Media

Apparently the legal department at MySpace is busy.

The social network, owned by Newscorp., has sent cease and desist letters to several Web sites with services built to thrive off MySpace membership, a community in the tens of millions. The MySpace legal letters ask that piggybackers shut down.

DatingAnyone.com is one such site. The service, which started in April, let visitors investigate the relationship status of MySpace members, and then get updates via e-mail when that status changes.

According to MySpace, whose letter is posted to DatingAnyone.com, the service may seem innocuous, but it's against the law. &… Read more

In a bid to come up with five of its users' best images, the photo-sharing site Flickr, is currently having a contest to do just that.

It's called the "Blink of an Eye" contest. The idea is that users can each submit one photo, and then a panel of five judges will sift through them (there are already 1,490 images up for consideration) and choose the best five.

Those shots will then be put on display for a one-night exhibition at a gallery in New York in August.

This should be interesting, as one thing about … Read more

Springer, a publisher of scientific, technical and medical books, is launching an eBook program that will give subscribers access to more than 10,000 texts. What makes the program unusual is that it will allow unlimited simultaneous access to the electronic books. That's in contrast to other e-book providers, who have a one e-book per user policy. Springer customers will also be able to print out a PDF document of a given title, or save it to their local computer. Springer is making the announcement at the American Library Association conference in New Orleans this weekend.

Micro Persuasion always offers useful advice, as blogger Steve Rubel proved once again with his post titled, "35 Ways You Can Use RSS Today.

Some are no-brainers (as far as we're concerned, anyway), such as feeds that track your favorite baseball/football/you-name-the-sport team. But we're curious about the first entry on the list: Using RSS to track drunken athletes?

If you're fans of the highly stylized work of Frank Miller, as we are, you might appreciate this entry. A post on TutorialSeeker.com gives detailed instructions showing "how to get that Sin City look in your image."

Mike Hudack, the CEO of Blip.TV, is on a mission to rescue videobloggers from video hosting sites and services that "aren't about individual empowerment." He feels that most of the video sites snag all the digital rights they can and make money on the backs of other peoples' work. Which sites? You(tube) know which ones.

Although Blip.tv does allow consumers to surf for videos on the Blip site, the core function of the service is that it allows its users to take video they upload to Blip's servers and easily push it out … Read more

Not having any luck with bids on eBay? Well, there's another online auction site you might want to hit--PropertyRoom.com. The goods in question are from police property auctions. That's right, the loot seized from thieves and convicted and alleged criminals.

For example, under the heading "Hot Pursuit Specials" (which features an illustration of a "Dragnet"-style police car), a Sony PlayStation Portable was listed, with bidding at $171. Among the "Fine jewelry items starting at $1" is a 1.5-carat diamond in white gold setting engagement ring, with bidding at … Read more

The mother of a Texas teenager has sued MySpace.com for $30 million, after her daughter said she was sexually assaulted by a man she met on the social-networking site.

According to an article published Monday in The Austin American-Statesman newspaper, the 14-year-old said she was contacted by the 19-year-old defendant through her MySpace Web page in April. He was arrested in May, the article says.

The lawsuit alleges that MySpace.com has lax security in protecting its users, many of whom are younger than 16, the article says.

"MySpace is more concerned about making money than protecting children … Read more

We at Blogma have long been suspicious of conventional learning principles, especially when we got lousy grades. So we welcome ideas such as those from The Creativity Packet, which offers unconventional approaches to education, often non-verbal. Its latest concepts focus on the power of puzzles.