Top Stories for the Week of July 14–18, 2008

The iHype continues: As of Monday, Apple had sold a million 3G iPhones in three days, and “it seems pretty much a given that Apple will surpass its stated goal of 10 million iPhones sold this year,” predicts VentureBeat. “Folks hit the App store like a school of piranhas,” reports Ars Technica, and downloaded 10 million mostly free applications for the phone—though “it’s not yet clear if this translates into an easier or better revenue stream for mobile developers,” warns MobHappy. The path to a million wasn’t entirely smooth—besides the long lines (San Fran pics via bub.licio.us), a glitch meant some customers had to activate their phones themselves at home (via ClusterStock). Nevertheless, the problems weren’t that bad—Silicon Alley Insider says activation problems were overestimated, “probably because New Yorkers complain so often, and so loudly,” and Apple raked in an estimated $330 million (via Apple 2.0). If you’re one of the lucky million, check out Gizmodo’s tips on extending the 3G’s “questionably adequate” battery life. If not, um . . . revel in the fact that the 3G has a questionably adequate battery life?

Speaking of sour grapes: Jason Calacanis, announced his retirement from blogging, via his blog (and in doing so, compared himself to Michael Jordan and Jay-Z). Why? “That’s complicated as they say on Facebook,” he answered. “I’m looking for something more acoustic, something more authentic, and something more private. The ‘a-list’ pressure, the TechMeme leaderboard debates, and constant accusations of link-baiting are now too much of a distraction.” (Jason: The phrase is “It’s complicated.”) While Teds Take asked, “Has blogging jumped the shark?” most felt the problem lay with the blogger, not the form. “Saying blogging jumped the shark because Jason’s giving it up is like saying television is dead because the guy who’s selling Oxy-Clean at 2 AM wants to do ‘real acting’ on Broadway,” writes Chuqui 3.0. “I guess giving a story like that is better than saying ‘I’m tired of linking to Mahalo all the time as an excuse for a blog’, isn’t it?” Deep Jive Interests asks (rhetorically). Stan Schroeder contemplated Calacanis’s notion of a golden blogging age: “These problems plague only bloggers that have been around for a while; a young aspiring blogger won’t care about them because he doesn’t remember this bloggers’ age of innocence.”

Following Jason Calacanis on the list of things bloggers love to hate: The New York Times. The paper published an article on Wednesday entitled, “Poll Finds Obama Isn’t Closing Divide on Race”; bloggers quickly called foul, along with the Obama campaign, which said the paper ignored key poll results (via Talking Points Memo). “This article is pretty stupid and well critiqued by the Obama campaign. . . . While the artisan searches for the natural conflict inherent in life itself, the hack has some polling firm call a bunch of people, and then writes a headline overstating the results,” writes Ta-Nehisi Coates. “I must admit that my breath is stopped by the idea of saying anything about Black-white opinion differences based on a poll with only 300 Blacks in it. That is bizarre statistical malpractice of a high order,” says Brad DeLong. Adam Nagourney responded, in an e-mail to TPM, “We are comfortable that our story accurately captured the results on the questions that most struck us.” So why the negative attitude toward the Gray Lady? Well, think of her as your aunt. “People love to hate their newspaper for the same reason they love to hate their relatives,” Slate press critic Jason Shafer told Vanity Fair. “There’s aggravation built into any relationship that’s really close.”

Finally, on the subject of families: Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt welcomed two new family members on Saturday: Knox Léon and Vivienne Marcheline (via Celebrity Baby Blog, and everywhere else). Pictures of the babies apparently sold to an unnamed U.S. mag for a record $15-$20 million, says The Insider, but for now you’ll just have to take the word of Us Magazine: The French doctor who delivered them says they’re “so cute”! Aw, just like the new iPhone.

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Obama’s major Iraq speech; McCain’s major rebuttal (“I know how to win wars”); and McCain’s shifting stance on Afghanistan all seemed like important news until it was revealed that McCain’s senior economic advisor, Phil “nation of whiners” Gramm had once helped to finance a soft-core porno flick, or at least tried to. It’s a complicated tale of political ickiness (via Huffington Post and The Nation), but the short version seems to be that early scenes from Truck Stop Women “really got Phil titillated” – enough to invest $15,000 in 1973 (or more than $73,500 in 2007 dollars)… But alas, funding for the classy project had maxed out, so Gramm’s ducats were rolled over into the producer’s next oeuvre, “White House Madness,” which depicts Richard Nixon … running around naked. The McCain campaign is considering adopting the tag line of that classic spoof comedy as its new slogan: “It’s Historical; it’s hysterical” (via Younger Than John McCain Blog).

In real news: Talking Points Memo slammed ABC’s Mark Halperin for his crack reporting stenography, when the ABC newser noted McCain’s new “Afghanistan surge” without mentioning that he had essentially adopted Obama’s long-standing position. After taking a beating from TPM and emails from the Obama campaign, Halperin begrudgingly updated his stenography to note that McCain had “supposedly” adopted the position of his supposedly inexperienced opponent. 

