• With the power of our scandalous bodies combined, we should surely produce an earthquake. If not, I’m sure [Sadeghi] can come up with a rational explanation for why the ground didn’t rumble.
• Blogger Jen McCreight • Regarding her attempt to test out an Iranian cleric’s bizarre theory that promiscuous women cause earthquakes. The Indiana atheist’s suggestion? She wants to encourage female bloggers to take part in a “Boobquake,” where they dress as provocatively as possible and see whether or not it actually causes a quake. This is hilarious, plus it’s picking up steam. While McCreight backed off from her original stance slightly (she’s encouraging donations to Islamic womens’ rights organizations and earthquake recovery groups, and plans to add some scientific data to make it worthwhile), it should be fun to watch on Monday. As long as the cleric is actually wrong, that is. source

• Canon is sure an arrogant company. They think, for some reason, that they’re worthy of their own top-level domain, unlike every other company out there. We think this is really stupid, because, well, their top-level domain opens up the possibility of a .cocacola or a .southoftheborder, which means that what’s a fairly simple domain structure becomes unspeakably complex.

• bad standardThe reason why top-level domains work well as-is, mostly, is because they create an open environment. By getting their own top-level domain, Canon creates a walled garden separate from the rest of the Web.
• Is it really easier? Canon seems convinced that it’s easier to type in my.canon (or whatever) than it is to type in canon.com. People have been typing canon.com for 15 years; changing it makes it harder. It’s branding gone amok.
• showing restraint To us, this idea suggests a need to figure out just when the best time would be to pull out the generalized top level domains. Because it appears Canon’s taking a road down a slippery slope with this move.

.canon domains we’d like to see

• » pachelbels.canon: One of the most well-known pieces of music is Pachelbel’s Canon, and that’s been around way longer than Canon has.
  
• » isthis.furry.buffyfanfic.canon: The main definition of “canon” refers to whether something is part of a story’s universe. And you could probably have fun with it, too.
  
• » potato.canon: Some jokers will probably come up with clever uses of the TLD, although if they’re like this, they’ll totally be wrong, because “cannon” has two N’s.
• » myprintersucks.itsmadeby.canon: If Canon really wanted to be bold with this idea, they’d let people buy dissenting domains that criticize both the brand and its products.
  

• Copyright, as Wolfram seems not to understand, is a bargain between creators and their public. As an *incentive* to create, the former are given a time-limited monopoly by governments. Note that it is *not* a reward for having created: it is an incentive to create again.
• ComputerWorld U.K. columnist Glyn Moody • Noting the should’ve-been-game-changing service’s overbearing copyright policy, which states that “failure to properly attribute results from Wolfram Alpha is not only a violation of [its license terms], but may also constitute academic plagiarism or a violation of copyright law.” So in other words, Wolfram Alpha is worse than the Associated Press. AND is has a laughably expensive iPhone app, too. It’s like the service was created by a bunch of scientists who don’t understand how the real world works! • source

• What it was Right around the time ShortFormBlog launched back in January, a fairly original twisting of the newspaper medium called The Printed Blog launched. We were fast fans, in part because the idea was so loudly original and because it partly felt like the kind of idea we’ve played with in the past.
• Why it’s dying It’s a victim of the economy and the idea didn’t work. Founder Joshua Karp announced the publication’s fate today, blaming it on a lack of venture capital support. Some, like Gawker (shut up, jerks), are claiming it was because it was a backwards idea. It was crazy, but it wasn’t backwards.
• What we’d doWe liked the idea but felt it could have used refinement. We would have used the publication as a guidepost to blog content online rather than straight-up printing blog items. It should’ve used its role as gatekeeper to edit and refine the content – like a newspaper! It might have gotten there, sadly. :( source