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I have never watched NBC's "The Philanthropist." (I have embedded a small excerpt, to offer you a little excitement.)

However, the show seems to be the battleground for a less than altruistic lawsuit against Microsoft Bing's ad agency, JWT and its holding company, WPP.

According to AdAge, the plaintiff, a Delaware-based company specializing in "program-integrated advertising" called Denizen, is claiming that it was in discussions with WPP as long ago as 2002.

These talks seem to have gone on for more than four years and Denizen claims it had a confidentiality agreement in place.… Read more

There's something that looks like a wedding ring. A wedding ring, I tell you.

I don't for a moment believe it belongs to Gov. Arnold Schwarzernegger's fair wife. However, it's the governor who is inviting you to "bring the family" and take items such as this ring off his hands. Because California needs to find cash wherever it can.

Please, go to Craigslist or eBay and take the ThinkPad ($200) and the the Dell laptop ($200). Or even these 10 office chairs ($5 each). The LG Flip Phone ($9) and the Blackberrys ($25) have … Read more

In the wake of the unfortunate race-swap decapitation performed by unknown persons on an image used on Microsoft's Web site in Poland, I thought I'd wander over to the Polish press and see what it might have to say on the subject.

You see, we spoke Polish at home. And, well, I wondered whether the coverage in the country of my blood might indeed differ in any way from that in the U.S. Some Polish papers, like the rather energetic tabloid Super Express seem not have to made much of the story.

The more serious Dziennik pointed … Read more

It has already been discussed on NBC's "Today Show."

It has apparently enjoyed more than 1 million views on YouTube. And it has already aroused cries that it is too graphic, too shocking, too much to watch.

But the police department of Gwent, Wales, felt it had to do something to highlight the realities of texting and driving, so together with filmmaker Peter Watkins-Hughes, it made a public service announcement.

The film shows a teenage girl driving some friends in her car. Engrossed in her texting, she is involved first in one crash before her car is … Read more

It's ugly. It's not proactive. It turns a deaf ear, a blind eye, and a snubby nose to investors. And it looks upon advertising as if it were as appropriate as an anchor tattoo on the Pope's forehead.

In sum, suggests Gary Wolf in the latest issue of Wired, Craigslist is a mess. A horrible mess. An embarrassing mess. A willful mess in which its principals rake in money while its principles seem to revolve around some weirdly benign view of human goodness.

Of course, you can see what he means.

We live in the forging, gorging … Read more

It's an enormous setback for the tech world's acceptance into mainstream society.

Next season's celebrity cast of ABC's "Dancing with the Stars" was announced Monday.

And while luminaries such as somewhat disgraced politician Tom DeLay, somewhat disregarded singers Donny Osmond and Macy Gray and somewhat forgotten athletic icons such as former Cowboys' receiver Michael Irvin and mixed martial arts and UFC poster person Chuck Liddell, there was no tech presence at all.

In recent years, tech entrepreneur Mark Cuban acquitted himself with much credit, despite newly inserted artificial samba hips.

However, one is concerned … Read more

Have you ever sat in a bar or a coffee shop, just watching what people do, examining the expressions on their faces, or just desperately trying to overhear the endearing nonsense that emerges from their mouths?

That's how I think of Twitter.

Except there is one small difference with this peculiar little microblogging site: you can control who is in the bar or the coffee shop.

Some extremely clever people at Pear Analytics declared last week that 40 percent of tweets are "pointless babble". However, might their analysis be, as the English enjoy saying, just a little … Read more

When it comes to things viral, Microsoft is in an interesting period.

Recently, there was the wife vomiting in the direction of her porn-embracing husband--something of a dubious affair.

But now please welcome a delightful amuse-oeil that is reportedly from Microsoft Germany.

The video features someone supposedly named Bruno Kammerl, who appears to be zooming down a waterslide and flying into a kiddie pool several hundred feet away.

He comes out full of bonhomie and achievement--as one should feel when using Microsoft Office 2007.

Yes, there may have been a leap of faith in that last sentence. However, it … Read more

Oh, Wikipedia. Have you really become just another political organization?

I only ask because some clever people with nothing better to do have dedicated their bright gray matter to poring through Wikipedia's pages and drawing conclusions. The members of the Augmented Cognition Research Group at the Palo Alto Research Center could probably solve health care over a nonfat latte and a blueberry scone. Instead, they have examined who makes edits on Wikipedia and whose edits are reversed.

It makes for the same kind of dispiriting reading that you might once have expected from a Politburo travel brochure. You see, … Read more