All four reddit employees will relocate from Boston to Wired's San Francisco office and become part of Wired Digital. Reddit, founded and funded in 2005, is a YCombinator company (see our interview with YCombinator founder Paul Graham here). The two original founders are Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, and they were later joined by Christopher Slowe and Aaron Swartz.

With not a penny of paid media and in less than a month, "Dove Evolution," a 75-second viral film created by Ogilvy & Mather, Toronto, for the Unilever brand has reaped more than 1.7 million views on YouTube and has gotten significant play on TV talk shows "Ellen" and "The View" as well as on "Entertainment Tonight." It's also brought the biggest-ever traffic spike to CampaignForRealBeauty.com, three times more than Dove's Super Bowl ad and resulting publicity last year, according to Alexa.com.

By those measures, "Evolution" is the biggest online-buzz generator in the U.S. personal-care and beauty industries, topping this year's effort from Omnicom Group's Tribal DDB on behalf of the Philips Norelco Bodygroom shaver. And that's before the campaign began rolling out to 10 additional countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America last week.

"Dove Evolution" also trounced another October darling of the blogosphere -- would-be investment banker Aleksey Vayner's self-promotional video -- for mentions on Nielsen BuzzMetrics' BlogPulse. And it ranked among the top 15 blog-linked videos last week on Technorati -- the only one, aside from a presentation by Apple's Steven Jobs, from a nonpolitician.

Nobody understands how online viral marketing really works. Worse: ever since big brands discovered its power, it's becoming harder every day to succesfully create some buzz online. It's true that a succesful "word of mouse" campaign is always cheaper to produce than, say, a street ad campaign. And yes, it's a perfect way to support a bigger ad campaign, or reach a different, more "webby" target group. But if a viral campaign is not handled right, it might hit you in the face, and sometimes even harm your brand. Or worse: be ignored completely, like the majority of them. All you can do is: avoid common mistakes, unleash the virus, wait and pray.

Kate began working as a copy editor at the Daily Record in July, after graduating from Lehigh University. She's been living in her uncle's apartment since then -- and is being booted out Dec. 1, when the lease is up. So the 22-year-old is on a quest to find an affordable apartment -- her first apartment -- in the Morris County area.

Only MingleNow goes further. It wants to give people hanging out at bars and restaurants ways to interact with each other online too. If you frequent a bar, for example, you can put your profile up on the bar's page within MingleNow, share stories about the bar, and see the profiles of others who frequent that bar - getting a glimpse of the personal details of someone you might have flirted with

MingleNow also allows you to earn VIP points. You get points by inviting others to join MingleNow, and you can redeem the points offline, with free drinks at bars, for example. Bar owners see it as a way of reaching out to new potential customers, and letting them know about promotions.

Hitting the financial jackpot, it appears, may have created some headaches for YouTube, the wildly popular video-sharing Web site that has agreed to be bought by Google for $1.65 billion in stock.

The site late last week began purging copyrighted material from Comedy Central, including clips from YouTube stalwarts like "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart," "The Colbert Report" and "South Park."

The action was "a result of third-party notification by Comedy Central," according to one such e-mail message sent to a YouTube user, Jeff Reifman, who broke the news on the Web site NewsCloud.

A week earlier, nearly 30,000 clips of TV shows, movies and music videos were taken down after the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers cited copyright infringement.

"I think it's definitely going down -- a lot of my friends have deleted their MySpaces and are more into Facebook now," said Birnbaum, a junior who spends more time on her Facebook profile, where she messages and shares photos with other students in her network.

From the other side of the classroom, E.J. Kim chimes in that in the past three months, she's gone from slaving over her MySpace profile up to four hours a day -- decorating it, posting notes and pictures to her friends' pages -- to deleting the whole thing.

"I've grown out of it," Kim said. "I thought it was kind of pointless."

Such is the social life of teens on the Internet: Powerful but fickle. Within several months' time, a site can garner tens of millions of users who, just as quickly, might flock to the next place, making it hard for corporate America to make lasting investments in whatever's hot now.

