Lots of interesting implications here for publishers, content creators and advertisers here if this takes off. Google's Kim Malone Scott, who runs sales for AdSense, modestly suggests "we have recreated the mass media."

But one thing isn't changing in the short term: If content creators want big paychecks, they had better stick with big media. MacFarlane's deal with Google is a side project, not one that will interfere with his day job working for Rupert Murdoch's Fox network. Good call: The Times notes that he's just signed a multiyear deal with Fox that will pay him more than $100 million.

During the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike, many desperate fans of genre television turn to the web for updates on where the story-lines for Heroes or Lost are headed -- or might be headed if and when the strike ends. Those TV enthusiasts can choose from ay number of online fan sites, but the best sources of insider news and predictions come from blogs maintained by a given show's top producers and writers.

For example, as reported here by Jenna Wortham, a Battlestar Galactica-related blog written by series executive producer Ronald D. Moore discusses Moore's work, his thoughts on the strike, the status of his show, etc. Moore manages to steer clear from discussing the creative aspects of BSG in any detail -- a sensible move if you consider he could violate strike rules if he did.

According to Jonathan Handel, entertainment attorney, "A TV show's fictional blog is just 'an extension of the same show,' and the writing (by a WGA member) is therefore prohibited."

Blog Cabin is DIY Network's newest hit series, featuring popular expert hosts who pitch in to bring the Kinzel Springs retreat to life. Watch us build the cabin one blog at a time, then enter daily for a chance to win it!

From February until early April, 2007, DIY Network.com invited visitors to vote each day on 13 design areas for a future cabin to be built in the Great Smoky Mountains. Thousands decided on such areas as the floor plan, roof, countertops, even the front door. The results are here, and so are the build projects.

What program viewers see is a structure designed, discussed and even tweaked by Internet bloggers. Thirteen parts of the building, from floor plan to front door, were voted on and blogged about on the channel's companion Web site, www.DIYnetwork.com, from February to early April this year.

The Web site's blog cabin section has had more than 2 million page views since February. More than 2,800 blog comments were posted and 4.2 million votes cast to select the cabin features.

"I was surprised by the sheer numbers, frankly," says Freddy James, DIY vice president for programming. "It's amazing how much having creative input in a home-building project really resonates with people."

Mr. Nakagawa's simple Web site has become the center of the "LOLcats" phenomenon, a booming online subculture built around digital images and deliberately bad grammar. There's not much to it: Take a digital photo -- often one of household pets, particularly cats -- and purposefully place misspelled text on top. Anyone with elementary skills in Adobe's Photoshop or Microsoft's Paint software can make their own.

Nearly nine months after launching icanhascheezburger.com, Mr. Nakagawa's site receives around 200,000 unique visitors and a half-million page views each day, according to Mr. Nakagawa.

Visitors can browse a sprawling gallery of lolcats, vote for their favorites and post comments. Mr. Nakagawa says he receives up to 500 submissions a day, thanks in no small part to his site's tool that helps people build their own. He says every entry is screened for merit and originality before earning inclusion.

Only 12 or so submissions make the gallery a day. "It's ridiculous," Mr. Nakagawa admits, "but we do go through all of them." He certainly has the time. Revenue from ads on the site is "more than enough to pay my bills."

He saw traffic on the blog, I Can Has Cheezburger, which he runs with his partner, "Tofuburger" [she refuses to disclose her real name] double each month: 375,000 hits in March, 750,000 in April, 1.5 million in May. Cheezburger now gets 500,000 page views a day from between 100,000 and 200,000 unique visitors, according to Nakagawa. The cheapest ad costs $500 for a week. The most expensive goes for nearly $4,000. Nakagawa, an accidental entrepreneur who saw his successful business materialize out of the ether, quit his programming job at the end of May: "It made more sense to do this and see how big it could get."

Cheezburger's story is unusual in the upper reaches of the blogosphere in that the time between launching and reaching a critical mass of readers who sustain the site is so compressed. But many of the most popular bloggers have similar tales of starting out with a niche idea -- an inside joke, a particular obsession -- and watching it explode. Of course, most blogs linger in obscurity and are read by only a handful of people, and few ever reach the level Cheezburger has. What about a blog like Cheezburger lets it break away from the pack?

