TechCrunch first reported this, so I decided to check for myself. Yahoo! appears to be preventing ThePirateBay.org from being listed as a result in its searches. I’ve check through eight pages of results for “pirate bay,” and the site is not listed. A more direct search for piratebay.org also does not turn up the site. Google, Ask, and MSN still have the site listed as the top search result.

For those unaware, The Pirate Bay is a controversial BitTorrent site that has earned the wrath of the MPAA and RIAA. Both have lobbied to have the site shut down, but have been unsuccessful thus far as the company is located in Sweden. A list of legal threats against the company is available on their website.

Is this censorship? Is this the beginning of Yahoo! filtering other sites large organizations oppose? What happens if the government asks Yahoo! to filter results it does not care for? I know personally I will not use their search until their actions are explained and ThePirateBay.org returns to their top search position.

In the new political spectrum, the Internet plays a key roll. In 2004, Howard Dean revolutionized the impact of the Internet with his presidential campaign. Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy on her web site. Ron Paul actually received some votes thanks to his web presence.

However, this year’s Internet darling is Senator Barack Obama.

Obama pulled in $4 million from Internet donation this weekend. He dominates the MySpace “friends” categories, and has over 200,000 more supporters than Hillary on Facebook. He now has his own YouTube-style site dedicated to videos supporting his candidacy – YouBama. The site’s top videos include George Clooney, a five year old girl, Charles Barkely, and a 20-something named Chris.

There is still a long way to go in the 2008 campaign, but if Internet support is a measure of popularity and votes, Obama has a healthy lead.

Then again, so did Howard Dean.

David Lynch discusses his thoughts of watching a movie on the iPhone. Midwestern Boy couldn’t agree more.

This Venn Diagram shows:

a: that higer priced PS3′s offer more features
b: that newer models of the PS3 have limited or no backwards compatibility with PS2 games
c: multiple reasons to choose a Wii over a PS3

From BB Gadgets via Gizmodo

The website Valleywag has an editorial piece on why magazines should stop covering gadgets.  They state that magazines will always be behind the curve because they need to produce articles months before the magazine is published.  By the time articles run, gadgets have been thoroughly dissected and reviewed on the web.  They use the example of Entrepreneur Magazine, which ran a review of the Palm Foleo.  The problem was the device that was discontinued by the time the review was published.

While Valleywag makes a strong argument, there are two reasons why gadgets need to be covered by magazines.
Read more…

For years I have stated computers of the future will based on “dumb terminals.”   Each of us will own a portable device (like a cell phone) that carries our basic information on it.  When we approach the terminal, all our preferences and subscriptions will be accessible via synchronization between our phone and the terminal.  For this to work, programs that we use everyday will be available online and we will subscribe to them rather then “own” a copy.

Apparently Adobe sees the future the same way I do.

Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen announced last week that the company plans to move all of their desktop applications online.  Chizen says this is several years out, but it the future of the company.

It will be a while before this comes to fruition.  The United States needs to increase its broadband infrastructure, which will take at least a decade.   However, I continue to stand by my prediction, and enjoy when I see large corporations moving towards this model.

Ars Technica has an article about Adobe’s future plans.

Two of my all time favorite science fiction movies will see new life in the coming years – both by the same director.

Joseph Kosinski got his start by making television commercials for Nike, Apple, and Nintendo before moving to Hollywood to starting his directing career.  His first movie will be a remake of “Logan’s Run.”  Many have never seen this forgotten classic (unless I’ve forced them to watch it) about a society where at the age of 30, you are eliminated.

The second classic was announced by Disney, and is a sequel to the nerdcore classic “Tron.”  For anyone that is unfamiliar with this story, Wikipedia provides a great synopsis.  While the new Tron will not be out until 2010, geeks around the world will keep their fingers crossed, hoping Kosinski’s version is as good (or better) then the original.

NY Times technology guru David Pogue has an article on Apple’s entry into the customized ringtone market. As a person that either creates my own ringtones or used the ones that come on my phone (a blasphemy I know), the thought of buying a ringtone is a foreign concept. However, I am apparently one of the very few, as it is a $5 billion a year industry.

Apple apparently has it right compared to other companies. Pogue points out in his aricle:

Pop song ringtones from T-Mobile and Sprint cost $2.50 apiece; from Verizon, $3. You don’t get to customize them, choose the start and end points, adjust the looping and so on. Incredibly, after 90 days, every Sprint ringtone dies, and you have to pay another $2.50 if you want to keep it. Verizon’s last only a year.

