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Rojo: Gmail Bedlam; Olympics Takedown; Wii MadWorld

Google's Gmail was down for at least an hour early this week, causing public bedlam equivalent to the 1938 "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast, at least among dozens of people who like to complain to friends instantly. Also, this gentleman below was down, on Google Street View, causing him to be embarrassed when he saw the picture. Switched reports that the poor bloke in Australia had been drinking heavily the night before after learning that a friend had passed away. He got out of a cab and lay down to rest, and the Googlemobile drove by, and the rest is the end of privacy history. Too bad the guy didn't have Gmail! Because the mail outage was a wake-up call, says Mashable: "It’ll be interesting to see what effect a couple hours of downtime will have on us all." Hey, seriously: is everybody ok?!! VentureBeat was paralyzed by the outage: "This puts my workday on complete hold." (Good time to take a nap?). VB wonders how smart it is for companies to rely increasingly on Google apps. Michael Arrington at TechCrunch wrote: "I can’t help but suspect that my decision to abandon MobileMe/.Mac in favor of the super-stable Google apps may have been a factor." Yep, that must have been what happened.

Might all this outageousness be why Apple has surpassed Google in market value? No, but that financial factoid became true this week, Digital Daily reported, noting that Valleywag predicted it would happen. Meanwhile, Amazon has launched "Amazon Green," a shopping area for the environmentally conscious. Nice idea, says Simpable, but "it is hard for me to take them very serious here. They still routinely use huge boxes and plastic filler packs for small orders." (Note: Andrew Stanton, who wrote the Pixar movie Wall-E about Earth being covered with trash from products sold by the powerful multi-national Buy N Large corporation, told NPR that he was inspired by all the packages he orders online.)

Between the Lines says "the Internet did not break, melt or probably even much notice the Olympics, in its first weekend." Views of Olympics video were just 2 percent of YouTube's video traffic. Don't blame It's Game Time. They tried to illegally show the opening ceremony and stream other Olympixels, but the International Olympic Committee made them stop (sez Silicon Alley Insider) and now the site is showing a Spanish talk show. TorrentFreak says millions downloaded the opening ceremonies anyway. We've had a very good experience watching official Olympian video on a Vista's Media Center with a plug-in from TV Tonic. Others, like the Unauthorized Microsoft Weblog, have found it a chore to install Microsoft's Silverlight player to watch through a browser. Valleywag reports that the IOC also issued a takedown notice to YouTube over a video that features protestors projecting free Tibet propaganda on the walls of the Chinese consulate in New York City. That warning is "a clear abuse of copyright law," Wag says.

Finally, in violent Nintendo game news: "Parents horrified as most violent video game ever to launch on 'family friendly' Wii," the UK's Daily Mail calmly announced on Tuesday. Joystiq calls the Mail article positively brilliant in its absolute ineptitude. Quite! Over at the Telegraph, blogger Tom Hoggins says, "from what I've personally seen of MadWorld, it is a hyper-violent brawler," but it's not meant for kids. "It's about damn time the media watchdog groups got around to blasting...Wii-slaughterfest MadWorld," adds Kotaku. "I was worried they were losing their touch."

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Blogging the Media: Magazines Are Dead, Tina Brown Rises Again

To the surprise of no one who leafed through the Brangelina twins People in the grocery store but put it back before checkout, magazine sales dropped by 6.3% in the first half of 2008, reports MediaBistro’s Fishbowl NY. O: The Oprah Magazine, US Weekly, and Cosmo had a “crappy year.” People is actually doing okay, even though the aforementioned Brangelina twins issue didn’t bring in as many readers as the mag hoped, possibly because of NOT ENOUGH SHILOH (in the opinion of Mark Pasetsky’s Cover Awards). 

But who cares about wrinkly old paper? The future of media is online ONLY, which is why Salon’s bloggers are going to pull in millions under the site’s new “real-world money” tipping system (via The Social). There’s also “a Digg-style rating feature” where top content is prominently displayed—in other words, “some or all of the pieces of a new-media strategy,” says Mathew Ingram. 

Tina Brown is attempting to pull off her own new media venture called The Daily Beast, backed by Barry Diller and named after the tabloid in Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop (via Gawker). Daily Intelligencer writes that it will be “largely an aggregator, along the lines of the Huffington Post . . . only repeating news, while generating little or none of its own. Perhaps this is Brown’s larger commentary on the state of where media is going.”