The initial appeal of the blog may have been a fluke, but its growth since then has been part of a tightly controlled experiment to help answer that question. Nakagawa and his partner constantly tweak the site to see what draws readers and what leaves them cold.

"We basically have a playground where people keep coming to play, so we're trying to create new games all the time,"Nakagawa says.

Oh great. Just what the world needs. Another lame-ass corporate-owned movie blog that doesn't know a freakin' thing about ... just kidding! We're actually quite happy to share the news that MTV Movies is now offering a brand spankin' new movie blog. Or at least I'm happy about it, and here's why: I'm a big fan of MTV's movie coverage. For the last year or so, they've done some really solid stuff. Aside from the clunky interface and long load times at the website, those guys do a damn good job with the scoops, the news and some consistently excellent interviews. So it's not like a "new" blog as much as it is an upgrade. A much more aesthetically pleasing and bandwidth-friendly upgrade.

Welcome to the MTV Movies Blog, updated throughout the day with exclusive movie news, trailers, interviews and more. Our team of film experts joins with celebrity contributors - from Eli Roth to Judd Apatow - to ensure that when it comes to the hottest flicks, you'll hear it first.

What happened to my Plog?
The program that was Plogs has made way for the new and improved Amazon Daily. Your feedback and investment in Plogs has helped shape this new program. We hope you enjoy Daily as much as you did Plogs! Any authors you had subscribed to from Plogs have been transferred over to your Amazon Daily, as well as reminders and activity from friends.

Amazon Daily is a blog-short for "web log"-that contains posts by editors from all over the company. Whether you're a die-hard fiction lover, a gadget geek, an avid collector of classic films or just a fan of what we sell, you'll find all sorts of entries that will interest you. Amazon Daily's home page contains all editorial posts (sorted so the most recent entries appear at the top); in the sidebar, they're sorted by topic, so you can browse one concept at a time instead of taking all of it in at once! Each post gives you the opportunity to provide private feedback to the editor as well as leave public comments for other customers to see.

How can I interact with Amazon Daily?
At the bottom of each post you will find an assortment of things you can do once you have read that post. The first is vote whether or not you liked that post, which will give you the option to leave feedback. You can also leave public comments on that post. You will also see an options menu, which has many interesting features. As more interactive features for each post are introduced they will be added into the options menu.

SYLVESTER STALLONE: I do. [LAUGHS] I, you know, the other day I, I usually paint characters or situations that are, you know, kind of emotional... bizarre. But lately I've been painting, dare I say it, flowers for the house. But they're bizarre flowers.

I made by bed, and I sleep like a baby,
With no regrets and I don't mind saying,
It's a sad sad story
That a mother will teach her daughter
that she ought to hate a perfect stranger.
And how in the world
Can the words that I said
Send somebody so over the edge
That they'd write me a letter
Saying that I better shut up and sing
Or my life will be over

The bottom line is this: if you want to be the next J.J. Abrams, Aaron Sorkin or Tim Kring, you better brush up on your blogging skills. Because it's not enough to write a hit show anymore. You have to interact with fans online, liveblog events and be ready with the pithy (yet not too revealing) commentary. Writing for tv sure isn't what it used to be.

I think there is a shorthand to compare it to X-men when you have not yet seen the show. However, my guess is that that comparison will go away once you have seen what we are doing.

Yes it worries me. There is only so much time commitment that an audience has for this kind of show. However, the only honest answer that I can give to this questions is that I have to hope and believe that Heroes will be one of the few that really hits for the audience. I think we are different enough in both premise and execution to stand out from the pack.

Hi my Dear fans and friends alike,
I have decided to not return to Saturday Night Live this season. I wish the best to everyone at the show and expect them to have a great season. It's been a wonderful eight years and I am grateful for all the friends I was able to make and all the great people I had the pleasure of working with. I want to give a big thank you to all my fans for your kind comments and well wishes. I look forward to making you laugh in the future, and hopefully not behind the counter at Burger King. Goodnight my dears!
XO,
H

After successful trials last year, programs are increasing their blogs' roles in the new season. CBS is setting up a MySpace page for Mother, with separate pages for the various characters to blog.

The Office's Dwight Schrute's blog on nbc.com has been read by over 1,000,000 different viewers since it launched last fall, with 2 million-3 million page views. Fulfilling NBC boss Jeff Zucker's "TV 360" mandate, the comedy is expanding its Web presence on MySpace, with blog entries from several characters.

