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You can't beat 'em join 'em.

My name is Will.  This is what I clicked.

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-Blogs are the engaged readers journalists have been looking for.

But while you can't beat 'em, journalists may also .

I often read about Chinese bloggers, but not only do I not read Chinese, most of the time the characters on don't even load on my machine.  That's when a post on Global Voices Online is especially helpful.

tells us, "Prodigem will take your original works, turn them into BitTorrent files, charge whatever fee you set for them, and pass the money on to you, less their commission."

Of course, if you charge money, .  Just ask the Wall Street Journal.

""

-Sample: Alternative slogan:

  • Wal-Mart: "Always low wages."
  • Google: "Maybe not evil, but after the IPO not so good either."

Speaking of Google, why it's sometimes a good idea to ignore traffic stats.  (Note how quickly the commenters rain on his theory.)

Speaking of The Simpsons, reminds us of their suggestion for increasing membership of the Catholic Church.

Businessweek draws some attention for its cover story and new blog with a .  In case your memory needs jogging, you may want to refresh it with the .

Yesterday's speech from the professor to the laptop thief seemed pretty scary to me, but .

Speaking of not being intimidated, is a little "techie" but still pretty dramatic.  A game of computer chicken.

Speaking of tips from smart people who deal with writers, this item "pays tribute to ."

-not a new Fox show.

Here's something I didn't even know was an issue.  Apparently the for-profit weather companies are unhappy that the federal government has .

  -Can this be right?  Have my corporate colleagues essentially doubled the population of the blogsphere?  I would have expected to feel a greater disturbance in the Force than I have.  Maybe once they get cooking their influence will be a little more apparent.

-As , the remake was attempting a shot-for-shot reshoot of the scene.  (A commenter on that blog saw breasts, which I somehow missed.  I watched it twice, and I can make out a bit of butt for a split second.  Anyway, the point is that it may not be safe for work, but then, if you're watching video of a woman getting stabbed in the shower at work, a stray boob probably won't make much difference.)

New expression to me: "Rumor surveillance."  See , and .

New movie from Disney looks interesting:

But sorry Disney, today's Video of the Day goes to .

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Is this a or a Sylvester Stallone movie tease?  "Bill Gates is on a mission to build a Google killer. What got him so riled? The darling of search is moving into software—and that's Microsoft's turf."

Speaking of being afraid of Google, .

And speaking of publishers:   -Will publishing be the next middle-man industry to be made obsolete by the Internet?

Speaking of digitizing books, " is wrestling to digitize 8.14 million books to keep pace with the age of the Internet and to prepare against major earthquakes and other natural disasters."  That's in Japan, and no, they're not books about food, that's just the name of the library.

And since we mentioned my paycheck's patron, gays are .  The story revolves around Microsoft supporting (or not) a gay rights bill.  I'm going to have to read this more closely because after a brief scroll-through I still don't quite understand the mechanics of Microsoft's role in government. 

  -A (mostly) anti-Blair bit of animation in the vein of the JibJab cartoons we saw during the U.S. campaign.  Again, I don't want to say that the U.K. election doesn't matter to

More on why gamers of the future .

makes a point that has surely occurred to others, but I haven't heard said out loud too much:  "Because I disagree with the Catholic Church on these and a few other matters, I am– how do I put this? – NOT CATHOLIC."

There are a few videos in today's entry, but this is the undisputed Video of the Day.  Unfortunately, in the time it took me to write this it just got a little trickier to watch, but this is a good test to see if you retained any of your BitTorrent skills from downloading tsunami video.  The story is that at the end of a college class a professor explained to an unnamed laptop thief that in the course of trying to steal an exam he had committed several federal offenses and is basically doomed.  The statement was initially at the very end of , but it looks like the school has edited it out.  Thankfully, has been updating its post on the matter and folks have produced a variety of alternative media versions.  (I've joined the BitTorrent share, and used Quicktime to view the video.)

