The heart of Propeller, you might argue, is the conversation threads attached to each story. That's where the members bat ideas back and forth (and engage in the occasional shoving match). But for those members who wish to explore a speedier method of virtual repartee, there is now Twitter--a microblogging service that allows users to report on their lives in minute detail. For a little more information, you might want to visit the Twitter site or watch this introductory video from Common Craft:

What does this have to do with Propeller? We have created a Twitter stream devoted to our community. If you sign up for the service, be sure to "follow" PropellerDotCom--that way, you will receive updates about breaking news, top stories, interesting comments, featured members, and hidden gems. And remember, Twitter is a two-way conversation! If you have any responses, feel free to send them back to us via the service, and we'll respond in turn.

Story: Net Explodes Over Journalist Firing
Submitted by: TheVisionary

One story that generated very little buzz on Propeller concerned Jeff Gerstmann, who was fired last week by the CNET-owned website GameSpot. Rumors swirled that the 11-year veteran was canned after writing a negative review of Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, a heavily hyped video game released by the British company Eidos.

In his review of the game, Gerstmann awarded Kane & Lynch a "6" (out of a possible 10). Mike Krahulik, who, along with Jerry Holkins, edits Penny Arcade, a Seattle-based blog that takes a satirical look at the gaming industry, says that's basically like handing out an "F." "This was a huge game," Krahulik tells Propeller. "People expected it to generate a 9 or 10 based on the hype surrounding it."

Following his firing, the text of Gerstmann's review on the site was edited. The video edition of his review was initially pulled, although later replaced on the site. In the days following his departure, GameSpot staffers alluded to total discord at the office. When Gerstmann was canned, wrote GameSpot editor Alex Navarro on his personal blog, it was "like someone hit the disaster button for me."

On Monday, GameSpot management directly addressed the controversy, denying a rumor that Edios had threatened to pull advertising dollars off the site following the poor review. On Wednesday, the site followed up with a Q & A called "Spot On: GameSpot on 'Gerstmanngate,'" written by staffer Tor Thorsen. While the management stated that they were unable to talk about the firing for legal reasons, they did provide some information. An excerpt:


The Q&A also disclosed that Eidos representatives "expressed their displeasure to their appropriate contacts at GameSpot, but not to editorial directly." And management reiterated that advertisers never dictate any editorial policy at the company.

Throughout the controversy, Gerstmann has publicly stated that he is unable to comment on his departure due to legal constraints. Additionally, editor Navarro referred our request for an interview to CNET PR, who emailed us the above Q & A article.

But an anonymous source at GameSpot spoke to Krahulik and Holkins last week. The conversation followed a company-wide meeting held last Thursday, November 29 (the day after Gerstmann's firing). According Krahulik and Holkins, the source told them that Gerstmann was fired because management didn't like the tone of his reviews, a sore point that had been an ongoing issue with Gerstmann's employers.

Holkins points out that Gerstmann had a tendency to score his games slightly lower than competing reviewers. In the case of Kane & Lynch, the game scored a 6.7 on Metacritic, which aggregates scores. But Krahulik and Holkins believe that GameSpot's reviews are closer to an accurate representation than those on competing sites like IGN or OneUp. "They have the fairest scores out there," says Holkins.

Still, the Penny Arcade team discounts reviews and scores as not particularly important for die-hard fans. Edward Woo, a research analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities, a Los Angeles-based investment bank that tracks the gaming industry, disagrees. "It's like giving a good review to a movie. It increases the odds of having the game do well."

"But there are some movies that do well, regardless of reviews," he adds. The release of Kane & Lynch was particularly important for Eidos, says Woo, noting that the game had been heavily promoted in company press releases.

In an apparent show of solidarity, on Friday, employees of the Ziff-Davis-owned 1up.com demonstrated outside of GameSpot's San Francisco offices. Across the Web, the fallout continues, with commenters still launching attacks--fair or unfair--on GameSpot.

Given the legal muzzling, Krahulik doesn't believe the truth of what happened will come out anytime soon, although with his new notoriety, Gerstmann should be able to snag another job elsewhere. As far as long term damage to the game review industry? "This is the Web," says Krahulik. "Nothing is long term."

Overlooked submission: "YouTube Tackles Bullying Online"
Via Propeller user: idreamed

This week's overlooked story on Propeller concerned the problem of cyberbullying. It's a timely topic, given the recent suicide of Megan Meiers, a 13-year-old Missouri teen who was duped into sending instant messages to a fictitious boy who was allegedly the mother of one of Meiers' classmates.

While the Meiers story shot to the top of the Propeller page, another story about YouTube's efforts to curb cyberbullying--defined as harassment by email, cell phone, IM, or social networking sites--received less attention. Last week, in conjunction with a UK-based group called Beatbullying, YouTube launched a new channel on the topic. Visitors can view UK and American celebrities talking about how to counter cyberbullies, and teens can submit their own related videos.

