Hugh Hefner and a passel of Playmates deciding to post photos of themselves “planking” on the table of the dining room at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles.

And, better still, using the hashtag: #plankingplaymates.

For those who have been in Outer Mongolia for a while, planking is a craze on the Web of posting a photo of yourself facedown in an unusual place.

And, as you will see below, Hef’s results are definitely odd:

That’s not exactly on the menu for a new mobile application being launched by the iconic adult-oriented media company today, called Scout (although BoomTown wishes it were).

Powered by Xtify’s geolocation push notification technology, Scout will be available first in New York and Los Angeles, and initially only on smartphones using Google’s Android mobile operating system.

Users of the Scout app get exclusive nightlife-oriented offers and information about events, clubs and bars aggregated by Playboy’s editors. And when users are near any of these venues, they get push notifications alerting them.

In a statement, Paul Lee, Playboy’s recently installed head of new digital ventures, noted the move was to leverage the famous Playboy brand.

“Scout is a first step in Playboy’s strategy of utilizing new digital platforms to extend our brand in the nightlife arena and to build new revenue streams for the company,” he said.

Playboy could use any help it can get right about now. Yesterday, the company reported a wider loss than expected, due to increasing weakness in its television and publishing divisions, even as it tries to grow via the licensing of assets such as its well-known bunny logo.

Presumably, using that brand to combine relevant content and location-triggered push notifications is yet another attempt to right itself.

Here are two screenshots of the Scout app (click on the images to make them larger):

And here is the official press release:

Xtify Powers Playboy Scout Mobile Application with Location-Based Messaging Technology

Playboy’s Nightlife and Entertainment Content Will Now Reach Users Wherever They Are, Whenever It’s Most Relevant

NEW YORK, November 10, 2010–Xtify, Inc. today announced the release of Playboy Scout, a mobile application enhanced with location-triggered content delivery using the company’s geo-location push notification technology. Playboy Scout is available on Android™ phones nationwide and will soon be launched on other smartphone platforms. The Scout application presents Playboys audience with exclusive nightlife oriented offers and information about events, clubs, and bars which have been reviewed and recommended by Playboy’s editors, and delivers push notifications to users when they are in proximity of venues of interest.

“Scout puts Playboy’s nightlife expertise in the hands of our customers at the time and place they’re most likely to use it–when they’re out with friends and looking for new experiences,” said Paul Lee, managing director of new digital ventures, Playboy Enterprises, Inc. “The Playboy brand and the Xtify platform allow us to offer a compelling value proposition in the location-based space, and we’re excited to leverage Xtify’s innovative messaging technology to deliver new services to customers. Scout is a first step in Playboy’s strategy of utilizing new digital platforms to extend our brand in the nightlife arena and to build new revenue streams for the company.”

Xtify offers the only location-based push notification technology that allows publishers to send notifications to their mobile audience even when the application is closed. To access Playboy Scout, customers simply download the Scout application directly from the Android Market™ to their smartphones to begin receiving mobile alerts featuring content such as VIP access to Playboy events and venue reviews from Playboy’s editors. Xtify’s geo-location platform allows Playboy’s Scout application to alert customers of nightlife events and local points of interest, without the customer needing to open the application.

“Playboy is an authority in the nightlife space with entertainment content that is even more relevant when unleashed from the confines of a computer or magazine,” said Josh Rochlin, CEO of Xtify. “With the Scout application, we are seeing the future of how geo-enabled offerings will allow brands to have a more meaningful relationship with their mobile customers. Xtify’s push notification technology and management tools make it easy for Playboy to deliver the most relevant, timely and highly engaging offers and content to its readers, ensuring a satisfying consumer experience with each notification.”

“When Mr. Hefner opened the first Playboy Club in Chicago, the brand redefined nightlife,” said Jimmy Jellinek, Chief Content Officer, Playboy Enterprises, Inc. “Today the Playboy brand continues to be an authority on nightlife and we intend to leverage that expertise in the digital realm.”