:  "They are meant to be a fun introductory overview of major film genres and movements, and to serve as handy guides in your rental selection process."

" seek to demolish the sterile conformity of mass produced objects and represent the stylistic and flamboyant embellishment of groups who live on the fringe of popular culture."

"Why do the media keep running stories saying suits are back? . One of the most surprising things I discovered during my brief business career was the existence of the PR industry, lurking like a huge, quiet submarine beneath the news."

: "The site allows you to record links you think might be the next big thing, and then, when you get mailed about them weeks later, you can direct the slow and the stupid here and show off how cool you are."

True to its word, most of the links are ones I have already seen.  .  I think the object is to keep the items out of the water long enough for a new item to fall from the sky.

-I don't know if that's counting the pair of eyes that follow your cursor.

gives you recommended searches from a whole list of engines, all at once.  I'm not sure what to use this for, but the stat page is interesting.

expresses his displeasure at seeing Ann Coulter on the cover of Time magazine.  (Among many in .)

is a new effort to rally Americans to fight the emergency of global AIDS and extreme poverty.

Speaking of charity, American tsunami relief donations top a billion .

-Informative, if a little dry.

-I haven't had a chance to see if this story is getting much play on TV, but we've seen a lot of outraged letters to the editor about it.

-Babelfish translates it as "We are pope" but beyond that I don't get much more.  My wild guess is that they're Germans who are excited to have a German pope.  If you understand it differently let me know.

A new ad is soon to air for not being loyal to President Bush on the matter of John Bolton's confirmation.  I like the line that reads, "No, I was streaming it on the Internet at the office..."  I have a funny feeling that's how most people will end up seeing this ad as well.

Speaking of the Bolton hearing, draws clicks for his views on the Bolton hearings and the need for a strong personality in the role of UN ambassador.

I hate when I'm not smart enough to understand what looks like a really .

" is the first search engine that actually allows you to search for spoken words within any audio or video file. We’re starting with podcasts and will be adding all types of multimedia in coming months."  From what I understand, the technology somehow understands the audio and  knows what it's about so you can search for it.

Surely the powers that be won't allow this to last: A couple guys have figured out how to run an offshore software operation .

Speaking of the sea,   (OK, I admit that was a weak segue.)

is a pretty big catalog of plane crash photos.  (Nothing gory that I saw, just broken machines.)

Commuter Click: --The behavior of a close relative challenges assumptions about male supremacy in human evolution

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The link lists are a little crowded with redundant Pope stories today, but there were a few stand-outs to be found.  We took a look at Andrew Sullivan yesterday, but today we see three specific links getting a lot of circulation (, , ).  Not that the number of links matters much to Professor Bainbridge, who to let readers know what he thinks of Sullivan's opinions.

Round-ups continue to be the most useful tool in sorting through all the reaction.  does his usual great job.  Given the Sullivan/Bainbridge exchange, I thought it was funny that the quote he pulled from Sullivan was, "I should shut up now.  And pray."

also has a substantial round-up with handy quotes.

"Call him conservative, call him reactionary, call him old, call him surly, call him the wrong choice.  ."  That's in reference to .

And in a cool bit of Citizen's Media, you can watch and listen to to the introduction of the new Pope.

And now for something completely different...

  -They're done well enough that at first I thought they were actual translations, but they're also silly enough that I stopped believing it and re-read the intro.

Folks who liked the idea of the Carnival of the Cats we clicked the other day, but found the category too restrictive will be pleased to learn that there is a for blogging of pets of any sort.

  -It's striking to me how many elements of this story of what it was like to be in Oklahoma City on the day of the bombing parallel what New York City was like after 9/11:

He spoke of the heavy smoke that filled the air, people running frantically, not knowing where to go, and the debris cloud that swarmed over downtown, filled with what seemed like thousands of sheets of paper....I had lunch out at a restaurant that day.  It was probably one of the eeriest things I've ever experienced.  The place was full and yet you could hear a whisper.  No one seemed to be saying anything.  They just ate quietly and talked in nervous, hushed tones.  I finished my meal and headed back to work....By Wednesday afternoon, lines of blood donors at the Red Cross were out the door.  By that evening, they were turning people away.