"If you can't say it to someone's face, then don't post it online," says Isaac Slade, lead singer of the Fray, a popular band from Colorado, in one of featured videos. "There's no shame in being bullied, it's not a sign of weakness...report it."

While it's not clear whether YouTube will launch a US-centric anti-bullying channel (the California-based Google subsidiary didn't return our calls by deadline), the site already has a library of videos on the topic, including a tribute video to teens who've committed suicide as a result of cyberbullying.

Among those who appear on the video is 13-year-old Ryan Patrick Halligan, an Essex Junction, Vermont teenager who committed suicide after a female classmate pretended to have a crush on him, but then mockingly passed their IM exchanges around to friends. John P. Halligan, Ryan's father, launched a web site to commemorate his son. There he writes: "It's one thing to be bullied and humiliated in front of a few kids. It's one thing to feel rejection and have your heart crushed by a girl. But it has to be a totally different experience than a generation ago when these hurts and humiliation are now witnessed by a far larger, online adolescent audience."

While there's conflicting data on the prevalence of cyberbullying, an AP story published this week noted as many as "one in three U.S. children have been ridiculed or threatened through computer messages." The harassment is just an extension of real-life bullying, which many teens likely consider an unavoidable part of adolescence. According to the AP story, "roughly 17 percent of early adolescents say they are victims of recurring verbal aggression or physical harassment."

Because of Halligan's lobbying efforts, Vermont legislatures passed a law a year after his son's death that requires bullying prevention procedures for schools, and similar legislation has passed in other states. If laws may help to curb bullying, grassroots initiatives may have the most impact. After all, Meiers' story reached the mainstream media via the blogosphere. Perhaps YouTube's new channel--and particularly the videos made by actual teens-- will bring more attention to the problem.

So far the response from YouTube users has been largely positive, with a few doubters. Writes one skeptic: "I honestly don't think that there is a way to stop bullying... I think the only way to stop bullying...possibly, is to always be with people...then you can never be alone and you wont get hurt." Another user is more supportive: "This is so important! Bullying KILLS!! We must hold the bullies accountable for what they do. I think we are doing wrong looking the other way, and do not react to the crime that is bullying."

It appears that FOXNews.com may be left with a red face today, after allowing a massive data leak on its own website and that of a major publishing group.

The problem came to light Sunday on the Something Awful website. A user named "Morphie" posted a comment entitled "Fox News Headline Images (some funny, some not)." The images in question had been found on FOXNews.com, and it turned out that the website had left its images directory unprotected, meaning that any Internet user could see every file listed in that particular directory.

It was soon discovered that the site's admin directory was also publicly accessible. And that's when the situation went from an amusing faux pas to a serious data breach. At 3:23 AM, another user on Something Awful posted the login information for a Ziff-Davis server, which he had found in one of the files in the FOXNews directories. This was a major catch: Ziff-Davis is a big publishing company and the owner of ZDNet. The information soon circulated through the social-networking world at Reddit and the IT community at Slashdot.

Unfortunately for Ziff-Davis, that particular server contained phone numbers, email addresses, and street addresses for many of its users. Wikinews estimates that as many as 1.5 million users may be at risk, with several gigabytes of data at least temporarily accessible. This number cannot be independently verified, however, since the security hole has since been fixed.

What is particularly interesting about this leak is that it was very basic and easily preventable. Even small websites are advised to avoid publicly accessible directories, and many network administrators would immediately turn them off. Security expert David Utter called it "surprising" that Fox would leave such an integral part of its website unprotected, going so far as to accuse the webmasters of outright "sloppiness."

Not surprisingly, the network itself is downplaying the incident. Contacted by NewsQuake, Jeff Misenti, General Manager and VP of Fox News Digital, addressed it this way: "It was a server communications error which was fixed immediately and steps were taken to make sure it doesn't happen again."

What do you do if you already own a stake in Craigslist, but yearn for a bigger slice of the online-classified pie? If you're eBay, you launch a U.S. version of Kijiji, with the hope of rivaling the San Francisco-based market leader.

Already well known internationally, Kijiji launched in China in 2005, and currently does business in 27 countries. In terms of unique visitors, it is the most trafficked site in Canada, Germany, Italy, and Taiwan, according to eBay communications manager Jose Mallabo.

Like Craigslist, Kijiji, which launched in the U.S. earlier this month, has a relatively simple interface and a wide range of categories. The similarities aren't accidental: eBay purchased a 25 percent stake in Craigslist so "we could learn how to do this," says Mallabo. He adds that the new site is more user-friendly than the market leader, requiring only two pages to post an item for sale, versus up to seven pages on Craigslist.

