Google said in a blog post that it has been inundated with requests to add a "history" function to its Google Latitude, a mobile phone app that shows where your (authorized) friends on the service are located at any given moment. This would be the exact "feature" that Google intentionally disabled at launch to allay concerns about privacy, to much praise from civil libertarians. Google will add logs to your Latitude service now if you flip a switch, and it can also send you "Location Alerts" if you're especially enthusiastic about Orwellian internet services.

Why do we need this? Google's Chris Lambert explained:

I stopped at an awesome BBQ place on my way back from Lake Tahoe this summer, but I couldn't remember the name when my friend was asking about it a few months later. I pulled up my location history for that weekend, found where I was stationary on the drive home, and the restaurant name showed up in Google Maps.

I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who once said, "They who would trade liberty for BBQ soon have none, deserve neither, and end up eating Prison Loaf thanks to small-town CSI wannabes with subpeona power."

[via Gizmodo]

(Top pic by gerlos on Flickr)

Google and its Dutch map provider told the UK Telegraph they have no idea how the fake town got onto Google Maps. "There are occasional errors," a Google spokesman told the paper. But the paper points out cartographers often insert fake minor features like "trap streets" to catch people copying their work. If Google and its partner don't know anything about the town, that leaves a possibility the Telegraph was too polite to bring up: Perhaps the data in Google's maps was, itself, purloined from an offline source.

Time to start asking this Dutch company some tough questions, Google. Either that, or you can risk that some aggrieved British mapmaker might see the coverage of "Argleton" and starting asking the tough questions for you.

(Top pic: Adam Burt)

"Younger employees help senior executives unlock social media mystery," declares a Chicago Tribune headline [via PRNewser]. What is this amazing mystery that has been unlocked? For Edelman—the world's largest independent PR firm, and one that loves to market itself as a "digital" expert that will help you, the corporation, navigate the wilds of the internet for a large, large fee—the mystery is, "How can we get people to pay us so much for this shit?"

"I am so all over this Delish thing," Cabot bubbled, punching up delish.com on her computer in her office at Edelman, a Chicago-based public relations firm.

"Oh, you're doing so well!" Spohn said delightedly, counting the recipes Cabot had collected on the food lovers' Web site. "Look, you've got so much!"

Her pride was as evident as the exchange was notable. Though Cabot, 56, is Edelman's central region president with more than 30 years in the business, she is the student. Spohn, a 23-year-old account executive on the firm's digital team, is the teacher.

Hahaha. Do you see what is going on here? Edelman, like many of its peers, is a PR firm that will charge your company a hefty fee for all the digital insight that its 23-year-old account executives can deliver. Because the people in charge aren't really so good on this "internet" thing. Which would be fine if they were not the same people in charge of convincing you, the client, to spend tens (or hundreds!) of thousands of dollars with Edelman for their expert strategic online influencing services. Their mentoring program for the olds is called "Rotnem" because that's "mentor" backwards and you must be a backwards-ass fool to pay money to a bunch of 23-year-olds to teach you how to make a Facebook page and shit at an Edelman markup, when you could get them off Craigslist for much, much cheaper.

"Edelman strongly advocates that companies participate with and engage online influencers." Did you know that Edelman, a massive corporate PR firm, started a blog called "Authenticities"? Edelman, how much do people pay you for your services? Because I am totally going to undercut your prices by one dollar, once the last media outlet finally stops paying employees. Please engage.

[Pic of Edelman's Global Head of Digital Strategy via Flickr]

If you're a Google-horny fanperson with enthusiastic regard towards the way your existence will be cataloged on the internet, this one's for you. Google Wave is, in the words of Gizmodo:

What could best be described as a genetically modified inter-species lovespawn between Gmail, Google Docs, Twitter and AIM.

But really, is so ridiculously confusing, there's now a website devoted to voting on how confusing it actually is. Naturally, people are gonna put their lives on this thing, which Google will hold in their severs to one day hand over to the government when they ask for it. This is mildly unsettling.

Even moreso: people are now paying for the privilege to do it. Google Wave Invites, the community devoted to people sharing their invites, is now raffling off four invites. You can buy a ticket at a $1 a piece to enter in the drawing. Interestingly, the site's been down since they sent out the announcement, which you can view below. Yes, I wanted one (and still do!) to see what all this talk is about, and also, because I'm pretty sure our privacy's long doomed, anyway. Someone, somewhere, might be getting kneecapped by a man dressed in primary colors.

