"ByteShark is the TIVO of the Internet" Prominently featured in the Reuters Internet story "Imagine a World Without Ads". But that's not all the ByteShark claims to do. Is this going to be the killer app that does to Google what Google did to AltaVista? Or should we trust a guy whose previous product was simulated interactive interrogation software for solving murders"? Something about this whole enterprise smells like spyware, or worse. But there are lots of better webware experts at MeFi than Me. Would YOU swim with this Shark?
posted by wendell on Feb 25, 2003 - 11 comments

What The Onion doesn't tell you… is that his atttempt to cash in his punchcard was invalidated when the counter clerk noticed that the 7th punch had left a hanging chad. Now you know… the REST of the story.
posted by wendell on Dec 12, 2000 - 0 comments

TiVo schadenfreude!
ReplayTV drops 40% of its staff (including a former TV Network Bigwig) and drops out of the retail "box" business. Gee, they're giving up without even asking for a recount of the sales figures from the Palm Beach Best Buy…
Now, if TiVo can just keep Microshaft from squishing it like a bug.
posted by wendell on Nov 28, 2000 - 2 comments

Wen Ho Lee is Free! (sort of)
Is this too much of a "seen everywhere" news story to post here? Or is the fact that this story was finally getting "seen everywhere" part of the good news???
posted by wendell on Sep 13, 2000 - 12 comments

Now this is what I call Reality TV.
I'm surprised we haven't seen more incidents like this outside or around Wrestling shows, or am I missing something? Just for the record, the TV show marred by this tragedy was BattleDOME, NOT BattleBOTS (otherwise, it would have been a pickup truck stabbing an SUV, right?).
posted by wendell on Sep 8, 2000 - 3 comments

"DotTV" to become the 189th member of the United Nations... Logical extension of "international dot-commerce" or sign of the Apocalypse?
posted by wendell on Sep 4, 2000 - 3 comments

ABC Mistakes Onion Story for Real News. Hilarity Ensues!
Couldn't resist... the "dummy" story even vaguely resembles my "White House Staff Eats Its Young" headline...
Now, compare and contrast with the handling of John Stossel's bogus lab results, or CBS' Craig Kilborn "sniper" sniping, or the Bryant Gumble mumble, or any other recent major media screw-up...
True credit to ROMENESKO'S MEDIA NEWS
posted by wendell on Aug 27, 2000 - 12 comments

Hey Kids! Add your greeting to a mass telegram (meta-gram?) being assembled by a British website to wish Prince William a Happy 18th Birthday!
Nice to know that the newfangled internet is being put to good use in support of England's embarassingly obsolete monarchy. But then, I suspect some of you more opinionated MetaFilterers would probably have some especially entertaining "greetings" to add to the mix...
posted by wendell on Jun 15, 2000 - 15 comments

Crime Does Not Pay, but Somebody Thinks Crime.Com Might
Even though APB News is a financial flop, CourtTV and the producer of COPS are teaming up to compete with it. While it'll probably lack APB's serious investigative journalism, CrimeWeb's site does let you order a criminal background check online on anyone you want. I tried it, and now I know the real reason Neale lives in Australia. ;-}
posted by wendell on Jun 13, 2000 - 2 comments

Attention, Online Catholics: "Virtual Adultery" is Officially a Sin.
posted by wendell on Jun 7, 2000 - 4 comments

The end of the dot-com gravy train may have doomed one website that deserves a whole lot better: APB News, the independent news site that covers crime without hysteria, knows the judicial system a LOT better than CourtTV, and beats The Smoking Gun in use of the Freedom of Information Act, is flat broke.
posted by wendell on Jun 5, 2000 - 2 comments

Freedom of Art Dept.:
In a previous topic, captain cursor said: "It's actually better to have a weak artistic piece when arguing aspects of law. Since the law should apply to all works, good or bad, you don't want to be distracted by the merits of the work.". So what happens when a very popular image is "censored"?

