Daily News Channel
Online retailer Amazon has found itself at the center of a storm after it removed a number of gay and lesbian-themed books from its sales charts. On Sunday, a number of distinguished writers, including Gore Vidal, Annie Proulx and E.M. Forster, suddenly lost their best-seller ranking — which is the number that Amazon uses to show how well one title sells compared with another
Penny Ireland’s family is so scattered around the world that Facebook, the popular social networking site, has become the family’s No. 1 way to communicate. “We call it our living room,” the 56-year-old mother said by phone from her home in Houston, Texas.
The business of having online sites with content created by amateurs to be viewed by other amateurs never had a reasonable chance of making money. The fact that at one point Facebook had a $15 billion valuation, that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp bought MySpace, and that Google bought YouTube only proves the “greater fool” theory. YouTube was started in 2005 and MySpace in 2003
David Bill isn’t annoyed when Twitter gets so bogged down with traffic that he can’t post a message. That’s because in the moment when frustration would hit, he’s greeted on the popular Web site by a cartoonish image he loves: a giant whale being lifted out of an ocean by a small flock of tweeting birds. The icon — which Twitter users call it the “fail whale” because the creature appears only when the site has failed to load — has gained a cult following as the social media site grows at breakneck pace.
Critics took to the social networking site Facebook to voice their fury over Pope Benedict’s remark that condoms do not prevent HIV. Thousands have pledged to send the pontiff millions of condoms to protest the controversial comment he made to journalists as he flew to Cameroon last week. “You can’t resolve it with the distribution of condoms,” the pope told reporters
Richard Barboza sits behind the steering wheel, patiently working a crossword puzzle. There’s no rush. Time is one thing Barboza has plenty of.
What he lacks in technique, Steve Wozniak makes up for in geeks. The Apple Inc. co-founder has managed to transform his less-than-graceful moves on ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” into enough votes to keep hope alive on the competitive ballroom-dance show.
An estimated 10,000 Argentines marched on the historic Plaza de Mayo in the capital, Buenos Aires, on Wednesday to demand more anti-crime measures, reflecting a top priority among Argentines, according to recent polls.
2009 State of the News Media The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism The Gist: The American financial and auto industries aren’t the only ones falling apart before the nation’s eyes. “Imagine someone about to begin physical therapy following a stroke [and] suddenly contracting a debilitating secondary illness,” researchers at the Project for Excellence in Journalism write about the news media’s long-overdue embrace of the Internet in 2008, just as a global recession began wreaking havoc on the industry’s biggest advertisers
Facebook wants to know what’s on my mind. Actually, that’s not true; so far, it wants to know only what’s on some of my friends’ minds. Facebook doesn’t care about me yet, although it promises that will soon change.