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Velcroman1 writes: "Car stereo salesmen and installers around the country are hoping Apple's CarPlay in-car infotainment system will have a big presence in the aftermarket car stereo industry. The Nikkei Asian Review reports that Alpine is making car stereo head units for between $500 – $700 that will run the iOS-like system Apple unveiled last month, and Macrumors added Clarion to the list of CarPlay supporters. Pioneer is also getting into the game, with support said to be coming to existing car stereo models in its NEX line ($700 – $1400) via firmware update, according to Twice. Given Apple's wildly supportive fan base, its likely that a lot of aftermarket CarPlay units are about to fly off stereo shop shelves. Indeed, CarPlay coming to aftermarket stereo units could bring back what Apple indirectly stole from the industry going back as far as 2006."

Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes: "Facebook settled out of court over displaying ads that told you which of your friends had 'liked' a product or service, and another lawsuit is currently pending over the use of minors' pictures specifically in similar ads. (Not to be confused with another recently filed lawsuit alleging that Facebook converts private messages into public 'likes'.) Google+ tried to limit its liability by only showing the faces of users over 18 when showing which friends 'like' a page. I'm all for more privacy for social networking users, and if it's true that Facebook has been silently marking users as publicly 'liking' a page because they mentioned the page in a private message, the plaintiff's lawyers ought to clean them out for that one. But in cases where you willingly and knowingly 'liked' a page, Facebook and Google+ ought to be able to tell that to your friends in advertisements, without being sued for it." Read on for the rest of Bennett's thoughts.

The rationale for the case against the Facebook 'your-friends-have-liked-this' ads, seems to be that Facebook is violating laws and social norms against using someone's image in a commercial endorsement without their permission. But I can only think of two reasons for why those laws and social norms exist, and neither of those reasons would seem to apply to Facebook 'likes.' The two main reasons that come to mind are (1) loss of control over one's image, and (2) the creation of the false impression that the company has paid for a product endorsement.

Consider first the issue of the loss of control over your image. You would probably be annoyed if a company took a picture of your face and started featuring it prominently in their advertisements without your permission. (If you had taken the photo yourself, then the company would of course also be on the hook for copyright infringement, but let's assume that the company had one of their photographers take the photo so that they owned the copyright, and the only issue is the unfair use of your likeness.) At that point, you have no control over the dissemination of the picture. Even assuming that you like the way you look in the picture, you might find it creepy to think of thousands of strangers looking at the photo of you (or your kids). That would be an argument in favor of requiring companies to get people's permission before using their likenesses in advertisements.

But that argument would not apply to an ad in your Facebook feed which shows you the profile pictures of friends who have 'liked' a page. Those profile pictures were uploaded by those users expressly so that their Facebook friends could see them. At any time, they can select a different 'profile picture', or remove any profile pictures that they no longer wish to be visible to friends. (Facebook took a lot of well-deserved criticism for exposing users' profiles and pictures to non-friends, as well, even for users who have disabled that setting — but that's a separate issue. The "ads" in question only display your pictures to your friends.)

Second, consider the issue of creating the false impression of a paid product endorsement. With traditional advertisements, it might seem strange that people respond to ads featuring a nice, attractive-but-not-in-your-face-attractive person using a product, even if the photo doesn't seem to directly convey any information about the product itself. What the photo really conveys is that the company behind the product has resources — to hire models, photographers, lighting crews, photo editors, and of course to buy the space to display the ad. This ostentatious display of "resources" might reassure a customer that the company similarly has the resources to test their product thoroughly, to replace a product that breaks, or to honor their returns policy. But it only works if the user believes that the company actually did spend money on all of those things to create the ad.

This is even more true of ads featuring paid celebrities. Steven Landsburg, in a passage from his book The Armchair Economist, writes:

"[I]t is also common to see products endorsed by celebrities who have no particular expertise, and who are obviously being paid for their testimony. Well-known actresses endorse health clubs; ex-politicians endorse luggage; in Massachusetts recently, a Nobel prize-winning economist endorsed automobile tires. People respond to these ads, and sales increase. What useful information can there be in knowing that the manufacturer of your overnight bag paid a six-figure fee to feature a famous person in a television commercial? How can it be rational to choose your luggage on this basis?