Take Xanga, the hot social networking site before MySpace: In October 2002, the typical Xanga user spent an average of 1 hour and 39 minutes a month on the site, a figure that declined steadily, reaching only 11 minutes last month, according to Nielsen-NetRatings. Friendster, another older site, hit its first usage peak of 1 hour and 51 minutes in October 2003, and then hit another peak of 3 hours and 3 minutes in February 2006. But last month, the average user was on Friendster for a mere 7 minutes.

"They're not loyal," Ben Bajarin, a market analyst for Creative Strategies Inc., said of the youth demographic. Young audiences search for innovative and new features. They're constantly looking for new ways to communicate and share content they find or create, and because of that group mentality, friends shift from service to service in blocs.

Consider the most popular teen sites tracked by Nielsen-NetRatings. Topping the list last month were Snapvine.com, PLyrics.com, Picgames.com -- none of which appeared among the top 10 for April, or the list a year ago.

Several news outlets, including the AP and Washington Post, reported or headlined incorrectly that Secretary Rumsfeld told "critics" to "back off" during yesterday's press briefing. In fact, the Secretary was referring specifically to journalists who were seeking to create a perception of major divisions between the positions of the U.S. and Iraqi governments. He was not referring to critics of the administration's Iraq policy.

We're not really traders here at Engadget, but we decided to indulge our fantasies of Gordon Gekko grandeur and put together a portfolio of tech stocks. To pull this thing together we enlisted a little help from our friends over at Blogging Stocks; we think besides being a barometer for the gadget industry, perhaps the Engadget Index will serve as a look from a different angle into the massive economy of consumer electronics.

All versions of Pluck's RSS readers for Internet Explorer, FireFox and Pluck's web edition will be discontinued on 1/5/2007. The RSS Readers have served our community of end users well for several years, but with Pluck's focus in other business areas, the venerable RSS readers are set to be retired from our product line.

Over the next two months, you will have the opportunity to export your RSS feed subscriptions to other RSS readers of your choosing. Please visit the RSS reader support pages for details on how to export your subscriptions and bookmarks for use in other readers.

You have until 1/5/2007 to export your data, after which our servers will be turned off and your data will be deleted. Note that the Pluck RSS readers are not supported for use on the new releases of IE (version 7) and FireFox (version 2).

Odeo, a podcasting site started by Evan Williams, who already made a tidy little fortune selling Blogger to Google, is buying back the share owned by investment firm Charles River Ventures. A source told Valleywag, Evan made the decision to dump investors (the venture capitalist aren't happy), which leads us to believe Williams still greatly cares about the company and has plans for Odeo's future. The source also says Evans never needed the money but was scared not to take it, and Charles River is now shopping around for a new podcast companies to invest in.

Build things cheaply and rapidly by keeping teams small and self-organized.

Leverage technology, know-how, and infrastructure across products (but brand them separately, so they're focused and easy to understand)

Use the aggregate attention and user base of the network to gain traction for new services faster than they could gain awareness independently

It was a dark and stormy night. The air was quiet. Too quiet. Yet stormy. Suddenly, a beep rang out from a bedside pager. The engineer woke up, grabbing a soda to sharpen his senses. Blogger was down. He needed to bring it back up.

You need to look no further than our status blog or perhaps your own experiences to know that Blogger had a significant number of unplanned outages this last week (forgive me my euphemisms?) and a handful of planned ones to clean up from the unplanned ones. It's been a Murphyesque cavalcade of power failures, fileserver trouble, and wonky network hardware, and I hope you'll believe me when I say that the Blogger staff is even more sick of it than you are.

First up, our apologies. We really regret these outages, which were a nuisance (or worse) to you. The past week's performance was not representative of the kind of service we want to provide for you.

forbidden, this page (http://www.wonkette.com) is categorized as (Personal Pages) ALL SITES YOU VISIT ARE LOGGED AND FILED.

A digital rights company representing sporting bodies has asked YouTube to remove about 1,000 videos for copyright infringement - and believes there are as many as 10,000 more illegal clips on the website.

