This has to be some kind of joke?

Right?

It's all an elaborate ruse and in a couple of days, after we've all blogged about it, they'll turn round and say “You didn't seriously think we were this out of touch did you? Suckers!”

Please tell me that's what's going to happen.

From BBC technology news.

Social music site Last.fm has been bought by US media giant CBS Corporation for $280m (£140m), the largest-ever UK Web 2.0 acquisition.

...

As part of the deal, Last.fm's managing team will remain in place and the site will maintain its own separate identity.

It is becoming unprecedentedly difficult for anyone, anyone at all, to keep a secret. In the age of the leak and the blog, of evidence extraction and link discovery, truths will either out or be outed, later if not sooner. This is something I would bring to the attention of every diplomat, politician and corporate leader: the future, eventually, will find you out. The future, wielding unimaginable tools of transparency, will have its way with you. In the end, you will be seen to have done that which you did.

William Gibson - June 25, 2003

(via Kottke)

Google have launched a new tool in their neverending quest to be the Swiss Army Knife of search (though hopefully not the one with the magnifying glass and toothpick).

As Tom Coates points out it does feel like the personality and spirit is lacking somewhat, but at the end of the day this is what Google are good at, stripping away the extraneous and leaving you with just the results.

(Yep, I ego-surfed, nope there's not much of me in there currently))

So Odeon have suddenly decided that they don't like the accessible version of their cinema listings that Matt Somerville built, and have shut it down.

Nice. Instead of investigating why someone felt the need to go to all this effort then taking a smart course of action - like making their site more accessible for instance - they decided that strong-arming was the way to go.

More comment from John.