MTV Music is Hulu for music videos. How can you go wrong? This is actually a BETTER concept than showing videos on TV, because you get to watch them in any order you want. Bravo, Corporate Overlords.
Not convinced?
Before working at Mahalo, I was not particularly gadget-conscious. I'm the sort of guy that thinks to replace his cell phone only when it suffers irreparable physical trauma or dies of its own accord, and not a moment before. (My current cell phone is from the first era of "camera phones," when the notion of taking a picture using your portable phone felt roughly as bleeding-edge futuristic as hovering skateboards and automatically-resizing Nikes.)
However, now that I'm immersed in the world of tech and gadgetry (tonight I went to what is essentially an adult science fair to check out homemade robot tables), I've actually started to lust after new shiny objects of consumer goodness. Such as the new ultra-deluxe 3G JesusPhone announced just yesterday by Captain Turtleneck. The mere fact that I understand the term "3G" is a big plus for me...That's the sort of thing I once assumed was arbitrary, like the naming system for new Terminators. (How do you go from T-1000 to T-X (which looks like T-100)? Shouldn't she be the T-10,000?
Here's the thing about the iPhone (or, if you prefer, the iPhone 2.0)...I will probably use 1/500th of the actual available features. (I frequently hear people complain that the phone is missing things I would never in a million years even think to put on there, sometimes with intimidating acronyms like VPD and SQL.) I basically just want a phone that I can also use to watch YouTube videos while I wait in lines and airports. (I'll consider playing this rumored Cro-Magnon Man Rally game, perhaps.) So my desire for the thing is almost entirely manufactured, a function of living every day in this world of gizmos and gadgets more so than any kind of practical application. It's sort of a new feeling for me...
I'm not really questioning the basic premise of this New York Times article - that frequent blogging may lead to an unhealthy lifestyle. It's pretty obvious if you think about it. When you blog, you're sedentary. You don't want to take a lot of time away from the computer to cook or go grocery shopping, so you're probably eating junk food and crap. And because the Internet has made people accustomed to a 24-hour news cycle, anyone wanting to stay on top of all breaking stories in their area of specialty may be inclined to skip a few hours sleep each night. It's clearly not as active and healthful a career as being, say, a personal trainer, or high-priced call girl.
But I am questioning whether or not it's appropriate to turn the deaths of two bloggers and the illness of another into a fluffy trend piece like this, based on zero evidence that any of their assorted maladies had anything to do with their occupation. I mean, couldn't three middle-aged men suffering from health problems related to coronary disease within six months of one another be coincidental? A lot of middle-aged men have bum tickers, even ones who spend little to no time on the computer.
The headline on this piece is Bloggers Write Till They Drop. I'm sorry...this is just insensitive and inappropriate. There's no indication that these Marc Orchart or Russell Shaw died as a result of blogging, and even if they had, "drop" is not a polite way to describe someone's passing in a major newspaper. I didn't see "Heston Drops at 84" on any mastheads today. Plus, neither of the deceased bloggers were blogging at the time of their death; Shaw was sleeping!
Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.
Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.
This whole thing strikes me as a really thin basis for a story (I mean, complaining about sleep disorders and weight gain is way different than Death By Blog). It kind of comes off as another subtle swipe by the mainstream media at blogs in general. (Especially all this "it's a young man's game" stuff, which may be true of certain kinds of blogging, but not all...There's plenty of middle aged political bloggers and they all seem to be feeling fine, and ace political blogger Steve Gilliard died young.)
So when will the NYT run a piece about how all journalists and hopeless out of shape alcoholics who either burn out by the time they're 40 or become puppets of a corrupt establishment?
How did Jason manage to land The Steve for an exclusive Mahalo interview? Not sure...but he did. Amazing stuff:
Cult of the Amateur author Andrew Keen joined us for lunch today at Mahalo andgave a little talk, followed by the most hostile Q&A session I have, personally, ever attended. Usually, Q&A sessions are fawning and ridiculous, which is why I try to avoid them. But not today. Today, my fellow Mahooligans and spectators who joined us through the magic of Ustream really let Keen have it, and held nothing back.
The full archived video (Fast-Forward to about 45 minutes in to get to the good stuff):
Here's the thing with Keen...It's almost impossible to take his arguments seriously on their face because they are poorly researched, frequently illogical and, in many cases, contradictory.