The online rights protection agency NetResult - which represents bodies including formula one, the Uefa Champions League, the Football League, and Australian Open Tennis - has also sent letters to about 10 websites that host links to clips that infringe copyrighted material.

Christopher Stokes, the chief executive of NetResult, said that the initial 1,000 was almost certainly the "tip of the iceberg" of its clients' copyrighted material, but it was very time-consuming to track and then report all incidents.

After spotting Jared in the VIP section last night, Stereogum grabs some footage of himself boldly inquiring about Leto's stated hatred of blogs.

Jared, perhaps having made the realization he's actually among the blog scum he so loathes, firmly grabs Stereogum's arm and begins loudly expressing his displeasure with the question.

Sensing that the eyeliner-wearing rock goddess might be in danger, a nearby security monkey grabs Stereogum, erases all the data in his camera, and forcibly removes him from the entire venue, severly injuring his left ring finger - his BLOGGING FINGER - in the process.

Stereogum is now seeking medical attention and, possibly (if it were us, at least) legal counsel.

Welcome to the new and improved Windows Vista blog. A few months back, I pushed our team to bring the blog from the blogging Dark Ages into something a little more modern. The blog back then wasn't quite doing the job. Postings were infrequent, and the site wasn't particularly helpful.

In May, the team really turned the corner and today we're launching the newly updated look and feel. I hope you'll agree it's a big improvement. It incorporates some key parts of the Windows Vista visuals. We've also improved the organization of the site, so things should be easier to find. The team's providing great information, and I'm happy to see the comments and feedback from the community through the comments on the site. I read these regularly, as do many others in the Windows leadership team, so please keep the feedback coming.

One of the exciting new features we're inaugurating today is the ability to deliver new kinds of content to you. The blog can now support cool multimedia content, including better image handling and video clips. The team will film short videos around our hallways and then make them available. I hope this helps the community connect with the experience of living and breathing the development process of Windows Vista.

The move by the United Talent Agency - best known as the home of comedians like Vince Vaughn and Jack Black, filmmakers like M. Night Shyamalan and television producers like Dick Wolf and David Chase - amounts to a bet, albeit a modest one, that Web video is on a growth curve similar to that of cable television a generation ago. It is also a return by Hollywood’s core talent representatives to the sort of new-media business they tested, without great success, at the peak of the dot-com boom.

The goal this time around, executives say, is not only to recruit the next generation of television and film writers and directors from the relative obscurity of sites like YouTube and Revver. It is also to help the major Web portals that are hungry for original content to find the creative people they need — just as movie studios have long turned to talent agencies when looking for new directors, screenwriters and actors.

Already, the three agents have cut six-figure deals with major media portals and signed a handful of clients whose Web-based serials, recurring comedy features and short digital films have drawn one-time downloads in the millions and regular watchers, in some cases, in the tens of thousands.

Two weeks ago, Mr. Weinstein said, one of his new agents showed him a Web video that had been up for less than an hour: "Paxilback," a parody of a Justin Timberlake music video, "Sexyback." The agents quickly reached out to its creators, a group of Los Angeles artists called People Food. By the time they could arrange a meeting five days later, the video had been seen 600,000 times.

Liberal bloggers had the idea first. Chris Bowers of MyDD outlined the strategy Sunday. He said the plan involves purchasing "Google AdWords that will place each negative article on the most common searches for each Republican candidate. Simultaneously, I will produce an article on MyDD that embeds that negative article into a hyperlink."

Bowers asked bloggers to help add links, and they spent the next few days compiling negative news articles on Republican candidates in about 50 targeted races.

Conservative blogger John Hawkins of Right Wing News learned of the strategy and urged his allies to "fight fire with fire." Hawkins expressed concern the Google-bombing campaign just might work for Democrats.

"Who would be doing a Google search on a particular candidate in the final days of a campaign?" he wrote. "Probably an independent voter who is trying to get more information about a candidate. And if the first article he runs across is a brutal hit piece, well, that could be the information that helps him make up his mind."

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.

