The highlight of an underwhelming MacWorld keynote [video] — after the enhanced iLife, iWork, and an updated 17″ MacBook Pro — was the official death of DRM. Called for by Steve Jobs nearly 2 years ago, the deal that was finally done gives the record labels the variable pricing they’ve been after ($0.69, $0.99, and $1.29, their call). That and what Erick Schonfeld says is a hidden $1.8 billion music tax on their best customers: Anyone who wants to upgrade their entire existing...

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard Yesterday I mentioned that LG Electronics is to announce a new range of Netflix-ready broadband HDTVs that will have a small Linux-powered, Internet-friendly computer embedded that will be able to get video right off the Internet. Today we learn from Robert X. Cringely how pricey they’ll be: The Netflix-capable LG TV’s, we’re told, will cost about $300 more than LG sets that can’t do such streaming.  The difference between the...

Minneapolis Star Tribune: The Minnesota Supreme Court today rejected a bid by Republican Norm Coleman to have hundreds of rejected absentee ballots considered in the U.S. Senate recount, apparently clearing the way for a state board to certify election results showing Democrat Al Franken on top — and also opening the door to a post-recount lawsuit that the Coleman campaign said “is now inevitable.” The state Canvassing Board is scheduled to meet this afternoon to review recount results....

Continuing in my food vein, I wish I’d done this before the holidays. Even though they’ve passed, we’ll still be cooking… Foodista aims to be the Wikipedia for food: Each recipe can be collaboratively edited and improved. Scrumptious photos for each dish are pulled in from Flickr, and descriptions are pulled in from Wikipedia itself. You can add or remove ingredients, see the edit history, or add a comment to each page. The site is well-designed and was put together by [Barnaby]...

Laura Miller on the anti-foodies’ foodie: The essence of the Bittman approach is simplicity, ease and quality, but that means he has to walk a fine and constantly shifting line. Americans’ attitudes toward what we eat are laden with class and cultural baggage. It’s no coincidence that when the conservative Club for Growth PAC produced its famous 2004 television commercial featuring an elderly couple telling Howard Dean to go “back to Vermont,” two out of the seven outré...

And a headache for cable and telephone companies. Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix: We want to watch what we want, when we want, where we want, and discover the content how we want. So how well are we doing in the areas of “where,” “when,” “what” and “discoverability”? We’re about 15 percent of the way to “what you want,” 100 percent at “when you want,” 15 percent towards “where you want,” and 25 percent for “discover your want.” To get even farther we need a standard...

Friday in The Guardian Anna Pickard authored a stirring defense of making friends online: The friends I’ve made online – from blogging in particular, be they other bloggers or commenters on this or my own site – are the best friends I now have. And yet, when I say this to people, many times they’ll look at me like I’m a social failure; and when surveys like this are reported, it’s always with a slight air of being the “It’s a crazy, crazy, crazy world!”...

Who ever would have thought that so many of us spend our Christmas Eve on the web? Back in the day we waited until we were back at work or school to go online (CyberMonday was premised on that fact). Those days have long since gone. Hitwise on Facebook: On Christmas Day 2007 Facebook reached a peak in traffic that wasn’t surpassed until July 2008. Traffic reached a new high on Christmas Eve 2008 when Facebook saw its highest ever traffic level – reaching 2.18% of all US Internet visits compared...

Like many of my fellow bloggers, I don’t have the credentials to argue the legal issues. I’m inclined to believe no matter what the constitution or case law says, if the Senate wants to keep Burris out, it can find the legal way to do it. Politically, on the other hand, I’m betting Burris gets sworn in. And Blagojevich — after providing plenty more fodder for the late night comics (who never doubted the pols would give them more material) — will walk. No conviction....

Here’s #4 in 365gay’s Top 8 gay videos of 2008… Separately, and significantly, David Bianculli named the Daily Show #1 in his Top 10 TV List of 2008. And when Terry Gross asked on Fresh Air recently if he could give an example of how the comedy shows have demonstrated a new model for the political interview, Bianculli said the Huckabee interview was a great example: Mike Huckabee was promoting a book, but Stewart was more interested in talking to him about his political stance....

Siva Vaidhyanathan has a book in progress, The Googlization of Everything. There he posted today an August interview he did with Vint Cerf, Google’s Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist. Siva calls it a brief but rich exchange. When Cerf says Google is committed to keeping the Internet open, Siva follows up: SV: Let’s talk about that. There is all this dueling lobbying and arguing going on at the FCC and in Congress between firms like Google and the telecoms. What can Google do...

I’m not sure I understand the headline of the Wired News story, Apple Says Farewell to Macworld, Hello to the Big Time. There’s plenty about the impending decline of Apple, not a word about a big-time hello: Apple and its cult following have much to celebrate, but its future is uncertain. The majority of speculators believe that Jobs’ era — and the entire Apple era — is coming to an end. The corporation recently delivered some shocking news: Jobs won’t be delivering...

