• Sorry, Bieber! 'Gangnam' is first video to get 1 billion YouTube views

    Nathan Denette / AP

    "Gangnam Style," that infectiously quirky rap video by South Korean sensation Psy, has shattered yet another record: It has become the first YouTube video to get one billion views.

    Not only that, but Psy will retain bragging rights for some time to come. It'll be quite a while before another video has a shot at earning the same distinction, says Billboard's William Gruger, citing projections provided by Next Big Sound.

    Justin Bieber's "Baby," the second most popular video on YouTube, isn't expected to earn one billion views until late 2014. This is quite noteworthy considering that it took "Gangnam Style" only about five months to hit Friday's milestone. (Amusingly enough, Bieber's manager, Scooter Braun, has at one point tweeted a link to Psy's video, exclaiming "HOW DID I NOT SIGN THIS GUY!?!??!")

    YouTube

    Psy's "Gangnam Style" overtook Justin Bieber's "Baby" so quickly in view counts that we barely had time to learn all the dance moves.

    Psy, whose real name is Park Jae-Sang, has seen some significant success well beyond the one billion view milestone, as YouTube trends manager Kevin Allocca explains in a post on the official YouTube blog. "Gangnam Style" has been viewed in "close to 75 countries, making it one of the most global music sensations ever." Fan tributes to the video are being viewed 20 million times every single day, Psy's own remix of the song has 200 million views, the song may have generated over $8.1 million in advertising deals, and it has been downloaded more than 2.9 million times.

    Considering that the phrase "Gangnam Style" was seeing more than five million searches on YouTube in early October and finished the year as YouTube's top rising search, odds are that Psy's success will continue for a while longer.

    I suppose that means it's time to finally learn those dance moves, huh?

    Related stories:

    Want more tech news or interesting links? You'll get plenty of both if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on Twitter, subscribing to her Facebook posts, or circling her on Google+.

  • Reddit 'Secret Santa' breaks Guinness world record

    TechNewsDaily via Reddit

    Reddit's Secret Santa map shows givers around the globe, with people from 126 countries taking part. Most givers were from the U.S.

    By Leslie Meredith, TechNewsDaily

    Reddit's annual Secret Santa gift-giving program has set a record with 58,504 participants, earning the title of "Largest Online Secret Santa Game" in the Guinness Book of World Records.

    Redditors spent more than $1.4 million on gifts for fellow members, or about $25 per gift.

    Reddit matched up members who signed up for the exchange. Redditors were encouraged to do some "non-creepy" stalking to find out about their matches so they could give an appropriate gift . However, participants were cautioned not to troll — the practice of goading other users.

    "Being matched with a lurker or new member may be difficult but does not give you a pass to troll," Reddit rules read. Rulebreakers would be banned.

    Participants had until Dec. 14 to ship their gifts. Shipping accounted for more than $400,000, bringing the total spent on the program to $1.8 million.

    While the majority of gifters were located in the U.S., 126 countries were represented in the gift exchange, including a Redditor in the southernmost tip of Argentina, one on the island of Fiji and several in ice-clad northern Russia. (Reddit has plotted all participants on a Google map that zooms in to the gifter's block.)

    So what did Redditors get for Christmas? Their photo posts to the page r/subreddit showed that many members received geeky gifts like a "Star Trek" doorbell, edible gifts ranging from South African candy to Idaho potatoes, books, and plenty of meme-themed things like sparkly cats, plastic unicorns and ponies for the bronies .

    Most were thrilled with their gifts. "Every time I participate I am reminded how awesome complete strangers are," a Reddit Secret Santa participant said in a post.

    Secret Santa is now over this year, but Reddit hosts several ongoing exchanges, including one for vinyl  album collectors, fans of Dr. Who and  yarn enthusiasts (yes, the kind you use to knit). And Reddit now has a marketplace of its own where users can purchase gifts year-round.

    Tech expert Katie Linendoll discusses and demonstrates some of the best gadgets for gifting this season, including a remote-controlled UFO that projects messages in midair, wireless speakers, and an iPad keyboard.