The Playboy Scout application is now live in New York City and Los Angeles with additional cities receiving the alert system throughout 2011. City content will also be updated every few weeks as new locations are reviewed by Playboy’s editors. Additionally, users will be alerted to special offers and perks in select cities across the country.

Today, in a sharply worded post titled “In Defense of Standards, Ethics, and Honest Financial Reporting at Hewlett-Packard,” prominent venture capitalist Ben Horowitz took to his blog to shoot back at the plethora of critics of the Hewlett-Packard board for their conduct related to the controversial jettisoning of CEO Mark Hurd.

That came after Hurd admitted to filing inaccurate expense reports related to an outside contractor who worked closely with him, and who later alleged sexual harassment on his part. Those charges were dropped after Hurd settled with the woman, named Jodie Fisher, but before HP could complete an investigation.

Since then, the board has been under fire from Oracle (ORCL) CEO Larry Ellison, who hired Hurd as the database giant’s president, and former GE head Jack Welch, who laid into the HP board this week.

Now Horowitz has fired back and here’s a taste of his ire, which is aimed at execs, the media and more:

If a CEO is prone to compromise for any reason, he will have every reason. This time it was his expense report. Next time will it be a marginal accrued liability? A deal that came in at 12:01 am on the last day of the quarter? This is a slippery slope that a public board simply cannot tolerate.

And:

Who is Jodie Fisher? According to press reports, Fisher is a former Playboy model, reality show contestant, and softcore porn movie actress with no work history relevant to her job with HP. She was hired by Hewlett-Packard and paid up to $5,000 per meeting to meet with Fortune 50 CEOs.

The mainstream press has reported these facts as mundane, ordinary, and hardly worth concern. I disagree. HP employs over 300,000 people. Every single one of HP’s employees is keenly interested in the qualities, skill sets, and behaviors that HP values most. Financial compensation and access to the CEO are the most important ways that HP communicates what it values to its employees. Jodie Fisher had more access to the CEO and was paid more than 99.9% of HP’s workforce, despite having no traditional qualifications.

It’s important to note that this was not Hurd paying for his personal extracurricular activity out of his own pocket. This was the Hewlett-Packard Corporation paying a softcore porn movie star with no relevant work experience more than it pays Harvard graduates with 20 years of industry experience. This was the company spitting in the face of the people who worked hard and sacrificed every day to help the company win in the market. It was completely and categorically unacceptable.

And:

There are many who take the view that business is singular in purpose–to increase shareholder value. They further take the position that constraining that purpose in any way is inefficient and counterproductive. The mainstream press seems to have broadly adopted this position in its attacks on HP. The Wall Street Journal Op Ed page even complained that businesses were being held to an unfair standard when compared to politicians.

I do not subscribe to this view. Running our companies with no moral or ethical standards is bad for society, bad for the country, and ultimately leads to criminal behavior.

So, what do you really think, Ben?

Horowitz does have an interest in the situation, which he discloses clearly at the top of his piece: His longtime business and now venture partner is HP (HPQ) board member Marc Andreessen.

And the Silicon Valley soap opera continues….

“I’m not afraid
To take a stand”
—Eminem

Disclaimer: my business partner, Marc Andreessen, is on the board of directors of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ). I note that I have no inside information, and this blog post is based purely on published material. In 2007, I sold Opsware, the company that I founded and ran to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6B. I worked at Hewlett-Packard from 2007 to 2008 as an executive in the software business.

Recently, my old company Hewlett-Packard has been in the news–and not in a good way. I’ve been watching the coverage from the sidelines up to this point, but felt increasingly compelled to join the conversation and share my point of view. So here goes.

After firing their CEO, Mark Hurd, the HP board has been accused of everything from incompetence to being prudes. The criticism comes from credible, important journalists and bloggers such as Joe Nocera from the New York Times (NYT), prominent economics blogger Felix Salmon, and former GE (GE) CEO Jack Welch. In addition, HP competitor Larry Ellison lambasted the board and even went so far as to hire Mark Hurd to be President of Oracle (ORCL).