And based on the popularity of its blogs, a book called Grey's Anatomy: Notes From the Nurse's Station and Overheard at the Emerald City Bar, compiling Debbie's and Joe's blog entries, hits stores Sept. 12. It's published by ABC corporate sibling Hyperion.

For many programs, the blogs fill a mandate from the network to increase their online offerings. Chris Van Dusen, assistant to Grey's creator Shonda Rhimes, says Rhimes challenged the staff to come up with compelling ways to promote the show online, and he suggested a blog for the bartender who pours drinks for off-duty doctors and nurses from Seattle Grace Hospital.

"The idea was to blog what happens in between the episodes," says Van Dusen, who writes the Emerald City Bar blog. "It's what [the characters] talk about when they come to the bar."

Just 19 years old when he became a viral video sensation, Brolsma waited months to tell his mother what was going on. Suzanne Brolsma learned of her son's new fame when she came home from work one afternoon to find the phone ringing and her answering machine full of messages from members of the press. The media attention was overwhelming and despite the immense popularity of the video, the Brolsma family never made a cent from Gary's fame. Like many lower-income American families, the Brolsmas struggle daily to make ends meet.

But while Brolsma may have found the press attention daunting, it was the enthusiasm, encouragement and affection of his fellow Internet users that inspired him to return with a new video. "I heard from so many people asking when I would do another video," says Brolsma. "If people can watch this new video, enjoy it and get a laugh out of it, then I'm happy with that."

MuggleCast is doing well. While many podcasts earn almost nothing, Demopoulos said, MuggleCast earns revenue. It makes money through T-shirt sales, after a printing group out of Georgia saw how well the podcast was doing and offered to design T-shirts for the show for free. Now, the hosts get $6 on each $15 shirt sold.

The site also garners about $750 a month from reading advertisements for GoDaddy.com, an Internet domain-name broker. Sims and Schoen also earn $800 a month for maintaining the site.

Visibility is high, too. Last month, the show was No. 3 on the Apple iTunes top-100 list of "Arts" podcasts. And it's enjoying an overall rank of 46th out of tens of thousands on the same site.

Podcast Alley, a directory of podcasts nationwide, ranked it No. 2 on its top-10 list. The show also has been nominated for the Nickelodeon Australia's 2006 Kids' Choice Awards, and is a nominee for the 2006 Podcast Awards People's Choice Award.

Joining Lander and Farabee in this endeavor are Nick Budd and David Martindale. Martindale also serves as lead designer and technician for the new site. All four writers work at Dragon's Lair Comics in Round Rock, Texas.

Comic Pants is anchored by "Wednesday Number Ones", a weekly feature updating every Wednesday morning that will provide commentary on every first issue coming to comic shops that day. In addition, the site will feature regularly updated reviews from all four contributors, Lander's popular Previews forecast column "Down the Line" and more.

Comic Pants is a serious review site with a sense of humor, as indicated by the unusual name, which was suggested by Dave Farabee during a brainstorming session.

There is no competing horror movie opening this weekend, so Snakes on a Plane should do well. This will confirm what we already know -- that Internet buzz can truly boost a film's performance at the box office. The only downside of Snakes being a box office smash is that we may have to deal with all sorts of "Something on a Something" sequels. You know, Snakes on a Boat, Snakes on a Train, Snakes on Your Bike, Snakes on a Segway. And when they run out of Snakes titles, they could always go for the cute, with Kittens on a Plane. That sounds like a good holiday movie.

Jesus is not God; he was only a man.

Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. They had a daughter Sarah and their bloodline lives on in Europe today.

Mary Magdalene is to be worshiped as a goddess.

The Bible was put together by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine.

Jesus was viewed as a man and not as God until the fourth century, when he was "deified" by Constantine.

The Gospels have been edited to support the claims of later Christians.

In the original Gospels, Jesus directed Mary Magdalene, not Peter to establish the Church.

There is a secret society known as the Priory of Sion that still worships Mary Magdalene as a goddess and guards the secret of Jesus’ bloodline.

The Catholic Church is aware of all this and has been fighting for centuries to keep it suppressed.

The Catholic Church is willing to and often has assassinated the descendents of Christ to keep his bloodline from growing.