A commercial mural painter in L.A. wants to paint a big Statue of Libery on the side of a building (nobody's paying him to do it). Big murals need permits, the local city councilman doesn't like big murals, the painter starts painting without a permit, gets arrested, puts up a web site. (At least he gives one page to the councilman's reply.)
So, MeFi opinion leaders, is this painter a First Amendment hero, an opportunistic promoter or what?
posted by wendell on May 27, 2000 - 7 comments

Pop Culture Alert: B. Kliban® Cat is making a comeback!
posted by wendell on May 27, 2000 - 0 comments

Maybe there are some things you can't sell on eBay after all...
posted by wendell on May 25, 2000 - 4 comments

Insert George W. Bush joke here...
posted by wendell on May 23, 2000 - 1 comment

"So who taught YOU how to do heart bypass surgery, Mister Smartydoctor? Could it be... SATAN???"
posted by wendell on May 20, 2000 - 1 comment

I normally wouldn't do this, but I think we all need a little Star Trek/Celebrity gossip to lighten things up around here...
Cap'n! I dunna think the condom's gonna hold much longer!
posted by wendell on May 9, 2000 - 4 comments

Freedom in the Off-Line World Department: This snarky commentator (who usually spews on Fox "We Distort, You Deride" News) hints loudly that NYPD changes after the Diallo shooting are responsible for the string of murdered cab drivers in the Big Apple. So, how much racial profiling and how many occasional unjustified police shootings are YOU going to accept in exchange for your safety? (And are you ready for the boom in murders when the LAPD is forced to clean its house?)
posted by wendell on May 9, 2000 - 0 comments

I owe Dan Gillmor an apology, dammit. On April 1st, I blogged here at MeFi this story about Stanford filing an IPO as an example of a rather lame April Fool's joke. Well, it turned out to be a little closer to the truth than I thought.
posted by wendell on May 9, 2000 - 2 comments

Charlie's Angels vs. intellectual property theft?
posted by wendell on Apr 26, 2000 - 6 comments

Am I nuts or is it possible that Hell.com could become one of the web's most valuable addresses?
posted by wendell on Apr 25, 2000 - 3 comments

Tired of your Wu-Name or your CYBORG identity?
Buzzy, the evil corporate weblog at Yahoo has a new, non-automated formula for giving yourself a new identity, supposedly lifted from a children's book.
posted by Oprah Chucklebutt
posted by wendell on Apr 25, 2000 - 7 comments

Sometimes the biggest cliches turn out to be true... A small tornado forms during a storm in Los Angeles and somehow finds a Mobile Home Park to hit... (and, no, the city of Paramount is not where the movie studio is)
posted by wendell on Apr 18, 2000 - 0 comments

Call this: "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost URL"
posted by wendell on Apr 12, 2000 - 0 comments

SAVE THE SCREECH!
Blame Hollywood Tattler for the idea.
posted by wendell on Apr 5, 2000 - 0 comments

Here's Project Censored's annual list of the 25 most undeservedly ignored news stories, although several of them (including the top 3) fall in the category of "stating the obvious" for me. Of almost equal interest is their list of Top 10 stories that maybe should have been ignored and/or censored (my wording NOT theirs). Got any you can add to that list? Right now, I'd start with 'Halle Berry's auto accident'...
posted by wendell on Apr 3, 2000 - 4 comments

Stanford University Planning IPO
I know this is starting to scrape the bottom of the April 1st barrel, but I WAS the first person to point out that the heading of the e-mail version of this writer's column is "D A N G I L L M O R O N T E C H N O L O G Y" (logical word breaks after DANG, ILL and MORON)
posted by wendell on Apr 1, 2000 - 3 comments

Let's stop fighting among ourselves and start abusing OldMedia people for a change
Amazing discovery #1: There is a difference between people who become journalists and people who don't!
Amazing discovery #2: Journalists who work for big media companies that make a lot of money are themselves making a lot of money!
Amazing discovery #3: Some newspeople get off on feeling morally superior to other newspeople!
from Romenesko's Poynter Media Gossip News Thingy
posted by wendell on Mar 30, 2000 - 0 comments

