"Whatever happened to Amanda Congdon's HBO deal?" asks Broadcasting and Cable today. Last November, the videoblogging web star, whose contract with ABC News was not renewed, said that her HBO project was "going to be comedy, and I know it's going to be cross-platform." But it's almost a year later, and B&C suggests that the deal will shortly expire. Well that's good—Amanda might have overextended her mindshare with so much cross-platforming vertical integration and new media brand synergy interaction! Also: Paradigm shift!

Apparently the Internet-access crisis has finally bounced above Threat Level Orange, forcing the Federal Communications Commission (well, two of its commissioners, anyway) into action. They're advocating a "national broadband strategy." The United States doesn't even rank in the top 10, worldwide, for broadband penetration. It's unacceptable to contemplate the notion of millions of Americans living without the ability to watch YouTube videos and upload photos to MySpace. The commissioners' proposal: Tap into the Universal Service Fund, a rural telephone subsidy program, to ensure everyone is wired into the great intarweb. It's the only way to spur entrepreneurial activity. Because what we really, really need is more people writing Facebook applications.

All this talk of auctioning and the 700mhz spectrum has thrown Verizon into a tiff. It's apparently none too happy that Google and other interested parties may soon have access to the airwaves once analog television broadcasts are discontinued in early 2009. So the telecom is suing the Federal Communications Commission on the grounds that its open-access rules — that the auctioned bands be made compatible with any device — are illegal. Sounds like its afraid of some friendly competition — the freed 700Mhz band could be used for anything from new wireless phone to broadband service. (Photo by majorvols)

Just in time for September 11, the EU is considering legislation to ban posting bomb-making instructions on the Web. Sadly, the horse is out of the barn on that one. [Ars Technica]

Newly launched FileRadar.net —the new website from Magazine publisher Future, the media conglomerate responsible for magazines like PC Gamer, Mac|Life, and Maximum PC—puts some extreme Digg-styled social media into the already saturated PC downloads market. Organizing files by Blips (i.e. popularity) won't be the easiest way for file seekers to find what they're looking for. (Isn't searching by topic simpler?) FileRadar's debut follows last month's launch of video sharing with Gloob.TV, an edited list of popular Internet videos. Future has been grasping at straws to compete with sites like CNET's GameSpot and Ziff Davis's 1UP Network by implementing all sorts of Web 2.0 tomfoolery. Future's thinking, apparently, is someone will love it if it's coated in enough Ajax, right? If this launch rate continues, some idea is bound to stick.

Didja hear the one about the young writer who got her start as a big bad blogger—until a savage backlash from readers made her reroute her career? Well, check out the October Glamour, in which Gawker alum Jessica Coen calls for an end to the "unmitigated and unintelligent nastiness" you find online. How did Coen's Damascene conversion come about? WWD has the scoop.

Vint Cerf, founding father of the Internet and Google's underemployed Net evangelist, has a theory: The Internet will kill the television set. The problem is that online-video initiatives are focused on streaming media. Cerf proposes a shift towards downloadable, Internet-delivered content — called "IPTV," after the Internet Protocol Cerf helped invent. IPTV would work more on the TiVo model of record now, watch later. According to him, it would then be possible to serve content faster than real-time — it would take 16 seconds to download an hour's worth of video on a 1 gigabit-per-second connection — which would eliminate strain on service providers and placate consumers seeking videos without jagged images and distorted sound. Or we could all just use BitTorrent.

Spend too much time online playing computer games (or, ahem, reading dumb websites)? Of course you do, you hideous geek. Thank your lucky geeky stars that you are not in China, where those who play for more than five hours a day are shipped off to a re-education clinic to be medicated, drilled, and, if we know the Chinese, tortured. We're not necessarily averse to this. CNBC has the whole chilling story.

