mimblr.com

All the bloggers were abuzz today with the news that Warner has required last.fm to remove their music. Silicon Alley Insider notes that contracts signed with iMeem and the coming MySpace music service included equity stakes in the company.
As for me? I don't really care. I hope last.fm tells Warner that they can take their music and stuff it. I'm watching the artists scroll by on their web site as I write this, and gee, that looks like an awful lot of Phil Collins and Genesis in the loop. I could live without the world having discovered James Blunt's "Beautiful," thank you. And I don't think I've really listened to any new Enya or Madonna since the 90s.
I have been one of the biggest proponents of these music services, mainly because personally, I find a LOT of new music that way. I find that I'm buying more things instead of waiting for new albums from those established acts to come out. I don't agree with the "freetard" mentality that all music should be free. But I also think that all artists should have the opportunity to get their stuff out there so I can hear it and then go buy it.
Here's the problem, as I see it, and I'll admit that I have never understood how the recording industry works, because to me, it makes absolutely no sense. As it stands, and please correct me if I'm wrong, the label promotes the artist so that radio stations will play the music, but they have to pay for doing that for the labels, but if the radio stations play the music, then people buy the album. Someone needs to explain to me why and how that isn't double-dipping.
In my logical world, the labels would be paying the companies like last.fm to carry their catalogue. Not promote anything, mind you, just carry it. And then people would find music from that label, and go buy it. So all this talk of equity and pulling their music just reeks of greed, but again, maybe there is some crucial thing that I'm missing. Warner pays last.fm for me to actually want to play anything Phil Collins has released since, well, actually, ever, and then maybe I'm convinced and buy the album.

profy.com

One mom does her best surveillance work in the laundry room.
Her teenage son has the habit of leaving his cellphone in the pocket of his jeans, so in between sorting colors and whites, she’ll grab his phone and furtively scroll through his text messages from the past week to see what he’s said, whom he’s connected with, and where he’s been. Sometimes, she’ll use her own phone to call another mom she’s friendly with and share her findings in hushed tones.
Effective detective work? Absolutely. Effective parenting? That’s less clear.
If her sleuthing prevents her son from engaging in unacceptably risky behavior, then it will likely have been worthwhile. But her own actions are not without serious risk. How can she act on her insider information without revealing the way she gleaned it? How violated would her son feel if he walked in on her in the laundry room, mid-scroll? And, more subtly but just as important, how can she not think less of her son after seeing in intimate detail this blow-by-blow accounting of the messy teenage experience that previous generations of parents viewed only from a safe, soft-focus distance?
Then again, the other extreme on the parenting spectrum - providing zero oversight and cheerily hoping for the best - is probably just as risky.
In manifold ways, technology makes life easier for parents - from improving the efficiency of after-school pickups to offering the ability to check in with our kids at virtually any moment. But technology also makes life a whole lot more complicated. It’s part of our kids’ consciousness from even before they can talk. As they get older, the gap between their fluency with it and ours widens, and they’re exposed to much more adult content, at a younger age, than we ever were. As teenagers back in the 1980s, some of us would think nothing of sitting through half an hour of scrambled Cinemax in hopes of catching a fleeting flash of unscrambled breasts. (That wasn’t just me, right?) Today’s teens can catch all the unscrambled action they want on their cellphones while waiting at the bus stop. Back then, the single home phone line was the central nervous system of the household, with calls being intercepted by Mom or Dad, or a little sister who delighted in screaming, “It’s for you, and it’s a girl!” These days, parents of teenagers marvel at how silent their home phones are; for their kids, the cellphone has become the great telecom bypass road. And text messaging provides even more freedom, since it knows no curfew. In a recent survey conducted by Teenage Research Unlimited, one-quarter of teens admitted to having texted or called their boyfriend or girlfriend hourly between midnight and 5 a.m.