Here's but one example: Keen argues that the market, in many ways, determine whether or not items are culturally valuable. YouTube videos may be popular, but if no one is willing to pay for them, they cannot be considered truly merited pieces of art with any cultural significance.
That would seem to be an entirely Capitalist stance - the market determines all things, including aesthetics. Yet Keen is no capitalist; most of the time, he sounds more like a Socialist, arguing that the BBC represents something of an ideal news-gathering organization because it serves a public good without worrying purely about ratings and profits.
Is it possible to hold both of these notions in your head at once? I suppose...but it strikes me as a case of not following through your ideas to their logical conclusions.
Take anonymity. Keen's major case against blogs as journalism is the fact that some people blog anonymously, and therefore are not transparent or accountable. (Never mind the fact that the vast vast majority of notable, widely-read bloggers, at this point, use their own names, or at least don't go to great lengths to hide their true identities.) But how many articles in his beloved New York Times base their stories entirely on anonymous sources? It happens all the time.
Whenever someone would ask Keen about this sort of thing, he's squirm out of it by reverting to vague generalities. Well, he didn't mean all newspapers are good and all blogs are bad. Some blogs are great and some newspaper articles, like those written by Judy Miller in the lead-up to the Iraq War, are bunk, he'll say. I just mean that we need gatekeepers. Listening to him speak is like chasing your own tail - most of the time, I found myself agreeing with what he was saying, because it was impossible not to. Yes, sometimes Wikipedia is full of shit. Yes, a Harvard professor is smarter than a 14 year old. So what? The Internet still r00lz!
Then I had what Keen would probably call "an epiphany." (He's had several.)
I realized that he wasn't really taking his own argument particularly seriously.
It wasn't just his flip, tongue-in-cheek tone. Mahooligan Nicole really called Keen out on some factual errors in the book, and he essentially conceded the point, laughed it off and continued with the same argument he'd already been making. But that could just be a strategy for deflecting criticism.
No, I became convinced by his constant double-backs, his rhetorical dodges, his lack of any kind of real consistency. He's just lobbing bombs, being a contrarian for its own sake. He calls the book a "polemic," but that's really just a stand-in for "a bunch of Devil's Advocate arguments with which I don't necessarily agree."
A full 50% of the book, I'd say, is made up of moral arguments - the Internet is bad because it allows people to steal music and movies. And then you meet this guy and you realize, "this cocky British atheist doesn't give two shits about the ethics of people downloading the new Danity Kane single for free."
So the question becomes why he's making the argument in the first place.
I can think of three distinct possibilities, ranging from most to least cynical:
Intensely Cynical:
Keen thought this would be a good way to move some units. A book about how Web 2.0 sucks would have no competition amidst the glut of books about how Web 2.0 will revolutionize your brain. He'd maybe even get on "Colbert"!
I don't know...Maybe I'm naive, but this seems improbable to me somehow, the pure greedy thesis. First off, the book can't really have made him all that much money. If you really want to make some green in publishing, you don't write books for nerds about how all their nerdy websites aren't as awesome as they thought. You write spy or legal thrillers and romance novels in which bored, lonely housewives are swept off their feet by troubled, hunky strangers.
Also, if you just wrote a book to get rich, and then people criticized you and called your ideas dumb everywhere you went, you'd be pissed off. Keen's clearly having fun. Which leads me to Point #2:
Somewhat Cynical:
Keen's just kind of being funny, and only half-heartedly meant any of this stuff, and it has now been blown way out of proportion. In essence, after today, I totally think it's possible that Cult of the Amateur is tongue in cheek, that this whole dismissal of what's clearly the future of communication and media is a put-on.
Consider this portion of the presentation: Keen conceded his own status as an amateur. Then he told us he "would like" to be one of his precious elite gatekeepers deciding what is true and good and what is not anyway. Then, he told us there's no such thing as "Absolute Truth" in the first place. I mean...come on....you can't tell me that's all meant seriously.
Not Particularly Cynical:
The final possibility: Keen doesn't really believe all the arguments he's making here, but he feels like someone has to make them, to dampen some of the reckless, utopian enthusiasm of the Internet community. Like the Web 2.0 William F. Buckley, he'll stand astride the Intert00bz yelling "Stop!"