How did the Bible Blog get on popular link lists today?  By of course.

Speaking of books:   -Articles like this are helpful because so much blog hype is hogged by the politics bloggers, and so much of the communication dynamic between blogs takes place through links, which aren't always common in some blog genres.

Speaking of literature online, read all of .  (Actually, that site has .)

"Once a leader in Internet innovation, the United States has fallen far behind Japan and other Asian states in deploying broadband and the latest mobile-phone technology. "

-in which we read about "libertarian paternalists," not abortion.

Two things strike me as odd about the new government .  First, it's not my pyramid no matter what the URL says.  Second, isn't the point of the pyramid to stack the categories on top of each other so that they form a triangle shape?  Now it looks more like a food circus tent.

To build a

declares Network news dead.

Reports of the death of newspapers, however, .

Speaking of newspapers:

Note: The second headline was not meant to answer the first.  Quite the contrary, in fact.

Speaking of The Times, I'm guessing their story on is what has raised the profile of the at Between Lawyers.

  -Pretty much how you'd expect, but still cool.

Few people know that Oops I Did It Again was originally .

Commuter Click:

:  "Our initial crew consisted of 2 boys who, by the end of the school year, had gone to over 20 local school dances and Proms."  This reminds me a whole lot of the rent-a-German site we saw a few weeks back.

It's a !

Speaking of the golden arches, for folks who don't find their particular sentiment properly expressed by McDonalds corporate slogan,

The Pretty in Pink sequel story .  My was not.

While looking for today's video of the day I came upon for why overweight gamers () will one day be a thing of the past.  Curious about the source I and also found this and promptly wasted a foolish amount of time.  The project is well .  (Note that the movie button produces a pop-up menu so you have to hold the ctrl key down when you click it.)

"Since trying , I have not been bothered by alien mind control."

But speaking of the Video of the Day, today it's a .  It takes a few seconds to move, so be patient.  While you wait, count the number of figures, there should be 12.  After it moves, count them again and there are 13.  Where did the extra one come from?

.

[Hat tip to and for some of today's fresh clicks in the pope link storm.]

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As I poked around for blog reaction to the new pope I heard a familiar voice.  Jeff Jarvis was on the tube doing a .  As for my hunting, this is what I clicked:

  • , of course
  • -This site is getting blasted with traffic so it doesn't load very well, if at all.  Sometimes I get an error, but hitting the refresh button will give me text with no graphics.
  • I've been following the commentary from .  I'm not sure why, his site just stuck in my head from when we looked at Catholic bloggers at the beginning of the month.
  • The direct link to the Wikipedia entry is .  The link says Ratzinger, the page says Benedict.
  • Jeff (and the cable folks) also recommend (who has been blogging since the dawn of time by the way, check out that archive) who points to, among others, "the has the first truly articulate Catholic blog post I've read on this breaking news (most are just one all-caps word with 10 exclamation marks) -- and he also has a Charlie Brown reference."
  • While playing with the new Blogrunner site and their I followed to (who has quite a bit to say, it turns out).
  • UPDATE:  After writing my ridiculous headline I went over to to see if they'd done anything clever and found who correctly narrowed the possible new pope nicknames and promptly registered their dot coms.

Speaking of speaking in Latin (but not speaking of the Pope any more), .  It looks like it's an outline of the industry (if you could call it that) surrounding the rebuilding of countries after a war or natural disaster wipes out their infrastructure and/or government.  There are a few Commuter Click candidates today, but this is the one I'm printing.

From the learn something new every day department:  " was used from mid-WW1 to the early years of WW2 for the passive detection of aircraft by picking up the noise of the engines."