    More from TechNewsDaily:

    Copyright 2012 TechNewsDaily, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

  • Vatican says pope beats Justin Bieber on retweets

    Giampiero Sposito / Reuters

    Pope Benedict XVI posts his first tweet using an iPad after his Wednesday general audience in Paul VI's Hall at the Vatican on December 12, 2012.

    By Philip Pullella, Reuters

    VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict, white-haired, 85 and a neophyte to social media site Twitter, has beaten out 18-year old heartthrob Justin Bieber to set a percentage record for retweeting by his followers, the Vatican said on Thursday.

    The Vatican newspaper said that as of noon Italian time on Thursday the pope had 2.1 million followers on Twitter, eight days after his first tweet was sent.

    Mark Blinch / Reuters

    Justin Bieber performs during the half-time show at the 100th CFL Grey Cup championship football game in Toronto, Canada, Nov. 25, 2012.

    While Canadian singer-songwriter Bieber has roughly 15 times as many followers — 31.7 million — the Vatican newspaper said Benedict had beaten Bieber on retweets.

    It said about 50 percent of the pope's followers had retweeted his first tweet on Dec. 12 while only 0.7 percent of Bieber's followers had retweeted one of the singer's most popular tweets on Sept. 26, when he commented on the death by cancer of a 6-year-old fan.

    The Vatican said this was part of a wider trend in which people were looking for more spiritual content.

    The pope already tweets in English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish and Arabic. The newspaper said he will start tweeting in Latin and Chinese soon.

    (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2012. Check for restrictions at: http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp 

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  • 'Lifelogging': Editor wears camera 24/7 for 2 months

    What if you recorded every second of your life and were able to replay it at a moment's notice? For two months, Esquire editor A.J. Jacobs did just that. He talks about what he learned by being able to rewind his life to catch anything he missed, and how the people in his life reacted.

    Imagine settling an argument by rewinding video from an earlier conversation, or being able to find your missing car keys by checking footage from when you last came in the house.

    With everyone already slapping half their lives on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, people wearing cameras on their ears or in their glasses to film every waking minute of the day may be the next step of what is known as “life-logging.’’

    In an experiment of extreme documenting, Esquire editor-at-large A.J. Jacobs decided to film nine straight weeks of his life with a camera on his ear that resembles a Bluetooth device for a story that appears in the January issue of the magazine. He hoped to find out if recording everything would help his memory, make him less lazy, and force people to censor themselves around him because they knew the camera was rolling.

    “We forget 90 percent of our lives, and the 10 percent we do remember is totally distorted, but we have the technology to fix that,’’ Jacobs told David Gregory on TODAY Thursday. “Think of the implications, like if I had an argument with my wife and she said, ‘Oh, you never told me that, that’s not what you said.’ I could rewind (the video).’’

    While it sounded good in theory, it didn’t work in reality when it came to resolving arguments around the house.

    “That kind of was a disaster,’’ Jacobs said. “It was kind of a lose-lose. When I was wrong, I was flat-out wrong, and when I was right, then she just got angry."

    Using the video as a back-up for a faulty memory also had its pros and cons.

     “Sometimes that works, and other times it takes you an hour-and-half to find the wallet on the video, and my wife found it in 10 minutes looking the traditional way,’’ he said. “But I think that will change because they’re developing technologies like Google for video so you will say, ‘Where is my wallet?’’’

    Jacobs was also eager to test whether recording everything would modify the behavior of those around him. Would people be healthier if everything they ate was being filmed? Would people be less likely to talk behind others’ backs if they knew it was being recorded?

    “It totally affected people’s behavior,’’ he said. “No one would gossip around me, which is terrible. After a while, people did kind of forget about it and started to go back to their normal selves.’’

    Jacobs believes that people recording their lives will eventually become the norm. In 2013, Google plans to introduce Internet-enabled glasses that have the capacity to display data on the lenses and record every moment.

    “I think millions of people will be doing this in 10 years,’’ Jacobs said. “It sounds far-fetched, but Google glasses are coming out, and there are advantages. I think once the technology becomes easier and you can just slip on the glasses, I am going to go back to doing it because it’s really an interesting way to live.’’

