very first thought, beside feeling appalled&disgust a quick comparison to both Iraq and Somalia came to mind. Everyone have heard about both Iraqis and Somalians “acting like animals”, but the events in New Orleans clearly show that it’s not a racial nor a religious problem that people do act like animals – it has to do with socio-economic prerequisite. Of course, one can’t “free” an individual from guilt due to that, but this is the root of the evil. I just hope that those that talk about arabs as animals will think again before saying this, as similar actions happened in their own backyard.

I must say that I’m also surprised over the late and inadequate response from the american government. Michael Moore took the opportunity to publish an open letter to his archenemy George W Bush stating:

“I especially like how, the day after the hurricane, instead of flying to Louisiana, you flew to San Diego to party with your business peeps. Don’t let people criticize you for this — after all, the hurricane was over and what the heck could you do, put your finger in the dike?”

This is really really bad!!! (Do note that I don’t go wild over Michael Moore in general) I’m shocked to see that all focus wasn’t on New Orleans when it was clear that a possible category 5 hurricane was about to hit this city, laying beneath the sea’s waterlevel. Yes, it is not the central governments fault that the infrastructure is bad and not enough to handle a storm even weaker than the one that hit New Orleans – this should have been handled on a local level, but there should be at least some advance planning in case of a possible emergency. It’s a disgrace that a country such as the United States of America can’t handle a crisis like this. It’s a shame that countries that want to send aid to the area are refused due to the “logistics not being in place to handle such aid”.

I heard on the Swedish news that the airplane that was filled with water-cleanining machinery, instant-housing equipment and mobile network-related equipment (yes, Swedish authorities together with Ericsson have an emergency team that can go out and set up temporary mobile networks in distaster areas) was set to “return to hangar” due to no official request coming from the american administration for, well-needed, help. Just imagine that the houses would make a difference for many of those having to live in sports-arenas, packed like sardines in a tinbox – having bullets flying by their heads.

The aura of incompetence shines around George W Bush, and he will not be able to joke this one away like he usually does. I am not a “Bush-hater”, this is written from a neutral stand-point, so all pro-Bush people out there, do not bother to try and dissect and cut down this blogpost, thank you. The effects for the republican party will be vast. People who regularly do not vote, will probably register to vote in order to punish the party that in their eyes did nothing to help them, their relatives, their friends, their class.

If the spindoctors fail, we will all see a democrat majority and a democrat president next time around…

The pioneer within the mp3-player field, “Rio” is no more. D&M Holdings has decided to quit making hardware under the “Rio”-brand, as it didn’t fit the core and profitable premium consumer electronics brands such as “Denon” and “Marantz“.

Here is en excerpt from D&M Holdings’ press-release:

“The company’s decision to exit the Rio business followed a determination that the mass-market portable digital audio player market was not a strong enough strategic fit with the company’s core and profitable premium consumer electronics brands to warrant additional investment in the category. The original goal of strategic advantage with wholly-owned and branded portable client devices was reconsidered in the context of the costs required to effectively scale and compete in this sector, where competition has grown intense. D&M Holdings will now focus all its resources on the core Premium AV business and advanced content server products.”

Did Apple just take a new scalp?

My local morning paper “Norrbottens Kuriren” had an article about HAP (swedish only) – “High Altitude Platform Station” and how this technique can revolutionize how we access Internet-related services while being mobile.

It was a happy surprise to see an article about this technique in my local newspaper, and it is certainly relevant as we both have the technological and industrial interests up here with LuleÃ¥’s Technichal University (LTU) and the space research facility Esrange. Just too bad that Esrange is the only partner in this program, and only as a technological partner for the actual launches of the unmanned vehicles.

HAP is a system where you have a range of different unmanned flying vehicles that cruise on around 20000 meters altitude. This is well above where the commercial airlines fly their airplanes, and well below commercial satellites cruising range. These unmanned vehicles have a current datatransfer-capacity of around 120 Mbit / second, and a ground area-range of around 60km in diameter.

The use of HAPs is very broad, from enabling fastmoving trains and airplanes to get connected to the Internet, large areas on the ground can get Internet-access, areas that aren’t economical in other cases to provide other forms of broadband Internet-access to (such as xDsl). Also extra capacity can be given to events such as the olympic games or other (mainly) sport-events where the demands on the data/voice networks are high.

I am convinced that HAPs will be common in a not so distant future, and it’s a shame that the swedish authorities aren’t putting in more effort in a technology that actually can maintain Sweden’s position as a “country in the technological front”. Instead, plans are made to manufacture a unmanned weapons-system, something that most likely won’t be used by a broad mass of people, and will be very expensive to develop with a (realistically) low chance of ROI (return of investment).