boston.com

-Here's the first look of the woman who allegedly broke upShania Twain's marriage. She's vehemently denying the rumours, though. Whatevs, at leastShania will get a whole album's worth of material out ofthis.
-Photogs are insisting that Cameron Diaz actuallyshaved her head for a movie role, but itlooks like a bald cap to me. Cams ain't no Daniel DayLewis, if ya know what I mean.
-Steve Carelland The Rock interview eachother for MySpace,which is not nearly as funny as the MySpace intervention video.
-I have no idea whoSteven Curtis Chapman is, but this story is too sad for words.
-Itlooks like Nicole Kidman is getting ready to give thoseshe's-not-really-preggers whispers a swift kick in the uterus by pulling aDemi and posing in the belly-baring buff.
-These videorecaps of Lost are great (though a bit on thelongish side).
-Britney Spears might be staging aVegas comeback, because she's "the master" at what she does. Whatis that exactly? Ignoring underwear? Driving incompetently?
-Itdoesn't really matter how big and famous Shia LaBeouf gets.He'll always just be that kid trying to kick his dad out of his garage.
-It looks likeDisney is prepping some new teen starlet who doesn't pose naughtily inVanity Fair or creepily with her dad in People. (Seriously,does anyone else get the wicked icks from the way the media talk aboutBilly Ray and Miley like they're husband andwife instead of father and daughter?)
-If, like me, you just couldn't sitthrough the two-hours-of-product-placement-disguised-as-a-finale that was lastnight's America Idol, here's the best 60 seconds that you missed:Robert Downey Jr, Ben Stiller, andJack Black performing as thePips.
-Nice!Nothing says "classy TV psychic" like pretending to have visions of Heath Ledger to pimp out your newbook.
-Keanu Reeves might be dating Winona Ryder?Sadly, I'm old enough to be very excited about this!
-If this story aboutthe Olsen twins' Starbucks baristas sneaking whole milk intotheir lattes in an attempt to fatten themup turns out to be true, it'll be the bestest storyever!

network.nationalpost.com

***UPDATED AT 8:40 AM***
Obviously many areas have already had showers and strong thunderstorms this morning. Heavy rain has also already fallen in a lot of areas. The bulk of the rain has moved north of the area, but additional thunderstorm development is expected through the moning in the area I have circled below. That region of development will shift east this afternoon and evening.
A serious flood threat remains across the Ozarks! We’ll have more on our potential for severe weather around 1 PM this afternoon.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone! Remember to wear green so those folks who insist on pinching you…don’t. I am in need of a few folks to help me build an ark today - in some places you might need one or at least an umbrella. A heavy rain event will begin today (especially tonight) and last through Wednesday morning. Moisture started to increase across the area Sunday afternoon and it has continued to pour into the area. An approaching storm system will combine with that moisture and create the setup for our heavy rain.
Showers and thunderstorm can be expected on and off today areawide, however the heavy rain during the daylight hours today can be expected to the northwest of Interstate 44.

read_more

But thanks to the magic of social networking, we get a fairly intimate look at one of the players in a sex scandal that brought down the governor of New York.
Two days ago, we learned that Spitzer–the politician who made his reputation as being tough on crime–had been implicated in a prostitution scandal. We got to see Silda Wall Spitzer stand by her man–AKA “Client 9″–while he apologized for “acting in a way that violates my obligations to my family and violates my, or any, sense of right and wrong.” Then Wednesday we saw him resign from the governor’s office.
The only thing we haven’t seen–until now–is “Kristen,” the woman who allegedly played the role of prostitute at a Washington, D.C., hotel with Spitzer last month in this mini-drama. Thanks to her MySpace page, we have a chance to meet “Kristen,” a 22-year-old aspiring musician whose real name was revealed by the New York Times as Ashley Alexandra Dupre.
Her page features several photos of Dupre, who seems to be a very popular woman, with more than 1,800 MySpace “friends.” According to her profile, she “learned what it was like to have everything, and lose it, again and again.”

read_more