    Read more:

    Animation students get an 'A' for viral eagle hoax video

    'Gangnam Style,' Kony, 'Call Me Maybe' lead YouTube's top 10 of 2012

    In 2012, you asked Google 'what is love?' and searched for 'funny pictures'

    Facebook in 2012: A year of 'Hunger Games' and 'Duck Dynasty', TBH

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Animation students get an 'A' for viral eagle hoax video

    In a viral YouTube video that has had millions doing a double-take since it was posted on Wednesday, a golden eagle appears to swoop out of the sky and snatch up a toddler right off the ground.   

    It turns out the bird was just flying into the YouTube hoax Hall of Fame. And in the process, it got a group of students at a Montreal animation school an "A'' for their class project. The eagle and the baby were digitally created by four students at Montreal’s Centre NAD, a 3-D animation school, who spent more than two months and 500 hours putting together the clip.

    “We did all the basic steps of integrating 3-D elements for a film,’’ co-creator Normand Archambault told NBC News. “We rigged the eagle, the kid and then we integrated it into the clip.’’

    With 16 million views and counting, suffice it to say that the video has earned these students top marks.   

    “The way we were graded, if you get 100 views, you get a 100 (grade), and we surpassed that, so it was great,’’ Archambault said.

    A closer look at the video by eagle-eyed viewers and reporters revealed  that the bird has no shadow in its descent and then suddenly a shadow appears. The bird’s wing is also cut in half, only to quickly reappear. And most tellingly, there were no reports by Montreal police of infants being snatched up by an eagle. That type of bird does not call Montreal home.

    This is not the first video hoax created by students from Centre NAD, which also fabricated a digital clip of a penguin escaping from a Montreal zoo.

    Hoaxes have become big business in the advertising world. Viral video marketing agency Thinkmodo recently fooled the public into thinking three people were flying through the skies of Manhattan when it was really a stunt to create buzz for an action film. The “people’’ were elaborately-equipped remote-controlled aircrafts, but the video racked up seven million views on YouTube.

    “At the end it’s about us creating something that’s super, super cool and awesome, and it’s a ‘wow’ factor and people share it and just go, ‘Hey, you got to see this video,’’’ Thinkmodo co-founder Michael Krivicka told NBC News.

    Read more:

     

  • 'Gangnam Style,' Kony, 'Call Me Maybe' lead YouTube's top 10 of 2012

    Hey sexy lady! It's time for YouTube's top 10 countdown of 2012, kicking off with, yes, you guessed it, our new best friend, Korean rapper PSY.

    With nearly a billion views on YouTube, there's one indisputed king and he's doing dance moves nobody's ever seen before — and only the YouTubers attempt to replicate.

    Shocker in No. 2 - This isn't Gotye's original video for "Somebody That I Used to Know" but one of the multitude of stunt covers. This one, by Walk Off The Earth, features five band members simultaneously playing the same guitar.

    Possibly the longest video ever to go super viral, this documentary about atrocities performed by Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony was the third most watched video of the year. 

    In fourth place is Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe," and no, not one of that insanely viral song's 7,000 cover versions.

    The elections had to turn up somewhere, but who would have thought that a mock Romney/Obama rap battle (No. 5) would be the winner, with over 45 million views?

    No. 6 is actually a commercial for the TNT cable channel ... in Belgium. Not where you'd expect the awesomest TV promo in history, which has to be the most dramatic thing to ever happen in this sleepy Flemish town.

    Do you love pizza? Not as much as this guy. And that's just the beginning of the insanely popular Spoken Reasons' rant about relationships (No. 7). His YouTube followers are legion, and with good reason.

    The eighth slot brings more music, an energetic dubstep violin jam starring the video game world's favorite angel, Lindsey Stirling.

    You may recall back in February of 2012, a man posted a video of himself, shooting his daughter's laptop as a disciplinary measure, and the entire world went nuts.

    Rounding out the top 10 is a highlight reel of daredevil Felix Baumgartner, who made history on Red Bull's dime, jumping from a capsule 128,000 feet in the air and surviving the trip back to Earth.

    We recommend you clicking play on all of them at once, and listening to the chaos that ensues. Or, if you want to view them in a more orderly fashion, go to YouTube's Rewind page.

