"Google is an avalanche and it has only just begun to tumble down the mountain," Jeff Jarvis writes in "What Would Google Do?", a new book that advises pretty much everyone -- you, your company, entire industries, the U.S. government -- to study and ape the online juggernaut, or risk getting buried.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog is a great place to stay absolutely current on absolutely everything about Apple -- if you can put up with a bit of cheerleading, that is. Only occasionally do the site's bloggers acknowledge the shortcomings of anything coming out of Cupertino. (Posts like this one, on Steve Jobs's health, are more often the case, and I just prefer my news to err on the side of skepticism.)

That tendency makes one of today's posts, "MobileMe Renewal: Yes or No?" all the more remarkable. It's a frank list of pros and cons about Apple's cloud computing service, similar to a recent item of mine. When even the true believers at TUAW start to waver, you know the product in question really is spotty.

I emailed Dave Caolo, one of the lead TUAW bloggers, for his thoughts. He writes:

What is the opposite of an ad campaign? Thanks to Microsoft, I think we've found out.

Ads, of course, are meant to encourage people to buy or use stuff. That's Microsoft was hoping when it released a video touting SongSmith, a software program that creates a whole song around your original vocal track. It's a cool concept -- but the ad was so lame, it drew a deluge of attention for all the wrong reasons. In addition to being cringeworthy, the commercial also made it clear that Songsmith just doesn't work all that well. It spits out mostly cornball Muzak, hardly the stuff Microsoft needs to close the coolness gap with Apple.

This weekend, my colleague N'Gai Croal forwarded me a list of "Songsmith remixes" that have cropped up on YouTube. From Britney Spears to Nirvana, seminal hits have been fed through Songsmith to hilariously awful result. (Although one -- a rendition of Li'l Wayne's "Lollipop" that turns the oral sex anthem into a piano ballad -- is actually kind of hypnotic. College a cappella groups, take note.) You can find a bunch of them here.

One ad that drew parody was bad enough. Now Microsoft is suffering a whole series of derisive videos -- an entire bizarro ad campaign, uncontrollable and spreading. Its unmistakable pitch: Songsmith is junk, and Microsoft is tone-deaf.

Microsoft has shown real verve with its "Project Experiment" advertising, which is attitudinous and convincing, and early reviews of Windows 7 are promising. The company should get out in front of this Songsmith fiasco prestissimo.

What do dumpsters, frisbees, and teleprompters have in common?

They're all products that are victims of their own success. They do what they do so well, becoming synonymous with a certain practice, that people forget their names are trademarked and use them interchangeably with their rivals. This brand leakage means that for a lot of people, any kind of tissue is "kleenex," and Canon makes great "xerox machines." I can recall 3M's plaintive advertising in the Columbia Journalism Review several years ago, politely reminding copy editors that "Post-It" needs to be capitalized.

Now the same thing is happening to BlackBerry. I got confused today after reading multiple articles and blog items with the same basic headline, "Obama Keeps His BlackBerry," followed by examinations of the device that the new president will reportedly use, a Sectera Edge. Which, you'll notice, is not a BlackBerry. It's manufactured by General Dynamics, not RIM, and it runs a version of Windows Mobile, not the BlackBerry OS.

RIM has reaped great p.r. during President Obama's public 'Berry battle -- between $25 and $50 million worth, according to some guesses. Some fraction of that will be lost if the takeaway message for consumers is that the president needs a smartphone, any smartphone, and not necessarily a BlackBerry.

There is some solace: at $3,350 a pop, the Sectera Edge probably isn't going to take away much market share.

By Dina Fine Maron

Trying to bring the Roman Catholic Church to the kids, the Vatican launched its own YouTube channel today, following the lead of other global figures such as Barack Obama and Queen Elizabeth II who have successfully employed the video sharing technology to get their message out on the cheap (actually, free of charge.) Pope Benedict XVI’s page highlights the Church’s effort to tap into their youth base with footage and audio of the Holy Father. The Pope explained in one of his first YouTube videos that launching the site was an effort to be available in “those spaces where numerous young people search for answers and meaning in their lives”

The Pope made a first foray into the youth digital sphere when he (or his office, anyway) texted thousands of young Catholics on their mobile phones during World Youth Day events in Sydney this past summer.

Bu the Church started making official YouTube appearances in 2007, when Cardinal Justin Rigali, the Archbishop of Philadelphia, made a video offering gospel reflections for Lent. There was so much traffic to his video that within a week his first video was rated #5  in one of YouTube’s subcategories. The success with that video inspired the Philadelphia Archdiocese to inaugurate its own channel which is now sporadically updated with video content.

