It looks like Dreamworks is using Friendster to promote the release of Anchorman, with user profiles for each of the characters. In addition to Will Ferrell’s Ron Burgundy, there are photos and descriptions for Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate), Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd), Brick Tamland (Steve Carell), and Champ Kind (David Koechner).

It looks like someone’s logging in every day to approve every new friend request and testimonial. (So far, Ron Burgundy has 273 friends from word-of-mouth alone.)

Is this sort of promotional tie-in a first for social networking applications? Does anyone know if Friendster approved (or was paid for) the creation of the fakester accounts, which they officially forbid? (Thanks to James for the original tip.)

Update: Some users are seeing giant Anchorman banner ads, proving that it’s an official Friendster tie-in.

March 29, 2012: Eight years later, Ron Burgundy joins Twitter to promote Anchorman 2.

Here’s a fun game… First, look up the most popular and critically-acclaimed books, movies, and music on Amazon. Click on “Customer Reviews,” and sort them by “Lowest Rating First.” Hilarity ensues! It’s the Amazon.com Knee-Jerk Contrarian Game!

Post your own favorites in the comments! (Coming soon: The Slashdot.org Knee-Jerk Contrarian Game.)

July 14, 2004: In a weird coincidence, Justine Larbalestier came up with the same idea on her own weblog two days before this entry. Creepy.

July 29, 2004: Alan Taylor wrote a neat utility that lets you easily find the 10 lowest-ranked reviews, without even going to Amazon. Yay!

Continue reading “Amazon.com Knee-Jerk Contrarian Game” →

Starting this month, I’ll be burning through all my leftover bandwidth by posting large videos and audio on my site toward the end of every month. It’s Waxy.org’s Bandwidth Blowout!!

First up, the best TV pilot you’ve never seen: Ben Stiller’s Heat Vision and Jack from 1999. Jack Black stars as Jack Austin, an astronaut on the run from NASA after a solar accident makes him the smartest man in the universe. Owen Wilson plays his talking motorcycle. Produced by Stiller, who also appears in the introduction and as a strip club DJ.

Download it quick, before I change my mind.

BitTorrent: Heat_Vision_and_Jack (.MPEG, 301.25 MB)

Knowledge is power… for real.

June 27, 2004: Courtesy of Drew, here’s an early and later draft of the script.

June 28, 2004: Well, my bandwidth was blown. My server can’t handle the load, so I’m moving this to my BitTorrent tracker. It’s seeded locally, so it should be very fast. I’m looking into upgrading to a 100MBps uplink, so I don’t have to deal with this next month.

Continue reading “Waxy's Bandwidth Blowout #1: Heat Vision and Jack” →

After serious deliberation with a secret cabal of expert judges, we’ve reached a consensus. And now, the winners of the Dave Winer Remix Contest!

Grand Prize: Ralph Brandi, “Smoking Weblogs”. Catchy beat, good musicianship, great samples. The “D-W-I-N-E-R” chorus is brilliant, and I can’t get it out of my head. Plus, cowbell!

2nd Place: Scott Mulligan’s “Goofin’ On Dave Winer”. Musically, the best of the bunch. The instrumental breakdown might be a bit too long, though.

3rd Place: Matt Canale’s “This Is Not A Morning Coffee Note”. The only one to use Dave’s voice as percussion. I was wrong; Exsend’s “Hi, It’s Dave Here” used exclusively Winer samples for all percussion. Therefore, a tie!

So, that’s it. Thanks for playing! I’ll contact the winners about your prizes, the increasingly-worthless currency of the web.

Yesterday, Dave Winer shut down the free Weblogs.com, inciting the wrath of his many critics and attracting media attention from Wired, News.com, eWeek, and Slashdot. Dave redirected every one of the 3,000+ Weblogs.com sites to this entry, with a 9-minute MP3 explaining his motives. (Full transcript.)

Brian Dear remixed the audio into a catchy number that I call “People Just Love to Jump Up and Down” [.MP3, 1.95 MB]. It’s good, but I know you people can do much better.

So consider this a call for entries… Remix Dave’s speech and e-mail/IM me a link to your MP3 (or Dropload the entire file), and I’ll gladly host it for you. Three Gmail invites to the winner, and one each for the two runner-ups. Have fun!

Entries:

Dan Dickinson – I’m Sorry (Dave Winer Remix).mp3 (7.6 MB)

Matt Canale – This Is Not A Morning Coffee Note (rcade Deep House Mix).mp3 (5.7 MB)

Ralph Brandi – Smoking Weblogs.mp3 (5.3 MB)

Phil Ulrich – Audio Thing.mp3 (5.7 MB)

Scott Mulligan – Goofin’ On Dave Winer.mp3 (3.6 MB)

Exsend – Hi It’s Dave Here.mp3 (1.9 MB)

June 17, 2004: Greetings, Scripting.com readers!

June 18, 2004: Feel free to use Dave’s second audioblog posting [.MP3, 4.3MB], now dubbing the shutdown as a temporary outage, into your remixes. Here’s a transcript.

June 22, 2004: The winners!