Finally, not to be outdone by Tina Brown, a few weeks ago Google launched the Wikipedia-esque Knol, which allows users to post articles on their areas of expertise. Unlike Wikipedia, it’s not anonymous and there’s no automatic collaboration, reports Lifehacker and others. As usual when Google does anything, bloggers are concerned: Cat in the Stack finds Knol entries “typically self-promoting and lacking all of the interesting debates that make Wikipedia exciting . . . very Western-centered, more infomercials than information.” PaidContent asks the “familiar and at-times tiresome” question of whether Google is a content company, referring to a NY Times article on the same topic. But Beyond Search says “Google’s been beavering away in ‘publishing’ for quite a while.” 

Olympics 2008: Gold, Silver and Pirates

Michael Phelps won his fifth gold at Beijing (and eleventh total) on Wednesday, making him the “winningest Olympian ever” and, says Brian Cazeneuve, maybe the greatest: “Phelps’ achievements have lifted his name into a place where swimmers have rarely gone: into a discussion of who the world's greatest athlete actually is. These days, any such discussion may include Tiger Woods and Roger Federer, but it must also include Phelps, who is toiling in a much more competitive era than Mark Spitz did” (via Sports Illustrated Beijing 08). The U.S. women’s gymnastics team didn’t do so well, coming in second after Alicia Sacramone made two major errors (via the LA Times Olympics blog and FanIQ Blog). This was predicted by First to Third, who wrote, “I always keep my eye out for the hottest gymnast on the team to see which one is going to blow it for [the] USA,” and decried by those who think two of China’s gymnasts are underage (this and other scandals at Athlists.

Other fun facts: Michael Phelps was arrested for DUI in Maryland at the age of nineteen, says Deadspin. And Gawker calculates that the NY Times will spend a total of $412,000 to send reporters to Beijing, “not including salaries, insurance, or bribe money.” But Waxy finds you can get all the Olympics coverage you want on BitTorrent for free.

Downey is Black, Cruise is Back, Clooney Texting Obama?

Tropic Thunder is getting a load of buzz for a movie with mixed reviews (aka a movie made by Ben Stiller). The buzz is partly because—oh, by the way—TOM CRUISE is in this movie, and Ropes of Silicon says Cruise's "performance is funny as hell and certainly steals the film." Some MSM reviewers love Thunder and Robert Downey Jr.'s portrayal of an actor who goes blackface to star in the war-movie-within-the-movie. Others say the attempt to combine comedy shtick with violent action misses the mark in a Pineapple Expressy way. Thunder wants to parody Hollywood, then becomes Hollywoodical itself, says Cinematical, "as if someone thought that there needed to be a little loud noise and comedic violence to counter the deadpan quiet of the film's showbiz jokes and jabs." Check the Fien Print says the movie is a 100 minute version of a "Ben Stiller Show" action movie parody skit.

The Downey controversy is a "non issue," says Boots and Sabers: "If black guys can portray white chicks, there’s nothing wrong with a white guy portraying a black guy." More heat seems to be directed at the Stiller character. He plays an actor who's doing another movie, Simple Jack, in which "he plays a developmentally disabled dude in hopes for an Oscar," says Socialite Life.

The Cruise buzz is loud, as America roots for him to become cool again.  He apparently needs the boost after being dropped from a starring role in a film Edwin A. Salt—and replaced by an actress, Angelina Jolie. Says I Watch Stuff, "Thank god someone has finally broken through the glass ceiling specific to the movie Edwin A. Salt, which will now presumably be renamed something with a woman's name." Agent Bedhead suggests "maybe Cruise can even play Rachel Ray in her yet-to-be-announced but inevitable biopic."

Elsewhere, George Clooney has been forced to deny reports that he has been text-messaging Barack Obama with foreign policy advice. Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood points out that Republicans have been trying to score points making Obama seem too "celebrity."

A Bad Week for John Edwards

It was a good week for Barack Obama to take a vacation (via The Politico) because the John Edwards-cheated-on-his-cancer- wife storyline might have thrown him off-message. Yet, despite the initial shock and first round of blog reaction, the story has died down everywhere except for the righty blogs and the tabloids. News of the story first broke in October 2007 as a National Enquirer exclusive (via National Enquirer). While ignored by the mainstream press, the story made strange bedfellows out of right-wingers who smelled blood and lefties who smelled truth. When Edwards finally admitted the facts to the Walt Disney News Channel (via ABC News), the mainstream press was forced to play catch-up (via WSJ). 

