AP

<strong>Palestinians voted, for the first time since 1996, to elect a parliament, with the Islamist movement, Hamas, competing for the first time ever in a national poll against Fatah, the secular group that has hitherto dominated Palestinian politics. Preliminary results suggested that Hamas was beating Fatah. See article

The <strong>Iraqi electoral commission ratified the results of December's general election, giving the main Islamist Shia coalition 128 seats in the 275-member parliament and the Kurdish alliance 53. The combined total was just short of the two-thirds majority required to endorse a presidential council as a step on the way to forming a government. Negotiations with the two main Sunni Arab groups, which together won 55 seats, began in earnest. See article

The trial of <strong>Saddam Hussein was again postponed, until January 29th, after a row over the appointment of a new head of the five-man panel trying him.

With bloodshed continuing in Sudan's western province of Darfur, the 53-country <strong>African Union (AU) decided not to appoint Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, as the body's chairman. Instead, it gave the job for a year to the president of Congo-Brazzaville, Denis Sassou-Nguesso, who first took power in a coup in 1979.

The AU is to ask a panel of “eminent African jurists” to recommend where and how Hissène Habré, a former dictator of <strong>Chad exiled in Senegal, should be tried. Senegal referred the matter to the AU after a Belgian judge asked for Mr Habré's extradition to face charges of crimes against humanity under Belgium's “universal jurisdiction” law.

The leader of one of <strong>Côte d'Ivoire's main opposition parties, Alassane Dramane

Ouattara, returned home after three years in exile, a week after several days of riots and attacks against UN installations by young backers of the president, Laurent Gbagbo, whose government controls only the southern half of his turbulent country.

An internal review of the <strong>United Nations'peacekeeping procurement operations found “substantial evidence” of fraud and abuse amounting to over $200m. Eight UN employees, including its procurement chief, were put on paid leave pending investigation.

AFP

The death of <strong>Kosovo's president, Ibrahim Rugova, cast a shadow over negotiations between the Kosovo Albanians and Serbia about the province's future. A first round of talks was postponed.

Spain's prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, reached a provisional agreement on the text of a new constitutional statute demanded by <strong>Catalonia. But the opposition People's Party is fiercely against the plan, on the ground that it could lead to the dismemberment of Spain.

Aníbal Cavaco Silva became the first centre-right candidate to win <strong>Portugal's presidency since 1974. Mr Cavaco Silva, who was the Portuguese prime minister between 1985 and 1995, beat a clutch of left-wing candidates, including the veteran Mário Soares, who guided Portugal to democracy after 1974. See article

A squabble broke out between <strong>Russia and Georgia after bombs severed gas pipelines and electricity links between the two countries. Russia also accused British embassy staff in Moscow of spying and helping non-governmental organisations. See article

Turkey proposed a plan to end the isolation of <strong>northern Cyprus. But the Greek-Cypriot government in the south dismissed it as offering no new ideas. See article

The Senate Judiciary Committee, voting on party lines, approved <strong>Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court. Judge Alito is expected to be confirmed when the whole Senate votes on the matter. See article

Lawrence Franklin, a former analyst at the Defence Department, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for passing <strong>government secrets to two employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a lobbying group, and an Israeli official. Mr Franklin is expected to testify against the lobbyists at their trial in April.

A federal election in <strong>Canada produced a rightward nudge, as Stephen Harper's Conservatives ended 12 years of Liberal rule. But the Conservatives won only 124 of the 308 seats in the House of Commons, presaging a second consecutive minority government. Paul Martin, the defeated prime minister, resigned as Liberal Party leader. See article

AP

<strong>Fidel Castro organised a march by hundreds of thousands past the United States' mission in Havana, in protest at the installation by American diplomats of an illuminated panel that displays democratic messages.

Evo Morales, <strong>Bolivia's new president, named a cabinet composed mainly of activists from left-wing social movements. He signed agreements with Hugo Chávez, under which Venezuela will swap diesel and political advice for soya and chicken. But he also called for an anti-drug alliance with the United States. See article

The wife and three of the children of Augusto Pinochet, <strong>Chile’s former dictator, were freed on bail after being charged with tax evasion. Lucía Pinochet, the general’s eldest daughter, fled to Washington, DC, where she reportedly sought asylum.

There were clashes between armed police and demonstrators in Katmandu, the capital of <strong>Nepal. But the government later lifted its curfew and partially restored telecoms links it had cut before a recent protest. See article

<strong>Walt Disney agreed to buy <strong>Pixar in a deal worth $7.4 billion. The move gives Pixar, the animation studio behind blockbusters such as “The Incredibles”, creative control over Disney's cartoon studios. Steve Jobs, Pixar's founder and chief executive (and also Apple Computer's boss) will join Disney's board and become its biggest individual shareholder with a 6.5% stake. See article

<strong>Boston Scientific's $27 billion offer won the bidding war for <strong>Guidant, a medical-device maker, after <strong>Johnson & Johnson confirmed it would not raise its bid again. J&J's initial offer of $25.4 billion was accepted by Guidant in December 2004, but J&J's doubts led to a renegotiation over Guidant's market value following product recalls (more were announced this week).

<strong>Albertson's, an American supermarket group that has struggled of late against discount retailers, was bought by a consortium in a deal worth around $9.8 billion. Albertson's businesses are to be divided, with the lion's share going to <strong>Supervalu, which will become America's second-biggest food retailer.

Several large institutional investors in <strong>Vodafone called on the company to boost its flagging share price by selling its 45% stake in Verizon Wireless, a big American operator. Vodafone's boss, Arun Sarin, hinted that he might one day dispose of the holding, worth up to £25 billion ($45 billion), but not yet. See article

<strong>Ford unveiled its long-awaited restructuring plan. The company will close 14 plants and cut up to 30,000 jobs (25% of its North American workforce) over the next six years. The carmaker also reported that net income in 2005 had fallen by 43% (to $2 billion) compared with 2004. Its North American operations made a pre-tax loss of $1.6 billion.

Meanwhile, <strong>DaimlerChrysler's new boss, Dieter Zetsche, announced the elimination of 6,000 white-collar jobs (mostly in Germany) over the next three years.

Kirk Kerkorian bought back the shares in <strong>General Motors he recently sold, which restores his stake in the carmaker to 9.9%. GM's woes continued when it reported a dismal loss for 2005.

<strong>Dofasco, a Canadian steelmaker, accepted Arcelor's (third) takeover offer of C$5.6 billion ($4.9 billion). Based in Luxembourg, Arcelor beat off competition from <strong>ThyssenKrupp, a German rival, to buy Dofasco, a big supplier to North America's car industry.

<strong>Google said it had voluntarily agreed to censor politically sensitive websites in China when it launches an internet service in the country. The approach is similar to that of other internet companies operating in China. See article

<strong>McDonald's announced plans to speed up a share buy-back programme and to offload some of its loss-making outlets as franchises, and also reported a 53% rise in net profit for the fourth quarter, compared with a year ago. An activist hedge fund said it would now end its campaign pushing McDonald's to sell its wholly owned restaurants.

<strong>Bank of America said net profit had dropped by 2% in the fourth quarter, compared with a year earlier, its first quarterly profit fall in more than four years (profit for 2005 was up by 19%). The firm, along with other big American banks that have reported disappointing quarterly results, blamed the decline on the surge in personal bankruptcies that preceded tougher bankruptcy laws last October. See article

<strong>Donald Trump launched a lawsuit seeking $5 billion in damages against both the author and publisher of a book that claims the property tycoon and reality-TV star is not a multi-billionaire but has a paltry net worth of $250m.

<strong>P<strong>&<strong>O's board accepted a £3.5 billion ($6.3 billion) takeover bid from PSA, a Singaporean port operator that is owned by Temasek Holdings, the Singapore government's investment company. A bidding war with Dubai's DP <strong>World, which made an offer for P&O late last year, is expected.

<strong>British Nuclear Fuels, owned by the British government, confirmed that <strong>Toshiba had won an auction for <strong>Westinghouse, BNFL's American power-plant business. The deal is reported to be worth $5 billion. Toshiba's victory in the hotly contested process puts it in prime position to take advantage of China's nuclear-energy market, where Westinghouse is already busy. See article

<strong>German business confidence is at its highest for almost six years, according to Ifo, a think-tank. An improvement in the country's economic performance and surging exports also fed a rise in business optimism about the future. Analysts think the news increases the chance of another rise in interest rates.

Or not. Yaho o! shares slumped following a disappointing quarterly earnings report, according to <st rong>CNET News.com, despite year-over-year income rising $80 million for the quarter. The news could hold clue s to Google’s earnings report on January 31. Part of the problem is hea dcount and stock options, a problem that Google shares. Yahoo’s increased its staff by 30 percent, to nearly 10,000 (that partly explain why Sil icon Valley added 2,000 jobs in 2005—its first increase in four years). There was other bad news to go around: Int el drop 10% after its earnings report and eBay and Apple reported record

profits, but forecasts disappointed. Also pushing the market down this week was a warning from the oracle: War ren Buffett says the U.S. trade deficit spells political turmoil and a big adjustment ahead. If stocks continue to take a pounding, it’ s bad news for Web 2.0 startups says <st rong>Om Malik on Broadband.

iTunes is spy tunes no more. Apple changed the MiniStore options to make everything more transparent, a move that won fans including <str ong>Boing Boing which exp lains the changes at length. Apple also released clues about what's in the next iPod, applying for the trademark “Mobile Me” as the umbrella name for a pot ential mobile phone service that would converge with a certain music service reports the <st rong>Yahoo! News feed. About the same time, App le's market capitalization briefly passed that of Dell reports <st rong>The Stalwart. <st rong>business2blog says it' s the software stupid and explains why. Maybe Mic hael Dell should eat his words says Steve Jobs (via the <st rong>NY Times).

