Gossip Morning
- Jamie Spears, Britney’s father, will maintain control over his daughter’s affairs because a judge has ruled that she is not competent. Oh, and her estate is worth 40 million dollars.
- Lindsay Lohan gives a p.r.-perfect interview to Glamour Magazine about life after rehab. Among the highlights: she likes staying home now, and it hard to be around certain friends because they have “gone down a different path.” Gag me.
- Ellen Page wears something other than black to some red carpet event. She still won’t really smile, though.
- Patrick Swayze spent the weekend at Stanford Medical Center to be treated for a “gastrointestinal procedure.” He is now resting comfortably at home, I am happy to report.
Gossip Morning
- Britney Spears is extending her stay at UCLA Medical Center for 14 days, unless she protests the hold.
- What Spears is protesting is her father’s control over her estate, which he acquired on Friday.
- Michelle Williams releases a very sad public statement. Really.
- Singer Lily Allen was dumped by her boyfriend two weeks after having a miscarriage. The couple had recently returned from a $6000 a night vacation in the Maldives.
Obituary: Netscape browser, 1994-2008
Scott Gilbertson writes at Wired’s Compiler blog that as of today, America Online has turned off the switch: “Navigator will continue to function should you happen to have a recent copy stashed away. But America Online, which has been Netscape’s guardian during its long, downward slide in popularity, will no longer support the browser and will stop releasing updates. Support for all versions of the software will be off-loaded to the Netscape community forum. Netscape.com will continue to live on as a web portal.”
Gossip Morning
Cecily files via email:
I am in LA, and the gossip is that in LA, celebrity gossip is a normal part of local news coverage. Go figure. On the 6 am news I have heard about Britney Spears (I am at UCLA today too, but not in the psych ward), Star Jones, and paparazzi laws!
- Entertainment Tonight was to run a video of Heath Ledger at a drug-laden party (though apparently there is no footage of him actually doing drugs), but Hollywood publicists and stars pressured the outfit to drop the video. Scarlett Johansson, Natalie Portman, Josh Brolin, and Sarah Jessica Parker all sent emails.
- Grey’s Anatomy star Justin Chambers recently checked himself into the same UCLA psych ward as Spears. Chambers was suffering from “exhaustion” and a “sleep disorder.”
- Actress Julianna Marguiles has given birth to a boy, Kieran.
Video: Google Street View 2.0 will be even more powerful and versatile
Via Valleywag, and one of the hotter YouTube clips of the week.
ArsTechnica: The state of the music industry 2008
If you follow news about the music industry, then you already know that the piecemeal drip-drip-drip of bad news is relentless. But coherent big-picture stories aren’t easy to come by. Last week Nate Anderson of ArsTechnica wrote the best analysis of music business trend lines I’ve seen in a long time, and it’s accompanied by interesting and accessible infographics. Highly recommended.
Excerpt:
“Don’t put all the blame on file-swapping… or chalk the problems up to an inability to ‘compete with free.’ Digital music sales soared in 2007, and in fact, the total number of ‘units’ moved during the year increased over 2006. eMusic, the number two music download service in the US behind iTunes, doubled its own projections for the Christmas season, pushed out 10 million tracks in the month of December, and added 50,000 new paying customers in the last six months.
“And all of this happened without the four major labels even offering DRM-free tracks online. Now that Sony BMG has finally capitulated, 2008 is poised to be the year digital goes so mainstream that even your parents use it.
“All that good news means that music is alive and well—but it doesn’t mean that things are rosy at the major labels. Let’s run the numbers from 2007, then do a case study on eMusic’s recent results to see just what kind of success can be had in the digital download world by competing with free.”
What’s wrong with this picture?
Via Consumerist: Has Wal-Mart got a deal for you! (And yes, this does mean you can get 4 for $20.)
Gossip Morning
- Britney Spears has been hospitalized again for psychiatric evaluation. Last night, her shrink called an ambulance. The ambulance was followed by her mother, beau, and a significant police escort. Spears is said to be suffering from a bipolar disorder. For more info, go here and here.