Meanwhile blogger TV Newser was sent the transcript of what else Jesse Jackson said on that hot mike on Fox News. Turns out Jackson also managed to drop the N-Bomb, but in reference to black men generally, not used in the direction of Candidate Obama (via Blogs of War). Pundits on the right to wonder why Papa Bear Bill O’Reilly would protect Jackson’s ever-weakening reputation (via Rhymes with Right, Gateway Pundit and Hot Air). Michelle Malkin’s readers say, “play the tape!”

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The New Yorker, published each Monday, usually doesn’t arrive in mailboxes until Friday—no wonder Arianna Huffington recently celebrated blogs’ 24-7 advantage over old media. This week, though, old and new media collided as bloggers posted fast and furiously about the instantly notorious New Yorker Obama cover. “We’re all just shilling for Condé Nast whatever the hell we say about it” writes No More Mister Nice Blog. Outside the Beltway adds “It’s provocative, sure, but how better to generate buzz and sell extra copies at the newsstand?” There were a few shrill voices like AMERICAblog’s “Okay, what do we do about this? . . . This is what we have to deal with in America, as Democrats.” Buck Naked Politics fears the “well-researched article beyond the cover will be largely ignored while people instead devote enormous amounts of energy to condemning [the] publication.” Andrew Sullivan says, “I thought it was quite funny myself . . . it’s not exactly Parade magazine.” It captures the personalities of the two Obamas, and how the Republicans would probably like us to think of them, writes Scripting News. New Yorker editor David Remnick weighed in, albeit reluctantly, in an interview with the Huffington Post.

The Obama campaign itself called the cover tasteless and offensive (via Politico) and might not carry the magazine on its plane anymore!!!! (via The Caucus), thus giving conservative bloggers their chance to attack. “Is there anything he isn’t prepared to be outraged over?” asks Riehl World View, while Michelle Malkin recommends, “Grow a pair, Obama.”

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Top stories for the week of July 7 - 11, 2008

They're setting up base camp outside the Apple Store again, which can mean only one thing:  People are insane. Early adopters can't wait in the privacy of their own homes for a crack at the iPhone 3G, which uses AT&T's extra-fast third-generation wireless network. It's released into the wild this Friday. Gizmodo presents an easy to use grid-o-matic that simplifies the first iPhone 3G reviews by the Three Amigos: Ed Baig, Walter Mossberg and David Pogue. All added together, they give about 5.3 thumbs up. Everyone likes the faster 3G speed for web surfing, but they don’t care for the shorter battery-life, observes Apple Gazette. Cult of Mac calls the raves-with-quibbles "qualified buy" recommendations. JKontheRun says 3G is fine and all, but the Apple App Store and 2.0 firmware are a bigger deal in iPhone land. Gadget Lab concurs that the App Store "might be exciting enough that we don't need the new iPhone 3G."

There may be no ideal time to quit being Fake Steve Jobs. Dan Lyons created the famous pseudoSteve blog, which got accolades for its content and its anonymity. Now he's closing it down and taking a magazine job. Silicon Alley Insider explains that freelance tech journalist Lyons, created the blog while working at Forbes magazine and has the rights to take it to his new gig at Newsweek, but he won't. Valleywag observes "Jobs's scary-skinny appearance at an Apple event this summer" following surgery for pancreatic cancer, got people thinking, and Lyons concluded that posing as a guy recovering from cancer just couldn't be humorous for much longer.

Doomsday forecasts that we'd start watching less TV because of online video have not yet proven true, yet. Nielsen reports that the average American watched 127 hours of TV in May up from 121 a year before. Silicon Alley Insider concludes that the Internet poses no threat to TV. "When you consider that the average web video lasts 2 minutes," says WatchMojo, the Nielsen estimate for online viewing, 2 hours 19 minutes a month—seems to make sense. Newteevee delivers fuller Nielsen data including an estimate that people who watch video on mobile devices did it for 3 hours 15 minutes per month.

Meanwhile, YouTube is still having a hard time making money off Web video. Mark Cuban at Blog Maverick says YouTube can only safely monetize four percent of its videos (without fear of infringing a copyright) and says the key to making more videos commercially viable is to "is simple. Review videos first." Maybe there's more $ to be made than the $ it will cost to screen vids for violations. But Why Does Everything Suck thinks the worst is yet to come for YouTube; it will lose the Viacom lawsuit and be torn apart by plaintiffs like piranha going after fresh bloody meat.

Google is pressing ahead, though, with its new Google Lively virtual world. (that link goes to a Mashable overview). Virtual Worlds News says GOOG is targeting a more casual user than Second Life. It's not clear how many eyeballs the service will get, but if this sample image is accurate the eyeballs will be HUGE. Inquisitr says click-counting firm Hitwise predicted Google would get into 3D social environments, based on traffic, and says the data/tea leaves indicate Google Autos or Google Music may be next.   

And finally in politics, Rev. Jesse Jackson whispered that Barack Obama was "talking down to black people," and Jackson happened to be on camera wearing a live microphone on Fox News when he did. Oops. Jackson also supposedly said he wanted to cut Obama's "nuts off," but the replay isn't conclusive. The Rev. apologized and Obama accepted. Hot Air suggests Jackson may have done Obama a favor: "Mainstream America has long distrusted Jackson, and anything that puts distance between him and Obama can only help." Bottom line: it looks like more un-monetizable video content for YouTube.

