Best and worst celebrity technology moments of 2010
By Bob Brown,
Network World |
Dec 6, 2010 6:00 AM
PT
Lindsay Lohan, Lady Gaga and Stephen Colbert collide with Twitter, iPads and hackers.
As if the technology industry isn't entertaining enough these days with exciting new products like the IPad rolling out and companies like Google and Microsoft slugging it out , the entertainment industry has thrown itself into the mix to ensure there's never a dull moment.
Some celebrities have embraced social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, while others have abused these technologies and still others find the sites have gone too far. Singers, movie and TV stars, and other hangers on have snapped up gadgets from iPhones to BlackBerries , while others have been innocent victims of hackers and stalkers preying on their well-known names online.
Here's a look back at the year's most memorable – for better or worse – celebrity moments in technology:
Stephen Colbert whips out an iPad during the Grammy Awards – more than three months before Apple's tablet computer becomes generally available. Producers figure it's worth giving Apple a plug to try to make the show bearable.
Even Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift can't resist the latest in computer peripherals and other gadgets showcased at the annual CES conference in Las Vegas. They are among the celebs who graced the annual Consumer Electronics Show with their star power .
The Chuck Norris botnet spreads by exploiting poorly configured routers and DSL modems, according to Czech researchers. The botnet code, which includes the Italian words "in nome di Chuck Norris," was seen kicking and karate-chopping routers hard .
Conan O'Brien goes Twitter after getting canned from his job hosting the Tonight Show. His Twitter bio reads: "I had a show. Then I had a different show. Now I have a Twitter account ."
"Law & Order" star Richard Belzer gets accused by Apple store employee in New York of harassing her because he was in need of help at the store, but Belzer denied the charge, saying he is vindicated by the security video .
Betty White got swept into a guest hosting role on Saturday Night Live following a massive Facebook campaign that followed the airing of her popular and muddy candy bar commercial during the Super Bowl.
The Daily Show's Jon Stewart rants about Apple becoming Big Brother in the wake of the leaked iPhone 4/Gizmodo craziness: "Come on, Steve. Chill out with the paranoid corporate genius stuff. Don't go all Howard Hughes on us."
Singer Prince declares that "The Internet's completely over" in an interview with British tabloid The Daily Mirror . Maybe he got the Internet confused with his career? Though a couple of months later, Wired magazine declared that the "The Web is Dead. Long Live the Internet."
Comedian Ellen Degeneres put on a frowny face and apologized to Apple after spoofing the sensitive company's iPhone ads on her talk show: "The people at Apple didn't think it was so funny"
Actor Edward Norton and friends launch Crowdrise , a social networking Web site focused on charitable giving. Feel-good hit of the year?
Actor Jason Bateman, from Arrested Development and other shows and movies, turned a crowd of 2,000 people waiting in line at a Los Angeles Apple store against him when he cut line (well, he was escorted by Apple employees) to snag a new iPhone 4. Bateman later apologized via Twitter, saying he hadn't been aware of any booing .
Hackers targeted fans of teen heartthrob Justin Bieber on YouTube, exploiting a cross-site scripting vulnerability that resulted in nasty comments popping up on pages featuring videos of the singer . As if these fans don't suffer enough already?
Rapper Kanye West joins Twitter , putting the Taylor Swift fiasco behind him and overcoming his earlier dismissal of the microblogging site. Tweet No. 1: "Up early in the morning taking meetings in Silicone Valley," in anticipation of a meeting with Facebook. He later tweets that he misspelled Silicon and must have been thinking "about the other type of silicone."
Cameron Diaz is named by McAfee as the Web's most dangerous celebrity . Searching for images, screensavers and videos of the actress gives you a 1 in 10 chance of landing on a malicious Web page, according to the research. Searching for Julia Roberts and Jessica Biel is also risky business on the Internet, McAfee says.
Gotta watch out for fake celebrity plane and car crash death news as well. Symantec warns of an explosion in malicious spam messages reading along the lines of " Miley Cyrus died ."
Fo'shizzle! Snoop Dogg joins forces with Symantec/Norton to promote the " Hack is Wack " video contest to raise cybercrime awareness.
Lindsay Lohan tweets about her failed court-ordered drug test: "Regrettably, I did in fact fail my most recent drug test and if I am asked, I am prepared to appear before judge Fox next week as a result." Back to jail.
Singer John Mayer declares Twitter dead and jilts 3.7 million followers by deleting his account . Though he later clarifies that it is he who is over Twitter, and into Tumblr instead .
The turning of the calendar to Sept. 2, 2010 unleashes a torrent of memories and homages on the Internet to Beverly Hills, 90210, the '90s teen drama that launched the careers of so many current stars such as, such as….
Singer Lily Allen sued Apple over her laptop being hacked, according to very brief report by The Sun in which it says Allen sued after not getting help from Apple with her computer problem.
"The Social Network," the movie about Facebook, makes its debut in October to rave reviews . Casting nailed the lead role in having Jesse Eisenberg play Mark Zuckerberg, though Eisenberg claims not to even use Facebook .
Microsoft goes the celebrity route to promote its motion-controlled Kinect for the Xbox game, with actress/singer Ashley Tisdale and soccer player David Beckham among the early testers. The Kinect also does the talk show circuit, appearing on Oprah Winfrey and Ellen Degeneres's shows .
JustSpotted.com , a celebrity "stalking" Web site, launches. The creators say it was 'meant to give fans an idea of what their favorite celebrities are up to at any given moment'. Twitter can't disassociate itself from the site fast enough.
The much more tasteful Internet Movie Database (IMDb) turns 20 . Not only can you find out about every movie and TV appearance any actor has made, you can also find out about movie appearances by tech luminaries like Oracle's Larry Ellison, who played himself in Iron Man 2 .
Actor Tony Curtis was buried in October with a Stetson hat, an Armani scarf and an Apple iPhone, among other favorite possessions . Let's hope he turned it off first.
Pee-wee Herman's latest big adventure? He leads a Pee-wee Parade around New York to promote social networking site Foursquare .
KISS bassist Gene Simmons, speaking at the MIPCOM convention in Cannes, France, advises new musicians to sue first, ask questions later: "The music industry was asleep at the wheel, and didn't have the balls to sue every fresh-faced, freckle-faced college kid who downloaded material. And so now we're left with hundreds of thousands of people without jobs. There's no industry."
Singer Katy Perry calls out Microsoft for being cheap when she finds out that there's no open bar at a Microsoft-AT&T shindig at New York's Roseland Ballroom to celebrate the launch of Windows Phone 7. Maybe they were just serving the WP7 Kool-Aid for free?
Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel calls for National Unfriend Day on Nov. 17: "We should have a lot of the real stuff. We should have less of the fake stuff like you have on Facebook. I'm asking you to unfriend anyone on Facebook who isn't really your friend - the annoying people. The people who feel the need to inform you of every thought that enters their head.... I would guess that 90% of your Facebook friends aren't even your friends at all. Most of them you probably don't even like."
Celebrities rally around Alicia Keys' Keep a Child Alive charity to ditch their Twitter and Facebook accounts until $1 million is raised in support of the charity. The Digital Life Sacrifice campaign kicked off on World AIDS Day, with celebrities such as Keys, Kim Khardashian and tennis player Serena Williams filming Last Tweet and Testament videos to spread the word.
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