We had no idea we were pulling down this much scratch. (Um, we imagine our business department doesn't either, in fact!) Hey, Nick Denton, when you finish your caviar omelet at Balthazar, can you stop by the office? We'd like to renegotiate our contract. [Shylock Blogging]

The New York Times Company just released its first quarter results, and the news is not all good. It's not all bad either though! Here are a few things Hassan Elmasry and other Times finance critics will be using to bolster their anti-Sulzberger cases: earnings per share were $.14, compared to $.21 in the first quarter of 2006. We would call that a 33 percent decrease in earnings per share. Also, operating profit decreased to $54.5 million, as compared to $60.5 million in the first quarter of 2006. That's 10 percent! (Yay, pre-algebra!) But CEO Janet Robinson put a brave face to the numbers. Let's walk you through some key points.

Ya hear about this whole Kathy Sierra story? Yeah, us either, but apparently the entire blogosphere got its panties in a bunch over an incident, which we will try to describe for you now, even though we still have no real idea who Kathy Sierra is and little inclination to actually find out. The Wikipedia indicates that Sierra is some kind of tech blogger-lady. Last month some random trolls made rude comments (including rape and death threats) on her blog. She was so alarmed that she canceled an appearance at an ETech conference. We say, good call! An "ETech conference" is right up there with pencil-in-eye mutilation on our list of things to get done in this life.

"Just because we can say anything, does that mean we must say everything?" That's legal scholar Elizabeth Wurtzel in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece this morning. We're not sure where to go with the irony of the author of Prozac Nation coming up with that line, but we'll give it the old college try. Liz is upset about something called AutoAdmit, "Web site of postings for law schools prestigious and otherwise, where students blab about whatever." Guess what? People say mean things on it.

It's Renovation Day on the web! Esquire, that bastion of middlebrow entertainment for men who need at least three beers before they'll go queer, has a shiny new site that appears to offer plenty of current content along with archives. Also, you get up-to-the-moment assessment of Britney Spears from noted Spears expert Chuck Klosterman; distressingly, it's actually pretty good. At the other end of the ledger, Kurt Andersen, who once edited something called, hmm, Sly? No wait, Spy, maybe? Anyway, he's blogging!

Number two? Dying.

The Merc buries the lede in its front page poll about the Net. Given the choice between clicking an online "citizen video" of a news event or watching it on the evening news, 70 percent would wait for the MSM report. The rest of the piece is as predictable as an Onion parody. Straight-faced blogvangelist Dan Gillmor deduces that "In a global economy ... innovation could come from anywhere.''

For those of you for whom high hopes for Studio 60 were dashed by entire episodes revolving around the use of Final Draft format settings as a legitimate dramatic device, and who are hesitant to get too attached to 30 Rock, lest series asset Tracey Morgan should suddenly disappear for what characters will refer to as an "8 to 10 month sabbatical to shoot a direct-to-video remake of The Toy," there is now hope in the form of yet another "behind the scenes at an SNL-type sketch comedy show" project at NBC, set literally behind the scenes at SNL:

• Google to sell print ads! What's next, newspapers with websites? [NYT]
  

If your friends are like our friends, you probably received a deluge of emails inviting you to join NiggaSpace, because, well, what we need now more than anything else is more social networking sites. And hey, "You definitely don't have to be black to join! We just want to embrace the black culture that continues to innovate and strive!", reads the greeting on the site's front page. Awesome.

Google Inc. snapped up YouTube Inc. for $1.65 billion Monday in deal that catapults the Internet search leader to a leading role in the online video revolution.

The all-stock acquisition unites one of the Internet's marquee companies with one of its rapidly rising stars.

The price makes YouTube, a still-unprofitable startup, by far the most expensive purchase made by Google during its eight-year history.

• Jes s D az Jr. resigns as publisher of the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald as a result of that whole cash-for-propaganda thing. Hopefully the government will give him some nice parting gifts. [Miami Herald]
• Across the pond, the company responsible for the UK versions of Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping and Country Living decides to get heavy into the Web. Somewhere in England a blogger at a British media gossip site starts thinking about career opportunities. [Guardian]
• More people are actually interested in watching Charlie Gibson than Katie Couric. We can't quite figure that out. [WaPo]
• Enough with the goddamn CGI already. [NYT]