In politics, an audiotape of bin Laden aired on Al Jazeera saying new attacks in the U.S. are under preparation. <st rong>Huffington Post was among the first to pick it up and covers the ongoing details. That news was almost (but not quite) enough to distract bloggers from another scary story: Unc le Sam wants your Google searches <span>says <st rong>Techdirt<span> and the FBI already got results from other search engines. That's right, the federal government asked Google to turn over search records from its closely guarded databases reports <st rong>MercuryNews.com. <span>It's not just about this one request. Thi s is a major, major moment. Shame on the other engines for not standing up and fighting writes <st rong>John Batelle. <stro ng>The Agitator puts a finer point on it: The FBI wants to monitor

your Google searches. Not to fight terrorism. Not to fight child porn. But <span class="extras">to fig ht good ol’ fashioned adult porn.

On a lighter note, exactly what is a blog? Political Blogstar Andrew Sullivan of <st rong>The Daily Dish <em>edumacated Americans and mad e sweet bloggy love to Stephen Colbert on <em>The Colbert Report. <st rong>Gawker has the transcript.

The Ste ve Jobs reality distortion field was in full effect at Macworld this week says <st rong>Fast Company. The announcements: Int el-powered Macs 6 months ahead of schedule, including the MacBook Pro notebook which gets a seri ous performance jolt from the new chip says <st rong>Cnet News.com. <st rong>Engadget’s in love: the new

MacBooks run Windows, weigh just 5.6 pounds, have trip-proof power cords, and are available in February.

Not everyone was thrilled: App le’s big news wasn’t complains <st rong>AdAge.com, and <st rong>Scripting News nev er liked Steve Jobs’ arrogant style. <st rong>Engadget offered a liv eblog of Jobs’ speech anyway with lots of photos and <st rong>BuzzMachine collected iPo d statporn: over 42 million iPods sold to date, over 850 million songs, and over 8 million videos to list a few.

Outside MacWorld, Yah oo bought music playlist sharing site Webjay (called the del.icio.us of multimedia) writes <st rong>Smart Mobs while <st rong>Infectious Greed reports that AOL snapped up Truveo, a video-search-engine company barely at proof-of-concept. Who’s next? 37 Signals, MeasureMap, Digg, YouTube and Technorati are likely candidates for fut ure Yahoo shopping sprees. Video search engine startup Blin kx may also be in play says <st rong>Red Herring. Meanwhile Rupert Murdoch laid out a plan to turn MyS pace into a portal that rivals Yahoo and MSN. And iNo ds launched, a site that aggregates blog reviews of products for shopping which could mean the death of Yelp, Riffs, Judy’s Book and others review sites says <st rong>TechCrunch.

<st rong>Internet Outsider Henry Blodget (yes , <em>that Henry Blodget) makes a bear case for Google’s stock and outlines reasons the stock could get kno cked back to to $100 a share. <st rong>John Battelle’s Searchblog comments on the new Google Video service, which gives content producers 70 percent of revenue, a

model that should worry Comcast and DirecTV. <st rong>InsideGoogle says the new Google Video store is bot ched, totally botched and explains why. <st rong>AVC makes sense of video online and lay s out what needs to happen next.�

In politics, bloggers tuned in to the Samuel Alito hearings as the Supreme Court nominee faced ever tougher questioning but ref used to proclaim Roe v. Wade “settled law” as Roberts did. <st rong>Think Progress believes Alito’s spe aking in code about his hostility towards abortion. Frustrated Democrats say Ali to’s mind is sadly closed. <st rong>Power Line notes that all of Alito’s former clerks, lib erals and conservatives alike, support his nomination. <st rong>Hugh Hewitt thinks Arlen Spe cter’s running superb hearings despite driving Republicans crazy—but <strong>Dani el Drezner is offering a prize for the person who spots the sin gle dumbest thing a Senator says. <st rong>Daily Kos notes Lie berman thinks a filibuster is on the table. And <st rong>Right Wing News says lefties are mea nly claiming Alito’s wife broke down crying on Wednesday as a PR stunt. It’s getting ugly.

Another popular blog topic this week: Fakesters. Best-selling author James Frey had his reputation handed to him by <st rong>The Smoking Gun, which reported Frey fab ricated or wildly embellished details in <em>A Million Little Pieces. Opr ah Winfrey dismissed allegations of falsehoods as much ado about nothing and urged readers who have been inspired to "keep holding on” while <st rong>Gawker cel ebrated fake writer day on Larry King Live. <st rong>Freakonomics Blog says it’s disgusting Frey passed the story off

as non-fiction but it’s sti ll a great book parents should make their kids read. And hey, at least Frey actually exists. J.T. Leroy, supposed author of <em>Sarah and other popular works, not only was never a male truck-stop prostitute, he’ s actually a married San Francisco woman who hired a local guy to play her at readings says <st rong>Huffington Post. <st rong>Susan Mernit writes that San Franciscans with actual sordid pasts are ticked.

Is Google set to sell PCs in Wal-Mart? Rum ors were rampant on the eve of the big Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas about a $20 0 box running Google’s own GooOS operating system to be sold at Wal-Mart. Shades of the sup posedly “big” partnership with Sun in October says <strong>Tec hdirt. The search giant’s already den ied the rumor says Microsoft's <st rong>Scobleizer (who also says he knows nothing about the rumor Mic rosoft offered $80 billion to buy a stake in Yahoo!). <st rong>Mary Jo Foley sti ll bets on a Google hardware announcement this week at CES, even if it’s not sold at Wal-Mart, and <strong>Sil iconBeat says no Google PC, but does that mean Google Cube? <st rong>John Batelle's Searchblog finds all the Cube/PC theories hard to buy (his post includes links to the original LA Times and Cringely pieces that cranked up the rumor mill).

So what will Google CEO Larry Page talk about during his Friday keynote at CES?
href="http://www.elabs3.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=gww,lyr1,39mg,cgmw,g3de,kpqm,g1qy" rel="nofollow"><st rong>Om Malik’s sources tell him the big news is new and improved Google video—a distribution deal or partnership. <st rong>Search Engine Lowdown lends some cred to that, bet ting on Google prepping a pay-per-view model. The <st rong>Wall Street Journal got the bigger scoop reporting that Google plans to let users buy video on its Web site and will offer the Google software pack. This Goo gle guessing game hasn’t been bad for business: Google's stock jumped this week after an analyst set a $600 price target. Um, this is 2006, right?

Highlights from CES: <st rong>Techdirt thinks mob ile media will be the big story considering news of Motorola’s iRadio and the latest version of Sli ng Media’s Slingbox. <strong>Giz modo agrees, with pho tos of the 7 new cell phones from Samsung that keep its new 82-inch TV company plus the scoop on every other gadget debuting in Vegas. For live updates and insider news all week, also check out <st rong>Engadget, and <st rong>Paidcontent.org. If you’re at the show in Vegas, <st rong>Doc Searls points to the uno fficial CES Wiki. Also check out <st rong>PC World.com’s pho to galleries, including the Monkey TV and a nightmarishly large, guitarplaying Hello Kitty.

Political news also kept bloggers busy, as consultant Jack Abramoff pled guilty to conspiracy, tax evasion, and mail fraud charges, and <st rong>Daily Dish links to a lis t of congressmen and causes that Abramoff “contributed” to. The Bus h administration will return money from Abramoff—to the American Heart Association (per <st rong>Blogs for Bush), while <st

rong>Hullabaloo says House speaker Den nis Hastert will also cough up $60,000 in Abramoff cash to a charity. <str ong>Wonkette loves Abra moff’s retro-Capone courthouse look (enjoy her sassy blogging while you can; Won kette is stepping down this month to write a book).� Catch <st rong>Talking Points Memo’s sum mary of key guilty-plea points here.�

Heartbroken families and Americans were reeling this week after mistaken reports that 13 miners reported missing in a West Virginia explosion had survived yet only one was found alive. <st rong>Buzz Machine blames the professional media for rep orting the news ahead of the facts, (includes a lin k to a video of a stunned Anderson Cooper learning on camera that 12 miners had died not survived). <st rong>Daily Dish says it could be ano ther crippling blow to media credibility. Dis turbing and disgraceful, says the Huf fington Post. Other bloggers tried to weave the Abramoff and mine-disaster stories into a way to cut working-class whites away from the GOP.�

Finally, <st rong>Techdirt reports that Business 2.0, Fortune and Money have tor n down their subscription walls, giving free access to archives as well as current content and finally competing with <st rong>Fast Company, <st rong>Forbes and <st rong>Marketwatch.com. The BBC is also freeing its archives, including footage of the fall of the Berlin Wall and crowds ejecting soldiers from Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989 (via <st rong>Smart Mobs). And if you’ve ever seen the grainy Zapruder film of the JFK assassination, you’ll want to check out the alleged “stabilized” film� (via <st rong>Boing Boing), and decide for yourself whether it’s a hoax or the

real deal.

Foxes outperformed hedgehogs in nearly every measure, Prof. Tetlock said. That suggested that those with flexible thinking were better equipped to make forecasts.

Foxes were better, by about three times, at adapting their predictions to world events they hadn't expected. This relates to another failing of hedgehogs: they tended to be more likely to engage in "hindsight bias." In other words, hedgehogs were more likely to err in their own favor when asked to recall past predictions -- and if they couldn't recall their own mistakes, how could they be expected to learn from them?

The media prefers hedgehogs, Prof. Tetlock writes, since "simple, decisive statements are easier to package in sound bites." Perhaps as a result, he found that fame, in both the public and academic spheres, correlated negatively with the accuracy of predictions.

The countdown to 2006 began early as bloggers spent the week making lists, patting backs, and predicting the future. Looking back, <st rong>Signal vs. Noise points to the FList by FlavorPill as one of the best collections of cool and interesting cultural happenings that didn’t get attention elsewhere, including the best blogs. The 200 5 Artypapers Awards has a roundup of the best blogs, people and sites that capture why this year feels so different. <st

rong>Marc’s Voice has a list of some of the best year-end lists including links to the top Web 2.0 software of 2005, the year in tags, and the sex iest geeks of 2005. And BlogPulse scoured an entire year of blog posts, links, and trends to summarize the year in blogging including the top posts, top stories and top images of 2005.

