In the announcement, Yahoo tries to explain: “In 2008, she made a comeback with a new album, three MTV Music Awards, a sitcom guest star role and documentary on her rise, fall and career comeback.” True, Britney actually had a #1 song this year – her first in a decade. But, Yahoo’s rankings are much more a testament to our collective fascination with pop culture, as other terms in the top 10 include World Wresting Entertainment, Miley Cyrus, Jessica Alba, Lindsay Lohan, Angelina Jolie, and American Idol. President-Elect Barack Obama was only the third most-searched for term.

In addition to the most searched terms overall, Yahoo has posted rankings for most searched politicians, Olympians, news stories, women, famous deaths, economic terms, and “rising” celebrities.

If you’re thinking the celebrity fascination might be a Yahoo thing, think again. In Google’s end of year search rankings for 2007, Britney came in at #3, with terms including American Idol, Anna Nicole Smith, and Paris Hilton blanketing the top 10. Any way you slice it, it’s fairly clear we’re all in the wrong business.

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According to AllThingsD, this puts the valuation for The Huffington Post at 100 million dollars. It’s a big valuation, and the 25 million dollar round is bigger than the previously rumored 15 million. A question that inevitably still pops up after any news such as this is: “How does this make sense? It’s just a blog!” I, however, don’t see why not.

I’ve checked out Huffington Post - which I rarely normally do as I’m not interested in politics - and I don’t see any crucial differences between this site, and any big media publication on the web. They’ve got news, reports, features, they seem to be timely and thorough, and they produce a lot of content. On the internet, that’s pretty much all that matters: whether you’ve got a team of 100 people behind the site or it’s just a one man gig, all your readers care about is the content.

The only difference between a blog and any other media publication is that blogs scale very well. Traditionally, if you want to start a

Back in my day, preparing for the SATs consisted of review books or signing up for an expensive in-person class or tutoring session. Now, using video, teachers walk you through everything you need to know for the Math, Verbal, and Writing components of the SAT exam, which is presumably even more competitive than it was during the college admissions process of the last millennium.

On a serious note, Brightstorm is the type of service that I’m happy the Internet makes possible. It makes something once reserved largely for kids with money – like SAT prep – available to everyone on the cheap (the service is $49/yr). Further, with video, you can watch

The real news, here, is the fact that the NYTimes is running a huge story about Facebook Connect in its printed edition. To the majority of the general public the concept of Connect - a two way platform which enables web sites to connect with Facebook and allow their users to communicate with their Facebook friends on these sites and away from Facebook itself - is probably quite vague. However, social networking is obviously now mainstream enough that a platform connecting social networks is big news.

Incidentally, Facebook currently doesn’t work for me: I can’t login, and I’m annoyed - too annoyed. Being connected with my friends on Facebook or some other social network soon might become a crucial part of my Internet experience; social networking is shaping up to be the first really, really big thing that came out of the web 2.0

Previously available in Brazil and India, the site bills itself as a “Meebo for social networking” of sorts, allowing you to simultaneously login to accounts on both social networking services like Facebook and MySpace and instant messaging networks like MSN.

From there, you can view new activities from friends on those services, see who’s online across all of them via a buddy list, and use the “Power Communicator” to simultaneously send a message to your friends on any site you have synced with Power.com. In other words, if your friends are spread across many social networks, you can see an aggregate view of their activities and message them on their native network, all from inside the Power.com interface.

Isn’t this just like Friendfeed?

Not exactly. For one, the instant messaging aspect is something Friendfeed doesn’t have - if you’ve synced your Facebook, MySpace, and MSN accounts with Power.com, you’ll get a buddy list that shows all of your friends who are signed on to those services, even if they don’t use Power.com. Additionally, Power.com is far more of a two-way communicator. In addition to aggregating activities from your friends across multiple services, it lets you respond to them and send messages to their native app.

So it’s like Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect, etc?

Still a bit off.

Not everyone was shocked by the unintelligibility of transcribed speech. Journalists know all about it, and it is a routine practice to edit quotations and interviews heavily before they are published…

Journalists’ editing of conversations became a legal issue in 1983, when the writer Janet Malcolm published an unflattering New Yorker series about the psychoanalyst Jeffery Masson.

…

In a closely watched opinion, the majority [of Supreme Court Judges] defined a middle ground for journalists’ treatment of quotations. (Requiring them to publish quotes verbatim was not even considered.)…”deliberate alteration of the words uttered by a plaintiff does not equate with knowledge of falsity.”

Note – if you are ever reading a book on linguistics and think that the examples of branching are silly (the man by the lake on the hill with the ..), take a look at your own writing. In the first para above, I wrote (without thinking about it):

the reaction to the release of the transcripts of Nixon’s meetings in the White House

In summary – subjects can be

Tonight is the final night to thank your favorite websites by putting forth your vote in the Open Web Awards, an open, international contest for the best websites and services. This voting round closes at midnight PST, November 30th (4 hours from now).

After that, it’s back to our regularly scheduled startup news until we announce the finalists on Wednesday. Vote now with the widget below, or forever hold your peace.

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Announcing the Open Web Awards After ...]]>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Mashable/~3/WLR2aMaQFbM/http://mashable.com/?p=55130Pete Cashmoreopenwebawards+web+owas+ Mon, 01 Dec 2008 03:56:49 GMTMashable!Mashable!http://feeds.feedburner.com/Mashable

Not too long ago, Twitter was constantly lambasted for its lack of reliability. Now, at least one developer is confident enough in the microblogging tool to launch a simple service that notifies users of website uptime/downtime via Twitter replies.

Ding It’s Up is about as simple a notification service as you can find. First, specify how you’d like to be notified (email, SMS, or Twitter). Then, enter your respective account information. From there, the site will send you a message when the site you want to monitor goes offline (or comes back online as the case may be). Conveniently, Ding It’s Up doesn’t require any separate account registration.

Typically, services like Ding It’s Up are used by webmasters who want to monitor their own sites, but increasingly, “uptime notification” is a useful feature for those that depend on services like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

Last year, a similar service called Monitwitter launched, but it (also, somewhat ironically) seems to have disappeared due to an expired domain registration. In any event, if one of your responsibilities includes keeping a website online, it’s probably best to subscribe to multiple notification services as a fail safe. For that, check out our list of 13 Free and

…by winning the Open Web Awards, Dating and Relationships category. First, however, we need to narrow down the field to the top 3 dating sites on the web - take your pick from these 10 contenders and submit your vote by midnight PST tonight to decide who makes it into the finals!

Copenda - social site that finds potential dating partners off numerous sites, including Facebook, MySpace, Match, and other sites.

DateHookup - dating site with free chat and emails.

FlowMingle - sets you up with local events with up to 20 people to give you a chance to connect with Mr. or Ms. Right.

Ignighter - a group dating service that lets you learn about individuals in packs.

Luvem or Leavem - a site by women that offers relationship advice