Interesting to note that Sky News is using YouTube to host their entire “News Corp will block Google” interview with Murdoch… …Picking up where Kathy left off this morning, The Guardian questions this Murdoch quote from that Sky News Australia interview: “We have it already with the Wall Street Journal. We have a wall, but it’s not right to the ceiling. You can get, usually, the first paragraph from any story – but if you’re not a paying subscriber to WSJ.com...

The Europeans believe in state action, so it’s not surprising they’re poised to leap ahead of us in road technology: Road trains that link vehicles together using wireless sensors could soon be on European roads. An EU-financed research project is looking at inexpensive ways of getting vehicles to travel in a ‘platoon’ on Europe’s motorways. Each road train could include up to eight separate vehicles – cars, buses and trucks will be mixed in each one. The EU hopes...

The NYTimes asks Can a Boy Wear a Skirt to School? But the story finds they already are. From this paragraph you’d almost think it’s a southern phenomenon: Last week, a cross-dressing Houston senior was sent home because his wig violated the school’s dress code rule that a boy’s hair may not be “longer than the bottom of a regular shirt collar.” In October, officials at a high school in Cobb County, Ga., sent home a boy who favored wigs, makeup and skinny jeans. In August, a Mississippi...

As I type, I’m listening to Engadget editor-in-chief Joshua Topolsky on NPR explaining why the Droid isn’t an iPhone killer. I have to agree, it’s not. But competition is good. And I’m resistant to buying three of those shiny apples for my family! A friend showed off his Motorolla Droid this afternoon. He’s very happy with it. I’m tempted by the HTC Droid Eris, $100 cheaper than the Motorolla Droid. Sleeker, too. ZDNet says it may be the best $100 smartphone....

Paul Carr’s righteous TechCrunch contrarian rant is one that’s wary of — weary of? — ‘citizen journalists’ with cell phones and Twitter. His case in point, the Fort Hood shootings: [T]he first news and analysis out of the base didn’t come from the experts. Nor did it come from the 24-hour news media, or even from dedicated military blogs – but rather from the Twitter account of one Tearah Moore, a soldier from Linden, Michigan who is based at Fort Hood, having...

My answer is NO! The Supreme Court will hear appeals from two juvenile offenders on Monday arguing the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment forbids life in prison for crimes other than homicide. (The court ruled in the 2005 Roper v. Simmons decision that it was unconstitutional to impose the death penalty for any minor who committed murder.) SCOTUSblog has a comprehensive preview of the cases which includes this analysis: The critical issue for the Court, having already decided...

You can listen to the speech here. The Roanoke Times covers it here. It will be televised by C-SPAN. I am persuaded my hope has been realized; this was not the typical celebrity journalist comeback it might have been. Instead, it sounds like Blair was a wise choice for the Journalism Ethics Institute keynote lecture. +++++++++++++++ Jayson Blair, who resigned from the New York Times in 2003 after he was caught plagiarizing and fabricating elements of his stories, was the featured speaker at Washington...

“My fellow Americans, tens of millions of you shared our convictions and gave us your votes. And I thank you for your confidence. For us, it was not our time . . . not our moment. But it is our country . . . the winner will be our president . . . and I wish Barack Obama well as the 44th president of the United States. If he governs America with the skill and grace we have often seen in him, and the greatness of which he is capable, we’re gonna be just fine. “And when a black citizen...

And Michael Arrington has posted a love letter: In just a few hours Verizon stores will open and the first customers will get their hands on their very own Droid. [CNet covers the midnight Droid madness last night in Manhattan.] And I promise you, if you are one of the people waiting in line, you will have a much lower than average amount of letdown. That’s because, in my humble opinion, the Droid is the coolest mobile phone to exist to date. It is as close as we’ve come to the Platonic...

Google announced today: In an effort to provide you with greater transparency and control over their own data, we’ve built the Google Dashboard. Designed to be simple and useful, the Dashboard summarizes data for each product that you use (when signed in to your account) and provides you direct links to control your personal settings. Today, the Dashboard covers more than 20 products and services, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Web History, Orkut, YouTube, Picasa, Talk, Reader, Alerts, Latitude...

You wouldn’t think so based on what the world is watching. The biggest television series ever, worldwide, was Baywatch. Broadcast in 142 countries its peak audience surpassed a billion people. House is tops today, with 82 million people watching last year in 66 countries. CSI and Desperate Housewives come in close behind. That from an interesting Foreign Policy piece by Charles Kenny. In it he argues that Television is a Revolution in a Box. While acknowledging that “a world of couch...

You may have seen the viral video of the worst parking job ever. 1,684,803 views since the Thursday Oct. 22 incident. While we gawk and guffaw, the owner of the crushed 2004 Hyundai Elantra (the one in the foreground) had just finished paying off his car loan! The 62 year-old woman driving the BMW was arrested for leaving the scene. The crushed Hyundai owner was left looking to replace his car. So what did Hyundai do? They surprised him with a new Elantra Touring: “We wanted to help the guy,”...

