Valleywag
paul boutin
Posts Tagged “
Paul Boutin
”
paul boutin
the olds
Olds take back Valleywag
Now that Valleywag's Straighty McStraights are out of the closet, it's time to stand up for another oppressed demographic: The Valley's middle-agers. No, not the professionally groomed gray-haired executives who hop between million-dollar gigs. I mean the kid-raising, house-owning, middle-managing people without whom none of the snotnose Web 2.0 brats would still have a job. I've been full-time at Valleywag three days, and the elder abuse is already insufferable. So: Send me your age-discrimination stories, your defamatory tales of underage "founders," your news items of interest to techies over 40. As for you Youngs, someone needs to tell you: Your code sucks, and we only keep John C. Dvorak around because he drives you insane.
online advertising
Valleywag's latest hire already making enemies
Here's a newscast that has us worried about Valleywag's latest hire, Paul Boutin. Either that or it's one of the better viral online ad campaigns we've seen in a while, put together by Showtime's interactive agency Deep Focus.
great moments in journalism
Full meta disclosure
After two years of playing footsie with Valleywag, I've finally been hired full time to write for what these kids call The Olds — that means winning over Fleetwood Mac fans and Fortune subscribers. Waist-high ace reporter Kara Swisher goaded me to start my first full day today with a journalistic "disclosure" statement like hers. She assured me that coming clean of my conflicts of interest would assuage Internet geezers suspicious of eww bloggers. Ok, but just this once. I hate journalism about journalism, plus I need to get back to nagging Arnel Pineda for an interview. More »
housekeeping
Very special correspondent Paul Boutin even more special now
The big tech pubs have been shuffling their A-team players lately. Steven Levy jumped from Newsweek to Wired. Dan Lyons left Forbes to replace Levy at Newsweek. Forbes is now doing some high-end poaching of its own. (Can we vote for Brendan Koerner?) And the New York Times is staffing up for battle with the Wall Street Journal. Here at Valleywag, we heard that perpetual hanger-on, WSJ book reviewer, Wired kibbitzer and Bono impersonator Paul Boutin was being pulled into interviews for some of these big gigs. Paul, we told him, why bother? No matter where you end up, every single article you write will be 100-worded and openly mocked on Valleywag. Why don't you just finally join the team and post the stuff yourself here? Cracked Boutin, "That seems easier." He starts July 1. More »
silicon valley users guide
The 250
Not every conversation happens online. A phrase you won't find on Twitter or Technorati is The 250 — pronounced "two-fifty" — a cruelly sarcastic euphemism used in real-life conversations for the small, cliquey group of self-appointed Web 2.0 insiders who seem to spend their days blogging and Twittering about one another. The gist is that The 250 are the 250 people who matter to The 250. None of the other 6 billion people on Earth care which of The 250 are dating each other or got onto a panel at South By Southwest. I'm loathe to name names other than Valleywag editor Owen Thomas, whose site the other 249 check obsessively for mentions of themselves.
too insidery
Amazon.com failure exposes shadowy origins of Paul Boutin
Wired has resurrected an old tradition: Get the geeks in the server room to explain why computers fail. This time, it's CondeNet CTO Rajiv Pant, explaining why Wired uses Amazon's S3 storage service despite this morning's breakdown. But last time around? Breaking down walls between the engineering quad and the newsroom resulted in ... Paul Boutin. Don't say you weren't warned.