The funny upshot, however: some guy's making money from Wave invites, or at least trying. Wonder what Google has to say.

First it was that huge knife he pulled out, at random, on a video posted to his Twitter stream. Now he's admitted to keeping his sword from the Conan the Barbarian movies in his office, as well, and even uploaded a picture of the thing. We thought we'd seen it all in California politics but, honestly, who does this? Is it supposed to frighten his political opponents? Awe fans of 1980s muscle flicks?

We shudder to think what other implements of death the governor might be keeping in that office. This is the guy who starred in Predator, after all. We've let our imaginations run wild in the photo gallery below, showing a logical progression in gubernatorial arms.

The knife Schwarzenegger brandished in July. It CUTS fat from the budget, like education funding. Ha ha, get it??

The Conan sword Schwarzenegger just disclosed. He can really take a WHACK at spending with that thing!

Why not a grenade launcher mounted under an assault rifle? The governor could blow holes in the status quo with that thing. "Today, I am here to LAUNCH a new initiative. I think you'll find its potential is EXPLOSIVE."

A Gatling gun would be great for mowing down the naysayers in the press, right Arnold? "I've put a few new issues into the ROTATION, guys. I hope you don't mind if my answers sound a little CANNON-ED."

Four months ago, Lodwick writes, he quit pot after realizing "it made me absolutely fucking retarded every time" (emphasis his). But that apparently doesn't mean the Vimeo founder is going to stop taking disturbing, semi-nude photos of himself, or making wacked-out, often half-naked videos. See the pic above, uploaded to Lodwick's Tumblr earlier today, or this new video of him channeling Eminem.

What Lodwick is going to do is make, and post to the internet, lists like these, illuminating just how much time he devotes to various forms of fameballing (a lot), and what he does with the rest of his time ("child's pose," "intellectual devotional," "Egosurfing"):

Lodwick has made quite a bundle from IAC, the company to which he sold Vimeo; the media conglomerate may even still be paying him $100,000 per year salary not to come to work. Perhaps we should all be grateful he's plowed that money into fizzled ventures like music-sharing site Muxtape (basically shut down by the RIAA) and record company Normative (three CDs for sale!), and that he's now obsessively making lists. As Lodwick himself has demonstrated, his sort of money can fuel a much more disturbing sort of late-20s identity crisis than this one.

In a blog post, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone writes that the attacks are ongoing and "massively coordinated," but declined to elaborate, because then he'd have to kill you. Actually no, it's because he didn't want to "engage in speculative discussion." But a Georgian blogger is happy to speculate; he says it's totally the Russian regime.

The blogger, known as "Cyxymu," has been outspoken in his criticism of Russian tactics in the war over the disputed region of South Ossetia. Facebook's chief of security tells CNET (via Business Insider) that Cyxymu is the target of the denial of service attack on Facebook and Twitter yesterday and today. The blogger has accounts on both services, as well as on LiveJournal, Blogger and YouTube. Google, which operates the latter two, told CNET its systems "prevented substantive impact to our services," so we still have the keyboard cat.

First the subs off our coast, now Twitter attacks. How will the Russians vaguely annoy us next? Satellite TV jamming? Attack the iPhone app store?

(Pics via)

Maybe it's all just performance art, the half-naked party appearances, brandishing that knife and going all Taxi Driver at a diner. But that doesn't really make it any less sad, the notion of a hipster millionaire fameball still clawing hungrily, strategically for attention. It would be more impressive if this were all some guerilla marketing campaign for a new class of hallucinogens. See excerpts from the latest installment above.

This is the very first question from a Q&A with Anderson in the German mag Spiegel:

SPIEGEL: Mr. Anderson, let's talk about the future of journalism.
Anderson: This is going to be a very annoying interview. I don't use the word journalism.

Uhh...

SPIEGEL: Okay, how about newspapers? They are in deep trouble both in the United States and worldwide.
Anderson: Sorry, I don't use the word media. I don't use the word news. I don't think that those words mean anything anymore...

SPIEGEL: Which other words would you use?
Anderson: There are no other words. We're in one of those strange eras where the words of the last century don't have meaning. What does news mean to you, when the vast majority of news is created by amateurs? Is news coming from a newspaper, or a news group or a friend? I just cannot come up with a definition for those words. Here at Wired, we stopped using them.