The Internet Society of China has recommended to the government that bloggers be required to use their real names when they register blogs, state media said on Monday, in the latest attempt to regulate free-wheeling Web content.

The society, which is affiliated with the Ministry of Information Industry, said no decision had been made but that a 'real name system' was inevitable.

"A real name system will be an unavoidable choice if China wants to standardise and develop its blog industry," the official Xinhua news agency quoted the Internet Society's secretary general, Huang Chengqing, as saying.

"We suggest, in a recent report submitted to the ministry, that a real name system be implemented in China's blog industry," Huang said.

But what is perhaps most interesting about the new Custom Search is that publishers (large or small) can allow anyone or selected colleagues, friends or community members to contribute to that index. For example, if I own a site dedicated to stamp collecting and have a group of regular contributors or trusted readers I can allow those individuals to contribute their selections to this index. This gives the index the ability to evolve and grow over time -- and makes it "social."

Last week, I found a beautiful, sleek, black video iPod. It's one of the 30GB models that looks very much like the one pictured to the left. The owner of this iPod has been taking very good care of it by keeping it in a case. My guesses are that the owner lives in the New England area and flew on United Airlines on or about October 9th or 10th. The reason I haven't posted this notice until today is that I had to wait to get a hold of a charger to charge it up in hopes of finding some clue as to who the owner is. Sadly, the owner did not elect to have any contact information engraved on the back of the device. Also, I don't know much about iPods, but it seems as though there should be an easy way to load it with the owner's contact information and have it "boot" to that screen. I searched high and low through the device and about the only clue I could find was the text "De Monstrow."

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

Tension between the government and Pronk escalated after he wrote in his personal Web blog this month (www.janpronk.nl) that Sudanese army losses in recent fighting in northern Darfur "seem to have been very high."

"Reports speak about hundreds of casualties in each of the two battles, many wounded soldiers and many taken as prisoner," he said, adding that morale was low among Sudanese troops in northern Darfur and "some generals have been sacked; soldiers have refused fighting."

On Thursday, the Sudanese armed forces said those remarks amounted to "psychological war against the Sudanese army" and declared that Pronk was "persona non-grata." One day later the military demanded an official apology.

According to the official news agency, the government said it was "committed to cooperate" with the U.N. and would work with Pronk's replacement "in accordance with signed treaties with the U.N. and the current principles of international law."

Mr. Vayner's curious celebrity came after an 11-page cover letter and resume as well as an elaborate video that he had submitted to the Swiss bank giant UBS showed up on two blogs, and then quickly spread on the Internet. The clip, staged to look like a job interview, is spliced with shots of Mr. Vayner lifting weights and ballroom dancing and has him spouting Zen-like inspirational messages.

The video clip flooded e-mail inboxes across Wall Street and eventually appeared on the video-sharing site YouTube.

***

Mr. Vayner's seven-minute clip, entitled "Impossible is nothing," presents images of him bench-pressing what a caption suggests is 495 pounds and firing off what is purported to be a 140-mile-an-hour tennis serve.

The job materials that were leaked and posted for public view included detailed information about him that allowed strangers to scrutinize and harass him, he said. His e-mail inbox quickly filled up, with most of the messages deriding him and, in some cases, threatening him.

Mr. Vayner's experience shows the not-so-friendly side of the social-networking phenomenon. While sites such as YouTube allow aspiring comedians or filmmakers to share their creations with millions of others, they also provide the ideal forum for embarrassing someone on a global scale. Materials can quickly make the rounds on blogs, via e-mail and through online hangouts like MySpace, becoming all but impossible to contain.

Despite the mockery that the video has inspired, he still speaks proudly of his athleticism. Nearly all the feats in the video are his, he said, and they are real. But he says he is not certain that the skiing segment actually shows him.

Visitors to social network heavyweight MySpace dropped to 47.2 million in September from 49.2 million in August, a 4 percent decline, per Nielsen//NetRatings. The decrease was more striking at YouTube, which Google just agreed to acquire for $1.65 billion [Adweek Online, Oct. 9]. Compared to August, traffic in September fell 19 percent to 27.6 million.

