Ze Frank’s “Star.Me” on Internet Explorer 9 at SxSW

I never thought I’d see Ze Frank do a promo for IE9, but there he was at South by Southwest Interactive, doing just that!

Ze (pronounced “Zay”, a shortening of his real name, Hosea) is probably best know for The Show with Ze Frank, a series of videocasts that ran the gamut from comedy bits to Daily Show-esque commentaries, all with Ze’s trademark oddball sense of humour. He’s been invited to do keynotes at a number of tech conferences; I particularly enjoyed the very memorable one he gave at RailsConf in 2007 that had people both thinking and rolling in the aisles with laughter.

star.meZe’s a Mac guy, so the fact that he was demoing his new web application, Star.Me , for the IE9 launch is quite stunning. He describes it as “a social game meets a social network, where you’re kind of in kidergarten but just had a lot of espresso”. That’s just his way of saying that it’s a way to give your friends Xbox-style achievements for their real-life doings. It’s in closed beta right now, but you can request a username in advance and you’ll be notified when it’s ready to launch. It’s a cool-looking HTML5 app, and I can hardly wait to give my coworker Ruth Morton a “Mom Jeans” star.

You have downloaded the release version of IE9, haven’t you?

click here to download ie9 now

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.