-- Twitturly, the site that tracks what people are most frequently linking to on Twitter (and an excellent resource for story-starved web journalists), "is slowly dying," according to a banner on its site. As LouisGray.com explains, this is the result of a policy change by Twitter that limits the number of unauthenticated API requests to 100 per IP per hour. So to services like Twitturly -- the ones that depend on asking Twitter a lot of questions -- the faucet is being shut off. Hopefully they'll be able to find a way around it or else, see you in Twitter Heaven (with the Fail Whale).
As this ZDNet article tells it, the British government is considering proposals to broaden the privacy protection powers of the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), an independent watchdog whose purpose is to "promote access to official information and to protect personal information."
A proposal for beefing up the ICO, reported ZDNet, recommended that the group be given the power to raid companies or entities they suspect of committing a "data breach."
How great is this? A privacy task force strike team? At the slightest hint that a SSN might be sitting on an unprotected laptop somewhere, these guys (and women) helicopter in, secure the premises, handcuff the privacy slobs and gingerly rescue the laptop, perhaps carrying it out in a baby blanket, as triumphant orchestra music plays.
Or, even better, how about this scene:
A little old lady is talking to a telemarketer.
Telemarketer: "Your social security number, please?"
Lady: "Do I have to?"
Telemarketer: "Yes, I'm afraid so."
Lady: "All right, then. It's 553--wha??"
Suddenly, a masked crusader glides in, grabs the phone, and--SLAM!--swiftly hangs it up.
Lady: "Oh, thank you, mister! I wasn't sure how to get off the line."
ICO: "All in a day's work, ma'am."
Lady: "But, who are you?"
ICO: "Just call me Privacy Man. And remember, just because it's a Social Security Number, doesn't mean your friends should know it."
And with that, Privacy Man disappears into the bright night.
Starting with the stare. That 10 to 20 second stare from Dr. Horrible (Neil Patrick Harris) was acting genius. And that melded seamlessly into the catchy, and might I add well-sung, "On the Rise"* harmony between Penny (Felicia Day) and Dr. Horrible. Technically, a great illustration of character development through song ... a hummable ditty!
Who knew Doogie was this good? Well, anyone who has seen him on stage and in anything he's ever been in -- but still, this is a bit surprising. A way-more-than-decent actor, but occasionally not in the greatest material. I guess "sometimes there's a third, even deeper level and that one is the same as the surface level." The individual stand-up scenes, the coin wash face-to-face talks with Penny, and the quick but hilarious repartee with his evil sidekick Moist ("At my most bad ass I make people feel like they want to take a shower,") illustrate why NPH got an Emmy nom this morning for "How I Met Your Mother."
Oh, and I really hope we get to meet Bad Horse (the Thoroughbred of Sin) and some other members of the Evil League of Evil.
Capt. Hammer (Nathan Fillion) is showing signs of Caleb (the demonic preacher from "Buffy"). That was pretty evil of him to bring Penny into his personal spat with Dr. Horrible. Evil of him? Do I feel a plot twist coming on ... nah! Couldn't be -- could it? Am I questioning myself? Let's stop this.
The songs. I hope Joss puts out a greatest hits album (yes, I really said album). Act I and its tunes were a bit more fun, but "On the Rise," "Seeds You're Sowing" and "Brand New Day" were excellent. With Dr. Horrible (PhD in Horribleness) embracing his dark side, I can't wait to see the climactic third act.
Daniel Craig, who plays Bond, and Bond girl Olga Kurylenko. (Photo: Karl-Josef Hildenbrand / EPA)
"Quantum of Solace," as a title, has a modicum of dullness. But from the trailer that's now circulating online, the new James Bond movie looks like it might follow on the heels of its dark, Daniel Craig-led predecessor in reviving a franchise that had descended into schmaltz, explosions, and formula.
If you haven't seen the trailer, check it out by clicking on the above link (caution: doesn't seem to work on a Mac). The player, by a company called Vividas, will instantly seize your computer and begin playing the trailer at full screen size.
But the vividness and resolution is impressive--it almost looks like you're watching a DVD. (For a kick, compare the streaming quality to the same trailer on YouTube.)
Also like the protected parts of a DVD, you can't fast-forward, pause, or rewind either--an irritating and un-webby feature. The software didn't let me take a screen shot either, so I'm thinking there's all kinds of anti-piracy software built into the Vividas player (their web site offers a pledge to deliver content owners "ultimate security through advanced Digital Rights Management.") Not sure what that means, since we all know how long those promises last.
Still, the player is pretty darned hi-fi, and it's a good example of how online video technology is continuing to evolve. Pretty soon DVDs, along with old vacuum parts and boxes of polaroids, will be among the funny things kids find in the back of the hallway closet.
The blog entry was a comment on a rule reportedly being drafted by the Bush administration's Department of Health and Human Services. The rule would threaten to cut funding to medical care providers which refused to hire personnel who preferred not to perform abortions for religious or moral reasons.
Commentators have noted that the proposal's definition of abortion is so broad that it could include, as the Times' Countdown to Crawford blog wrote, "multiple forms of contraception, including some birth control pills, IUDs and emergency 'morning after' contraception." (C2C also posted about this situation).