At the very same time Maine voted to repeal same sex marriage, they approved a bill that expands the state’s existing medical marijuana law. With that Maine becomes the third State to License Medical Marijuana Providers: “This is a dramatic step forward, the first time that any state’s voters have authorized the state government to license medical marijuana dispensaries,” said Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C., which drafted the initiative...

Check out the Colbert video above. Funny, as always, it’s a strident mocking of the Mormon Church for a gay kiss incident in Salt Lake City last summer. Police handcuffed and cited a gay couple for “kissing and hugging” on the city’s Main Street. That part of the street, it turns out, was bought by the church. Main Street in downtown Salt Lake is church property. Lesbian and Gay people won the culture war long ago; it’s a small, highly motivated minority, frightened by the...

UPDATE: All fixed. —————— A developing story, Gizmodo’s updates: Update 1: Several commenters are reporting that both incoming and outgoing calls are working if routed through Google Voice. Update 2: Many reports that T-Mobile @Home is out as well. Update 3: We got a note from a T-Mobile spokesperson: We’re making good progress restoring voice and messaging service to affected customers. At this time, approximately 5 percent of T-Mobile customers are...

Jonathan Safran Foer (and Michael Pollan) notwithstanding, Nicolette Hahn Niman argues it’s factory farming, not meat eating, that wreaks environmental havoc: In contrast to factory farming, well-managed, non-industrialized animal farming minimizes greenhouse gases and can even benefit the environment. For example, properly timed cattle grazing can increase vegetation by as much as 45 percent, North Dakota State University researchers have found. And grazing by large herbivores (including cattle)...

TechCrunch: Twitter tweeted out a message today about a special Halloween feature if you Tweet “#trick” or “#treat.” It was difficult to figure out at first, but if you tweet either from your Twitter home page (this is key, you can’t enable the feature when you are on a client), your home page background will go “ghoulish” and the avatars on the Tweets on your page will turn into zombies and ghouls. The way to trigger it is by tweeting ONLY “#trick”...

The Mercury News: Google is set to launch a free service for smartphones that will combine GPS navigation, voice-activated search and real-time traffic updates. Other telecommunication companies already offer turn-by-turn navigation systems that talk drivers through a route and run on smart phones, although many are not free, and would not offer the same connectivity to Google’s massive store of data. There is currently no handset on the market that runs Google’s Android 2.0 operating...

From a 3 page statement distributed by the local Catholic Archdiocese on the island of Guam in opposition to Bill 185, which would would allow same-sex couples to enter into legal domestic partnerships: The culture of homosexuality is a culture of self-absorption because it does not value self-sacrifice. It is a glaring example of what John Paul II has called the culture of death. Islamic fundamentalists clearly understand the damage that homosexual behavior inflicts on a culture. That is why they...

Making the rounds in copyleft circles, a Harry Potter themed dinner at a house in West London has been banned by Warner Brothers, because they say it infringes its copyright: Guests would have been led down ‘Diagon Alley’ by the side of the house and been met by a portrait of the “Fat Lady” who would have demanded a password before they could be let in. But the plans were scuppered when Warner Brothers heard about the themed dinner. A letter from their legal and business department...

My partner and I use Google Voice as a single number that rings all our phones (home, both mobile and both offices) so that if a friend is trying to find us, one number does it. Because it’s another number for friends to learn, it hasn’t caught on. Now we can port our existing mobile numbers over to Google Voice. It’s not a full port, Google says they’re still working on that. There are a few less features, but still an amazing service. Google Voice Blog: We’re excited...

Sam Reich’s “Pixar Intro Parody,” written by Sam and Dan, animated by effects superhero Mike Ritchie, scored by music supervillain Carl Sondrol. Pixar Tweets, “careful as it’s not suitable for minors, and probably shouldn’t be viewed at work.” It’s that happy ending that does it in.

On The Media devoted its entire show this week to The Future of the Music Industry. The occasion is the 10 year anniversary of the record industry confrontation of the peer-to-peer file-sharing service, Napster. The hour is guided by public radio and TV reporter Rick Karr. I encourage you to listen to the full program, but today I choose to quote from the piece that looks at sampling. In it OTM producer Jamie York talks to Girl Talk, Hank Shocklee and Duke Law professor James Boyle. Girl Talk is...

While George Lucas may or may not be preparing to unleash another Star Wars trilogy on us, this time in stereoscopic 3D, some of his most re-creative fans had their work included in a fun Star Wars Uncut trailer out this week. Launched in July, the project aims to complete a full user-generated version of the original, dubbed Star Wars: A New Hope. This “biggest fan recreation in the universe” was the brainchild of Casey Pugh. To do it he cut the original Star Wars film into 15 second...

Among those things I am involved with is suicide prevention. A friend in our local coalition forwarded this third and final piece in a fascinating series about predators. The whole series is worth a read, but these final paragraphs are what she highlighted for us: Today, in many parts of the world, the human being most likely to cause your violent death is: you. Yes. You are the person most likely to kill yourself violently and on purpose. Suicide rates have risen dramatically over the past 50 years....