I've written before about Download Squad friend, Drew Olanoff, and his creative way of kicking cancer in the behind. Count up one more point for Drew and his fight -- Drew Carey just bid 25K for his Twitter name, @drew. All proceeds of the auction, which ends on November 9th, will go directly to The Lance Armstrong Foundation - Livestrong. Better still, if Drew Carey gets 100k Twitter ... Read more »

What's been on the Internet 12 hours too long, is 5 years too old and demonstrates the gaping chasm between blog journalism and credibility? This Huffington Post piece pointing to a five year old YouTube video as footage from yesterday's tsunami in American Somoa. Are you getting all your news on the Internet? Constantly cruising a mix of major and minor media sites, or sucking them all in at ... Read more »

The wait for an official CNN app on your iPhone is over, and it looks like it was worth your patience. Available on the iTunes store soon -- Download here -- CNN's new app represents a serious investment in mobile news delivery, a 55 million user market according to Neilsen, and adds a few game changing features which may leave rivals MSNBC and Fox News scrambling to catch up. I spoke with ... Read more »

Every once in a while, someone actually sneaks something cool into the YouTubes. Tetris lovers of the world, unite! via @arnteriksen ... Read more »

Piryx is payments for the social web, but with a host of intelligence and data mining features only available to huge companies and campaigns in the past. With roots in political fundraising, Piryx has a track record that's somewhat impressive, having recently rolled out a site to accept donations for Rep. Joe "You Lie!" Wilson, and claiming another 150 payment taking users nationwide. The ... Read more »

Online dating is a somewhat static market. You have premium players Match.com and eHarmony, who seem to suggest at every commercial break that the person you've been looking for your whole life just signed up a few minutes ago. At the other end of the spectrum, there's Plenty of Fish which, although vastly improved from a few years ago, is still one of the least visually pleasing and user ... Read more »

For those of you lucky enough to still squeeze your boss for a travel budget in the tough economy, San Diego's weather for DEMOfall09 today will be a balmy 90 degrees with what Weather.com refers to as "Abundant Sunshine" From where I sit, I'm only slightly more jealous of the weather than the lineup of presenters I'm going to miss in person. I spent the better part of yesterday getting ... Read more »

Twitter -- everyone's favorite plucky little micro-blogging service -- is making room in the bank for another $50 Million dollars in venture capital money. In and of itself, that's not all too surprising. What is shocking -- utterly mind blowing in fact -- is the valuation at which Twitter raised all that new scratch. In case you're unfamiliar with venture capital, valuation and all this money ... Read more »

You're sick of hearing about it, and so am I. Ashton, Demi, Oprah, Miley, etc, etc, yadda, yadda, ad nauseum. Just a year ago Twitter still belonged to the geeks and a small army of fake "social media experts" so new only a few of them had been removed from their original plastic packaging. Now Twitter is the plaything of A through Z-list celebrities clamoring to validate their position in the ... Read more »

Every week, I abuse myself for your amusement by seeking out yet another horribly constructed web site and poking fun at its awfulness. Doctors and Optometrists write in each week to warn of the damage I'm doing to myself. My shrink is buying a new beach house on the expected revenue to be generated by my nervous breakdown. But still -- glutton for punishment that I am -- I continue to seek the ... Read more »

If you needed just one more scrap of proof that the U.S. patent system is completely and utterly broken, then you might want to click the "I'm feeling lucky" button. I have a sneaking suspicion that the reviewing agents at the USPTO couldn't tell the difference between a "Graphical user interface for a display screen of a communications terminal" and a hole in the ground. Patent number D533561 ... Read more »

Normally, I wouldn't do this. A source deep within Microsoft -- who just happened to owe me a favor -- passed along a list of new Windows marketing slogans which, for one reason or another, just didn't make the cut. After careful consideration and soul searching, I've decided to release them to the public. Frankly, I think a few of them deserved more contemplation. Really, it's better ... Read more »

Oh Idaho. We love your delicious baking potatoes, the mouth feel we get when we say "Boise", and, uh, whatever the third thing to love about Idaho might be. In any event, that third thing to love about Idaho probably isn't quality web design. Poor layout, dancing graphics, overuse of capital letters; I've learned to forgive quite a bit. What bothers me most about Bannock County Bluegrass ... Read more »

My optometrist was insistent that I not remove the bandages for another 24 hours. He also said I might have done less damage to myself if, instead of searching for today's Fugly Friday, I'd tried something safer like scouring my own eyes with a gentle bath of rock salt. He also said something about a fork. As I laughed, encased in my world of darkness and unable to see his face, a chill came over ... Read more »

Do you ever think about the family lineage of your hard drive? Heck, do you ever think about the history of your hard drive at all? Of course you don't. Hard disk storage has become so ubiquitous, so reliable, and so inexpensive that most of us never give it a second thought. But where would Download Squad be if you didn't have all that cheap, seemingly endless space to download your prize finds ... Read more »