Signaling change in how the Vatican thinks it can reach the public, the new interactive Vatican Channel will update daily with content from the Vatican’s television and radio channels. It offers news in four languages, and allows users to comment, share videos with friends, and even directly contact the Pope’s office (though there is no promise on what the response rate might be.). In March the Archbishop of Washington, D.C. plans to post his own YouTube video, inviting youth to come back to the Church for lent, and depending on the traffic, might opt to create its own channel as well.

Morbid news from TV land--the big network news operations have started working on their obits for Apple CEO Steve Jobs. They’re shooting interviews now so that they’ll have their stories ready to go, if or when the bad news hits. You can’t blame them for trying to be prepared. But it does say something about Apple’s credibility on this issue. The company insists Jobs is simply taking a six-month medical leave, and will be back in June. Then again, until last week, the company was insisting that that Jobs was fine, even when it was apparent that he was not.

Earlier this month Jobs published an open letter claiming he was suffering from a “hormone imbalance” that was “relatively simple and straightforward.” Nine days later, however, Jobs said his condition was more complex than he’d originally thought and he would be taking a leave of absence.

The matter reportedly has prompted the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate whether Apple misled investors about Jobs’s health. Apple’s stock has bounced up and down for months as different reports have surfaced about Jobs. Last June he appeared on stage looking frail and gaunt, which aroused fears that Jobs might have suffered a recurrence of pancreatic cancer, for which he underwent surgery in 2004.

In December, after a blog called Gizmodo reported Jobs’s health was “rapidly declining,” a reporter from CNBC claimed sources at Apple had told him Jobs was fine--and Apple shares jumped on the news. Who were those people at Apple claiming Jobs was fine? The SEC may want to know.

 Walt Disney Pictures' "Bolt"

For those early adopters and PlayStation fanboys who believed that Blu-Ray would triumph over HD-DVD, the spoils of that format war are starting to come your way--sort of. According to Blu-Ray.com, Disney has announced that last year's computer-animated movie 'Bolt" will arrive on Blu-Ray on March 22nd, two entire days before it comes out on DVD. That's not a whole lot of difference, but it does suggest that studios are looking for low-impact ways to maximize the share of their home video revenues that come from higher-priced Blu-Ray discs. If videophiles cruise store aisles on a Sunday afternoon and only see the Blu-Ray version, they might be more inclined to pick it up immediately rather than wait two more days for its cheaper DVD counterpart. Sneaky, Disney. Sneaky.

 The Canadian flag as seen through a microsocope. Photo courtesy of wisforworlddomination.

It's no secret that certain Internet service providers have made a practice of 'throttling' broadband access--reducing the bandwith available to heavy users, especially during periods. What's often more challenging to figure out is which ISPs are doing this and when. That's because the negative PR associated with throttling makes many ISPs reluctant to disclose such activities.

 A link to photos of the new First Family mistakenly leads to a gallery of Presidential pets

Change certainly came to Washington Tuesday, but change.gov did not. President Obama's former transition Web site is now defunct, with a note sending visitors to whitehouse.gov. The official presidential Web address relaunched as a shiny social-media hub at 12:01 p.m.—even before Obama took his delayed oath into office.

Immediately, the twitterati and tumblr set were abuzz over the site, noting how similar it looked to the campaign's previous sites (with its twilight blue background, Gotham font and a YouTube video highlighting the president-elect's train journey this past weekend) and marveling at the new chief executive's continued technological prowess. But it's worth wondering how many of these observers had ever actually looked at President Bush's site. It also had news updates (much like the blog on Obama's White House site), an "Interactive White House," a newsroom-like "Setting the Record Straight" feature, and slideshows—and oh yes, that famous Barney cam.

So the real difference is that the new site glosses with the buzzwords of social media and pristine politics: transparency! Participation! RSS feed! All these look good on paper (or, in this case, on screen) but delivering on the many promises won't be easy—making the Web site a near-perfect metaphor for the entire Obama presidency. The premier blog post, written by the director of new media, Macon Phillips, introduces a framework full of features, few of which are ready to use. Things that do work, like the slideshows, are rife with bugs. Early Tuesday evening, Obama's new site still referred to him as the president-elect in some places, and a link to a gallery of first families shows you pictures of presidential pets. "[Phillips's] first message was just about openness," says Rex Sorgatz, an online media consultant who runs fimoculous.com. "But you can't just crack open a wiki and say, 'Go at it.' Even forums or comments won't produce anything meaningful. You need to have a filter in order for productive discussions to rise to the top."

READ THE FULL STORY HERE.

 A purported image of visual voice mail on the BlackBerry Bold. Photo courtesy Boy Genius Report.

