LOTD: 6/26/07

• Law school rankings, once the domain of once-a-year publications aimed at those considering a degree in that field, are now being handled by blogs. Even worse for those publishers, they’re becoming more of a factor in future attendee’s decisions. (CT)
• Today’s Meta of the Day award goes to MightyBids, an online auction site which has gone belly-up, is now selling itself on eBay. (CT)
• If you tried tuning into Pandora or any other online music station (except Last.fm) and were wondering where the, you know, music was, the stations all fell silent. The move was made to protest the ridiculous new royalty fees online broadcasters are to be subjected to. (CT)
• Robert French lists the new batch of blogging communications students he’s got for this coming five-week period. These, like all their predecessors, should be good reads. (CT)
• Mack Collier is asking for input on best practices in terms of comment approval on corporate blogs. (CT)
• LinkedIn has, seemingly, seen the positive press and usage growth Facebook achieved by throwing open the API doors and decided to follow suit. The move will be made inside of the next nine months. It will be interesting to see how such tools get applied to a more professionally-oriented network as opposed to one with a reputation of being just cool. (CT)
• Didn’t realize there was a blog focused on the homeless in Los Angeles. Check out the “LA’s Homeless Blog,” written by Joel John Roberts of PATH Partners. Found this via this item by Dakota Smith on Netscape’s Newsquake blog. (TB)

LOTD: 6/22/07

• Congratulations to digg, which has found yet another way to honk off its user base, this time with the introduction of threaded comments. User complaints have, of course, been dugg, completing today’s meta requirement. (CT)
• Kevin Dugan is, of course, being completely serious with this list of ten reasons you should join a social network. (CT)
• Google has been busy creating a whole series of new blogs. First there was their Public Policy blog and now come official journals for Google News and Google Finance. Both of the latter two have as their stated goal a more instant, direct communication of product happenings with users and readers, which of course is the whole blogging point, so good on them. (CT)
• Todd Anderlik is great at finding fun videos and this one featuring a bunch of agency type folk lip syncing Harvey Danger’s “Flagpole Sitta” might be the best ever. For some reason watching this while I had Twitbin, Socialtext, WordPress, Google Reader and Trillian open at the same time made me think about how different my life is than how I thought it would be when I was six. (CT)

LOTD: 6/21/07

• Arianna Huffington and Jay Rosen are partnering on a new citizen journalism site called Off the Bus that focuses on the 2008 campaign cycle. The site aims to bring a new and fresh perspective to the campaign beat that just isn’t possible with mainstream reporters. (CT)
• Media planning tool provider Telmar will be launching a new vertical search engine to help people find media industry research studies and other statistics. (CT)
• If you were getting jittery without your hourly fix of Jessica Britney Alba Timberlake Diaz news it’s because Perez Hilton’s web host inoculated itself against an eventual lawsuit took down the site for a short while yesterday, citing the site’s continued usage of copyrighted photographs. (CT)

LOTD: 6/20/07

• The WSJ is tapped in to the “virtual job interview” meme that’s floating around, on how companies are using Second Life, among other places, to get the scoop on potential staffers. Awesome job pointing out the “difficulties” some have using the system. (TB)
• Launching off of Tom’s item above, the difficulties of the Second Life experience are recreated in the world in a video passed on here by Eric Rice. (CT)
• In case any of you were wondering when LOLcats were going to officially become uncool, the fact that the phenomenon got a write-up in today’s Chicago Tribune seems a good starting point for that countdown. (CT)

LOTD: 6/19/07

• Jeffrey Zeldman reminds (gulp) everyone who’s doing a bit of Web design to make sure and set the background color of those sites, so that users don’t do it themselves and then make fun of you. (TB)
• An increasing number of non-profit organizations are getting over long-held prejudices and fears over engaging public relations firms, instead using them to get the word out and compete for press coverage with some big players in the philanthropic area. (CT)
• CNET is launching a whole slew of new blogs dealing with how technology influences various niche interest areas. (CT)
• I don’t understand the hesitation some corporations are experiencing in agreeing to sync people’s iPhones to their corporate email servers. Do these IT departments not realize the iPhone is the BEST DEVICE EVER? (CT)

LOTD: Social Networking Edition

• Businesses are increasingly looking at social networks not as a marketing opportunity but as a way to find new employees and connect team members.
• A number of online social networks exist specifically to connect people for offline activities. There are also startups popping up all over the place that are geared toward niches and specific interest areas for people who don’t want to get lost in the MySpace crowd.
• That leads to the next issue, which is the rise of network aggregators that allow people to manage multiple profiles from one interface.
• A new study shows kids are citing updates from friends they’re connected to as an important source of news, more so than newspapers or other traditional news outlets.