So why in the world did the HP board fire such a high performing CEO? Don’t they care about profits and shareholder value? Aren’t those the most important things? Who cares about his personal shenanigans? Did Mark and his marketing contractor even have sex?

While I am pretty sure that there is much more going on behind the scenes than has been broadly reported, as there often is, let’s look at what has been reported:

* Mark Hurd falsified expense reports.

* The false expense reports are related to a contractor named Jodie Fisher, a former softcore porn movie actress and Playboy model with no relevant marketing experience, who HP was paying up to $5,000 per marketing event.

* At the time of his departure from HP, Hurd issued a public statement saying that he’d violated HP’s Standards of Business Conduct:

“As the investigation progressed, I realized there were instances in which I did not live up to the standards and principles of trust, respect and integrity that I have espoused at HP and which have guided me throughout my career. After a number of discussions with members of the board, I will move aside and the board will search for new leadership. This is a painful decision for me to make after five years at HP, but I believe it would be difficult for me to continue as an effective leader at HP and I believe this is the only decision the board and I could make at this time. I want to stress that this in no way reflects on the operating performance or financial integrity of HP.”

Let’s start with the issue of falsifying expense reports. This factor has been largely dismissed in the press with characterizations like this from Joe Nocera of the New York Times:

“When pressed, H.P. said that Mr. Hurd had fudged some expense reports.”

Nocera goes on to argue that there must have been an alternate motivation to dismiss Hurd, because clearly no CEO would be fired simply for “fudging” an expense report.

When I first read of the expense report issue, my reaction was the opposite of Nocera’s. If the Chief Executive Officer of a public company falsifies any official financial statement, he must be fired. In my mind, this is non-negotiable. We are not talking about a low-level employee tossing an extra receipt into his expense report. We are talking about a public company CEO who is paid tens of millions of dollars a year and is responsible for the integrity of the company’s financial statements fraudulently reporting his own expenses. Why is this a problem?

Every person who invests in Hewlett-Packard does so on the basis of HP’s financial statements. Every pension fund, every retiree, every charitable organization, every employee who joins and is compensated via stock options. When they do so, they trust that the statements are true and that the numbers are accurate. The person they trust to ensure accuracy is the CEO.

If the Chief Executive is willing to compromise the integrity of the company’s financials for any reason, then it is impossible to trust any statement. Every day, there are many potential reasons to falsify financial statements. Here are four examples:

* If you miss the quarter, shareholders will lose money.

* If revenues aren’t high enough, you’ll be forced to lay-off hard working, valued employees.

* If you grow slower than a competitor, you may jeopardize your job.

* A shareholder that you’ve been having an illicit affair with doesn’t want the stock price to go down and threatens to tell your wife.

If a CEO is prone to compromise for any reason, he will have every reason. This time it was his expense report. Next time will it be a marginal accrued liability? A deal that came in at 12:01 am on the last day of the quarter? This is a slippery slope that a public board simply cannot tolerate.

What reason was so powerful that it caused Mark Hurd to break his ethical standard, falsify an official financial statement, mislead the board, and ultimately be fired? It seems that this was done to cover up a “close personal relationship” with a woman named Jodie Fisher, who later accused him of sexual harassment, then subsequently withdrew her claim after Hurd personally paid Fisher a large sum of money.

Who is Jodie Fisher? According to press reports, Fisher is a former Playboy model, reality show contestant, and softcore porn movie actress with no work history relevant to her job with HP. She was hired by Hewlett-Packard and paid up to $5,000 per meeting to meet with Fortune 50 CEOs.