  • Perfect tech gifts for the women on your list

    Whether you are shopping for a female tech fan, a new mom or an overworked professional, TODAY's Kathie Lee and Hoda have 25 great gift ideas for any type of woman out there.

    By Carley Knobloch, Digitwirl.com

    You don’t need to be tech-savvy to give gadget-y gifts, and neither do the folks on your list! If you’re still looking for great gift ideas, consider some of these tech-centric items that anyone can figure out. Whether they’re looking to get fit, be a better cook, or just catch up on some reading, there’s something for everyone, including:

    Belkin

    The Belkin Chef Stand + Stylus helps your iPad act as a recipe book that's easy to see and the tablet will stay clean.

    Foodies
    Cuisinart’s PerfecTemp Water Kettle ($99) is great for tea and coffee lovers (it quickly gets water to the perfect brewing temp), but it’s also handy for speedy cooks who hate watching water boil. If your top chef is already digitally inclined, the Belkin Chef Stand + Stylus ($40) will keep her iPad clean.

    Cuisinart

    Cuisinart PerfecTemp Water Kettle

    Voracious readers
    My favorite easy-to-use readers right now are the Nook HD and the new iPad mini (from $329). What’s even more perfect for magazine junkies is a NextIssue (from $9.99/month) subscription, granting your friend unlimited access to over 75 magazines.

    Workout buddies
    The Fitbit Zip ($59) is anything but a boring old pedometer. This teeny-tiny device tracks your steps, movement, and activity, wirelessly syncing everything to your computer and smartphone. Better yet, the program allows you to challenge friends, so make this a double gift, and keep one for yourself!

    Urban gardeners
    Creating an indoor garden for busy city-dwellers has never been easier. Click & Grow ($59) creates self-watering flower pots, dosing your plants with the correct amount of water, nutrients, and air. Plus, the sleek, minimalist design means it’ll fit in anywhere.

    Biscotti

    Biscotti turns a TV into a high-def video phone.

    Long-distance loved ones
    For those who like things on the big screen or for older relatives who may not always be near a computer, Biscotti ($150) turns a TV into a high-def video phone. Controlled by a simple remote, Biscotti makes placing and answering calls is easy. Plus, the wider view allows you to squeeze in the whole family. When you can’t connect, make memories to show later with the Vivitar XVN-1 ($149), a powerhouse video and still camera in a tiny, well-priced package.

    Home improvers
    A great family gift — for your own or maybe some other branch of the family — Nest is a smart thermostat that auto-adjusts your house temperature, learns your patterns, and shuts off unnecessary heating/cooling while you’re away. The best part? Giving Nest is kind of like giving money: Nest can cut your bills by 20 percent.

    Juicy Couture

    Faux fur earmuffs with headphones

    The digitally fashion-forward
    Earmuffs are so hot this season. Juicy Couture ($98) pumps things up even more with a pair featuring built-in headphones and faux fur. Plus Nordstrom's tech-friendly gloves ($24) mean you can keep your hands toasty while you text out in the cold.

    Digital artist
    Use the Sensubrush ($39) to transform your tablet into a canvas you can create a masterpiece on.  It feels just like a paintbrush, but it’s designed to work with all your touchscreen devices to help you create beautiful art.  Eat your heart out, Picasso.

    More stories from TODAY Digital Life:

    Carley Knobloch is a personal tech expert and host of Digitwirl.com. Carley scours the Web to find gadgets and apps that make managing life a little easier. Her Webby-nominated show "Digitwirl" offers up bite-sized tech tips and gadgets that save time and money. Carley also decodes social media on eHow's Tech channel and "The Ricki Lake Show." She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, two kids, a springer spaniel, and myriad tablets.

  • Mr. Rogers photo, words of advice go viral in wake of shootings

    During a time when so many are wondering how to talk to their children about the school massacre in Newtown, Conn., some familiar voices of reassurance have surfaced online. Among them is Fred Rogers, even though the children's television icon passed away in 2003.

    Jim Judkis

    Fred Rogers meets children at a school in Pittsburgh in a photograph taken by Jim Judkis.

