Chowking Celebrates Geek Culture

When Chowking wanted to celebrate its 25th anniversary last week, the Chinese fastfood chain decided to try something a little different. Sure, they could have gone with a stuffy old coporate suit party or an unremarkable generic street party. They could have just invited a whole bunch of silver-screen celebrities and TV news networks. Having just completed a $5 million modernization program, this four-hundred-branch international fastfood chain could certainly afford all the accoutrements of old reliable mass media. Instead, Chowking chose to do something a little more… geeky.

Niche media and geek culture are currently ascendant in Chowking’s home country of the Philippines, so Chowking decided to contact one of the most influential geeks in the Philippines: cosplayer and blogger Alodia Gosiengfiao. The result was a night of pure awesomeness. Click here to continue reading “Chowking Celebrates Geek Culture”…

Google Buzz: FriendFeed in Gmail

Google Buzz strikes me as a lightweight clone of FriendFeed integrated into Gmail. That’s not surprising when you consider FriendFeed’s origins: the founders are all former Google employees. While FriendFeed remains a marvelous service — it was recently acquired by Facebook — it never saw much adoption beyond the geek set. Mainstream Internet users have yet to wrap their brains around the concept introduced by FriendFeed in 2007: social media aggregation.

Google Buzz could finally bridge that conceptual chasm, racing out the gate with a combination of four very powerful advantages: Click here to continue reading “Google Buzz: FriendFeed in Gmail”…