Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Meredith Viera bounces back, Dropbox rises up and Colin Kaepernick takes heat


- To find the location of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick current drama, take a left at irrelevant, a right at “get a life” and a second left at “in need of a hobby.” That’s where you’ll find out one of the breakout stars of last NFL season defending himself against idiotic fans and media members who ripped him after he posted a photo of himself wearing a Miami Dolphins cap while celebrating July 4 on his Instagram account. Kaepernick initially refused to apologize for wearing another team's hat, but sadly backed down and posted a second photo, this one of himself wearing his own team’s logo cap. His first message for all of the haters was a photo on Instagram of him holding the Dolphins cap with a smirk, asking, "This the hat y'all mad at?" He continued by explaining that he was going to wear what he wanted regardless of what anyone thought. "I'm goin wear what I want regardless of what you think, all you need to worry about is the fact that I grind for my teammates and the 49ers! I plan on doin this until they won't let me in the building!" he wrote, adding hashtags of #ridiculous and #y'allmustbebored. He seemed to double back on Monday with the picture of himself in Niners gear, but the fact that he had to address the issue at all is both sad and a prime example of how many truly pathetic people follow the NFL as if it were more than a game between millionaires looking to drive each other into the ground and advance a small, oblong ball into a large, painted rectangle of real estate. Amazingly, there were also media members who excoriated Kaepernick for his choice of hats as if he had walked up to them, spit in their face, drop-kicked their dog and drank all of their beer. On the field, Kaepernick took over as the 49ers' quarterback during last season and led San Francisco to the Super Bowl, finishing with 1,814 yards with 10 touchdowns and three interceptions and rushing for 415 yards and five touchdowns. He has also received heat for the size and number of his tattoos, so at this point he is likely feeling a bit persecuted……..


- Dropbox has claimed a large chunk of the online storage and cloud computing world, but now the company is seeking to replace the hard drive all together. The quest to expand from a simple cloud storage app to a fully-fledged platform of services is underway, as Dropbox CEO and founder Drew Houston revealed at the cloud storage provider's first developer conference on Tuesday morning. The Dropbox Platform is being touted by the company's as "a new foundation to solve the problems of sync so you don't have to." Houston explained that the platform includes keeping structured data in sync, working offline, handling conflicts and working across operating systems. "Sync is the new save. We're never going back," Houston vowed. As of November, Dropbox had 100 million users, a number Houston now places at  175 million users and growing "like crazy." The CEO added that there are also more than one billion files saved to Dropbox accounts every day and waxed poetic about how Dropbox has filled a void and been used for much more than cloud storage for content but also an online hub for families, friends and colleagues to communicate and share. His rambling speech reference Apple, Android, Amazon and more and said that such rival companies are making amazing products, but are too busy battling with each other. This, he added, creates problems for both developers and end users. These rivals digital storage bins are just "new places for your stuff to get stuck,” Houston said. For the tech simple, the Dropbox Platform is a set of tools for developers to use in determining how apps access data across both desktop and mobile platforms and devices. It is, Houston said, a simple solution to a complicated problem. The primary components of the Dropbox Platform perform tasks such as streamlining the developmental process, providing web and mobile apps with direct access to files in Dropbox and enabling one-click saving to Dropbox……..


- All of the freaks who squirreled away Twinkies late last year when Hostess went belly-up, thinking they could jam sweet-toothed fatties for the cream-filled, hydrogenated desserts they had kept in a deep freeze for the past few months are probably cursing aloud right now. It turns out that the last Twinkie has not been made and when these dessert favorites return to store shelves on July 15, they will have almost twice the shelf life the old Twinkies did. The new Hostess Brands, which bought the rights and recipe to make Twinkies and other Hostess snacks, promises that when Twinkies return they'll have a 45-day shelf life. The company, which bought out the holdings of the old Hostess from bankruptcy court, has found a way to upgrade Twinkies’ shelf life from 26 days to 45. An über-long shelf life for the cream-filled sponge cake has long been a part of the Twinkie mythology, leading to a 2012 Super Bowl ad for Chevy pick-up trucks that predicted Twinkies and Chevy trucks were the only things that would survive the coming Mayan-predicated apocalypse (which amazingly never happened). For the new Twinkie, 45 days will be the (alleged) minimum shelf life; some will last even longer. According to hostess, it will start freezing about 10 percent of its shipments to retailers. Shoppers won't be able to purchase the frozen Twinkies directly; retailers will store the frozen cakes then thaw them out for sale, stamping their own expiration date on the package. Hostess spokeswoman Hannah Arnold explained that only retailers who ask for frozen shipments will get them, while other merchants will receive the traditional "fresh" product. As part of the re-release, the new Twinkies will also be found as many as 110,000 stores, compared to  50,000 stores nationwide when the company shut down. The former Hostess Brands ceased operations and liquidated its holdings after a strike by the bakers' union in November last year, sparking a run on Twinkie buying by fans of the treats (and opportunistic tools)……..


- Meredith Vieira has finally landed on her feet. The former "Today" morning news show host will have her own daily, nationally syndicated, daytime talk show in the fall of 2014, NBC announced on Tuesday. Now Viera can be just like her "Today" predecessor, Katie Couric, who bolted television news and launched for her own daytime show, "Katie" in 2012. NBCUniversal Domestic TV will produce and distribute "The Meredith Vieira Show," which will be based in New York City, where the Peacock is somewhat consolidating its base of power with “The Tonight Show” moving there next year when Jimmy Fallon takes over for Jay Leno. Viera also snagged herself a spot as an executive producer of the show, which doesn’t yet have a time slot. Regardless of what hour her show hits the air, it will be good to see Viera working again after announcing earlier this year that she was leaving the quiz show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" after 11 seasons – or as it’s known to most people, “Huh? That show Regis Philbin used to host like a million years ago? It’s still on?” Viera also hosted "Today" from 2006 to 2011 and either she took a lot of viewers with her or she jumped off what she knew was a sinking ship because at the time of her departure, "Today" had been the top rated morning news show for 16 years before a massive ratings dive that saw rival “Good Morning America” pass it by. Since Viera’s departure, Ann Curry came and went in the span of a year and has since been replaced by Savannah Guthrie. Viera has 14 Emmys to her credit and prior to joining "Today," she was a host on “The View,” ABC’s all-lady daytime gab-fest……..


- Umm…..did anyone NOT use chemical weapons in the ongoing civil war in Syria. Multiple nations have accused the Syrian government of unleashing chemical weapons and nerve agents on rebel forces and according to Russia's U.N. ambassador, Russian experts have determined that Syrian rebels made sarin nerve gas and used it in a deadly attack outside Aleppo in March. International analysts believe a chemical weapon attack occurred March 19 in the government-controlled Aleppo suburb of Khan al-Assal and Ambassador Vitaly Churkin blamed opposition fighters for the attack. Churkin claimed the attack killed 26 people, including 16 military personnel, and injured 86 others. Predictably, the rebels have blamed the government for the attack. For his part, Churkin delivered an 80-page report to Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon at the behest of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, who asked Russia, his regime’s closest ally, to investigate the attack after a U.N. team of chemical weapons experts was unable to enter the country. Samples were taken from the impact site of the gas-laden projectile and analyzed at a Russian laboratory certified by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Churkin said. The lab reportedly found that the Bashar 3 rocket "was not industrially manufactured and was filled with sarin” that appeared to be produced in "cottage industry" conditions. In Russia’s (biased) world, that is reason enough to believe that it was the armed opposition fighters who used the chemical weapons in Khan al-Assal……..

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