"Infamous Domino's location closes doors" [Charlotte Observer] (Thanks to Timothy!)

Webmonkey notes that data portability has become an increasingly salient problem as more and more people store their data with various online services. Unfortunately, no open standards have emerged yet, which is why Google decided to put together a team that could at least address its own services.

The name might be a bit of a joke, but the idea is not. The Data Liberation Front wants to make it easier for you to get your data out of Google services and take it wherever you please. In other words, Google wants you to use their services because you like them, not because you're trapped in them.

You might want to bookmark the DLF home page for future reference if you have Google accounts, because they list all of Google's services there with links to how to get your data out of each one of them. That's the "do no evil" good news; the bad news is not every Google product or service makes the process easy—which, to its credit, the DLF openly admits.

The organization also offers some really good advice that we should apply to any online service before signing up:

People usually don't look to see if they can get their data out of a product until they decide one day that they want to leave For this reason, we always encourage people to ask these three questions before starting to use a product that will store their data:

1. Can I get my data out at all?

2. How much is it going to cost to get my data out?

3. How much of my time is it going to take to get my data out?

The ideal answers to these questions are:

1. Yes.

2. Nothing more than I'm already paying.

3. As little as possible.

There shouldn't be an additional charge to export your data. Beyond that, if it takes you many hours to get your data out, it's almost as bad as not being able to get your data out at all.

"Data Liberation Front" [Google]
"Google's ‘Data Liberation Front' Aims to Make Your Data Portable" [Webmonkey]

The advice ranges from sneaky (place your phone into roam mode to trick the cell phone company into thinking your contract is more trouble than it's worth) to the outrageous (move to a blackout area). Other hints include finding a friend to take over your plan and whining incessantly to customer service. Of course, there's also the ever-popular pastime of watching for materially adverse changes to your cellphone contract and using them as an excuse to rip up your service agreement. Watch and learn!

How to Get Out of Your Cell Phone Contract for Free [SpendLess TV, via Bargain Babe]
(Photo: FastFords)

Attention Digital has collected several YouTube videos of CEOs apologizing for one reason or another: Domino's Patrick Doyle, for the infamous snot-food video; Matel's Bob Eckert, for its run of toy safety violations, and the Maple Leaf Foods robot, for listeria in its products. The article missed it, YouTube also has a video apology from United Airlines' Jim Goodwin (oooo, I just want to take him home and rub his belly...)

Having all of these collected in one place is nice because it allows consumers to get a sense of apologizes as a genre. Apparently, bad lighting and monotone reading from a teleprompter are a plus. Of course, CEOs can always get help from this guy when they need it.

CEOs apologize on YouTube [Attention Digital] (Thanks to Johnny!)

The clip never caught on, though, with only about 2,000 hits, and the movie crashed and burned. The officials at the high school had no idea there was a business transaction involved in the ceremony, and they weren't too happy to learn of it from the WSJ:

The stunt did succeed in outraging officials at Hamilton High and the Los Angeles Unified School District, who were horrified when informed by a reporter that a movie company had essentially planted a paid advertisement in the midst of a graduation ceremony.

Hamilton High Assistant Principal Roberta Mailman says neither she nor anyone from the school was contacted for permission — either for the stunt itself or for filming it. Before learning of the payment, she says, "I thought it was a great speech."

School District spokeswoman Gayle Pollard-Terry says she is unsure whether the episode violated any policy, but adds that Ms. Mejia's diploma is safe. In a statement, Local District Superintendent Michelle King wrote: "Obviously, this is not condoned by the District. It's unfortunate."

Hey, $1800 isn't too bad for a college freshman starting her first year at MIT, so we don't begrudge the student her money. But what's next, o Intelligence Group? How about you wire a baby to deliver an E-Trade pitch at his baptism? Or maybe bribe some pallbearers to "drop" a casket during a funeral! We think you were on the right track with hijacking a big life event ceremony to sell crap; we just don't think you were aiming low enough.

"Fellow Graduates, Before We Greet The Future, a Word From My Sponsor " [Wall Street Journal]

The Army brass now believes such sites can be used to further the military's cause, the story says:

An operations order from the Army's 93rd Signal Brigade to all domestic Directors of Information Management, or DOIMs, aims to correct that. Issued on May 18th "for official use only," the document has not been made public until now.

