• Fidel Castro calls Forbes "garbage" and said that the magazine "disgusted me." He also had an issue with a specific article. [Sun-Sentinel]
• The broadcast networks are shying away from comedies this year. Analysts have dubbed it "The 'Joey' Effect." [NYP]
• Bloggers are too quick to post information without actually having verified it. Also,Wall Street Journal reporters trade sources pure Peruvian white for information. Or so we've heard; that may not hold up. [WSJ]
• Apparently there's this restaurant in midtown where influential media types go to see and be seen. What was it called again? Marty's? Bob's? It's a guy's first name, that's for sure. [LAT]

Ritual Roasters (or "Ritro" to the stupid but trendy), a San Francisco Mission District ad hoc office that happens to serve overrated coffee to its residents, has finally crossed the line in acknowledging, and wryly nodding at, its oh-so-bloggy clientele.

With skills like these, Michael Arrington could nail a job in Google HR.

• Ballmer, Brin, and the other big boys take potshots. Google's Sergey Brin about Microsoft: "We just see the history of that company behaving anti-competitively and not playing fair." MS's Steve Ballmer about Google: "Can you imagine writing a letter to someone. 'Hey, Mom, I am upset with the gun policy.' Then an ad pops up and says, 'Hey, do you want to buy a gun?'" Yahoo's Terry Semel about Microsoft: "My impartial advice to Microsoft is that you have no chance." [ISEdb.com]

In a disappointing little update to the "BBC mistakes cabbie for IT expert" story, it's come out that the bewildered man mistaken for IT expert Guy Kewney — and then mistakenly interviewed on live TV — is IT expert Guy Goma. According to Kewney, Goma is not a cabbie but a business studies grad who was at the Beeb applying for a high-level IT job.

Nothing gets past Om Malik. The tech blogger is quickly becoming the industry standard for voice-over-IP news. But as of press time, he hasn't blogged about free Skype-to-phone calling, announced today at Skype's official blog.

It's big, bright, and bold — TechCrunch relaunches mean and green, no more of that weak-ass pastel. And up-and-coming tech blogger Michael Arrington gives a sign of the times:

• Thanks to that health nut Steve Jobs, your kids are gonna get Hot Wheels and Barbies in every Happy Meal from now on — just as Jobs becomes Disney's biggest stockholder, the Mouse stops signing Happy Meal toy contracts with McDonald's. [ZDNet]

MySpace's new IM client (now that creepy "friend" you added out of pity gets to TALK to you!) may actually not suck, judging by comments from the top tech bloggers. Jeremy Botter calls it "quite clean and user-friendly." Pete Cashmore says it's "slick, intuitive and well-designed."

Techmeme (TechCrunch's robot friend) got extra-confusing yesterday with all the talk about OPML. Blog-syndication boss Dave Winer opened his blog-sharing project, Share Your OPML, to much fanfare from the technorati.

Oh BBC, aren't you above this sort of thing? Not just running a four-year-late trend story on blogs' influence — "The impact of blogging has reached a tipping point, argues Julian Smith, senior analyst at Jupiter Research" — but tying it to the recent We Media conference.

• Tonight: Schmooze with organizer Vincent Lauria and other dot-commers at the Silicon Valley New Technology May Meetup (Upcoming.org). E-mail Lauria if you didn't RSVP but are very important.

Can they change their names and end the confusion already? Wired News bitchslaps the letter-writers who, inspired by a dead-wrong Huffington Post article, went apeshit on Wired Magazine for an old Wired News story. Wired News ed-in-chief starts his reply:

Look, if a company sends out a press release at 1:22 AM EST Tuesday morning, is there any good reason to embargo it until 7 AM the same day? Answer: hell no. If Michael Arrington wants to gush about a startup, he'll gush when he damn well pleases. And if Valleywag wants to unfairly criticize that startup...well, here, about four hours early, is the press release for Sphere. Hope for its sake that it's actually useful. "Sphere is an unfortunate name," says a friend of Valleywag, "if your service is a load of balls."

If there's one charming detail about the political bloggers at the Huffington Post, it's their knee-jerk righteous anger. Eric Boehlert dismisses Wired Magazine's Al Gore cover story (complete with hero cover shot) as a "make-good" for a little incident in '99. Way back then, Wired News quoted Al Gore's "inventing the Internet" line, sparking (according to Boehlert) that whole PR debacle. So the HuffPo writer writes, "Wired Owes Al Gore an Apology."

All right, I've been had by a flack. (Household hint: No cleanser can wash away the shame of using a PR piece.) A big-shot blogebrity (approval to name him pending), who probably got the eBay conference story pitch too, IMed last night:

In the chat after his Berkeley lecture ("The State of American Media") this week, Dan Rather talked to ZDNet journalist Steve Gillmor, who came with indie journalist (and ex-Mercury-News columnist) brother Dan Gillmor and Steve's look-alike friend, RSS czar Dave Winer. To save you from caption confusion, here's the breakdown:

China blocked Technorati, the once thrice once-funded blog search leader, today. The company says it's getting reports of this and that it's investigating; no further comment about their plan of action, their attitude toward the Chinese market, or what the VCs think about getting banned before getting bought (they think it's brilliantly precocious, right?).

AOL exec Jason Calacanis says:

TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington (center)'s Flickr photo stream shows some TalkCrunch podcasters wearing gangsta faces. The bad boys blowing up the bubble: