up-business.com

It was only after he saw that some people were capable of bizarre behavior during interviews did he turn the clips into reality TV for the Web.

Lusnia said that she sensed during the phony job interview that something was amiss. The office was barren and the man who posed as the interviewer poured what she assumed was liquor from a metal flask into his coffee. When I asked Skipsness whether he attempted to spook candidates into doing something funny, he said just that once.

But Skipsness also acknowledged editing some quotes out of context on at least one of the other interviews. Won’t this send some of the people he covertly videotaped running to their lawyers? Skipsness said he obtained waivers from everybody taped.

Lusnia said the waiver she signed mentioned nothing about hidden cameras or being part of an Internet dos-and-don’t video. What she was really upset about, however, was that her interview response was under the heading “Don’t mention your spouse’s job.”

“This is what people want,” said Skipsness, 27. “This is just like Borat,” referring to the fictional character created by comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, who films unwitting people reacting to his character’s outrageous behavior.

“The original idea was to give pure interview advice,” Skipsness said. “We only thought later to add a hook, something funny. We did the flask thing to get the deer-in-the-headlights look from her. But we stopped when she told us about Bigfoot. That was 100 times funnier than what we could have come up with and we stopped.”

The woman in the video who said her husband hunts Bigfoot is named Kelly Lusnia. In a phone interview, Lusnia confirmed her husband moved to Seattle to become a volunteer expedition leader for Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, a group dedicated to studying “the Bigfoot phenomenon.” A BFRO worker also confirmed Lusnia’s husband worked there.

In the videos, did Skipsness ever stretch the truth?

(Credit:
Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization)

If you were interviewing people for a job, what would you do if a young female candidate began openly flirting with you, or if another said the reason he liked his former job was the “lack of responsibility?” How about if one job seeker said she relocated to the area so her husband could pursue a career as a Sasquatch hunter? (See video below).

“How would that be a ‘don’t?’” asked Lusnia, 25, who is now in graduate school. “Everyone I talk to finds my husband’s job interesting.”

After seeing a YouTube video of people doing these things in job interviews I thought it was a put on. But after making some phone calls to the guy who operates Howtonailaninterview.com, and one of the people interviewed, I learned that I was wrong, or at least partially wrong.

Steiner Skipsness, the man who produced the videos, works in search-engine marketing. He says he has nothing to do with job placement or head hunting. He swears his clips are not a YouTube prank. He initially started filming job seekers–without their knowledge–to offer insight into good and bad interview techniques, he said.

The service works with a variety of popular blogging tools like TypePad, Blogger, and WordPress. However, LiveJournal, Facebook, and MySpace users are out of luck since these sites don’t allow JavaScript from outside sites.

You know my stance on bad e-cards, and in the same vein comes my dislike for in-text ad links that you find on some blogs. I’m not talking about Snap’s little Web site previews with its Snap Shots service, which people either love or hate, but the IntelliTXT stuff–the kind where you accidently moved your mouse near one and it opens up an ad that doesn’t go away for several seconds. Ryan Block from Engadget had a good missive on the matter back in August of last year, and I have to agree with the guy that it ruins the reader experience.

The best part is, to actually trigger the video you need to hold your mouse over the link for a good 3 seconds before the video starts playing, so your reading experience won’t be too bothered if you make the occasional brush.
If you end up actually clicking the name link, Viewdle will kick you over to Reuters, which has a bunch of links to videos where the person appears. Each link jumps you right to that spot. However, Viewdle doesn’t require you to link back to its Reuters page, which means you can jump the link wherever you please.

Jessica Alba

George Bush

Ron Paul

Related:
Yahoo Shortcuts: It’s everywhere you want to blog

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

You can give it a spin on the names I’ve added after the break.

With that said, I’m really digging Viewdle’s new Name Widget service, which will cross check any names you mention in a blog post and serve up a tiny little video morsel of the person’s face when you hold your cursor over his or her name. The video clips in question come from larger pieces of video that have been run through a facial recognition database and cropped down to fit in an area the size of your thumb. Anyone can add to their blog posts or Web site free of charge with a few lines of JavaScript.

Hovering over the text link of someone's name gives you a quick video clip so you can ID him or her.

Facebook has hired an American Civil Liberties Union attorney to serve in the new role of director of public policy for the social network, according to The New York Times.

Sparapani will join Facebook next month and report to Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly. Meanwhile, Kelly is expected to take a leave of absence in order to make a bid for the California attorney general spot in 2010.

