They must be ecstatic 

The cable nets got themselves a new Scott Peterson.

Maybe this cycle viewers will revolt, turn it off, write in, not play. Pundits could refuse to come on the tube to talk about it, but they won't. Producers could say we're not wall-to-walling it, but they won't. It's up to the audience. Give it an old-fashioned shunning. Think an online petition would do anything? How about an online pledge asking users to sign and agree to turn it off when it comes on? Facebook group?

Remember this? 

Stay with it.

I saw Cocker in London when he was just starting that spastic grabbing the back of his neck phase. He may have been coming out of it by this SNL performance in 1976. He did other spastic things with his hands before and after, I think. I love his into-it-ness. Like Willie Nelson, a pretty awful voice but a great singer. Also love The Letter -- and his duet with Jennifer Warnes, Up Where We Belong, has been known to make me cry.

Cheney 

Completely out of control.

Basement dwellers and little piglets 

God I hate the comment culture on Slash and Digg.

Sign of the times spotted at Walgreens 

$5.99 64MB thumb drives displayed in a tempt-you, impulse way on the checkout counter like packs of gum.

That works! 

Inspiring win-win marketing and creative partnership story. An indie film is shown in full on YouTube, and a sign-up deal with a movie review site helps the filmmakers pay off the debt they incurred in making the film. Wired.

It all seems straightforward and unslimy. Maybe because it's a subject-appropriate customer acquisition thing and not advertising. A 180 from dumb conversational marketing BS. There's a touch of a cause there, too. That helps. Watch for the big corporate mind to try to tap into the cause or starving artist aspect soon, and spoil the vibe.

Class differences alive and well online 

danah boyd on use of Facebook vs MySpace from a social class perspective. You guessed it: college-bound kids use Facebook and think MySpace is tacky. Working-class kids may not even know about Facebook. The divide holds up even in the military with officers on FB and enlisted folk on MySpace. I like the way danah writes about fairly academic topics in an informal way, with opinions about what she's discovered.

I'd check Techmeme more often if it told me about more things like that essay.

Anecdotal note from my own teen. Apparently his gang has talked about the danger presented by all the new Facebook apps junking up profile pages and making FB feel more like MySpace. Snobs (though I agree ;-) ). Heading out from the white-collar burbs and into the corn fields for college is going to be a really good thing for this particular kid, I think, round him out a little, just as going to New York was a good thing for his older bro, who spent more of his growing-up time in Bloomington, IN.