The mainstream press has reported these facts as mundane, ordinary, and hardly worth concern. I disagree. HP employs over 300,000 people. Every single one of HP’s employees is keenly interested in the qualities, skill sets, and behaviors that HP values most. Financial compensation and access to the CEO are the most important ways that HP communicates what it values to its employees. Jodie Fisher had more access to the CEO and was paid more than 99.9% of HP’s workforce, despite having no traditional qualifications.

It’s important to note that this was not Hurd paying for his personal extracurricular activity out of his own pocket. This was the Hewlett-Packard Corporation paying a softcore porn movie star with no relevant work experience more than it pays Harvard graduates with 20 years of industry experience. This was the company spitting in the face of the people who worked hard and sacrificed every day to help the company win in the market. It was completely and categorically unacceptable.

Finally, Hurd admitted in a press release to violating the company’s standards of ethics and integrity. So what? Why do companies have standards and ethics anyway? Shouldn’t they just be concerned with profits? Do we want choir boys or shareholder value?

There are many who take the view that business is singular in purpose–to increase shareholder value. They further take the position that constraining that purpose in any way is inefficient and counterproductive. The mainstream press seems to have broadly adopted this position in its attacks on HP. The Wall Street Journal Op Ed page even complained that businesses were being held to an unfair standard when compared to politicians.

I do not subscribe to this view. Running our companies with no moral or ethical standards is bad for society, bad for the country, and ultimately leads to criminal behavior.

Companies should not merely be thought of as money generating machines. Business can represent human society at its best. A business is a group of people working together to deliver value to the world and improve people’s lives. When done ethically, business quite literally changes the world for the better. However, if the dark side of human motivation is not mitigated with standards and ethics, business can destroy.

We saw this unfold at Enron, a company that was, in its time, celebrated for its impressive profits. Underneath the profits was a culture designed from the ground up to completely ignore any ethical standard including a dazzling display of ethically questionable sexual activity among its executives. These activities, such as promoting secretaries to executive positions in exchange for sexual favors, parallel Hurd’s behavior with Jodie Fisher. In Enron’s case, the bad behavior bled over into first line employees who conspired to create blackouts in California in the name of profits and in the absence of ethics. Ultimately, Enron imploded in a swirl of criminal behavior that bankrupted the company, but not before destroying tens of thousands of peoples’ life savings and damaging millions of innocent victims. After the fact, the press bemoaned the culture that lead to the destruction. However, the same reporters instantly forgot the cause as they cavalierly dismissed Hurd’s ethical breach.

In closing, I point out the impressive courage of the HP board of directors to ignore popular opinion and do the right thing. It is not an easy thing to fire a popular, highly successful CEO. It’s even more difficult when you know that you will be roundly criticized for tolerating that same CEO’s failure to develop internal successors. Despite those factors, Hewlett-Packard’s board of directors stood tall and protected the company, its shareholders and all of us from a dark and destructive journey. As a member of the business community and as a citizen, I am extremely proud of and grateful for their actions.

Ben Horowitz is co-founder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz. He co-founded Loudcloud, later renamed Opsware Inc., in 1999 and served as CEO of the company before it was acquired in 2007 by Hewlett-Packard. He was most recently vice president and general manager of Hewlett-Packard’s Business Technology Organization Unit.

But you no longer need to guess. See for yourself, at The Smoking Jacket, which is now up and running. Mostly running, that is: I’m getting lots of “502 Bad Gateway” errors this morning:

If you’re time-pressed, here’s some of the editorial you’re missing:

• “7 Signs You’ve Given Up on Getting Laid”
• “How to Get Laid at Work”
• A photo gallery of the 1983 Playmate Playoffs
• A video of Playmate Kimberly Phillips in which she is not visibly naked.
• A 21-second video introduction from Hugh Hefner, in which Hef speaks for a couple seconds.

Hefner may have been time-pressed because he is busy trying to take Playboy (PLA) private. Another option: A sale to Penthouse owner FriendFinder Networks, which tried and failed to go public itself in the last year.

That appears to be what the publisher has in mind with TheSmokingJacket.com, a “safe-for-work” site it has in the works (don’t bother trying out the URL–nothing to see there now).