It is "the intent of senior Army leaders to leverage social media as a medium to allow soldiers to ‘tell the Army story' and to facilitate the dissemination of strategic, unclassified information," says the order, obtained by Danger Room. Therefore, "the social media sites available from the Army homepage will be made accessible from all campus area networks. Additionally, all web-based email will be made accessible."

The operations order (OPORD) doesn't apply to all GI Bases overseas, or those run by the other armed services, which aren't affected by the decree. Nor does the order overturn the long-standing, military-wide ban on sites like MySpace, YouTube and Pandora. And it's almost certain some Army posts that still block the now-approved web 2.0 networks. Still, it's a click in the right direction for the armed service which seems to be making a slow but steady recovery from its lingering hostility towards social media.

As if anyone needed another reason to stop using MySpace. But I do feel bad for the troops for not being able to learn mildly NSFW lessons about the original Commander-in-chief on YouTube.

Army Orders Bases to Stop Blocking Twitter, Facebook, Flickr [Wired]
(Photo: frankieleon)

First, here are two entries from the OpenDNS forums by a different customer, posted back in March, that describe the problem:

When I use OpenDNS for my DNS servers, YouTube loads videos very slowly (it is actually impossible to watch anything). The second I switch back to my ISP DNS, YouTube videos load fast.

I KNOW OpenDNS is ONLY a DNS server and should not affect my download speeds — BUT IT DOES, at least on YouTube. It does not matter if I use a Mac (10.5.6) or a PC (XP SP3) I get the same results.

Here's what happens with OpenDNS:

[removed screen movie from server but basically the "loading" spinner in youtube would sit there spinning, then the video would play for 1-2 seconds, then go back to the loading spinner for 20 seconds, then play a couple seconds, etc]

Here's what happens with my ISP DNS:

[removed screen movie from server but with my ISP DNS the movie loads fine and plays without a problem]

EDIT: Adding youtube.com to my whitelist does nothing.

---

I did some more digging and figured out that the .swf file is appears to be calling a .flv file that is hosted at:

v19.cache.googlevideo.com

When using my ISP DNS, it wants to pull the video from 74.125.165.88 — and the video downloads in about 90 seconds. In fact, the first 1/4th of the video comes in at a whopping 800 KB(ytes)/sec, then it seems it is trottled at the source end down to about 100 KB/sec for the rest (I'm assuming this is how they do it for youtube to keep their bandwidth in check).

When using OpenDNS, it wants to pull the video from 74.125.100.100 — and the video download crawls along and the estimated completion time is 20+ minutes.

(I am downloading just the FLV file separate from the youtube page using my browser's download manager)

If I manually put this IP in the URL for the .flv (no matter what I have my DNS set to), I get the same results. That is, I can put the "good/fast" IP in the URL and get a fast download even when using OpenDNS servers.

Apparently something is happening where OpenDNS is returning this "bad/slow" IP when looking up v19.cache.l.googlevideo.com

Our own OP performed a similar experiment and says his YouTube streaming is back to normal:

I ran a traceroute to v23.iscache5.googlevideo.com, the apparent server within Google that was serving up the video. I was a bit surprised to see the the traceroute cut off at an OpenDSN router (line 10 in the included traceroute) from my IP to the cited Google server. I have been using OpenDNS's servers for a a few years with for security reasons. I've been more than pleased with their service (free to individuals).

I reconfigured my network's DNS to point to QWests own nameservers. I again attempted viewing the same video. This time the download completed without stalling or interruption in the display. FlashGot's instrumentation showed a rate of 60Kbs. A traceroute to the same google video server yielded an entirely different route to the destination. See the included traceroute.

I ran these experiments several times and the results were consistent.

I would imagine that the reason OpenDNS routed traffic via their own IP-space is to identify potential malware and to protect its users from same, a laudable goal, and part of their service. I'll stay with QWest's nameservers until QpenDNS investigates my trouble ticket and fixes it or refutes my suspicion.

Did I get it right this time? Time will tell.

