Media - Internet

THERE are lots of ways to describe Boing Boing, the Web's obliquely subtitled "Directory of Wonderful Things," which draws millions of eyeballs to its relentless, stylistically minimalist scroll of high-weirdness each month. It is a site where, on Saturday morning, there were links to video games that "subvert post-industrial capitalism," federal legislation aimed at digital radio technology, a...

SHANGHAI, March 5 – Last October, a colleague persuaded Xu Jinglei, a Chinese actress and filmmaker, to start writing her own Web log. Now, five months later, Ms. Xu, 31, is the country's most popular blogger, and her runaway success has given rise to an online debate here about the economic value of blogs and who should profit from them. Ms. Xu's blog has already received more than 11 million...

SEOUL, South Korea -- Kim Hyo-bi doesn't want her picture taken any more. Not after the 22-year-old student's portrait wound up on a photo-sharing Web site last summer with her face colored and distorted to make her look silly, titled alongside the original as "Before and After." She tried to simply forget about it, but she couldn't. She was barraged with calls from friends who saw the page, and...

BEIJING (AP) – China's government is trying to boost public interest in its figurehead parliament and its companion advisory body by setting up Web logs for members as they meet this week. Called "bo ke" in Chinese, blogs are popular with young people despite strict censorship rules. In one posting, National People's Congress delegate Zhou Hongyu wrote that serving in the legislature is a way to...

Security experts have long warned computer users to beware of links that come via instant messenger or e-mail, the most common ways for adware, spyware and other bad stuff to get into your PC. But few people think twice about the unfamiliar links that turn up after a Google, MSN or Yahoo search and how those sites might also expose users to a security risk. For the past few weeks I've been surfing...

Kingston – A woman who made disparaging comments about her landlord on her Internet blog has become the latest person to discover what can happen when cyberspace and legal realities collide. Sarah Dawe is facing eviction for her postings related to an ongoing dispute with Homestead Land Holdings Inc. Ms. Dawe says she was stunned to find herself on the receiving end of such an action. "When I got...

SHANGHAI, China -- A Web-surfing Chinese professor was nonplussed to find personal attacks against him posted on a blog. So when the operators of the hosting Web site refused to remove the offending language, he decided to sue them for harm to his reputation, in what Chinese media on Thursday called the first such case to come before the country's courts. Web site Blogcn.com had told Nanjing...

Maybe you've heard: Blogs are a vanishing fad -- this year's digital Pet Rock. Or a business bubble about to pop. Or a sucker's bet for new-media fame seekers. Recent weeks have seen the rise of a cottage industry in Whither Blogging? articles. New York magazine cast cold water on newly minted bloggers' dreams with an examination of the divide between a handful of A-list blogs and countless B-list...

SAN FRANCISCO – After spending the last decade building its brand around a cartoon character named Jeeves, Ask.com wants everyone to forget the dainty butler and remember its long-overlooked Internet search engine as the next best thing to Google. To make its point, Ask.com is jettisoning Jeeves as its corporate mascot on Monday and unveiling a retooled website that's designed to make it easier to...

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A new South African Web site aims to capitalise on a potential cyber boom by offering a media-wary public the chance to become journalists themselves. Web site "reporter.co.za" lets members of the public submit articles and pictures, which are sifted through by an editorial team and posted on its site. The "reporter.co.za" site hopes to cash in on government plans to...