Uh huh. Then he goes on to talk his new age "Free" shit about how news just "comes to me," but media outlets themselves aren't important. Hey Chris Anderson, I haven't read your new book, but I hear from the internet or whatever that you plagiarized it, and that it sucks. That's that new journalism!
[Spiegel via Media Decoder. Pic: Getty]

No one knows why on Earth Schwarzenegger showed off a massive bowie knife from his chair in the governor's office. Asked about it by a local TV station, his own spokesman said, quote, "I don't know why he is holding a knife."

The governor didn't address the knife in his video, instead setting it quickly aside to suggest that people on Twitter send him more super brilliant ideas like the one in which he will personally autograph property being auctioned by the state, thus solving California's budget crisis with the brilliance of his action-movie-star celebrity. Yes, just a few more ideas like that and California's $26 billion deficit will be gone.

The state has been paying people with IOUs, the sort of scrip you'd find in a common third-world country, after failing to pass a budget by the deadline three weeks ago. Schwarzenegger just reached a tentative budget deal with legislators that allows offshore oil drilling, steals $4 billion from local governments, cuts $6 billion from education and chops AIDS programs.

Obviously this is the sort of manly butcher work you'd want to brag about to millions of people, over the internet, by showing off the knife you used to personally cut off HIV help.

TechCrunch this week published internal Twitter documents obtained by a computer hacker. Twitter wasn't thrilled, but entered talks with the influential business website.

Then, today, TechCrunch claimed it had received a "green light" from the company to publish some internal business discussions. Twitter has now vehemently disputed that, first via its CEO's Twitter stream, then on its blog, where co-founder Biz Stone (pictured) wrote, "we absolutely did not give permission for these documents to be shared."

Several hours later, TechCrunch had not changed its posting or addressed Twitter's contradictory version of events. We called TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington to clear up the confusion, but he cryptically said he wouldn't comment on the matter for at least 24 hours. We asked if this meant no new statements would be posted to TechCrunch, and he wouldn't comment on that, either.

Twitter, meanwhile, sounds like it's rattling a saber. From Stone's blog post:

Out of context, rudimentary notes of internal discussions will be misinterpreted by current and future partners jeopardizing our business relationships. We are pursuing a path to address the harm caused by these actions and as noted yesterday, we've already reached out to the partners and individuals affected.

And so it begins. Who would have thought that blogs vs. microblogs would be one of the fiercest media wars of 2009? It's enough to make you long for a good old fashioned Google-newspaper fight.

"Steve Jobs is back to work," chief spokesperson Steve Dowling told CNN. "He is at Apple a few days a week and working from home the other days. We're glad to have him back."

A few days a week? Kind of vague, no? And then working from home, because it's not like Steve Jobs likes to micromanage, or just turn up at people's offices unannounced or roam the halls.

Just to recap the official line on Jobs' health, over time:

• First he had a "common bug" and no one should be worried;
  
• Then it wasn't that bad and Steve wasn't going anywhere;
  
• Despite his appearance, Jobs' health wasn't keeping him from doing his job;
  
• Fixing the health issue would be "simple and straightforward" and Jobs atill wasn't going anywhere;
  
• Jobs was taking medical leave, partly because all the talk about his health was a "distraction."
  
• Jobs had a liver transplant and his prognosis was uncertain, but Apple wouldn't acknowledge it.

Now Jobs is back at work, sorta. While no one will begrudge the cancer survivor a part-time schedule while he recovers, no Apple investors except a select few have a sense of what is known and not known about Jobs' health; how encouraging his prognosis is or precisely what risks the next six months carry. Some uncertainty is unavoidable when it comes to human health; but Apple's handling of Jobs' health just creates unnecessary uncertainty for both investors and employees who have more productive things to worry about.

Given Apple's track record, the sanest response for anyone who has to make a decision involving the company or its stock is to assume the official talk of Jobs' return is immaterial (read: untrustworthy) and that Tim Cook is in charge.

This guy was out to prove that young Tony Castro could be got. And he got him. With Yahoo Messenger:

Mr Dominguez, who was born in Cuba, said his sting operation had been designed to "shatter the myth of an impenetrable" security network around the country's first family.