Traceroutes follow ...
Using opendns's name servers (208.67.220.220)
traceroute to v23.iscache5.googlevideo.com (208.67.216.132), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 gateway (192.168.1.1) 1.166 ms 1.647 ms 2.089 ms
2 * * *
3 tukw-dsl-gw22-214.tukw.qwest.net (63.231.10.214) 59.107 ms 68.397 ms 68.847 ms
4 tukw-agw1.inet.qwest.net (71.217.184.169) 70.277 ms 70.600 ms 71.929 ms
5 sea-core-01.inet.qwest.net (67.14.1.194) 73.591 ms 73.757 ms 73.912 ms
6 sea-brdr-01.inet.qwest.net (205.171.26.82) 74.155 ms 73.224 ms 75.141 ms
7 POS1-1.BR1.SEA1.ALTER.NET (204.255.174.177) 74.957 ms 54.444 ms 55.264 ms
8 0.so-4-2-0.XT1.SEA1.ALTER.NET (152.63.105.82) 56.941 ms 56.282 ms 57.602 ms
9 195.ATM4-0.GW10.SEA1.ALTER.NET (152.63.104.1) 58.294 ms 56.959 ms 57.516 ms
10 opendns-gw.customer.alter.net (63.65.72.74) 58.111 ms 59.424 ms 59.580 ms
11 * * *
12 * * *
13 * * *
...
30 * * *

Using QWest's nameservers (205.171.3.65)
1 gateway (192.168.1.1) 0.924 ms 1.327 ms 1.745 ms
2 * * *
3 tukw-dsl-gw22-214.tukw.qwest.net (63.231.10.214) 56.385 ms 57.373 ms 58.440 ms
4 tukw-agw1.inet.qwest.net (71.217.184.169) 60.214 ms 61.207 ms 62.190 ms
5 sea-core-01.inet.qwest.net (67.14.1.194) 63.198 ms 64.190 ms 65.183 ms
6 sea-brdr-01.inet.qwest.net (205.171.26.82) 66.152 ms 66.203 ms 66.916 ms
7 63.146.26.198 (63.146.26.198) 267.621 ms 213.340 ms 213.519 ms
8 sl-gw20-sea-0-0-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.6.8) 54.976 ms 54.198 ms 54.257 ms
9 sl-googl13-199181-0.sprintlink.net (144.224.13.138) 55.146 ms 54.540 ms 54.197 ms
10 209.85.249.32 (209.85.249.32) 107.489 ms 138.085 ms 128.856 ms
11 72.14.233.117 (72.14.233.117) 109.982 ms 108.183 ms 108.998 ms
12 209.85.242.209 (209.85.242.209) 131.685 ms 164.573 ms 137.819 ms
13 72.14.239.95 (72.14.239.95) 218.838 ms 209.426 ms 228.598 ms
14 209.85.251.41 (209.85.251.41) 248.187 ms 210.056 ms 223.112 ms
15 74.125.6.100 (74.125.6.100) 211.362 ms 219.634 ms 211.790 ms

It turns out another Qwest customer, Andrew, wrote to us yesterday to suggest the same solution to the problem:

I had the exact same problem with Qwest and YouTube; I am, I guess you could call "a heavy user". However, I realized that this began to happen after I used OpenDNS on my router. After I removed OpenDNS, YouTube worked great and every video downloaded very fast.

"Why does OpenDNS make YouTube load slowly?" [OpenDNS Forums]

Hammonds appeared yesterday morning on Good Morning America, but we haven't located a video of the appearance yet. Instead, here's part of a recap article posted on ABC's website that coincided with her GMA appearance:

Kristy Hammonds, 31, tells ABC News that she has become a local pariah and cannot find work to support her two children...

Hammonds, a registered sex offender who faces felony food tampering charges from the Domino's incident, says she has been turned down at several area fast food restaurants, including Taco Bell and McDonalds, when employers recognized her name and face.

She says her inability to find work has made it difficult to raise her two children, aged 4 [years] and 8 months, whom she conceived with the aid of a sperm donor. The baby, she said, has special needs.

We think Kristy should work again and support her family. Just, you know, not in the food service industry.

A warning: don't watch the lame "story recap" video accompanying the article if you're wearing a Halloween mask. It appears to be an attempt to trigger the Silver Shamrock Samhain spell from Halloween III. (Also, the talking heads look like dorks—do you really need an editor from Wired Magazine to watch those clips alongside an ABC reporter and crack wise? No.)

"Star of Domino's Pizza Gross-Out Video Is Sorry" [ABC News via Barf Blog]
(Photo: unk's dump truck)

A Qwest customer in Washington has been having trouble viewing streaming video, but suspiciously everything else he accesses online seems to come through at the advertised speed. After a long phone call today where he was passed among agents and technicians repeatedly, he ended up being told that Qwest reserves the right to throttle users who exhibit "excessive use." Ah, that old term again. So what counts as excessive use to Qwest? According to their FAQ, it could be as little as exceeding 3 gigabytes per month.