Let me suggest an answer. [...] Hiring a celebrity to endorse your product is like posting a bond. The firm makes a substantial investment up front and reaps returns over a long period of time. A firm that expects to disappear in a year won't make such an investment. When I see a celebrity endorsement, I know that the firm has enough confidence in the quality of its product to expect to be around awhile.

(The full argument is in the text of The Armchair Economist on Scribd, although you've probably got the idea.)

However, none of this applies to your friend's profile picture appearing in an ad in your Facebook feed. No rational person would think that meant that the friend had been paid for the endorsement, so the ad doesn't falsely convey anything about the company's "resources." (All you really know is that the company paid some money to buy the ad — but, unlike a print ad that appears in a national magazine, you have no idea how much they spent to promote their brand on Facebook just because you happen to be seeing the promotion.) The valuable information conveyed in the ad is just what it seems — at least one of your friends thought the company or product was cool enough to 'like' it.

(This argument does leave an interesting case uncovered. What if a real recognizable celebrity 'liked' a page on Facebook, and that company paid for a flurry of ads in people's Facebook feeds prominently featuring the celebrity's likeness, truthfully claiming that the celebrity liked their product, but without paying the celebrity? I don't happen to know of any real-life case where a company found out that a celebrity actually used their product, and then started advertising the fact that their product was used by that celebrity without actually paying the celebrity, using the defense that all they were doing was stating a true fact. (Tell me in the comments if you know if that's happened.) However, Facebook seems to have ducked that issue for now, because virtually no actual celebrities have regular user profiles on Facebook; they have official fan pages, clearly demarcating the line between "them" and "us." So the sponsored ads are not likely to include a real celebrity's likeness any time soon.)

Fundamentally, if an 'ad' appears in your Facebook feed telling you that some of your friends 'liked' a page, all that ad is doing is stating a true fact, something that Facebook ought to be allowed to do under the First Amendment. I don't agree with Mitt Romney that "corporations are people too, my friend," but they do have First Amendment rights, which I would argue should include the right to tell you if friends of yours have publicly indicated that they like a product or service.

One currently pending lawsuit against Facebook makes much of the fact that Facebook's ads were displaying the profile pictures of minors, and that California law requires the permission of a minor's parents to use their likeness in an ad. But when that law was drafted, the authors probably had in mind the kind of traditional advertisements that raise the two concerns above — where (1) the minor and their family lose control over the dissemination of their image, and (2) the use of the likeness creates the false impression of a paid advertisement. It's not obvious that they would have considered the law to apply to a note in your Facebook feed telling you that your friend had liked a page. To the extent that the law could be interpreted to prohibit those kinds of notifications, that's arguably a violation of Facebook's First Amendment rights.

Of course, I've made this argument by assuming that the two reasons listed at the top are the only reasons that a company should be required to get people's permission before using their likeness in advertisements, and that if those reasons don't apply to Facebook 'likes,' then the permission requirement should not apply. But there may be other reasons besides those two, reasons that would also apply to ads listing Facebook 'likes,' and then that would invalidate the argument. But in the meantime, even though I don't use Facebook, if I did, I'd tentatively be fine with Facebook showing my profile picture in 'ads' to friends listing me as one of a group of people who had 'liked' a particular page.

On the other hand, if Facebook is really scanning your private messages for mentions of a particular page, and then automatically indicating on your profile that you 'like' that page, then yes, that means that any 'likes' acquired in that manner were not intended by the user to be public, and yes, that changes everything.

First time accepted submitter Saethan writes "Healthcare.gov, the site to be used by people in 36 states to get insurance as part of the Affordable Care Act, has apparently cost the U.S. Government $634 million. Not only is this more than Facebook spent during its first 6 years in operation, it is also over $500 million above what the original estimate was: $93.7 million. Why, in a country with some of the best web development companies in the world, has this website, which is poor quality at best, cost so much?" That $634 million figure comes from this U.S. government budget-tracking system. Given that this system is national rather than for a single city, maybe everyone should just be grateful the contract didn't go to TechnoDyne.

