Yogi Land

CBS has shown the door to the blogger who tweeted an erroneous report of legendary Penn State University football coach Joe Paterno’s death last weekend.

Blogger Adam Jacobi wrote on Friday, “I had an awesome 17 months with CBSSports.com. I’m sorry to everyone, most importantly the Paterno family, for how it ended.”

He followed it with this message:

In the end, CBS had to let me go for the Paterno story going out the way it did, and I understand completely. Thanks, everyone, for reading.

— Adam Jacobi (@Adam_Jacobi) January 27, 2012

The fiasco began last Saturday when Onward State, an online publication run by Penn State students, tweeted that Paterno had passed away. The 85-year-old coach was previously reported — and confirmed — by many news outlets to be gravely ill with lung cancer and in the hospital.

The @OnwardState Twitter account posted this: “Our sources can now confirm: Joseph Vincent Paterno has passed away tonight at the age of 85.”

The story quickly spread online as an attributed rumor, while many news outlets held off on reporting it as fact. But CBSSports.com tweeted that “Joe Paterno has died at the age of 85.” The message was ostensibly sent by Jacobi, and did not name a source.

The false reports were soon debunked by the Paterno family. Joe Paterno died the next day.

Onward State‘s managing editor resigned from his position shortly after Paterno’s family denied the premature reports.

Jacobi’s dismissal announced Friday is not the first time CBS has cut ties with a blogger over erroneously tweeted reports. In September, blogger Shira Lazar was let go after tweeting that Steve Jobs had died. Jobs died the following month.

Media commentator Alan Mutter, who writes the blog Reflections of a Newsosaur and is a former newspaper editor and Silicon Valley CEO, said that the recent propensity of false reports like the one that cost Adam Jacobi his job are symptomatic of today’s perpetually in-motion news cycle.

“It’s been a great tradition in the news business to always want to be the first with the most, but the problem is that the traditional latency between news gathering and news production — the different editing layers and time it took to actually go to the press and things like that — is gone today, ” he told Mashable.

“The good news with tools like Twitter is that we have many more people contributing to the conversation,” Mutter said. “But if they’re wrong, or especially trying to mislead or missing the facts, then that’s the price we pay for instantaneous communication.”

What’s more important to you — the speed or accuracy of news delivery? Do you think people such as Adam Jacobi deserve to be fired, or do large publications like CBS deserve equal blame? Let us know in the comments.

More About: Media, sports, Twitter

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The latest political parody — Sh*t Politicians Say — just hit YouTube, keeping the unstoppable Sh*t [Insert Stereotype] Say meme alive for yet another day.

Go ahead and bemoan the meme all you want; you’re still going to watch the clip. And you should because it has multiple purposes. Other than trying to induce laughs, the video serves as an advertisement disguised as a meme for Americans Elect. Let’s call it a meme-vertisement for the the group’s online political campaign.

Americans Elect dubs itself the “first nonpartisan nomination,” which means it wants to provide Americans a third candidate — not just a Democrat or Republican — to vote for during the 2012 presidential race.

Sh*t Politicians Say landed just hours before Thursday night’s Republican presidential debate and stars actor Joe Leon. In true political fashion, his character rattles off common jargon heard from people running for office.

Do these ring a bell? Moral fiber, family values, trust me, three-point plan, earmarks, tough question, children are our future, Washington outsider, jobs, my opponent — all sound familiar.

SEE ALSO: MTV’s ‘Power of 12′ Campaign Creates Fantasy Political Election Game

Taking jabs at politicians is nothing new. For example, this presidential election season alone has spawned funny memes poking fun at Rick Santorum’s sweater vests and Rick Perry’s controversial “Strong” commercial.

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Bonus: Political Gaffes Caught on Tape

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Speaking of Rick Perry, remember his “Oops” memory lapse during a debate in November? That moment and these nine other gaffes have been etched into our mind’s eye for better or worse.

Rick Perry: "Oops"

2012 presidential candidate Rick Perry drew a massive blank Wednesday night during CNBC’s “Your Money, Your Vote” GOP debate. On stage in Michigan, Perry attempted to rattle off three federal government agencies he would eliminate, but failed to remember number three: “Commerce, education and the … uh, um, what’s the third one there. Let’s see … ” The mental block lasted about 40 more seconds before Perry uttered, “Oops.”

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: memes, Politics, Video, YouTube

I’m a woman who is too young to remember the Reagan administration, but Google has me pegged as a middle-aged man.

Given my habit of browsing technology websites, the search engine probably placed me in my father’s demographic a long time ago. But it didn’t break the news to me until Tuesday, when it rolled out a revamped privacy policy that drew my attention to my account.

