Adam Osborne has died.

Weight Watchers recipe cards, circa 1974. Things have changed a bit...

Good news for avid searchers, Co-founder downplays Google IPO.

AP reports that NYSE Revokes Credentials for Al-Jazeera. Officials are saying it was for security reasons...

Joi Ito has done the first Segway review I've seen. Somehow I doubt the Segway will ever reach sales commensurate to even 1% of the hype, but it probably is a fun ride...

For those that need to hear the latest war news immediately, the best place on the web for that right now is The Command Post - A Warblog Collective.

Al Jazeera - is now in English.

Although there was no fanfare or announcement, hidden in their filing is the note that looksmart has purchased Grub.

Expect some news from Yahoo and Microsoft in the coming couple of months...

Not that this is such a big deal, but The Smoking Gun has obtained the video that BBC had to apologize for...

Excerpt:

The British Broadcasting Corporation has apologized to the White House for its broadcast Wednesday night of a live Oval Office feed showing President George W. Bush preparing for his speech announcing the start of the Iraqi war. Administration officials are apparently steamed because Bush was seen having his hair primped and readied by a female stylist armed with a comb and hairspray. Below you'll find a screen grab from the BBC feed as well as a 10-second snippet from the unauthorized TV transmission.

Halliburton is in the news again.

So far, The Baghdad Blogger seems to be for real.

How can people do this?

28 baby girls found in suitcases on Chinese bus

The Washington Post has some good news: Scientists Find Mystery Illness Virus

U.S. Scraps Turkey Troop Deployment. After all the negotiations, Turkey finally decided to allow US overflights right before moving in some troops into Iraq to protect their interests. However, they realized that giving the US overflight permission could endanger their ability to move in so they added restrictions. The U.S. decided to give up on the Northern front.

Wisconsin is seeing double.

A friend of mine is in the hospital with Fibromyalgia, given the wrong drugs for a long period of time. Almost killed her. If anyone has some good info on what helps and works for it, please comment. Thanks!

Here's some net coverage of Gulf War 2: Raed is apparently a blogger based out of Iraq. His perspective is quite interesting and worth a look. Another one blogging from Iraq is Kevin Sites, a CNN correspondent (although the site is his personal one, not affiliated to CNN).

Elsewhere, on one side of the equation you have michael moore's message to George Bush and on the other side you have a statement to France by someone who is not as attached to the statue of liberty as some others are.

FastCompany has an interestiing article on Google: How Google Grows...and Grows...and Grows...afterwards, check out Good Experience's interview with Marissa Mayer, Product Manager at Google as well as Neema's report on the seminar by Marissa.

A few points struck me:

1. Google news has a delicate balance. Since it is being cited as a news source, those blurbs carry a lot of responsibility to them. It's more than just a machine picking up news items from all over the web, even though, all it is, is a machine picking up news items from all over the web.

2. Marissa's interviews sound very similar to interviews given by Larry Page. They probably have the same talking points.

3. Nice Flow Chart :)

The NYPost reports that YAHOO! TO BUY U.K. ONLINE PAY-FOR-PLACEMENT AD FIRM. If it's true, Overture's days are numbered. At least that's the buzz. But I think Google's announcement I reported here a couple of days ago will wind up being a much bigger problem for Overture. But one thing's for sure, Microsoft and Yahoo! will be doing some purchases soon.

The Globe and Mail reports that the Northwest Territories want tighter restrictions on the definition of a Canadian Diamond.

Excerpt:

The Northwest Territories, frustrated at seeing many of the benefits from its newfound diamond riches flow abroad, wants federal rules rewritten to compel companies to keep gem-finishing work in Canada or lose the right to call their stones Canadian.
The NWT government is lobbying Ottawa to have regulators revisit the definition of "Canadian diamond" in hopes it will be changed from any gem "mined in Canada" to only those "mined, cut and polished in Canada."

So that's why all the comedians made those jokes about Abe Vigoda during the Friar's Roast.

Ananova reports: Oldest set of human footprints found at volcano.

