Early Thursday morning, Google News shutdown for hours before coming back online with a new feature – little YouTube thumbnails next to news stories. When clicked, users were taken to YouTube news videos. Cool, I guess. But it seems as though these changes caused a worldwide Google sh!tstorm never before seen – Google search wouldn’t load, nor YouTube, nor any Site running Google ads. Basically, half the damn Internet was down for the count. It’s like their servers caught the Google flu.

Needless to say, we started freaking out – along with everybody else. It was so bad, we even used Yahoo search for the first time in years. And while the outages only lasted a little more than an hour, it made us realize exactly how totally and completely f**ked everything would be if Google really went down for any significant amount of time. Kinda makes that whole ‘Internet monopoly’ investigation seem a bit more important, wouldn’t you say?

• Jimmy Fallon Nabs Top Webby Award

• Realistic Map of Europe

• Apple Rejects Nine Inch Nails iPhone Application

• Where to Drink on Cinco de Mayo in NYC

• Yoga Boobs

• My Favorite News Columnist…

At this point, we have all heard of the pending technological apocalypse that will be delivered by the last source we ever thought. Not Apple, Microsoft, or the Peoples Democratic Republic of Korea, but rather – the sun.

Oh yes! Screw what the hippies say, the sun is  public enemy #1. If we could, we should blow it up…or at least try…like Superman-IV-style. The sun is not trying to kill us yet, but it is trying something worse. The sun, the giver of light and life (sorry creationists), is trying to destroy our entire technological infrastructure. Imagine more than a million people without power, the distribution of drinkable water disrupted, transportation, communication and banking upset. In short, trillions of dollars in damage that everyone thought would come with Y2K. (more…)

Want to get in on the eBook action, but don’t have $360 to drop on a Kindle 2? Then definitely check out Shortcovers. Unlike Amazon’s nifty but way overpriced electronic book reader, Shortcovers focuses primarily on the mobile market, capable of delivering hundreds of thousands of titles straight to your mobile phone. (more…)

You’re concerned about Facebook’s new Terms of Service, right? There is only a day and a half left to cast you vote deciding whether or not Zuckerberg goes with the ToS written in September 2008 without user input, or the new one they’ve drafted over the last month based on suggestions from the Facebook community.

Consumerist makes a good point saying, “Facebook is calling the Internet’s collective bluff on being concerned about this. To avoid what one might call the tyranny of the easily outraged—to keep from making a major policy change because of some perfect storm of Twitter, Consumerist, and the mass media—they’re requiring that at least 30% of active users in the past month participate in the vote for it to count.”

They don’t “think that’s entirely unreasonable; after all, if you care about this, it’s painless and quick to cast a vote either way. It creates a huge obstacle to overcome, however. As of tonight—about 40 or so hours before the the voting ends—only 300,000 users have cast their vote. For the vote to count, somewhere between 60 and 70 million users will need to vote. Um, yeah.”

So have you cast you vote yet because the lack of participation is embarrassingly low for a issue we were “concerned” about just a few weeks back. Read all about it here!

Being the internet junkies that we are, we’ve noticed that there’s always at least one audio clip from viral videos that makes us here in the COED office laugh harder than any other part. Which got us thinking, wouldn’t it be awesome to have viral video ringtones? Well, now we do! From Rimjobs to Bill O’Reilly, here are 14 rad viral video ringtones, which you can download in either .Mp3 format or for your iPhone. Enjoy! (more…)

• Hulu Possibly Coming to iPhones

• Top Seven Artists About To Expire

• Lady Gaga Nipple Tape Pictures

• Vijay Singh’s Amazing Hole-in-One Video

• 11 Essential iPhone Apps for a Road Trip

• The Worst Idea In Mafia History

President Obama is not the only one having problems giving a commencement speech. A group at American University is protesting the selection of Congressman Barney Frank for an honorary degree and as the commencement speaker for the American University School of Public Affairs.

A letter written to the School of Public Affairs calls Barney Frank’s record “as a key player in our current economic crisis is almost as offensive as his endless refusal to accept responsibility for it.”  Sarah DeStefano, the founder of the Facebook group “AU Students & Alumni Against Barney Frank @ SPA Commencement ‘09”, told AU’s student newspaper, “The Eagle”, she is “sickened that the university would want to undermine the worth of my education by honoring a man with such a dishonorable record” stating that “Frank stood by and did nothing as our economy tumbled further into dismay.

On the record, he insisted that desires for further oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were ‘overblown’ and that ‘Wall Street would get over it’ if the banks collapsed.” DeStafano wonders how the Congressman “can honestly look students in the eye who are struggling to find a job.” (more…)

John Madden is calling it quits.

NBC said Thursday that the burly ex-coach who has been one pro football’s top broadcast analysts has decided to retire. The 73-year-old Madden has been working for the past three seasons on NBC’s Sunday night NFL game. His last telecast was the Super Bowl between Arizona and Pittsburgh.

Madden’s football video game is one of the highest sellign video games in history, check out 20 Years of Madden Coveres for a good perspective of how the NFL has evolved since 1990.

Check out all the details and tune to ESPN at noon for the press conference.

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Big Brother is about to encroach on your living room. The California Energy Commission is proposing stricter energy-use rules by banning retailers from selling wide-screen TV sets 40 inches or higher. The Commission wants to reduce the strain on the states energy grid and avoid building new power plants because the amount of energy a TV uses is proportional to screen size.

The Consumer Electronics Commission is opposed to this plan because it would eliminate approximately 80 percent of all wide-screen digital TV sets, which would bring about massive job losses and a loss of approximately $50 Million in sales tax revenue. The regulations, if unopposed, are expected to be approved this summer.

Am I the only one who thinks this is one of the stupidest ideas ever proposed? I happen to enjoy HDTV. I like watching “Heroes” and having every image of Hayden Panettiere in bright, close up quality. The last time I checked America is about choice, if you don’t like HDTV’s then don’t buy one. What right do you have to tell me how big a TV I should have? The answer: you don’t. (more…)