Media

Peter Harper's Web site is a classic example of how online social networking is redefining tastes in entertainment. Each month readers vote on four artists and four musicians; the winners then get to submit additional works and contact information while earning a permanent link on the site.

Harper told Blogma that the grassroots marketing system, which allows artists to sell their works as well as raise their profiles, has been in operation "for the last four years, and it has been a huge success." It's just one way that artists and performers are breaking old rules … Read more

If you've been following the saga of Kyle MacDonald, you know that he has been trying to trade, step-by-step, a single red paper clip for a house.

Absurd as it sounds, he's made some serious progress, and when we last checked in on him, he had traded his way up to an afternoon with rocker Alice Cooper. Surely, the thinking went, someone would want to trade something of some pretty serious significance for the time with the music icon.

Well, at each step of the way, MacDonald is the one making the decisions on what trades to make … Read more

Is MySpace already becoming yesterday's news? The New York Times this weekend became the latest to weigh in with that assessment.

If it's true, no one should be surprised. Even Blogma pointed out that such communities have always had limited shelf lives, going back to the early days of AOL, Geocities and, more recently, Friendster.

This is not to say, of course, that News Corp. necessarily wasted the entire $580 million it paid for MySpace. It just underscores the inherent risk of investing in anything that relies on the enduring loyalty of teenagers. If anything, it can be (… Read more

News about the 60GBroundtheworld.com project, in which a black 60GB iPod sails across the globe, is gaining some mileage.

The iPod, itself, however, is just starting its journey.

The venture, dubbed a "modern message in a bottle," involves a traveling iPod, which will collect content such as photos, videos and music, as it is handed off from person to person, country to country.

The enterprising scheme, conceptualized by 23-year-old Mirko Kraemer, of Germany, is ready for an official launch June 9.

Aside from getting media attention, the experiment will serve as an investigation into the human side … Read more

An estimated 25 percent of boys and 20 percent of girls say they have engaged in online sex, according to the Drudge Report that cited Dutch researchers. Online sex is defined by pretending to have sex while sending explicit email, instant messages or images to a partner.

Apart from faux sex, the majority of boys and girls said they had at least flirted online, according to the report.

Yet there's a big caveat: the study isn't scientific and it's yet to be confirmed. Drudge said the survey was commissioned by Royal KPN NV, the Netherlands' largest Internet … Read more

Loved ones who turned to a blog to get updates on the condition of a young car crash victim got some chilling news Wednesday.

Not only had Laura Van Ryn, 22, of Caledonia, Mich., died, but it turned out she had been buried for month.

In a shocking case of mistaken identity, the Van Ryn family was led to believe that Laura Van Ryn, a student at Taylor University in Indiana, was the blond-haired woman who had been hospitalized and, until recently, in a coma, following a fatal car crash in Indiana last month, according to The Associated Press. The blog, … Read more

Lest we forget, David Fincher's 1999 punching fantasy "Fight Club" was a movie. Nothing more. Nothing less.

But according to the Associated Press, a group of Silicon Valley geeks has been playing out the brutal, beat-each-other-up-for-fun mentality of the film in real life and for real fun. Or whatever people who beat each other to bits for recreation call it. Never mind the bruises, blood and hurt feelings.

"When you get beat down enough, it becomes a very un-macho thing," the AP quoted 34-year-old Santa Clara software engineer Shiyin Siou as saying. "But I … Read more

More money will soon be spent on Internet advertising than national newspapers in the United Kingdom, according to an article in Monday's Financial Times.

"By the end of 2007, Internet advertising will close the gap on regional newspapers, the No. 2 medium, but will still be well short of television, the biggest outlet in the 12 billion-pound--a-year ($22.6 billion) media advertising market," the article said, citing a report from GroupM, a WPP holding company.

The report estimates that the Internet will take 13.3 percent of the total media advertising spending, just above national newspapers but … Read more

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday chose not to intervene in a long-simmering dispute about whether a French censorship order can apply to Yahoo's U.S.-based Web site.

The justices, without comment, denied a request by French activist organizations to address the topic. (PDF)

In January, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed Yahoo's case involving the online display of Nazi-related books, posts and memorabilia on grounds that it was premature to offer a definitive ruling.

Yahoo filed the suit in December 2000 in an effort to clear up whether a U.S. company … Read more