If the Administration goes through with this draft proposal, it will launch a dangerous assault on womens' health.
The majority of Americans oppose this out of touch position that redefines contraception as abortion and represents a sustained pattern of the Bush Administration to reject medical and sound science in favor of a misguided ideology that has no place in our government.
Digg can send thousands of visitors to a website at a time, a level of traffic concentration that can bring down even large and relatively well-established sites. It's probable that the Speaker.gov site rarely gets spikes of this size, and so -- like many websites that get Dugg, Drudged, Slashdotted or even Yahoo! Buzzed -- they'll have to learn the hard way that there's no such thing as too much bandwidth.
When I called Pelosi's office, the spokesperson I talked to did not know there was a problem with the site. When he tried to load it himself, it did not come up. He said he'd look into it and call back.
UPDATE (12:19 p.m.): The site appears to be back up and running.
In a stipulation issued by the court, the two parties agreed that all data from YouTube user logs would be anonymized -- that is, the IP addresses and user names would be removed from all viewing data and substituted with placeholder values. Translation: Now, no Viacom employees or outside legal experts will know it was me who watched Miss USA fall down 300 times in a row last night.
But the real subtext of this controversy has taken a few days to bubble to the surface. Google may have narrowly maneuvered out of the potential PR disaster, but who's to say there won't be another company suing them for their logs next week? In 2006, the Justice Department subpoenaed Google for two months' worth of search data. Google fought, and won, like they did this time. But the streak has to end sometime.
Neither Google's search engine nor YouTube ever ask users to explicitly, clearly agree to having their behavior permanently logged. After all, if they did, a lot of people might say no. And though YouTube has a page called, "How do I clear my Viewing History," this is, at best, misleading. Clearing your history in this manner appears only to remove the videos that you've watched sinceyour browser window has been open -- and not the endless perma-log YouTube stores of all the videos you've ever watched. The help page above barely makes this distinction. I asked YouTube about this yesterday, and am still waiting for an answer.
JibJab, a distributor of electronic greeting cards, is back in the saddle with its first video co-starring Barack Obama and John McCain. The terms "Jib Jab" and "jibjab.com" held spots at No. 2 and 7 on Google Hot Trends this morning -- so people are hearing about it.
The "Time for Some Campaignin'" eCard opens with President Bush, outfitted in flannel and cowboy boots with a banjo in hand, being carried out of the White House. It goes on to poke fun at McCain's age, Obama's lofty promises and both candidates' high-volume campaign spending. There's even a cameo by a Hillary Clinton (who recently asked donors to contribute to her next presidential bid in 2012). Clinton sings, "I'll be back in four years, heck it ain't all that far! Oh it's time for some campaignin'!"
The spoof of Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'" might spark a bit of déjà vu. JibJab was in the spotlight during the last election for its "This Land" video, a 2 1/2-minute clip that spread like wildfire four years ago, back when "viral" was just a wee little concept. That cartoon, set to the Woodie Guthrie classic "This Land is Your Land," depicts Bush drawing on a map with crayons, while "liberal wiener" John Kerry dances around in a hot dog costume.
"Dr. Horrible," which is now the No. 1 TV show (and TV season) on iTunes, is off to a roaring start.
Roaring so hard, in fact, that the DrHorrible.com site was down most of the day Tuesday because it couldn't handle all the incoming requests.
The show creators said at peak, the site was getting 200,000 hits per hour. In fact, a representative from their web hosting company, Vireo Verio.com, called to tell them the site had crashed when, at one point, 1,000 people tried to access it in one second.
According to "Dr. Horrible" writer Maurissa Tancharoen, the representative told the creators that the traffic to DrHorrible.com had been "insanely huge."
Though the creators had anticipated being able to handle the traffic loads with a large bandwidth plan, Tancharoen said they upgraded to the largest "monster" plan their provider offered, which comes with a backup server in case the primary fails.
In addition, the Hulu player that originally wasn't allowing international viewers to watch has been tweaked so the episode is now available everywhere.
Dr. Horrible, played by Neil Patrick Harris, is up to no good in his Horrible lab. (Photo credit: Amy Opoka.)
Dr. Horrible is good!
And that’s exactly his problem. The title character of the landmark new Web musical, “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” played by the lovable and unmenacing Neil Patrick Harris, dreams of gaining admission to the vaunted Evil League of Evil, home of the baddest baddies in the land. But he’s kidding himself. Dr. H. is too skittish to harm innocents or wreak much havoc. The ray guns he invents never seem to work that well, and his cackle is so wimpy he’s hired a voice coach.
Plus, what kind of criminal mastermind has a blog?
Ask Joss Whedon. He’s the guy who’s built a career on bending genres. In “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” he dreamed up a 16-year-old girl who sent vampires back to hell. And “Firefly,” Whedon’s short-lived 2002 TV show, was a Western, except, in space.
So it’s only fitting that Whedon would create a show like “Dr. Horrible.” He makes bad guys into good guys and good into bad, writes a superhero epic where every three minutes the characters break out in song, and most death defying of all, he puts the whole thing on the Internet.
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