people

Somebody combined the Village People's hit song, "YMCA," with footage of a dancing Adolf Hitler and posted the clip to YouTube. Now the company that owns the rights to the band's music is preparing to sue YouTube.

John Giacobbi, president of Web Sheriff, which hunts down pirated material on the Web and tries to get it removed, said his company has sent 500 "take-down" notices to YouTube. Each time the video is pulled, someone else uploads another copy. Giacobbi believes that YouTube has the ability to screen for copyright content in the same way … Read more

Last week, The Wall Street Journal had a story about Arbitron's People Meter, a new portable device that helps the radio ratings measurement company determine the exact amount of time a user spends listening to particular radio stations. Radio stations insert an inaudible signal that only the device picks up, and testers are supposed to carry the devices at all times, so regardless of where they listen (work, home, car, grocery store), the People Meter knows. This is more accurate than the old way of asking radio listeners to record their habits in a paper diary--users tended not to … Read more

Spock, a new search engine that searches for people, has opened its doors to all as of this morning. I was actually able to use the service freely early yesterday, but things were a bit slow going--and still are. How does it stack up? Well, we got our hands on it a few months back while it was still in private beta and came away with a few concerns, mostly about the speed and its database of noncelebrities.

To my surprise, however, a quick search this morning picked up a good number of people in my family, many of whom have no real Internet presence. The service claims to have more than 100 million people in its database as of this morning. If you can't find yourself, you can register with the service and claim your name.

Charles Cooper over at CNET News.com has an interesting Q&A with Spock's CEO and cofounder Jaideep Singh. Some of the topics discussed include what content the service is indexing, the business plan, and some background on how the tool works.

Below is a widget of some Spock results. As you can see, feeding it "John Smith" is hardly a fair task, yielding everything from politicians to porn stars.To see it, click the read more link below.… Read more

I never cease to be amazed by the bizarre and inane uses to which the web can be put. The most recent case in point is Camfess, "a site where you can share your secret on video anonymously." Makes sense, right? You have a secret, so why not share it online with everyone?

This is a really, really, really dumb idea.… Read more

The PeekYou people search engine launched today in open beta. It's yet another site (see Wink and Spock) designed to help you find people.

If you're interested in this space, my recommendation is to use Wink. Spock is still in closed beta, and PeekYou's current beta is unimpressive. Despite the company's claim of 50 million people in the database, there are many duplicates (over 700 entries for George Bush, each with a few links--and typing George W. Bush doesn't work to narrow the results). And there's no good way to tell who's who … Read more

The people search engine Spock is still in very private beta, but the doors opened up a crack this morning when a few more people were let in to the system, including me. Now that I've been able to play with the service, it's easy to see that Spock's creators are trying to build more than just a Google of people. Spock is also being built to map the relationships of people to each other.

This is made clear when beta users activate their invitation code. Spock asks you first for your personal connections: It wants you … Read more

It's been a banner week for germaphobes. Just the other day we pointed to a device that purifies water with UV rays, and now we get word of a product that filters out airborne germs from the air within its immediate vicinity.

The "Ionic USB Air Purifier," according to Fareastgizmos, "discharges negative ions to absorb second-hand smoke, odors, clean airborne dust, and eliminate bacteria, germs, viruses." The device circulates air silently without a fan and needs no filters. All you need, apparently, is faith.

We've officially crossed the line from mild obsession to full-blown paranoia over egg-shaped speakers. We're fully convinced that, one by one (or two by two), they're populating themselves in preparation for world domination.

The latest are Evergreen's pair of oval speakers, which Shiny Shiny wryly noted are offered on AudioCubes of all places. The proliferation of this USB line is apparently limited to Windows, so we're relieved to say that we may have eluded a full ovo-revolution--for now.

(Photo: AudioCubes)