?  It's pretty scary to link to something that is so critical of my boss's boss's boss's boss's....well, you get the idea, but there it is.

  -Unless you like your rut, in which case, enjoy!

-Where blogs and maps meet

Reading through this page on an , it looks like it's only a neat idea at this point.  A few too many unanswered questions yet.

Yet another .  Somewhere a pop culture PhD is sitting up and taking notes.

Making a game of feeding the hungry  -Hey, if the Army can use video games as a recruiting tool, why not apply the idea to global famine?

Speaking of games, there are in Turbo Tax.

Speaking of pop culture crossovers, The Wedding Singer .

has an item that is almost a look at online smear artists but ultimately comes across as being about mainstream reporters who don't like to be criticized.  There is a lot to be said about the level of discourse on blogs and the relationship between the media the audience.  This piece, however, only whistles past the grave yard.

My New York Times was delivered on Sunday without a magazine section, something I took to be random coincidence.  But I keep running into references to its in the blogosphere so now I'm wondering if someone snatched it.  Anyway, two buzzpoints I clicked are and the .

Speaking of knocking the Times, that's a role I usually think of as being filled by bloggers on the right.  On the matter of war coverage, however, the left has its .

As long as we're on a bloggers v. MSM theme, the Time magazine Ann Coulter story is getting slammed left and right by the blogosphere.  Yesterday I mentioned the fuss over the cover photo.  Today I see there's been an even bigger fuss over in which Time initially misidentified, well, .

Not to be left out of the Time bashing, liberals are also .

Speaking of news photos, I lost track of whose blogroll I found it on, but by chance, I also clicked dedicated to analyzing news photos (more psychological than for "bias").

The Counterterrorism blog has some interesting material.  I first clicked a from a few days ago, but more significant seems to be on a State Department report.

In that vein, when the going gets tough, the tough .  As soon as the bloggers finish chewing up the media, I look forward to a blog driven "open government" movement.

Speaking of counter terrorism, relays the tale of and how our skies are getting safer by the day.  No one carrying more than two books onto a plane can be up to any good anyway.

with search engines.  Could this bridge the gap between TV and Web video?

Remember when protests in Lebanon was a story you could follow on TV news?  is one way bloggers are following the movement.

  -I understand that raising kids to be OK with personal trackers is probably the first step toward a seriously big brother society, but I reckon parents appreciate being able to keep tabs on their kids.  The description makes it sound like one of those First-Alert "I've fallen and I can't get up" devices.

reports on amusement park ride accidents (of course).  I would feel better about it if all the incidents were linked to a news story.  Some of them are though.

A relatively new "carnival" style blog round up: "".  They're only up to #2 so far.  For those who don't recognize the pun, a blawg is a law blog.

Folks in the UK are in the midst of an election season.  I haven't been following it very closely, so I don't know the details behind this site, but I understand it has .  (Such a relief to be only an observer!)

Speaking of the UK, .  No satellite yet though.

I've seen individual links to these songs, but now I see the general site is getting a lot of attention.  Basically what this person did was take all the curses out of a rap CD and made a song of just the swears.  They're the opposite of censored -it's the clean words that are taken out.  The effect is kind of funny, and I was surprised to find that I could still be shocked by cursing.  Consider yourself forewarned.  .

?  This symbol is meant to represent individual rights, privacy, etc.  For some reason I always thought the Maltese Cross was a symbol for individuality- or at least independence.  I'm not sure why any of this needs to be branded however.

Just in case:

  -The subject of the interview is "The Singularity," and though I've just read it, I'm not sure I can compose a quickie summary here.  Once you start reading you'll know if this is the kind of thing that interests you.

looks at a study comparing the U.S. to rest of the world and concludes that socialized medicine is more satisfying to citizens than private.  That's an inadequate summary, but if you want more, it's a quick read.  What stands out to me about this post is that Glenn just that is also about comparing the U.S. to the rest of the world, and he concludes that socialism essentially saps the spirit and productivity of the citizenry.  They're not exactly opposed, but still an interesting contrast.

is out!  This is the latest version of the popular penguin swatting game.  No swatting in this one.  In fact, no penguins at all that I encountered.

