Spin Valley Post

So, Justin Timberlake was supposed to be at a party tomorrow night in San Francisco. The “special, private celebration” was in honor of the company Particle (which counts Timberlake as its lead investor), which recently launched its Robo.to service. Myself and fellow writers Jason Kincaid and Paul Carr were so excited that we’ve been gossiping about it all day in back-channel conversations. I believe Paul even bought a JT book for him to sign, earlier today.  But sadly, Justin, is bailing on us.

It appears that like most celebrities, Timberlake came down with a case of the “scheduling conflict,” and had to fly back to L.A. (or stay there, not sure if he left or not) to go be a movie star. But we’ll forgive him this time because of the reason for his conflict: He needed to be on the set of The Social Network, yes, the Facebook movie.

But Paul has a brilliant back-up plan. Why doesn’t Particle get Sean Parker, the Facebook founder that Timberlake is portraying in the movie, to be Justin’s stand-in? Perfect, right? Of course, Parker may be busy, seeing as he has three or so jobs at the moment, the most recent of which is being a member of Yammer’s board.

Timberlake needs to understand that the real way to get rich — and I’m talking real rich — is to be a Silicon Valley star, not a movie star portraying a Silicon Valley star. Next time, JT, next time.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Joining the NFL and other sports organizations in the raining-on-our-parade camp, the NBA has declared pre-, post-, and mid-game social media verboten, according to a Sports Illustrated post this evening.

According to a memo sent out to team today, no mobile or other communication devices are to be used from 45 minutes before a game starts until after the players have finished performing their athletic duties, including postgame locker room interviews. The ban affects players, coaches, and “basketball operations personnel.” We are unclear whether cheerleaders are included in this perplexingly named category.

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We’re also not sure whether this ban applies to the official NBA Twitter account, which has more than 1.4 million followers, or to any of the myriad team Twitter accounts. What we do know is that the NBA will now be treating social media content the same way it would treat comments made to traditional media outlets.

The complete list of NBA players affected by this decision is staggering, but the ban also applies to other forms of social media, such as Facebook status updates. It would even prohibit the sending of text messages and emails during the prescribed time limits.

And although tweeting on the job is generally considered bad form, like all Twitter users who choose to make their professional lives part of their social stream, these NBA players are doing monumental things for engagement, brand ambassadorship, and real-time promotion. We consider the NBA’s decision to make basketball less fun short-sighted and generally uncool.

However, the memo may be welcomed by many coaches and other team executives, who often prohibit the use of electronic communication devices at various times during team activities. Teams such as the L.A. Clippers and the Miami Heat already have guidelines in place that are much stricter than what was outlined in the NBA memo.

Many thanks to Mathew Ingram for the pointer and for inspiring our headline.

Does the NBA’s call make sense to you? Or did the out-of-touch leadership go over the line? Let us know what you think in the comments.

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Bitstrips for Schools makes us want to go back to the third grade.

Bitstrips is an online tool for quickly and simply creating web comics, and the company has just launched a new product custom-tailored for the classroom. Kids get to be creative; teachers get a new, interactive tool to reinforce learning; and everyone goes home smarter and happier.

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A year and a half ago, Bitstrips launched at SxSW. At the time, we wrote that it was the “YouTube of web comics” and speculated on whether the app could become the breakout app of the show.

While the service has remained relatively under-the-radar, Bitstrips has managed to suss out their revenue streams and remains 100 percent bootstrapped, according to an email we received from co-founder Jesse Brown today. With Bitstrips for Schools, the company is offering a subscription-based service, adding even more revenue to their budget.

“We sold a license to the Ontario Ministry of Education,” he wrote. “It just launched six days ago, and over 15,000 students have already signed up. They’ve been making over 1,000 comic strips a day.”

Basic accounts give users (a.k.a. teachers) one private and secure virtual classroom; space for up to 40 students in each class; unlimited saved activities, comic strips, and characters; and unlimited use of the Shared Activities Library. They’re also remarkably affordable at a $.9.95 monthly subscription rate. For $29.95 a month, users (a.k.a. schools) can purchase a package that includes up to six classrooms with space for 40 students each.

Now for the fun part: the comics! Check out this promo/demo video showing the software hard at work in a real classroom environment:

Students, individually or as collaborators, create characters and choose from a variety of scenes and props to create comic strips, which they can then share, print, and comment on. Teachers can review comics as they are created.

We can see kids having a ton of fun with this tool and learning a lot about design, content creation, and media while they’re at it. The site also points out that comics could be an especially good tool for students of foreign languages.

Finally, we had to take the app for a test drive. We had a lot of fun – the interface is extremely intuitive and works well for kids of all ages. We’ll be showing it to the kids in our lives, and we recommend that teachers give the 14-day free trial a shot, as well!

For those of you who are not teachers, we suggest taking a look at classic Bitstrips, where you can create your very own tech scene-themed versions of Family Circus. Or something less nerdy/ironic, if you prefer.

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