Corinna Chang, a Nielsen//NetRatings data analyst, said the traffic dips could be attributed to the start of the school year, when "activities like blogging and video searching would experience a decrease as students are focusing on schoolwork and not leisure activities." She noted that overall Web traffic slipped in September.

Social networks have enjoyed a tremendous run in 2006. Since the start of the year, MySpace traffic has grown 65 percent and YouTube's has increased eightfold. The hefty price paid by Google for YouTube was attributed to the buyer's confidence that it could effectively integrate advertising into the site's existing user-friendly features.

While Nielsen//NetRatings detected a decline in the unique visitors to these sites, it reports they continue to keep visitors for long periods. Average time spent by MySpace visitors in September was just over two hours, a slight increase from August. On YouTube, visitors stayed 33 minutes, up from 26 minutes the previous month.

Reality must smack even harder just after the blockbuster deal in which Google agreed to pay $1.65 billion for YouTube, the video-sharing Web site that has yet to celebrate its first anniversary or its first profits. Friendster essentially created the social networking sector three years ago by offering users a site where they could browse profiles posted by friends and the friends of friends in search of dates and playmates. But so badly did Friendster fumble its early lead that, as of last month, it ranked 14th among all social networking sites tracked by comScore Media Metrix, trailing even myYearbook.com, a site started last year by a 16-year-old high school student.

The Affinity Circles software platform is designed to let basketball fans connect with one another online, create profiles, join groups, share photos, and post blogs.

Phil Taylor, a Senior Writer for Sports Illustrated, said the Blazers investment should be popular with fans.

"I think the fans would love anything that lets them communicate better with each other," Taylor told internetnews.com. "But with a team like the Blazers it could backfire if they give fans an easier way to gripe and complain about the team.

"Web sites and blogs are icing on the cake if you're a good team, but if you don't win it doesn't help."

"It shows they understand and respect the growth of message board and blog communities," Clark said in an email to internetnews.com.

"On the other hand, I have to wonder how it is going to be moderated. If the team restricts negative comments about the organization, people won't respect the credibility of the site. But if they don't moderate it, the site will fall into chaos and nobody will want to participate. It all depends on the people that help out," said Clark who relies on several regular volunteer contributors for content at CelticsBlog.

The main point of potential conflict is the millions of YouTube videos that are embedded on the profiles of MySpace users. Google is expected to integrate advertising into YouTube videos produced by professionals and amateurs alike. As a result, Google could soon have the ability to stream ads to MySpace users who are viewing YouTube videos embedded onto their MySpace pages. The question is whether News Corp. will get a slice of that revenue, and if so, how much.

Google's most successful search advertisers are those who methodically experiment with multiple messages. Sometimes they try thousands of combinations of different texts displayed in response to various search keywords, quickly - often in hours - eliminating those that don't attract the clicks of users and refining those that do, until they arrive at the ideal combination of message and keyword.

A similar process of refinement takes place in Google's AdSense service. It places ads on the Web sites of affiliates with which it shares ad revenues.

I don't know if they're right, but Google's managers now seem to believe they can do the same thing with print, radio and TV, albeit with much of the testing taking place on the more immediate and low-cost medium of the Internet. Buying YouTube will give Google a platform on which advertisers can experiment with TV ads in different forms.

So, movie studios, TV networks, ad agencies, and record companies, here's my plea: Let me advertise your stuff on my web site. Hire some smart folks to put together a Flash player like YouTube's for your site, give me HTML snippets to copy and paste into my blog, and let my visitors see your stuff, and your ads, without the extra clicks and without waiting for your lame Windows Media Player to load. Don't make me go to YouTube for what you, in the interest of your shareholders, should be giving me yourselves.

The "Project Starrlight" blog is on the Zap2it entertainment Web site produced by Tribune Media Services, which also syndicates "Brenda Starr." The comic, created by the late Dale Messick, is now done by Mary Schmich and June Brigman.