    "Mister Rogers Neighborhood" went off the air in 2001, but the TV host's calm approach and knack for relating to kids is being called upon now. In a message that's gone viral on Facebook, and originated on PBS' "Helping Children Deal with Tragic Events" web page, Rogers talks about what his mother taught him when it came to scary situations.

    "When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping," Rogers said. "To this day, especially in times of 'disaster,' I remember my mother's words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers -- so many caring people in this world."

    On the Facebook page 170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting, the words were attached to a photo showing Rogers interacting with a young child. More than 48,000 people "liked" the image and 88,000 had shared it by Monday afternoon.

    On the Washington Post website, Maura Judkis wrote about the photograph, which was taken by her father Jim Judkis during a shoot for People magazine. The photographer is sure that if Rogers were alive today, he'd be doing anything he could to help the children of Newtown.

    LeVar Burton, who hosted "Reading Rainbow" on PBS from 1983-2005, shared his own thoughts on the Reading Rainbow blog. "I offer prayers for the families and the community devastated by this violence against the innocent. This year has seen several tragic shootings which are terrifying for all of us. When this happens in an elementary school, a place of safety, of learning, of play, our suffering is amplified. It would be best of course if children never have to hear about events like these, however that is not the world we seem to live in!"

    "Sesame Street," another childhood mainstay, is not going to air a special episode aimed at addressing the events in Connecticut, but has posted resources online to help parents talk about what their kids might be seeing or hearing.

    Related content:

  • Morgan Freeman did not blame the media for Newtown shootings

    Justin Lane / EPA file

    Morgan Freeman.

    Many people -- including celebrities -- have spoken out on the horrific tragedy that struck Newtown, Conn., on Friday, when a 20-year-old gunman opened fire and killed 26 people, including 20 children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

    However, Morgan Freeman is not one of those people. The actor has not released a comment on the incident that took place a few days ago, despite numerous stories reporting otherwise. 

    The lengthy quote attributed to Freeman is indeed a hoax.

    President Obama tears up when addressing Connecticut shooting

    "Morgan neither made statements or posted those statements. We are trying to find out who did, but they did not originate from him," the actor's rep told E! News.

    So what did the Oscar winner allegedly say?

    Celebrity response to Sandy Hook shooting: gun control demands, outrage toward NRA

    The remark floating around online that was said to be from Freeman stated the following: "You want to know why. This may sound cynical, but here's why. It's because of the way the media reports it. Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are household names, but do you know the name of a single victim of Columbine? Disturbed people who would otherwise just off themselves in their basements see the news and want to top it by doing something worse, and going out in a memorable way. Why a grade school? Why children? Because he'll be remembered as a horrible monster, instead of a sad nobody."

    "Dark Knight Rises: shooting: Aftermath of a tragedy


    The falsely-attributed quote continued, "CNN's article says that if the body count 'holds up,' this will rank as the second deadliest shooting behind Virginia Tech, as if statistics somehow make one shooting worse than another. Then they post a video interview of third-graders for all the details of what they saw and heard while the shootings were happening. Fox News has plastered the killer's face on all their reports for hours. Any articles or news stories yet that focus on the victims and ignore the killer's identity? None that I've seen yet. Because they don't sell. So congratulations, sensationalist media, you've just lit the fire for someone to top this and knock off a day care center or a maternity ward next. You can help by forgetting you ever read this man's name, and remembering the name of at least one victim. You can help by donating to mental health research instead of pointing to gun control as the problem."

    -- Reporting by Marcus Mulick

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  • 'Fifty Shades Freed' ties up Amazon.com as most popular book in 2012

    © Neil Hall / Reuters / Reuters

    E L James, author of Fifty Shades of Grey, poses for photographers during a book signing in London.

    (Reuters) - E.L. James' erotic romance novel "Fifty Shades Freed: Book Three of the Fifty Shades Trilogy" was the best-selling book on Amazon this year, followed by the thriller "Gone Girl," the online retailer said on Friday.

    "This was truly the year of the billionaire bad boy in romance," said Sara Nelson, editorial director of books and Kindle at Amazon.com.

    "While E.L. James published the first two books in her Fifty Shades trilogy in 2011, so they aren't eligible for our 2012 list, the series really took off this year and propelled the third installment and the omnibus edition onto our Top 10 list," she added in a statement.