He could have, what, come slithering through the webcam like the girl in The Ring and strangled Castro Jr., mysteriously? Not quite clear on the concept here. Let's let the people decide.
[Miami Herald, Independent. Pic via]

Yesterday's Gillmor Gang topic: the Palm Pre. Things started out nice enough when LaPorte - who owns and operates netcast network TWiT.tv, on which the show is featured - was discussing how much he enjoyed his new toy. Arrington, sounding a little bitter about not having one, asks LaPorte whether or not he got his for free. LaPorte notes that yeah, he did, but that he wasn't the only one! Arrington notes it to be on the record, and that's when LaPorte really gets pissed, especially over the implication that the fact that he got the thing for free would ever influence his review over a highly coveted tech product! Arrington chuckles back: "What're you gonna do about it?" That's when LaPorte lets loose, and promptly shuts the show down:

Glorious, no? The program, as you can tell, actually did get shut down. Arrington later went on TechCrunch to issue an apology to LaPorte, explaining that he didn't at all intend to provoke him, and that he was just joshin' him:

I've had a lot of interactions with [LaPorte] and they've always been positive. Or at least I thought so. I wasn't watching the video live during the show and I really thought Leo was joking until the very end (as did Steve Gillmor and Loren Feldman, who were chuckling in the video). My "what are you going to do about it" comment doesn't sound so great in hindsight. But I really did just think he was joking around.

It gets better, though: Arrington noted at the end of his apology post on TechCrunch that comments were going to be moderated. LaPorte kindly comments on Arrington's post with a mutual apology for the snapping:

Thanks for the post, Mike. Apology accepted. Now that I know what was going on in your mind, I apologize to you.

There seems to be something about the Gillmor Gang that just engenders over the top passion. I'm embarrassed by my overreaction. Peace.

But it ain't over, yet, because the commenters are pissed about being moderated by Arrington! Arrington, who has received numerous death threats before over his site, responds thusly:

Many comments are complaining about comment moderation. This isn't about free speech. It's about dozens of death threats and hundreds of others saying pretty horrible things about one of of us. You may think that your comment needs to get heard and that calling for someone to die shouldn't be taken seriously. But multiply that by hundreds and maybe you'll get a sense of this. I was rude. I made the problem worse by saying things because I thought he was play-mad. and then i apologized. i may be a lot of things but i don't think i deserve to die over this. please. stop. i can't deal with the death threats after what happened last year and then this year in europe. leo won. you guys won. i surrender. just stop. please. stop.

Quite simply, Arrington was being "cute," and this thing just blew up in their faces. Really, the problem is that these guys never played a game of two-hand-touch in their lives. No harm, no foul!

And who the hell is making death threats to Michael Arrington over this? Jesus. Arrington then notes in the comments that this "ruined [his] entire weekend. for fuck's sake." And why wouldn't it?

Lesson learned: gadget nerds are terrifying! I'm going back to writing about Sesame Street and hipsters. Goodbye. Freaks.

N.B. One commenter on TechCrunch noted that Arrington has been "Keyboard Catted." Which made me laugh very loudly. Gadget nerds: terrifying. But hysterical: The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

Jill Sobule's dig at Glenn Beck was fun. And one can only marvel at the singer-songwiter's fortitude in conjuring a detailed fantasy date with Murdoch.

It turns out she was prodded into the tune, per her own account, by D co-host Kara Swisher. You have to hand it to Swisher and her D partner Walt Mossberg: This is certainly one of the more creative ways to re-secure your job in a recession.

[All Things D]

No words for this. I mean, no words. We present the entire feed as it occurred:

# ok, maybe I should lock my door - I swear a random dude just walked into my bathroom and I can't believe I haven't freaked out
about 4 hours ago from Tweetie

# and I can't believe I'm tweeting about it while he is still in there — in wonder of he is sleep walking - or if maybe I should freak out
about 4 hours ago from Tweetie

# ok - he's still in the bathroom and Im now thinking a combo of hobo and drunk and sleepwalking dude - he seems late 20s - hmmm what next ?
about 4 hours ago from Tweetie

# I'm thinking the hobo part cause I can smell BO - and I really am wondering why I haven't freaked the F out
about 4 hours ago from Tweetie

# maybe I should mention I live in a relatively rustic studio apartment in SF
about 4 hours ago from Tweetie

Yes, please, tell us more.

# there is no TP in my bathroom - wonder if that is complicating things for him - was gonna wait for him to come out and kick him out
about 4 hours ago from Tweetie

# hmmm — should I call the cops like you guys have recommended? find a blunt object before opening the door? my gut tells me he's harmless
about 4 hours ago from Tweetie

# but ... I could be wrong about the harmless assumption
about 4 hours ago from Tweetie

# I'm now thinking maybe he's passed out in my bathroom — I guess that's better than violent — but I have no idea. time to freak out??
about 4 hours ago from Tweetie

# ok - about to make move - putting shoes on first
about 4 hours ago from Tweetie

# glad that GF wasn't here
about 4 hours ago from Tweetie

As is she.

