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Rage Against the Machinima

As the stakes get higher on YouTube, video stars are finding safety—and power—in numbers

A Handy Flowchart For Selecting Your 2012 CMJ Panels, Day 2

While you folks were all wearing yourselves out running around between CMJ showcases yesterday, I just guzzled a bunch of free booze at a press-only party and then ran home to giggle at the two boring rich dudes angrily discussing the details of their pension plans on national television. Hope it wa ... More >>

Groupon Has Bought Out Savored

Groupon has bought out Savored, a reservation and discount-meal provider. It's a win-win-situation: Restaurants get customers they otherwise wouldn't, and diners get both a reservation and a discount. According to TechCrunch, Savored is used by some 1,000 restaurants and gives diners discounts of u ... More >>

Turns Out, Yelp Ratings Really Matter to Customers

Believe it or not, but those Yelp ratings have a really strong influence on whether a restaurant succeeds. According to Techcrunch, two Berkeley economists found that a half-star improvement on Yelp's five-star rating makes it 30 to 49 percent more likely that a restaurant will sell out its evenin ... More >>

Guy Adams, Brit Journalist, Has Twitter Account Suspended for Criticizing NBC Olympics Coverage

Because of our mutual interest in Scientology, Guy Adams and I have come to know each other in recent months. He's the Los Angeles-based reporter for the UK publication The Independent, and lately he's been taking aim at NBC's problems covering the London games. But he really ran into trouble when ... More >>

Your Phone Numbers and Facebook: What You Should Actually Worry About

Collecting your data to serve you better.​If you're on Facebook, you've likely seen the panicky message that's been circulating, warning that the social networking behemoth has started publishing all your phone contacts for everybody to see: "ALL THE PHONE NUMBERS IN YOUR PHONE are now PUBLIS ... More >>

Facebook Facial Recognition Technology Being Probed By EU; Plus, How to Turn It Off!

via​Facebook will be investigated by the European Union's sector on data protection, Bloomberg reports this afternoon, because of new facial recognition technology added to profiles that users have to opt out of through a typically convoluted security settings process. Yes, again. Facebook's l ... More >>

Arianna Huffington Wants an App To Tell You When To Stop Using Apps

Bloomberg View Gathers All-Star Roster of White Males

​Bloomberg View, the forthcoming editorial page at Bloomberg News -- under the umbrella of the media and data company Bloomberg L.P., founded and owned by Michael Bloomberg, New York City's three-term billionaire mayor -- has finally released its list of high-powered editorial board members and co ... More >>

Lara Logan Speaks on Her Sexual Assault in Egypt

Lara Logan in Cairo​As the deaths of photographers Tim Hetherington and Chris Honros sadly reminded us last week, journalists continue to face dangers all over the globe, and especially in the volatile Middle East, where a rash of uprisings have created historic opportunities to capture news, ... More >>

R.I.P., Friendster, the Social Media Site of Our Relative Youth

Turn that smile upside down!​Remember Friendster? One time we met someone on Friendster, a date, in fact, and we went to a vegan restaurant in the West Village (not that we were vegan), and we ate something that looked like meat but wasn't, and was really weirdly chewy, and then we never spoke ... More >>

Fleet Foxes' Robin Pecknold To MySpace: The Internet Is Not A Laughing Matter

​Outdated social media sites are taking a beating this month. In addition to today's news that Friendster will be shutting down, Fleet Foxes frontman Robin Pecknold's charge against the slightly older "a/s/l" site MySpace seems to be gaining steam. Pecknold tweeted earlier this month that he w ... More >>

Village Voice "Best Of" App Now Available!

​Exciting news: Our long awaited "Best Of..." app is finally here! Featuring more than 10,000 of the best things to eat, drink, buy, and experience in cities all across the U.S., the app is built from our annual "Best Of" issue and features recommendations on nearly every block in New York Cit ... More >>

Moviefone Interviewed Us About Scientology, and Didn't Ask Us to 'Tone it Down'

​AOL's Moviefone got some bad press this week when it was revealed that one of its employees sent an e-mail to another AOL entity, TechCrunch, objecting to the way one of its reporters, the always delightful Alexia Tsotsis, wrote up her interview of Jake Gyllenhaal and the movie he's promoting ... More >>

TechCrunch Tells AOL to Piss Off; New York Times & Huffington Post Continue Catty Swipes

​AOL is balancing a lot right now. In addition to letting hundreds go last week, the media giant is moving toward becoming an editorial powerhouse, sucking up websites like Michael Arrington's TechCrunch family and Arianna Huffington's The Huffington Post, which is even hiring more journalists ... More >>