- Okay, so apparently it is totally true that Angelina Jolie is pregnant. So is 24’s Potato Face Mary Lynn Rajskub. And so is Ethan Hawke Ethan Hawke’s girlfriend, Uma Thurman’s former nanny. Small world!
- Page Six has more on Heath Ledger’s history of drug problems.
Gossip Morning
- Gwen Stefani is 13 weeks pregnant with her second child. This is good news, as she had good clothes and was fun to watch when she was pregnant the first time.
- Kevin Federline’s lawyer is going back to court to get Britney Spears to pay another 500k in legal bills.
- Click here to read Us Weekly’s take on Michelle William’s purported attempt to get Heath Ledger into rehab in 2006.
LOL Cats coming to a bookstore near you
MediaBistro’s GalleyCat blog reports that Gotham Books will publish a book spinoff from the LOL cats website I Can Has Cheezburger. The agent says, “The authors are letting [website icon] Professor Happycat guide the reader through the different memes with brief definitions and context, while still capturing the absurd humor of the site.” Uh huh.
Meanwhile, notes GalleyCat, there’s already a book that compiles Adam Koford’s The Laugh-Out-Loud Cats, a strip based on the premise that LOL cats started in a newspaper comics strip in 1912.
There’s a very funny video clip for Koford’s strip. We posted it a few months ago, and–what the hell–here is it again in case you missed it the first time.
Google may get into the scientific data business, and the “Google generation” isn’t
Two items about the Behemoth of Mountain View from the invaluable ArsTechnica:
- John Timmer writes that Google has been providing science researchers with powerful computers–in exchange, effectively, for copies of the data–and may soon open a science data store under the auspices of Google Research.
- Nate Anderson writes that a British study has found that the “Google generation”–kids born since 1993–are not the search and navigation jocks they’re presumed to be: “It’s true that young people prefer interactive systems to passive ones and that they are generally competent with technology, but it’s not true that students today are ‘expert searchers.’ In fact, the report calls this ‘a dangerous myth.’ Knowing how to use Facebook doesn’t make one an Internet search god, and the report concludes that a literature review shows no movement (either good or bad) in young people’s information skills over the last several decades. Choosing good search terms is a special problem for younger users.”
Gossip Morning
- Britney Spears is so powerful fucked she’s stimulating a whole economy all by herself. I’m not kidding!
- Michelle Williams’s next movie, Blue Valentine, is on hold until she is ready to go back to work. The drama also starring Ryan Gosling, was set to start production in late February.
- Lindsay Lohan was spotted drinking straight from the bottle again.
Wired: The life cycle of a blog post
“You have a blog,” writes Frank Rose. “You compose a new post. You click Publish and lean back to admire your work. Imperceptibly and all but instantaneously, your post slips into a vast and recursive network of software agents, where it is crawled, indexed, mined, scraped, republished, and propagated throughout the Web. Within minutes, if you’ve written about a timely and noteworthy topic, a small army of bots will get the word out to anyone remotely interested, from fellow bloggers to corporate marketers.”
The heart of the piece is the very detailed graphic illustrating what happens after you hit Publish.
[Via boingboing]
The MPAA needs a new shill in Congress, and a new accountant
California Democrat Howard Berman, the man known as Congressman Hollywood during his time as chair of the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property, will likely leave that post to chair the much more prestigious House Committee on Foreign Affairs (whose current chair, Tom Lantos, is retiring for health reasons), according to Nate Anderson at ArsTechnica.
As chair of the intellectual property subcommittee, writes Anderson, “Berman has consistently backed stronger IP rights for all industries that want them. He’s been behind the push to make radio stations pay performers for playing their music (instead of just paying the songwriters) and has backed the MPAA’s campaign against colleges and universities. Berman has also argued for “reforming” the DMCA on the grounds that it did not go far enough, and he has backed the PRO-IP Act, a bill that Google’s top copyright lawyer has called the most ‘outrageously gluttonous IP bill ever introduced in the US.’”