I'm not sure which of these three I really believe...but it's got to be one of them. Because I can't imagine such a funny, seemingly intelligent guy would really present this case as the sum total of years of investigation and thought about the Web.
Ironically, while I was enjoying a lovely three-day weekend in Vegas, the Internet got angry with my boss for working me too hard.
Now, don't me wrong. I work hard for the money. So much so, in fact, that people occasionally treat me right.
It all started when Jason, the CEO of Mahalo, wrote this post discussing some of the principles he has employed in running the company. I would say this post very accurately reflects the culture at Mahalo.
Buy second monitors for everyone, they will save at least 30 minutes a day, which is 100 hours a year... which is at least $2,000 a year.... which is $6,000 over three years. A second monitor cost $300-500 depending on which one you get. That means you're getting 10-20x return on your investment... and you've got a happy team member.
I have three monitors at work. It's like starring in my own Michael Bay film. "Abort! Abort! Get 'em outta there!"
Buy cheap tables and expensive chairs. Tables are a complete rip off. We buy stainless steel restaurant tables that are $100 and $600 Areon chairs.
We do have excellent chairs.
Here's the segment that got controversial:
Fire people who are not workaholics. don't love their work... come on folks, this is startup life, it's not a game. don't work at a startup if you're not into it--go work at the post office or stabucks if you're not into it you want balance in your life. For realz.
The strikethroughs are in the original. Jason changed the language after the strong Internet reaction. I'm really not clear as to why "it's not a game" is crossed out, though. Mahalo is no game - we're all busting our ass around there. There's no playtime on this guy's watch.
As for the stuff about "balance" in one's life, I have two responses:
(1) It's entirely possible to work at Mahalo and still have some kind of balance in your life. Many Mahalo guides and developers have strong passions outside of work - there are numerous authors, screenwriters, musicians, athletes, bloggers, podcasters, actors, even feature film directors. Numerous guides and developers are married; some have children. Sounds like balance to me. Oh, but they work hard for a guy with high expectations, so that doesn't count as having a life. Now, going to tech industry conferences every weekend...THAT'S LIVING! WOOOOO-EEEEEEE!
(2) Jason was right the first time. Balance is overrated. Obsessiveness is not rewarded nearly enough in this world. The only way to get truly amazingly good at something is to obsess over it. There are things in this world that rely heavily on natural ability and can't be achieved through extensive experience, practice or investigation...but not too many.
When I worked at Laser Blazer, I would estimate that I watched, on average, 1 movie I had never seen before each day. Some days, I would watch movies at work, then come home and watch 2 or 3 more movies. That's obsessive behavior. But I bet I know more about movies than you, unless you have also kept up a regimen like this for an extended period of time.
Not everyone's personality works this way. Some people need to focus for 6-8 hours and then get the hell away and focus elsewhere. I get that. They should just find a job that fits this lifestyle and rhythm. Mahalo is so not that job. If I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't be able to work there. If my post-production job had required this level of dedication, I would have quit inside a week. (Wisely, they worked me just hard enough to dampen my spirits and keep me quiet for 3 years, but not so hard that I'd actually come to my senses and quit. My revenge was not really giving a shit and sometimes getting drunk at lunch.)
But these days, I care about what I'm doing and I enjoy my job, so I get obsessive about it, because that's just how I am. It's not really about the salary.
Some of the responses to Jason's post were, in my mind, ludicrously naive. Most ludicrous? This one from 37signals titled "Fire the Workaholics." Good luck with all that...
People who are workaholics are likely to attempt to fix problems by throwing sheer hours at the problem. If you’re dealing with people working with anything creatively that’s a deadbeat way to get great work done.
Time and concentrated effort won't necessarily solve every problem alone...but you've got to admit that it really helps, right? Perhaps this is why, immediately after a homicide has happened, they start scouring the crime scene and questioning witnesses rather than, say, catching up on last week's "House." Building a company from scratch takes a lot of work, and that means a lot of hours. If you have someone who's passionate enough about the job to work long hours for you solving problems...you're gonna tell me that's a bad thing, because they're not being creative enough?
If all you do is work, your value judgements [sic] are unlikely to be sound. Making good calls on “is it worth it?” is absolutely critical to great work. Missing out on life in general to put more hours in at the office screams “misguided values”.