A Facebook representative did not immediately return a call seeking comment on Tuesday.

Representatives from those groups have complained about Facebook’s advertising practices and its revised terms of service agreement. (The CDD complained this week that revised terms of service still give Facebook too much control over user data.)

As a senior attorney at the ACLU, Timothy Sparapani worked on issues like data mining and national ID cards. He also has close ties to privacy groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and the Center for Digital Democracy.

The OZOcar and driver Robert Reichenbach at 5:00 a.m. EDT Tuesday.

NEW YORK–Flying out of New York this morning to San Francisco, I took an OZOcar to JFK.

OZOcar is ahead of the pack. Earlier this month, the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission approved a regulation (PDF) requiring that all black cars coming into service must get at least 25 mpg beginning January 1, 2009. By January 1, 2010, the rate increases to 30 mpg. New York City-based limousine services have about 10,000 black cars on the road. According to the commission, black cars spew 272,000 tons of CO2 equivalents annually, or about 2 percent of New York City’s vehicle emissions. The new standards will cut emissions of the black cars in half.

OZOcar’s fleet includes other hybrids, such as the Lexus Rx 400h, Toyota Camry, and Toyota Highlander. The company, which was founded in September 2005, has blue-chip investment banks, advertising firms, and media companies as customers.

(Credit:
Dan Farber/CNET News.com)

It’s a practical example of how
green tech makes sense. OZOcar has a fleet of about 50 Toyota Prius
cars that get nearly 45 mpg and are outfitted with wireless connectivity, power strips, Sirius satellite radio, and a Nokia N800 Internet Tablet.

“I get just shy of 44 miles per gallon in the real world, where you have to stomp on the accelerator, which you need to do to keep up with yellow cabs or they will cut you off every time,” my driver, Robert Reichenbach, said. “I drive about 200 miles a day on half a tank, using the cheapest grade of gas.” Prior to driving his Prius for OZOcar, Reichenbach spent five and a half years at Lehman Brothers working in the computer graphics department.

Black limos in New York City will be the new green in the next few years.

(Credit:
Dan Farber/CNET News.com)

But I have said, continuously, that Apple could significantly expand its market share by allowing Mac OS X to run legally on other hardware platforms, particularly to leverage and entice the efforts of the Open Source community working on Linux and similar systems.

See what he did there? He riffed on the Macalope’s bit. It’s almost unheard of. A tip o’ the antlers to you, sir!

And he will sigh.

The Macalope was there, Jason, and maybe he remembers it a little differently than you. In his recollection, it went down like this:

Not everyone thinks the Apple industrial design ethos fits their ideal of cool or sexy, mister smart antlers.

The Macalope doesn’t argue that you and many others want more choice — everyone loves choice — but our fundamental disagreement is over whether it’s in Apple’s interests.

Don’t you know anything about Godwin’s Law?

Incidentally, the most hysterical example evah of Godwin’s Law was executed by a former ZDNet blogger you might have heard of.

Well, Jason, the Macalope can’t say it hasn’t been fun because it has. He looks forward to our next bout.

Technology pundits say Apple must license or die.
Apple licenses and has its lunch eaten.
Steve Jobs returns, kills licensing and returns the company to profitability.

What, amputees aren’t entitled to have fun? You got a problem with veterans who had half their limbs blown off in the OS wars?

I believe the good Macalope is again confusing harmless PC hobbyists doing things in the privacy of their own homes with the activities of a struggling upstart computer manufacturer, whose business practices are under very close examination. Not once have I advocated people actually go out and buy systems from companies like Psystar. Yet.

In response to the pointy one’s point that the legs of the
Mac cloning biz might be short and stumpy, Perlow replies:

Well, such was his initial reaction upon finding that ZDNet’s Jason Perlow had posted a response to his piece from Monday. But to his delight, he found this response was different. This was saucy, with a piquant flavor and none of the usual bitter aftertaste so many of the Macalope’s other sparring partners have left him.

So often when deconstructing a work of silly punditry, the Macalope will log on later to see that there is a response, a comeback, a retort.

OK, there are some details left out, but that’s the Reader’s Digest version and the Macalope’s seen nothing other than your unsupported assertions to the contrary that would belie this historical truism.

But I guess Macalope likes to get his point across using inflammatory and tasteless metaphors.

Oh, and “mister smart antlers”? Awesome.

The Macalope’s frown? Turned upside down.

Because they’re always really lame.