That’s when I noticed a settings tab in my Google account called Ads Preferences, launched a few months ago, that shows the basic profile Google has compiled based upon my web browsing habits. Other websites who partner with Google use the profile to target ads on their sites.

Here is a snapshot of what Google thinks I’m interested in:

Look like a 35- to 44-year-old dude to you? Google, too. Google uses a cookie, that is, a long string of alphanumeric characters, to convey this snapshot along with its guess for my age and gender to other websites.

If Google were to have attached a non-PR-filtered, honest note to this page (it didn’t), I imagine it would say something link this:

“See, this is all we’re concerned about in this whole tracking business. It’s not even detailed enough information to distinguish a middle-aged man from a girl technology reporter. To us, your profile is just a series of random digits, nothing more. And if you don’t like it, we are making it so easy to opt out that you have no excuse not to.”

Easy it may be, but there’s still a battle raging between privacy advocates on one side and Google and advertising agencies on the other over whether an opt-out solution to privacy in behavioral advertising, like the one Google participates in, is sufficient.

User data has become the number one factor that advertisers take into account when searching for a media partner, and the Network Advertising Initiative released a study that found behaviorally targeted advertising secured more than 2.5 times as much revenue per ad as its non-targeted counterpart. Both parties are hoping to prove that a choice to opt out of behavioral tracking is sufficient privacy protection.

Privacy advocates, meanwhile, have demanded an opt-in solution that would only allow behavioral tracking if a user consented to it, citing, for instance, a 2010 study in which only 51% of participants realized that online behavioral advertising “happened a lot.”

“People understand that the [grocery store] is obviously keeping track of the food that they buy, but they’re getting it cheaper,” John Simpson, a privacy advocate with the non-profit Consumer Watchdog advocacy group, told me about a year ago while explaining why he opposed an opt-out solution. “And if they’re using those cards, they’re willing to give up some of their information for cheaper prices. The thing about what’s going on online is nobody really understood what they were giving up.”

Google looks to be making a bigger effort to help people understand how they are being tracked. And after looking at my own profile, what it’s telling other sites about me doesn’t make me paranoid. The step is probably not a big enough effort for most privacy advocates — some people don’t know how to find the opt-out button on the settings page and it’s easy to imagine the havoc Google could wreak with information it is capable of collecting — but is it enough for you?

Let us know in the comments.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, hidesy

More About: behavioral advertising, Google, privacy

Somewhere, the spirit of Steve Jobs is smiling.

The company he so reluctantly left behind is in better shape than ever. Jobs’ hand-picked successor, Tim Cook, is a well-compensated, self-effacing steady hand on the tiller — exactly as advertised. And every indicator of the company’s health you care to name is doing better than even the most optimistic predictions.

Apple had $97.6 billion in the bank as of the end of its first quarter, it announced Tuesday; that amount has almost certainly crossed the $100 billion mark by now. (The company’s first quarter actually ended on December 31.) It sold 37 million iPhones in the quarter, 7 million more than Wall Street was expecting. Sales of iPads and Macs also beat estimates. In other words, Apple owned Christmas.

And yet, far from crowing, the company sent out one clear message on its earnings call Tuesday evening: we can do better.

Cook was quick to point out that Apple had been struggling with shortages all quarter. Tragic floods in Thailand have led to poor availability for components across its devices. The company has not been able to make as many iPhone 4Ss as it would have liked. And it wasn’t even able to sell the 4S in mainland China, due to a rampage on launch day.

All of which left analysts wondering: what would the quarter have looked like if everything went Apple’s way? And if none of those problems can lay the company low, when will this amazing growth spurt end?

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An Abundance of Caution

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If anything seems likely to hobble Apple in the future, it’s that Cook’s greatest strength — his caution — is also his weakness.

Jobs may have ruled with an iron fist, and it was he who began storing up Apple’s cash to make a war chest large enough that it could be wielded as a weapon. But he also knew the value of throwing out as many spitballs as possible, in the hopes of finding one that stuck. At Jobs’ memorial service, design guru Jonathan Ive fondly remembered the one phrase Jobs would use above all others: “Hey, Jonny, here’s a dopey idea.”

Those dopey ideas begat the iMac, iPhone and iPad. They also begat the countless tiny improvements which helped each of those devices redefine their category.

But it’s hard to imagine Cook peppering Ive with dopey ideas. So who is throwing out spitballs at Apple now? Is upper management making it okay for the company’s designers and engineers to try new ideas and fail fast? Or is caution the new watchword throughout Apple?

If so, then Apple could find itself being out-innovated by the competition. As one of the analysts on the earnings call pointed out, Android phones already beat the iPhone in a couple of categories: screen size and speed (ie. 4G). Cook responded that Apple didn’t consider itself in a race with Android and was focused on creating the best product it could.