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Dear Rojo members,

We wanted to let you know that Rojo is about to go through a life change. In a few weeks, Rojo will be getting a new name, a new look, and a new vision for how it brings you the best blog content from around the web. This relaunch and rebranding of Rojo is coming soon and we are very excited about it.

While the newsletter and blog roundups will continue, we have decided to suspend the feed reading part of Rojo. If you are still actively using Rojo to read RSS feeds, we recommend that you export your feeds (via OPML) and import them into one of many excellent feed reading services such as NewsGator, Google Reader, or Netvibes. (Get detailed instructions on how to export your feeds via OPML in Rojo here). We also recommend that you remove any Rojo subscribe chiclets that you may have on your blog. 

The launch coming in a couple of weeks sets out a new path for the service, founded in 2003 to help people discover great blogs and more efficiently read blog content. Rojo was acquired in 2006 by Six Apart, the blog company, and its future will tie into the mission of Six Apart to be the leading blogging company, for writers and readers alike. We don’t want to spoil the surprise, but we think you’ll like what you see – and we look forward to your feedback when the new site launches.

If you have any questions, please let us know at feedback@rojo.com.

Team Six Apart

Exporting your feed list from Rojo (via OPML) is easy - just follow these simple steps:

1. Log into your account at Rojo.com in any browser.

2. Click on the “My Feeds” tab at the top of the page, and select “Import/Export OPML” from the Options box in the upper left corner of the screen.

3. On the next page, select “Export OPML,” right below the file upload textbox.

4. Select File | Save in your browser and save the file on your computer, with the filename of your choice. 

Yesterday, Rafael Nadal beat Roger Federer in the longest singles match in Wimbledon history (4 hours, 48 minutes). Today, bloggers justify sitting in front of the TV for that long: The match was “too good, too surreal, too euphoric, to pass up for a blog entry,” gushes anywhere but here. “When we look back, the 2008 Wimbledon final will prove to be the best tennis match of this generation,” says Sports Crackle Pop, but if you were unfortunate enough to miss it, “find out when it is being played in its entirety on ESPN Classic and sit down and watch. You owe it to yourself” recommends The Sports Banter. (Ramblings of an Aimless Mind doesn’t hold out the promise of a rerun: “If you missed it, then there is not much you can do except feel sorry for yourself.” Well, you could watch this clip of the last set, via Canuckflack.) The Golf Blog even wondered whether yesterday’s match was better than Woods/Mediate at the U.S. Open. Many bloggers recognized the hyperbole even as they acknowledged being guilty of it themselves: Deadspin covers the traditional media reaction (Nadal as “muscled young prince” in the NYT), while The Millions claims “Every now and again the genuine article comes along, making it obvious that all the other hyperbole was just that. Yesterday's Wimbledon final was that kind of event.” 

Nadal was too busy celebrating to post on his own “The Rafa Nadal Blog: The world No 2 blogs exclusively during Wimbledon.” But maybe at some point he’ll get around to updating that subtitle.

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Top stories for the week of June 30 - July 3

TV has been a way to sell annoying advertising since the dawn of the broadcast networks, so Google's plan to distribute sponsored cartoons via its far-reaching AdSense network is no shocker. A New York Times story reported that GOOG struck a deal with Seth MacFarlane, creator of Fox's Family Guy, to create "Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy." Apparently 50 two-minute webisodes will be created to run in the AdSpace rail on sites targeted at adults who still like cartoons, starting in September, with advertisers paying more than they do for text-only teasers. Metarand says the move leverages Google's existing AdSense infrastructure beautifully. VentureBeat calls it thinking outside the [TV] box. But WatchMojo points out that Google supposedly was going to try the exact same thing with SpongeBob Squarepants two years ago. Digital Destiny complains there are privacy issues in targeting TV at people like this (umm, DD, have you seen the Google ads on GMail that play off personal messages?). Paid Content says the Times story goes "a bit overboard" in calling it “a bold step into the distribution business."  The Times going overboard about Internet business? Now that's a shocker.

The Week in Blog Censorship:  Some bloggers are up in arms that pioneering proto-blog Boing Boing purged itself of any posts by former contributor Violet Blue, who writes about sex or something. Tomorrow Museum captured the spirit of the minor public outrage by saying "This is sexism. It’s also bad journalism. And it goes against the free interactive spirit of blogging." Gawker says it's just uncool. Boing Boing explains: Violet behaved in a way that made us reconsider whether we wanted to lend her any credibility... we made an editorial decision, like we do every single day." You got a problem with that?

It appears Barack Obama supporters have tricked Google's Blogger service into suspending several anti-Obama sites as "spam" sites. Most were pro-Hillary Clinton blogs, several listed on justsaynodeal.com, an anti-Obama site.  "It looks like Google has officially joined the Barack Obama campaign," says the conservative blog NewsBusters. Bloggasm contacted affected bloggers and "every single one was convinced that it was Obama supporters who had flagged the blogs in some kind of concerted effort to silence them. But when I asked for specific evidence of this, most simply pointed out that only anti-Obama blogs were targeted — a fact that is certainly suspicious but not especially conclusive." BlueLyon, one of the suspended bloggers, posted Google/Blogger's apology letter in a WordPress blog. It read: " …we believe this may have been caused by mass spam e-mails mentioning the “Just Say No Deal” network of blogs, which in turn caused our system to classify the blog addresses mentioned in the e-mails as spam…” Black & Right asks: "What's next, YouTube?"