I live in western Washington. My DSL provider is Qwest: I bought 1.5Mb/800Kb service. About a week ago, my companion said that her download speed with YouTube, TED and others was substantially less than it had been. I suggested that it might be the outbound load on host site. Her complaints about poor performance persisted.

This morning I ran some standard tests: speed test (speedtest.net) reports that I have the full 1.5Mb/sec I bought. I tried viewing a YouTube video, a long one (50 minutes) and found the experience painful, about 20% of the speed it should be. I suspected Qwest of rate limiting. I used an external proxy server to view the same YouTube video. It appeared to download at full speed.

I called Qwest DSL support. They were unhelpful, even when I escalated to a supervisor. I next called "customer service". The lady I talked to said she wasn't a techie and barely understood the terms "rate limiting" and the like. She transferred me to "Broadband Retention". I explained the apparent rate limiting to that individual. He denied knowing anything about it, but did transfer me to "Louis" in some tech department (not regular DSL support). I explained my observations and tests one more time to "Louis". He denied that Qwest was rate limiting. Louis did put me on hold for a good while. When he came back he referred me to the Qwest "subscriber agreement" at:

http://www.qwest.com/legal/highspeedinternetsubscriberagreementfilesHSI_Subscriber_Agreement_ENG_v20_042209.pdf

He cites the second page, end of the first paragraph, where it says that Qwest may limit speeds. He also cites a "FAQ on Excessive use Policy"

http://www.qwest.com/internethelp/eup/16915_EUP_Details-15.pdf

and admitted that Qwest was, indeed, rate limiting YouTube and other streaming sites.

I asked for a discount based on degraded service. Louis conferenced me to "Jason" in the "loyalty group". I told Jason that I thought 1.5Mb/sec but with rate limited access to YouTube, etc, was worth about $10/month. Jason offered $15/month for 3 months. I said, "Not good enough. Make it permanent". He declined.

I told both Jason and Louis that would post a summary of my discussion with Qwest to Consumerist, Reddit and Slashdot. I ended the conversation with a polite "Good day".

About 20 minutes later Louis called to change his previous statement that Qwest rate limits YouTube and others. He now declares that Qwest does not rate limit. — From my observation, it does appear that Qwest does rate limit. Maybe smarter folks than I can determine the truth.

We wonder just what kind of conversation Louis had with his supervisor or another technician in that 20 minutes before he called you back to change his statement.

For the record, here are a couple of sections from the FAQ linked above. They're not exactly contradictory, but there seems to be a lot of uncharted middle ground between a 3 GB soft cap and the "excessive" examples that immediately follow.

2. A Qwest spokesperson contacted us and said under no circumstances do they throttle YouTube traffic:

We just want to be clear that Qwest doesn't block lawful Internet traffic on its network; never has. It is our responsibility to make sure that our network delivers an optimal Internet experience to customers. If a customer is transferring volumes of data comparable to commercial-grade volumes (hundreds of times more than normal use - examples are included in your story), we have the products to meet those needs and we work closely with these customers to get them the right service.

They also told us they have a Twitter account if you need to reach a Qwest person to discuss a problem you haven't been able to resolve through the standard channels: http://twitter.com/talktoqwest.

Bad luck for the rogue employees, though: North Carolina, where the Domino's incident took place, is actually quite strict about food tampering.

[In North Carolina,] you can be charged with a Class I felony for knowingly distributing food that could cause "mild physical discomfort without any lasting effect." (Technically, you don't even need to distribute it-just leaving the food somewhere "in a position of human accessibility" is enough to get you charged.) If the hapless Domino's employees are convicted, they could get up to one year in jail.

"Is It Really Illegal To Put Boogers in a Sandwich?" [Slate] (Thanks to HogwartsAlum!)
(Photo: xersti)

Domino's has even issued its own YouTube video from Patrick Doyle, the pizza chain's President. Just note that the "members of the online community" that he thanks are all Consumerist readers—they're the ones who did the detective work for the company.

"Arrest warrants issued in YouTube pizza prank" [Charlotte Observer] (Thanks to everyone who sent these tips in today!)