PaidContent’s David Kaplan, who had to sit through Playboy’s (PLA) earnings call this morning, doesn’t have any other details, presumably because Playboy didn’t offer them up.

But it’s easy to imagine what a Playboy-run site you could view at work without getting fired might look like: Take a look at Maxim.com or FHM.com or AskMen.com or any of Break Media‘s sites or…you get the picture.

Despite the challenges the music gaming industry has been facing of late–such as sales dropping, yipes, almost 50 percent in the U.S. this year–the top companies in the field are still churning out new products like it’s nobody’s business.

Well, actually, they are hoping it is going to be somebody’s business–namely, theirs–as they seek to reinvigorate the category, which has been one of the most innovative over the last several years.

Case in point is a spate of new products from the Guitar Hero division of Activision Blizzard (ATVI), which is coming out this fall with three separate major launches.

The fifth version of Guitar Hero arrives tomorrow with 85 tracks, more famous player characters and new features; the family-aimed Band Hero comes out soon after that; and then–in what is probably the most important debut of the three–DJ Hero will be released on October 27.

In that game, a player can turn into some kind of club king, scratching along with unusual mashups that Guitar Hero provides with the new game, which are heavy on hip-hop (versus Guitar Hero’s more typical rock and roll vibe).

[In related news, one of the key player characters in DJ Hero--DJ AM, whose real name was Adam Goldstein--was found dead in his apartment in New York on Friday night.)

Nonetheless, the show will go on.

"We are deeply saddened by the loss of DJ AM," said Tim Riley, Activision VP of music affairs, in a statement. "We hope that his work on the game will be a fitting tribute to his creative spirit and musical talent."]

Does this burst of energy coming from Guitar Hero, which has heretofore dominated the music game space, have to do with the Sept. 9 debut of a new Beatles title for Rock Band, the music game from Viacom (VIA)?

As the Fab Four might sing: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But it also has to do with both music game rivals trying to keep consumers from getting weary of the entire genre.

In that vein, for example, the makers of Beatles: Rock Band are telling consumers to use Guitar Hero controllers to play.

In anticipation of these rollouts, BoomTown visited Guitar Hero’s HQ in Mountain View, Calif., to get a look-see at the new stuff (tomorrow, I will also post interviews I did with Guitar Hero division CEO Dan Rosensweig and its brother founders).

For today, though, here’s the video of the tour, as well as the Playboy Playmates television advertisement for Guitar Hero 5 (I do believe they are aiming at a male demo, so don’t blame me–and it is kind of funny):

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090831/kara-visits-guitar-hero-hq-for-a-sneak-peek-of-gh5-band-hero-and-dj-hero/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20070823/the-tech-10-facebook-markets-you-apple-soups-up-the-ipod-and-youtube-ads-yield-rants/ http://allthingsd.com/20070823/the-tech-10-facebook-markets-you-apple-soups-up-the-ipod-and-youtube-ads-yield-rants/#comments Thu, 23 Aug 2007 18:21:30 +0000 John Sullivan http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20070823/the-tech-10-facebook-markets-you-apple-soups-up-the-ipod-and-youtube-ads-yield-rants/ Note: John Paczkowski is on vacation and won’t be writing or posting videos until he returns Monday.

To keep you abreast of tech news while he’s away, we’re compiling a daily digest of 10 must-read tech stories. We’re calling it the Tech 10 and it appears below.