<str ong>Read/Write Web hands out surprising Bes t Web BigCo and Best Web LittleCo awards along with a year of weekly Web 2.0 wrapups; <st rong>Digg points out <st rong>CNET News.com’s 10 Worst Products of 2005; <strong>Fas t Company collects the Top Creative Minds of 2005 including Ashoka’s remarkable Bill Drayton and Malcolm Gladwell’s overexposed hair. Don’t miss the hilarious 2005 Foot in Mouth Awards from <st rong>Wired (thanks to <strong>Boi ng Boing for the find) for bits like Brit Hume interviewing President Bush about his iPod and Microsoft’s Ballmer saying: “I’m going to f***ing kill Google.”

The war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, and the future of the Supreme Court were all big news in 2005 on <strong><strong><st rong>Slate, but the most popular stories were about dogs, beer, celebrities, and naked ladies. Other disclosures: Britney Spears was the most searched term on Yahoo in 2005, but Pam ela Anderson is the most searched person, place or thing in the past 10 years; Mer cedes Benz was the most rapped-about brand of 2005, with Nike becoming cool again in second place, <st rong>Ad Age reports;� Don ald Trump and penis patches were the mos t popular spam ads this year, eclipsing porn for the first time in history; and <st

rong>Motley Fool has 3 stocks that blew the market away this year.

In politics, left-ish Bob Burnett rounded up the top news stories of the year at <st rong>Huffington Post (Bush’s and Republicans’ woes, the Iraq war, natural disasters) while <st rong>Hit and Run captions the libertarian Reason Foundation’s Top 10 Headlines from 2005 to Remember (medical pot, Katrina’s cost, the pension crisis) and <st rong>Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift showcased the year’s top political lies ranging from “we do not torture” to “the insurgency is in its last throes.”

What’s ahead for 2006? Trendwatchers foretell arg yle sweaters and Superman will be hot again plus the iPod will remain the must-have gadget. Ray Ozzie’s lea ked memo lays out what’s next for Microsoft. <st rong>Scobleizer writes about the prediction business going hot and heavy while <st rong>Scripting News forsees Sco ble on Oprah. It will be the yea r of the personal video thanks to the video iPod says <st rong>Om Malik and look for a new video blog or vlog soon from <strong>New Media Musings. <st rong>A VC starts with the del.icio.us predictions tag and then wor ks up his own list here.

Is the U.S. government secr etly and illegally spying on Americans? The president’s admission and then defense of NSA wiretaps ignited a firestorm among bloggers. <st rong>Blogs for Bush calls it leg al and effective, but current and former spooks tell <st rong>Eschaton "You should not ever ... tur n this massive apparatus on an American citizen." <st rong>Instapundit and <st rong>Worldwide Standard say: Bill Did It First
href="http://www.elabs3.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=gww,lg2y,39mg,fjfx,26tp,kpqm,g1qy" rel="nofollow">her e and her e, respectively.

Did Bush bypass warrants because the NSA's using som e previously unknown spying technique? <st rong>Talking Points Memo has some ideas. In the meantime, the Sen ate asks for a spying probe reports <st rong>Washingtonpost.com The FBI is even mon itoring PETA says the ACLU. For more background, <st rong>Pajamas Media has regular summaries ongoing blog coverage and you'll find a rou ndup of newspaper op-eds here. Interesting to note: Even<strong> Fox News says mos t Americans put Bush on Santa’s naughty list this year.

Other news that got bloggers going: NYC transit workers are striking so New Yorkers are walking--and <strong>Buz zMachine isn 't happy. <st rong>BoingBoing has links to pho tos of the snarls. <st rong>Scripting News has some chilling thoughts about whether a ter rorist attack on NYC subways would turn New York into a New Orleans and <st rong>Techdirt has a case for why it's time to aut omate the subways. The cost of the strike? $40 0 million a day for this temper tantrum <st rong>Michelle Malkin reports.

In tech news, Google will buy 5% of Time Warner stepchild AOL. <st rong>John Battelle’s Searchblog thinks this let s Google "go public" again and AOL's stock will jump from buyers wanting to tap Google's revenue stream cheaply. <st rong>PaidContent worries Google searches may bring up Mad onna videos and other distractions and just wait until Goo gle adds logos and graphics to search pages says
href="http://www.elabs3.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=gww,lg2y,39mg,lfka,hwhu,kpqm,g1qy" rel="nofollow"><st rong>CNET News.com. Catch tru ly exhaustive analysis of the deal here.

Other popular items this week: Google music debuted (type music: and your search term) and <st rong>Om Malik is hooked. <str ong>Time named Bil l and Melinda Gates and Bono Persons of the Year. New services let you sen d email to yourself or others years in the future. <st rong>Digg has these 8 cool Firefox extensions you’ve never heard of. Microsoft may be rea dying an iPod challenger according to the <st rong>Consumer Electronics Stock Blog. And Google Zeitgeist reveals a dist urbing list of the most searched items of 2005.

Christmas carols aren't the only music in the air this week. MTV and Microsoft teamed up to announce Urge, an online music service to rival Apple’s iTunes. It's about time, says <st rong>CNET News.com—the y've only been talking about this since 2003. Look for this battle to get messy: Urg e will work with Windows Media Player but not on iPods.�

Still, the MTV-Microsoft deal may take a back seat to TagWorld, a startup targeting the MySpace crowd with Ajax tools, a gig of music storage, top bands on board, and digital rights options for controlling distribution. <strong>Tec hCrunch thinks TagW orld could take MySpace down but check out this <st rong>Businessweek story on the MyS pace Generation before you bite. If MySpace really has 10% of all inventory on the Web, Rupert Murdoch got a deal when he bought the company for $600 million says <st rong>John Batelle’s Searchblog.

In Web 2.0 news, <st rong>Google Blog takes the wraps off too ls for creating custom Google widgets.
href="http://www.elabs3.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=gww,lb7q,39mg,jboe,dush,kpqm,g1qy" rel="nofollow"><st rong>TechCrunch got the lowdown on who ’s using Meebo (250,000 logins per day!) and how, while <st rong>Ajaxian wonders is instant messaging in a browser really useful? <st rong>Scobleizer says check out the des ktop widgets on Goowy. And 37 Signals has a list of the Bes t Web 2.0 Software of 2005 on <st rong>Signal vs. Noise.

The Wikipedia saga continues. <st rong>business2blog interviews Jimmy Wales about fak ester Brian Chase, the facts, and the New Pages Patrol. Will there be a classaction lawsuit against Wikipedia? <st rong>O'Reilly Radar says it could be a hoax. The open source encyclopedia is getting some things right: a study found its science entries as accurate as those in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

It was a sober week for political bloggers. Just before convicted murderer Stanley Tookie Williams was executed at San Quentin, <st rong>Doc Searls weighed in, saying Wil liams was about to die because of a bad book review from Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. <st rong>Michelle Malkin is sic k of the left-wing circus and planned "statesman's funeral" for the Crips founder while <strong>Huf fington Post challenges death penalty naysayers not to be racist and get behind the next guy scheduled to die, a 76-year-old white man.

And on the eve of elections in Iraq, President Bush acc epted responsibility for taking the U.S. to war on faulty intelligence, but defended the decision saying it had produced "a watershed moment in the story of freedom." Bloggers also rallied to provide rou nd-the-clock coverage of the Iraqi elections while the London Independent has sta ts on 1,000 days of war via <strong>
href="http://www.elabs3.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=gww,lb7q,39mg,7kd1,dckc,kpqm,g1qy" rel="nofollow">Dai ly Kos.

1. The dangers posed by SCO and other patent claims faded, with each story gaining less-and-less play.
2. ABM (Anybody But Microsoft) coalesced around open source. Unix virtually became Linux.
3. Microsoft tried to crash the open source party.
4. Real, successful open source start-ups emerged.
5. Open source found success in the Windows world.
6. The SMB (small-medium business) market opened up to open source.

Pryor battled alcoholism, drug addiction, and, since 1986, multiple sclerosis. Until MS stopped him, he performed onstage, in more than 30 movies, and on TV. He won five Grammys, one Emmy, and, by all accounts, changed comedy forever. But it was still extraordinary to witness the Search spikes this weekend. The in-your-face star rose a whopping 24,822%, and interest in everything from his jokes and his quotes to multiple sclerosis and its symptoms soared upward.

As further proof of Pryor's influence, a cadre

of comedy's finest also spiked after his death. Eddie Murphy (+895%) and Robin Williams (+871%) both sprang into our top 10. Sarah Silverman, the newest member of the can-they-really-say-that clan, rose 198%, and Gene Wilder (+82%) and George Carlin (+59%) weren't far behind. Even the decidedly clean-mouthed Bill Cosby, who influenced a young Pryor, rose 224%. We can only assume that Pryor, who once proclaimed "I ain't dead yet mother*#@#er," is up there now, hanging with Lenny Bruce, cracking up the archangels, and giving the finger to The Man.

Q&A: The Kyoto Protocol

ANALYSIS AND BACKGROUND

<strong> Animated guide
Find out how the greenhouse effect works
Climate talks - hoops and hot air

Entering uncharted waters?

Warming: The evidence

TECH FEATURE

<strong> Black to green
How coal is cleaning up its act and moving back on to the agenda
Clean coal tech: How it works

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UN Convention of Climate Change

Kyoto Protocol

WWF

US environmental protection agency

FROM OTHER NEWS SITES:

Telegraph <span>US out in the cold at world climate talks - 24 hrs ago

Xinhua News Agency <span>Clinton says Kyoto Protocol not to harm economies - 25 hrs ago

USA Today <span>Clinton criticizes Bush on Kyoto - 26 hrs ago

Wired News <span>Bush 'Flat Wrong' on Kyoto - 28 hrs ago

MSNBC <span>U.S. on defensive at climate conference - 07 Dec 2005

After two scandals in a week, Wikipedia now bars anonymous posts to the anyone-cancontribute encyclopedia reports <st rong>Cnet News.com. Founder Jimmy Wales is also likely saf e from libel charges. <st rong>BuzzMachine sees an opportunity for universities and media companies to bui ld a commercial Wikipedia on top of the open one (the Red Hat model notes <st rong>A VC). Since Wikipedia was outed, New York Times staffers are prohibited from using it to fact check says <st rong>Jossip. Judith Miller, however, is still an A-OK source.