# ok - have weapon if I need it - but don't plan on any confrontation with it - about to go in
about 4 hours ago from Tweetie

# haven't gone in yet ..... debating calling cops but just feel it's not needed for some reason (and probably contrary to all logic)
about 4 hours ago from Tweetie

# ok - still haven't done anything - he is still in there - gonna setup a ustream now I think - standby
about 4 hours ago from Tweetie

# http://www.ustream.tv/channel/revision3
about 4 hours ago from web

At this instant American manhood reached its nadir.

# going in
about 3 hours ago from Tweetie

# if u haven't been watching my ustream -the dude passed out in my bathroom and I just dragged him out
about 3 hours ago from Tweetie

# ok - I think the drama is over - intruder is out - door is locked - think I finally need some sleep
about 3 hours ago from Tweetie

David Prager, American man. Prager is an exec at Internet TV site Revision3, a dodgeball coach, and a character already known to Valleywag.

Update: And of course, his ustream is now a youtube. Watch the hero at work:

This occurred to us after a top lawyer at TMZ's owner sent out an all-caps email screaming about the online tabloid's exclusive rights to photos of Nadya Suleman's distended octuplet-carrying belly.

Until now, we hadn't run said pics. Uh, WTF? So we called up the nice folks at TMZ and asked them what was going on. They say a photo agency called Polaris Images had been selling the Octo-mom pictures, even though TMZ had an exclusive license.

The unconfirmed scuttlebutt is that Suleman's own publicist may have given the photo to Polaris. To what end? Generating more publicity for her widely hated client? The motive isn't clear (if that's even how it happened). Peter Bolioli, Polaris's general manager for news, did not return a phone call, but a TMZ representative said Polaris stopped selling the photo after the site's request.

What's even odder: TMZ generally doesn't charge money to license its pictures to other sites; it just asks for credit and a link, in exchange for the publicity. (We get emails from TMZ all the time promoting stories in this fashion.) So what you have here seems to be a lawyer sending out an ANGRY, ANGRY email to enforce TMZ's rights to give away photos. Don't you love the Internet?

NOTICE OF TMZ'S EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS TO NADYA SULEMAN'S PREGNANCY PHOTOS

THIS IS TO ADVISE YOU THAT TMZ IS THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OF TWO PHOTOGRAPHS OF NADYA SULEMAN (THE "PHOTOGRAPHS") ATTACHED HERETO AS EXHIBIT "A" THAT TMZ FEATURED ON ITS WEBSITE AT www.tmz.com/2009/02/12/octomom-it-was-a-very-goodyear. IT HAS BEEN BROUGHT TO OUR ATTENTION THAT A THIRD PARTY HAS BEEN WRONGFULLY DISTRIBUTING THE PHOTOS WITHOUT TMZ'S CONSENT.

ANY TELEVISION BROADCAST OR INTERNET USE OF THE PHOTOGRAPHS RECEIVED FROM PARTIES OTHER THAN TMZ WILL BE CONSIDERED AN INFRINGEMENT AND VIOLATION OF TMZ'S VALUABLE EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS AND WILL EXPOSE THE INFRINGER TO SUBSTANTIAL MONETARY DAMAGES.

WITHOUT TMZ'S LICENSE OR PERMISSION, YOU DO NOT HAVE PERMISSION TO USE ANY PORTIONS OF THE PHOTOGRAPHS ON TELEVISION, IN ANY PRINT MEDIA, ON THE INTERNET, OR OTHER ONLINE SERVICE OR INTERACTIVE MULTIMEDIA TRANSMISSION, OR IN ANY OTHER MEDIUM.

________________________________

David J. Decker
EVP, Business & Legal Affairs
Telepictures Productions Inc.

(Exclusive photo exclusively via TMZ.com, exclusively)

Ending malaria is a particular passion of Gates's, whose Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent millions fighting the disease. But he apparently didn't feel like TED attendees were taking the threat seriously. "Not only poor people should experience this," Gates said as he let the bugs loose on his audience, according to Facebook manager Dave Morin. (eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and Twitter CEO Ev Williams confirm the report.)

A showman's way of making a point, perhaps. But it doesn't do much to undo Gates's reputation, borne out of the Microsoft antitrust investigations of the 1990s, that the man considers himself above the law. Doesn't California's Health and Safety Code have something to say about insect infestations?

(Photo by jurvetson)