1. Getting to know you: Facebook is developing targeted ads based on the information that users of the social-networking site reveal about themselves. Quoting anonymous sources at the company, The Wall Street Journal says the advertising system is at an early, changeable stage, but Facebook hopes to launch a basic version late this fall.
2. It looks like Apple will turbocharge its iPods with the Mac OS. According to AppleInsider, the upgraded digital music players will debut at a media event next month and are part of the computer maker’s master plan to create devices around its legendary operating-system software.
3. Dude, where’s my YouTube? Initial response to ads overlaid on downloaded videos from the popular online site is overwhelmingly negative, Computerworld reports, noting that the comments on a YouTube feedback blog could be summarized by the one-word review of a user from Oro Valley, Ariz.: “Yuck.”
4. Hoping to shore up anemic sales of its PlayStation consoles in the face of competition from Microsoft and Nintendo, Sony said it will market a recording-transfer device (pictured here) in Europe enabling users to record TV programs on their PlayStation 3 video-game consoles for transfer to the PlayStation Portable. According to the Associated Press, the new gadget, dubbed PlayTV, will give game consumers an additional function for their PlayStations beyond playing video games.
5. Too hot to handle? Microsoft announced that it’s offering a free retrofit to the Xbox 360 Wireless Racing Wheel after reports from a number of users that smoke issued from the device when used on AC/DC power, according to PC World. The retrofit comes six weeks after it extended the Xbox warranty for “flashing lights of death” failures–and took an earnings hit of $1.15 billion for the anticipated repair bill.
6. Paper trail, indeed. Many iPhone customers are irked over the book-sized bills they are getting from wireless provider AT&T, reports the New York Times. The bills itemize all phone calls, as well as every text message and online data transfer. In response, AT&T announced that beginning Sept. 28, customers would get summarized bills removing the wireless detail.
7. Microsoft and Nokia won’t sit back and watch while the iPhone marches through Europe, apparently. The companies are joining forces to put Windows Live services on selected Nokia S60 handhelds, reports IDG News Service. Customers in 9 countries in Europe and two in the Middle East will be first to get the services, including Hotmail and Live Messenger. A Microsoft spokesman couldn’t say when the functions would be available for cellphones in the United States, however.
8. Speaking of teaming up, MTV and MySpace are collaborating on a series of one-on-one dialogues with the major Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. CNNMoney.com reports that the hourlong events will be streamed live on MTV.com and MySpaceTV throughout the fall on college campuses.
9. Palm’s Foleo computer, first exhibited at this year’s D Conference, is having trouble leaving the gate, writes Tech Trader Daily, quoting a Deutsche Bank analyst who disclosed that the debut in stores of the stripped-down laptop scheduled for this week “was delayed after software bugs were detected. … Palm now expects the device will ship in late September/early October.”
10. Playboy Enterprises is, uh, unveiling Playboy U, a social-networking site targeted exclusively at college students. The move online by the granddaddy of the skin rags, says the Associated Press, is an attempt to capitalize on the Playboy brand as the 54-year-old magazine continues to lose money and readers. The site is modeled after Facebook and MySpace, with users allowed to “friend” other college students. Although there will be no nudie shots, users will be able to discourse on such topics as how many sex partners they’ve had or what they think of penis enlargement.

–posted by Associate Editor John Sullivan

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20070823/the-tech-10-facebook-markets-you-apple-soups-up-the-ipod-and-youtube-ads-yield-rants/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20070511/playboy-second-life/ http://allthingsd.com/20070511/playboy-second-life/#comments Fri, 11 May 2007 16:53:44 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20070511/playboy-second-life/ “What sort of man reads Playboy?” Playboy has long posed that vaguely rhetorical question in the pages of its monthly magazine. Well, now we finally have the answer. He’s a Second Life entrepreneur, an established man of experience and poise, comfortable in his furry avatar with the taste, talent and unrelenting drive to make it in a virtual world where conflicts are resolved with exploding pigs. Oh yeah, and he loves hot avatar-on-avatar action!

Linden Lab’s Second Life, the metaverse’s premier destination for folks missing a first, is getting a new tenant: Playboy. The world’s largest-selling men’s magazine will open shop in the Internet-based virtual world sometime in June. What sort of form it will take remains to be seen. A metaverse mansion and grotto? A retail outlet peddling Playboy Bunny avatar skins? Or perhaps a simple casting call for the girls of the next “cultural zeitgeist”?

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