From Ariel Levy’s droll review of the new edition of the 1970s phenom, The Joy of Sex, which appears in this week’s New Yorker: The book is still emphatically straight, but [British sexologist Susan] Quilliam has given it a gay-positive tone, in sharp contrast to [the original’s] advice that if you might be that way inclined it was better not to experiment too much with a partner of the same sex, lest you let the gay genie out of the bottle. The original drawings have been replaced,...

Geoff Nunberg’s pick for 2008’s Word of the Year — JOE. Give a listen. (The linguist can convey much more through the spoken word than in print): In 1942, FDR’s vice president Henry Wallace made a famous speech where he described the 20th century as the Century of the Common Man, and for most of that period, the common man went by the name of Joe. The generic Joe Blow made his first appearance in the 1920s, to be joined later by Joe Schmo from Cocomo. And by the ’30s,...

This has been out for a while but I was unexpectedly out of commission for a while and it’s worth catching up. Google Zeitgeist 2008: Studying the aggregation of the billions of search queries that people type into the Google search box gives us a glimpse into the zeitgeist — the spirit of the times. We’ve compiled some of the highlights from Google searches around the globe and hope you enjoy looking back as much as we do. Fastest Rising (Global) sarah palin beijing 2008 facebook login tuenti heath...

He’s a 30 something from Connecticut and his videos have been going around the Internet for some years now. Still, he’s number 4 on NewTeeVee’s Top 10 Pretty Obvious Video Favorites For 2008: The latest installment in Matt Harding’s world travels spread even more viral than before, a triumph of sponsorship that also legitimately spread goodwill throughout the world. More than you ever wanted to know about Matt: About and FAQ from his site, Wikipedia entry, his longtime sponsor, Stride...

The WaPo today: Strict new laws aimed at keeping track of sex offenders after they leave prison appear to be having the opposite effect, encouraging homelessness in a population believed more likely to re-offend if cast into the streets without structure or family support, say prosecutors, police, parole officials and experts on managing sex offenders. The issue is starkest in California, where the number of sex crime parolees registering as transient has jumped more than 800 percent since Proposition...

Retailers are hoping today will be a black Friday sequel. Meanwhile, while personal bankruptcy is at a record high it’s the credit card companies getting the bailout: American Express announced Tuesday it’s getting a $3.39 billion “capital injection” from the US Treasury. For you and me new credit card rules are set to stop card companies from applying higher interest rates on existing balances and require giving customers at least 21 days to make a payment before charging...

Via Gideon. UPDATE: And then there’s this cartoon from Mexico:

This will be the 14th Christmas behind bars on contempt charges for H. Beatty Chadwick, who allegedly hid $2.5 million from his wife in divorce proceedings: After a hearing yesterday, Delaware County Court President Judge Joseph P. Cronin Jr. turned down Chadwick’s latest request for Christmas furlough, declaring him “a significant risk of flight.” Had the court let him out for Christmas, Chadwick could have cut off his electronic-monitoring bracelet and used his money and contacts...

Larry Lessig likens the Hollywood content industry’s battle against “peer-to-peer piracy” to the failed prohibition era battle against “intoxicating liquors.” Lessig believes that prosecuting online file sharing is turning a generation criminal: The copyright industry has used every legal means within its reach (and some that may not be so legal) to stop Internet “pirates” from “sharing” copyrighted content without permission. These “copyright...

So says the LA Times: Pop culture is finally hitting the eject button on the VHS tape, the once-ubiquitous home-video format that will finish this month as a creaky ghost of Christmas past. After three decades of steady if unspectacular service, the spinning wheels of the home-entertainment stalwart are slowing to a halt at retail outlets. On a crisp Friday morning in October, the final truckload of VHS tapes rolled out of a Palm Harbor, Fla., warehouse run by Ryan J. Kugler, the last major supplier...

No one was killed. 38 were hurt. Just 1 tweet. (Warning, adult language!) Silicon Valley Insider: In another first for Twitter, passenger Mike Wilson tweeted his miraculous escape. Read from the bottom up. And then buy this man (and everyone else on the plane) a vodka tonic! This was crash #2 for Mike, “Maybe I should start taking the bus.” Maybe? He’s making the news show rounds now.

More from The Richter Scales.

Brad J. Ward, coordinator for electronic communication in Butler University’s admissions office, discovered late last week that dozens hundreds of 2013 Facebook groups had been created or administered by the same handful of people. He posted to his blog, SquaredPeg, There’s something going down on Facebook. Pay attention. Through Thursday night and into Friday he updated that post as at least 15 of his colleagues used Twitter, Google Docs, LinkedIn, ZoomInfo, Flickr and more to uncover what...