Uber, A More Expensive Car Service For iPhone, Headed to NYC

​Uber, the San Francisco-based car service start-up, is expanding from California to New York City beginning "in a few short weeks," TechCrunch reports today. Do we need more cars? Do we need to pay more money for more cars? Maybe in the outer boroughs! But what if it will run you as much as t ... More >>

Tina Brown Excites Staff With Redesign, Still Riding New Newsweek Hype Wave

​If there's one word to describe the media news narrative so far in 2011, it's probably "reinvention," or something like it, what with all of the relaunches, redesigns and restructuring, from AOL and the Huffington Post to Gawker, the New York Times (plus Magazine), New York Observer and Tina ... More >>

Flavorize Wants to Be the Pandora of Food

Find the tasty​The Interweb is getting pretty crowded with all the food and restaurant sites that are cropping up (Google's new recipe search, Foodspotting, Foodily, Dinevore), and now Flavorize wants to become "the Pandora of food" by recommending dishes based on taste preferences.

Snow, Snow, Snow, Etc.; Beloved Twitter Apps Return; Man Finds Wallet After 40 Years

​• Happy Presidents Day! In case you haven't noticed yet, it snowed. Central Park was reporting 2.5 inches as of this morning. There's a chance of more snow over the afternoon, and again tonight. [Weather, NY1] • Protests in Libya against Muammar Qaddafi's totalitarian rule are spreading, ... More >>

Arianna Huffington Named Editor-in-Chief of Black Voices, MapQuest, Old People's Email

​AOL bought The Huffington Post for $315 million, it's true. Arianna Huffington says she's "stepping off a fast-moving train and onto a supersonic jet," by which she means she just made a large amount of money. And she is now the editor-in-chief of Black Voices. Also, MapQuest and Moviefone, p ... More >>

What Would Times Square Look Like With No Ads?

​From the man who brought you Super Size Me and reality stunt show 30 Days comes No Ad: New York, "an internet-based effort to remove all visual advertising from Times Square." Morgan Spurlock's Warrior Poets have teamed with online photo editing program Aviary and some neo-ad agency called Th ... More >>

Gabriel Snyder to The Atlantic Wire: On Growing Up an Aggregator

​Gabriel Snyder, who was fired by Nick Denton as the editor-in-chief of Gawker in February 2010, will be joining The Atlantic as the editor of the magazine's Atlantic Wire aggregation website, according to an Observer report today. Snyder will replace Ben Carlson, who left for a job at Rupert ... More >>

Egypt Blocks Twitter During Protest

​Likely emboldened by the recent uprising in Tunisia, which took down longstanding dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, thousands of Egyptians are protesting today in Cairo against a general lack of freedoms, and more specifically, the horrific murder of Khaled Said (warning: graphic image) by p ... More >>

Mark Zuckerberg to Debut New Facebook Profile Page Tonight on 60 Minutes

​Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg will use Sunday's episode of 60 Minutes like one giant commercial for his company, unveiling the new profile page design on the air. Above is a screenshot of the episode's preview, giving us the pleasure of a first glimpse. In the clip Zuckerberg is described ... More >>

Groupon Brushes Off Google's $6 Billion Offer

​Six billion dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? Groupon, the Chicago-based mega-start-up of online group coupons (get it?), turning down a six billion dollar offer from SkyNet Google. The tech giant has more money than God and often uses it to snap up smaller companies. But often, they ... More >>

Facebook to Introduce "Gmail Killer" Email

​Facebook is the place for your friends, your farms...and starting soon, it will be the place for your email. According to TechCrunch, the email client is expected to be announced on Monday during a special event Mark Zuckerberg is hosting in California.

Press Clips: RELEASE THE IACRACKEN! (or: Newsweek/Daily Beast Merger Rumored, Again)

​ARISE, DAILY NEWS BEAST OF THE WEEK! Press Clips, Day 20, I'm Somehow Writing About The Observer Again edition, right here:

Even the New Gap Logo Hates the New MySpace Logo

​Amid an internet uproar about how bad the new Gap logo is -- and just after iTunes faced similar scrutiny for the updated iTunes 10 icon -- MySpace is getting in on the Any Press is Good Press action by releasing their own terrible new logo. TechCrunch describes it literally as "the word 'my' ... More >>

AOL TechCrunch Deal Is Done, So What Does This Mean for Everyone Else?

