Pissed off Americans

Is it the ongoing war? The economy? Bush's re-election? More and more Americans seem to have enough and have to let their steam off by expressing their anger. The pissed-off American (POA) has become a trade mark in the meanwhile, he has a website, a blog, he can draw angry cartoons - and he even sells pissed-off T-Shirts...

Weird foods from around the world

Have you ever travelled to a country faar away and wondered, how the locals can eat their gross-looking local dishes and specialties - without dying on the spot? Then this website which lists weird foods from around the world is for you.

With a little help from my friends

Then:
Effexor
Celexa
Zoloft
Anafranil
Venlafaxin
Seropram
Stilnox
Klonopin
Restoril
Sominex
Lexotanil
Dormicum

Now:
Cymbalta
Wellbutrin
Temazepam
Provigil
Skelaxin

Blogosphere dispatches

Wow! A lot is going on in the blogosphere! I assembled quite a few news clips about some interesting trends, changes and business developments in the world of blogs, but I wasn't able to publish them until now. So here is what caught my attention - with the latest news first:

CooperKatz & Company, a mid-sized New York City public relations firm, more famously known as the employer of Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion, today launched a new service to help corporations monitor, analyze, plan for and respond to issues that might bubble up from blogs.

Search engine Ask Jeeves has bought Bloglines, a Web log index and Internet news funnel popular with serious readers of online journals, in its latest bid to gain ground on heavyweight rivals Google and Yahoo. California-based Bloglines, formed in 2003, has established itself as an important player in the field, with a searchable index of nearly 285 million articles posted on blogs.

Blogcritic asks: Are blogs the new Google?

Fotolog has welcomed its one millionth “Fotologger” and has claimed the title of the Internet’s biggest photo-blog site.

Yahoo has entered the blogging market launching Yahoo Japan blogs. The move comes following the launch of the Microsoft MSN Spaces service last year and Google’s purhase of Blogger in 2003. Yahoo is currently not disclosing its blogging strategy for English speaking markets but has a track record of testing new offerings in Asian markets.

America's "first blog mogul" Nick Denton - publisher of Gawker media - launches two new blogs: Gridskipper, dedicated to travel, and Lifehacker, which will examine software downloads and time-saving web sites. Sony Consumer Electronics agreed to pay $25,000 a month to be the exclusive sponsor of LifeHacker - according to Advertising Age "a new milestone for the commercialization of blogs". Denton, publisher of 11 blogs, has done other sponsored blog deals in the past, among others with Audi, Nike and New York Times.

More and more bloggers turn into book authors. Just recently two of the 'A-list' web writers, conservative polit blogger Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) and witty Wonkette editor Ana Marie Cox, announced they would stop blogging for a while in order to focus on other projects. Cox received an a $275,000 advance for her first novel "Dog Days". And Jay Rosen, author of the journalism blog PressThink, has signed with Times Books to publish his book about how blogs are changing media and and politics.

Writers of the following blogs also have book projects, according to the The New Yorker: Buzz Machine, Engadget, Eurotrash, Hit & Run, The Black Table, Dong Resin, Zulkey, Low Culture, Lindsayism, Megnut, Maud Newton, MemeFirst, Old Hag, PressThink and I Keep a Diary.

Just as a recap. One of the first to make the transition from web to book author was Baghdad blogger known as Salam Pax, who wrote an often bleakly humorous weblog under most dangerous circumstances from Iraq. He became an internet sensation, got a column in the British "Guardian" and signed a book and a movie deal. His book "The Clandestine Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi", has just been published as paperback.

Then some sex blogs also caught the attention from publishers. Jessica Cutler, for instance, a 24 year-old staffer at Capitol Hill, became famous last year with her online diary Washingtonienne about the sex affairs shed had with her co-workers. Despite the fact she lost her job, the "scandal" payed off: she soon signed a book deal and posed for Playboy. And a British call girl with the pseudonym "Belle de Jour", who had created a sensation with a blog about her experiences, has signed a six-figure deal with Warner Books to publish a memoir. The book has been recently published. The film rights are also being frantically contested. (Update: Channel 4 is to make a TV drama based on her web diary.)

More blogs will turn into 'literature'. The interest among editors and agents continues to increase. The New Yorker reported that one of the leading talent agencies, International Creative Management in New York, has assigned one of their assistants to become a kind of one-woman blog boutique, surfing for the best writers online and suggesting they work with her to develop and sell a book. The magazine predicts: "Books by bloggers will be a trend, a cultural phenomenon."

A daily dose beach

Why not travel far away for a change? Webcam from the beach Port S. Charles, Barbados.

Different sexes - different shopping patterns

No further comment.

"Sideways" boosts wine sales

There are a few moments where it's a pleasure to refer to a piece of news. This is one of them:

Alexander Payne's Oscar nominated film "Sideways", a romantic exploration of California's vineyards, has prompted thousands of fans to buy the wines featured in the movie. Sales of pinot noir have seen the most dramatic rise after Paul Giamatti's character, Miles, eulogises its subtle qualities in an attempt to seduce the character played by Virginia Madsen. Wine connoisseurs bought 22 percent more pinot noir after the film's release.

Hey - whatever it takes! The Americans still are the world's biggest beer lovers (they drink 24 billion liters a year). Plus: Madson definitely deserves to win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.

Craigslist - the movie

There is no question that the website Craigslist, with more than 1.7 billion pageviews a month and a presence in nearly 100 cities worldwide, has changed the way many millions of people buy and sell things, meet people, and look for jobs and places to live. Now Craigslist goes Big Sceen: A documentary called "24 Hours on Craigslist" tries to explore the phenomena by chronicling the outcome or more than 80 Craigslist postings. The movie is currently playing at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival - the city where Craigslist was born.

(Odd) News of the day

President Bush has sent Congress a $2.57 trillion budget for fiscal year 2006 that bolsters defense and homeland security and puts most other programs on a diet aimed at halving the federal deficit by 2009. He asked Congress to reduce or kill 150 federal programs that affect schoolchildren, farmers and health care for the poor - and make his tax cuts permanent. He also proposed to shift more resources to faith-based groups that provide a social safety net. Update: NPR reports that these budget cuts amount to 6 percent of the deficit. The tax cuts, on the other hand, make up 50 percent of the deficit.

West Hollywood may ban cosmetic surgery for pets (finally - there were just too many dogs on the streets with a facelift..).

Scandal: U.S. military police threw a mudwrestling party at a prison camp in Iraq. At least three female guards stripped to their underwear and wrestled each other in a paddling pool full of mud. One young military woman lifted her T-shirt to expose her breasts, while another revealed her thong panties.

A former American guard at the Nuremberg Tribunal claimed that he had smuggled in the poison that allowed Hermann Goering, Hitler’s second-in-command, to escape the hangman’s noose. Herbert Lee Stivers, 78, a retired sheet-metal worker from Hesperia, California, broke almost six decades of silence to appear to solve one of the great mysteries of the Second World War.

According to the upcoming book "Disney War" by Pulitzer prize-winning author James B. Steward, Disney CEO Michael Eisner called his executives "monkeys". Eisner, who was able to obtain several chapters of the book, strongly denies that. Apparently the Disney management is so distraught over the Stewart unflattering revelations, that the company's head of public relations has offered to resign - an offer Eisner refused.