Product news this week: The Flickr of video sharing is here and <st rong>TechCrunch, gives version 2 of Grouper a big thumbs up. CNe t acquired Consumating, a dating service built around tagging people. Squ idoo, the human powered search engine went live (check out the top 100 lenses). And <str ong>Boing Boing loves the new Gawker site, <st rong>The Consumerist (its motto: where shoppers bite back), a new blog that exp oses retail scammers, poorly engineered products, and lousy customer service.

This should get interesting.

Is AOL for sale or not? <st rong>Techdirt translates: When Time Warner’s Dick Parsons said there's no interest in selling AOL, he really means Mic rosoft, Google and others aren’t offering enough yet.

Apple has better news: itâ €™s sold over 3 million videos since October 12, with plenty of new content on the way: Law and Order, Battlestar Galactica and Dragnet for starters. Maybe that’s why <em>podcast beat out <em>bird flu as word of the year (via <st rong>Macworld UK).

In politics, all egations of secret American jails in Europe dog Condoleezza Rice's footsteps in Europe and also dominated posts on blogs this week. Ric e denies the U.S. uses cruel or degrading interrogation practices. But if even the Brits are suspicious, <st rong>Daily Dish wonders wha t's the rest of Europe thinking? <strong>Ins tapundit finds a bright spot: The U.S. remains hugely popular in the former Warsaw Pact.

If Bill O'Reilly is bugged that Christmas is more commerce than religion, why 's there an O'Reilly Christmas Store? <st rong>Daily Kos wants to know. O'Reilly should be ticked at President Bush's seasonal card too: It wishes everyone a wat ered-down, politically correct, happy holiday season. Earlier the TV host pro mised to bring “horror into the world of people" who oppose Christmas. <st rong>Eschaton says it’s proof Bill O’Reilly is still bonkers.

We didn't learn much at comedy traffic school.

However, one thing became obvious after the first 15 minutes -- not everyone who goes into comedy is actually, well, funny. Indeed, good comics may be rare, but at least they're easy to recognize. Dane Cook, Dave Chappelle, and Larry David are three very different stand-up stars who share at least one thing in common -- they've all garnered a healthy following in Search.

Dane Cook may not yet be a household name like, say, Carrot Top, but if his success in Search is any indication, he's tantalizingly close. Interest in Cook rose 306% following his recent gig as host of <em>Saturday Night Live. He may be heating up due to his recent stint but Cook's been simmering in the Buzz for awhile now on the strength of his official site, which is full of clips, articles, news, and is generally way ahead of its time.

Dave Chappelle (+11%) is also on the move since Comedy Central decided to air some of his never-before-seen sketches. <em>Chappelle's Show, the hugely successful if shortlived program, was mysteriously put on hiatus earlier this year after Dave announced he was unhappy with its "creative direction." Now long-suffering fans who've kept their Chappelle DVDs in heavy rotation have some new material to look forward to. Life is, at last, worth living.

The 28th awards ceremony convened Sunday night to honor a Sundance kid (Robert Redford), a leggy dynamo of soul (Tina Turner), a smooth crooner (Tony Bennett), a legend of the stage (Julie Harris), and a prima ballerina (Suzanne Farrell). The honorees lined up on stage and, one by one, saw their colleagues and friends stand to salute them. Among those lavishing the award recipients with praise, Paul Newman (+48%), Queen Latifah (+6%), and Kevin Spacey (+8%) also garnered a little buzz of their own.

All of the artists, save one, enjoyed their own bursts of Search approval. The two actors led the way, with Redford bowing out at 327% and Harris soaring from a flat line to an off-the-chart rise. The singers followed with their own tunes; Turner belted out a 152% leap and Bennett crooned along to a 74% increase. Only the dancer, Suzanne Farrell, was left without any online applause. But CBS will broadcast the ceremony on December 27, so the "long-limbed elegant wildness" of Ms. Farrell may dance yet across the Buzz.

<strong>
href="http://www.micropersuasion.com/2005/12/web_10_vs_web_2.html" rel="nofollow"><strong>From MicroPersuasion ::

Two new Web 2.0 RSS readers recently crossed my radar. One, pictured above, is called Protopage. This is a free start page that you can customize with RSS news feeds, sticky notes and bookmarks. It's akin to Goowy, except that it's quicker since it does not require Flash. Another is etamp.net.

Both these sites demonstrate there's a lot of room for innovation in the RSS aggregation space. What they have in common is that they are built with Ajax (defined). This technology enables rapid reading because you can skim feeds without having to reload pages or frames (a Web 1.0 model).

Lately I feel like Newsgator and Bloglines - while innovative last year - are starting to fall way behind readers that are based on Ajax. Some of these - like Windows Live and Google Reader - are from the big boys. However, Ajax seems to be leveling the playing field, leaving room for sites like Netvibes to become popular. Thanks to the wonders of OPML, I have pretty much abandoned all Web 1.0 feed readers for Web 2.0 aggregators since they streamline my RSS reading. This is essential once you have hundreds of feeds.How about you?

Technorati Tags: AJAX, Bloglines, Newsgator, Netvibes

Call it the XBo x 360 frenzy. Game addicts across the country this week bra ved the chill for the thrill and camped in line overnight for Microsoft’s new 360 gaming console <st rong>Cnet reports. EBay bids reached $5,000. Parents panicked. <st rong>Engadget has the complete scoop on the setup, the services and the games...and yes, the

crashes.

But wait: <st rong>digg has a list of 10 reasons to wait for the Sony PlayStation 3 instead. Want one anyway? <st rong>Geeky Corner� found the XBo x Locator, a Google Maps mashup that shows how many units are at Best Buy in your area.

Speaking of taking over the world, what is Google’s secret plan for all the excess dark fiber it’s buying? <st rong>I, Cringely says the answer is in a shipping container hidden in the search giant’s parking garage that is the beginning of Google Internet: a faster, safer, duplicate Internet. Other Google news this week: Goo gle Base is already a porn haven; <st rong>Gawker wonders if Google has jum ped the shark; and <st rong>digg found this item on how to make $100,000 a year from AdSense.

In blog news, Del.icio.us got a makover and <st rong>TechCrunch liked the brief new look before it returned to its old design. Want to search Del.icio.us, Digg and Slashdot all at once? Go here.

No one will roa st the turkey that President Bush pardoned, but the bird had it easy compared with Al-Jazeera. Political bloggers like <st rong>Daily Kos and others were buzzing about reports that the president considered bombing the Qatar-based news network for helping fuel the Iraq insurgency, but Tony Blair talked him out of it. <st rong>Hit and Run says a Brit’s being prosecuted for leaking a memo about this conversation, while <st rong>BBC News reports the Whi te House denies everything. <str ong>Wonkette just says
href="http://www.elabs3.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=gww,kps6,39mg,cl7o,m6s6,kpqm,g1qy" rel="nofollow">AlJazeera go boom.

Finally, <st rong>digg found the holiday gift that keeps getting bigger: instructions for dow nloading all of Wikipedia in XML format. Yes, the whole thing. Once you've got it, check out these top 10 Wikipedia hacks.

That's it for this week's highlights...Happy Thanksgiving!

Shoppers sta mpeded to stores on Black Friday but slo wed their buying over the rest of the weekend reports <st rong>MSNBC.com. Onli ne holiday sales should ring up $20 billion this year while <st rong>business2blog says Wal mart.com passed Amazon.com in total visitors on Thanksgiving Day.

But is there such a thing as Cyber Monday, where online shoppers return to their high-speed connections at work and start buying? A myth, says <st rong>Fast Company.�

New product announcements this week: <st rong>Gizmodo has pic tures of the new TiVo that show off partnerships with Yahoo, Fandango and Live365; <st rong>CNET News.com rev iews Firefox 1.5 which adds faster browsing, easier updates and better pop-up blocking. Look for more feedback from bloggers as 100+ million copies of 1.0 are upgraded. Or you could just spiff up version 1.0 with these top 15 Firefox extensions. Yahoo announced it’s adding RSS

to the Yahoo Mail beta and Alerts. <st rong>TechCrunch gives it a rave. And xBox 360 tries to head off run away crash and burn reports says <st rong>eWeek.

Podcasters beware. <st rong>Om Malik says your podcast can be hijacked; basically, the bad guys find a way to ste al your podcast's links and hits.

Engineers really do run the world—at least at Google. <st rong>Slashdot found this item on the Goo gle caste system. Even doc tors are turning to Google for diagnosing patients reports <st rong>Business2blog. Border guards have gotten into the act: They denied Hoder (a.k.a. Hossein Derakshan) entry to the U.S. after Googling him. Also this week, Goo gle’s stock was downgraded when it hit $400.

<st rong>Digg fans squirmed over this video on how not to get a job at Google and also found this useful beg inner's guide to Ajax. If it makes you want to start a Web 2.0 business, <st rong>Signal vs. Noise has <st rong>Gawker founder Nic k Denton's Startup Kit for running his company which includes Trillian, Basecamp and FogBugz.

Finally, don’t miss the collection of <st rong>Cool Google Maps, a blog that collects mas h-ups of maps and apps including HotOrNot photos by zip code, live cams all over NYC, and a way to chart where you'd come out if you tunneled through the center of the earth.