The reaction of Elizabeth Edwards (via Daily Kos) prompted its own criticism, notably from Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn, who accused Ms. Edwards of being a "co-conspirator in his betrayal." Meanwhile, Democrats have moved on with their lives, much to the chagrin of FOX News and others who see a conspiracy of silence from the mainstream media (via Pajamas Media, News Busters, and Ace of Spades). Of course, these knee-jerk conservatives have yet to understand how this game plays out, and how John McCain will now be subject to the same scrutiny on the same topic says Huffington Post. 

Also, from the sour grapes department, Hillary Clinton's primary surrogates are now claiming that Edwards has now retroactively cost Clinton the Dem nomination (via ABC News, Liberal Values, and Hot Air). And another flashback: In November 2000 People magazine named Edwards as its choice for "sexiest politician alive" (thanks Vote for Breakfast).

Olympics 2008: Minor Mishaps, Major Ratings

One of the best parts of following the Olympics is being on the lookout for mishaps and minor scandals. Bloggers are especially great at pointing these out. The opening ceremony was only on Friday but already we have: Fakery! "[The] series of giant footprints outlined in fireworks processed gloriously above the city from Tiananmen Square” was digitally done, reported the Telegraph, down to how the lights reacted with Beijing’s smog. Bela Karolyi speculated on Chinese gymnasts being younger than sixteen, complaining, “They are using half-people,” writes Deadspin, which wondered “Which half are they using?” Gawker thought the Ralph Lauren uniforms the U.S. wore in the opening ceremonies looked “pretty cheap up close.” And the LA Times Olympics Blog reported (and refuted) the rumor that NBC rearranged the Parade of Nations for primetime, “putting the U.S. team at the end of the line in order to keep sleepy Americans in front of the tube.”

But for every bronze, there is a gold. Whatever NBC’s doing, it’s working: 34 million viewers tuned into the opening ceremony, up 35% since the last summer games, reports MediaFile. Plus, lots of other countries’ uniforms were uglier than ours: An Indian newspaper “pilloried India’s ‘shoddily dressed contingent’” and “Aussies thought the togs looked like ‘sucked iceblocks,’” says the NYT’s Rings. Finally, digital effects aside, the opening ceremony was pretty spectacular; Beijing Olympics Blog has a list of its Top 10 Moments, and predicts, “The organisers for London 2012 will have a tough act to follow.”

Rojo: Favre Drama; Olympics-o-rama; Polling Obama

Top stories for the week of August 4 - 8, 2008

The 31-day Brett Favre melodrama has reached a merciful end, says Deadspin. Favre, un-retired, will play quarterback this season as a New York Jet. It's his biggest comeback since that scene near the end of There's Something About Mary. Larry Brown Sports reported the Jets were selling Favre jerseys less than an hour after the trade from Green Bay was reported on Wednesday night.  But Alex Podlogar says history will forget this jersey, recalling other players (Joe Montana on the Chiefs, Joe Namath on the Rams, Johnny Unitas on the Chargers) who ended their careers on teams everyone forgot they played for. Gaming Today observes that—whoops!—the cover of Madden 09 for Xbox has Favre on the Packers. The curse continues. Fanhouse notes Favre's switch from NFC to AFC changes which TV network gets his games, so Fox's loss is CBS's gain. My Green Bay Packer Blog asks: "How many think Favre’s antics will get him eaten alive in the Big Apple?" And the Fantasy Football Geek Blog breaks down altered fantasy league values for the 10 or so players affected. That seems to cover everything—except how well the Jets actually will play football now, which nobody really has a clue about.

Meanwhile, the 17-day meolodrama called the Olympics commences on 8/8/08 at 8 p.m., and the big question from sports fans is: how are brands using online social media in conjunction with the Beijing Games? ReadWriteWeb runs down all the clickable content from McDonalds, Lenovo, Panasonic and others. Google is pulling no punches: SearchEngineLand says Google has created a special "OneBox" for Olympic schedules on its search results screens.  So this truly is historic. Daily Wireless has a gigantic compendium and facts and figures about China's high-tech set-up for the Games, like "an estimated 2 billion people are expected to watch the Games on television (in a variety of screen sizes)." Silicon Alley Insider says despite 2,200 hours of Olympics going to the Web, some of the best stuff won't be available online in the USA, so viewers will have to get sneaky.