A week ago, the New York Times reported on just this kind of online sleuthing, and how people working together via the Internet can accomplish some pretty amazing detective work. In that article, it was to track down and return a lost camera. Here, Amy Wilson and whyerhead were able to actually take action against the bad employees in the videos by alerting their superiors and Domino's corporate. Congratulations on some pretty amazing detective work for the greater good!

Update: Another reader, Jonathan Drake, emailed Domino's VP of Communications Tim McIntyre last night to point him to the post. McIntire and Drake exchanged a few emails, including a copy of an apology from Kristy.

From: "Tim McIntyre (COMM - Communicat)"
Subject: RE: Video Location identified!
Date: April 14, 2009 6:45:40 AM EDT
To: Jonathan Drake

Subject: RE: Video Location identified!

Jonathan,

Thanks so much for pointing us to the comments in the blog. I alerted our security team as soon as I received it last night.

At 1:38 a.m. today, this email arrived in my inbox:

—
The gross videos
Kristy Kristy
Sent: Tuesday, April 14, 2009 1:38 AM
To: Tim McIntyre (COMM - Communicat)

I am sorry about all of this! It was all a prank and me nor Michael expected to have this much attention from the videos that were uploaded! No food was ever sent out to any customer. We would never put something like that on you tube if it were real!! It was fake and I wish that everyone knew that!!!! Michael never would do that to any customer, EVER!! I AM SOO SORRY! You see all the time of the pranks that people upload and the pranks need to seem real in order to get a laugh out of people but this prank was very very immature and I am sorry for the embarrasment that I have caused your company!
—

At this point, we certainly are not taking her at her word that this was all fake, but we will be following up today with these people who are employed by an independent, and innocent, franchise owner.

Tim McIntyre
Vice President, Communications
Domino's Pizza LLC

From: "Tim McIntyre (COMM - Communicat)"
Date: April 14, 2009 9:20:54 AM EDT
To: Jonathan Drake
Subject: RE: Video Location identified!

Jonathan,

To say that the Consumerist is "relatively popular" is a bit of an understatement. Thank you for your understanding. Our chief of security has spoken to the franchise owner this morning, who was dumbfounded, to say the least. He has told us that he will be terminating their employment today. The "challenge" that comes with the freedom of the internet is that any idiot with a camera and an internet link can do stuff like this - and ruin the reputation of a brand that's nearly 50 years old, and the reputations of 125,000 hard-working men and women across the nation and in 60 countries around the world.

Tim McIntyre
Vice President, Communications
Domino's Pizza, LLC

Thanks, Jonathan!

"Domino's Rogue Employees Do Disgusting Things To The Food, Put It On YouTube"
(Illustration: olarte.ollie)

He opened a new Wells Fargo card, put only a dollar in it, then bought several $1 items at the local mall, running up over $100 in overdraft fees. Naturally, Wells Fargo refused to refund any of his overdraft fees. So, he took them to small claims court. Rather than pay the cost of sending someone to defend the case, Wells Fargo refunded his overdrafts and even paid the about $47 it cost him to file.

Says Ralph Nader in the documentary, "If a million consumers filed a million small claims court actions a year against the banks, the banks would either try to abolish the small claims court or improve their performance."

Taking a company to small claims is not that hard, we've written several posts that tell you how to do it.

How To Beat The Bank [Current] (Thanks to Kane!)

Hint to preserve your sanity: to avoid PC Mag's trashed layout, try viewing/bookmarking the print-friendly version.

"How to Delete Accounts from Any Website" [PC Mag] (Thanks to Josh!)
(Photo: jm3)

If this had been around in the 80s, we're sure it would have replaced Huey Lewis in Patrick Bateman's CD player.
Life Fail [FailBlog]
CHEERS TO YOU!

That thing is brutally efficient. We wonder how many fish they had to go through to get those shots.

Commercial Fail [Fail Blog]

A Single SD card, tucked behind the bottom flap of the box. It's almost like it's ashamed of its unnecessary packaging. It's alright, buddy. You're safe now.

Video:[SimplySped2]

According to the ad, your parents are going to find out exactly what kind of sick, perverted stuff you are into - unless you use their new Holiday wish-list website (titled HintOrElse.com, just to rub it in). It's good to see one company really get into the holiday spirit, if 'the spirit' happens to be free-wheeling paranoia and abject horror.