But, who knows? Maybe you’re right. Clearly Apple’s doing something wrong, huh?

Inflammatory, yes, but as a gourmand such as yourself should know, taste is subjective.

That was actually the Macalope’s point — that you were flirting with it.

Can’t the brown and furry one just let the air out of a piece without having to spend an entire week on it?

The horny one would argue with you about how significantly cloning would expand market share. But, more importantly, market share is not the most important metric. If it comes at the cost of profit, it’s not much of a prize. As a matter of fact, it’s the kind of “prize” that can put you out of business. Remember, we have precedent.

Fair enough. Whatever freaky hermaphroditic PC action people are into at home is their own business.

According to the Financial Times, music label EMI is planning to launch its own music portal to sell songs and videos, and offer some free content as well.

My first reaction was similar to that of the anonymous music executive quoted in the FT article: dead on arrival. Listeners don’t know and don’t care about labels; they want to buy all their music in one place, and so on.

I suspect that this is more of a cross-marketing play instead. Users will google an EMI artist like–just to pick an example at random–A Perfect Circle. Instead of directing them to a boring alphabetical list with a link to the band’s MySpace page, users could land on a label-owned page with actual songs and videos and CDs, both free and for sale. Once there, EMI might intelligently discern that a fan who likes A Perfect Circle might also like Korn and Iron Maiden, two other metal bands with recordings on EMI, and offer those recordings for sale as well.

And now, just because I haven’t linked to it in a while, here’s the Sex Pistols.

But surely EMI’s digital team, led by former Googler Douglas Merrill, is smart enough to realize that it can’t take on Apple’s iTunes with a label-specific store.

Next-generation data connectivity aside, the $1,399 M50Vm-A1WM (catchy name, that) looks to be a fairly typical media-oriented mainstream machine. Its WXGA+ display should do just fine for watching movies, and we hope its Altec Lansing speakers will make it easy to enjoy music; the laptop is also HDMI ready and Dolby Home Theater certified. Inside the case, you’ll find a 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 processor, 1GB Nvidia GeForce 9600M GS graphics, and a 250GB, 5,400rpm hard drive.

Of course, the WiMax-enabled laptop will initially appeal to residents of Baltimore, where Sprint just launched its Xohm network. However, there will eventually be a broader market for such laptops; Sprint has plans to roll out the technology to other cities, including Chicago, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Portland, Ore., and Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas.

The company’s WiMax promotional page also lists a WiMax-enabled version of its 14.1-inch F8Va laptop, though that model doesn’t appear to be immediately available. So far, the company hasn’t announced plans to release a U.S. version of its WiMax-enabled Eee PC 901–but we certainly expect to see it happen, as the Netbook’s extreme portability seems the perfect match for next-generation wireless services.

Everyone else is doing it, so why shouldn’t Asus? Late Wednesday, the company announced the immediate availability of the M50Vm-A1WM, a 15.4-inch laptop with a built-in WiMax module for the recently launched Sprint Xohm data network.

Temporarily disable your security software. Overzealous firewalls and antivirus programs may inadvertently block Windows Update from downloading and installing necessary OS patches. Right-click the program’s icon in your system tray and choose Exit or Disable (you may have to open the program’s management console and close it from there).

You try to do the right thing by setting your PC to update Windows automatically, only to be stopped in your tracks by some error message or–more likely–a hung browser. Usually there’s a simple explanation for the update hiccup. But not always. The steps below for resuscitating a stalled Windows update begin with the simplest solution and end with the trickiest.

Tomorrow: the best alternatives to Adobe Acrobat.

Unfortunately, the only way to disable some security programs, such as Symantec’s Norton 360, is to open Task Manager and disable them there. To do so, press Ctrl-Alt-Delete, click the Processes tab, find and select the process for the program (it likely uses a variation of the product’s name), and click End Process. The process will restart automatically the next time Windows loads, or restart it manually by clicking its Start menu shortcut to reopen it.

Check Microsoft’s update-troubleshooting site. The first time I visited the Windows Update Troubleshooter, I expected to find a great tool that automatically scanned my PC and fixed whatever was blocking Windows from updating. Instead I opened a page with a long list of links to articles intended to help you figure out the problem on your own. You can find much the same information by copying the error code that appears when Windows Update fails and pasting it into your favorite Web search engine to discover information about it, and possible a solution.

If Windows won't update, check the User Accounts Control Panel applet to make sure you're logged on as an administrator.