Remember, dog training focuses on getting the dog to respond to human commands. Dog psychology is really training humans to understand how dogs function, communicate, and fulfill their lives without human-created techniques.

A well-trained dog in the sense of traditional dog training doesn’t necessarily make for a balanced dog, any more than a Harvard degree makes for a balanced human being. You can teach almost any dog to sit, come, stay, or heel because most dogs are easily conditioned to respond to commands with positive reinforcement. True understanding of dog psychology results in your dog staying next to you on a walk, even as you pass by another dog, someone riding a bike, or a noisy garbage truck.

Sony Pictures proudly presents a pair of Marvels: The classic Marvel comic Ghost Rider comes to the big screen with Academy Award-winning Nicolas Cage playing Johnny Blaze. Appearing in person to answer your questions and show some previews will be the film's stars Nicolas Cage and Eva Mendes and director Mark Steven Johnson. Oh, and did we mention Spidey 3? Come find out why we don't have to say anything else... besides Sam Raimi! Hall H

Niesward's theory has at least one major flaw: Niesward doesn't really exist. He is a character created by Torsten Lauschmann, a German-born artist living in Scotland. Lauschmann, a live performer, filmmaker, DJ and photographer, may be best known for his work "Misshapen Pearl," described as a "phenomenological investigation of the streetlamp's function in our consumer society."

Lauschmann's multimedia approach has allowed him to explore a wide variety of subjects, including butterflies, paparazzi photos and, now, a flash-mob experiment.

In 2005, Lauschmann encouraged scientists and bloggers from around the world to discuss World Jump Day.

"He thought it would just circulate among friends, but it quickly seemed to morph. Within weeks it was global - people in Australia were talking about it on the radio," said Neil Mulholland, a reader in contemporary art theory at Edinburgh College of Art. "The more it was discussed, the more people joined the site, and it crashed several times."

Looking for a way to get over her ex-boyfriend (the man she thought she was going to marry -- ouch) and seeking perhaps a wee outlet through which to vent her frustrations, the struggling Seattle writer began pouring her heart out -- pouring it out and then directly into a weblog.

That was back in 2002, and ever since then Agiewich not only has blogged her way through the ups and downs of that particularly pugnacious parting of ways, she also has blogged her way through a variety of dates and the breakups that followed and, more importantly, blogged her way right into a novel. (Yes, a novel. Take that, you unappreciative ex-boyfriend!)

"There's only one Heidi MacDonald and Publishers Weekly and PW Comics Week are lucky enough to have her. Heidi can literally do it all. In the Beat Heidi manages to break industry news, offer insightful analysis and perspective and she seems to know everyone in comics from the quirkiest indie self-publisher to the heads of the biggest comics publishers in the industry. She brings wit, wisdom and a tremendous love for the comics medium to PW and we couldn't be happier (or luckier) to have her."-Calvin Reed, Senior News Editor, Publishers Weekly and PW Comics Week.

"I'm overjoyed to be bringing The Beat to the PW website," said MacDonald. "Every one here at Publishers Weekly has been a huge supporter of both graphic novels o and myself, and with all the added resources, The Beat is going to be better than ever."

We love to laugh - so now we're preparing the world to bLaugh! This is the (un)Official comic of the blogosphere - colorful, satirical, and comical. Expect parodies of "A-List" bloggers all the way down to the meme of the day - no holds barred. Brad Fitzpatrick is bLaugh's artist, and Chris Pirillo is the writer. Our strip is exclusively sponsored by a single company, GoDaddy. We have a bLaugh feed for you to suck down - and we give you code to display our comics anywhere! Of course, all you ego-maniacs should be watching closely - because you're likely the ones to be parodied on a regular basis. If you blog, or your name (brand) is getting tossed around in the blogosphere, you're on our radar.

When I said I was going to a press screening of "An Inconvenient Truth," a friend said, "Al Gore talking about the environment! Bor...ing!" This is not a boring film. The director, Davis Guggenheim, uses words, images and Gore's concise litany of facts to build a film that is fascinating and relentless. In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to.

Pop critics are used to dishing it out - criticism, that is - but can we take it? I'm not talking about the feedback received from fans when we write something unflattering about their favourite artist, but facing the wrath of the artist him/herself.