Kijiji and its corporate parent won't interact on a technology level, but the two sites will complement each another. "Let's say you want to put a mattress on eBay," says Mallabo. "You can also list it locally on Kijiji. So this is on a more grass-roots level."

On some of its overseas sites, Kijiji charges posters or allows users to pay $1 fee to bump up a listing to the top of a page. The U.S. site hasn't ruled out charging users for listing certain items, according to Mallabo.

What does the management at Craigslist think of Kijiji? Largely due to its decision to forgo traditional web advertising, the 12-year-old market leader has already become the go-to place for listers, publishing 17 million classifieds every month and generating a reported $25 million in revenue last year. In an email to Newsquake, Craigslist CEO and President Jim Buckmaster said he is unfazed by Kijiji's entrance into the marketplace.

"We generally don't think in terms of competition, or concern ourselves with what other companies are doing," wrote Buckmaster. "Certainly there are hundreds if not thousands of companies offering online classifieds."

Meanwhile, users are slowly discovering Kijiji. "It's something different," says Kevin Emerson, a Los Angeles resident looking to sell his Buick Centurion. A friend recommended the site to Emerson, who says he had previously posted the car for six weeks on Craigslist, but had received no offers. It takes less time to post on Kijiji than on Craiglist, says Emerson. But has he gotten any offers on that car? Not yet, he says.

As Apple's newest toy goes into its second day of release, iPhone mania continues to sweep the nation. If somebody told me that the shiny little slab could make breakfast and sort the mail, I think I'd believe it. In any case, I was at my local Apple Store on Friday night to chat with some of the devoted Mac users waiting patiently in line. Check it out...

In his earlier books, William Langewiesche focused on large and fundamentally empty spaces: the Sahara desert and the sky (as transformed by the invention of flight). Recently, however, he has been drawn to more chaotic subjects. In American Ground he described the monumental ruin at Manhattan's Ground Zero, while The Outlaw Sea envisioned the ocean itself as a kind of watery Wild West. Now, in The Atomic Bazaar: The Rise of the Nuclear Poor, he take on the burgeoning threat of nuclear proliferation. Netscape's James Marcus began a conversation with the author by asking him about the genesis of his new book.

William Langewiesche: The real basis for this book came from sitting in Baghdad, where I've spent a lot of time since 2003, and observing the catastrophe that has resulted from demonizing a political opponent.

Netscape: You're talking about Saddam Hussein.

Langewiesche: Right. I was working for The Atlantic when I began this book. During the run-up to the 2003 invasion, we published a story with a cover illustration of Saddam Hussein--and it was an image of a demonic figure. I remember saying to my friends at the magazine, "We shouldn't be doing this. Let us not demonize this guy. It's a mistake."

Netscape: And why was it a mistake?

Langewiesche: If you believe that the very acquisition of a nuclear weapon by a Third World country is a sign of inherent evil, then you're in trouble. The fact is that nuclear weapons are extremely effective systems for achieving political power. And the decision to acquire them (though loaded with risk, of course, for the individual country) is actually a logical, rational move.

Netscape: And what if Saddam Hussein had actually possessed nuclear weapons?

Langewiesche: If you look at the specifics, at the tangible details on the ground, there's no evidence that Saddam Hussein would have been any more willing to use these weapons than we have been. Saddam Hussein was an extremely rational man. Sure, he was a bad guy, he killed lots of people. But it was all about consolidating his power. He was not going to use these weapons and see his country wiped out due to a nuclear response.

As is often the case, Second Life has been in the news over the past week. The celebrated online community continues to gain traction with real-world businesses and advertisers, who are eager to cash in on the theoretical population of 7.2 million residents--many with deep (if virtual) pockets. In this piece from the Raleigh News & Observer, David Ranii runs down just a handful of these early adopters, including Reebok, Nissan, and Intel. He also quotes a 3-D Internet Champion (an actual job title) at IBM, who wants Big Blue to climb aboard the Second Life bandwagon as quickly as possible:


Where there's money, of course, there's eventually litigation. And according to Eric J. Sinrod's piece in Silicon.com, the ball has already gotten rolling. In a recent case, Bragg v. Linden, a plaintiff sued the website's proprietors--Linden Research and CEO Philip Rosedale--for confiscating a piece of virtual real estate he had bought, freezing his additional assets, and subsequently barring him from Second Life itself.

Documentary filmmaker Rob van Hattum's latest effort, Waste = Food, explores the concept of "cradle-to-cradle" environmentalism. First developed by celebrated environmental architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart, this pioneering design philosophy envisions endless use and reuse of raw materials. Since Van Hattum's film recently premiered on Sundance Channel's The Green, this seemed like the perfect moment to have a chat with him.

Netscape: When did you first become interested in environmentalism?

Van Hattum: Quite a long time ago, actually. In 1972, when I was 17, there was a report released by a nongovernmental think tank called the Club of Rome. They argued that we would soon have a very polluted environment, and problems with energy and natural resources. We discussed the report at school and it got me rather worried. It was the first moment my mind was turned towards the environment and the impact man has on the planet.

The year after that, there was an oil embargo by the OPEC countries. As a result, we experienced government-mandated car-free Sundays in the Netherlands. I talked about the environment a lot, about our impact on the planet, and you could say I was kind of a nerd in the eyes of my friends. They always tried to convince me that science and technology were the cause of all the environmental evil. I tried to convince them that mankind itself was the problem, at least those who believe that you can use the oceans and the air as a sewage system for harmful products.

There's an interesting story in today's Washington Post (submitted to Netscape by TechnologyExpert), in which various pundits and GOP operatives wring their hands over the Republican Party's alleged inability to compete with Democratic candidates on the internet. An excerpt:



As that excerpt makes clear, the Post's Jose Antonio Vargas chose to focus on the early front runners in both parties, and in doing so, he makes a fatal error by exclusion. The story fails to mention Ron Paul, whose official YouTube channel has a good 2,000 more subscribers than Barack Obama's channel and almost three times as many subscribers as John Edwards'. The Republican underdog is also clearly on the mind of bloggers; his name has been the number one search term on Technorati for several weeks.

I called Ron Paul's Austin-based campaign headquarters to get their take on the Washington Post story. Jesse Benton, Paul's communications director, told me that the Paul campaign was not contacted by the Post in connection with the story. "It is a little ironic that the strongest Republican candidate on the Internet was excluded from a story about Republicans on the Internet. I think that has been a little typical of our treatment in the mainstream media. I also think that is changing--the mainstream media is paying a little more attention to us every day."

All the more ironic is the fact that the Paul campaign has specifically sought to use the Web as a tool to reach voters in absence of that coveted MSM attention. "The internet is a major part of our strategy," Benton says. "We think it's a powerful force in leveling the playing field and allowing non-Establishment candidates, without nationwide name-recognition at this early point in the campaign, to be able to stand up on the same platform with self-anointed--or mainstream media-anointed--front runners." Benton attributes Paul's online success in no small part to his message. "He is the leading advocate for Internet freedom in Congress: he has never voted to tax the Internet or regulate it in any way. People who have a presence on the Internet realize that he is their strongest champion."

So why exclude the Paul camp from the story? I've contacted Vargas and will update this blog post when I get a response.

Earlier this week on Newsquake, we told you about the Pentagon's decision to block soldiers from accessing YouTube over DoD networks. Yesterday, YouTube's creators and chief executives issued an insouciant response. Via Detroit Free Press:


You've gotta wonder: are Hurley and friends standing up to the Pentagon in the name of First Amendment rights? Or are they just terrified at the prospect of losing all those page views?

Our top story on Netscape last night and this morning was this op-ed from left-wing blog SmokingPolitics, predicting a nasty political fight for Al Gore once his new book, The Assault on Reason, is released next week. Bloggers Dave Johnson and James Boyce say this event will give the Left the perfect opportunity to draw attention to "the mechanism of the smear":


With an excerpt from The Assault live on TIME.com (and at the top of buzz-generated news aggregator Memeorandum) as of this morning, let's take a look at the first responses to Gore's tome. Because bloggers like to talk about themselves debate the nebulous laws governing the Web, let's focus specifically on Gore's statements about network neutrality.

Tensions are really heating up this week in the world of online image sharing. First, on Monday, Heather Champ and Derek Powazek, co-creators of the socially-produced photography magazine JPG (you've probably flipped through it at Urban Outfitters whilst waiting for your significant other to try on pants), announced that they were leaving their baby in the hands of their former business partners. The split was acrimonious, to say the least. The magazine and its parent company, 8020 Publishing, will now be run by CEO Paul Coutier, in partnership with CNET founder Halsey Minor. As Champ put it in a blog post, the new ownership


In post on his own blog, Powazek (who is Champ's husband as well as collaborator) painted Cloutier as an underhanded power-grabber. Cloutier's goal, he argues, is to recast JPG as less of a built-from-nothing community-powered experiment, and more of a traditional publishing venture.

Netscape recently attended the first-ever Economics of Social Media conference, held in Los Angeles last Thursday. Hosted by Rafat Ali, the editor of Paid Content, the one-day conference sold out two and half weeks in advance and drew about 500 people from around the country.

The night before the conference, the organizers threw a cocktail party at CAA's spacious new headquarters in Century City. CAA wasn't a sponsor, but Ali told me that the uber-agency was eager to donate the space--a sure sign that CAA agents are watching what's going on in social media.