Beyond tech, Beijing Olympics Fan says the Dalai Lama has given the Games his blessing. Uh, despite everything. Talking Philosophy makes no moral commitment, arguing against itself that: "There are excellent justifications for protests against China. However, there are excellent reasons to let China have her moment of Olympic glory." Gawker offers traveling journalists tips, like "bring bribe money." Well, that seems to cover everything—except how the sporting events will actually go. We were looking for a forecast from a diehard sports blog, but the only site that seems to be on the record with projected medal-count standings is the Daily Kos  (1. USA, 2. China, 3., Russia, 4. Germany, 5. Australia).

In politics, Mark Ambinder says you can analyze the polls and maps all you want, but the presidential election is all about white males: if Barack Obama can keep John McCain's victory margin below 10 points in this demographic, "then he wins the election (probably)." Politico reported that Obama's campaign juggernaut is "stalling" as it attempts to "expand the electoral map" into states that haven't loved the Dems lately. MyDD replies: "Umm, if by 'expanding the electoral map' you mean winning, well, he sort of is."

Over in the Department of Acquisitions and Blockages, Comcast reportedly has paid $125 million (what the?) for DailyCandy, an e-newsletter startup about "fashion, food and fun." PaidContent quotes Comcast Interactive Media exec Sam Schwartz calling DailyCandy “a high-monetization property.” Guess that's the fun part! Gawker notes that Comcast's recent FCC reprimand for blocking high volume BitTorrent users is still fresh news, and figures "being a media company is way more fun than trying to meet the needs of millions and millions of customers!" So don't blame Comcast—okay, maybe a little—for the fact that BitTorrent just laid off 20 percent of its staff and, ValleyWag reports, will scuttle a plan to sell an online media store to Best Buy for $15 million. 

Finally, if you really want to brave some heavy Internet traffic, try loading the awesome Internet Memes Timeline at Dipity.com. It's worth the load time.

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McCain Hearts Paris

John McCain let the genie out of the bottle, and that genie is Paris Hilton, who in her mockery of McCain's campaign ad featuring her compares the GOP nominee to fellow "super old" figures like the Crypt Keeper, Larry King and Colonel Sanders (via Funny or Die, The Politico, Commentary, New Republic, and Raw Story). Ouch. If you need proof that Paris Hilton has officially turned this campaign on its head, here it is: Dan Quayle seems to have enjoyed it, saying "Golly..." (via Swamp Politics) "Why is it that Paris Hilton’s fake ad," asks Carpetbagger Report, "includes more substantive talk about energy policy than John McCain’s real ad?"

Between the actual candidates, John McCain has backed off his ridicule of Obama's tire gauge comments, after realizing that AAA, NASCAR and the Bush Administration all agreed with Obama, and after Obama hit back at McCain, saying the GOP "take[s] pride in being ignorant" (via Politico's Ben Smith, MyDD, Hot Air, and ABC's Political Punch).

Cashing Out on Web 2.0

Facebook figures it's worth $4 billion, and for the longest time that's just been frustrating to employees with stock options. Now, says VentureBeat, the company will let staffers "sell 20 percent of their fully vested stock options, starting this fall." Is that cooler than Scrabulous or what? It's not clear how the sales would work logistically, because the plan is unannounced, but Valleywag seems convinced it's real because there there's a Twitter by Facebook employee Eston Bond asking for advice on selling restricted shares.  Silicon Alley Insider figures the impact on the company would be minimal—$20 to $40 million—if buys the shares, and for workers it could be "perhaps enough to cover down payments on a Silicon Valley starter home, or to swap a Prius for a Tesla." If some shares are made available to outsiders, Portfolio's Tech Observer says go for it: owing a piece of the Face is a great way to beat the market slump.  It's especially good for Face-workers, Valleywag points out, because the company's current policy permitting only ex-employees sell shares "actually encourages employees to quit."  Adds Furrier.org: "employees at Facebook were getting restless given that an IPO is not in sight."   In fact, says Webware, this could be a definitive sign that no other way for Facebook employees to cash in—like an IPO or merger—is on the horizon. Paid Content says LinkedIn is doing the same thing.

Also Overheard:  App developer/blogger Mike Ash has rants that Apple's iPhone is "Your Crappy Mac of Tomorrow, Today!" At Scripting News, Dave Winer imagines a beautiful world where Twitter and other micro-blogging services all work together.