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By Paul McNamara

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Judge rejects lawsuit challenging Magic Quadrant: 11/12/09; In a ruling that should surprise no one, California Ninth Circuit Court Judge Jeremy Fogel recently dismissed a lawsuit filed by ZL Technologies that accused Gartner of committing a host of illegalities via its placement of ZL's e-mail archiving software in the "niche" box of its Magic Quadrant.
EFF launches 'Takedown Hall of Shame': 10/29/09; The Electronic Frontier Foundation last week aimed a historically potent weapon -- the spotlight of public shame -- at those corporations and individuals who abuse copyright claims to stifle free speech.
Missing dot drops Sweden off the Internet: 10/15/09; What was essentially a typo last week resulted in the temporary disappearance from the Internet of almost a million Web sites in Sweden -- every address with a .se top-level down name.
Book of Odds opens eyes to new probabilities: 10/01/09; You're more likely to be killed by a vending machine than a shark, say the researchers behind a soon-to-debut, semantic-based Web start-up called Book of Odds. And, they add, you're more likely to die falling out of bed than win the lottery.
'Anonymous Digging'? What could go wrong?: 09/28/09; This item will likely interest only those readers who use Digg. The rest of you are excused.
T-Mobile folds plan to charge for paper bill: 09/17/09; Under the cloud of a class-action lawsuit and battered by a barrage of negative publicity -- not the least of which occurred on my blog -- T-Mobile has decided that its threat to gouge customers an additional $1.50 per month to continue getting a paper bill wasn't worth the pixels it was written on.
Silliest 'wiretapping' charges ever recorded: 09/10/09; Chi Quang Truong, 46, is being charged by police in Natick, Mass., with "unlawful wiretapping and possessing a device for wiretapping," according to a story in The MetroWest Daily News. If you're thinking foreign spy or industrial espionage, think again. … Try an irate customer who kicked up a fuss at a car dealer's service department.
Why is Wikipedia such a men's club?: 09/07/09; You say you don't trust Wikipedia? Well, you can blame your lack of confidence on men, at least for the most part.
Unreliable is a tough reputation to shake: 08/10/09; Twitter used to be down so often it made the site's "fail whale" famous enough to be profiled in The New York Times. However, as Twitter's popularity has exploded and the hoopla surrounding it has become overbearing, the fledging company has gotten its uptime act together.
Tenant's tweet about mold prompts $50K libel suit by landlord: 07/31/09; This latest example of ordinary people courting trouble on Twitter isn't the usual cautionary tale about remembering that what's written on the Internet stays on the Internet. Nope, it's more about why people hate landlords.
Best Buy calls Twitter a job qualification: 07/23/09; Of course Best Buy should be seeking Twitter experience in a candidate for a senior manager's position in "emerging media." Who would dream of landing such a job without first-hand knowledge of the most-hyped emerging medium in recent memory?
Ringtone royalties are music to these ears: 07/09/09; This splendid idea inexplicably managed to raise a ruckus right before the holiday weekend: Every time a musical ringtone plays in public — suggests the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers — carriers should pay a royalty for the "performance," a cost that would unfortunately need to be passed along to wireless phone users.
Another pair of deadline-extending dodges: 07/02/09; An item here last week about the Web site Corrupted-Files.com had one reader reaching deep into the memory bank for similar tale that also deserves sharing.
How headline writers create news: 06/18/09; You have to hand it to the tabloid headline writers at the New York Post: They know nothing if not how to turn the tiniest spark into a five-alarm conflagration.
Reading the fine print … so you don't have to: 06/11/09; Next time a major Web site such as Facebook, Google or eBay changes their seldom-read terms of service, a new project from the Electronic Frontier Foundation will be there to chronicle the alterations and highlight them for all to see.
5 'marketing opportunities' hospitals are missing: 05/29/09; Doctors Twittering from the operating room is yesterday's news. "Brain Surgery Cam"? Now that one got my attention while reading the May 24 edition of The New York Times.
Google ran out of bandwidth? … Google?: 05/14/09; For a while there a few days ago it sure seemed to some as though the Google Chrome browser development team had proven again that no matter how much bandwidth is made available, someone, somewhere, for some reason, is going to need or want more.
Meet Francis, a failed phishe: 05/07/09; The subject line alone was enough to unmask this criminal mastermind: "This message it is confidential." This message it is really not from the IRS.
Street View-style voyeurism stretches skyward: 04/30/09; Arrive at the Gigapixel Photography Web site and you'll see a gorgeous photo of a dozen condominium towers stretched across the Vancouver skyline, yachts docked in the foreground, dusk bathing the scene in a rich blue hue.
Politicians need their own slice of the 'Net: 04/23/09; On the surface, Washington attorney Matt Sanderson would appear to be pitching a tough sell: special protection online for politicians and would-be politicians. However, because the villains here are predatory criminals and cybersquatters, it should be easy enough for all but the anarchists to see that he has point.
Fact-checking the fact-checkers: 04/16/09; What's your first thought when someone spreads an e-mail around the office claiming that Oprah is giving away a million bucks or that your penny-pinching state will no longer send out reminders about driver's license renewals?
Workplace surfing hounds have a new hero: 04/09/09; Surfing the Internet for fun while at work actually increases employee productivity, insists Dr. Brent Coker, a researcher at the University of Melbourne's Department of Management and Shirking.
The FCC teaches me a lesson: Don't complain: 04/02/09; Six months ago I filed a complaint online with the FCC about mistreatment suffered by my family at the hands of a run-amok Verizon robo-call system. I recently received a response from the agency via snail-mail … which given that a half-year had elapsed since my complaint, could conceivably have been delivered by an actual snail.
Tweeting with a celebrity 'sparks kitchen fire': 03/23/09; It was only a matter of time before this Twitter madness leapt from merely hypnotizing the masses and bastardizing the language to causing real-world mayhem for those (like me) caught in its seductive clutches.
Google's new 'Tip Jar' offers small change: 03/12/09; The notion is to harness that ballyhooed wisdom of the Internet crowds in order to help us all save money in our everyday lives.