When I reviewed a gig by the much-discussed new singer Lily Allen, I knew that if she read it, she was bound to disagree with the gist of it - which was that at this early stage of her career, she hadn't yet proved that the hype is justified. And she did. She posted a message on her MySpace page after the review ran last month, categorically taking exception to most of the points I'd made. Principally, she argued that having made an album (due for release next month) and received 1.3m MySpace plays, she had proved herself.

Well, we will continue to differ on that, but her post impressed me. Pop stars can be legendarily vituperative (one major indie frontman was so put out by a piece in the NME that he wrote a song just for that particular journalist, entitling it something like You Scum), but Allen, despite her pique, came across as decent and likable. And I began to wonder whether, taking into account that she's 21 and it had been only her second gig, I'd been too hard on her.

And what citywide art installation would be complete without a little blogging? Some of the cow artists are keeping people informed with blogs of their cow decorating process. So, enjoy the parade and let us know if you come across any must-see cows.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster has arrived and we have all been taken to planet Zeus 94 to kneel before Zod. All this is a little much for us to handle at the moment so come back later please. And leave a quarter in the collection tray on your way out.

"MySpace is the largest video site on the Web, with more video uploaded every day than any other site on the Internet," Ross Levinsohn, president of Fox Interactive Media, said in a statement.

Nicole Kidman may still love Tom Cruise, but the same can't be said of some bloggers. "Mission: Impossible III" debuted with $48.025 million, well below industry expectations and almost $10 million lower than the franchise's previous installment, according to studio estimates. Industry analysts had expected the movie to open in the range of "Mission: Impossible II," which debuted with $57.8 million in 2000, and "War of the Worlds," which premiered with $64.9 million over the July 4 weekend last year.

If you work in an office, think about the most annoying co-worker, subordinant, or boss you have at the moment. Then tell me the one thing that he/she did most recently to set you off. (No long background stories please, just the behavior that got you.)

I will be selecting one example from the comments today to make my Sunday comic that will run on 8/13. This is your chance for revenge. (I might use more ideas for other comics, but I'll guarantee that one date.)

I will be ignoring all stories involving food, beverages, bathroom humor and speaker phones. Those are overdone.

TVGuide.com (www.tvguide.com) has launched one of the largest professional entertainment blog communities on the Internet, it was announced today by Gemstar-TV Guide International, Inc.. Over 65 entertainment blogs are now live on the site, featuring expert reporting and commentary from writers and editors from both TV Guide magazine and TVguide.com. Each blog allows TVGuide.com users to post comments and interact with the site's critics. In addition, every user can create his or her own blog about entertainment using TVGuide.com's simple blogging tools. TVGuide.com's blogs can be found at http://www.tvguide.com/blogs.

Paul Greenberg, general manager of TV Guide Online said, "At TVGuide.com, we are focused on becoming the leading destination for television information and entertainment guidance. The addition of blogs and community is a natural progression for us and will enable TVGuide.com to provide an enhanced experience for our users. We've learned very quickly that our users are looking for new ways to engage with others who share their same passion for entertainment."

Some of you know each other, others may not, but I'm calling all of your powers together because I have a goal that I cannot achieve alone. It's a goal of such lofty proportions that the mere thought of achieving it has me trembling in my darkened apartment. It's keeping me up at night. My goal, my quest, is to be an invited guest to the world premiere of the movie that is destined to change the world. A movie of such scope and awe that you need only read the title to understand everything you'll ever need to know about the movie. The fact that it's staring Samuel L. Jackson is a mere afterthought to the magical title. I want to attend the glitzy Hollywood premiere of:
Snakes on a Plane

The engine and power of the movement is the blog. The blog will allow us to link hand in hand, one to another. Even those who are not Hammer Fans but appreciate blogging's empowerment are welcomed supporters. The blog is our commonality. My goal is to connect with Hammer Fans. Make new Hammer friends and meet with like minds. Those who believe in God, family and community. Through the blog I will eliminate sensationalism. You will have access to my many thoughts and truly get to know me without an intermediate.

Superheroes, graphic novels, comix, comic strips, or manga, whatever your preference in comics, someone is blogging about it: news, reviews, commentary, criticism, or discussion. Comics readers are a wordy bunch for people who spend so much time looking at pictures. This list collects sites that predominantly focus on comics and organizes them by LinkRank. If you have suggestions for additions to the list, let us know.

