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I got a tip recently about MySidekick, a new search site that blends traditional search results (powered by Yahoo) with monitoring of what users do with the search results.

For example, if you click through to a search result from MySidekick, and then come back to the search engine after a long while, MySidekick will assume you're returning from a successful foray and thus a good recommendation. If you click to a result and come back quickly, it'll assume it was a poor recommendation. Good results move up to the top of the page in the "People'… Read more

I've seen a few good flash mobs in my day. San Francisco lends itself to the strange, including the simultaneous zombie mob and Critical Mass bike ride, which was chronicled by CNET's Declan McCullagh a few months ago. But what if you don't feel like riding a bike, or eating brains? Do sandwiches and potato salad sound better? Picnicmob is a new site full of questions like that--30 in fact. Answering them will help the service figure out where to sit you, in a virtual grid of picnic goers in an upcoming mass picnic flash mob, taking … Read more

Have you ever wanted to browse a Web page you saw a few weeks ago, but gave up after spending too long sifting through your browser history? Maybe you found some information on a site about a particular subject you wanted to revisit, but numerous searches have turned up nothing. I discovered a program recently which helps with this very problem and also offers some other cool features that just about anyone might find useful. Unfortunately, the program is not without its problems.

Browseback, from developers SmileOnMyMac, takes your Web history and organizes it visually with thumbnails, so you can … Read more

My, my, Lonelygirl15 sure has come a long way. Not so long ago, everyone thought the too-cute videoblogger was, well, a too-cute videoblogger. Then some online video fans with a shocking amount of time on their hands deduced that she was likely an actress in a staged series of video episodes. (They were right.) Now, leading lady "Bree" (played by Jessica Rose) has gone all professional on us--the new MySpaceTV video portal will be hosting Lonelygirl15's season finale.

Season finale?

On Friday, MySpaceTV--which launched in June and has been rolling out content deals ever since--will broadcast the … Read more

Let the hand wringing begin: Rupert's in charge.

As we are now aware, a $5 billion buyout bid from News Corp. for Dow Jones, parent of The Wall Street Journal, appears to have enough support from factions of the Bancroft family, which holds a majority stake in the company, apparently putting the coda on this three-month saga.

But we're only in the early innings when it comes to the grieving over the pending acquisition by Rupert Murdoch of one of the world's best newspapers. Normally, I'd let this story pass, but by virtue of News Corp.'… Read more

Statistics house ComScore released some numbers on Tuesday pertaining to how quickly a handful of popular social-networking sites are growing worldwide, and which ones dominate in which regions of the globe. There's nothing all too notable here, as the global reach of various social-networking sites has been well-documented already--and even mapped. But it's always cool to see numbers, which I suppose is why companies like ComScore exist in the first place.

The main set of numbers tracks worldwide social-networking growth, with June 2006 and June 2007 as the benchmarks, for seven services: MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Orkut, Hi5, Friendster, … Read more

Want to emulate that neat collage look you get when you get photos printed out? There's a service called Collagr that does it for you pulling in photos from Flickr. If you've got shots on there, just fill in your username and Collagr will do its magic. The result is a square array that may look a little small in the preview, but if you save it to your hard drive you'll notice it's 1,400x1,025, which is larger than the average desktop wallpaper. The recommended use, however, is for MySpace profiles--you know, the kind … Read more

Amy Tiemann asks, in light of MySpace's announcement that it has recently removed the pages of 29,000 registered sex offenders from its site, "What does this news mean for parents?"

Call it knee jerk, but it means that my kids will not be using MySpace. Sure, 29,000 is a "drop in the bucket" compared to the 80 million registered pages on MySpace, but just as I'm careful where I live (yes, we checked the sex offender list before we moved into our home and continue to monitor it), I'm also careful where I go online. We teach the same principle to our kids.

I don't want my kids to be anywhere where 29,000 registered sex offenders feel comfortable signing up for pages using their real names. Period. How many others register under pseudonyms?

Amy suggests:… Read more

Phonevite is a new free invitation and RSVP service that turns your Web browser into a personal assistant of sorts, letting you call a large group of friends, family, or contacts without having to spend all day on the phone. Instead Phonevite provides an asynchronous solution, giving you an easy way to record a personalized invitation message using your computer's microphone, and send it out to a list of hand-picked phone numbers. From there you can send out the "invitation" right away, or schedule it in for a later date.

When an invitation goes live, Phonevite will … Read more