I wanted to try a series that simplifies the news - cuts through big articles with boring facts and interviews and shit and just tells you what the story is about. Simple.

The backlash against Facebook's rampant abuse of privacy is gaining ground. 15 consumer watchdog groups have filed complaints with the American FTC over their more recent abuses.

Lebanon holding up peace talks with Israel by stating that they won't tell Hezbollah(a militia turned political entity) to disarm until the country has decided on a defence strategy to integrate Hezbollah's weapons into the regular army.

Pakistan tests a couple of nuclear bombs saying they want recognition from the world for being a legitimate nuclear power.

Lithuanian court this week banned the gay pride parade in the name of Jesus. The ruling was later overturned by an appeals court in the name of justice and freedom.

The Pope fired a leading German bishop for allegedly physically and sexually abusing children, and financially misconducting.

In Afghanistan the now unanimously unwelcome violent extremist group, the Taliban, is upset that the Afghan president is visiting Washington. The group has announced that they will be launching a fresh violent campaign starting on Monday, planning to "Lay siege to the cities".

Protestors in Thailand becoming violent; using drive-by shootings, grenades, in an effort to encourage peace in the country and to keep busy while a rough peace draft is being written up. The draft is due by the 15th.

Researchers at the University of Toronto have found a way to better predict how genes will behave in different types of human tissue. The same gene does different things in different places in the body. This discovery decodes those different things for any given gene.

Scientists have created a material that mimics the physical properties of muscle tissue. No one's sure what to do with it yet.

Nokia (The world's biggest mobile phone company) is suing Apple, saying the iPhone infringes on 5 of Nokia's patents. It's not the first time. Apple is counter suing saying Nokia infringes on their patents.

A few days ago Greek protestors were upset with the government and economy, so they set fire to a bank killing 3 people.

Editorial Section:

Perhaps the most important news of the day, this dog smiled so much she almost fell over.

Keith and The Girl, the amazing incredible comedy podcast, close to starting their 5th year and 1200th episode are in the middle of doing a 76 hour marathon show. Last year they did the infamous 74 hour podcast where they broadcast live for 74 hours straight with all the best guests rotating in, prank calls, and awesome entertainment. Now they're doing it again for 76 hours straight. It ends March 3rd in the evening EST.

The reason for the marathon is that Keith and Chemda just got their relationship book published which you can and should pre-order on Amazon.com. They're trying to get onto the best seller list on Amazon, and are already 120th and moving up fast. Buy the book now from the American Amazon.com site to help push them over the edge. All the pre-orders count to their ranking and getting on the best seller's list. Keith and Chemda have literally done easily more than 1500 hours of high caliber hilarious content and it's all available free. An hour+ show every weekday, aftershows, and weekly video podcast, and so much more they deserve the world so buy the book and help them out.

A lot of hardcore fans are making deals if the book get's past certain rankings on the Amazon daily sales list. One guy promised to put up video of himself stapling his balls to his desk while ordering another book if they get to #1, and like the original 74 hour podcast a few hot fans agreed to strip down and post nude pictures if they pass certain books or get up to 100 on the list.

At 4pm EST today make sure you tweet with hashtag #whatdowedonow and #katg with everyone else to get them as a trending topic on Twitter, and continue to tweet, facebook, buzz, email, and tell everybody about the book. Order 5 copies now and give them out for birthdays and holidays.

Chemda just announced as I write this that they past the Twilight book in ranking, and one of the girls just sent in her racy pics to support the show. http://www.keithandthegirl.com/forums/f6/marathon-pictures-thread-14774/#post637821

Watch the marathon now at http://katg.com/chat, or at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/keith-and-the-girl. Listen in itunes http://liveshow.keithandthegirl.com:8004/. Download the Keith and The Girl iPhone app from the app store, or listen on the KATG Desktop App from here http://innovate.chalk-it-out.com/katg_desktop/download.php. Right now Chemda, the great Victor Varnado, Liam McEneaney, Newsy, Matt B, Jeremy, and McNally are live, go listen.

Digg: http://digg.com/comedy/What_Do_We_Do_Now_Keith_and_The_Girl

Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/b87cc/what_do_we_do_now_keith_and_the_girls_smart/

StumbleUpon: http://www.stumbleupon.com/to/5OdDHH/www.keithandthegirl.com/book/t:4b8d05c59cbeb;src:all

Everything About The Book Here:  http://www.keithandthegirl.com/book/

They also put one of the chapters up for free that you can see at KATG.com/book

And like 12 commercials on youtube that are really funny, featuring Lauren Hennessy and Brother love. Watch them all here http://www.youtube.com/user/keithandthegirl

I kept reading on Giz about how HTML 5 takeover is imminent and each time lost a little respect for my favourite gadget blog. It's good to know that when it comes down to it some of them do actually know what they're talking about.

Gizmodo, who were some of the idiots I referred to in my post yesterday redeemed themselves by publishing a very comprehensive breakdown of why HTML 5 isn't saving anyone anytime soon 40 minutes ago, and (although they only briefly touched on it, being that the post is primarily about HTML 5) why Flash is better at doing the kind of things HTML 5 is supposed to usurp in imagination land.

HTML isn't platform ubiquitous and never will be because whoever has the monopoly is also directly motivated to keep web standards to shit. Companies are companies and the monopoly will always be a company.

Flash on the other hand is already platform ubiquitous. Write once, deploy everywhere. The only problem with flash is resource use, which 10.1 - already in 2nd beta will address.

Flash also now has the ability to run native c/c++ code, so decoding video with flash will be as fast as doing it natively in the browser. Well as doing it natively in the browser will eventually maybe possibly in 5-10 years if the web can come together in happy fairy land on HTML 5 implementation.