silicon valley users guide
How to write for Valleywag
New York Magazine has helpfully published Valleywag's internal style guide. Why keep it a secret? The full guide, written by very special correspondent Paul Boutin, follows. More »
party plane
Three questions for the Google party plane posse
We know TechCrunch's Michael Arrington didn't make it onto the Google jet back from Davos, but who did? Arrington claims that Lotus founder Mitch Kapor, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and tech publisher Tim O'Reilly made it onto the flight but doesn't serve us up with a passenger manifest. More »
nerdspotting
Robert Scoble almost managed an interview with some guy wearing sunglasses inside at Davos. But no, that's not our very special correspondent recording a message to fans on YouTube. It's the real Bono. Really, you think our guy would say, "Don't change your lightbulb. Change your leaders" ? He's a bit more cynical than all that. More »
Robert Scoble gets within inches of Real Bono
Robert Scoble almost managed an interview with some guy wearing sunglasses inside at Davos. But no, that's not our very special correspondent recording a message to fans on YouTube. It's the real Bono. Really, you think our guy would say, "Don't change your lightbulb. Change your leaders" ? He's a bit more cynical than all that. More »
party report
We wear our sunglasses at night
No, I don't understand Paul Boutin's fixation with Bono, either. But he brought a fistful of sunglasses to Moose's on Friday, and before we knew it, everyone was putting them on. The bar's lighting is already moody, and let me tell you, when you put on a pair of Bulgari, it gets murkier than an open-standards discussion list. Things got even geekier when the boys from Uncov rolled in. And then, out of nowhere — well, out of Las Vegas, really — Julia Allison and Meghan Asha showed up to glam up the evening. Did we say "happy hour"? Our apologies. We practically closed the place. Next Friday: Natali Del Conte's going-away party.
paul boutin
Why I hate you -- and I do mean you
Entrepreneurs. Engineers. Bloggers. You keep asking: Why does a writer like me hate people like you? Nick Denton's new traffic-based pay scale has backfired wonderfully, giving me a few minutes to explain it. More »
9:54 AM on Thu Jan 10 2008
By Paul Boutin
2,986 views,
19 comments
paul boutin
Math nerd explains Google's top searches
Very special correspondent Paul Boutin went on NPR this morning to talk about Google's year-end Zeitgeist list of top searches. Sure, he takes style tips from Bono these days, but I knew the guy when he was a major nerd (see picture). And in this episode, he reverted to form, invoking the "first-order derivative" in the first minute. Way to go, man!
too insidery
Fake quote a real honor for Gizmodo editor
What a Christmas present: Gizmodo editor Brian Lam has been fake-quoted by The Onion. Paul Boutin, our very special correspondent, still talks about the day — five years ago, people — that he got the Onion treatment. And yes, I'm jealous. (Disclosure: Gawker Media publishes both Valleywag and Gizmodo, which means I get to rag on Lam about this at staff meetings.)
paul boutin
Wikipedia wins, I lose big bet on the news
Blogger Rogers Cadenhead doesn't get to declare the official winner of the bet between the Dave Winer and the New York Times. Google — the company, not the search engine — will call a winner, and the Long Now Foundation, which holds the cash in the pot, will decide the issue. I know because I set this all up in 2001, by talking to Google PR chief David Krane before approaching Winer and the Times to arrange a wager on whether blogs or the paper of record would cover the big stories of this year better. The bet ran in Wired's Long Bets issue. More »
boozer-generated content
The perils of drunkblogging
"Quick, post the pictures before you sober up!" the ever-helpful Paul Boutin emails me. I'd love to, Paul, but it seems that Brian Lam, gadget expert, forgot to put charged-up batteries in this superhigh-tech, amazingly unusable Sony camera he lent me. Thanks, Brian. This is why he's running a gadget blog and I make fun of venture capitalists for a living, people. More »
recap
Bulldog pup photo shortage rocks Silicon Valley
You know, I'm perfectly fine with funtrepreneur-in-residence Jason Calacanis telling us to "please die." I'm totally OK when Calacanis emails me "Subject: Idiot," because I can take a joke, especially when it's true. But dammit, Janet, Calacanis has stopped posting pics of his puppies. Valleywag has been forced to outsource to Professor Chips (above), winner of last year's Babies vs Puppies showdown. After a week where the big stories were Larry Page planting one on new bride Lucy Southworth, Heidi Roizen singing her thighs thin, Google ripping off AOL — AOL? — the Times poaching yours truly, and Megan "Leggy" McCarthy leaving Valleywag for Wired, we could all use some face-blurpy time.
boozer-generated content