If the folks at Boy Genius Report are correct, it would appear that sometime this year, visual voicemail will be coming to users of the BlackBerry Bold on AT&T's wireless network.As one of the signature features of the iPhone since its debut--it allows you to select and play back individual voice messages rather than forward through your entire list of voice mails--it's a welcome addition to non-iPhone gadgets like the Bold. The only reason that I'm not more ecstatic is that I have a BlackBerry Pearl, with no intentions to surrender the diminutive device anytime soon. So if anyone from AT&T and RIM is listening, don't forget about us Pearl users. We like up-to-date features too.

Drifting off to sleep last night, I found myself in nightmare territory: the music from Microsoft's SongSmith ad was looping in my head.

By now, you've probably seen it, too: Four minutes and 17 seconds of wince-inducing promotion for a new Microsoft application that says it can create a whole song once you've sung a verse or two into a microphone. Great concept; horrible execution. The sample tracks are so weak, they make Muzak sound like death metal.

This was one of those occasions when the Internet really came through on the ridicule front. Within nine minutes of watching the clip on Monday, I'd read an excellently scathing review at VideoGum and other blogs (with headlines like "MS ad starts off year with a bang...and that year is 1991") and discovered MetaFilter's ingenious backwards-engineering of "Runnin' With the Devil."

What's amazing, though, is that two days after that initial hurricane of commentary, the SongSmith ad's awfulness still haunts me. New and disturbing moments keep popping into my head.

"Microsoft, huh? So it's pretty easy to use?" An actor speaks this line upon seeing SongSmith in action. It's about as convincing as, "Molten lava, huh? So it's pretty easy to drink?"

I was willing to give it one last shot. If Apple had used the MacWorld conference to announce a super-cool feature for MobileMe, their cloud computing service, I probably would have renewed my subscription.

But Apple didn't -- my colleague Dan Lyons's review of the show is a must-read -- and I'm going to let MobileMe lapse in four days. The sad thing is, the only reason I'm able to make this decision now, and not when my subscription was originally due to expire in October, is that service had been so poor Apple gave me an extra three months for free.

In effect, it's only been a stay of execution. And after ticking through MobileMe's features, the decision about what to do with my $99 is that much easier.

Mail. Never used it. Apple's mail service lacks many of Gmail's features and offers, as best I can tell, no new ones.

Contacts. Over-the-air syncing with my iPhone would be nice, but if it's not push technology, it's not worth it. I'll sync with a cable, through iTunes.

Calendar. Here's a feature someone else might decide they can't live without: appointments made on your computer will magically appear on your iPhone. from work. But in my experiments, this performs fitfully. And again, because MobileMe has never offered true push syncing, I just don't have faith that I'm working with the absolute most current version of my data. Instead I use my never-let-me-down-a-single-time BlackBerry.

Gallery. This is the reason I signed up for MobileMe in the first place: a gorgeous way to share your photos online. I posted several galleries of a 2007 vacation to Namibia (check them out here, for the next four days at least) -- and while everything worked, and worked well, I've seen equally impressive free services elsewhere, like SmugMug.

iDisk. It just doesn't work. Uploads and downloads on my MacBook Pro are slow, drop for no reason, and the status information given is often wildly misleading. I'll test out some other online storage options (I'm already using Mozy for backup), but in the future, I expect to need this service less and less. A lot of my documents are stored in the Google Docs cloud, and most other files I can send to myself for free on Gmail.

There are assorted other features, but they don't add up to a $99 value, and certainly not if Apple experiences more of the downtime that plagued MobileMe's rollout last summer.

By Daniel Lyons

The coverage of Steve Jobs of Apple and his health woes is starting to remind me way too much of the old Generalissimo Francisco Franco jokes on Saturday Night Live in the 1970s. Back then, Chevy Chase would report that “Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead” – a dark-humored play on the drawn-out coverage of Franco’s declining health, in which newscasters had solemnly reported that Franco was still alive.

So, we are told, is Steve Jobs. We know this because a terse and somewhat grumpy letter was issued from the Apple mothership in Cupertino, Calif., today, over the signature of Dear Leader himself. In this letter, Jobs acknowledges that he’s lost a great deal of weight in the past year, and says doctors have finally figured out what’s causing it – it’s a hormone imbalance. And now he’s being treated for it, and he should start gaining weight again soon, and he hopes to recover by spring. And, as Jobs finishes up in his letter, “So now I’ve said more than I wanted to say, and all that I am going to say, about this.”

Left unaddressed were fears that Jobs has suffered a recurrence of the pancreatic cancer for which he underwent surgery four years ago. Today’s note doesn’t mention cancer at all. From this we are presumably meant to infer that Jobs does not have cancer again. That at least is the message Wall Street took from the news, as Apple shares popped  four bucks today, to $94.

Even those who hate Twitter tend to like the concept of fake Twitter -- that is, false accounts for real people that come off as absurdly plausible, or plausibly absurd.