Video of the Day: Nothing beats

a story to get from the blogosphere to the New York Times?  I'm not sure how scientific this is meant to be.  The implied question is "how out of touch is the New York Times?"  A related question I often wonder about is what makes some stories move to the New York Times (or traditional media generally) at all while others only flash in the blogospherical pan.

New word of the day, "."  Michael Totten does a good job exploring its meaning, but I won't be surprised if it becomes the new slur for "terrorist sympathizer."

Are we really meant to believe that this is ?

To the mailbag:

.
Best,
Ed

Dear Ed,
Thanks, that's great.  I should point out to readers that you sent that in before the ridiculous "is that white smoke?" confusion this afternoon before the selection of the new pope was confirmed.  They definitely could have used one of those.

By the way, Adam Felber's is also pretty funny.
Cheers,
Will

Hi Will.
I am not sure if you already have heard about this, but there is an ancient prophesy written by St. Malachy which details every pope until the final two after John Paul II.  Some say that the final pope on this list, Peter the Roman, will be the last.  Other say there are more to follow him, but Peter the Roman's cruel death "at the hands of Arab terrorists will signal the beginning of WWIII).  I read , and its scared the living daylights out of me.

Here is of St. Malachy with all the popes.  Notice that the next pope after John Paul II is referred to as "Glory of the Olive," which many speculated would come from the Benedictine Order...

Pope Benedict XVI was elected today.
~Gabe

Dear Gabe,
We've looked at the list, your second link, but I didn't see the longer explanations in your first link.  The explanations for the "Glory of the Olive" is interesting -at least the peace parts sound hopeful.  It does seem to defeat the purpose of making predictions that we can't understand what they mean until after the fact when we can go back and apply history to them.

Still fun though.

Thanks,
Will

| (But really earlier because I had it all set and my laptop froze and I lost everything.)

" asks 10 scientists to name the biggest danger to Earth and assesses the chances of it happening"  -All of which are either a movie I've seen or would see.  For some bonus anxiety, find out why telomere erosion should be on your list of irrational fears you can't help worrying about.

And tell me this doesn't sound

"The U.S. military has assembled the world's most formidable hacker posse: a super-secret, multimillion-dollar weapons program that may be ready to launch bloodless cyberwar against enemy networks -- from electric grids to telephone nets."

I'm not sure why it hasn't happened already, but surely we are due for a war to be fought online.

Continuing the theme, I'm ready for my any time now.    Unless I can get to do the driving.

Ur blogger Matt Drudge doesn't read blogs.  Needless to say, .

Speaking of Drudge, he out that his friend is not at all pleased with how she was portrayed on the cover of Time.  All politics and opinions of pundits and photography aside, I've seen her in person and she is .

Speaking of distorting photos, delivers another winning batch, this time on the theme of corporate logos run amok.  (Potential disclosure:  I probably work for half of those corporations)

In some ways, is exactly what I expected from a site with that name, but in other ways it isn't.  It's a little dense to scroll through (it's not a blog), but it's more explaining and researched and less hysterical than I guessed before clicking.

MaxSpeak draws clicks for his explanation of the "."

  -What's most amazing to me about this story is the contrast of applying such ancient rules to such new technology.

If you're going to have a guest blogger, it might as well be a .

Tell me again why we went to war?  Are you sure?  Glenn gets in a great back and forth with a newspaper columnist over whether bringing democracy to Iraq was part of the pitch for going to war there.  Really it's a back and forth about having selective memory to suit your version of events.  The thread starts , then , then , then .

