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Linden Labs, the people behind Second Life, recently sent a letter specifically permitting parody of the burgeoning online service. [link]

The parody, called “Get a First Life”, exhorts users to “Go Outside. Membership is Free!” amongst other hilarious send-ups of the service.

This has resulted in positive coverage throughout the blogosphere, even recently rising to coverage on Slashdot and Digg.

Where this could have resulted in a PR debacle that would have damaged Linden’s reputation, it has instead resulted in a positive spread of inbound links and linkbaiting.

While this strategy would not be appropriate for all companies and all parodies, it certainly proves that it is smart business to give the funny bone a chance before calling in the lawyers.

A cheap airfare hotel deal would be an ideal deal for a vagabond. Such people prefer to travel alone, without wasting time to book flights or get reservations in hotels. Their whole life is a vacation. They are usually found on cruise vacations, enjoying their time partying away. They would not waste their time in flying or getting airline tickets, or traveling slow and economical as in cheap rental cars. All they need is their spirit and they are on their way.

A National Passenger Bill of Rights for the transportation industries is an idea that has been long discussed, and whose time has come.

Unfortunately, the idea is now being championed by a group of upset travellers whose trips were interrupted by a freak thunderstorm affecting the entire state of Texas. [link]
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This story could also be filed under RTFA. (read the f– article)

Some researchers made public their findings that microwaving a wet sponge could kill bacteria that had infected it, providing security against spreading infections in the act of cleaning.

Some people, on testing the findings…..forgot to wet their sponges. Hilarity ensued. [link]

Ubuntu’s development teams recently announced a new Ubuntu flavor aimed at multimedia and video production environments. [link]

Speaking as someone who’s tried to steer video-editing friends into F/OSS, only to find the true GPL solutions “not yet ready for prime-time”, I applaud this move: the right move at the right time.

Is it just me or is IE7 even more hopelessly broken than IE6?

IE7 was supposed to mark a movement towards standards compliance, yet it seems as though there’s even more stuff that doesn’t work right. Even the long-promising alpha-transparency PNG fix is only half-functional.

I checked around, and the official IE7 blog keeps asking people to make changes to their code.

Microsoft developers, here’s a free tip: If a large percentage of people have to change their sites to comply with your browser, then you didn’t fix anything. You made a change. There’s a difference. Continue reading…

I’m surprised this little internet gem missed my attention as long as it did.

Blendtec, a manufacturer of blenders for both the home and commercial markets, was faced with the need for a creative way of separating them from the competition.

So what did they do? Create a series of very catchy viral videos, featuring a humorously laconic host blending all sorts of crazy products, from iPods to light bulbs. The question is, “Will it Blend?”

The real question for webmasters is, is there some way you can adapt this tactic to your own purposes? With more than 56,000 inbound links, the Will it Blend? site proves that making people laugh is a most effective tactic for linkbaiting.

There’s a lot of misinformation out there about how to accomplish proper Search Engine Optimization. An entire market has cropped up to service the needs of business owners eager to climb to the top of google in rankings.

Many of those services use so-called “black hat” techniques that can get your site penalized! In fact, SEO is far easier and more straightforward than people seem to think, and anyone can do it.
Here’s the ten biggest things you can do to improve your search engine rankings, right now:

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There’s a bright comet in the morning and evening skies, dropping by for a limited-time engagement, so get out of your la-z-boys, grab a pair of binoculars, and check it out. [link]
Parents, this is a great time to get your kids interested and involved in the sciences, or specifically in astronomy, which can be a great hobby for a kid. (And a better one as an adult!) Continue reading…

There’s a Silicon Valley catfight brewing over the rights to the iPhone name.

On one side, Cisco Systems, whose Linksys division released a net-enabled phone dubbed iPhone just three weeks ago.

On the other, Steve Jobs and Apple, who seem to be acting quite deliberately, given that they had tried to secure legitimate and exclusive rights to the name.

The facts, as presented in this article, point powerfully toward an actionable case for Cisco.

My money’s on Jobs. He knew precisely what he was doing, and he must have some kind of plan in motion.

More than that, the man’s stared down more lawsuits than Johnny Cochran. I don’t think he’s real worried about this.

Here comes the “free iPhone” spam.