H_Fisher writes "What do you do when your daughter wants the girl to be the hero of your old video game? If you're Mike Mika, you hack the game ROM to reverse the roles. He even changed the 'M' at the top of the screen to a 'P.'"

Now that unlocking a new phone is under many circumstances illegal in the U.S. (!), Digital Trends has collected a useful set of answers outlining just what that means. As they put it, a "quick guide to answer all your why, how, and WTF questions." Among them, some explanation of the rule-making process, the reasoning that led to the end to the unlocking exception to the DMCA (including the Ninth Circuit's 2010 Vernor v. Autodesk decision), and illustrations of situations in which it is not illegal to unlock your phone.

The Oatmeal's call to raise funds for a museum celebrating Nikola Tesla seems to have electrified enough people. From Digital Trends: "The Oatmeal has raised over $1 million on IndieGoGo in an effort to secure Wardenclyffe, the site of Tesla's final laboratory, to build a museum dedicated to Tesla. ... [Oatmeal founder and artist Matthew] Inman’s original goal of $850,000 would buy just half of the cost of the property, but the state of New York has agreed to match contributions, bringing total funds up to $1.7 million. Raising the capital to build a museum from the property will be another cost, but from the looks of it, with 36 days left and having already surpassed the $1 million mark, there should be funds to spare."

twocows writes "FOX is set to make a new season of Carl Sagan's 'Cosmos: A Personal Voyage,' hosted by Neil Degrasse Tyson and written by none other than Ann Druyan (Carl Sagan's widow). Let's hope they don't screw it up like every other good show they've aired in the past decade."

ColdWetDog writes "Scientists now believe they've figured out what causes the uncanny valley response. They compared functional MRI scans of volunteers watching two different types of videos: those showing human-appearing androids, and those showing the humans that the robots were created to mimic. 'The results suggest that the uneasiness we feel could be caused by a "perceptual mismatch between appearance and motion."' Basically, the brain seemed to react in a strongly negative manner when the robotic motions of the android didn't match its human-like appearance."

derGoldstein writes with an article in DigitalTrends: "An amateur astronomer recently discovered what has been confirmed to be one of the best looks yet at a planetary nebula, the last, gassy breath of a dying star. The nebula, named Kronenberger 61 after the enthusiast who discovered it, will offer insights into the future and death of our own sun."

satuon writes "In a recently screened BBC documentary called 'Secrets of the Superbrands', UK neuroscientists found that the brains of Apple fans are stimulated by images of Apple products in the same areas as those triggered by religious imagery in a person of faith. According to the scientists, this suggests that the big tech brands have harnessed, or exploit, the brain areas that have evolved to process religion."

fysdt writes "Details on the next Call of Duty game, Modern Warfare 3, have not simply leaked onto the internet; they have flooded. Among other details, a November 8 release date was mentioned. According to a report coming from Kotaku, what was just a month ago among the best kept secrets of the gaming industry — information on the next Call of Duty game — has now become anything but."

rudy_wayne writes "News Corp. is reportedly trying to sell MySpace for $100 million, a fraction of the $580 million it originally paid for the social network in 2005. Parties interested in acquiring MySpace include private equity firm THL Partners, Redscout Ventures and Criterion Capital, owner of social network Bebo (the company AOL bought for $850 million and then sold for $10 million). Chinese Internet holding company Tencent is also reportedly interested, and so is MySpace co-founder Chris De Wolfe. What's not yet clear is what any of these companies plan to do with MySpace if a sale goes through." This follows news of massive layoffs and a rapidly shrinking userbase in recent months.

