Tell HN: The joojoo guy [was] live on mixergy | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: The joojoo guy [was] live on mixergy

mixergy.com

70 pointsvaksel50 comments

Two observations:

1. Can't imagine a more horrible way to launch a product.

2. In a lawsuit context, why on earth is this guy, as the company's primary witness, allowing himself to be subjected to detailed questioning on the merits of the case in a public venue? Not coming off as very credible either.

I would like to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I don't think I'll ever buy the joojoo product because of this interview. He appears to be dancing around nearly every question, and his body language is shady. I don't trust the company.

Maybe so. Maybe he's just following the lawyers' advice. Anyway I'm inclined to like him because this whole thing has been so damn entertaining.

I completely agree. Everything about his appearance just screams shady.

If I was being sued, I'd be dead worried I'd say the wrong thing. To me, it seems like it could just be that.

But come on HN, you're judging someones integrity based on their appearance?

I guess I should revise my statement. It's not really appearance as much as presentation. Body language and confidence of your answers.

Humans have highly attuned bullshit detectors built right in. If your intuition is telling you not to trust someone, you should listen to it, despite the words coming out of their mouth.

If you have to be evasive for legal reasons it's probably smarter to not give the interview at all than to give a bad interview.

yeah agreed, when he came on in the beginning I told to myself, man this guy looks like such a snake oil salesman

He might not be the prettiest guy, definitely not the best PR man, but neither was Woz.

Have to give Andrew credit - he's not using kitty gloves on Chandra, asking him the same questions multiple times to nail down responses.

Holy cow, no kidding.

"Can you show us a YouTube video on this right now?"

"No, I'm not connected to the internet right now. [pause] Are we running out of time?"

"No, we've got as much time as you need to show this stuff. So, you're going to connect to WiFi right now?"

If you are about to give an interview and show off your new product to a bunch of people, wouldn't you take time in advance to make sure all is set up and you can give a flawless demo of many different aspects of the toy? Having a WIFI connection should be one of the basics.

Absolutely. The lame excuse leads to the obvious conclusion that he could not give a demo of YouTube streaming video, which is very curious.

It might be an ARM processor. Flash can run on an ARM (works on my Nokia N800), but that is not a free flash player from Adobe. Money is a known issue, so that might be the explanation.

It might indeed be a custom OS rather than linux and they don't have flash (a binary blob) running on their custom OS, but why would they not use linux???

Hmmm, it could be a MIPS derivative (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson) - I don't know what the flash player availability is on MIPS. Interesting thought...

The lame excuse leads to the obvious conclusion that he could not give a demo of YouTube streaming video, which is very curious

Except he did, towards the end of the video. Apparently, he was in an office without wifi, and needed to turn on his verizon myfi to get it working.

Yes. I did not see the video live, am seeing it now that it is posted. I should not have speculated without seeing the video. Sorry. :-(

He also is doing the interview from a borrowed office, which could easily explain why he was unable to get the wifi running (ended up connecting via mifi, i.e. cellular).

Arrington said CrunchPad was Atom-based; if so they could use the stock Linux/x86 Flash Player.

I wasn't aware that Nokia is paying for Flash Player; that would certainly add a twist to the "Open Screen Project" if true. (More like open wallet?)

he always does that, he has a really good BS detector and most people tend to give in after you ask them the same question 3 times

Reminded me of the ultimate:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uwlsd8RAoqI

(Jeremy Paxman interviewing Michael Howard).

he's spent a lot of time doing interviews and has gotten exceptionally good at it. He knows what questions the viewers want and makes sure to get the answer/rounds back to the question.

I wish I had this HN page up during the interview. I love the input I get from HN readers.

I'm exporting the edited video now. Should be up on Mixergy soon.

will you have an embed link? I want to add the interview to my the life and death of crunchpad page on http://crunchpad.com

And this way it would actually be seen on the page, instead of getting lost in the wall of text. But if not, I'll just link it

You should really get a player with embed functionality, that way you can get people hooked by the 1-2 good interviews they find posted on other sites they visit, and then they'll come to yours for future interviews.