But then, as they say, there's no such thing as bad publicity. In that case, <em>Memoirs of a Geisha, the new film directed by Rob Marshall (of <em>Chicago fame), which stars Ziyi Zhang, Michelle Yeoh, and Gong Li, will be a smashing international hit. From our seat overlooking the Search box, we're already impressed by the buzz. Searches on the film and its lead actresses have soared. Queries for "geisha" and "japanese geisha" have shot off the chart, and "sayuri," the main character and the film's title in its Japanese release, rose dramatically in advance of the movie's Japanese premiere.

Perhaps the Tinseltown treatment of high costs, lavish costumes, and beautiful women will charm audiences in Tokyo and Shanghai as well as Detroit. In the meantime watch for more buzz, more blog posts, and, this being an American venture after all, an extensive line of tie-in face-wash, green tea, and handbags.

For reasons we dare not explain, we took four of our favorite words ending in "est," then looked up which terms are most commonly associated with each. Our four finalists were: "ugliest dog," "fastest car," "fattest city," "smelliest feet." The place of honor goes to the dogs due to the recent passing of Sam, the world's ugliest pooch, while stinky feet bring up the rear, thankfully downwind.

Here are the "popularest" terms in each category. Click and learn...

It was a bum py start for Google’s supposed e-Bay killer, Google Base. The much-touted, late-to-market database this review from <st rong>TechCrunch: Yuc k. It goes on to compare it to a 1985 dBASE file that has less to offer than Craigslist. And it's ugly too. The word from <st rong>SearchEngineWatch is that it’s old -school tagging--maybe someday it will replace classifieds and Monster, but not yet. <st rong>Scripting News is also luk ewarm. If all the words about Google Base were being written on paper, entire forests would be flattened by now says <strong>Pai dContent.org which col lected reactions both good and bad.�

Google Analytics got more upbeat reviews. <st rong>TechCrunch likes the tools that lets Web site owners track how well keywords and ads are working. <st rong>Ars Technica hig hlights bells and whistles like Flash-rendered graphs, 80 types of reports and spiffy geographical overlays. And of course, there’s already a hack: <st rong>gHacks shows how to keep Google Analytics from tracking your searches her e. <span style="font-weight:bold; ">

href="http://www.elabs3.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=gww,klku,39mg,8653,55y5,kpqm,g1qy" rel="nofollow"><st rong>Digg uncovered this essential read from <st rong>Forbes about the search giant’s pla ns to take over the world—one small project at a time. Eve n Wal-Mart is afraid of Google. And so is Microsoft which is reportedly considering making desktop apps free. <st rong>CNET.com quotes three Microsoft insiders who say Redmond is seriously investigating adsupported versions of Works, Money and Windows.�

The dot com days have turned into the blogosphere days. <strong>Yah oo! News: Technology reports that 70 Web journalists, including <st rong>Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds, have signed up for Open Source Media, an ad-supported service that will com bine blogs with newsroom reporting. Bloggers will be paid by traffic generated. <st rong>PaidContent.org also reports Yah oo will begin serving up content from several popular blogs on its home page, including the super-snarky (and highly entertaining) <st rong>Gawker.

Other popular links on Rojo this week: a mashup that maps the homes of celebrities (<st rong>Google Blogscoped suggests calling it <em>Stalker Directions); NAS A photos of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11 taken from the International Space Station, 220 miles up; and in virtual space, <st rong>A+E Interactive says Miami filmmaker John Jacobs paid $100 ,000 to buy a space station� in cyberspace within Project Entropia. Why? So people within the game will visit the virtual nightclub inside.

• Small Business Trends Anita Campbell looks at the latest trends affecting small businesses and entrepreneurs. A must-read for entrepreneurs.
• Just for Small Business Full of thought-provoking tips for small business owners from Denise O'Berry, I like this blog because the topics are often unexpected - not your usual small business fare.
• WorkHappy.net - Carson McComas lives up to this blog's subtitle of "killer resources for entrepreneurs" by providing links and reviews of "killer" applications and other resources to help entrepreneurs work smarter, not harder.
• Duct Tape Marketing - John Jantsch delivers 2-3 small business marketing tips weekly in easily digestible, actionable bite-size chunks.
• Home Office Voice - Internet entrepreneur Martin Neumann shares his experience and tips for building a webbased business. His writing style is very informal and entertaining, but at the same time he provides some really solid advice.
• Sacred Cow Dung - There are a number of really good blogs out there by venture capitalists about the VC market, entrepreneurship, and so on, but Christian Mayaud's blog is for me the one that most consistently provides content that is actionable, not just informative.
• The Entrepreneurial Mind Jeff Cornwall, Director of the Belmont University Center for Entrepreneurship, looks at trends in small business and entrepreneurship and their impact on individual business owners.
• Escape Velocity - Flemming Funch chronicles the ups and downs of life as an Internet entrepreneur.
• BizzBangBuzz - Pittsburgh attorney Anthony Cerminaro delivers excellent commentary and some original posts on the challenges facing emerging growth companies, with particular emphasis on legal issues.
• Business Opportunities Weblog - Dane Carlson mixes links and commentary on legitimate business opportunities with his thoughts and personal experiences regarding entrepreneurship.

A list like this inevitably sparks some controversy, so before I get hit with a flurry of e-mails or a rant on Fark or Slashdot about what an idiot I am for overlooking a particular blog, let me explaing a little about my methodology. It might be easier to explain what is <em>not in this list and why. Consider this my Honorable Mentions:

• <strong>Blogs by famous entrepreneurs - Entertaining and informative though they are, they tend to be mostly about that entrepreneur's business and whatever other topics they find interesting. I stuck to blogs that are more generally relevant and practical for entrepreneurs. I'll probably do a separate list of these, though at some point. Some of my favorites in this category are Mark Cuban, Anita Roddick and Seth Godin.
• <strong>VC blogs - Blogging has become very popular among venture
  
  capitalists, and many are worth reading, particularly if you are (or are planning to become) a venture-funded entrepreneur. But the VC blogs also tend to look more at the VC side of things and also tend to include a lot of personal musings about other topics. A good read, but perhaps not for the time-constrained entrepreneur not interested in venture capital. I'll also probably do a separate list of these, but for now, some of my favorites are Torsten Jacobi, A VC Blogs, VentureBlog, Southeast VC and VCball.
• <strong>Aggregator blogs - The blogs on the list all feature a substantial amount of original content by the author and commentary on links to other sites and stories. If you just want a list of good articles for entrepreneurs, I highly recommend Small Business Brief and Business Know-How.
• <strong>MIA - There are some great blogs that have languished into inactivity for whatever reason. I only included blogs that have been very consistent in their posting, but I highly recommend reading the archives of Entrepreneur's Life and re:invention. I'd love to see these people posting again.
• <strong>Too new to tell - A lot of bloggers seem to lose interest after a few months, so I've stuck with blogs that have been established and consistently posting for six months or more. Some of my favorite new blogs to watch include Young Entrepreneur Journey, Home-Based Business Blog and Venture Voice.
• <strong>Blogs about business blogging - There are easily ten great blogs out there about how to earn money with a blog or how to use a blog to support your business. Some of the best are ProBlogger, Blog Business World, Business Blog Consulting and Buzz Marketing with Blogs.
• <strong>Niche topics - I stuck mostly to blogs that are generally applicable to most entrepreneurs, not specific types of business. If you're into these topics, check out eBay Seller Central, Candle Making Blog and Home Party Plan Blog.
• <strong>Number 11+ - There are more than ten blogs that meet these criteria, but 10 is that digestible magic number (and also the limit on the size of my blogroll in our content management tool), so 10 it is. I do have a larger list that includes some great blogs that just didn't quite squeeze into the top 10, but may in the future.
• <strong>About.com blogs - It just wouldn't look right to include the other About.com guides on this list, though I certainly think many of them deserve to be there. Consider adding Small Business Information, Small Business: Canada, Online Business, Consulting/Freelance and Marketing to your list. Also check out our business channel for blogs on specific industries and general business topics. And if you want to learn more about blogs, including how to read them more easily and how to create them, check out our
  href="http://weblogs.about.com/" rel="nofollow">Weblogs topic.

<strong>Round Two: Countries
Clue #1: This Muslim country of an estimated 8.5 million people lies on the horn of Africa.
Clue #2: According to the CIA World Factbook, this country has no permanent national government.
Clue #3: A recent attack on a cruise ship off the coast of this country dug "pirate attack" (+124%) searches from out of the Buzz treasure chest.
Answer: Click here.

<strong>Round Three: Islands
Clue #1: This small island of 64 square miles is distantly located between Tahiti and Chile.
Clue #2: Some of the island's well known attractions include ahu and moai as well as a cave called Ana Kai Tangata, meaning "cave

where men are eaten."
Clue #3: Searches for this island shot up 2,299% after the <em>Today Show's Matt Lauer paid a surprise visit.
Answer: Click here.

Bill Gates turned 50 this week, then he and Ray Ozzie dro pped 2 memos to Microsoft employees about the company's rad ical reshaping saying Microsoft needs to adapt to a new wave of money-making on the Internet. Within hours Dave Winer's <st rong>Scripting News had the full text of the memos posted her e. <strong>CNE T News.com reported Gates told the staff to bra ce for a services wave and warned the company had to change with the times to sta ve off competition from leaner, hungrier companies. The memos pointed to missed opportunities like Skype, Salesforce.com and you-know-Whoogle. <st rong>Scobelizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger had the insider's perspective and was sti ll reeling from their significance. Scoble also digests some of the bes t post-memo analysis.

So how do the rest of us com e to grips with the fear of Google? <strong>AdA ge reports that not since the Microsoft of the mid-'90s have we had so much angst over the ambitions of an evil empire. At the same time, mor e details emerged about GoogleBase and Google Automat on <st rong>Buzzmachine and <st rong>CNET News.com fueling talk of company's pla ns to conquer the Web by becoming a one-stop info shop. The other Google rumor of the week came from <strong>
href="http://www.elabs3.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=gww,kbiq,39mg,jboe,dush,kpqm,g1qy" rel="nofollow">Tec hcrunch: A new Google game called free lunch.