Stenchwarrior writes "Hewlett-Packard's chief executive officer Leo Apotheker announced that WebOS will be on every PC that HP ships in 2012. The move is intended to attract more developers and push the operating system from mobile devices onto desktops. Apotheker made the announcement during a presentation to HP's staff in India, according to a report by Bloomberg. It's not likely that WebOS will supplant existing operating systems on PCs, but rather would run on top of Windows to be able to launch WebOS apps. HP had previously announced its plans to push WebOS onto PCs last month, but, at the time, the company didn't reveal the scope of its commitment to the operating system. We now know that HP means each and every PC it sells starting in 2012 will have WebOS installed."

Hugh Pickens writes "Large images of Jimmy Wales have for weeks dominated each and every page on Wikipedia, making Wales arguably the single most visible individual on the planet. Now Molly McHugh writes that Wikipedia is once again pleading for user donations with banners across the top of its site with memos from purported authors and this week, Wales stepped up the shrillness of his rallying cry by adding the word 'Urgent' to his appeal. Wales attempted the same request for donations last year, and failed to meet the company's goal until Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar donated $2 million and Google stepped in with another $2 million gift to the foundation. This time around the foundation is approximately $7 million short of its 2010 fundraising goal, and Wikipedia analysts are saying the site would be better off with a marketing scheme as Alex Konanykhin of WikiExperts explains that the donations-only, no-commerce model restricts Wikipedia to relying exclusively on free volunteers, losing opportunities to involve qualified professionals who charge for their time in addition to the thirty staff members already on the Wikimedia payroll. 'Advertising is not cool. You're not as cool if you have advertising. But you know what else is not cool? Begging,' writes Jeff Otte. 'We do not care if there is advertising on Wikipedia, so long as it is not ridiculously invasive. So please, replace your sensitive mug with a Steak 'n' Shake ad or something, and start making advertisers pay for people to have stuff for free and not feel bad about it. It's the Internet's way.'"

Hugh Pickens writes "TechNewsWorld reports that Amazon's new, slimmed-down Kindle devices are notable for several things, including upgrades to their experimental WebKit browser that makes it faster and easier to navigate, and the new 'article mode' feature extracts the main text-based content from Web pages for easier reading (as Safari does), suggesting the possibility that the Kindle may grow up to be a real tablet computer someday. Eventually, the tablet and e-reader categories 'are going to slam together,' says Rob Enderle, adding that they are 'held apart, largely because we don't yet have an affordable display that will do both tasks well.' One current problem 'is that TFT displays like the iPad uses suck for reading because they aren't outdoor viewable and are very power hungry. Display technologies like the Qualcomm Mirasol stuff will change this over the next 18 months, and by the end of next year — likely before — we'll begin to see converged devices.' Mirasol uses tiny mirrors, known as microelectronic machines, to create its display, which has the low power characteristics of E-Ink displays and the video-playing and color abilities of LCDs."

Barence writes "Netbooks are more likely to fail within the first year than their more expensive laptop brethren, according to new research. SquareTrade, an independent US warranty provider, analyzed the failure rates of more than 30,000 laptops covered by its own warranties. It found that 5.8% of netbooks malfunctioned within the first year, compared to 4.7% for regular laptops and 4.2% for premium laptops costing more than $1,000. The research also raises question marks over the legendary reliability of Macs. Three PC manufacturers — Asus, Toshiba, and Sony — boasted better reliability rates than Apple. Macs have a 17.4% malfunction rate over three years, compared to market-leader Asus, which has a 15.6% failure rate. HP was the worst of the nine PC vendors listed, with a malfunction rate of 25.6% over three years."

shiroobi writes "Wow! $24-40 USD a pop? This would seem to mean that every TV is already marked up with this cost now that ATSC tuners are required. Looks like Vizio is fighting something like this already against Funai."

Anonymous Howard writes "Toshiba and Matsushita, in a joint venture, are going to be bringing OLED TV panels to market within 3 years! Granted, the size of the panel is only 20.8 inches, but that is a huge step up from the small OLED screens used in cell phones and other portable devices. It will have a resolution of 1,280 by 768 pixels (WXGA) and handles 16.7 million colors. No specifications on contrast, brightness, or refresh rates have been released, but such specs wouldn't necessarily be indicative of OLED displays to be released in three years' time."