Funny gamestop Commercial (Hint or else) [youtube]

Thesmokinggun found some more interesting info on Dunn, including that he filmed his incriminating announcements "from inside a shower stall," that he claimed to have paid off the police and the FBI, and that investigators found him not through fancy IP tracing or anything like that, but because he broadcast the name of a site registered to him across the bottom of some of his Trashman videos.

Dunn has been arrested three times in the past ten months on charges unrelated to his moviemaking, according to the complaint. The Harlem resident, who has previously posted videos in which he claimed to have infected numerous female sex partners with the HIV virus, operates a low-budget porn web site and, on his MySpace page, describes himself as an "adult website owner looking to network with people in the porn and music world."

"'Trashman' Nabbed For YouTube Threats" [The Smoking Gun]
"New York man arrested for YouTube baby food threat" [Associated Press]

Here's Joanna:

I was personally contacted by an executive at Viacom, who explained how my film got mixed into their system. Juxtaposer was in a film festival that was presented by Nicktoons, which is of course a Viacom company. They offered selections of the festival as downloadable content, and Juxtaposer was one of them. They just forgot that Viacom's rights to those films were all nonexclusive. He personally assured me that Viacom is no longer making a claim to my film and YouTube should be sending me documents affirming that shortly.

I don't think this would have been over with nearly as fast if not for the publicity I got from your post. This could have been a nightmare, but it wasn't. Count this one a success!

Score one for the little guy.

Viacom Apologizes! [Channel Federator Raw]
PREVIOUSLY: Viacom Fraudulently Claims Ownership Of Indie Filmmakers' YouTube Clips

Joanna is, of course, disputing the claim.

The video is still up, but now Viacom gets access to her video statistics. The worst part is the fear Joanna has that something she slaved and sweat over could be taken away from her. "I'm just a scared that my little film will be lost in the shadow of the hulking monolith...," she wrote on her blog. Also on her blog is a comment by another filmmaker indicating Joanna isn't the only filmmaker Viacom has fraudulently targeted in this manner.

YouTube used to be cool but the site allowing actions like this show how much it's become just another co-opted drek-hole... all because they're too cheap to hire enough people to vet either the uploads or the corporate takedowns.

Below, a screenshot of the creepy and baseless stake-claiming.

Viacom Wants To Steal My Film [Channel Federator Raw]
Juxtaposer [YouTube]

Viacom is arguing that it needs the data to prove that its copyrighted material is more popular than user created videos.

Wired says:

Although Google argued that turning over the data would invade its users' privacy, the judge's ruling (.pdf) described that argument as "speculative" and ordered Google to turn over the logs on a set of four tera-byte hard drives.

The judge also turned Google's own defense of its data retention policies — that IP addresses of computers aren't personally revealing in and of themselves, against it to justify the log dump.

The EFF has responded to the ruling, calling it "a set-back to privacy rights," that "will allow Viacom to see what you are watching on YouTube. "

Judge Orders YouTube to Give All User Histories to Viacom [Wired] (Thanks, Everyone!)
Court ruling will expose viewing habits [YouTube]

The secret, apparently, is to make every third or fourth yes mean something entirely new through the magic of inflection—but you'll have to stay committed to it even when the telemarketer catches on, which may result in a self-inflicted insult.

"How to torment telemarketers with one word" [YouTube via Neatorama]

The article says,

The clip, which has been viewed more than two million times, shows 25-year-old Lauren Bernat hula hooping in time with the fitness video game.

Rumours that the clip was a clever marketing ploy for the Wii Fit spread after it emerged that both Miss Bernat and her boyfriend, who filmed the footage, work in advertising.

Giovanny Gutierrez, 30, works as director of interactive media for Tinsley Advertising in Miami, Florida. According to his biography on the firm’s website, he "creates web, e-mail and interactive marketing solutions that perfectly integrate with television, radio and print campaigns."

"Gio is a master of e-commerce, having created web portals for scores of businesses," the biography adds.

Miss Bernat works as an account executive at Tinsley Advertising, where her duties include "evaluating the responses to our Internet advertising".

But Nintendo has denied that the footage is part of an advertising campaign. "This has and is absolutely 100 per cent nothing to do with Nintendo," a spokesman said. "Nintendo did not create it and were not aware of it until it was brought it to our attention."

Mr Gutierrez has also denied that it was a viral advert for the Wii Fit.