Friends (and Twits) with Money: Well, it appears that a movie version of Friends is going to happen. Dlisted says Jennifer Aniston had been the holdout because she's too successful and then scoffs on her movie Derailed.

The National Venture Capital Association says the drought for venture-backed startups is in “crisis.” There were no VC-backed IPOs in the 2nd quarter, and TechCrunch notes that the last time there were no VC-backed IPOs in a quarter was 1978. TechDirt and Infections Greed say Sarbanes Oxley regulations, which make paperwork a hassle, are making companies reluctant to go public. Uhh, maybe potential stock buyers have just looked at the market lately.

A post at Innonate (and later on Silicon Alley Insider) insists Twitter could make itself worth $1.5 billion by turning into a PayPal-like online payment system, specifically fro mobile use. Twitter is everywhere, you see, and people could just type "P somebody $5" and that would do it. "Forget, for a moment, that Twitter has had serious scaling problems" Innonate says. OK. Is the moment over yet? Joe Duck seems to recall that "Nobody trusts Twitter to stay up, let alone handle their money." 

Happy 4th!

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Bloggers are an ironic bunch, but their reviews of WALL-E are remarkably snark-free. “A masterpiece . . . a universal film with timeless appeal,” says /Film (which also has an extensive list of Easter eggs in the film); Reel Fanatic ponders whether any recent film has “had more to say about the power of love.” Among the seemingly disparate groups the cute trash robot has brought together: Catholics (“a celebration of what makes life worth living,” says Catholic Media Review, and Happy Catholic has a list of other glowing reviews from Christian media); nervous parents (ParentDish calls WALL-E “a neat friend and a positive hero”); Mac lovers (“As soon as he’s fully charged, he emits the Mac’s familiar startup chime,” notes Apple a Day); and science fiction geeks (io9 pays homage to real-life trash robots).

Of course there are haters, mainly from conservative corners. “A $170 million art film,” according to KyleSmithOnline. “Will you go see Wall-E knowing it makes fun of Bush?” asks The Conservative Mindcleaner. In “An Open Letter to Conservatives Pissed Off at Wall-E,” Plog says those right-wingers have a self-image problem and are out of touch—and audiences seem to agree (via Blogging Stocks). WALL-E’s currently rated 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. That’s even higher than Ratatouille’s 95%—and definitely higher than Bush’s approval ratings.

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Top Stories for the Week of June 23 - 27, 2008

It's the end of an era. Bill Gates has retired and will stop punching his time card at Microsoft. Let's just hope he stashed away some savings. In stunned reverence, Gizmodo has uber-tagged its finest Gates-related posts into a Bill Gates Retirement Party compilation. Our fave is a video of the greatest billg parodies, a mashup of clips from The Simpsons, Celebrity Death Match, South Park, 2DTV, Freakazoid and Pirates of Silicon Valley. Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog can think of no finer way to honor Gates than by starting its series on his departure by printing internal memo Gates wrote, documenting his own frustration trying to use Microsoft products. "The lack of attention to usability...blows my mind," Gates wrote to colleagues after trying unsuccessfully to download Microsoft software. A Seattle radio guy read the memo on the air. Michael Krisman at IT Project Failures reproduces the best bits of the memo.  To Mashable, Gates' rant shows big companies have "lost all reasoning about what’s usable and what’s unusable..." All these guys will miss Gates the way political comedians will miss George Bush.  He's provided so much material over the years.

PaidContent.org picked up on a New York Times article about Google News, which compiles breaking stories from other Web sources using algorithms instead of editors. The site hasn't been taking over the world as feared. Google hasn't monetized the service with ads, and PaidContent says "It can’t, without getting into too much trouble with the news media companies." Indeed: the AP is still using cool text-fingerprinting software to hunt down blogs using its content without paying, and Signal to Noise asks: "When is old media going to realize that the world of charging $$ for proprietary content isn’t the only model that works any more?"

Lawyers for a guy on trial in Florida for running a porno Web site have used Google to show that residents of Pensacola are more likely to use Google to search for terms like “orgy” than for “apple pie.” That's a great use of marketing intelligence, says Buzzmachine.  Adds TalkLeft: "Technology makes the concept of contemporary community standards meaningless."  Meanwhile a class-action lawsuit over a hidden sex scene in videogame Grant Theft Auto: San Andreas was joined by only 0.022% of the game's buyers, says Joystiq.   Words of the Weasel Sort says the mere existence of the suit shows the nation is messed up: "You'll allow your 11-year-old to play a video game named after a felony, but once you hear that it gets a little naughty, THEN you start to think that maybe he shouldn't be playing it."