In politics, Americans voted. Why do we bother? <str ong>The Freaknomics Blog explains. In the fallout of this week's poll results, <st rong>Daily Kos calls Bush rad ioactive. <st rong>Salon reports on California Governor Arno ld Schwarzenegger's big flame-out killing onservatives' dreams of a hip GOP hero but says the irony is that California needs some of the Terminator's reforms. Thi s was a Democratic rout any way you look at it says <st rong>WSJ.com: Opinion and could happen again if the GOP learns the wrong lessons. A bad week for Republicans or a bad year? Evan Coyne Maloney has thoughts on <st rong>Instapundit. And <st rong>Hit and Run cheers that Jud ith Miller is leaving the New York Times.

While Par is burns, the <strong>NY Times Opinion rages about the flailing response of President Jacques Chirac and his ministers illustrate the deeper problems that underlie the unrest. <st rong>The Washington Post reports the cal l to arms has been circulating on French blogs and text messages for days: "All the housing projects should rise. The wait is over. Friday, Nov. 11, a meeting under the Eiffel Tower." <st rong>Boing Boing col lected these links to stories about the detention of 2 bloggers, plus reports of Google ads that direct surfers to a petition supporter hard-liners.

Finally, on this week's gri m news about the newspaper business, Chris Anderson's <st rong>The Long Tail runs the numbers and declares a mai nstream media meltdown.The bright spots: Banner ad revenues were up 10 percent

this year and Google's revenue was up 96 percent.

Microsoft finally cau ght the Web 2.0 bug and announced Windows Live and Office Live this week. <strong>Tec hCrunch had raw notes from Microsoft’s big announcement and an indepth report with screenshots. Says TechCrunch’s Michael Amington: “After what I saw today, I despair for many a silicon valley startup. Seriously.” <st rong>Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley thinks a lot of the "new" stuff is ret reads or not even out of beta. Still, she talks about what Off ice Live and Windows Live are and aren't. <st rong>CNET News.com saw Goo gle peeps hovering over Microsoft's presentation, particularly whe n Redmond's guy couldn't get his Windows Live demo to work. <st rong>Beta News has the lowdown on whe ther this means the end for MSN.

Google’s hiring like it’s 1999. The company has tri pled its head count to about 5,000 since two years ago, <strong>CNE T News.com reports. It still has a thousand open positions, and will thr ow some of those bodies at Openoffice.org, says <st rong>OSNews. Meanwhile the <st rong>Official Google Blog reports Google is resu ming scans of libraries' in-copyright works for Google Print; <strong>Sla shdot makes sense of it here . Google rumor of the week: <st rong>Slashdot also reports the search giant may be preparing to

launch its own branded digital television DVR/satellite service. Coming soon: Google TV.

Other popular items this week: Net Flix is now selling DVDs; online paid content nears $1 billion for the first half of 2005 (a new record) according to a story from <st rong>Red Herring; and Apple has already sold over 1 million videos through iTunes since the release of the Video iPod 3 weeks ago.

Political bloggers went to work on news of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito. <st rong>National Review Online applauds Ali to's lengthy record and examines a 3rd Circuit abortion opinion, arguing that he'll fol low precedents more faithfully than outgoing Justice O'Connor. <st rong>Slate took the opp osite tack: He's ant i-abortion but he's no Miers-style lightweight. Good thing he' s Catholic. <st rong>Daily Dish finds a liberal ex-clerk who likes Alito, while <st rong>Drudge Report links to Was hington Times and Was hington Post stories that use words like "Arm ageddon." <st rong>New Republic Weblogs says Ali to predicted his nomination while <st rong>Daily Kos has the Right moa ning over comparisons of Alito to Scalia.

Finally, <st rong>digg links to the Hac

kers' Diet: How to Lose Weight Through Stress and Poor Nutrition, an engineer's approach to dieting. Check out the chapter on Taco Bell.

Is Google tak ing aim at eBay? That’s the word from the <st rong>Wall Street Journal and <st rong>Red Herring as Google Base, the search giant’s foray into online classifieds, was bri efly spotted live. Google blocked access to the page shortly after it was discovered, although <st rong>Boing Boing reported this ite m on <st rong>John Batelle’s Searchblog which includes lin ks to screen shots. <st rong>Chris Pirillo has dir e predictions about Google controlling the Internet—and he's a stockholder. The <st rong>Google Blog says this is, ahe m, what’s really going on. Watch for ong oing revelations from Google’s super-secret Zeitgeist conference on <st rong>Google Blogscopped.

Google Web Accelerator is back … or is it? GWA appears and vanishes for <st rong>Om Malik, who wor ries about Google caching cookies. <st rong>Signal vs. Noise is ala rmed about e-mail privacy with GWA, then explains why it's evil. At the same time, scammers around the world are rip ping off Google AdSense, <st

rong>Joel on Software explains. And <st rong>Ad Age reports that sear ch keyword prices increased an average of 19 percent from September 2004 to September 2005.

Web 2.0 or Bubble 2.0? <str ong>Read/Write Web gets thoughtful about whe ther Web 2.0 can move mainstream and figures it's still not ready for prime time. <st rong>Signal vs. Noise calls it Babb le 2.0 and links to a Bubble 2.0 blog complete with Aeron chair. And for more signs of bubble vs babble: Fin d out how much your blog is worth with this widget oncovered by <str ong>Boing Boing.

In politics, <str ong>Daily Kos has Plamegate posts on wha t the vice president knew and whe n. <st rong>Salon.com speculates on whether Judith Miller wants a Times severance package and keeps a clo se watch on possible Fitzgerald indictments.

The White House gets good press by nominating Ben Bernanke to replace Alan Greenspan as Fed chairman. <st rong>Forbes speculates on whether it will lead to a Ber nanke Bounce for the market. Even the <st rong>New York Times Opinion page is onb oard with Bernanke—but that doesn't stop <st rong>Wonkette from bei ng catty.

And finally, you'd think the White House would be a little busy right now, yet it still found time to send�<st rong>The Onion a cease-and-desist for using the presidential seal; <strong>dig g has the

scoop. Onion radio news "re corded" the president’s reaction.

Oprah's book club selections always have readers rushing to the bookshelves and their computers. Her latest choice is no exception. Turning away from the classics, Oprah is now highlighting works by contemporary, living writers. Her first choice on this path, James Frey's (+33%) memoir <em>A Million Little Pieces, has shot up the Buzz charts 157% since September.

Personally, we're still frolicking in Oprah's Summer of Faulkner, but we can't wait to read Frey's book -- a gripping memoir about his drug and alcohol addiction and subsequent recovery. In it, Frey recounts how his brother gave him a copy of Lao-Tzu's <em>Tao Te Ching when he entered a 12step recovery program. Frey drew inspiration from the classic Chinese text during the program. Both his memoir and Oprah's b ook club site are peppered with quotes from the sage piece.

With searches on Tao up more than 2,000% over the last month, Frey is not the only one who looks to the great book for guidance. In homage to “the Way,” let us now ponder the top 12 Tao searches...

First there was spam, now there are splogs. Mark Cuban tells Google to “get its Blogspot sh*t together” about spam blogs as reported by <st rong>digg. Cuban says Google didn't do enough against a splogbomb so bad it created thousands of spurious blogs and potentially millions of phony posts. Cuban's own <str ong>Blog Maverick has more.

Is Google helping terrorists? This story in <strong>Wir ed News quotes Indian president A.P.J. Kalam as worrying that Google Earth gives troublemakers too much info on sensitive installations. <strong>
href="http://www.elabs3.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=gww,jh3o,35bp,8j9y,ithn,i3wy,e70u" rel="nofollow">Sla shdot has� a CNN story on the Indian president's speech her e.

<strong>Sla shdot also reported on Google's new privacy policy which let’s the company "use personal information to display customized content and advertising" but it remains silent on how long information is kept and doe sn’t address concerns about possible abuse. And then there was this sign that Goo glemania may have finally reached its apex: Google fans in Sweden named their baby boy Oliver Google Kai.

Fir efox hit 100 million downloads this week while <st rong>Lifehacker offered these tip s for becoming a Firefox power user.

Does Web 2.0 even exist? <strong>Mar keting Technology suspects no, linking to Rick Segal's contention that Web 2.0 is a lot of hot air. Tell that to <strong>dig g fans who got a lot of mileage out of this list of the Top 10 Ajax apps. <str ong>Read/Write Web has lists—from Don Dodge at Microsoft and Tim O'Reilly—of Web 2.0 companies that have pas sed and even killed Web 1.0 predecessors. <strong>Sim pleBits offers "Web 2.01 Release Notes" with three simple rules: Provide what's useful rather than trendy, don't rule out the desktop, and don't "mine" data you have no right to.

<strong>Tec hCrunch points to a par ody of Web 2.0 thinking and an even funnier del .icio.us parody.

Finally, <strong>Boi

ng Boing has a list of the 100 oldest .COM domain names and their registration dates. A fascinating look at who was visionary enough to register a domain and when. �

What a couple of weeks for the bookish sort. The equivalent of the readers' playoffs kicked off with every major literary prize stepping up to the plate, and intrigue over the literature Nobel almost made the Angels–Yankees series look ho-hum. (Well, for those with literary leanings...) Here's a rundown on how the book-lovers' fall classic played out in Buzz.

• <strong>The Nobel Prize for Literature -- When infighting held up the panel's decision, bookworms across the country looked up from their lattes, and the prize scored several spikes in Buzz. After on e disgruntled member belatedly quit over last year's winner (Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek), searches on the controversial novelist surged into the thousands.

  The Nobel finally ignored novelists altogether and recognized British playwright Harold Pinter. After seeing Pinter described as a "master of menacing drama," "theater's explorer of menace," and a pervader of "unnamed menace," Buzz started to feel a little...menaced. But our timid Pinter pause ended when the prize was announced and hundreds of thousands of new queries sent Pinter out of the Search park.