The game, which allows Nintendo Wii owners to do a range of exercises and stretches under the guidance of on on-screen fitness expert, hardly needs the free publicity, having sold more than 300,000 copies in the UK in its first two weeks on sale, and sold out in many parts of the world.

But the YouTube affair has done much to boost the profile of Mr Gutierrez and his agency.

The evidence that this is an organized marketing campaign seems circumstantial to us. However, advertisers are always coming up with new ways to turn attention toward new products so who knows? We'll just have to keep watching the video until we figure it out.

Wii Fit underwear girl: A marketing hoax? [The Telegraph]

Completely Foreseeable Riot as Cash Thrown at Public in Union Square [Gothamist]
(Photo: M. Roberts/Daily News)

From Reuters:

An NBCU spokeswoman said the company would consider making its videos, including clips from "Saturday Night Live" available on other services in the future.

Sorry, YouTube. No more "Dick In A Box."

NBC Universal removes YouTube channel [Reuters]
(Photo:stirwise)

Plug in your work headphones and get ready to rock out classic-easy-listening-style.

Gate Agent Plays Ukelele [YouTube] (Thanks to Brent!)

Our favorite moment: when Halleran asks, "If I cancel my account with you guys, will that stop the mailing?", and the man on the other end just sighs in angry exasperation.

(Thanks to Taryn!)

"Off The List" [YouTube]

Now Google believes it finally has found the formula to cash in on YouTube's potential as a magnet for online video advertising and keep its audience loyal at the same time.

The company said late Tuesday that after months of testing various video advertising models, it was ready to introduce a new type of video ad, which it said was unobtrusive and kept users in control of what they saw.

The ads, which appear 15 seconds after a user begins watching a video clip, take the form of an overlay on the bottom fifth of the screen, not unlike the tickers that display headlines during television news programs.

A user can ignore the overlay, which will disappear after about 10 seconds, or close it. But if the user clicks on it, the video they were watching will stop and a video ad will begin playing. Once the ad is over, or if a user clicks on a box to close it, the original video will resume playing from the point where it was stopped.

Google Aims to Make YouTube Profitable With Ads [NYT]
(Photo:NYT)

Many entries are mediocre, if not downright bad, and sifting through them requires full-time attention. And even the most well-known brands often spend millions of dollars up front to get the word out to consumers.

The High Price of Creating Free Ads [NYT]
Top This TV [YouTube]
(Photo: cloudzilla)

The companies said Thursday that distribution partners for the online content would include Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp.'s MSN network and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL unit. The site, which will be free, is expected to launch this summer and will carry full episodes and clips from hit shows such as "Heroes," "The Simpsons," "24" and "My Name Is Earl." It will also feature movies, including "Borat."

News Corp. and NBC said they've already lined up several big advertisers for the site, including Cisco, Intel and General Motors.

The partnership is a major salvo against YouTube, which has emerged as both friend and rival to traditional media companies. Google has had difficulties striking deals with the media titans, who have accused YouTube — which Google acquired last year — of benefiting from illegal use of their copyrighted material.

NBC, News Corp. Plan Video Site In Challenge to Google's YouTube (Subscription)[WSJ]

Digital Music said on Monday the deal also includes an agreement to allow certain music, for which it controls the rights, to be used in users' videos uploaded to YouTube.

Digital Music owns publishing or distribution rights to over 40,000 music recordings and over 4,000 hours of video content including television shows and films.

YouTube to offer old U.S. TV programs [Reuters]

5Six different video have already gone up on YouTube in response to our upload of George's original "Verizon Can't Count" phone call.

They won't win any Emmys, but they're honest, which is more than can be said for Verizon. Check 'em out, inside. — BEN POPKEN

Remember, don't go to Best Buy without doing your product research first. The only thing you should ask a BB employee is "where is this item located?" Or, "where is the exit?" — BEN POPKEN

Two years ago, the AG sued franchiser Francare Inc. As a result of a settlement, the company agreed to stop deceptive trade practices. Apparently, the suit didn't make enough of an impression. Perhaps this next one will.

Is there such a thing as an honest mechanic? Why does auto-repair seem to encourage fraud?

Parts 2 and 3 of the news reports, inside. — BEN POPKEN

Part 2

Part 3

I-Team Follow: Las Vegas Auto Repair Rip-Off [Channel 8] (Thanks to Jeff!)

Are these manufactured by Sony?— BEN POPKEN