They use the term historical revisionism, but I'm not sure something so recent fits that description.  Regardless, there are two things I note about the debate, without even touching its substance

  1. Glenn is talking to a newspaper.  I can't imagine when it's ever been possible to publicly engage in a dialogue with a newspaper unless you yourself worked at a newspaper or had a radio show or TV show.
  2. Glenn's entries evolve as his readers contribute research.  They even digress in interesting ways.  From the columnist we'll have to wait until Thursday.

" of the original Trivial Pursuit, who knew the most common Russian surname (Ivanov) and the international radio code word for the letter O (Oscar). In his place is the specialist, who knows every inch of Return of the Jedi."

  -Could also be called, "Why everything wrong in the world is Tom DeLay's fault, as proven by this handy chart."

I never point to blog polls here, but has been enjoying prominence for almost two days now.  I don't know what's making it so popular.  It's a relatively quick 20 questions and the results are of dubious use -at least they were to me since mine came out a hodge podge, but some bloggers just love these. 

Some LiveJournal folks are , with complaints about ownership and accusations of bandwidth theft.

Nintendo songs (another copy ).

Signs appear to be pointing to in '08.  I can't believe we're already talking about that.

  -Not just for kids.  Plus, includes how to pronounce moleskine, which I'm now trying to remember if I've ever mispronounced in public.

"To show you how radical I am, I want carjackers dead. I want rapists dead. I want burglars dead. I want child molesters dead. I want the bad guys dead. No court case. No parole. No early release. I want 'em dead. Get a gun and when they attack you, ."  I don't imagine we can expect the "culture of life" folks and the NRA to  be sharing convention space any time soon.

You may be a nerd if you're excited by something whose description begins with ""  I'll take two please.

offers a new podcast  (By way of that page I clicked at hackers helping in Iraq.)

The death of has many people linking to .

Various polls have been reporting on the President's approvals ratings lately.  The sees some link action today.

",'' said Ivan Seidenberg, chief executive officer of Verizon Communications.  Have you ever seen a PowerPoint presentation in which the presenter lightens the mood by showing quotes from powerful people about how the TV would never catch on and people would never need their own computer and stuff like that?  I have a feeling Mr. Seidenberg just added to that list.

I haven't played with this yet, but some members of a photoblogging community I follow have already been singing its praises:

" is the world's first fully automatic 2D image stitcher. Capable of stitching full view panoramas without any user input whatsoever, AutoStitch is a breakthrough technology for panoramic photography, VR and visualisation applications."

: finding interesting video, sound and image files in unprotected directories  -I considered pulling the Video of the Day from this technique, but since these are people who may not think they're offering video publicly, driving traffic through their back door is probably rude.

:  You'll never look at  your computer the same way again.  (If I'm not mistaken, I think the creator of this video prefers that you explore his work through .)

Here's a Google Map destination I didn't think of:  "."  Contains lots of good I-don't-know-what-that-is,-but-let's-agree-to-assume-it-has-to-do-with-secret-alien-research.

Speaking of things that probably have real explanations but are more fun to imagine are something magical or alien, what the heck are  the ?

UPDATE:    (Commuter Click)

And speaking of Google Map destinations I didn't think of, one from the mailbag:

Will,
, since I know you’re into the Google satellite these days.  It’s the infamous Amityville Horror house (I’ve seen creepy pictures of it for years, but in the Satellite image, it looks kind of like a regular house).  Amazing how technology can put things into perspective.

Big fan of ‘Clicked’.  Keep up the good work!
-Ed Doherty
St. Louis, MO

Dear Ed,
Thanks, that's a good one.  I've been trying with no luck to think of something to add to the

When I was in college some friends and I piled in the car and went looking for the Amityville Horror house.  I don't remember the address, we just asked for directions in town, but the two things I recall that may help readers pick it out of the satellite shot (and it sounds like you can correct me if I'm wrong) is that it's on the east side of the street, and unlike its neighbors, which face the street, it is turned sideways.