All this obscenity is a fitting segue into the passing of profane/profound comedian George Carlin who bloggers mourned on Monday - and all week. Kuro5hin commits some kind of sin by editing the eulogy for Pope John Paul II into one for Carlin. Searchengineland uses Google to show that a lot of people were searching for Carlin material this week. The Unofficial Apple Weblog points to Carlin performances available on iTunes (including his infamous "seven dirty words" bit) and there are many compilations of YouTube clips of his act (like here and here). The Beat, in a epic look at Carlin's material and politics, points out that a transcript of the dirty words routine ended up in court documents. So there. Says the Beat: "George Carlin was, like the radicals of an earlier age, an idealist – and a patriot -- of a deeper sort than is encountered very often these days."

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“If you need us to tell you that it’s pretty much all NSFW, then you have a lot to learn, kid,” says Best Week Ever. Today bloggers are commemorating comedy legend George Carlin, who died of heart failure on Sunday at the age of 71, with video clips galore. Going beyond “Seven Words You Can’t Say On Television,” which is everywhere (and here’s the transcript from the FCC case that followed), The Big Picture compiled some of Carlin’s political clips and a list of one-liners, while Jesus’ General is running 8.5 hours of his material in a loop all day. Blogger reaction ranged from lukewarm (The American Mind’s Obama-on-Hillary-esque “Carlin was entertaining enough”) to poetic (“Like Lear’s Fool or Hamlet’s gravediggers, he did not polish or varnish the brutality of life” via Bark Bark Woof Woof) to near-manic (“Oh, God…no,” cries Brilliant at Breakfast). “A true hipster of the old-school variety,” says A Deeper Shade of Soul, while Happy Furry Puppy Story Time with Norbizness compares Carlin to “a foul-mouthed Wittgenstein” and rounds up his best jokes on religion. “Carlin would have had a field day with the coverage,” says No-Name247, and indeed, the c omedian was a blog reader himself: Last year, he told HuffPo’s Rachel Sklar in a long exclusive interview: “Every time you read someone’s blog or someone’s column on the Net, they’ve got a series of links for you of other bloggers and columnists. So I just go down the hole . . . I just get like six or seven steps removed from the one I was reading originally by following links. And then I wonder where the fuck I was, you know?”

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Top Stories for the Week of June 16 - 20, 2008

Mozilla wanted to set a record for most downloads of a software program in a 24-hour period when it released Firefox 3 on Wednesday, and since no one else has ever bothered to really count, they did it! 8.3 million served! Users partied, and Microsoft sent a cake (with a DLL file baked inside). Arcanology, which speaks from inside the Mozilla-torium, says "the new cake is much nicer (and much less brown) than the old one." John's Blog, also an inside job, reports at the peak there were 283 downloads per second. BWTorrents says the Moz became a victim of its own PR stunt as its servers crashed amid the swarm. All the fuss was about the new Firefox browser, which won't change the world or even the Web but has cooler bookmark management, a larger "back button," and other magic as detailed by Lifehacker.

Speaking of crashing, the UK blog Register Hardware says bored youths this summer are using Google Earth satellite images to find houses with swimming pools, then using Facebook to organize pool-crashings.  Wonder if they could use Google Earth to find a job? Elsewhere in technology use and abuse, YouTube said it will now accept longer videos from certain partners. The max file size is now 1 GB, which Silicon Alley Insider says is nearly enough for a full movie in standard definition (for example, "Semi-Pro" runs an hour and 38 minutes and consumes 1.1GB.)  Blog Maverick (aka Mark Cuban) says it's about countering Hulu, with long-form content that YouTube can sells ads against. YouTube is "under the gun to start monetizing those 82 million viewers a month," says NewTeeVee.

In old media, TV newsman Tim Russert will be missed, but the relentless TV coverage of his passing (Wolf Blitzer again?) seemed excessively insidery to many normal people (and also bloggers). Balloon Juice wrote that the marathon coverage "is indicative of the problem...[TV newspeople] think they are the story. It is creepy and sick and the reason politicians get away with all the crap they get away with these days..." Added Below the Beltway, "It’s gone from remembering a good guy to a bunch of NBC hacks sitting around talking about him for no apparent reason other than filling up air time." Asked Jack Shafer at Slate's Press Box: "What has possessed NBC News to televise a never-ending video wake?" Thank goodness one brave media critic, Pop Culture: Adam Graham stepped up and wrote there were excessive stories complaining about excessive Russert coverage.

And in sports, Tiger Woods announced he's having surgery to fix a torn ACL that will end his participation in pro golf for the year, and Deadspin says that means the PGA will "lose a large portion of its fanbase not ingesting daily doses of Centrum Silver vitamins" (that's a joke about older folks!). There's no guarantee Tiger will return in top form, and The Golf Blog frets injuries might jeopardize the Tigerquest to break the world record for most downloads in one day (or some such thing). The Boston Celtics won the NBA Championship, and few commentators have done a better job than Most Valuable Network of describing the turnaround in Boston's sports psyche, which used to be about "expecting the worst and bracing for heartbreak." Boston fans are so happy now they even sent Microsoft a cake.