I fail to see how working hard and utilizing good judgment are mutually exclusive.
But still, just for the sake of argument, let's consider a scenario: Two employees both come up with the same idea and the boss hates it. "That's a terrible idea!" the hypothetical boss who is absolutely not based on any real boss says. So one employee goes, "Crap, he didn't like my idea, what a big meanie" and goes home while the other hangs out for 4 hours trying to improve his or her idea. You're telling me the latter employee has "misguided values"? Isn't this usually called "trying"? Or "giving a shit"?
Working with interesting people is more interesting than just working. If all you got going for your life is work, work, work, the good team-gelling lunches are going to be some pretty boring straight shop talk. Yawn. I’d much rather hear more about your whittling project, your last trek, how your garden is doing, or when you’ll get your flight certificate.
You'd rather your employees talk about goddamn whittling than the vital task at hand? REALLY? I mean, there's no need to be a Nazi, and I think it's fine to allow people to be people and to gab occasionally during the day (and Mahalo, like all workplaces, has its share of socializing, and more of its fair share of Rick Rolling). But it's not a bad thing if a lot of people who work on a big project want to talk about the project. We can talk about what books we're enjoying on GoodReads and go see monster movies on opening night, but that's hardly the top priority.
I mean, regardless of what you personally think of Mahalo, the fact is that the people who work on it believe in what we're doing. So once you start from that assumption, not wanting to take 2 hour coffee breaks to discuss whittling makes more sense. (Not that it doesn't sound riveting.)
I've been so enjoying Hulu, the free streaming video site where I just watched the entire first season of "Arrested Development," I completely forgot that I still have a beta membership to its competitor, Joost. I went back over to Joost for the first time in a few months today.
The problems began immediately. See, Joost requires you to download software to watch videos (unlike Hulu, which plays videos right there in your browser). But apparently, the beta software I had downloaded a few months ago was no longer operational, not that there was any actual message letting me know this. So, I deleted the old version and went back to the website and downloaded the newest Joost. The whole operation probably took 5 minutes, but it would have been nice if the old software had just told me to download the latest counterpart, rather than just giving me an error message.
Once I downloaded and started up the software and gave them a lot of information they really shouldn't need, I was ready to watch shows. Unfortunately, there is next-to-no genuinely worthwhile content on Joost. They have a lot of film channels, but they're almost entirely devoted to short films. (One "horror movie" channel was devoted to a few, old public-domain black-and-white horror movies, such as you might find on late-night UHF television in the '80s. Most of these can be obtained on DVD for under $5.) Seriously...this is their heavily-invested business plan? Post a couple of public domain horror movies and some shorts?
I was excited to find, on the Saturday Morning Cartoons channel, some Rocky and Bullwinkle episodes, but they don't even have a single full story arc. (Fans will recall that Rocky and Bullwinkle stories carried over from week to week). Weak.
Hulu, on the other hand, contains whole seasons of its shows, and in many cases, that means the current season. So if I miss "Family Guy," it's streaming, free, online (with a few commercial interruptions so money can be made) a few days later. Now that's in the neighborhood of what I'm talking about.
(I see that Hulu has just added several whole episodes of "What's Happening" to their line-up. Well played.)
So I'm not sure if Joost saw itself as directly taking on Hulu, but so far, it's a total rout. (Not only in terms of content and the pain-in-the-ass of downloading software just to watch videos, but the Joost interface also leaves much to be desired. It crashed once on me, froze my computer temporarily on another instance, and twice, I clicked a video on a menu only to be told that it wasn't currently available.)
Joost calls itself "Free Online TV," but that's using the notion of TV pretty loosely. Most of their content reminds me of what you'd see on a public access channel, or the channel in your hotel room that tells you about all the great amenities, maybe featuring Eric Estrada showing you around the resort, letting you know where the clubhouse is located so you can get clean towels.
It occurs to me now that Joost is brought to you by CBS, a Mahalo investor, and the same VC firm that is invested in Mahalo, so maybe I shouldn't even go ahead with this post...I might make some powerful enemies. But hey, I'm helping out the Joost people. Everyone loves feedback, right?
