This past Sunday (Easter 2011) was a pretty interesting day for me. I did my first-ever TV news appearance — I was interviewed live on CNN by Fredricka Whitfield about how mobile phone users are more vulnerable to e-mail phishing attempts. Here’s the video (sorry about the annoying preroll ads)…
CNN tech Writer Amy Gahran talks to CNN about… by BeyondPixBroadcast
And here’s the transcript.
Now that you’ve seen the finished product, here’s the backstory….
Actor Ashton Kutcher challenges CNN to a Twitter race. He reached the 1 million follower mark first.
Just after midnight mountain time on April 17 actor Ashton Kutcher became the first Twitter user to accumulate more than 1 million followers — winning the race he challenged CNN to by video on Apr. 14.
As Kutcher cross the 1 million follower mark, CCNbrk, which posts current headlines (but not links) from CNN breaking news stories, had just over 998,000 followers.
So what? Is this a publicity stunt and a popularity contest, and mostly trivial? Yes — even though Kutcher did agree to donate $100,000 to the charity Malaria No More when he reach 1 million followers. (However, Ethan Zuckerman pointed out that this charity’s initiative to donate bednet to Africans may be misguided.)
However, there’s an interesting backstory: The CNNbrk account was only recently acquired by CNN.
The Dallas Morning News Tech Blog speculates on the next step in holographic election coverage...
Someone might want to tell CNN: TV is a two-dimensional medium. Holograms don’t work there — not even in high-definition. That’s even more true for holograms that aren’t really holograms.
On election night, CNN debuted a new type of eye candy into its coverage: three-dimensional video interviews with reporter Jessica Yellin and rapper Will.I.Am, both speaking from Chicago. As the TV camera moved around the studio, the angle of the projected image changed, creating the illusion of an in-studio 3D projection.
Here’s what it looked like (Note: CNN’s embedded video just went flaky, but that article on CNN contains a playable version.)
And here’s why this stunt was such a bad idea…