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In a brilliant piece of linkbait, the Vanity Fair VF Daily Blog produced an A-List map of the blogosphere that ranks top blogs from Scurrilous to Earnest (Jossip to Think Progress) on one axis to News and Opinion (think Consumerist to The Daily Dish) on the other. Do NOT hit the link unless you have hours to wander around, writes The Whited Sepulcre. Blatant New York Magazine theft says emptyage and VF clearly didn’t bother to read 60% of the sites they describe. Valleywag is trying to grasp how it ended up on the Earnest end of the scale (frankly, so are we). Surprises on the list? Just one: Calacanis at bottom right as the most Earnest (ahem) and Opinionated. The predictable “we made the list” blog posts ensued. Mission accomplished!

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Here come the takedowns. The Associated Press, one of the world’s largest news organizations, is facing a blog–bully firestorm after threatening Rogers Cadenhead and his Drudge Retort (a Drudge Report parody site) for linking to and reproducing 39 to 79 word snippets of AP stories (thanks Techdirt). The AP backed off over the weekend (via Wordyard) or did they? AP executives told the NY Times “We don’t want to cast a pall over the blogosphere by being heavy-handed, so we have to figure out a better and more positive way to do this.” But they didn’t withdraw their demand that Drudge Retort take down the articles writes Paidcontent. 

Blogger reaction was swift and harsh. “AP, hole, dig” wrote BuzzMachine followed by another post titled “FU AP.” “The Associated Press: FAIL!” says Marketing Pilgrim. TechCrunch’s new policy on AP stories: they’re banned. If we all stop linking to and reading AP stories, maybe they’ll come to their senses says Texas Startup Blog. The silver lining: It's an amazing opportunity for other local and national news sites to get that blog link love and traffic says Publishing 2.0.

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Top news stories for the week of June 9 - 13, 2008

TechCrunch calls the new Glassdoor.com a way to find out how much people really make at Google, Yahoo and other companies. VentureBeat says it's a way to let your boss know what you think. Infectious Greed proclaims "call it a PG...version of F***edCompany.com"—and reproduces a Glassdoor chart showing Yahoo and Microsoft employee approval ratings of their CEOs, Jerry Yang and Steve Ballmer. Startup Chatter suggests (in a self-defeatingly-ranty way) that Glassdoor's exploitation of unverified scuttlebutt makes it "scarier than Wikipedia."   

Hey, everyone's right! 

Inquisitr (which calls Glassdoor an employment conditions service) says it extends the idea behind The Funded to potentially every company. Anonymous employee gripes and salary reports are "untapped space that would seem to have huge possibilities," Inquizz says, although we seem to remember several sites already tapping that inner space, like Vault.com for worker evaluations and Payscale.com for competitive salary dope. 

Meanwhile, Valleywag has its own takes on high-tech jobs (and Jobs), with its tournament to discover the worst entry-level jobs in tech and an item wagging over the hauntingly thin appearance of Apple boss Steve Jobs at the WWDC (Apple says he just had a bug).

There's no "i" in Phone: Apple Insider says financial analyst/cheerleader Piper Jaffray predicts Apple's soon-to-open App Store, an online mart selling apps for the iPhone and coming iPhone 3G, could do $1.2 billion in sales in 2009. And that's all from one guy buying Super Monkey Ball. Sure, it sounds like a lot, but they misplace that kind of dough in Iraq all the time. Mark Evans sees it all as part of the iPhone's evolution from a fancy object of desire to a revenue platform for Apple—getting cheaper to buy with plenty of new ways to pay to use it. Well, yeah. Though Tech Beat reports that 71 percent of enterprise iPhone apps will be free (hence the Super Monkey Ball theory). And—before you get tired of free stuff—Mozilla announced it wants to set an all-time download record when it releases Firefox 3 on June 17. Gizmodo calls that a crass marketing ploy but says "it's tough to blame a company for shameless self-promotion of a superb free product."

On the entertainment trail: You can't stop Hulu. Viacom will begin syndicating The Daily Show and Colbert Report through the online TV-show-watching service, and PaidContent says that's validation for the growing Hulu.com, a joint venture of NBC and Fox. And Gold Derby thinks it's "very strange" that actress Katherine Heigl withdrew from contention for an Emmy this year—but still-worth printing a photo.

On the vote-pandering trail: It seems lame to poke fun at John McCain for his little slip of the tongue saying he'll "veto every single beer—bill with earmarks" (from Political Ticker). Hey—there's so much else to poke at. Andrew Sullivan says it's really true that, to McCain, it doesn't matter when U.S. troops come home from Iraq. And The Raw Story has details on a new book that does a hatchet job on Johnny Mac's personal life. Political Radar breaks the news that Barack Obama has copped to smoking—tobacco! Scolds The Sundries Shack: "It’s a shame that he can give a more direct and serious answer about his smoking habits than he can about his bigoted spiritual adviser..." Web Scout says Obama keeps fighting false online rumors and reports that Snopes.com has 18 entries for rumors about Obama, just one of which may be true. Nevertheless, The Hill says Obama could bring in $100 million in June. At that rate, he'd be in a dead heat with Apple App store!

