Transmetropolitan author's new sex-infused post-apocalytic comic

"Twenty-three years ago, twelve strange children were born in England at exactly the same moment. Six years ago, the world ended. This is the story of what happened next." FreakAngels is a new graphic novel published online in weekly installments by Warren Ellis. The zany, dog-hating author is best known for Transmetropolitan, from which Valleywag cribbed the "I Hate it Here" tag and the Spider Jerusalem Award. FreakAngels opened last week with a blackout-drinking young lady and her steampunk helicopter. This week: Shotguns and jerricans. Next week, I predict, something bad happens to puppies. (Image (c) Warren Ellis 2008)

Social nerdwanking

Coined by R. Stevens in his webcomic Diesel Sweeties, "social nerdwanking" means lording your social-network superiority over others, which is secretly the only reason you bother with Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Orkut, and every other social network. Except your legitimate if fruitless use of Adult FriendFinder.

Fake Facebook friends annoy all

No, Victoria's Secret, I don't want to be your friend. Who are you empty-profile people sending out friend requests? I don't even know anyone who lives in that state. If longtime users have learned anything about Facebook, it's really little more than a friend-finding game. A game whose rules have become increasingly difficult to decipher as Facebook rolls out all these branded channels and marketer-assembled product profiles. It's so absurd that Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, authors of the videogame-focused Web comic Penny Arcade had to take a break from critiquing the game industry.

Marvel is hesitantly entering the digital era with a new subscription service that grants access to its back catalog, and eventually will offer new releases on a (much) delayed schedule. Unfortunately Marvel is taking too many cues from its copy-fighting brethren in the music and television industries. Digital comics will be locked to a proprietary reader on its website. [PaidContent]

Steve Jobs and Bono explained

Nine ways the Internet is truly boring

The Internet is boring. Even the most interested/interesting man I know, artist and dandy Jonathan Grubb, is bored with it in eight ways. (Granted, he's also super-excited; the man equivocates like he's running for president.) Grubb's insidery analysis speaks to those embedded in the dot-com industry, but here's a wider view of why the Internet is boring, starting with the pinnacle of mediocrity called LOLCats. More »

The 12 Funniest People On The Internet

NICK DOUGLAS — Some of them you recognize, some of them you don't. Here are the twelve funniest people on the Internet today, including Ze Frank, Brad Neely, Worker #3116, and that crazy lady at Violent Acres. More »

Loose Wires: So we have to wait longer for the Matrix

• Pew Internet releases its second Future of the Internet report. One finding: In the next 15 years, "Humans will remain in charge of technology." Oh good, I was afraid the Machines would take over. [Pew Internet]
• Comic books, published on the web before they go to books! It's like webcomics only it gets in the New York Times! [NY Times]
• Video sharing site VideoEgg launches an ad network today. As fellow snark blogger Eran Globen tells me, it's almost time for someone to invent TiVo for Internet video and scrap all the ads that we came here to escape in the first place. [Press Release]
• UnFaced, a service that lets Facebook users spy on people checking out their profiles and run compatibility tests, gets some press, bringing it that much closer to a privacy lawsuit. [Daily Texan and UnFaced]

Things HP CEO Mark Hurd is too busy for

Because the story that Hewlett-Packard's CEO was too "focused on getting the company fixed" to make sure the chairwoman didn't break it again is ludicrous, and because making comics is fun, here are more situations Mark Hurd can't handle because he's busy with his job. More »

Mark Hurd too busy running company to run company

Friends of Mark Hurd pulled off a beautiful spin job explaining to the New York Times why the Hewlett-Packard CEO didn't stop chairwoman Patricia Dunn and a whole team of investigators from digging up reporters' phone records and planning to plant spies at media outlets. More »

UnBoomed unwound

I am as tired of Rocketboom split-up news as you are. More »

Web 2.0 (TM): Tim O'Reilly and Tom Raftery make up

"Didi!" "Gogo!" "Come to my arms!" "Your arms?" "My breast!" "Off we go!" More »

They turned Scoble and Israel into comics!

Someone's been playing with Comic Life. A Flickr user named "Privateye" 'shopped up the shirtless shot of Naked Conversations authors Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. (That's JD Lasica's photo, first covered back here.) More »