Goodbye Flash?? I say goodbye web browsers and hello Adobe AIR branded front ends to web services and content.

Here's a small excerpt from John Herrman of Gizmodo's comprehensive HTML 5 breakdown, although I strongly recommend you read the whole thing as it makes things clear for the tech - and not so tech, savvy:

...

The Basics

Before we get into what HTML5 means, we have to talk about what it is, and to talk about what it is, we need to talk about what it's built upon.

Hypertext markup language, or HTML, is the language underneath every web page you've ever been to. The language, along with its various complementary technologies (see: CSS, Javascript), has become immensely complex over the years, but the concept is simple. HTML is what turns this:

<u><em><strong><a href="http://gizmodo.com">Hello!</a></strong></em></u>

Into this:

Hello!

It's basically a set of instructions that a website hands to a browser, which the browser then reads and converts into a formatted page, full of text, images, links and whatever else.

Here, try this: Right-click anywhere on this webpage, and click "View Page Source," or "View Source," or something to that effect. Your eyes will be assaulted with a wall of inscrutable text. You'll see evidence of syntax, but your brain won't be able to parse it. Your eyes will glaze over, and you will close the window. This, my friends, is HTML. But you probably already knew that, because it's 2010, basic web languages are basically in our drinking water. So what's this "5" business?

Somewhere in the central command center basement of the internet, there's a group of guys who maintain the standard, or the rules, of HTML. In the case of HTML5, the buck stops with the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG), and to a lesser extent, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). It is through these independent standards organizations that new features are codified and presented to the public, and later—in theory—supported by various browsers, no matter what company is behind them.

In the early nineties, the W3C and a few influential torchbearers would collect various new web features thought up by different browser makers, publishing these standards with the hope that we didn't end up with different internets for different browsers. By the mid to late nineties, the standards had grown in both size and stature, then serving as the de facto guide for browser makers and developers alike. (If this sounds a bit rosy, the reality was far grimmer—just ask any seasoned web developer about Internet Explorer, version 6 or earlier.)

Despite an occasionally rocky road, HTML standards went beyond being just a record of changes in web technology; eventually they became the blueprint to push them forward. Still, standards are guides, not laws, and no browser maker has to adopt each and every revision.

The last major revision of the HTML standard, version 4.01, was published in 1999. HTML5 hasn't yet been formally codified, but it was born in 2004 and has been undergoing steady work and maintenance since. In the '90s, HTML discussion centered around topics like font coloration, or tables, or buttons, or something more esoteric. Today, a new HTML version means deep-down support for the modern web, namely web apps and video.

John Herrman - Read the rest on Gizmodo

The future of search..

• Google Goggles
• Voice search in English, Mandarin, Japanese - more to come
• Live mobile voice translation - between every major language coming
• Location becomes first class object in mobile searches

• Desktop search gets real time results integrated as animated scrolling
• Latest(search sidebar) - all latest, including blog posts, tweets, etc.
• Updates(search sidebar) - all status updates, twitter, facebook, etc.
• Real time results focus on relevancy
• Hot topics page based on real time what's happening
• Dozens of algorithms and tech to make real time possible
• Real time partners - Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and more.

• Google Googles will not recognize faces... yet
• Would like to partner with any source of real time information - comprehensiveness = better search results
• Plan on being/remaining platform ubiquitous.
• Google sends billions of clicks/month to news publishers
• "the web thrives on openness"

Adobe is literally making it possible for me to create what I want, and cosmically in sync with where I am on the road to creating those things. I feel indebted - as I should, to the tool creators. The future will be a crazy cross platform interconnected kinda world. It's a great era to live in, and be a part of.

Sammy Hagar

Joe Satriani

Michael Anthony

Chad Smith

Preview (and then buy) the album http://www.chickenfoot.us/listeningparty/

Watch the 12 days of Chickenfoot video podcast where the band explains each song in the album http://www.chickenfoot.us/12days

Myspace | Facebook | YouTube | twitter | iPhone app

I was just on Digg or something and ended up watching the whole interview on Youtube. From what I could gather from the interview she wrote a bogus book and is full of shit, but it's entertaining so watch the video after the jump.

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Click images for full size.

Someday I'll get around to posting all the Chalkboards that keep coming in - Draw your own here. In the meantime I was going through some of the recent submissions and one stuck out, visit their site [www.oddball-studios.co.uk] it's freaking awesome! They've also got artwork and cartoons which you have to see. I asked Peter to tell me a bit about what they do and why. They also sent some artwork to put up and embedded below is "Flies on a Wall".

Oddball Studios was established by Sam and Peter Foster in May 2008. The ambition to bring things to life has always been something we like to do. We were heavily influenced by 90's cartoons such a Ren and Stimpy, Cow and chicken, Dexter's Lab etc. It seems cartoons these days have gone to a more "PC" side, whereas our cartoons tend to steer to the other direction.

Since our early workings like "Coffee cake" and "Frank Furter" our ambition has changed to create something with more thought, character building and some relation to people. Thus our latest creation "Flies on a Wall" was created, giving more personality into the individuality of the characters even though they are the same species of fly.

Our latest project has gone a step further "Wake up Larry" which is currently in development. We will release more information on the feature soon, along with concept art.

Flies on a Wall

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeDcZ7e14CU]

I try to space out posts that just have video but this is something people need to see. Leo talks about new media vs. old media, and from his standpoint where this all is and might be going.

I was waiting to see how this would play out, and it was Dan Bull who wrote/sang an open letter making the clearest most to the point and least boring by far explanation of why copyright needs reform (not that the issue is boring, but it gets tedious when one side of an argument has a convoluted detrimental and ignorantly self serving agenda).. now there I go.. watch this: