Capitalism: A Love Story

I was reading the review of Capitalism over at Reason and at the end it had this, One final note: Just before the film started, Moore asked the audience to turn off any recording devices because the studio did not want bootleg versions of the film getting around. Apparently this socialism stuff has its limits. I had to laugh. Frankly I ...

Google Wave Pulp Fiction

Megan McArdle points me to this amusing video about which  Gizmodo's John Herrmann gushes, "I've read the articles, watched the instructional videos, and gotten an invite, but nothing—nothing—has done more to explain to me how this mind-melting Internet Thing works than Pulp Fiction, spectacularly adapted for Google Wave. (Warning: Tarantino language ahead)" It's an entertaining illustration but, frankly, not one that ...

Email Era Over?

"Email has had a good run as king of communications. But its reign is over." So begins a column by Jessica Vascellaro in today's WSJ. We all still use email, of course. But email was better suited to the way we used to use the Internet—logging off and on, checking our messages in bursts. Now, we are always connected, whether ...

New York Times Malware Ads

This weekend, I got one of those fake "virus clean" popups after clicking a link to a New York Times article from Memeorandum.   Apparently, I wasn't alone as there are a dozen or more posts about it today at Techmeme. The NYT itself has this Note to Readers: Some NYTimes.com readers have seen a pop-up box warning them about a virus and ...

Google Patents Web Page Design

Google filed a patent five years ago for its home page design. Yesterday, it was approved. I'm with Valleywag's Ryan Tate: We always thought the page was brain-dead simple, but apparently it's an innovative "graphical user interface." [...] In other words, subject to how the patent is enforced, Google owns the idea of having a giant search box in the middle of the page, ...

Mary Jo Kopechne

In my early morning Teddy Kennedy Dead at 77 media roundup post, I observed, "That the Chappaquiddick scandal didn’t make the first several paragraphs — or even first page — of several of these obits is quite remarkable. It would be like writing an obit for Richard Nixon that didn’t mention Watergate or one for Michael Jackson that glossed over ...

Outed Liskula Cohen Blogger Sues Google

Remember when Liskula Cohen forced Google to reveal an anonymous blogger who was using their domain to call her a "skank" and suggest she performed lewd sex acts? Naturally, now that she has been outed -- as Rosemary Port, a Fashion Institute of Technology student -- is suing Google for violating her privacy. "This has become a public spectacle ...

Google Chrome Bleg

I gave Google's Chrome browser a go the first few days after its debut but found it rather annoying and went back to Firefox.  The latter has gotten so balky of late, however, that I've followed Alex Knapp's suggestion and given Chrome another chance. For the most part, it's fine.  I'm not having the crashing issues that I was with Firefox ...

Liskula Cohen Forces Google to Reveal Anonymous Blogger

A Vogue cover model of whom I'd never previously heard and does not conform to my preconceptions of what a Vogue cover model looks like has won a lawsuit against Google over an anonymous former blogger who called her names on the Internet. A Vogue cover girl has won a precedent-setting court battle to unmask an anonymous blogger who called her ...

Google Opt Out Feature Protects Privacy

Pretty sure this is still in Beta: Google Opt Out Feature Lets Users Protect Privacy By Moving To Remote Village via Hal Hildebrand

Google is a Verb, Not Just a Search Engine

E.D. Kain makes the interesting point that it may be too late for Microsoft's bing to make much penetration into the search market, regardless of whether it's better at producing desired results, because we've already reached the point where the name of the market leader has become a verb. Once something becomes a sort of universal noun, that’s bad enough.  Kleenex ...

Firefox 3.5 Available

Mozilla has just released version 3.5 of its Firefox browser. CNET's Stephen Shankland: Firefox 3.5 has a range of new features, including a new JavaScript engine for faster Web applications such as Google Docs; the ability to show video built into Web pages without plug-ins; a private browsing mode; fancy downloadable fonts; and geolocation technology that can let ...

Michael Jackson Dies, Kills Internet

Not sure this is BREAKING NEWS, as CNN does, but it's amusing nonetheless: How many people does it take to break the Internet? On June 25, we found out it's just one -- if that one is Michael Jackson. The biggest showbiz story of the year saw the troubled star take a good slice of the Internet with him, as the ripples ...

Public and Private

Jeff Jarvis notes that there has been some controversy over Google's Streetview, which allows people to see videos of what's going on in the streets, including residential neighborhoods, in an ever-expanding number of locations. In a few countries around the world, we’ve seen a backlash against Google’s Streetview as somehow an invasion of privacy, even though what Google captures is the ...

Weird Al ‘Craigslist’ Doors Video

Not one of his better efforts, frankly, but I haven't seen anything from Weird Al Yankovich in years: Jack Humphrey jokes, "Craigslist has truly arrived.  When Weird Al makes a Doors-inspired melody about your site, there’s really nothing left to do but cash checks and wait for Google to buy."  Indeed. That seems to be the business model for quite a ...