Mattison's credits include writing, producing, and starring in the independent films "Fish Without a Bicycle" and "The Third Wish." She has also appeared on "Party of Five," "Beverly Hills 90210," "Married With Children," and other TV shows.

For 90 days, CHEC is focusing on daily tips that will help you reduce exposure to chemicals, toxins, and pollutants - for the benefit of your children's health, the health of your home, and the environment. Visit us often... and please share your own tips too.

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The Bloglines Browser Plug-In will enable you to use the Bloglines RSS aggregator from your browser and subscribe to RSS feeds with one click. The plug-in will be integrated into the RSS Aggregator functionality of your IE7 browser bar and will be accessible through the RSS Aggregator button in your IE7 browser bar. You will need to register with http://www.bloglines.com to use this plug-in.

Now, I got a couple of e-mails I was checking here during the break from people who say, "Oh, no, Rush! Don't get in a war with conservative bloggers. If the media rips you guys apart, it's all over." I am not at war with conservative bloggers. I quote countless posts from many blogs on this program. I use them as resources. I'm referring to one blog post, and I don't even know who it is. This all got started when I cringed when I saw the use of the term "premortem" on a blog site called Insta-Pundit. It hurt me; it irritated me as much as when Tom Davis, congressman from Virginia, goes on Face the Nation and starts speculating to Bob Schieffer or whatever it was, and starts counting up the number of seats his party is going to lose.

No, it's not. But I'm talking about one blog, and it's not even Insta-Pundit. Whoever Insta-Pundit is, is letting somebody else reply to whatever it was I'm saying on the program, and it's a little one-page post that I responded to this morning in the first hour.

I'm going to tell you the blog postings that I regularly read in my RSS reader. I've communicated with many of the people who run them. They're fabulous people, starting with National Review Online, then Hugh Hewitt and his Townhall blog, Captain Ed, Ed Morrissey at Captain's Quarters. The three lawyers at Power Line. These are resources that I have added to everything else that I use for show prep which makes show prep an ongoing, never ending thing. Red State is another site.(I hope I don't forget anybody.) Little Green Footballs. I don't want to leave any out. A.J. Strata, Strata-Sphere. I don't want to leave anybody out here. The American Spectator. You here me talking about these. I'm referring to two days' worth of posts on this one site.

No, not a buttock-related social network, but a blend of MySpace and YouTube aimed at hip-hop fans, at least according to a paper copy of Billboard Magazine. Designed for the "urban youth" demographic, California-based CrackSpace will offer exclusive videos and tracks from artists like Ludacris, T.I., Diddy, Akon, Ghostface, Lloyd Banks, Hi-Tek, Jim Jones and Foxy Brown. They’re also throwing in a MySpace-style social network, a YouTube-inspired video sharing service, a download store and the option to sell your own videos, music, wallpapers and ringtones. The site launches officially on November 1st, but they pre-announced it today and most of the functionality seems to be there already.

At launch, the new section, "The Stump," contains blogs by 17 political bloggers hired specifically for the venture. The bloggers represent a wide range of political ideologies; while some of them also maintain personal blogs, the content they post on AOL is exclusive to the site, said Lewis D'Vorkin, editor in chief, AOL News.

In addition, through a deal with ABC, visitors to The Stump also can ask questions of TV journalists Sam Donaldson, George Stephanopoulos, Jake Tapper and Brian Roberts. Videos of the journalists' responses will be posted each Friday beginning this week, with Donaldson.

With The Stump, AOL aims to both increase users' interaction with the site and expose more AOL users to Web logs, D'Vorkin said. "Our goal is to open up the blogging experience," he said, adding that the blogs allow for users to post unmoderated comments.

As for the iPod reveal, here's Mary-Kate:

Some of the fun music I've been listening to on the trip are the Babyshambles, Cream, and The Doors.

Hey, so we finally had some time to approve all of your wonderful comments yesterday. We read them all! Thank you for all of your sweet music and book suggestions and well wishes.

Keep them coming, and we'll continue to post all of your thoughts for the world to read. Remember: You have to click on the "comment" link to the bottom right of each post to read your messages.