The minds behind the Mahalo Daily bring you Steve Jobs' 90 minute keynote address from today's Macworld in easily-digestible 60-second form:
Right-Wing Facebook...Finally!
It's a pretty solid parody - one of the better jokey political sites I've seen. Each candidate has his own "profile" page. I particularly liked that Mike Huckabee's favorite quote is “I can has cheezburger?!1!”
Check out this hilarious, likely-to-be-a-hoax website Marry Our Daughter It allows prospective grooms, provided they are good Christians, to bid on teenage brides!
The late Founder and CEO of MarryOurDaughter.com
Kyra's 14 and a half. She's a real bargain at $27,995:
Kyra likes the outdoors, more the open air of the beach or the desert than the woods. She would love to live somewhere away from it all. She is bright and funny and full of life and while she has little direct experience with the opposite sex we have made sure she is aware of everything she needs to know to be a good wife and mother.
See? It's almost creepy enough to be real.
But, alas, it's not. How do I know? Well, first off, the folks at Snopes, who are always on top of such things, have pretty much declared the thing fake.
There's very little actual information on the site, save for a FAQ:
Q: WHAT IS A BRIDE PRICE?
A: The bride price is an ancient custom, somewhat like a dowry. A man wishing to marry a woman would offer her family a Bride Price in cash or kind, or sometimes offer to work for their family.
Q:WHAT IF NO ONE ACCEPTS MY PROPOSAL?
A: In that case, you might want to closely examine how you are proposing and how carefully you are matching your likes and dislikes, your goals and dreams, to those of your prospective bride.
Also, lines like this kind of give it away:
Please do not propose to multiple Daughters or you risk having all your proposals disqualified.
Plus, the "testimonials" are just too perfect:
"Thank God for your site! Our daughter was really nervous walking down the aisle, but she seems okay now and the money we got let us keep our farm and even add on a few acres."
—Mrs. Addrien L.
[Hat tip: Tristero at Digby's blog]
Just returned from Third Street Promenade, where I waited for six hours to get an iPhone.
Well, I'm not personally buying an iPhone. It's a bit expensive for me, and I rarely go anywhere or do anything that would allow for portable Internet time. I bought my Video iPod months ago and tonight was one of my first chances to actually get some use out of it, and it still sat in my pocket for most of the night.
No, I was waiting on behalf of Mahalo.com. The phones don't actually go on sale until tomorrow afternoon at 6 p.m., so a bunch of us are working the line in shifts, three at a time.
It was interesting - a chance to experience what may turn out to be a significant cultural moment, but without all the massive downsides to waiting in a 28-hour line. (Like the not getting any sleep thing, the massive boredom thing and the sitting out on a public street like a goober for 28 hours thing).
Hanging out there on Third Street for six hours on a Thursday in a line outside of the Apple Store...I learned some things. And here they are:
- Some of the amateur musical acts that play on Third Street are surprisingly okay. Most are not.
- The Helio Ocean has GPS. The Apple iPhone does not.
- Camping chairs are far more comfortable and easy on the ass than regular folding chairs.
- Santa Monica has a tremendous amount of really beautiful women and the vast majority of them will studiously avoid making contact with yours truly.
- The Helio Ocean has a convenient keypad, useful for text messaging. The iPhone does not.
- In Los Angeles, brief lines, say for films or bathrooms, tend to be quite hostile. I've been at local bars where guys will shove you aside to get to the urinal first. But long queues, say for iPhones, tend to be extremely communal and friendly. No one said anything about people getting up, moving around, leaving their seats, inviting friends into the line or switching off turns with friends. People were making jokes and sharing observations with one another. An egregiously nerdy weirdo in a stupid green hat whose ability to raise the iPhone's asking price was in serious doubt shared a spontaneous hoedown with some young ladies to the strains of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia." Fostering this kind of convivial atmosphere in a long-term line makes sense, as you'll have to be around your neighbors for a while and you might as well get along and enjoy your time together, but it's interesting to see a crowd of strangers spontaneously behave in such a logical fashion.
