AllThingsD » girl

Viral Video: Adorable Tyke Dancing With Less Adorable Adults

Kara Swisher — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 07:28:39 +0000

This video is clearly cooked up for virality, but BoomTown fell for it anyway.

In it, a cute little girl starts dancing like any kid would–which is to say, all goofy and silly. But, lo, she is then joined by a bunch of adults and begins a choreographed number that would do Beyoncé proud.

And then, at the end, the kicker: It is all part of an advertisement for Samsung’s Galaxy 580 mobile phone.

Giant, prolonged, I-was-totally-snookered sigh.

Still, enjoy:

BoomTown Talks Girl Geek at Facebook Hack Event

Kara Swisher — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 15:08:41 +0000

This Saturday, BoomTown gassed up the Mini and motored on down to Facebook’s newest building in Palo Alto, Calif., for a Developer Garage and Hackathon, which the social networking giant did in partnership with Girls in Tech.

The goal was to focus on women developers, although there were plenty of dudes in attendance, as per usual at any all-night nerd-off.

While there, event wrangler Randi Zuckerberg fobbed off to me a panel for lady geeks she was slated to moderate, which was a decidedly risky move on her part.

Here is the video of that panel, which included: Facebook Engineering Director Jocelyn Goldfein; Meebo co-founder Sandy Jen; Jennifer Pahlka, founder of Code for America; and Catherine Herdlick, a game producer for Electronic Arts (ERTS).

Natch, I also did a video of my own at the Silicon Valley event that features interviews with Zuckerberg, Facebook Engineering VP Mike Schroepfer, GIT Managing Director Dhana Pawar and Goldfein, which is also below:

[ See post to watch video ]

Viral Video: Love Your Flawz

Kara Swisher — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:14:27 +0000

Here is a terrific video by singer Caitlin Crosby, which seems to start as a marketing tool for her most recent album and single, “Flawz.”

Instead, her rallying cry of “Embrace Your Flawz,” aimed at a wide range of people, especially young girls, makes for a most effective and innovative online message, made up of messages from fans and celebrities.

You can also visit the Love Your Flawz Web site, but here is the video:

Prankster Jason Calacanis Talks About His Apple iPad Hoax (Warning: Cute Baby Alert!)

Kara Swisher — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:05:30 +0000

While in Los Angeles for a brief second on Friday, BoomTown motored over to the Brentwood home of puckish entrepreneur Jason Calacanis to talk to him about his prank tweets the night before the introduction of the iPad last week.

On Tuesday night before the much hyped launch of the newest device from Apple (AAPL), Calacanis let loose with a series of over-the-top posts to Twitter, claiming he had been a beta tester for the iPad tablet computer for 10 days.

Unfortunately, these were assertions that some in the mostly mainstream media took too seriously.

So was it a jump-the-shark moment for journalism?

It was certainly sloppy, given that Calacanis is well known for slapping Apple around and that the secretive computer giant does not even give its own employees access to new products.

All this might have sent off alarm bells.

But he followed up with a series of tweets on a myriad of features of the new iPad–one nuttier, pricier and heavier than the next, such as a built-in HDTV tuner, a solar recharging pad and more.

For example: “Yes, there are 2cameras: one in front and one in back (or it may be one with some double lens) so you record yourself and in front of u.”

The problem was that a few big media outfits, including CNNMoney.com and WSJ.com, posted reports on the tweets without much of a raised eyebrow or first checking on their veracity with Apple or with Calacanis.

While anyone can get caught in a prank–and this was a pretty elaborate one pulled by Calacanis, who claims he was just trying to point out how ridiculous Apple hype had become–it’s still an instructive moment for journalism.

Here’s my interview with Calacanis, explaining it all (with a little shot of his new baby girl at the end), as well as images of his faux iPad tweets below:

[ See post to watch video ]

Yahoo Sorry About Lap Dancers at Hack Day in Taiwan–So What's the Excuse for Last Year's Go-Go Girls?

Kara Swisher — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:37:01 +0000

One word: Shameful.

So, no surprise that Yahoo (YHOO), which is trying mightily to burnish its image worldwide, quickly apologized for the presence of women lap dancers onstage at its Open Hack Day in Taiwan last weekend.

