Media

Government officials often shape the official version of major events to fit their needs at the time. 90 years after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake a historian concluded the official death toll had been minimized so it would be easier to get support for rebuilding the city on the San Andreas Fault.

The current source of innumerable conspiracy theories is 9/11. Not since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has there been such a flurry, such a rich choice of conspiracy theories. And they're all out there in the blogs.

One woman in rural Pennsylvania is a … Read more

Coming to your flat screen and your cell phone: Anheuser-Busch promotion just off the production line. The brewing giant is setting up its own video production Unit, reports AdAge.com.

Some observers believe this is a signal of Anheuser-Busch turning toward Hollywood. The brewer's product placement deal with "Wedding crashers" was their first show biz partnership in over a decade.

If this video venture begins to work as an advertising tool, we may see Budweiser vignettes all over youtube. Even automatically downloaded to your cell phone. Won't you be pleased? And this could signal the beginning … Read more

Hey, bloggers. Disappointed by the single-digit number on your FeedBurner tracker? Embarrassed about how few Technorati trackbacks you have? Don't worry. The Washington Post wants to be your friend.

Traditional media's forays into the online world, as we all know, have a tendency to be kind of awkward, and The Washington Post's has been no exception. (Case in point: the Ben Domenech kerfuffle.) But now the D.C. paper has announced a new program that aims to reach out to the further corners of the blogosphere--an advertising network in the form of a blogroll.

In the traditional … Read more

Wikipedia suffered a shutdown for about 2-1/2 hours Friday, one of the longest outages in the online encyclopedia's history.

According to Jimmy Wales, the site's founder, the outage was caused by a dispute between Wikipedia's ISP, Cogent, and its hosting service, PowerMedium.

Wales said that the dispute had nothing to do with Wikipedia, but rather involved what Wikipedia was told were other "bad" customers. However, when Cogent pulled a block of IP addresses, the group of addresses Wikipedia was leasing were included, and the site went down.

The dispute was resolved Friday, but Wales … Read more

Lest there was any doubt, the incessant pre-opening buzz over "Snakes on a Plane" proved that the Hollywood studios are have discovered the power of viral marketing online.

And it's a good thing for them, because the dinosaurs of Madison Avenue certainly haven't been helping out much at a time when the big screen sometimes seems destined for a decidedly unhappy ending.

We've long wondered when the advertising industry would figure out that the old ways of business are over, but some signs indicate that it's finally starting to wake up--or, at least, some … Read more

For awhile now, it has seemed to us that Web 2.0 logos were all starting to look alike. Apparently, we're hardly the only ones who think so.

Last month, some clever folks at Yay Hooray posted some parodies of famous logos done in similar style. Now, we have the Web 2.0 Logo Generator, which will create one for you that looks remarkably realistic--right down to the obligatory "beta" tag.

More and more glossy monthlies have been making the big leap to the Web. And now, finally, so is their bible of style.

No, not fashion style; you can find plenty of glam gospel online, especially if you're into offbeat journals like Manolo's Shoe Blog. I'm referring to copy style. Spelling, citation, punctuation, hyphenation, jargon, libel--all the things nerdy editors like myself try to keep a close eye on.

Journalists at traditional papers and sites such as CNET News.com have been able to search online for up-to-date missives from their primary style guide, the AP Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law… Read more

SAN JOSE, Calif.--Few Silicon Valley companies are dogged by more rumors than YouTube.

Talk of a possible acquisition of the white-hot video-sharing site drifted into discussions at the Digital Hollywood conference here this week. Few details, such as the name of the acquirer or the asking price, were included.

These kind of guessing games are nothing new to YouTube's executives, who scoffed at the idea that YouTube was for sale. "Really, was it a big number?" joked YouTube CEO Chad Hurley, after being told that rumors of a buyout were floating.

Hurley participated in a panel … Read more

Power to the shopper. That could be the credo that defines a new era in the retail industry, if sites like Crowdstorm succeed.

The latest service to enter the so-called social shopping market, Crowdstorm "measures the buzz around products and allows users to recommend products to each other." The site is born from the same concept that launched such services as Wists, Yub.com and ShopWiki. Major players have also gotten into the act, including Yahoo with its Shoposphere and eBay through its affiliation with Kaboodle.

If anything, it's curious that such sites haven't taken off … Read more