    Sylvia Day's "Bared to You: A Crossfire Novel" came in at No.4 and "No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden" by Mark Owen was fifth.

    Day had two novels in Amazon's Top 10: "Reflected in You: A Crossfire Novel" captured the seventh spot, just ahead of John Grisham's "The Racketeer" and William Landay's "Defending Jacob: A Novel."

    "The Marriage Bargain (Marriage to a Billionaire)" by Jennifer Probst was No. 6 and David Baldacci's "The Innocent" rounded out the Top 10.

    (Reporting by Patricia Reaney; Editing by Christine Kearney and Jan Paschal)

    (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2012. Check for restrictions at: http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp

    More Digital Life:

    From a photo of a mom breastfeeding her three-year-old to Michelle Obama talking about "Fifty Shades of Grey," Kelly Wallace of iVillage.com talks about the stories that sparked chatter among women over the past year.

     

  • Bare with her: Grandma searches Amazon.com for teen books, finds porn

    Amazon.com

    Martha Welter's search on Amazon.com for a book for her 12-year-old granddaughter started out innocently ...

    A Chicago woman’s recent search on Amazon.com for books for teenaged girls turned up scores of pornographic books.  And now — more than two weeks after she first alerted Amazon to the problem — the books have still not been taken down, NBC Chicago's Unit Five Investigative Team has found.

    It was November 26th — Cyber Monday — when Martha Welter logged on to Amazon to shop for books for her four grandchildren for Christmas.  She’s a frequent Amazon shopper and has kept up a tradition of giving books to her grandkids. "For some reason I’m always able to find books that they really like," she says.

    Welter found a book for her eight-year-old granddaughter, then her ten-year-old grandson. She then set out to find a new book for her 12-year-old granddaughter.

    Starting at the Amazon.com home page, she refined her search from "All" items to just "Books." Then she typed "teen" in the search box, and clicked on one of the auto-fill terms that popped up: "Teen books for girls.”  Then — because she wanted to choose a recently-published book, Welter clicked on "New Releases — Last 30 days" in the left-hand column.

    "I go through the first page, and that’s fine,"  she says.  She finds such books as "Throwing Like a Girl," and "Pretty Little Liars."

    "And I go to the second page, and there I find adult picture books," Welter says. "Adult, pornographic picture books. I can’t even say the name of them. "Most of the titles can’t be mentioned here, either. Some of the milder are "Sexy College Girl Enjoying Herself," "Hot Asian Girl," and "Wild Beach Night." Most are listed on the Amazon site as "adult picture books" — each with a banner over a suggestive photo saying "Look Inside!"  Inside each "picture book" are more photos of women, along with an offer to download the entire picture book onto a digital device for a small cost – or borrow for free.

    And it’s not just a few books. In the total of 140 books featured on Amazon as "teen books for girls" released in the past 30 days, Unit Five counted 91 graphic adult picture books – nearly two-thirds of all the search results.

    "I was speechless," Welter says. "I just could not believe that this was happening. So right away I’m on the phone to [Amazon] customer service." She says Amazon representatives promised to follow up on her complaint.

    "I wait until three days have gone by," says Welter. "Those books are still there.  I kept on e-mailing."

    And on Friday, four days after Welter first alerted Amazon to the search results, she got an e-mail from the customer service department, which read, in part:

    Hello,
    From your message, I understand that you have seen some Pornographic books in recent releases of books for teen girls.
    I appreciate you taking the time to share your opinions about website information.
    We introduced this feature so that individuals using our web search feature would be presented with the opportunity to discover related items of interest.
    I’ve passed your message on to the appropriate people in our company.

    "I don’t think anyone I was corresponding with actually went and did this search to see what I was finding," Welter says. She eventually wrote to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and a few days later she got a reply from a representative in Amazon’s Executive Customer Relations department. 

    "She told me I was searching wrong," Welter says.
     
    In part, the woman told her:

    The adult themed books you saw were a result of you clicking on “Last 30 Days” which moved you outside of your current search results.  To see the newest titles within your current search results, you can use the “Sort by” feature which is in the upper right hand corner of your search results page.