Anonymous Howard writes "Just a couple of weeks ago Sandisk introduced a 32-GB solid-state drive. Now Samsung has one-upped them, unveiling a 64-GB solid-state drive. They are expecting to begin shipping in the second quarter of this year. Samsung says the device can read 64 MB/s, write 45 MB/s, and uses just 0.5 W when operating (0.1 W when idle). In comparison, an 80-GB 1.8-inch hard drive reads at 15 MB/s, writes at 7 MB/s, and consumes 1.5 W when either operating or idle. No pricing yet."

Anonymous Howard writes "Just a couple of weeks ago Sandisk introduced a 32-GB solid-state drive. Now Samsung has one-upped them, unveiling a 64-GB solid-state drive. They are expecting to begin shipping in the second quarter of this year. Samsung says the device can read 64 MB/s, write 45 MB/s, and uses just 0.5 W when operating (0.1 W when idle). In comparison, an 80-GB 1.8-inch hard drive reads at 15 MB/s, writes at 7 MB/s, and consumes 1.5 W when either operating or idle. No pricing yet."

macnificent7 writes "Market analysis firm Cymfony has combed through blogs and discussion boards, and finds online consumers aren't thrilled about Sony's Blu-ray DVD technology. Many users are still bitter about the limited availability of the PS3 because of the Blu-Ray. Also many are skeptical of the Blu-Ray because of Sony's past formats that did not succeed."

Luis Escalante writes "After over a year and a half, IE7 has been released to the public as of Monday afternoon. Download it directly here. Word hit the streets after several mangers of the IE division posted on the IE blog."

Luis Escalante writes "After over a year and a half, IE7 has been released to the public as of Monday afternoon. Download it directly here. Word hit the streets after several mangers of the IE division posted on the IE blog."

wh0pper writes "Digital Trends is reporting that a recent survey finds that there aren't just 2 gamer markets, but instead a whopping 6. What does this mean? It means that game developers and publishers are ignoring a large portion of the gaming market by focusing on the traditional two segments: casual gamers and hardcore gamers. The 4 other game markets they identified are Social Gamers, Leisure Gamers, Dormant Gamers, Incidental Gamers. If you are wondering what those categories mean, the article gives descriptions of what each segment is. A surprising result from the survey is the importance of social gaming; video games are often considered a solitary activity, but Parks Associates' findings indicate a significant portion of the market views gaming as a social activity."

RX8 writes "A Digital Trends article suggests that Apple's Leopard agenda is to get Windows users to use Apple hardware then convert them to the Apple camp and that Apple will also be directly targeting Dell by offering a better experience when it comes to media and related tasks. Lastly, they suggest that Steve Jobs held back on showing more Leopard features so people would not get too excited and stop buying in 2006. 'If you get too excited about what is supposed to be an incredibly amazing product you simply won't buy a new Apple this year.'"

One of yesterday's most commented stories was the report that MySpace.com has recently topped the charts for at least one measure of Internet popularity — site visits, as measured by Web-metrics company Hitwise. Along with a hefty dose of scorn for the actual content driving those page views (and some challenges to the conventional wisdom about MySpace's audience), readers expressed respect — not all of it grudging — for the reasons that MySpace has succeeded as it has. The 360-plus comments readers contributed to the story add interesting insights as well as information about the backend system which supports all those pageviews. Read on for the Backslash summary of the conversation.

To the objection raised by reader extra the woos ("I find this difficult to believe. I would think that Google would have more visits than MySpace, for sure."), MattHawk provides a reason why those sites are difficult to compare: "Google's design is lightweight. MySpace does not even pretend to suffer from this convenience. Google might very well account for more unique visitors, but MySpace makes up for the visitors by having each page view result in a significantly greater amount of bandwidth usage. Not to mention, if Google is working in its optimum capacity, it minimizes page views mdash; if you only load the front page, and then find what you're looking on in the first page of search results, it doesn't generate many page hits."