• <strong>The Mann Booker Prize -- The prestigious U.K. award also lurched out of the dugout on October 10, though with far less fuss than the Nobel. Irish novelist John Banville snagged the top honor and enjoyed a run in searches. Zadie Smith, who was also nominated, scored a jump in Buzz, but Kazuo Ishiguro -- another favorite -- struck out with zero interest online.
• <strong>The National Book Award -- Not to be outdone, this committee announced its shortlist on October 12, although it only managed to hammer home Buzz for one of its nominees. Joan Didion, the novelist and journalist with an acclaimed new memoir, made the list for nonfiction and sent searches flying. E.L. Doctorow, the other big name at bat, fouled out with nary a blip in Search.

Finally, we'd be remiss if we didn't pay our respects to August Wilson. The beloved American playwright died October 2. Buzz marked his passing with a 155% jump in queries, and increased interest in his biography, his plays, and -- specifically -"Fences," one of his bestknown works. For him, we rise out of our seats in a prolonged standing ovation.

<strong>Sco bleizer is und erwhelmed by Yahoo’s Blog Search but impressed with Yah oo’s new service for finding podcasts and think teens like his son will eat it up.

Hungry? Burger King's new Mea

t'normous Omelet Sandwich, a cardiologic train-wreck of eggs, sausage, bacon AND ham got lots of attention on <st rong>Signal vs. Noise. Before you order one--or anything else--check out this cle ver spot by the ACLU on the dangers of private databases.

The sold-out Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco is creating a buzz reminiscent of the go-go late 1990s. The scent of money is in the air too. <str ong>Kottke reports Dave Winer sold weblogs.com, a key part of the blogging infrastructure, to Web giant Verisign for $2 million. AOL scooped up Weblogs, Inc., a network of more than 80 blogs, for $25 million. <strong>Paid Content.org isn' t missing a minute.

Internet stock queen Mary Meeker (remember her?) was at Web 2.0 and says we're at a "boom-let" stage now (after boom and bust). More speculation about whether Web 2.0 is a bubble or boom here.

Richard MacManus has blowby-blow coverage of the conference at <stro ng>Read/Write Web, including John Battelle's conv ersation with Yahoo CEO Terry Semel. <str ong><strong>TechCrunch has word of all the juicy corporate presentations by companies like Bunchball, Zvents, KnowNow and Orb. Particularly interesting was the Atte ntion Trust open board meeting and talk about the Atten tion Trust Recorder extension (ATX) for Firefox which can track what sites you’ve been to, and how long you’ve stayed.

So what does Web 2.0 mean exactly? <str ong>Om Malik's Broadband Blog tried to
href="http://www.elabs3.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=gww,i93b,2sxe,e2kn,4ee0,kwd0,6v0" rel="nofollow">defi ne it and from a look at the list on <strong>Read/Write Web, so did everyone else.The CEO of Socialtext, Ross Mayfield put it more succintly for <str ong>Wired News: "Web 1.0 was commerce. Web 2.0 is people."

More Web 2.0 apps: The supe r-stealth 24 Hour Laundry project from Marc Andreessen (think Netscape) has finally launched Ning, a do-it-yourself toolkit for creating social-software applications. The idea here is that anyone can create soci al software apps like Flickr, Craigslist, and even Zagat-type guides. <strong>TechCrunch gave it a brea thless writeup. Meanwhile, 37 Signals released Whiteboard, a write-revise tool for online editing that broadcasts changes as an RSS feed.

Even Web 2.0 couldn't drown out Google mania this week as the rumors and announcements continued to pour in: Google and Apple may part ner on music, Google Calendar could be very close to launch, free Google WiFi could soon cove r San Francisco…�but there's a catc h, and Google and Sun teamed up to repl ace MS Office and Windows. This last item turned out to be a whole lot of nothing, and not the Goog le Ajax Office suite many were hoping for. Another Google disappointment: Google Earth shows Taiw an as part of mainland China. Oops.�

Finally, count on <str ong>MetaFilter for this week’s important cultural contribution to the blogosphere: a link to Sesa me Street’s theme song—in Klingon.�

Google turned 7 this week and then got bloggers buzzing: Word leaked that the search giant is setting up sup er-secret invitation-only meetings with 400 elite attendees at Google Zeitgeist 05 on Oct. 25-27. Che ck here often: With so many bloggers and media types also invited, the details won't be secret for long.

What are the most influential feeds and blogs on the Web? <strong>Tec hCrunch has the list courtesy of PubSub, whose LinkRanks 1000 is "a list of the most consistently influential sites that publish feeds, based on their average LinkRank scores over the past 30 days," culled from over 16 million sources. Definitely some surprises.

It’s official: Windows is broken and Microsoft admitted it. In this popular link on <strong>dig g, the software giant tries to explain its ongo ing problems with Longhorn, the next version of Windows. Turns out that all that code doesn't work past a certain level of complexity—which also explains last week's hasty Microsoft reorg.

The iPod backlash has begun. After two weeks of rave reviews by bloggers about Apple's newest music player, <strong>scob elizer is now col lating the complaints. The case scratches; the color sucks; the LCD breaks; and so on. <st rong>Gizmodo reports that App le is offering to replace cracked LCDs but is otherwise downplaying the problem. Don't want to buy into the iPod hype? <strong>Wir ed News tells you how to mak e an ipod for anarchists.

The bright spot this week was Web ad revenues. <st rong>John Battelle's Searchblog cites a report showing online ad revenues to be way yyy up in the first half of 2005. Advertisers racked up $5.8 billion in online spending, the majority on search and display advertising, a 26 percent increase over the same period in 2004.

And finally, <em

>Futurama is back—at least on an impending straight-to-DVD release. For die-hard fans, Fox is also assembling a fan-favorites collection called <em>Futurama Monster Robot Maniac Fun Collection.

<strong>Top Stories
The brain drain continues. One of the most-tagged items in Rojo this week was the big news from Redmond: Microsoft will be slimming down, reports <st rong>Microsoft Watch, combining its seven divisions int o just three and letting some bigs "retire." <st rong>Paidcontent.org also comments on several mainstream outlets' coverage her e, and <st rong>business2blog thinks the biggest winner is new CTO Ray Ozzie. Others speculate that 200 6 will be the year of Microsoft.

Other related revelations: vid eos Bill Gates doesn't want you to see.

Meanwhile, Microsoft's chief rival got its share of attention too. Howard Rheingold's <st rong>Smart Mobs cites a study sho wing that the number of WiFi hot spots will double by 2009, and that Google's new Secure Access may help mak e WiFi use more secure (but then you're run ning your whole traffic through Google, as <st rong>Jeremy Zawodny's blog notes). Meanwhile, <st rong>Techdirt mentions that the search-engine giant is in trouble with the Authors Guild, which fil ed a class-action suit alleging that Google Library infringes copyright.

In market news, the Fed raised the target rate for the umpteenth time in a row. BusinessWeek Online's <st rong>Well Spent offered some explanations for the mar ket's subsequent slide. The <st

rong>Motley Fool offers insight into why interest-rate hikes and other factors haven't yet punctured the so-called hou sing bubble.

<st rong>Wired News reports that two European airlines will test letting passengers use cell phones during flights next year. If this makes you feel like knocking someone's face off, your victim may be able to just get a new one transplanted.

The iPod Nano also stomped around the blogosphere like Godzilla dispatching Tokyo. <st rong>iPod Hacks describes new cases from Tun ewear and Spe ck, while <st rong>iPoding tells you where to get service and repairs like a new LCD.

And finally, <st rong>Joystiq links to a list of 192 clich��s common to role-playing games (RPGs) both electronic and paper. No. 157, the Doomed Utopia Theorem, says that "All seemingly ideal, utopian societies are powered by some dark force and are therefore doomed to swift, flashy destruction."

Biggest item for bloggers this week: the Senate hearings on confirming John G. Roberts as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, which even displaced the fallout from Hurricane Katrina as the top news event.
href="http://www.elabs3.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=gww,gefg,2a7l,7kd1,dckc,dtaq,1xhb" rel="nofollow">Dai ly Kos looked at Roberts' views of a con stitutional right to privacy in response to questions by Senator Arlen Specter, while Salo n.com reported that the nominee was ducking the hard questions on abortion. For exhaustive gavel-to-gavel coverage see Tom Goldstein's SCO TUSblog or Matt Margolis at Blo gs for Bush.

In tech news, the rumors are true: online auctioneer eBay agreed to pay $2.6 billion for VoIP giant Skype. Why? For bes.com predicts Sky pe is the future of telecom. Jeff Jarvis of Buzz Machine mostly agrees though eWe ek Technology News caught Sky pe users grumbling.

Meanwhile, Oracle plans to buy Siebel for $5.85 billion and creates an 800pound gorilla of customer-service software. Inf oworld raised questions about the fate of Siebel's CRM OnDemand service. Inf ormationWeek weighed in on both sides: Is this the end of CRM as we know it or, as Bill Gates says, not a big deal?

For those still following Katrina's aftermath, Goo gle Blog unveiled a search tool for Kat rina-related databases, to search all databases at once for information on friends or family who may have been affected. Google also launched Blo gsearch which scans content posted to blogs and feeds in virtually real-time. Read a full report on Sea rch Engine Watch.<span style="font-size:9pt; color:black; font-family:Verdana; ">.

Does all this make you wish you had bought shares in the search engine giant's IPO? Mar ketwatch.com reported that Google issued $4 billion in new stock.

Something Awful :: "Paypal's outlook is that every single one of their customers is a liar, a cheat, and a thief." -- Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka after his bid to donate almost $28,000 to the Red Cross for hurricane relief was thwarted after his Web site raised money so quickly it made Paypal suspicious.

But this isn't the same Clijsters, not the four-major-loss Clijsters, not the second-best Belgian in women's tennis.

Somehow the nicest woman on Tour gained a little fight.