    So I did that, and they still popped up," says Welter. Unit Five followed the same directions spelled out by the Amazon representative, and still found the adult books.

    Welter wrote back to the representative to let her know the adult books still appeared. She has not heard back — and more than two weeks later the books are still there.

    "What concerns me about this is that young people can go on Amazon.com — you don’t have to prove that you’re 18," says Welter.  "They can’t go in an adult book store. They should not be able to find this stuff so easily online."

    So how is it happening? Unit Five found that the books are being uploaded through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing service, which Amazon advertises online as "the fast and easy way to self-publish your books for sale in the Kindle Store." Amazon even offers a video tutorial on how to upload a book and list it on Amazon’s website. 

    And these days it’s hard for any company to curate what is posted to its site, according to Howard Tullman, president of Tribeca/Flashpoint Media Arts Academy in Chicago, and an expert on web-based media throughout the internet.  “”It’s totally the Wild West,” he says.  "Anything goes; anything can be published.  The truth is, the volume of everything that is going on the web is beyond human capabilities to edit or review."

    Amazon does issue "Content Guidelines" for what it allows to be published. "We don’t accept pornography or offensive depictions of graphic sexual acts," the guidelines say. "What we deem offensive is probably about what you would expect."  Amazon adds that “we reserve the right to make judgments about whether content is appropriate and to choose not to offer it.  We may also terminate your participation in the KDP program if you don’t adhere to these content guidelines.”

    Unit Five repeatedly contacted Amazon.com by phone and e-mail about Welter’s search results and Unit Five’s findings, but so far Amazon has not responded. 

    Welter says she would describe Amazon’s attitude towards her complaint as "dismissive." 

    "No one that I had contact with seemed to have any concern that this was happening," she says.

    But she is still hoping to hear from the company. "I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know where else to go with it," says Welter. "I would hope that somehow they would get the message and somebody would actually look at this. I can’t imagine that they would be doing this intentionally."

    Documents

     

  • Kanye West's leather skirt steals the show at Sandy benefit

    Larry Busacca / Getty Images

    Skirting the issue: Rapper Kanye West performs in a Givenchy leather skirt at a concert benefiting the victims of Hurricane Sandy on Dec. 12 in New York City.

    Kanye’s never one to make a subtle entrance.

    The rapper, 35, had Twitter abuzz Wednesday evening when he wore a Givenchy leather skirt paired with "meggings" (which are all the rage these days) at the 12-12-12 concert to benefit Hurricane Sandy. As he performed hits like “Gold Digger” and “Touch the Sky,” fans were far more interested in dissecting his unconventional outfit, with some calling it a “disaster” while others pondered whether “Beyonce wore it better” and wondered hey, “why no fishnets?”

    Even celebrities chimed in, including (a little too) fashion-forward Jared Leto, who joked “OK, I admit it. I let Kanye borrow my skirt.”

    And of course, as with all  big pop culture moments these days, the garment quickly spawned its own Twitter feed, @kanyesSkirt. According to a Thursday morning tweet, the skirt is currently in negotiations for its own "E! True Hollywood Story."

    Julio Cortez / AP file

    Old territory: Kanye West, in a leather skirt, performs with Jay Z during the "Watch The Throne" tour on Nov. 6, 2011.

    This isn’t Kanye’s first time in the women’s department. He has performed in a leather skirt before, including during a 2011 concert with Jay-Z in New Jersey. It’s a high fashion trend generally spotted on only the most fearless of male fashion risk-takers – like designer Marc Jacobs – so it’s no surprise Kanye would opt for the bold look: He now features collections on the Paris Fashion Week runway, designs sneakers for Louis Vuitton, and c’mon, gets away with women's shirts and even a red leather motorcycle jacket.

    Getty Images, AP file

    A history of fashion: Kanye West at the 84th Annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on November 25, 2010; Kanye West makes a guest appearance during a Jay-Z concert on Sept. 13, 2010, in New York.

    Kanye had at least one fan out there, his boo – Kim Kardashian, who tweeted, “Awwwwwwww I'm so excited right now!!!!! He looks so cute!"

     That’s the power of love, folks.

    What do you think of Kanye's bold look? Share your thoughts!

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