Media

Elle Girl mag now only online

After five years in print, Elle Girl will stop the presses and publish exclusively on the Internet to better target its audience, according to a report in Ad Age. Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., its parent company, plans to publish online and mobile content to reach the teen girls of its demographic.

With the rising number of teens online, the move seems to be a no-brainer. It's further evidence that companies targeting a younger generation need to reach them where they spend most time.

YouTube receives $8 million in venture funding

Video upload site YouTube.com has received $8 million in funding from venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, the companies announced Wednesday.

This latest round of funding comes five months after Sequoia invested $3.5 million into YouTube, a site that has grown rapidly by building an online community where a mixture of homemade and professionally produced video clips are presented.

"The additional capital will be used to advance the company??s rapid growth, expand sales and marketing efforts," the company said in a statement, adding that the money will also go to helping the company expand its data … Read more

Webcasting crooner signed to RCA

Sandi Thom, the singer/guitarist whose live Webcast concerts created a cult following, has been signed by the RCA Label Group.

According to Thom's Web site, the official signing was Webcast at 9 p.m. U.K. time on April 3, 2006 and was "the first Webcast signing in major record label history."

The Scottish singer/guitarist has attracted fans with her live Webcam concerts from her basement in London.

"Anyone wanting to come to the venue physically and not watch it on the Web, please note that the room capacity is a maximum of 10 … Read more

Apple releases 10.4.6 update to Tiger

Apple Computer has released an upgrade to the Tiger operating system that fixes some bugs and offers some modest performance enhancements.

Apple said in an e-mail message on Monday that the updates to Tiger (the new version is called 10.4.6) fix problems with printing to wireless printers, quotations in the Mail application, and exporting image data in Aperture.

The update is available for both Intel and PowerPC-based Macintoshes.

AOL announces name change

The confusion about whether AOL stands for America Online or American Online is forever over. From now on, the company will officially go by its widely used acronym.

Most people have referred to the Web media company as AOL for a long time and Monday's name change was expected for some time.

Time Warner's Internet unit also announced that it's moving from a corporation to a limited liability company.

"Our company long ago accomplished the mission implied by our old name. We literally got America online," Jon Miller, chairman and chief executive of AOL told … Read more

Animations reveal shocking violence at Dude Corp.

The managers at Dude Corp. should expect a visit from their OSHA representative in due time--assuming the government tracks animated fiction.

The killer fans, ejector-seat Aeron chairs and unsecured ice-skating rinks depicted on these four short videos by Rubberductions in London show a typical day at the apocryphal Dude Corp. in all its gory glory. They're also an excellent example of the type of video that's expected to appeal to mobile-phone users.

Phone carriers and moviemakers are getting ready for the advent of mobile video, which is already common in some parts of the world. Participants in a … Read more

Google Romance launches, Gates buys OpenOffice--not

A couple April Fool's Day jokes got us smiling this morning.

Seems Google is coming out with new features all the time, so the search giant got us--for a very quick moment anyway--with its Google Romance beta and pitch, "When you think about it, love is just another search problem."

Some of the spoof features include a Soulmate Search and Contextual Date "which we'll pay for while delivering to you relevant ads that we and our advertising partners think will help produce the dating results you're looking for."

Slashdot then pointed us to … Read more

Sensitive documents surface in AT&T-NSA spy lawsuit

It looks like the Electronic Frontier Foundation may have unearthed some highly sensitive documents about the National Security Agency's supersecret spy program.

The San Francisco-based advocacy group said on Friday that the Bush administration had objected to it including some internal AT&T documents with a scheduled court filing because the information may be classified. (In January, EFF sued AT&T over its alleged participation in the possibly-illegal scheme.)

Here's what Kurt Opsahl, an EFF staff attorney, told me late Friday:

"We're having some discussions with the Department of Justice about what can be … Read more

Like a MySpace cowboy

MySpace.com, the online community that's skyrocketed to popularity, isn't just for teens and aspiring rockers. It can also be a digital doughnut hut for police officers.

According to a report in Kentucky's Herald-Leader, a handful of Lexington police officers may be reprimanded for comments and photos posted to MySpace.com that deride gays and the mentally disabled.

One Lexington police officer even described himself in his MySpace profile by saying: "I love to lock a mother f----- up ...," according to the report.

That's certainly shooting from the hip.

George Clooney fights back against celebrity stalker site

Actor George Clooney is mad about a celebrity stalker Web site and is corralling fellow stars into taking action, according to an article on Friday in New York Post's Page Six. Clooney is urging stars to flood the Gawker Stalker with so many bogus star sightings that the Web site will lose credibility.

"There is a simple way to render these guys useless," Clooney said in an e-mail his publicist sent out show-business publicists. "Flood their Web site with bogus sightings. Get your clients to get 10 friends to text in fake sightings of any number … Read more