The best of these can be great satire. The fake Twitter feed of Michael Bay, for example -- whose approach to directing movies seems to be making everything in them bigger, bigger and bigger -- claims that he has just signed on to direct "Slumdog Billionaire." Back in January 2008, the acid postings of @FakeHillary amused the presidential candidate’s traveling press corps with tweets like, “Apparently there is a limit to how much I can say here (I wonder if the male candidates have the same limit?)” And half the fun of following the Twitter feed of @THE_REAL_SHAQ when it first appeared in November was trying to figure out if its author was the actual Phoenix Suns center or not. (It’s Shaquille.)

But now there’s Twitter hacking, a more malicious version of fake content on the site. Today, the microblogging service announced that 33 bona fide accounts, including those of President-elect Barack Obama, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly and singer Britney Spears, had been broken into and defaced with juvenile updates. "i am high on crack right now might not be coming into work today," read the official feed of CNN anchor Rick Sanchez; "Breaking: Bill O Riley is gay," read O'Reilly's page.

Not exactly Jonathan Swift, but the crudeness amused many bloggers, Valleywag among them. Twitter called the matter "a very serious breach of security" and says its support team has identified and disabled the part of its site that failed.

 Several covers of the now defunct JPG magazine. Photo courtesy of Graham Ballantyne.

One of the most interesting (social) media ventures of the past couple of years has been San Francisco-based 8020 Publishing. Here's how it worked: anyone could submit pictures and articles via the Internet for the company's two publications (JPG, devoted to photography, and Everywhere, which focused on travel); online readers voted on their favorite submissions; and a small staff of 10 assembled the layouts into a magazine available for free as a downloadable PDF or at newsstands for $6.

Backed by C|Net founder Halsey Minor, the concept of a crowdsourced magazine was so ingenious that University of Mississippi professor and Mr. Magazine blogger Samir Husni told the New York Times in 2007, “You’re going to see more of this....I don’t think it’s just about getting cheap content into a magazine. Seeing their own work in print makes people feel like part of a community.”

Today, it would appear that such a community was not enough. Reporter Brad Stone posted on the New York Times' Bits blog that 8020 publishing is shutting down, taking with it JPG and Everywhere. Stone wrote:

JPG had a circulation of around 50,000 and had recently secured some prominent space on newsstands around the country.

But ultimately the money ran out, and Mr. Minor declined to invest more, according to a person with knowledge of the situation. 8020 was attempting to either raise more money from other investors or to sell itself to big media names, including the Meredith Corporation and Conde Nast, but with no success. Mr. Minor could not be reached for comment on Thursday.

The 18 employees who worked for 8020 were given the holiday week off. On Tuesday, they received individual telephone calls and e-mail messages telling them that the company had exhausted its options and was shutting down.

A Logitech webcam attached to a laptop. Photo courtesy of Mofetos.

For prospective college students, the interview has long been one of the most nerve-wracking parts of the admissions process. Now, according to a recent Associated Press story, colleges are beginning to bring the admissions interview into the 21st century by conducting them online via webcams. As the story explains:

Wake Forest uses a webcam version of Skype for their online interviews. The technology allowed [Avery] Cullinan and about 30 other hopefuls to use a computer-mounted video camera and microphone to speak with an admissions officer through the Internet, "face to face" on a computer screen.

After a successful round of Web-based interviews in the early admission process, Wake Forest offered the program to its entire undergraduate applicant pool--a decision that doubled the number of requests for such interviews.

"We decided this would be a wonderful alternative to the face-to-face interview," [Wake Forest admissions director Martha] Allman said. "We have to stay attuned to how students receive information and how they communicate."

Cover art for the Criterion Collection edition of Ang Lee's "The Ice Storm"

Back in my DVD buying heyday, scanning The Criterion Collection section of Tower Records (R.I.P.) or the Virgin Megastore was an essential part of movie shopping. Some of the movies I'd already seen ("Dead Ringers") and others I hadn't ("The Seven Samurai"), but the care and dedication of the folks at Criterion always added a little extra something to my viewing experience. So it's welcome news that the company has started streaming some of its movies online. Here's how Laurence Lerman wrote up the news for Video Business:

Titles will be available online as streaming video for $5 for a one-week rental. The rental fee can be applied toward the purchase of that film on DVD or Blu-ray Disc when it is bought online at www.criterion.com. Criterion also initiated a "frequent flyer" program wherein every dollar spent earns the purchaser a point; 500 points yields a $50 gift certificate redeemable at the Web site.

"The rental fee counting toward the purchase of the DVD or Blu-ray was a direct response to the fact that, even though we've spent a huge amount of time developing an encoding workflow and a set of compression standards that we truly believe is the most film-like streaming experience on the Web, we still feel we can't offer video worth buying over the Internet," said Becker. "If you love these movies and really want to see them in high quality versions, you should buy the DVD or the Blu-ray disc."