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It's been a leak-filled wait, but Apple finally announced the 3G iPhone today at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). Bloggers went wild over the Steve Jobs keynote (liveblogging blow-by-blow courtesy of Engadget and Gizmodo, respectively) and Fake Steve Jobs secretly despises all the idiots who camped outside overnight to get into the Moscone Center. New iPhone features announced today include MobileMe for synching mail, contacts and your calendar to all your mobile and desktop devices, and a GPS service so you can track your friends. But don't line up at Apple stories yet: there will be no iPhones available for about 6 weeks, reports News.com. And for those excited about the new $199 iPhone price, check out these videos of your brain on a cellphone (yikes! via Whatsnextblog). Headset, anyone?

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Top Stories for the Week of June 2 - 6, 2008

The fallout from the aftershock to the backlash continues in response to ex-Gawker Emily Gould's New York Times magazine essay about the perils of oversharing personal information via blog. Mediaworks looked at the rise and fall of "pseudo-celeb" bloggers and quoted one young job-seeking writer as saying: "I wonder if I should take Gawker off my résumé." Melissa Lafsky at HuffPo (and also at Opinionistas—nice double dip! getting not paid twice for the same post!) asks, "Does blogging about your life necessarily ruin it?" (Spoiler alert: nah, it's still cool!) Variety editor Anne Thompson, who blogs Thompson on Hollywood, gets into the navel-gazing spirit by suggesting Gould's essay "reminds me of myself." Sounds like she has a future in this business.

In other new tech for people who love to read, YouTube has added a video annotation feature, which lets you add text bubbles and boxes—with links!—to create your own pop-up videos, as NewTeeVee describes it. Silicon Alley Insider points out that the linking feature enables production of choose your own adventure type videos. But Webware suggests "the purity of home videos is about to get a little more cluttered."   

About four percent of websites are dangerous (in virus-y sort of way), says a new report from McAfee, "Mapping the Mal Web Revisited," according to the WSJ Tech Blog. The numbers are juiced by the generous 12 percent of .info sites that are potentially evil and 19 percent of .hk sites (now entering Hong Kong) that could become hell on earth. Ars Technica suggests the ratings system seems squishy, as McAfee "equates aggressive pop-up marketing with virus propagation." AppScout somehow sees in the McAfee warnings a fun world geography lesson. Meanwhile, ReadWriteWeb reports that Japanese wiki-media company Nota has solved the age-old remixable t-shirt problem. With its C-Shirt service, it sells t-shirts with cool designs and codes on them that can be scanned with a mobile phone. What? You can see someone wearing a cute shirt design, scan and upload it, remix it, and create a new shirt design. It's like Frankenstein, with a Hello Kitty twist.

Bloggers are everywhere! Bill Clinton's "sleazy-slimy-scumbag" invective, aimed at Todd Purdum's gossipy Vanity Fair hatchet piece, was recorded on audio by a "citizen journalist" named Mayhill Fowler, while mainstream press were being kept away from the rope line where Clinton made the acid remarks. It further turns out, says Scripting News, that Fowler is the same person who recorded Barack Obama's comments about poor people in Pennsylvania. Fowler, who calls herself "an over-educated sixty year-old woman with politics in my blood," now blogs for Huffington Post and has the Clinton audio right here. Porch Dog has an awesome compilation of all the unnamed sources credited with providing the VF story's information including Clinton's "old friends" and "others."

Thankfully, there won't be any nasty primary elections to get America some vice president nominees. Veep candidates for both parties will be picked through insider politics, closed-door meetings and quid-pro-quo-deals, just like the normal government works. Hillary Clinton is ready to suspend her campaign this weekend and endorse Barack Obama. Now, Bob Reed at ReedBiz says Obama needs to offer her his VP slot "to reach out and bring Hillary's backers into his orbit." TalkLeft concurs and asks: "Does Clinton's promise to campaign for Obama if he's the nominee, begin now or in August when he officially becomes the nominee? Did she ever say?"  But Jimmy Carter says picking Hillary would be "the worst mistake that could be made" (from the Guardian via Politico). Carter, who is an engineer as well as a former President, figures like this: a lot of people won't ever vote for Clinton, and a  lot won't ever vote for Obama. Why combine the haters into an "anybody but them" mega-bloc?

Scouting the Red team, Words of Wisdom runs down the vitals of VP eligibles Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Charlie Crist and Bobby Jindal. WoW's negative on Huckabee: "Thinks the Flintstones is a documentary." While Johnny Mac picks a mate, the GOP has begun circulating vintage video of Hillary Clinton questioning Obama's experience and praising McCain's: “Senator McCain will bring a lifetime of experience to the campaign, I will bring a lifetime of experience and Senator Obama will bring a speech that he gave in 2002,” she said in March. "Thanks, Hillary!" says Balloon Juice (whose gratitude we're sure Hillary was shooting for).

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Barack Obama became the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate last night and finally, newspapers across the nation get to run all those "what does it mean that we have a black candidate" pieces they've been sitting on for months. Obama also gets his first test of how to handle Hillary writes Politico who refused to concede defeat. HuffPo reports that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, DNC Chairman Howard Dean released a public statement on Wednesday morning requesting that the party close ranks and prepare for the race against John McCain. The team also set a deadline of this Friday for superdelegates’ choices reports Top of the Ticket. Caroline Kennedy will be part of a three-person team leading the search for Barack Obama's vice president (via The Swamp). But don’t count Clinton out yet. Whoever said that after denial comes acceptance hasn’t met the Clintons snarks Maureen Down in the NY Times. Talking Points Memo has a roundup of Hillary-as-Veep reactions here.