- No question gets irritating faster than "What are you guys waiting in line for?" My technique to avoid getting extremely annoyed and rude is always to make up the most elaborate falsehood I could think of, and then stick to it religioiusly. "David Hasselhoff is going to be here signing albums in an hour!" "They're giving away free dialysis treatments!" "We're waiting for the bus to Burning Man!" My dream, the ultimate, would be for my victim to go around the next day and share this misinformation with friends, family and co-workers. "I was at Third Street last night? And this whole line of people? There were waiting to see David Hasselhoff sign albums. Ya rly!"
This is just an incredibly stupid question, regardless of how frequently it's asked. We're all in a line late at night in front of a computer store...If you know anything about computers or the tech industry, that alone should be enough for you to figure out what's going on. What could we be waiting for outside of an Apple Store? A free round of delicious apple martinis? Autographed photos of Apple Paltrow Martin? If the Apple Store line isn't enough evidence for you to piece together a theory, you don't know anything about computers or the tech industry...so why do you care what we're waiting for? It's clearly not going to affect you. What were they hoping we'd say? "One random person in this line is going to receive $10 million! Come on in, there's still room!"
- People love to feel superior to others, even if it's only for NOT waiting overnight in a line for a phone, as if that were difficult to do. Line passerby comments ranged from condescending ("Wow, you want an iPhone that badly? Well, more power to you...") to the obnoxious ("You're paying $600 for a phone? Didn't you read the New York Times review?") to the the outright hostile. A guy actually walked by the line and yelled "baaaaaa," implying that we were all soulless sheep-like consumer-bots, I guess. Which is just so easy, to judge someone in this way over something so superficial. "Hey, this person is expending energy on something I personally don't care about...What a loser. Thank God I'm such a super-cool individual, the kind of bold non-conformist who just wanders around malls late at night on a Thursday without buying anything. Man, I'm terrific."
- Jean Baudrillard was totally 100% correct. The iPhone line is a real media event. Earlier in the day, one of my co-workers who had an earlier line shift was interviewed by the CW, and two others were photographed by the Associated Press. All night, people were videotaping and photographing the line from different angles and perspectives, with the Apple Store logo in the background and without, individual faces and large crowd scenes. There's a sense that this is something significant that must be captured for posterity. But the whole thing is also a media creation. The iPhone doesn't exist in reality for anyone but Steve Jobs and Walt Mossberg.
Mossberg and Jobs at the Mahalo launch D: All Things Digital conference
A massive half-year-long saturation campaign has brought the hype over the iPhone to a fever pitch, essentially informing us that this was THE MUST HAVE device of 2007. Maybe of the decade. So we, the public, hearing the message loud and clear, have enacted that favorite ritual of hyped gadgetry, the pre-sale line-up. We're basically just doing what we're told. (In this context, the "baaaa" comment appears not so much off-base as arrogant, adolescent and unnecessarily direct. We're talking about pop culture phenomena here, not the behavior of any single individual, who could have a variety of potential reasons for sitting in an iPhone line. Such as, for example, not purchasing an iPhone but as a favor/assignment for work.)
Then, having heard and acted upon the media message - "Get excited for the iPhone!" - the media then shows up to report on us doing their bidding, but pretending the whole time that it was a spontaneous, unexpected outpouring of iPhone-related enthusiasm. As if the whole purpose of all the magazine covers, newspaper columns, blog posts, keynote speeches, press releases and commercials wasn't to convince people to line up outside of Apple Stores in a frenzied panic to obtain an iPhone.
- The iPhone is going to be enormous. Enthusiasm for it was palpable, for people in and out of the line. Some of the blogs are calling this thing the "Jesusphone" for a reason - it promises the world at your fingertips, a fully integrated experience that combines the best aspects of all of our favorite technologies in a tiny box you can keep with you all day. (Whether this is something the iPhone, nor any object aside from a nimble and well-educated mind, can actually deliver remains to be seen. But this is the promise.)
Just like the iPod, the iPhone simply replicates the experience of using other devices that already exist. Steve Jobs didn't invent the mp3 player, or online music downloads, and he certainly didn't invent phones that can play songs, take pictures and check e-mail. But he's somehow figured out how to package these things in a way that makes intuitive sense to Americans, aesthetically and practically, and gets them excited. E-mail and Google Maps, in 2007, could not be more mundane. It takes a special kind of genius to motivate people from around the country to line up for 28 hours for an overpriced cell phone integrated with these tools, and there's a lot more to it than senseless Consumer Whoredom.