I think we found another reason for record companies to stop their whining. Read the full article.

If you wanted to read an editorial piece by Thomas Friedman published by the NY Times on the Internet, you had to subscribe to their service. That all changes today.

The Times dumped their “TimesSelect” service, which would charge users $7.95 per month for the opportunity to read editorial pieces. This move was rumored for a while, and the change is welcomed by the Internet community. In a letter sent to subscribers, Vivian Schiller, Senior Vice President & General Manager of NYTimes.com states:

Since we launched TimesSelect, the Web has evolved into an increasingly open environment. Readers find more news in a greater number of places and interact with it in more meaningful ways. This decision enhances the free flow of New York Times reporting and analysis around the world. It will enable everyone, everywhere to read our news and opinion – as well as to share it, link to it and comment on it.

I subscribe to the print version of the times, and there is often commentary worth blogging about. However, if I can’t link to an article so that readers can view it, I am not going to discuss it. This s a smart move by the Times. I believe the ad revenue over time will make them significantly more then if they kept it a pay service, plus the exposure by bloggers will hep their view rate thrive.

Visit TimesSelect for free starting today. Thanks to James for the update.

Today marks the 25th birthday of quite possibly the most despised and overused symbols of the computer generation. According to CNN:

Twenty-five years ago, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman says, he was the first to use three keystrokes — a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis — as a horizontal “smiley face” in a computer message. … “It has been fascinating to watch this phenomenon grow from a little message I tossed off in 10 minutes to something that has spread all around the world,” Fahlman was quoted as saying in a university statement. “I sometimes wonder how many millions of people have typed these characters, and how many have turned their heads to one side to view a smiley, in the 25 years since this all started.”

While hated by many true geeks, the emoticon helps portray emotions such as sarcasm that may be misinterpreted in emails and online dialogue. The simple symbol gives emotion to the dry black text on a white background that inhabit our inboxes on a daily basis. Three cheers for Mr. Fahlman.

Read the CNN Article.

Imagine how easy it would be for marketing departments to have a list of everything you do and like. The social networking site Facebook is constructing an advertising system that would do just that. According to a Wall Street Journal article, the website plans to market to its 30 million users based on what they define as important in their profiles.

These ads would show up differently than the banner ads and boxed flyers that appear on the borders of Facebook pages, say people familiar with the plan. Instead, they would be interspersed with items on the “news feed,” which is a running list of short updates on the activities of a user’s Facebook friends. In addition, the ads would show up on Facebook pages that feature services provided by other companies, one person says….

Eventually, it hopes to refine the system to allow it to predict what products and services users might be interested in even before they have specifically mentioned an area.

Read the entire WSJ article.

BBC News is reporting that laser printers can emit particles into the air similar to second hand smoke. From the article:

Almost one-third were found to emit ultra-tiny particles of toner-like material, so small that they can infiltrate the lungs and cause a range of health problems from respiratory irritation to more chronic illnesses.

While this is the first study of its kind, it should not surprise anyone that has worked in an office. When printing using a laser printer, there is often a sandy substance left by the printer on the print dock (more so when there are a lot og graphics/blackspace involved . It would not be difficult for that to get into the air and your lungs.

Read the article.

Also have to love that this video was choppy when I watched it due to my overworked web browser.

Imagine you and your spouse are having dinner, when they suddenly collapse. Unaware of what is happening, you run to the phone to dial 911 only to find you have no signal. How could this happen? You use an Internet phone, but you paid for a full year and should have service.

This could have been the case for subscribers of SunRocket’s VoIP service when the company went out of business Friday without alerting its 220,000 customers. Customers of SunRocket paid a set $199 for a year of unlimited calls. It is unclear if those that paid will be credited.

The disappearance of SunRocket is a hit to both the independent telecommunications industry as well as progressive Internet technology. Read more…

People often ask me as a single man how will I know when I have found Ms. Right; that perfect woman that I’ll want to spend my life with. Well, there are a couple things a woman could do that would lead me to believe she was the right one:

To start, she could be wearing these earrings when we met.

If we dated for a while and I decided to propose, she could request this for her engagement ring.

On our wedding day, she would want a cake like this one.