(Credit:
Microsoft)

Run the Windows Update Fix batch file. The CastleCopsWiki offers a downloadable batch file that automatically addresses many of the causes for a stalled update. Use it by unzipping the download file and double-clicking the file named WUFix.bat. This is far from a guaranteed fix for update woes, but if everything else has failed to resolve the problem, it’s worth a try.

Make sure you’re logged in an administrator account. To find out if your current account has administrator privileges, click Start > Control Panel > User Accounts (in Vista’s standard Control Panel view, click User Accounts and Family Safety, and then choose User Accounts). If the account you’re currently using isn’t labeled “Computer administrator” in XP, or “Administrator” in Vista, log into an administrator account and try the automatic update again.

An unspoken reason for the MPAA event–which included a symposium earlier in the day with remarks from top House Democrats and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke–was the loss of $246 million in tax breaks when the Senate revised the economic stimulus bill earlier this year. An MPAA report released Tuesday appears designed to avoid a repeat of that setback, listing the number of movies being filmed in each state.

“It’s pure theft, stolen from the artists and quite frankly from the American people as consequence of loss of jobs and as a consequence of loss of income,” Biden said, according to a White House pool report.

Vice President Joe Biden lauded Hollywood at a gala dinner in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday evening, assailed movie piracy, and promised film executives that the Obama administration would pick “the right person” as its copyright czar.

The president chose as top Justice Department officials the music industry attorney who pulled the plug on Grokster and another longtime Recording Industry Association of America ligitator. The Obama administration recently sided with the RIAA in a file-sharing suit, and Biden was a staunch RIAA and MPAA ally as a U.S. senator.

Earlier in the day, Locke also talked up more government action against peer-to-peer piracy. “The recent revelation that an illegal copy of the upcoming movie “Wolverine” had been posted on the Internet prior to its theatrical release underscores the problem the industry faces…As a former prosecutor, I believe in the full and impartial enforcement of the law,” he said.

He also addressed President Obama’s forthcoming decision about who will be named the intellectual-property enforcement coordinator, better known as the copyright czar. Copyright industry lobbyists sent a letter Monday to the president asking him to pick someone sympathetic to their concerns, while groups that would curb copyright law sent their own letter urging the opposite approach.

Under a law approved by the U.S. Congress last October, Obama is required to appoint someone to coordinate the administration’s IP enforcement efforts and prepare annual reports.

“I think sometimes you underestimate the impact you have, and not just entertaining but uplifting,” Biden told the audience at the MPAA event. “I wish I could inspire the way you do.”

On copyright, President Obama has signaled a more pro-industry approach than his predecessor, which has alarmed advocates of less restrictive laws.

Senators attending the MPAA gala included Richard Durban (D-Illinois); Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.); Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Judd Gregg (R-N.H.); Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota); Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont); Roger Wicker (R-Mississipi); and Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska).

Biden blasted China, saying its intellectual property laws remain “largely ineffective” and will end up “strangling their own creative juices,” and compared it to what he described as India’s more effective anti-piracy regime. He singled out Canada, a close U.S. ally, as needing stronger laws; it never signed the treaty that led to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and a proposal to adopt anti-circumvention restrictions was never adopted.

We “will find the right person for intellectual property czar,” Biden said.

Just days after four Pirate Bay defendants were found guilty in Sweden, Biden warned of the harms of piracy at a private event organized by the Motion Picture Association of America in the sumptuous, newly renovated Great Hall of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.

We love it when companies just get it. Valve Software and its announcement of SteamCloud is a prime example. As reported by John Walker at Rock, Paper, Shotgun, SteamCloud will let anyone using Valve’s Steam PC game download and networking service carry over saved game files, mouse, and keyboard configurations and other player-specific info regardless of where you log in. In other words, if you’re at a friend’s house and you want to jump into a game of Team Fortress 2 on his or her PC, all you need to do is log in to Steam and all your settings are there.

We’ve heard a lot of noise from other vendors, Microsoft specifically, about making it easier to play games on your PC, but no one else has come up with a solution that ties in so directly to the games you want to play. Best of all, Steam, SteamCloud, and all of Steam’s community and player matching services are free via a simple download.

Mr. Walker outlined several other features Valve is working on for Steam, including automatic driver updates and a hardware-compatibility check to make sure your PC can play the games you’re interested in before you make a purchase.

(Credit:
Valve)

Valve’s Steam service is perhaps the best digital distribution network for downloading PC games.