Bits Blog: Bits: Gawker Media Gets Strung Out on Sci-Fi
274046
Gawker Media adds a new science fiction blog to its staple of online media properties.
438853
Weâve talked about popcorn here on Dinerâs Journal before, but today brings some actual popcorn news. For more on that, and a way to avoid becoming a news story yourself, Iâd like to present Mark Bittman, who writes the Minimalist column for the Times. I think the guyâs got a future in blogging. Take it [...].
191027
Jacob Harris leads this piece about the metadata of the NY Times with the corniest tech quote I've ever heard.  I heart corny quotes.
24270
Also: Chevy Volt: GM's 'moon shot'. See what people are saying on News.com Extra.
597984
I have no problem with the photograph but why would you bother publishing the story of a complete waste-of space family in the first place? Giving such people any publicity is something you and all media should be ashamed of.
515617
The alternative search engine buys Bloglines in a move to compete with the likes of Google and Yahoo. Also: Mitsubishi feels the financial pain of repeated scandals.... EarthLink earnings are up and looking good... and more.
321549
Tycho:  Kotaku carried a story yesterday that is (basically) the Nintendo DS version of that Playstation Pornable scare from six months ago.  You can see it here, and you should, because it's awesome.  It depicts a scenario so imaginative that it juts into the realm of speculative fiction:
216691
Also: Arthur C. Clarke's three wishes. See what people are saying on News.com Extra.
574281
An offer we couldn't refuse NSFW We welcome freelancer Destiny Welles to Vulture Central. She will contribute an occasional column from within Second Life: thus we join our colleagues CNET and Reuters with a correspondent embedded in the popular online universe. As a budding young journo, Destiny has already earned a remarkable reputation for hard-thrusting investigative work. Moreover, she's clearly teh hawtness. -ed.â¦
478583
Outages put a crimp in access at PayPal, Gawker. Also: Microsoft's latest security warnings.
422149
We turned off share.opml.org yesterday, for good, as far as I know. It was a good idea, but we never got it together to make it the powerhouse I wanted it to be.  Now that Google and Bloglines both have discovery mechanisms for feeds that you might like, based on what you and others like, there would only be a future for SYO if it were a thriving and growing community, and it isn't.  Normally, I'd leave a site like that running indefinitely, but this one needed its own server, and I wanted to cut my server expenses now that my S3 bill is going up, serving some very big JPEGs and generally being the back-end for a community that is growing, the people using FlickrFan. If there's a big demand to bring it back, we can -- but that's going to require cash flow to go with it. At this point, I don't think it's a good investment for me. Still diggin!
592
And did Apple buy the eBay TARDIS? Letters Let's start with the bloggers. Such an easy target - there are so many that any mud slung is bound to stick to some of them. Still, as Ashley Norris points out, Daily Mail columnists really should be careful about any kind of projectiles they launch, lest they turn out to be boomerangs:â¦
749231
When everything gets an API then everything you can imagine will be possible if you can write a script.  And sometimes, to give you an idea, all that has to happen is that a wall come down. The latest, most intriguing such wall was the paywall at the NY Times. Now all of a sudden we find the wealth of information published by the NY Times over many decades is available without tariff. More important, we can point into the archive. We've gotten so accustomed to the wall, that you actually have to think when it may be possible to go in there, as if it left behind a wall in our minds, even after the wall on the web is gone. For example, the first episode of Ken Burns's The War, an epic series about World War II from the American perspective, cited several NY Times articles. If you looked carefully you could see the dates, and the actual headlines, and then if you have a browser handy, as I do (I have an iPhone) you can actually read the article while the narrative continues. Today this is mostly a gimick, but I suspect as we get used to having history so available (like having a library microfilm machine, which I used to spend whole days playing with when I was a kid) it will change our sense of information, perhaps as much as anything else that's ever been on the web. Take movie reviews for example. What a thrill to be able to read a review of a movie that I love that came out in 1932! The reviewers back then were more forgiving, less sarcasting, more enthusiastic. Consider their review of the Hollywood Revue of 1929, a favorite of mine that I've only seen once (I'd pay for a DVD, if it were available). They loved audible movies (that's what they called them) as if the term "talkie" was as elusive as "podcast" was in the summer of 2004. Again, we've just scratched the surface. Wouldn't you like to have NY Times movie reviews integrated with Netflix? Or have Yahoo's movie rating service available on the NY Times site. And I have to wonder whether they really have gone all the way. You can't see the reviews unless you're logged in. Can Google's robots, therefore, see the movie reviews? Unless the've made some special arrangements, it seems not.  It would be helpful to get a technical guide to the newly hatched NY Times on the Web, or (as in the old days of software) a reviewer's guide, so we get some ideas of what to look at. Clearly a lot of work went into opening up the Times archive. I'm going to be in NY the week of October 8 and will have some time toward the end of the week. If anyone at the Times would be willing to spend some time with me reviewing what's now open, that would be helpful. In any case, at least the Times today is somewhat more available to be integrated into the fabric of the web. That's some progress. How much, remains to be seen. Postscript: Kottke did a great job of skimming the surface of the newly opened Times when it first came online, just one week ago today.
587396
(Gene Emery is a columnist who covers science and technology. His Internet address is GEmery(at)Cox.net. Any opinions in the column are his alone.)
225512
Susie Bright calls internet writers to task for labeling links as not safe for work. Is it time to drop the flag? In Sex Drive Daily.
88197
Also: Stephen Hawking's next goal: Space travel. Read these stories and more from around the Web on News.com Extra.
450170
Plus: Was Einstein a plagiarist? [News.com Extra]