​Well, when we're wrong, we're wrong: I didn't think AOL was going to pull the trigger, but they just did. Apparently, at TechCrunch Disrupt -- Michael Arrington's cuddlefest of sycophantic entrepreneurs, wannabes, and the Real McCoy, who mostly attend to have their asses kissed -- Michael Arr ... More >>

D-Grade Rap Star Possibly "Riding Dirty" with Newly Minted Baller-Status Michael Arrington, Other Nerds

​Remember rapper Chamillionaire ("Chameleon" "Millionaire"), who had that song about "Riding Dirty" that was less about unspeakable sex acts we'd probably rather not want to catch him in the middle of rather than the proposition of being pulled over by law enforcement officials with illicit ... More >>

Breaking: Michael Arrington Responds to AOL/TechCrunch Acquisition Rumors with Potentially Suicidal Segway Rides, Truancy

​It has recently been rumored that TechCrunch CEO Michael Arrington -- a tech/media entrepreneur who takes the whole "bustin' down doors" bravado pretty seriously -- is in acquisition talks with media giant AOL, Om Malik at GigaOm reports, noting that the deal "is at a sensitive stage and migh ... More >>

Bye Bye, Bloglines

All Blogs Go To Heaven​Do you use an RSS reader? If so, and you're stuck on the old-school Bloglines, it's time to get a Google Reader. IAC,which bought Bloglines five years ago, has decided to shutter the service on October 1, according to an announcement on Ask.com. It's always a pain when p ... More >>

The 9/11 iPhone App: Not Quite 'DoodleJump'

​Those of you with iPhones out there in the world have a universe of various games, utilities, and information at your fingertips with the single swipe of a finger, as there's an iPhone app for everything. Even, apparently, to help us remember 9/11.

Fat Tweets: Twitter Bug Allows Way Over 140 Characters, Gone in a Flash

​On Saturday, a bug with a new Twitter URL-shortener shook the fabric of the universe, allowing tweets to go well over 140 characters if you were nerdy enough to a) be at home and online during the small window of time and b) get it to work. Scrambling on weekend hours, the good folks at Twitt ... More >>

Bike Share Program Getting Attention -- But Will It Work?

​Ryan Rzepecki is dashing in between sponsorship meetings when he tells the Voice on the phone that all this media attention over his new start-up SoBi (Social Bicycles) is a blessing and a curse. He hasn't stopped getting e-mails from bicyclists, hipsters, urban planners from as far away as H ... More >>

Kanye West Performs at Facebook, Disses Twitter

Yesterday, Kanye West traveled to tech world, baffling a crowd of cellphone-toting Facebook employees by performing in their Palo Alto cafeteria, a cappella, in a sharp suit and matching scarf. Why they couldn't get him some sort of beat-delivery apparatus is unclear, though these raps sound more ... More >>

Starbucks Continues to Try to Make You Like Them, Offers Free Wifi Starting July 1

​There's yet another reason to continue our conflicted relationship with Starbucks, where on one hand, the coffee generally features an aspect that you might call either "burnt" or "like urine" (and, hey, it's just an opinion, we're sure some love it), but even if you don't, the bathrooms are ... More >>

Michael Arrington's Asshole Moment of the Week Number Two: Sad Water is Gross

​TechCrunch Disrupt - which is like a G8 conference for people who get evangelical over things like iPhone apps, except the protesters are inside with everyone else - is in New York right now. The person responsible for importing San Fransisco's tech scene to this city for three long, long day ... More >>

Mike Bloomberg Announces Mobile Tech Startup Investment, 'MyCityWay'; Doesn't Tell Arrington to F*ck Off

​The mayor made a stop at New York's hottest (read: most..current tech conference right now, TechCrunch Disrupt) a few minutes ago. Here's what we learned:

The Most Exciting Moment of TechCrunch Disrupt Thus Far: Michael Arrington Told to "Fuckoff"

​Do you know what a TechCrunch is? No? Well then: it's a site run by a guy out of San Fransisco for San Fransisco tech geeks, and unless you work for FourSquare or you're a venture capitalist with a few hundred thousand to peel off, don't worry too much about it. All you need to know is that T ... More >>

Murdoch Scores "Kleptomaniac" News Sites, Calls to Make Them Pay

​Everyone says newspapers are dead (except in New York, city of seven dailies), but Rupert Murdoch has found a way to bring them back to life: making "aggregators and plagiarists" (presumably meaning sites like Google News and Drudge) pay the content-providing news orgs whose works they blurb ... More >>

Tech Review: iPhone "Hottest Girls" Nude App

Though iPhone apps such as Bikini Blast and Peekababe have been around a while, Alan Leung's Hottest Girls app is said by its developer to be "the first app to have nudity" (He also says, "you should be happy to know that the new update contains 99% non-Asian images.") TechCrunch calls it "iPorn" ... More >>

China Blocks Twitter, Other Web 2.0 Stuff, As Part of Post-Freedom Internet Boom

As we approach the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square uprising, China is apparently blocking Twitter -- and maybe also "Blogger, Flickr... Livejournal, Tumblr, the Huffington Post and Microsoft's Live.com, Hotmail, its MSN Space blog tool and its new search engine Bing," says Fox News. Whew -- ... More >>