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Of girls and tech
30It came to my attention this morning that some things were said on TWiT this past week regarding the Forbes “The Web Celeb 25” list. Now, there’s been a lot of discussion on the blogosphere about the list, mostly in the vein of “Where’s Kevin Rose?” or “Who the heck is so-and-so political blogger?” This Week in tech discussed things in this vein too, but that part of the discussion isn’t what caused the controversy.
No, it was their comments about blogger Violet Blue. Violet is becoming (has become?) a San Francisco institution, and her columns on SFGate.com and her posts on her own blog, tiny nibbles, are both interesting and educational articles on sexuality. She’s a mainstay of the SF tech scene, and while we’ve never been introduced I admire her very much. Leo LaPorte is also someone I admire, and it was a lot of fun having him co-host the podcast the two times he did.
However, I am unsettled that Leo referred to Violet as “that porn girl” and insinuated that she didn’t deserve to be on that list. John Dvorak has since apologized for the things he said on the show , but I haven’t seen an apology from Leo. He’s a hugely influential tech personality, and it just seems so frustratingly old fashioned that this can happen .
I’m constantly asked what it’s like to be a female working in the tech industry, and let me tell you… it’s not always easy. True, it’s not easy for women working in many fields, but technology has always had that “boy’s club” feel to it. Do you know how many times I’ve been told that I should just stop bothering with technology, and maybe try porn for a living? Or that I’m obviously just a talking head that’s reading a script?
Maybe I’m taking this too personally. It just bothers me to think that for people who are so forward-thinking in one sense can be so backwards in another. Very disappointing.
Link to Violet’s post on SFGate.com
UPDATE: Oh my god… check out this comment:
Yeah, I noticed the old-school mentality of Leo in that episode (as well as in a few other actions in other podcasts and interactions).
No defending intended, but for what it’s worth, there is a porn star called Violet Blue: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violet_Blue_(porn_star)
This doesn’t say much for Leo’s research on the subject, especially since Forbes had links to the prover Violet Blue.
Could Leo have been Googling Violet and turned up the porn star by accident?! Could this all be a case of mistaken identity? What do you think?
UPDATE:
We were right, he DID confuse the two. From SFGate.com:
My apologies – I did, in fact, confuse Violet Blue, podcaster, with Violet Blue, the porn star. Having taken Patrick’s advice and done a little research I now see my mistake. I am sorry if I have offended Ms. Blue, please accept my apologies.
It takes a big person to admit a mistake, so good for Leo. While this was a unfortunate misunderstanding, I’m glad that it gave people the chance to open a dialog on the subject. The comments on my blog post were very interesting to read, and I think it gave people something to think about.
Search strings
24I find it amusing sometimes to go through the stats for my site to see how people got here. But there are a few search strings that I just don’t understand. Here are the top three for January:
OK, “veronica belmont” makes sense… but “kitchen?” When have I ever talked about a kitchen? Who is getting to my site by searching for “kitchen”? “Draenei” is funny, because I’ve only mentioned them in one or two posts, but I can see how that might be a top term.
Now for February:
“Kitchen” again. Mind you, this is the first day of the month, and already “kitchen” is coming up as the only other search string. Does anyone know what this is about? Maybe someone needs to explain to me how search strings work.
Attack of the Show
95 years ago
AOTS went well today, I think! We talked about eBay banning the sale of virtual goods. I may have gotten a little defensive, but what can I do?
Waiting on Geni
13I was excited when I heard about Geni, a new website that helps you map your family tree. According to Techcrunch:
The initial product is a very easy to use Flash tool to create a profile and a family tree – including siblings, spouses, cousins, aunts and uncles, and their families. When you add a relative, there is an option to add their email address and have the tree sent to them as well. They can add their own data, extending the tree, and Geni will launch tools to merge overlapping trees.
Great! Exactly what I’ve been looking for. I didn’t want to pay for a service like Ancestry.com, but at the same time I’ve always wanted to have a web solution for mapping out my family history. One problem – apparently I’ve not only made an account, but someone has added me to their tree:
They were supposed to send my password, but nothing has come to my email address. I know this site is still in beta, but this is day two that I’ve been let down when trying to use the site (yesterday it was down with technical problems.) You would hope that founder David Sacks, with his experience starting PayPal, would know a thing or two about building a stable website.
I don’t know why someone didn’t think of building a “social networking” family tree before. What better way to use that technology than to find out how we’re all interrelated?
UPDATE: Got my password (well, four emails for it, actually) but now the site is having issues again. Maybe tomorrow.
UPDATE:
Uuuuugh!