sesame

'Sesame Street' tops 1 billion YouTube views, the Count celebrates

You're famed PBS kids show "Sesame Street." You've just topped 1 billion views for your videos on YouTube since you joined in 2006. How do you celebrate? With the Count, of course!

The Count (whose full name is Count von Count) took to YouTube to display his singing and counting skills in a video tribute to "Sesame Street" reaching the 1 billion mark, the first time a nonprofit has topped that milestone, according to YouTube. "Gangnam Style," however, got there much more quickly.

A count of all the views individually would take an untold amount of time, so the Count decided instead to tackle the task of counting all the "you's" in "YouTube," which only takes a few minutes to accomplish.… Read more

NASA: Cookie Monster is big on other planets

While Big Bird might be feeling a bit vulnerable to winding up on a list of endangered fictional species of late, "Sesame Street" colleague Cookie Monster appears to be expanding its range by at least 48 million miles, showing up recently on Mercury.… Read more

Friday Poll: How much of the debate did you follow on Twitter?

Twitter launched a new star during the presidential debate on Wednesday, but he wasn't wearing a suit and tie. Big Bird from "Sesame Street" was the subject of an explosion of tweets after the topic of cutting funding to PBS came up between President Obama and his Republican rival Mitt Romney.

There was a point during the debate where the phrase "Big Bird" was tweeted 17,000 times a minute. That's some serious action for a fictional creature. He also spawned a slew of satirical accounts. This all just goes to show how Twitter … Read more

Curiosity rover gets chatty, clever on Twitter

Coming off the tremendous success of completing the "seven minutes of terror," the Mars Curiosity rover will now spend the next several weeks getting settled before embarking on its data-collecting two-year mission. So what does a solitary rover in a Mars crater do during its downtime? Chat it up on Twitter with its peeps back home, of course.

Earlier today, the official Sesame Street Twitter account sent a shout-out to the rover on Twitter, amusingly suggesting the children's entertainment company hoped to see its famous fictional Martian Yip Yips characters emerge on camera during the latest ground pictures from Mars.

Curiosity rover quickly tweeted back: "Science is cool. Yip-yip-yip-yip... Uh-huh. Uh-huh. #STEM #MSL" (Even BoingBoing served up a satirical screenshot wonderfully Photoshopped of what a Yip Yip on Mars would look like; see our own vision at right.) … Read more

The 404 1,012: Where we bring our Ella, Ella (podcast)

There's so much to talk about with our guest today, Ella Morton. She's a former editor from CNET Australia, so we'll talk to her about her appearances on Planet CNET, a book she co-wrote with the founders of RecordSetter.com, and her visit to Sesame Street with RocketBoom.

Ella is currently working on a guide book to the world's hidden wonders with the team from Atlas Obscura, so she'll also tell us a few of her favorite stories from her research. We'll finish out the show with a chat about Ella's other love: burlesque!

With so much to talk about, we'll definitely have Ella back on the show, but in the meantime be sure to follow her on Twitter and check out her own podcast, Ellipsis.… Read more

The 404 926: Where Siri ratted us out (podcast)

We didn't think it would take this long, but somebody finally exploited the iPhone 4S to catch a cheater using the new Find My Friend app on iOS 5.

The scary part of this story, though, is how easy it is to use GPS to lurk on your S.O. using Google Latitude or any one of these mobile spy apps.

In that same vein, today we're chatting about our favorite tech pranks along with the latest news headlines that include BlackBerry freebies, iPhone record breaking, cell phone bill shock, and a fishy story out of Sesame Street.

… Read more

Hackers add porn to Sesame Street YouTube channel

Sesame Street's YouTube channel was hacked today, leaving its normally family-friendly content replaced with pornographic content, according to a report on the tech blog The Next Web.

YouTube had the content removed in 22 minutes, according to the report, and as of this writing, the show's channel has been replaced by a message saying it is unavailable.

YouTube representatives declined to comment on Sesame Street's incident but said the removal of the content was in keeping with user guidelines.

"YouTube's Community Guidelines prohibit graphic content," a YouTube spokesperson said. "As always, we remove … Read more

The 404 880: Where we separate the hacks from the cracks (podcast)

If you leave your Facebook logged in on a friend's computer and that person posts an embarrassing photo for all your friends to see, would you say you got hacked?

Today's episode of the podcast takes issue with the misuse of the word "hacked." With news stories about Stuxnet, PlayStation 3, and News of the World throwing around the term with no specific definition, we hope to define exactly what it means to hack...at least according to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

First, we'll explore the origins of hacking by breaking the definition down into subcategories like phreaking, cracking, and spoofing. Then we'll tell you why the courts decided that sending out too many e-mails to someone can be considered computer hacking, and we'll introduce the 23-year-old Assistant Commissioner hired by the NYPD to spearhead its new social media unit.

Finally, we close today's show with an exploration into the changing landscape of "Sesame Street," and why some of the LGBT community is pushing Bert and Ernie to finally tie the knot on the air.

The 404 Digest for Episode 880

Stock art meant for news stories about cybercrime. NYPD forms new social media unit to mine Facebook and Twitter for mayhem. Court deems e- mail spam is considered a form of computer hacking. iPad cases made out of Bernie Madoff's auctioned clothing. Slice Harvester shows every pizza spot in NYC on a Google map. Petition asks Bert and Ernie to get married already. Working in an office is bad for your brain.

Episode 880 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

Petition to revive Oscar the Grouch trash-can utility in OS X Lion

Mac OS X Lion has plenty of features that make it worth the upgrade for all Intel Mac users, but it's still missing one of my favorite extensions from the Mac OS legacy: Oscar the Grouch.

Oscar was a trash-bin animation utility that originally came bundled with OS 7.1 (later updated in 7.5) and featured everyone's favorite grumpy sanitation officer singing "Oh I love trash" and "I love it because it's trash" whenever you emptied the bin.

The character cameo quietly disappeared soon after, although Henson and Kermit the Frog himself … Read more