Before getting deeper into the comments, though, a contribution from reader wh0pper on the same topic of accuracy in MySpace's site statistics is worth considering; thanks to selective data presentation, he writes, the recent ranking numbers could be wrong. "According to Yahoo!, HitWise compared all of MySpace's traffic numbers to only one of Yahoo's subdomains: mail. Yahoo claims they get 129 million unique visitors a month. The article goes on to state that 'the bottom line is that, unless research firms of all stripes disclose the data they use to conduct their analyses (along with their methodologies and tools) taking the 'facts' of these reports — or the subsequent retorts — at face value is not a big improvement over studying steaming sheep entrails under giddy, sputtering torchlight.'"

Not all the visitors on MySpace are actual people, either. Reader micheas wants to know "What percentage of the traffic is bots?" He explains "I received 55 friend requests today mdash; none of them from real people. (Well, I haven't looked at all of them, but the few I clicked on were from profiles that identified themselves as 18-22 single female, and all had lots of male 'friends' they all more or less looked like ads for dating services, promos for bands, etc.) ... It is kind of interesting that MySpace seems to hold up under all the spam, even though they don't seem to do much about it (or are at least losing the war badly)."

Reader l3v1 scoffs at the claim in the originally linked article that MySpace has "[seen] a 4300% increase in visits in just two short years," writing "Like that would mean anything. Anyway, a few more dozen Slashdot [posts] about MySpace and that figure could easily go to about twohundredgazillion percent."

However they're calculated (or generated), the numbers are nonetheless huge. Reader gluecode writes "I speak to the person who runs their (MySpace's) ad servers, every week. He tells me that they average 3.7 billion page views per day. They run a custom version of the Doubleclick 5 ad servers, almost 400 of these servers. But they have a issue of how to monetize this traffic. They are trying to find ways to do that. They have a lot of junk ad inventory. I hear that they are getting very much into the mobile space in the US and internationally mdash; video blogging, photo blogging etc. This way they can make at least two dollars per user month over mobile services. On another note, Microsoft is working with them very closely to convert their server farm from Cold Fusion to ASP.Net 2.0."

Reader Timbotronic comments on the note about switching to ASP.Net: "This is an interesting one. MySpace is written in ColdFusion but actually runs on the .NET version of BlueDragon [ newatlanta.com]. BlueDragon is a .NET (or Java) application that runs ColdFusion code as an alternative to Adobe's ColdFusion server. So what we have currently is a situation where:

1. Adobe can't really claim that MySpace is running ColdFusion because it's running in .NET on a competitor's server not theirs and
2. Microsoft isn't really crowing about MySpace running .NET because it's written in a competitor's language.

Not surprising that they're 'working closely' to fix that!"

Reader Gord laments for practical reasons the "bandwidth wastage" resulting from MySpace's popularity, writing "MySpace users accounted for nearly 10% (2GB) of my bandwidth usage last month from my general webserving box. Mostly by people using a direct link to a 4MB image for their background image. Fortunately this has been largely mitigated with an apache rewrite redirecting MySpace users to a polite message asking them to stop. However, this leads me to wonder how much bandwidth MySpace is sucking from non-MySpace servers just so users can have pretty background pages and other assorted images. Helping support Rupert Murdoch isn't something I'm happy to waste bandwidth on."

Other readers have their own reasons for negative views of the MySpace phenomenon. Reader eplossl, for instance, calls the site's success "worrisome," because "people don't seem to understand how potentially dangerous this is. Consider the sheer volume of details some people (read: children) put on their MySpace accounts. Parents should police this, but, all too often, they don't. The fact is that this service presents all too much possibility for children to get hurt. Consider also the single women all over who post their info online. Some of them realize that they shouldn't post that they live alone in an apartment in south-central LA, but others would very quickly post this sort of thing. Unfortunately, this again puts people at risk."

