What it does

Given the popularity of reality television and the subsequent fame of their stars, who’s to say that fame can’t be reached by even more “ordinary” citizens? The Fame Experiment wants to see if someone can become famous via the internet, simply by gaining enough exposure. The website will carry out their test in two stages. First, interested parties will publicize The Fame Experiment on their own blogs and profile pages. In exchange, they will get “fame points” that will make them eligible to be the individual randomly selected to become famous. Second, after a candidate is selected, these same sites will publicize that individual and link back to a blog and profile.

In their own words

“Welcome to the Fame Experiment! This isn't a reality show, there's nothing particularly special about anyone who takes part in the experiment, but we're all interested in one thing, the power of the internet to generate fame. We're investigating the answer to one simple question: Can the internet be used to generate enough exposure for one person to experience public recognition?”

Why it might be a killer

This is an interesting social experiment to test the different avenues of gaining exposure, and how easy or difficult it is to become famous. Because it is an innovative idea, it will likely garner a lot of buzz, at least in the blogosphere. Moreover, given the “experiment” label, if the individual does not become famous, it doesn’t mean failure for the site.

Some questions

Can this succeed in any way without participation by more traditional media?

Updates


 » original news

Right on schedule: Google is releasing their April Fools jokes onto us as the calendars hit April 1 on the east coast (here’s last year’s efforts). Google Australia got a head start earlier today with the very funny Future Search. Gmail’s effort this year isn’t in my opinion as funny.

Gmail Custom Time lets users send emails with a custom date in the past, putting it in the recipients inbox at the old date:

How do I use it?

Just click “Set custom time” from the Compose view. Any email you send to the past appears in the proper chronological order in your recipient’s inbox. You can opt for it to show up read or unread by selecting the appropriate option.

Is there a limit to how far back I can send email?

Yes. You’ll only be able to send email back until April 1, 2004, the day we launched Gmail. If we were to let you send an email from Gmail before Gmail existed, well, that would be like hanging out with your parents before you were born — crazy talk.

Funny? You decide. The team did better last year in my opinion.

But the joke has started a minor Wikipedia war, which makes it more interesting. In describing the technology Google says “Gmail utilizes an e-flux capacitor to resolve issues of causality (see Grandfather Paradox)” and links to the Grandfather Paradox on Wikipedia. Someone changed the words “time travel” to “gmail” in a revision, along with the comment “Gmail starts a wiki-war by linking directly to this article on April 1st…”

The change was quickly put down by the Wikipedia police, of course. And then changed back. And then reversed. You can watch the drama in real time on the article’s revision history page (or feel free to participate with your own flourishes).

I wonder who’ll get tired first.

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In case you didn’t know, terraforming Mars and sending people to live up there (or down there, depending on how you look at it) is only about cash, nothing else. Kim Stanley Robinson hasn’t got a clue. Now, three guys that have cash in abundance, Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have agreed to finally take humanity to the stars and create a human settlement on Mars. For this endeavor, they formed a new company called…wait for it…Virgle!

I’m not going to get into details, but let’s just say that Mars will be “open source,” that Virgle plans to earn back their considerable investments (10-15 billion) by selling real estate, and that they have a “100 year plan” for the development of Mars. Hear it all straight from the mouths of Sergey and Larry in the video below.

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What it does

When it comes to going green, you’re either with them or against them. If you haven’t gotten on, or at least made a veiled attempt at some shade of green, be wary. Society’s catching up and will mostly slap you with a firm “Shame On You” for your lack of compliance and/or saving the world gumption. But it’s never too late to start. There are plenty of sites claiming greenness, showing you how to get green, and rating your greenness . All the cool kids are doing it. Really. Here’s an easy place to start, and it’s also perfect if you’re already an ecowarrior. It’s called, appropriately enough, Greensie and it’s a green search engine. It’s like any other of your popular search engines. Enter a keyword, term, or phrase, and choose what you want searched (audio, images, news, shopping jobs, etc) then search away. Greensies organizes every possible bit of information on green and will bring you the results. It’s that simple.

In their own words

“Greensie's mission is to organize and deliver to you the world's best information about green. To accomplish this, Greensie searches billions of web pages, images, news articles, videos and more from across the web.”

Why it might be a killer

Greensie is an interesting concept indeed. It certainly jumps on the green bandwagon and has a noble mission. Helping you get informed on being green is key to changing the world and what a better way to start then search.

Some questions

Is Greensie really that different from Google? Are the results green? What is Greensie’s criteria for “green”.

Updates


 » original news

Filed under: Cellphones

Just in case you missed it, the Verizon XV6900, Motorola Q9c, and LG enV(2) are all finally launched on Verizon. Head on over to Engadget Mobile for the full details.

 

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We’ve seen some pretty interesting advertising campaigns that utilize Facebook’s platform for integrated applications, such as Bob Dylan’s. Most of them have been pretty cool, even in their blatant attempts to get users to spread a brand’s name around to their friends. Coca-Cola’s latest, however, seems like it could be fun.

It’s branding is rather subtle–if you add the app to your profile (click here), you may not even recognize that it’s a marketing effort until you’ve gotten it all set up and begin to play. The product being promoted? Coca-Cola’s drink Burn. The app itself? An avatar alter ego that goes clubbing at night, and reports back in the morning. That report shows up on your Burn app blog, your profile page, and even your newsfeed.

You can choose to go out with your other friends that have added the application, or make new friends while your out. Who knows? You may even bump into a celebrity avatar, and have all your friends thinking you were out with Paris Hilton last night.

At any rate, there’s a bit more to this application than trying to trick your friends on your newsfeed. The more you go out and enjoy the Burn night life, the more options you’ll unlock for your avatar. New outfits, hair dos, furniture for your apartment, and more. Looking through the application’s unlockable extras, there don’t appear to be too many more than what’s already available, so I’m curious to know how far Coca-Cola plans to build out the Burn application and others like it.

Depending on the success of the Burn app, however, and the potential for other services like SceneCaster may be recognized even faster, for use as branding tools across social networks.

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If you recall, back in the day (that is to say, January), I had MG Siegler of ParisLemon and VentureBeat on the show to discuss a little project he and several other tech bloggers had undertaken in the L33t Tech News filter for Reddit. Shortly after our conversation on the podcast, MG offered me a spot on the L33t Squad, as it were, helping decide the news with the rest of the crew. In short order, those moderating the L33t Tech filter included of course MG and myself, Jason Kaneshiro from Webomatica, Frederic Lardinois of The Last Podcast, Louis Gray from LouisGray.com and Steven Hodson from Winextra.

We began emailing each other with a fair degree of regularity and one of us (probably me, as I tend not to shut up about podcasting) floated the idea of doing a round-table podcast. Everyone seemed agreeable to the idea, so we picked a date, procrastinated, went to SXSW, re-organized the idea, and decided to actually record a pilot.

As the small number of folks we’ve tested the show seem reasonably pleased with our work so far, and since Frederic and Jason have already posted it to their respective blogs, already, I’m letting the cat out of the bag here that we plan on continuing this podcast out of pilot phase and into a regular weekly thing.

In this episode: Jason, Frederic, MG and myself kick off the show with a bit of talk of hilarious Apple unboxings, FriendFeed APIs, my WordCamp Dallas experience, and the top 10 L33t Tech News stories of the week.

You can also play the show directly from the player below or download the MP3 file directly.

To subscribe:
Get the Elite Tech News podcast here.
Add directly to your Zune here.

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