The Pirate Bay Sold For $7.8 Million

Global Gaming Factory X AB acquired The Pirate Bay for $7.8 million. I wonder what this will do to the political party…

Twitter Founders Talk About Its Origins, Next Steps and Social Alchemy

During the All Things D conference, the founders of Twitter talk about the origins of the micro-blogging site and what’s in its future.  Founders Talk About Its Origins, Next Steps and Social Alchemy – Digits – WSJ.

Pope Benedict Launches Facebook and iPhone Apps

Obama— the technology president— has a rival in the world leader realm. Pope Benedict has hit social media with a God-like fury.

ABC Joining NBC, Fox on Hulu

The Walt Disney Co. is joining fellow multimedia giants NBC Universal and News Corp. as stakeholders and providers of content to the growing TV Web site. Disney is promising to distribute a host of programming via the service, including such ABC staples as Lost, Desperate Housewives and Ugly Betty.

Nielsen finds most users on Twitter are male

A study released today found that Twitter has a dominant presence of young males on its service, while Predicto, another mobile community, is dominated mostly by older women.

Colbert’s Politics

The Huffington Post reports on a study that claims viewers of the Colbert Report tend to believe that the host holds something remarkably similar to his or her own political views.

Maybe we’ve cracked the code as to Colbert’s sucess. Each viewer see in him exactly the political views he wants to see.

A Nintendo DS….on the Rocks Please

Jodi Wykle knew her son would be thrilled when she gave him a new Nintendo DS for his birthday.

Instead, he was rocked.

According to WTSP-TV, the confused teen opened up his gift only to find bunch of stones and a rolled up Chinese newspaper in place of the popular handheld.

All I got was a rock.

Needless to say, mom was equally stunned.

“When he opened it, he was pulling the seal off, my sister-in-law carries a pocket knife and she opened it and that’s when he pulled it out and it was Chinese newspaper and a bunch of rocks,” she explained.

The troubling discovery prompted the Florida woman to contact the local Wal-Mart where she bought the curious box and complain, but reportedly workers there told her it wasn’t their problem and that she should contact Nintendo instead. Of course, Nintendo told her roughly the same thing, leaving mother and son with a $138 box of rocks.

“They don’t want to do nothing. They want me to keep the box of rocks. I’m not buying a box of rocks for $138,” she said.

Amazingly enough, however, Wal-Mart soon caved after learning that the same box of rocks had been previously returned by another disgruntled customer. How exactly it made it back onto store shelves remains a mystery, but for her troubles, Wykle was given a full refund and a $20 gift card.

It’s not the first time Wal-Mart has gotten into hot water for selling a questionable handheld. Earlier this month, a PSP system bought at a different Wal-Mart store in Florida was found to contain a memory stick filled with pornographic images.

Obama interrupts sweeps week

Fox has decided to be the only major network not to air th Obama press conference this coming Wednesday. According to an article in Variety, this may open the door for future networks to ignore presidential requests in the future as well.

Personally, I wonder if the networks couldn’t just do a round robin; I mean do we really need 12 choices about which feed of the president to watch?

Microsoft Vine = Emergency Twitter?

Mashable - Microsoft has an early beta of a new product called Vine. Currently available for beta testers in Seattle, it’s a location-aware social networking application focused on being a robust means of local communication that’ll work even in times of emergency.

It’s a desktop client (available for Windows only), and you can also post to it via e-mail or SMS. It gathers local news from 20,000 sources and displays it on a map. It lets you post alerts (short messages) and reports (longer posts). Finally, it integrates with Facebook(), while Twitter() integration will be added at a later date.

Marathon Runners Tweet Their Way to the Finish Line

Two London marathon runners documented their cardiovascular treks in real-time, and they didn’t need a camera crew to follow them.

CNN news producer Peter Wilkinson and Latitude Group CEO Alex Hoye stood out among 35,000 runners at Sunday’s London Marathon — in the digital world, at least, where they tweeted their progress with their cellphones.

“To you’se enjoying marathon w/ a beer, a) chers! b) cam u shield your beverage as I pass for 9 more mls? Mi 17 http://twitpic.com/4173o,” tweeted Hoye with his iPhone.