Warner-Lambert Withdraws Diabetes Pill Rezulin
Imagine how it feels hearing this news about six hours after my doctor told me "After looking at your latest liver test, you'd better stop taking the Rezulin, and come in for more tests."
For the record, I was aware of the potential risks before I & my doc started it, and have been doing regular liver tests all along; before my last test, I had noted to doc that I was getting more symptoms of out-of-control diabetes, even though frequent monitoring showed the blood sugar numbers were always IN control, and I was ready to ask for a change to one of the newer drugs... when my latest refill runs out. I'd always assumed that by the time the FDA acts on it it'll be too late, and I am very interested in the official FDA non-position on the safety of the newer drugs...
posted by wendell on Mar 22, 2000 - 2 comments

Tired of The Media not getting your story right?
Looking for a way to make sure your feelings are respected and your point of view is aired?
It's easy! Just kill four people and take three more hostage. (from Romanesko's Media News)
posted by wendell on Mar 20, 2000 - 0 comments

Have Tom Green's rather transparent efforts to become the Andy Kaufman of the 21st Century gone too far?
posted by wendell on Mar 20, 2000 - 7 comments

Somebody stole the Oscars (TM AMPAS)!
And, of course, I am denying all involvement.
posted by wendell on Mar 17, 2000 - 9 comments

Isn't Fox supposed to be the enemy of fan sites (Simpsons, X-Files, Buffy) all over the web??
Then what are they doing supporting a site that's promoting one of its lowest-rated shows????
The producer of Get Real had previously done a half-hour comedy called Parker Lewis Can't Lose that, IMHO, was worth saving...
posted by wendell on Mar 14, 2000 - 1 comment

Blame Dubya.
Ten days after George W. Bush is pranked into mistaking the Prime Minister of Canada for a dish made from french fries and gravy, 60 percent of Canadians want their real PM to resign. Never underestimate the power of the Shrub.
posted by wendell on Mar 14, 2000 - 0 comments

Microsoft issues the PR equivalent of a neener-neener-neener at RealNetworks.
And shares of RealNetworks fell about 12 percent on the neener.
posted by wendell on Mar 14, 2000 - 2 comments

e-publishing-wise, THIS is scary!
posted by wendell on Mar 8, 2000 - 1 comment

Derision 2000 (Y2Komedy Department)
The best thing about this satiric "secret memo" from the Dubya campaign is the date at the top of it: February 29, 1990. A Slate story, so obviously written with MS Word...
posted by wendell on Mar 3, 2000 - 2 comments

This explains (choose one)
(1) The real trouble with Globalization, or
(2) Why Germany has started so many wars.
(yes, Wittler is a German name; you wanna make something out of it?)
posted by wendell on Feb 28, 2000 - 3 comments

The Half-Human, Half-Silicon Chip sounds like something out of a movie I saw on MST3K. And the reference to the "cell in the hole" sounds like an old catchprase from Seinfeld. In other words, TV Comedy Technology.
posted by wendell on Feb 26, 2000 - 1 comment

After all the death-penalty arguements have been made, there is only one reason to link to the story about this Texas case: to use the phrase Beets Around the Bush.
posted by wendell on Feb 24, 2000 - 24 comments

Only in L.A.?: Bad LAPD cops could cost the city $125 million; I just hope they aren't the same cops who successfully sued the city for $40 million. Yeeesh.
posted by wendell on Feb 17, 2000 - 7 comments

Special note to anybody who thinks the Tobacco Companies are getting a bum rap: Apparently, even their own growers think they are a bunch of rat bastards.
posted by wendell on Feb 16, 2000 - 0 comments

Costly High-Tech Band-Aid Unveiled
I thought it was this story with a different headline.
posted by wendell on Feb 10, 2000 - 2 comments