The European Commission proposal would require websites and mobile phone services that feature video images to conform to standards laid down in Brussels.

Ministers fear that the directive would hit not only successful sites such as YouTube but also amateur "video bloggers" who post material on their own sites. Personal websites would have to be licensed as a "television-like service".

But Shaun Woodward, the Broadcasting Minister, described the draft proposal as catastrophic. He said: "Supposing you set up a website for your amateur rugby club, uploaded some images and added a link advertising your local sports shop. You would then be a supplier of moving images and need to be licensed and comply with the regulations."

Last night, Stephen Colbert finally announced the winner of his Green Screen Challenge (which was not a contest). The competition had finally boiled down to two finalists... Bonnie R. and some random guy named George L.

Yes. Yes. George freakin' Lucas made an appearance on the show to present his green screen entry. The man whipped out the big guns from LucasFilm and created a hilarious clip... complete with Jar Jar Binks interaction! I can safely say that's the first time I've ever laughed at Jar Jar.

Hi, this is Tina Fey. I'm in New York at a little party we're having for our cast and crew. We're eating chicken wings and getting ready to watch the show and I hope you're doing the same. Especially the chicken wings part. You may know me from SNL or as the teacher in Mean Girls. And hopefully you'll recognize a lot of people on 30 Rock. Alec Baldwin, international movie star and genius. Tracy Morgan from SNL and The Longest Yard. Super-talented Jane Krakowski from Ally McBeal. Judah Friedlander; he's been in everything from American Splendor to Feast. The delightful Mr. Jack McBrayer from Talladega Nights. The awesome Rachel Dratch from SNL. I love everyone in this cast.

The team uses several scanning tools to monitor sites for OPSEC violations. The tools search for such key words as "for official use only" or "top secret," and records the number of times they are used on a site. Analysts review the results to determine which, if any, need further investigation.

For the 10 Virginia Guardsmen, the mission often becomes personal.

"I have friends over in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan," said Sgt. Yaphet Benton, a network technician in civilian life. "Once I started this mission, I saw a lot of things that can endanger a lot of Soldiers. I see a lot of bios, pictures, names and birthdates. I consider that critical. Terrorists (and persons trying to steal your identity) can use that information."

Based in Arlington, Va., AWRAC was created in 2002 to monitor official Web sites. Its mission was expanded in August 2005 by order of the Army Chief of Staff to include unofficial sites written by servicemembers.

*BLOGS,* OR WEB LOGS, POSTED TO PUBLIC WEBSITES ARE INCREASINGLY USED BY MILITARY PERSONNEL AS PERSONAL JOURNALS. COMMANDERS SHALL ENSURE SUBORDINATES ARE AWARE THAT, IN ACCORDANCE WITH DOD DIRECTIVE 5230.9, *CLEARANCE OF DOD INFORMATION FOR PUBLIC RELEASE,* AND THE JOINT ETHICS REGULATION (DOD 5500.7-R), PERSONAL BLOGS (I.E., THOSE NOT HAVING DOD SPONSORSHIP AND PURPOSE) MAY NOT BE CREATED/MAINTAINED DURING NORMAL DUTY HOURS AND MAY NOT CONTAIN INFORMATION ON MILITARY ACTIVITIES THAT IS NOT AVAILABLE TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC. SUCH INFORMATION INCLUDES COMMENTS ON DAILY MILITARY ACTIVITIES AND OPERATIONS, UNIT MORALE, RESULTS OF OPERATIONS, STATUS OF EQUIPMENT, AND OTHER INFORMATION THAT MAY BE BENEFICIAL TO ADVERSARIES.

I would like to invite you to check out our web site, www.centcom.mil. It's one more resource for information and you're free to use any of it (video, audio, photos and articles) in conversations on your blog.

"A year ago, brands were saying, 'Oh no, not the blogosphere,'" said Peter Hirshberg, chief executive of Technorati, a blog-tracking service that last week, in partnership with Edelman, provided results of a global survey of blog use. "Now they're saying, 'Great, this is an opportunity.'"