Maybe it was the lost year, a wrist injury erasing her 2004 season. Maybe it was watching the very pregnant wife of Lleyton Hewitt -- Clijsters's former fiance -- in the boxes all week. Maybe it's a final push for a player who says she plans to retire by the end of 2007, when she'll be just 24 years old.

o get the feel of Web logs and blogging, visit some of these sites. Most blogs carry links to other blogs on related topics or that the author likes (known as a blogroll). This page is under development; feel free to suggest your own finds. Business and sports are being built, and suggestions are particularly welcome.

<strong>Recent additions: Footnoted.org reads corporate filings and news

releases more closely than most people. . . . Terry Teachout's About Last Night covers culture in New York and elsewhere. Interesting blogroll of culture sites, too. . . . Cyberjournalist.net looks at the effects of the Internet and new technology on the media. . . . Paidcontent.org looks at the economics of the Web. . . . ScotusBlog and the related Supreme Court Nomination Blog are keeping a close watch on the proceedings in the court. . . . Crooks and Liars and politics, with a liberal slant. With a great collection of video clips. . . .

Collections & Rankings

• Technorati <em>blog search and the Technorati Top 100 list of most linked-to blogs
• Feedster <em>Search for news feeds and blogs by topic
• Bloglines <em>(Registration required.) Find blogs by topic (or name) and read them here
• Blogpulse, <em>from Intelliseek, lets you search blogs and automatically finds trends
• Truth Laid Bear Traffic Rankings <em>Most-visited blogs
• Flickr <em>Not quite blogging, but fascinating. Storytelling through photo sharing.

General

• BoingBoing <em>"A directory of wonderful things" from around the Internet
• Gawker <em>Gossip and snarkiness about media, showbiz, New York City, etc.
• Defamer <em>Similar in tone to Gawker, but with a West Coast slant

Technology & Media

• Romenesko <em>The blog all journalists know
• Media Bistro <em>Sort of a blog. Its Fishbowl <em>is more of a blog.
• John Battelle's Searchblog <em>Media, technology, Internet search, etc.
• Dan Gillmor's blog <em>Wellregarded former columnist for San Jose Mercury, now on Bayosphere
• Cyberjournalist.net <em>Jonathan Dube for the Online News Assocation
• BuzzMachine <em>Jeff Jarvis talks a lot about new media (and himself).
• PressThink <em>Jay Rosen of N.Y.U. on The Media vs. the press
• SimonWaldman.net <em>Newspapers and new media from a British perspective
• Scripting News <em>Dave Winer tracks the world of blogging and technology and has some interesting (and some cranky) thoughts.
• TheJasonCalacanisWeblog <em>Blog about blogs from the chairman of Weblogs Inc.
• Paidcontent.org <em>Looks at the economics of the Web
• Journal-isms <em>Richard Prince, of the Maynard Institute, pays attention to diversity issues in journalism.
• Media Law <em>Robert J. Ambrogi

Technology Toys & Cool

Things

• Gizmodo <em>From the Gawker empire
• Engadget <em>Gadgets of all sorts
• Josh Rubin: Cool Hunting <em>"Stuff from the intersection of design, culture and technology"
• Cool Tools <em>Kevin Kelly finds all manner of intriguing things.
• Josh Spear <em>"The pulse of cool."
• Treehugger <em>Environmental design and consciousness

Politics & Government

• Daily Kos <em>Markos Moulitsas Zuniga. One of the best-known liberal blogs.
• Talking Points Memo <em>Joshua Micah Marshall. Widely read liberal blog from a contributor to Washington Monthly and The Hill.
• MyDD <em>Jerome Armstrong and Chris Bowers.
• Eschaton <em>Atrios, aka Duncan Black. "Proud member of the reality-based community."
• AmericaBlog <em>John Aravosis. Politics from the left; one of the key sources of info in the Gannon/Guckert affair.
• Crooks and Liars <em>and politics, with a liberal slant. And a great collection of video clips.
• Daily Dish <em>Andrew Sullivan on conservative, religious and gay issues. (He tried to stop but couldn't.)
• InstaPundit <em>Glenn Reynolds. One of the best-known conservative blogs.
• Kausfiles <em>Mickey Kaus's mostly political blog on Slate
• Little Green Footballs
• Power Line <em>One of the more widely read blogs from the right.
• Iraqi Bloggers Central <em>Good collection of links to Iraqi bloggers.
• Mystery Pollster <em>Mark Blumenthal's intelligent analysis of polls and polling.
• Wonkette <em>Washington gossip (also from the Gawker empire).
• Global Voices <em>gathers some interesting views from blogs around the world.
• ScotusBlog and the related Supreme Court Nomination Blog <em>are keeping a close watch on the proceedings in the court.
• <em>Also see Traditional Media, below

'Traditional Media'

• Altercation. <em>Eric Alterman. MSNBC.
• Howard Fineman <em>MSNBC
• Bloggermann <em>Keith Olbermann. MSNBC.
• Citizen Journalists <em>MSNBC's experiment in participatory journalism
• LOOSE wire <em>Jeremy Wagstaff, Dow Jones
• The Corner <em>From National Review
• Hit and Run <em>From Reason
• Editor's Blog <em>John Robinson, Greensboro, N.C., News Record. The paper is conducting a widely-commented-on experiment in increasing communication with its readers. Other News-Record blogs can be reached from this
  
  page.
• The Politicker <em>Ben Smith, New York Observer
• Tapped <em>from the American Prospect
• CJRDaily <em>Updates from the Columbia Journalism Review (successor to its Campaign Desk)
• The Huffington Post <em>Arianna Huffington's celebrity blogfest
• Blinq <em>Daniel Rubin, a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, blogs for its Web site
• Blogspotting <em>from Stephen Baker and Heather Green of Business Week. (You can find other Business Week blogs from there.)

Business

• Seeking Alpha and The Internet Stock Blog <em>News and analysis by David Jackson, a money manager and former tech stock analyst
• Footnoted.org <em>reads corporate filings and news releases more carefully than most people

New York

• Curbed <em>Everyone's favorite New York City topic: real estate
• Gothamist
• About Last Night <em>Terry Teachout writes about culture in New York and elsewhere. Interesting blogroll of culture sites, too.
• NYC Bloggers <em>Thousands of other New York City bloggers, organized by subway line

Food

• The Food Section <em>Josh Friedland. With a New York slant.
• Gothamist Food <em>From the Gothamist folks
• Saute Wednesday <em>Bruce Cole.
• Chocolate and Zucchini <em>Clotilde writes about food from Paris.
• A Full Belly <em>Alaina Browne.

Design

• Apartment Therapy <em>Maxwell and Oliver Ryan. Tips and things for living better in small spaces
• Core77 <em>Industrial design
• Design*Sponge <em>A little breathless, but some interesting finds.
• Land and Living
• MocoLoco <em>Modern design from all over
• Reluct.com <em>Design and architecture from a team in the Netherlands.
• Treehugger <em>Design with an environmental slant

Miscellany

• PostSecret <em>People mail their secrets -- touching, funny, scary -- on homemade postcards.

<em>Maintained by Rich Meislin. Feel free to send along your favorite blogs.

The many great gardens of the world,
of literature and poetry, of painting and music,
of religion and architecture, all make the point as
clear as possible:
The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden.
If you don't want paradise, you are not human;
and if you are not human, you don't have a soul.
<strong>- Thomas Moore

<strong>EPITAPH ON A TUFTHUNTER.

Lament, lament, Sir Isaac Heard,
Put mourning round thy page, Debrett,
For here lies one who ne'er preferred
A Viscount to a Marquis yet.

Beside him place the God of Wit,
Before him Beauty's rosiest girls,
Apollo for a _star_ he'd quit,
And Love's own sister for an Earl's.

Did niggard fate no peers afford,
He took of course to peers' relations;
And rather than not sport a Lord
Put up with even the last creations;

Even Irish names could he but tag 'em
With "Lord" and "Duke," were sweet to call;
And at a pinch Lord Ballyraggum
Was better than no Lord at all.

Heaven grant him now some noble nook,
For rest his soul! he'd rather be
Genteelly damned beside a Duke,


Than saved in vulgar company.

Thanks: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/8187

Lot had been said, written and talked about this movie. I like bio pics. Recent memory brings 'The Pianist'. Hotel Rwanda is not graphic (violence). It does not preach. It shows the vulnerabilities. It easily displays the uncomfortable blacks. It does not pass judgments. It portrays human nature; the safe decisions we make to stay protected in our shell.

If you haven't watched it, do see it once. Might explain why folks resort to extremism?! Instead of blindly branding folks as terrorist and organziations as fascist, it will let us think through them.

For all the talkers in us, I like to quote this from the movie:

<strong>Jack: [after Paul thanks him for shooting footage of the genocide] I think if people see this footage, they'll say Oh, my God, that's horrible.<strong> And then they'll go on eating their dinners.

And finally peace keepers do not shoot at others was one of the etching pieces from the movie.

<strong>Top Stories
Deadly Hurricane Katrina is the week's big story tracked by Rojo readers and news keeps breaking even as flood waters begin to recede. Reporting from inside New Orleans is hard to come by although Boi ngBoing told a tale of two photos (one showing volunteers rescuing a family from the roof of their Suburban in Mississippi (Ben Sklar / AP)), and led many readers to The Interdictor, which reported looting and gunfights.

You’ll find wre nching stories by evacuees and those who stayed at Nol a View Blog while the New Orleans Times-Picayune reporters struggled to keep up with bre aking news inside the city.

Bloggers of all pol itical str ipes tried to do their part to help with hurricane Katrina relief.

As the south-central U.S. is devastated and communications to many areas are cut off, disc ussions of Goo gle Talk and other online voice clients are popular. Om Malik chimed in on
href="http://www.elabs3.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=gww,fdfw,1ztd,3kew,6uvs,4md4,f2zv" rel="nofollow">voi ce over IM, while Bus inessWeek Online focused on the App le/Motorola iPhone deal.