Big Night at This Year’s Webby Awards

Last Tuesday night the “Science of Sex” women headed down to the Museum of Finance and Cipriani’s on Wall St. to celebrate winning our People’s Voice and Webby award!

Wall Street was cut off. Must have been 700+ attending.

Action on the red carpet. The reporters and producers of the “Science of Sex,” left to right: Anne Machalinski, me, Aili McConnon.

More red carpet.

Beastie Boys, honored as artists of the year. Beastie oldies.

More pics after the jump.

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This entry was written by Christie, posted on June 10, 2007 at 8:02 pm, filed under Home. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

Webby Awards 2007 – some review notes

The production of the night was over-the-top seamless – at least from a service and organization pov. Bravo, to the team at Webby HQ!

But here are some brief notes:

1) Rob Corddry wasn’t funny. He leaned on the shock-value, f-this and f-that and peppermint shampoo jokes. He looked like he had no interest in being there. Maybe since the birth of his daughter, Sloane, he’d rather be home in L.A. – I don’t blame him.
Maybe he’s just got new priorities, beyond hosting the Webbys? Where to next?

2) The video animation of the little “cluster” intros were terrific.

3) No one performed! Nothing! (Prince played last year AND smashed his guitar on the stage.) — and this year, with Bowie and Beastie Boys and nothing. Like Corddry, they didn’t want to be there either. I think it was an obligation? Really?

4) The sound system in Ciprani’s has limited range – distortion hits fast as soon as you walk five to seven tables in either direction from the dead center of the room. (Hey. Better sound! C’mon!) It was so distorted that folks started talking through the five-word speeches. (I know boredom kicks in too – but if we could hear them, we might have hung on longer!)

5) I wanted to see more “reviews of the year”- perhaps a short produced retrospective? More than “Dick in a Box?”

This entry was written by Christie, posted on June 9, 2007 at 8:07 pm, filed under Home. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

The Human Google

I have always said that the only thing better than Google, is a human Google. Armed with human judgment, a search engine could be off-the-hook, capable of tailored and precise context.

Well, it looks like they’ve actually done it.

But not Sergey and Larry, it’s Jason Calacanis – and the folks at Sequoia.

I met with Elon Musk (founder of SpaceX and Tesla Motors) last friday at his offices in El Segundo, for an interview for SciAm, and he mentioned funding a new search engine – one that uses a human filter – called “Mahalo” — that’s ‘welcome’ or ‘thank you’ in Hawaiian (aka maybe surfer speak.)

This engine might have a fighting chance against Google. It’ll be announced this week at the “All Things Digital” conference in San Diego. Apparently there is a team (how many I don’t know) of human editors that filter spam and off-the-mark search results.

Imagine a human filtering your results just for you! How this works is the mystery, (and the answer of whether it’ll actually succeed.)

But as anyone who has dealt with an automated dialing menu knows, nothing beats understanding context like human judgment. I mean, those menus have a 90 percent failure rate for getting my questions answered. And I end up pressing zero over and over, just praying a human will come.

No computer or robot has mastered the unlimited ability of a human to get context. This is the ultimate challenge in artificial intelligence.
Mahalo. Mahalo. Mahalo. Anxious to see what you do.

This entry was written by Christie, posted on May 30, 2007 at 8:03 am, filed under Home. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.