Well since everyone else has a blog, I guess it's my turn.

Sometimes when I start getting in a drawing rut by drawing my own cartoon characters over and over again I look to my favorite cartoonist for inspiration and new ideas. God. He is the funniest designer in history.

Cartoonists tend to get trapped in their own cliches after a while and the best cure for that is to do caricatures. But the trick for me is to empty my mind of preconceived notions of what caricatures should look like.

"Blogs are becoming a vital part of an independent film scene that relies on word-of-mouth and alternative media to truly thrive," says Eugene Hernandez, editor of the pioneering indie film site IndieWire.com, which hosts some two dozen blogs and this year has asked 12 filmmakers from Sundance and the concurrent Slamdance to blog about their experiences.

BloggingSundance.com, a pioneering festival blog, was dreamed up by the founder of the Weblogs Inc. Network, Jason Calacanis, who persuaded the festival to let him blog in 2003. "I blogged live from inside movie theaters. I'd sit in the back row with my laptop," he recalls. "It's the closest thing to live coverage." Film fanatic Calacanis continued to blog Sundance through 2004 and '05, when he reviewed 19 to 20 movies by himself. "When I'm at Sundance I don't go to parties, I watch films," he says.

I HAD TO run a few errands downtown, but I hesitated to go.

What if I ran into bloggers?

Ever since the total, irretrievable collapse of the Internet in a chaos of viruses, worms, spam, terrorism and busts by the FBI anti-porn squad, that archaic species of human had become a bigger street menace than mimes, Jehovah's Witnesses, or panhandlers ever were.

Yet despite the fact that "Long Tail" has become short hand, the economics of the Long Tail are, to my mind, still often misunderstood. I continue to hear funding pitches that talk about the Long Tail as a powerful enabler for content creators. Companies are presented to me premised upon the increased value of Long Tail content for musicians and artists and film makers. The fact that increasingly the likes of Amazon and iTunes make it possible for Long Tail authors or bands to sell a few books or records through legitimate, recognized channels is touted as the revolution of the artist. Far from it.

It is certainly the case that in the aggregate, Long Tail content is extraordinarily valuable. The question for VCs and entrepreneurs is "for whom?" I've had the good fortune over the last year or so to engage in a number of conversations about the economics of the Long Tail with Chris Anderson and to see those economics illustrated by innumerable Long Tail investment pitches. And, from those conversations and pitches, I have come to the conclusion that there are essentially two general classes of technology the will benefit economically from the Long Tail -- aggregators and filterers.

E&P: With your sabbatical nearing a year, do you have any idea yet whether or not you will resume your column at some point?

Barry: I'm not going to resume my regular weekly column. I'll continue to write occasional columns for the Herald, as I did this year. I'll also continue to do the holiday gift guide, and the year in review. And I'll keep blogging. But not the weekly column.

E&P: If you might resume it, when would be the earliest that would happen?

Barry: Several weeks after my death.

I can't believe that the Olympic Trials are over. This is not the result I was wanting, but I can walk away knowing I gave it all that I could; I have no regrets.

Editor's note: Bridie finished tied for 11th with 4 points; the top five skaters were eligible to make the team.

Gervais' podcast also features his "Office" co-writer Stephen Merchant and their former radio producer Karl Pilkington, as the trio take on a succession of offbeat topics from vampires to a regular segment called "Monkey News."

The free half-hour show -- essentially a radio program that can be downloaded to a computer or portable audio player -- now occupies the top spot on the podcast charts of the U.S. and UK iTunes Music Stores run by Apple Computer, whose popular iPod digital music player was the basis for the podcast name.

Now that blogging has officially become the new "cool" way to market a movie, it seems as if we no longer need to see the film once it comes out since the entire thing has already been shown to us over the course of a year and a half on that damn webpage. Between the interviews and the assortment of behind-the-scenes tours, these blogs are waging a tough battle against, what used to be, a sweet spoiler-free world.

The idea for this geeky theme came a few months ago when someone known as ZF from Littleoslo posted a funny remake of the Monopoly board with properties like Google, Yahoo, Flickr etc. Popular IMs took there the roles of what was previously known as rail stations while Wikipedia and Creative Commons became the public utilities. For a geek like me, there was no better theme for a Monopoly-like game that I planned to add (even Ghettopoly couldn't compare).