Written on June 28, 2008 – 3:04 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
What do Polaroid, VHS, and the Internet have in common? They owe a huge part of their success to sex. As Boris once said in the comments on this blog: “Porn is usually the killer app“. He was referring to Qik, the mobile video streaming service that has a lot of porn-related opportunities (The Qik team doesn’t want to take advantage of this though, as they’ll blacklist users who make naughty videos). There’s another company who doesn’t want anything to do with porn, but which WILL profit from it - big time.
Since TIME published an article about the endless porn possibilities the iPhone has - large color AND touch screen, speaker, web access -, Apple spokeswoman Jennifer Bowcock has a hard time claiming that Apple will do anything to stop this. But there’s one thing that Bowcock, nor Steve Jobs, can’t control: the users’ browsing adventures. And thus, the solid Safari browser opens the gates to a mobile porn heaven.
Some people get really excited by the thought of a new iPhone and the sex part combined. Not everyone dares to express these fantasies though. Apart from one blogger, Jason Swifter, who wrote “what everyone wants, but is too chicken to say“:
I wish that there was an application that allowed you to undress people by dragging your fingers across the screen and literally dragging it off.
Seems like the iPhone has everything going for its success. It already was a killer app, yet the popularity will multiply now the sex frontier is in sight.
(Via: Bright - Dutch only)
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Written on June 16, 2008 – 8:45 am
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
Jack Thorogood came across this sign-up form that kind of caught him off guard. Start reading the form and image what you would answer. Let us know in the comments and feel free to make up another few options besides the 3 current ones. Sex? Yes! Done!
I can image the smallest Matryoshka containing a USB stick with some important files on it. Don’t know what else to say about this except that I want it:
If you see anything funny online which would make a good ‘Mischievous Monday Morning’ post don’t hesitate to send it to me! I will reward you with linklove, but no sex.
Written on June 12, 2008 – 11:18 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
When I visited San Francisco a few weeks ago, I noticed that people got really excited when I told them I’m from Amsterdam. Not for the obvious reasons - “oh you guys smoke pot all the time, right?” - but just for the reputation of Holland’s capital. When I got back in Amsterdam, somebody told me we partly owe this reputation to Mediamatic, a cultural organization that organizes exhibitions, presentations, workshops, and more things on these lines. They’re now organizing an evening about DIY and the web, which appears to be pretty interesting. The event goes by the name of “Say Yes / No to the Internet” and is part of a series of evenings on The Power of Negative Thinking.
According to the people from Mediamatic, there’s a yes-yes-mentality today:
Everyone seems gay these days. This lack of conflicting emotions fails to arouse alternative passions. Here, every critical position dissolves.
So by organizing evenings as “Say Yes / No to the Internet“, Mediamatic wants to stimulate you and me to break from this positive consensus. We must make negative statements about anything and in this particular case, the web.
Three speakers address examples of Do it yourself and the web. Brian McKenna’s talk has the title “Proprietary Hardware Do It Youself vs. the Ever Elusive Potential of Software”, Harm van den Dorpel discusses life changing experiences on the web, and Roald de Boer will hold a lecture about porn on the Internet. De Boer will look into the history of porn, especially porn movies, and the amateurish aspect of porn. He will show how images evolved and tries to answer the question whether Internet created a new pornographic language.
So if you’re in the neighborhood and not into football (Holland will defeat France that night), you might want to drop by the PostCS building in Amsterdam. It can be inspiring and refreshing to hear a more philosophical talk about the web, instead of all the start-up bla bla all the time.
Written on May 20, 2008 – 10:09 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
I guess we all know that selling domain names can be pretty good business. But exactly how much money is in that business is anybody’s guess. To give you an impression of what your 4 letter, dictionary safe, erotic style domain name could be worth here is a list of the most expensive domain names ever sold:
1. Sex.com: $12.5 million
2. Porn.com: $9.5 million
3. Diamond.com: $7.5 million
4. Business.com: $7.5 million
5. Casino.com: $5.5 million
6. Asseenontv.com: $5 million
7. Korea.com: $5 million
8. Wine.com: $3.3 million
9. Creditcheck.com: $3 million
10. Vodka.com: $3 million
The interesting thing about this list is the amount of traffic they all generate as measured by Alexa. Sex.com is an obvious winner here but porn.com is only just getting started. And sex.com isn’t even a real site. It just redirects to another domain: sptc.information.com (Yeah, I checked so you don’t have to). If I would own such a great domain name I would use it for something more, well, to the point.
Another surprise is Asseenontv.com. Isn’t that a damn ugly and long domain name? I would guess that it would be a lot cheaper than the 5 million they got for that one.
Do you own any domains you don’t use which might be worth more than usual? Tell us in the comments!
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