Yet if Android handset makers manage to overcome the battery life issues that plague 4G phones — the Droid Razr Maxx, set to launch Thursday, promises to do just that with an eye-popping 21 hours of battery life — then they have a very real claim to be selling more innovative devices than Apple. If that impression sticks among consumers, even Apple’s giant war chest won’t necessarily help it turn the tide.

It may seem almost too ridiculous to consider that Apple could be knocked off its lofty perch. But rest assured, it will happen sooner or later. All companies die eventually; all rise and fall. Cook is doing his best to push all problems into the far future, and in many ways he’s doing the best job imaginable.

But Apple already has two bars to jump this year: the launches of the iPad 3 and the iPhone 5. Expectations are ridiculously high. To meet them, Cook had better be throwing lots of spitballs behind the scenes — or appointing Jobsian idea-generating leaders who can.

More About: apple, earnings, ipad, iphone

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Whether you love or despise 17-year-old international pop star Justin Bieber, you have his mom to thank (or blame) for thrusting him into the spotlight five years ago this month.

On Jan. 19, 2007, Pattie Mallett uploaded a video of her son performing Ne-Yo’s “So Sick” in Stratford, Ontario to Bieber’s YouTube channel — kidrauhl.

Rap star Usher signed Bieber to a record label the following year in 2008. Since then, Bieber has taken the social media world by storm, attracting millions of followers across many networks. Bieber has 16.7 million Twitter followers and 39.4 million Facebook “Likes” and he’s just warming up.

Google Chrome recently chronicled Bieber’s impressive reach and presence on Google and YouTube in an ad below. The YouTube-star-turned-mega-celebrity most recently made a splash at the Consumer Electronics Show where he endorsed a gadget for robotic toys company TOSY.

SEE ALSO: YouTube in 2011 — How Its Busy Year Affects You

For a quick glimpse at Bieber’s high-profile YouTube ride, check out the fun tidbits below thanks to Danish social media agency Crisp Social, that created the infographic for Mashable. Bieber Fever, anyone?

More About: celebrities, Entertainment, justin bieber, Music, videos, viral videos, YouTube

Following weeks of speculation, it appears Research in Motion (RIM) is finally ready to oust Co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis. The two are, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, stepping aside on Monday and will be replaced by a company insider.

The move comes after a solid year of miscues and blunders by Balsillie and Lazaridis. 2011 got off to a promising start with the introduction of the Playbook tablets, but RIM bungled the launch, leaving out key features like a native e-mail client. Later in the year the company announced the name for a new combined OS only to learn they didn’t have rights to the name. The company also suffered through an extended service outage and took what some believe was too long to respond directly to customers about the situation.

The company has also steadily slipped down the ladder in smartphone market share as Android competitors and Apple released more and more innovative and well-received handsets. The calls for RIM to replace its co-CEOs have been growing steadily, even as RIM gets its house in order. Just this month, the company finally unveiled Playbook OS 2.0 which does feature its own email client. Now the question is what the new CEO can do to return the Canadian technology company to the front of the mobile technology pack.

What do you think? Did RIM make the right move? If so, did it make it soon enough? Share your take in the comments.

More About: RIM

Thousands of websites are created every day, yet sometimes the Internet feels a bit stale. How do you filter through all of the junk when you want to discover something new?

StumbleUpon is a site that randomly shuffles through websites, curating content and information specifically for you. Since its start, the site has surpassed 20 million users, and continues to be a dominant source of traffic for the world’s top social media sites.

According to StumbleUpon, the site delivers more than 1.2 billion recommendations per month, and users spend seven hours per month stumbling. Most surprisingly, according to this infographic, the average stumbling session lasts 69 minutes.

SEE ALSO: StumbleUpon’s Most Popular Searches and Links of 2011

Those numbers might seem a bit overwhelming, especially if you don’t have that kind of time to devote to the site. However, there are a few things you can do ahead of time, and while stumbling, that’ll provide you with the best sites specific to you. Here are 10 ways to get the best stumbles.

1. Plan Ahead

If you take the extra steps in the beginning to completely fill your profile, you'll have a better experience. The more customized you make it, the better results you will see when stumbling.

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: features, stumbleupon

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The raid and subsequent shutdown of file-sharing service Megaupload not only hacked off members of Anonymous, it also underscores one of the inherent vulnerabilities in storing data in the cloud.

Beyond just providing easy TV access to college students without cable, Megaupload and the other sites in its network helped encompass the largest digital locker service in the world. While we suspect that the majority of Megaupload users were not storing family photos and personal documents, the site was exceedingly popular with users.

Ars Technica reports that Megaupload consumed more bandwidth in corporate workplaces than cloud-storage and collaboration services like Dropbox and Box.net.