One possible replacement: Virginia Democrat Rick Boucher, whom Anderson called “a voice of sanity in a cacophony of idiocy.”
More intellectual property news from Movieland: The Motion Picture Association of America has admitted that the estimate of movie thefts via campus file-sharing in a 2005 report it released was three times too high.
Gossip Morning
- Angelina Jolie did herself no favors in the celebrity gossip/pregnancy department by wearing to the SAG awards a long, flowy, strapless gown held up only by her ample bosoms. I’m just saying.
- Martie Maguire, of the Dixie Chicks, is pregnant with her third girl. She already has twins.
- A private memorial was held Sunday in LA for Heath Ledger. He will be buried in Perth, Australia.
- Prettiest dressed at the SAG Awards: Julie Christie, in a chic black suit; America Ferrera in Monique Lhuillier; Chandra Wilson in a slinky gold number; and Marion Cottilard in Nina Ricci. Worst dressed: Daniel Day Lewis.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a cheerleader?
Via boingboing, a TV station in New Hampshire has–for admittedly inscrutable reasons–posted a slide gallery of celebs and political eminences (including former Morehouse College student Samuel L. Jackson, pictured, and future ex-president George W. Bush) who used to be cheerleaders.News media: As dailies decline, wonks start talking about a government news agency
One of the plaints that always accompanies inside-media discussions of newspapers’ failing health is, “Who will find a commercial model for large-scale newsgathering that works?” Which assumes that someone will because, well, someone has to. At a panel discussion hosted by the Twin Cities Media Alliance last fall, I suggested that the answer might be “no one,” and went on to speculate that it wasn’t hard to imagine a state-run news agency-cum-propaganda ministry taking the place of national and international news reportage.
Yesterday Michael Arrington at TechCrunch wrote that media policy wonks are starting to debate whether the government should get into the news business.
Gossip Morning
- Star Magazine is reporting that Angelina Jolie is pregnant with twins. Who knows. Tori Spelling is pregnant with her second child.
- Blind item: “What bad boy actor, who spent some time in rehab not too long ago, was openly doing cocaine in the back seat of his chauffeur-driven car while in Sundance for the film festival? Get over your vice! And Shower!”
- Amy Winehouse officially entered rehab, for now.
- Reality pays. Lauren Conrad of The Hills has bought a 2.5 million dollar house.
Gossip Morning
- A “rolled” 20 dollar bill found in Heath Ledger’s Soho loft has tested negative for narcotic substances. So far, all drugs found in his apartment have been varieties of anti-anxiety and sleeping medications. Most pill bottles were full. A preliminary autopsy failed to determine the cause of death, but foul play has been ruled out and his death is being called accidental.
- Michelle Williams and daughter Matilda have arrived in New York from Sweden.
- Reasons for Eddie Murphy’s split from “wife” Tracey Edmonds two weeks after their “wedding” are emerging. Page Six reports it wasn’t over a prenup but because Murphy wanted his mother to come on their honeymoon, among other things.
- Yesterday, Britney Spears showed up to court for a hearing she had requested, but she left before it started. No visitation rights remain in place.
More media gloom n’ doom: Online ad buyer sees national web advertising flattening in ‘08
“Most prognosticators predict another booming year for online advertising,” writes Michael Learmonth at Silicon Alley Insider, “but Carl Fremont [pictured] isn’t so sure. Fremont, the global media director for digital ad giant Digitas, says the weakening economy will slow down Web ads as well.”
Excerpt:
SAI: What happens then to online CPMs?
Fremont: I see them flat or in some cases down. What is happening is there is a glut of impressions on the market. I believe what’s going to happen is there will be more inventory flooding the market as a growing number of publishers move away from the the subscriber model to an ad-supported model. You are going to see much more inventory on the market.
More: Valleywag points out that the industry will get a clue about the shape of 2008 when Google releases its fourth quarter ‘07 results at the end of this month.
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