Reader caitsith01 speaks for many with an evaluation of MySpace as "for the most part intensely narcissistic and inane," and writes "People are presented with a tool for publishing absolutely anything, about any topic they choose. Instead of presenting thoughtful, creative or otherwise valuable content, the vast majority elect to pointlessly ramble about themselves in minute detail or engage in endless back and forth with other users about nothing in particular. Which is fine, but it shouldn't have the legitimacy of other web content. [...] Perhaps it's time to move past the blog hype and to consider some method for differentiating personal diaries (i.e., what used to be a personal homepage), social chit chat (i.e., what used to be a bulletin board, IRC, or IM activity), and publications with actual content. Right now the net is awash with an ever-expanding tide of rubbish and there is very little to assist in finding the few really interesting and high quality publications among the garbage. Ultimately it's depressing that, given the ability to communicate our ideas to anyone on earth, most of us can't come up with anything better than pictures of ourselves drinking too much and mass-produced but ineffectual rebelliousness."

Reader enjahova reacts viscerally to that sentiment, commenting "You are not alone in your argument. You are supported by medieval scholars who decried the rise of literacy, the government of the UK when the printing press was made, and many more anti-intellectual pessimists throughout history. They held your very same belief, what sort of chaos and tragedy will occur if everybody is literate? Peasants are dumb and uncultured, they will only pollute the literary pool. You say the same shit about the Internet. The only difference now is that we have search engines, computers, and instant communication to help us sort through the bullshit. People like you like to ignore the fact that if only one out of every 99 people posting to MySpace creates something worthwhile, that's one more worthwhile thing on the Internet to be found and shared."

NickFortune acknowledges that free-form online expression isn't always of great merit, but also shares a more optimistic view of its possibilities: "Alas, the price of giving people a tool for publishing whatever they want, is that people will use it to publish whatever they want. ... Stephen King once wrote "If you lift weights for an hour a day, you're going to grow muscles. If you sit down and write for an hour a day, you're going to learn how to write". Some of these bloggers you so deride are going to grow into people worth reading.

A similar argument from reader Sloppy: "[I]f MySpace is inane, it's because people are inane. MySpace is merely a microcosm. Go out and listen to people talking. At work, at a bar, whatever. You're going to hear pointless rambling.

On a completely different tack... you're looking at what people publish, and maybe not looking at what people are reading on MySpace — what they're getting out of it. That is a lot harder to figure out. What I found, when I signed up, was that it was a way to keep up with my local music scene. In that regard, it has been valuable .. or at least (heh) no more inane than the local music scene itself (which maybe isn't saying much, I can't make up my mind about that)."

Several readers expressed even greater appreciation for the site; playingwithknives, for instance, writes "Im 34; my beautiful, wonderful, amazing girlfriend I met through MySpace is 33; my MySpace friends are all mid 20s to low 40s. Ive met and socialized with some, and romanced a few too and its all been pretty damn cool so far. ... I just avoided the kiddies/teens/emos with a simple age filter on searches and it actually turned out to be one of the better websites about for meeting new people."

Content aside, several readers outlined reasons to believe the growth of MySpace is far from over, starting with its ownership. Reader Animats raises an interesting point about where MySpace fits into a broader landscape of media ownership, calling its success a "triumph of 'old media.'"

"Alexa says that the top five sites today are, in order, Yahoo, MSN, Google, MySpace, and eBay. Of those, only MySpace is owned by an 'old media' company, and only MySpace is growing significantly. This may be the first time that a top Internet site was owned by an 'old media' company. (MySpace is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation [ www.newscorp]). It makes sense; MySpace is to the Internet as tabloid journalism is to the newspaper industry. News Corp now has a leading position in both."