Since the Megaupload shutdown, users with non-infringing content served on Megaupload’s servers have expressed outrage at no longer having access to their content.

According to the federal indictment, the data center that housed Megaupload’s servers had more than 1,000 different computers and contained more than 25 petabytes (25 million gigabytes) of data storage. That’s a lot of data.

The fact that Megaupload stored so much information — and for so many potential users — got us thinking about the bigger implications of the cloud, online storage and the rights of law enforcement.

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Could a Service Like Dropbox Get TKO’ed Megaupload Style?

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Although cloud storage and backup services have existed in various forms for well over a decade, few companies have managed to make the concept easy to understand and use. Dropbox is one of the few companies that has managed to present a concept — and a service — that is easy to understand and invaluable to use.

I’m a Dropbox Pro user myself and I gladly pay $99 a year for 50 GB of storage. I use Dropbox with Mashable colleagues, friends and family members. I also use Dropbox as a way to back up my music and video libraries. In most cases, these are files that I have digitally purchased or ripped from a CD. Still, the nature of Dropbox and its ability to easily share files with others means that hypothetically, I could share my Amazon MP3 library with someone else.

That opens up the question: If the district court could shutdown charge Megaupload and its employees with “conspiracy to commit copyright infringement” (amongst other crimes) and shut down the service (including access to non-infringing files), could a much more legitimate service like Dropbox be next?

Right now, the answer is “no.” Megaupload’s problems go far beyond the content its users uploaded to the service. The government case against the company and its employees alleges money laundering, trafficking and a blatant disregard for copyright, even in the face of takedown notices. A court will make the final determination as to the validity of these charges, but suffice to say this isn’t just about copyright infringement.

Moreover, current safe harbor rules don’t hold Internet services accountable for the the actions of their customers. In other words, if I commit copyright infringement by using Dropbox to share music and movies with my friends, Dropbox as a service isn’t liable for my actions (provided it kicks me off when presented with my misdeeds).

One of the major problems with the SOPA and PIPA legislation was the restriction of these safe harbor legislations. Web services — and even websites including Mashable — could be held responsible for the actions of users, even if the services themselves were unaware of those actions.

While SOPA in its current form is dead — or at is on hiatus — it’s important to remember that if it or similar measures pass, what has happened to the (few) legitimate users of Megaupload could happen to other services as well.

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The Cloud Isn’t Always Forever

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As I’ve read accounts of users who actually used Megaupload for work or personal file storage, I’ve been struck by two things.

• Why would you choose Megaupload over Skydrive, Dropbox or YouSendIt? I mean, really.
• The cloud isn’t a panacea or a total replacement for off-site backups.

This isn’t the first time that a cloud service has gone offline and taken user files with them, and it won’t be the last. In the mid-2000s, a rush of online storage services raced on the scene, only to go belly-up a few years later.

Cloud storage and online backup is a wonderful thing, but it cannot — and should not — be the sole backup solution for a person’s most important files and documents.

Instead, I advocate a combination of backup policies that combines local backup (preferably on a RAID setup) and cloud backups. For truly important files, an offsite local backup (in a firesafe box or safe deposit box) is also a great idea.

Even if you pay a service money for backup and storage space, disasters do happen. Proper backups at multiple locations is the best way to protect yourself from the pain of losing important files.

Also — if you’re using a service that is best known as a pirates paradise to store and transfer work or personal files — it might be time to switch to a provider with a bit less heat.

More About: cloud, Dropbox, megaupload, Opinion, SOPA

1. Tweepi

Tweepi's "Flush" option allows you to see the users you follow who are not following you back. Its "Reciprocate" option allows you to see the users following you who you're not following back. And the "Cleanup" option allows you to see everyone who you're following so you can unfollow as many users as you like.

You can also see who your friends are following, follow full lists and follow other users based on who they follow.

Tweepi displays the users in helpful columns by showing their names, bios, locations, number of tweets, number of followers, number of users they follow, dates of their last tweets, their Klout scores and more.

Click here to view this gallery.

Elijah Daniel is an up-and-coming writer and comedian. He aims to make people smile via his Twitter and YouTube accounts.

As a Twitter enthusiast, it’s always nice to find useful apps that help to manage my account. Check out five of the best apps I use regularly by clicking through the gallery above.

More About: apps, contributor, features, Social Media, trending, Twitter

The time has come for another Facebook launch event, and we’re here to cover it live. Rumor has it that the social network will be launching more apps based on the Open Graph and Gestures — that is, apps that let you “verb” any “noun” (read a book, hike a trail, ride a bike and so on.)

The event starts at 5pm Pacific Time, 8pm Eastern — and we’ll be here to chat and answer questions a half-hour beforehand. Stay tuned!

More About: Facebook, Open Graph, trending