The idea of the Semantic Web has been around since 1999. Why is the Times treating it as new? For the same reason that the Times put Burning Man afterparties on the Styles section cover: It sells papers.

But take a closer look — there's no quote from Google VP/spokesperson Marissa Mayer. In fact, there's no quote from anyone at Google. You can bet writer John Markoff gave them the chance. Other than nods to PageRank and Google Maps, the company isn't even mentioned.

(One other company gets their message through, though. The creator of would-be A.I. system Cyc tells Markoff his system should be able to answer, say, "Which American city would be most vulnerable to an anthrax attack during summer?" Sounds like a researcher going after more military money.)

In short, the Times wants to announce a trend just in case that trend actually materializes in the next few months. But don't bet on it — Google smelled a dud and didn't touch this story, and neither should anyone looking for the real next big thing.

Entrepreneurs See a Web Guided by Common Sense [NY Times]

Tech blogger Om Malik, for example, goes overboard in his commentary on the story, comparing Universal to the Mafia. "Any business that perceives its end customers as crooks and thieves should go the way of the a broken ice cream cone on a hot summer afternoon."

Please, Om, this is the New Wave — music companies demanding sweeter deals from more desperate media player makers. It's a Darwinian way to give good players — and by "good players" I mean "the iPod" — an advantage.

Microsoft Strikes Deal for Music [NY Times]
Microsoft, Zune & The Music Mafia [GigaOM]

"People here think the design is bad," he said, "and that is important for Germans."

Hey Robert! Us too! We feel same! Is like brothers!

Honestly, how does the Times expect us to buy this bull?

MySpace Aims for a Global Audience, and Finds Some Stiff Competition [NY Times]

Pogue's latest story, now topping the New York Times tech section, is "A Look Back at the Buzz of 2006" — a review of his own reviews for a year that has not actually ended. Says Pogue:

As the year draws to a close, then, it's worth taking a look back at some of my weekly tech-review columns to see how their subjects have withstood the very brief test of time. Almost all of them have seen noteworthy developments since my reviews appeared. Here it is, then, a review of the reviews.

The Hamlet question is: Has he truly gone mad, or is he feigning madness to up his word count?

A Look Back at the Buzz of 2006 [NY Times]

After Tuesday's frenzy of industry news (Wired buys Reddit, Google buys JotSpot, Fortune picks a new editor, a video site goes public, Monday's looking quiet for the industry (apart from that bomb at eBay HQ). The New York Times tech page, for example, is all gadget stories with punny titles. Hell, the top story is gizmo columnist David Pogue's "look back" at a year that's only 5/6 over. Has anyone bought something bigger than a frickin' iPod today?

New York Times: Technology [NY Times]

But only the New York Times can capture the moment when Howard Stern and Jon Stewart are accosted by the police and forcibly dragged off the site — Jon cackling in disbelief, Stern already submissive to his captors.

YouTube Is Purging Copyrighted Clips [NY Times]

Dems To Set Off Election Google Bomb [WebProNews]
Liberals Drop The Google Bomb [Valleywag]
Manipulating Google Data [NY Times]

*This is assuming Valleywag can be knocked out of the #1 slot for 'thieving hack'.

Fifty or so other Republican candidates have also been made targets in a sophisticated "Google bombing" campaign intended to game the search engine's ranking algorithm.

How sophisticated is this attempt to link searches of GOP candidates to negative news articles?

Each name is associated with one article. Those articles are embedded in hyperlinks that are now being distributed widely among the left-leaning blogosphere. In an entry at MyDD.com this week, Mr. Bowers said: "When you discuss any of these races in the future, please, use the same embedded hyperlink when reprinting the Republican's name. Then, I suppose, we will see what happens."

Did you get all that? Very sophisticated work indeed. More after the jump.

The highlight of the confused article is rehashing everyone's favorite 6-year-old email forward.

The ability to manipulate the search engine's results has been demonstrated in the past. Searching for "miserable failure," for example, produces the official Web site of President Bush.

Even my grandmother sent that one to me. Every time one of these articles makes mainstream media (go ahead google 'French Military Victories" for old time's sake) Google PR issues the canned response.

"A site's ranking in Google's search results is automatically determined by computer algorithms using thousands of factors to calculate a page's relevance to a given query."

A New Campaign Tactic [NYT Times]

[NY Times]

"I think you'll see a lot of people switch their search engine from whatever it might be to [Google]," [Mr. Snell] said. "I think people have a comfort zone with Google searches."

Google's PR has certainly reached a comfort zone with the Technology Editor at New York Times.

[NY Times]

• Om Malik discusses Microsoft's fear of online apps. Apparently they've never been to Ning, home of web2.0 abandonware, with notable apps like Who's a Bigger Douche. [Business 2.0]
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• Slate has a video history of youTube. Soon to be including clips of themselves on Court TV [Slate]
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• NY Times covers Silicon Valley's secret to success. The "20-minute rule...if a start-up company seeking venture capital is not within a 20-minute drive of the venture firm's offices, it will not be funded." So you future startup CEOs, take a good look. You're not on this map, you're out. [NYTimes]
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• Washington Post notes AOL executives have been spared prosecution due to a five-year statute of limitations on fraud. Can someone mail the U.S. Attorney's office a free 90-Day AOL CD so we can finish this? [Washington Post]

It's real stuff in a fake world. We get it. GO DEEPER.

A Virtual World but Real Money [NY Times]