LOTD: 6/18/07

• Mashable’s Pete Cashmore has some thoughts on the deal to bring FOX video clips online via Brightcove. (TB)
• In the San Francisco Chronicle, there’s an item about what could amount to an iffy situation with Comcast phone customers, who thought they could stick to a cheaper plan, but are now being notified that “pending regulatory approval” that this would probably change. Considering people’s annoyance with “unlimited” bandwidth advertisements and how that has cropped up from time to time, this could also start a fire under some unsatisfied customers. [via TechMeme] (TB)
• A new lawsuit could decide whether or not anonymous, libelous statements are allowed online. (CT)
• YouTube is warning people who might use its new mobile service frequently to biggie-size their service plans since the bandwidth requirements are sizable. (CT)
• Neville Hobson alerts us to new corporate blogs from GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson & Johnson. (CT)
• Neville’s FIR co-host Shel Holtz says the companion website for the podcasting book the pair have written is now live. (CT)
• This kills me. (CT)
• Speaking of Shel and Neville, the two are stepping back from their day-to-day roles at the crayon agency, but Digitas’ Greg Verdino is coming onboard. (CT)

How is the answer to this not “Yes”?

Should Parents Be Liable For Boozing Teens? – Newsweek: Teen Driver – MSNBC.com

My grandpa used to sneak me a bottle-cap of beer when I was an older kid but that was about it. Parents who help their kids obtain and consume alcohol are doing a disservice to those kids.

Back to the core

WW Philly: Brand New Day – Marvel.com news

Marvel is doing with its Spider-Man titles exactly what I wish it had done a while ago and wish it would do with its X-Men and other titles. At the end of the current story arc, running through all the Spidey books, the only one left standing will be The Amazing Spider-Man, which will be published three times a month.

It always frustrated me that if I wanted to follow Spider-Man I had to buy AMS, Spectacular, Web of and whatever else was out there. And all those stories seemed to be taking Spidey to different places but they were all happening at the same time and all were considered canon, or at least played as large a role in character development as anything else. This makes for a confused and frustrated clientèle and a fragmented universe. Better to bring things all into one core title and publish it more frequently.

That has the increased advantage of allowing ONE title for new buyers – something the comics industry desperately needs – to find and reduces the odds of them turning away cause they feel overwhelmed. Great move by Marvel and I hope it’s not undone in six months when they get greedy.

LOTD: 6/15/07

• Interesting object lesson from people who found some very…umm…interesting debug statements in the hidden language of YouTube pages. (CT)
• Some sort called “hockey” (Tom keeps talking about it but I have no idea) is looking at what the NCAA did when it kicked out a blogger and going in the opposite direction. Instead of telling them to shut down their laptops the New York Islanders have created a special section for bloggers to do their thing. (CT)
• To chime in on Chris’ last entry, I present some comments from one notable hockey / sports blogger, Eric McErlain, who isn’t so happy about this move by the Islanders. David Singer has also put together a pretty decent roundup of commentary on the subject. (TB)
• It’s interesting that only the online folks comment when Calacanis or Winer try to set the rules for how and when they’re interviewed but when Mrs. Pitt does so it gets mainstream media attention. (CT)
• Over at Slate, Harry McCracken really really likes Google Gears, and tells you all about it. (TB)
• In blogger news, James Joyner has pointed out that Chris Bowers is leaving MyDD for a new group blog that will open up his horizons a bit. (TB)
• On Twitter, Randall Bennett alerts us to a new technology that could affect anyone who drives while on their cellphone. The device, from Highway Safety and Technology, would enable police to determine whether a vehicle had someone using a cellphone at the time it passes by, rather than having to see the driver holding up the phone. And yes, there’s the opportunity for “false positives.” (TB)