That guy does not seem like a pushover. He's not the kind of guy I would want to get in a fight with. He's really not afraid, he stands up for himself directly. I would bet on him. If he came to me right now and said Max, give me $50k, I'd just hand it over to him.

Fighters are winners.

There is a small chance that Arrington thought he could screw them over, but they turned out to be way tougher than some 'random offshore company'

From the amount of openness Chandra has shown, it seems there is more than a small chance. No contracts in place? No code contributed? That's not stuff you can lie about.

Arrington is just a bit of a fighter himself.

But Arrington cares about his image. This guy just seems to not just give a fuck - he just barges on ahead. Such people are excellent to work with. Someone with that type of confidence keeps you moving forward... fast.

Is it just me, or does this guy act annoyed at answering completely reasonable questions?

Anyone got a permanent link? The site's really hard to use and the term 'Joojoo' doesn't appear on their interview page.

the interview just finished, he usually edits them and puts them up the next day, so there should be a link on HN tomorrow

Thanks.

Just finished watching it, congrats Andrew!

Funny thing - I think Micheal Arrington jumped on the phone with Andrew getting ready for an interview just after interviewing Chandra (JooJoo guy) - and Micheal said something like "hold on, let me call you back" - is Andrew going to be interview Micheal next?

I think that was Michael from justin.tv

Offtopic, but it seems really odd to use twitter to do "realtime" chat. Maybe I'm just biased ;)

it's not a chat, it's more of a viewer commentary + a way to ask questions.

ok, it's "Real-Time Conversation". I still don't find it useful :)

1 month in singapore, and he is saying that they only spent 1 day in the office? come on

ye thats just crazy. I remember seeing photos somewhere at some point of the TC guys at Fusion and there were just heaps of them. Should find the link

I feel so...connected...that I just wrote that and got my question answered by the guys in the center of the tech scandal. I almost feel...important! They said my name! I am somehow part of this!

at the end of every interview, Andrew asks "so how can people connect with you" people usually give out their emails, or twitter account, or phone #.

I'm actually looking forward to see what contact method this guy decides to give

oh and you got another question asked

I never thought I'd say something like this, but watching "lie to me" was worth it!

More than the lawsuit, I would really worry about the apple tablet competition which is around the corner. That news leak itself is a big sale deterrent for them.

What was that song he was listening to? Sounded AWESOME!

well he is Iranian/Iraqi so probably something from that region. Although can't be sure, yesterday he was playing JayZ

I just can't get myself to trust him, why is that?

He seems to be evasive about the 'investors' question too! Why is that so secretive?

He seems really evasive and disingenuous. It could be nerves, but I doubt it.

Chandra is clearly an untrustworthy scumbag. He can't speak perfect English and isn't even white. This alone makes Michael Arrington the legitimate creator of the JooPad. Chandra's story is full of holes. I mean, who cares about who actually built the software and the hardware and the tangible aspects of the product? The TechCrunch people went to Singapore for a whole month! What were they doing there if not contributing their extensive expertise in tablet-device ideation? Surely you don't expect us to believe you came up with the idea to include Youtube all by yourself. You can hide behind your IP and legal rights and Bruce Lee for now, but just wait till someone digs up your old blog where I'm sure we'll find the missing legal documents where you hand over your creation to TechCrunch. Like most of the other posters, I don't care that you've answered the key questions surrounding this case and all Arrington can do is raise a bunch of tangential issues to undermine your credibility. Here in Silicon Valley, we value ideas over execution, loud-mouthed promoters over serious technologists, being part of the start-up establishment over being a genuine entrepreneur, and, of course, appearances over substance.

demo fail interview fail joojoo fail

I'm really curious if Michael is going to buy one...

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