Zaphod2016, sees a parallel in the search engine world because of MySpace's current popularity, writing "Recently, Slashdot ran this article about Ask.com's growing market share. CEO Jim Lanzone has complained that his service is superior to competitors', but has not yet approached the market share of the Google-ocracy. The reason? Like Xerox before it, Google has become a part of our common vernacular in 2006 (to google, I googled it, etc). Some expect Google will remain on top for this reason alone, others claim that superior technology is how Google became #1 in the first place, and so, Ask.com has a chance. So what does this have to do with MySpace? MySpace currently finds itself in a similar position; unlike rivals such as Facebook or Friendster (remember them?) their market share is simply in a league all its own. ... With a social network, I must invest a significant amount of time in order to setup my profile, and the experience is dependent on how many friends (or similar-minded people) I can find also using the service. Once I have become comfortable using one service, I might be hesitant to 'start over' at another, especially if none of my friends were using it either."

Partly because of that time investment in familiarization, reader LittleBigScript calls MySpace "the new Internet," writing:

"I think you all aren't going to like this, but MySpace is beginning to become what people (under 30) mean when people ask if you are 'on the Internet.' This is similar to when people ask if you have a phone, [and] they mean a cell phone. I saw a movie preview yesterday on TV where it didn't list a website, but a MySpace address. It may be a good thing that your content provider will become a social networking site, so you could look at your content in virtually the same way on every computer which is connected."

One of the most concise arguments for MySpace's success comes from walnutmon, who writes "What I rarely see about MySpace, is what a brilliant idea it is. Not everyone knows how to create a website, but most people have the capacity, and interest to learn how to use MySpace. Instead of looking down on myspacers perhaps those of us who know how to use the Internet should learn how to cater to those who are not technically savvy. Isn't that the idea of selling technology? Making things that normally wouldn't be accessible to everyone accessible?"

Cgenman lays out a similar argument, which could be a manifesto for anyone trying to start an online community: "Basically, MySpace does all of those sappy things that the Internet was supposed to do years ago. The content is all by users. It's all about helping people network with each other. It appeals to people's vanity as well as their curiosity. It happens to have a great underserved niche (indie bands) that tent pegs it even if they aren't the primary users. It's naughty. It's viral.

Basically, put control in the hands of your users, and let them work for the communal site. Find some underserved niche and add features to support their usage habits. Make sure everyone joins. Don't censor interesting stuff. Be a community builder rather than a content provider."

Thanks to everyone whose comments informed the discussion, in particular those readers quoted above.

wh0pper writes "Digital Trends has a great opinion piece about how Netscape has lost its identity again in regards to their wanna-be Digg portal. One interesting fact I was not aware of is that Jason Calacanis is the person behind the new beta Netscape portal. A choice quote: 'If this business model sees the light-day and it looks like it will, Netscape readers will change from the baby-boomers of yester-year to a younger audience more interested in Jessica Alba's Bikini or Britney Spears than real intellectual news.' I've tried using the new beta Netscape site, and personally hate it. The little link to the external site and the frame to keep you on Netscape's site are deal killers for me. Does the general audience think it can compete?"

lfescalante writes to mention a unique synergistic melding of television and gaming: A Dance Dance Revolution TV show. From the article: "Dance Revolution, said all parties involved, is a live-action television series based on Konami's extremely popular video game franchise Dance Dance Revolution. Notes published by DIC and Konami describe this series as one in which 'tweens' and teens bring their freshest moves to this sensational new dance competition where teams of dancers display their innovative routines."

lfescalante writes "TiVo, in an increasingly diversified attempt to offer new content to its subscriber base, today announced a partnership with Internet TV pioneer Brightcove to bring content partner video offerings from this company to Tivo boxes. The first fruits of this relationship should begin appearing within the coming months."

wh0pper writes "Digital Trend has an interesting take on Yahoo! Go. With Yahoo's acquisition of Meedio, Yahoo! Go will be in the position to be everyones media bridge. With Yahoo!'s intended arrival in the TV environment, it aspires to become the user's guide to all media." From the article: "This would appear to be the worst of nightmares for traditional PayTV operators. Suddenly, they become part of a Yahoo!-defined walled garden of sorts, hidden behind the Yahoo!-branded user interface and reduced to a simple pipe that delivers broadcast television. Without their own proprietary IPG being used, how can they sell pay-per-view and VOD movies?"