Update: ABC reports Hillary will concede by Friday (thanks Hot Air).

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Top Stories for the Week of May 26 - 30, 2008

D6, this year's All Things Digital conference, was quite the big deal this week, featuring many legends and headliners of the modern space age. Rupert Murdoch spoke at the conference—which, by the way, HE OWNS.  He talked about the Wall Street Journal (which he owns) and commented on the Microsoft/Yahoo situation (which he doesn't own). Regarding MySpace (yep, he owns it) he said (according to the UK Guardian's tech blog): "45 percent of all the mothers in America are on MySpace." Meanwhile, rival Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg bombed on stage. He should've mentioned mom.

Amazon boss Jeff Bezos said his company's fake book, Kindle, is selling well and the price is dropping, but he assured everyone (as recapped in Tech Trader Daily) that real books won’t go away, just as horses have not gone away. What? Silicon Alley Insider says Bezos sneaked in news that Amazon will launch a pay-per-view streaming service next week.

Our whirlwind overview of the talk with Microsoft's Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer is here. Henry Blodget at SAI adds that Gates said: "There's no product we've ever shipped...that is 100% of what I've wanted." And ever is a long, long time.

Dunkin' Donuts supposedly has pulled a TV ad because perky spokeswoman Rachel Ray is wearing a scarf in it. Conservative blogger Michele Malkin wrote on Real Clear Politics it's a keffiyeh, "the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad." Is this for real? Someone give Malkin a munchkin. April Blog says "it’s just a scarf with fringes on it and happens to be black and white with a paisley pattern." (We bet 45 percent of the mothers in America have scarves like that.) Ray Haniania at Huffington Post says it's just another example of hate served up hot for racists who don't want to bother to make a distinction between real terrorism and the way someone looks or dresses.

What Happened, the new memoir by former Bush press secretary Scott McLellan, is stirring the usual partisan punditrism. The book contains Scott's post-facto regrets about having to lie for the administration about the Iraq war build-up and the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Hey, sorry I misled the world—my bad! Right Wing News says the traitor McLellan was never very good at his job anyway. Rich Noyes at NewsBusters.org ("exposing and combatting liberal media bias") says Ari Fleischer, another former Bush press secretary, wrote a memoir that was kind to the administration and it "generated virtually no broadcast or cable news coverage." Hmm, a book with no new information getting little attention?  Shocking. Over across the ideological divide, ThinkProgress says: "It’s a shame it took McClellan so long to acknowledge that his boss and his colleagues were misleading the country." Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com asks: "If Bush's own press secretary mocks the American media as excessively "deferential" disseminators of right-wing government propaganda, isn't it time to retire forever the myth of the "liberal media"?

And, finally, in geekertainment, the video for the new Weezer track "Pork & Beans" is an homage to the most popular videos on YouTube and features their actual stars singing along, according to NewTeeVee. Guests include the Numa Numa Kid, Judson Laipply (the “Evolution of Dance” guy), Eepy Bird (the Mentos and Diet Coke guys), and even Miss Teen South Carolina. Underwire interviews the director behind this tribute that mashes together a decade of Internet memes in less than 4 minutes. Maybe there's hope for us after all.

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The Vista hate-o-sphere went into overdrive today after Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer's session at D6, the Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference. The two execs confessed a few sins, talked about online biz models, and showed a sneaky peek at a forthcoming finger-driven version of Windows that's called Windows 7 (not Vista anything). Tech columnist Walter Mossberg asked Ballmer point-blank: Is Vista a failure? A mistake? Ballmer's reply [Video here]: "With 20/20 hindsight, are some things we'd do differently? Undoubtedly there are...There was so much pressure to get security right, we gave up some compatibility for security." The highlight was Windows 7, and the peek was kept short. Engadget says the early leaks about Vista may have set expectations too high and made things difficult for developers. "Apparently," says Engadget, "Microsoft is reworking the whole user interface with a multitouch experience in mind."Gizmodo says the touchy tech "takes many of its roots from Microsoft's Surface Table." (Though the two-finger screen manipulation idea may be familiar to most people from the magic vote screen that John King uses on CNN. It's not Microsoft technology.)

Consensus is that it's pretty cool, but... Scobleizer asks whether it will help Windows sales. Like tablet computers, multi-touch seems to solve a problem people don't really have. Adds commenter Paul Buchheit at Friendfeed: My arms will get tired. Between the Lines says "by the time Windows 7 launches in late 2009 I’d bet Apple will already have something." ParisLemon seems optimistic but says: "Get rid of that translucent color scheme. Your products are ugly. I'm just sayin."

Separately, Bill Gates claimed "We will build the world's best search" (thanks Search Engine Watch). And—after Ballmer pointed out how everyone will benefit if Google doesn't consolidate the online advertising market—Gates said "Guys like us avoid monopolies. We like to compete."

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