In a post on its Yahoo Developer Network blog tonight, titled “Sorry,” YDN head Chris Yeh wrote:

All,

I wanted to acknowledge the public reaction generated by the images of female dancers at our Taiwan Open Hack Day this past weekend. Our hack events are designed to give developers an opportunity to learn about our APIs and technologies. As many folks have rightly pointed out, the “Hack Girls” aspect of our Taiwan Hack Day is not reflective of that spirit or purpose. And it’s certainly not the message we want to send about our values here at Yahoo!. Hack Days are about making everyone feel welcome, including women coders and technologists.

This incident is regrettable and we apologize to anyone that we have offended. Rest assured, it won’t happen again.

Best,
Chris Yeh
Head of YDN
twitter: @ydn
email: cyeh at yahoo-inc dot com

Ironically, in a post listing the winners and details of of the Open Hack event, at which Yahoo invited outside developers to brainstorm, Yahoo’s Erik Eldridge noted earlier today (italics are mine):

“This was our second visit to Taiwan, and we were really looking forward to coming back to see the passionate Taiwanese developers.”

Ouch. Worse still, top Yahoo execs–such as Taiwan CTO Joy Chan, Asia head Rose Tsou and Chief Technologist Sam Pullara, all pictured here with another Yahoo exec, Peter Lin–were in attendance at the event, although it is not clear if any of them attended the lap dance performance. (Yahoo PR is checking on that now for me.)

Like the image above, here are some more pictures of the lap dancers from a Flickr video, posted here, which has since been made private (click on the images to make them, um, larger):

And, rut-roh, here is a link to some more, even shorter-skirted photos on Flickr.

But, perhaps worst of all, this kind of thing is not new for Yahoo’s hack events in Taiwan, at least, where there seems to be some history of this sort of Pussycat-Dolls-meets-geeks tone.

It is not clear why all the thumpa-thumpa music and dancing gals did not engender complaints last year, although I am guessing the nerd lap action sent over the top.

In any case, here are four videos from the event in 2008 of even more gyrating ladies, which you can contrast with a video from Yahoo’s New York event on Oct. 12 of this year.

UPDATE: The videos have been suddenly made private by the person who posted them since I posted them last night, as they now say when you click them. They are not searchable or available any longer on YouTube. But you can see the situation from the images on the videos.

(If you want to know what a lap dance is, by the way, try Yahoo Answers!)

Viral Video: Teen Girl Alert! "Twilight: New Moon" Trailer Loose in the Internet Wild.

Kara Swisher — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 21:09:50 +0000

Since it was tacked onto the slasher movie, “Sorority Row,” which opened this weekend, many have been posting the brand new trailer for “New Moon.”

The second installment of the “Twilight” vampire series debuts Nov. 20, natch!

And, actually, while the first film left me in a mild stupor–BoomTown is so not the demographic for the film–this one looks pretty good because it seems chock full of the Olympic broodiness of Kristen Stewart (who is also filming a biopic about Joan Jett, which completely redeems her in my book).

Here’s one of the many video trailers, one of which already had 2,732 comments on Google (GOOG) video site YouTube since it was posted just yesterday, most of which are text versions of teen girls screaming:

And here are the first two trailers, released earlier this summer:

V-Day Founder Eve Ensler: The Full D7 Session

Kara Swisher — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 05:04:52 +0000

As founder of a global movement to end violence against women and girls, Eve Ensler has long been focused on human rights issues across the world.

Onstage in an interview at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, she shed much-needed light on the dire situation in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where some of the worst atrocities are now being committed on the population in a terrible civil war.

Ensler’s aim is to end the use of rape as a weapon of war there, which is, in part, a consequence of the region’s coltan trade. Coltan, or columbite tantalite, is a mineral essential to the manufacture of a wide array of consumer electronics, such as mobile phones and laptops.

It is well worth hearing about exactly how some of our everyday gadgets come to us at a terrible price.

Here is the video of the full D7 session:

[ See post to watch video ]

V-Day Founder Eve Ensler: The Full D7 Session

Kara Swisher — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:21:16 +0000

As founder of a global movement to end violence against women and girls, Eve Ensler has long been focused on human rights issues across the world.

It is well worth hearing about exactly how some of our everyday gadgets come to us at a terrible price.

Here is the video of the full D7 session:

[ See post to watch video ]