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Storage Wars Sued By Its Star; Show Is Faked And Execs Were Confronted By Cast, Court Papers Charge

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“Reality TV” star is shocked — shocked — that his own show is faked.

Storage Wars Sued By Its Star; Show Is Faked And Execs Were Confronted By Cast, Court Papers Charge | Radar Online.

Academia | Business | Culture | Ethics | Humanities | Literature

Losers exist. Don’t hire them

The headline is provocative — I wouldn’t have phrased it that way, but this anecdote was certainly interesting.

[W]hen I asked him about his BA in English, which he had earned about five years earlier, he got nervous. [...]

Aesthetics | Business | Cyberculture | Design | Literacy | Media | Modding | Writing

I like Zite, but what’s with the slogan?

What was the quality control process behind the creation of this logo?

Should that be “Discover Your Interest” or “Discover You’re Interesting”?

I’m not sure I associate owls with curiosity. Owl from the Christopher Robin stories is pompous and oblique. The owl from the Tootsie Pop commercial is impatient and destructive. The Owl in [...]

Amusing | Business | Cyberculture | Media | Modding | Rhetoric | Technology | Usability

iTunes 11: It’s time for Apple’s horrible, bloated program to die.

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At the head of the team is a grizzled old engineer who’s been at Apple forever. He’s surly and crude, always making vulgar jokes about iPads. But the company can’t afford to get rid of him—he’s the only one who understands how to operate the furnaces in the iTunes boiler room. Then one morning the [...]

Books | Business | Culture | Government | Humanities | Literature | Media

What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2012?

Current US law extends copyright protection for 70 years after the date of the author’s death. (Corporate “works-for-hire” are copyrighted for 95 years after publication.) But prior to the 1976 Copyright Act (which became effective in 1978), the maximum copyright term was 56 years (an initial term of 28 years, renewable for another 28 years). [...]

Business | Current_Events | Cyberculture | Design | Literacy | Media | Social_Software | Technology

What Do People Do on Mobile Devices? (Infographic)

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A handful of vignettes communicating the point that mobile use of the Web is on the rise. It’s a challenge to teach students everything that will truly benefit them in a changing world, so for now all I can do is touch on how to use CSS to deliver different versions of a website for [...]

Business | Design | Rhetoric

The 7 key components of a perfect elevator pitch

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Whether you are trying to raise money for your business or just want to perfect your business strategy, a solid elevator pitch is an essential tool for achieving your goals. An elevator pitch can be delivered either verbally, ideally in 60 seconds or less, or as a one-page overview of your business. [...]

Business | Cyberculture | Media | Social_Software | Technology

Family Feud: Tense Thanksgiving for Facebook and George Takei

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Businesses — as well as groups like nonprofits and celebrities like Takei — join the social network by creating pages, and they speak to customers and fans by posting to those pages, which users may follow by clicking “like.” A typical page post is only shown to around 15 percent of the [...]

Business | Cyberculture | Design | Technology | Usability

Thank You, Verizon, for this Confusing Screen

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A few weeks ago, I had to get a new credit card because someone tried to use it fraudulently. The new credit card didn’t arrive until after Verizon tried to charge my bill to the old card. I’ve updated the auto-pay feature with the new credit card, but I don’t know how to read this [...]

Business | Cyberculture | Ethics | Social_Software | Technology

How Amazon Exploits Small Online Retailers

“Our store has been closed with them for two years now and if you google the name of my boutique Amazon links appear,” she said. “We have sold on Sears, eBay, and others, and if we ask them to close the merchant account, the links disappear from Google. So why not Amazon?”

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