Captcha

ONLINE

So there's a name for those "enter the word to verify you're a human" things you see on consumer websites: Captcha, which stands for "completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart." What I really hate about these is that some of them are completely unreadable.

News Nerd Alert! Someone is aggregating a list of all sites indexed by Google News. You can also see it sorted by frequency.

Yet another panel (long streaming .wmv video) with the usual blog suspects, including Wonkette, Sullivan, and Shafer,

FILM

I forget to read Gawker on Friday, and Jessica lands a funny phone interview with Sir Vincent. (See also: Defamer's IM interview with David Cross.)

Stephen Tobolowsky's Birthday Party looks a less-funny Being John Malkovich. The trailer.

MUSIC

A couple new vids: Gorillaz' Feel Good Inc. and Daft Punk's Robot Rock.

I wish there were a way to scientifically prove or disprove the recent string of NYT arts trend stories (such as the one a couple months back that posited that SNL was more issue-oriented in the past). Sunday's lead music story is about the instant cover -- the proposition that musicians are covering more songs from their contemporaries than from previous generations. I feel obliged to come up with contrary examples (weren't Dylan and the Stones always covering each other?), but that seems to also be missing the points of these trend stories. I guess it's better than obsessing about band names like they do across the pond. Anyway, in addition to mentioning nearly every band recording music today, the story also name-drops Stereogum and Fluxblog.

A reason to read Magnet again? Sleater-Kinney interviewed by Eddie Vedder. Okay, maybe not.

ADVERTISING

NYT on The Future of the 30-Second Spot, which basically says Minority Report-ish ads are right around the corner. Includes numerous profiles of those in the personalized ads business including OpenTV, Navic Networks, Invidi Technologies, and Visible World.

For the three of you into this meme, more GoDaddy.com ads.

TV

Biz Week on Social TV.

LOCAL

Although my first reaction was "people still care about Gore Vidal?", CP's interview with him has been getting lots of blogosphere attention. Okay, I promise to read it this week.

New segement on The Current: Sounds Around Town (.rm audio stream). Dangerously close to tacky, yet still almost good. Hear also: Mark Mallman in-studio.