Excerpt:

Scientists have found the oldest set of human footprints to be discovered, preserved on an Italian volcano.
They were left by three small human-like creatures who scrambled down the side of the mountain between 325,000 and 385,000 years ago.

Epinions.com has been bought by Dealtime.

Some 30 years after telemarketing became a real big problem for anyone with a phone in their home the Federal Government has created a National Do Not Call List, to be implemented by summertime. If they continue with the same pace on email, that means that We the People, by 2025 or so, can count on our government to make junk mail not using a do not email registry, illegal.... Let's just hope some smart techies can come up with something better in the meantime...

CNN Money has an article on Red carpet fashion and product placement, like the Bvlgari necklace Nicole Kidman is wearing.

The Statesman has a detailed article on the Belgian diamond heist.

Excerpt:

ANTWERP, Belgium: The thieves stood ankle-deep in a mess of diamonds, gold, jewelry, stocks, bonds, cash and lockboxes strewn on the vault room floor.
After outwitting security in the world's diamond-cutting capital and prying open 123 vaults, they had one unexpected problem: There was just too much loot to carry.
Two weeks later, authorities are still trying to figure out how much the thieves actually did get away with. Their rough estimate is $100 million.
That would easily make the Antwerp heist the largest safe-deposit box robbery ever %u2014 twice the 1976 hit in Beirut, Lebanon, when a guerrilla group blasted its way into the vaults of the British Bank of the Middle East and into the Guinness Book of Records.
It would also beat the largest jewel theft on record, when machine gun-toting thieves took $45 million in gems from the Carlton Hotel in Cannes on the French Riviera in 1994.
So far, authorities have three Italians and a Dutchwoman behind bars, but no clue where the loot is.
The robbery has Belgians reaching for Hollywood metaphors. "Ocean's Eleven," the daily La Libre Belgique wrote. "Mission Very Impossible," says diamond dealer Marcel Fuehrer, one of the few whose vaults were spared.

Diamond.com is apparently offering Diamond Underwear on Amazon. (Thanks Nate)

Critical Section has an interesting article on The Tyranny of Email.

The Observer has a couple of reports recently about the US spying on UN officials.

Good luck in Boston, Dave.

If SPAM was federally illegal, maybe good people (rodents?) wouldn't have to go to such lengths to fight it.

For those of you who can't get enough of Dave Barry, check Dave Barry's Blog.

P.J. Stock, doing what he does best. I know hockey never was and never will be a "gentle" sport, but I'd rather see finesse players like Super Mario, than a PJ Stock, whose style of play I've never liked. What is the skill level in hacking at the hands of a Mike Modano level player? Anyone can do that....

Damn Small Linux is pretty cool.

The Kimberley Process has a website.

Newsmax reports Diamonds are Saddam's Best Friends.

Excerpt:

Diamonds Are Saddam's Best Friends
If London's Sunday Times has it right, Saddam Hussein may be getting ready to hit the road. He's bought millions of dollars' worth of diamonds - the traditional hard currency of fleeing refugees.
According to the Times, Saddam dispatched a "personal jeweler" to Bangkok, Thailand, to pick up a small mountain of the gems, prompting, the paper reports, speculation that the Iraqi dictator may be getting ready to get out of town while the getting is good.
It was the jeweler%u2019s second visit to Bangkok, the paper reported. Three months ago, Saddam's son, Uday, had sent him to buy a $750,000 diamond ring from an American dealer, according to a Times source.
Saddam, reputed to be worth at least $2 billion, is one of the world's richest men. Although he told Dan Rather last week he would never leave Iraq, the Times suggests that the diamond purchase may signify a change of mind, adding that he might have decided to convert part of his wealth into diamonds because it is easier to hide and move around than paper currency when one is on the lam.

Black Enterprise reports: Jewelry Retailer Faces Federal Suit.

Excerpt:

One of the nation's largest jewelry retail chains, Savannah-based Friedman's Inc., is being challenged for alleged racial discrimination in their hiring and promoting of African Americans, and for fostering a hostile work environment. Yesterday, Attorneys Morris J. Baller and Thomas A. Warren of Goldstein, Demchak, Baller, Borgen & Dardarian filed a federal class-action suit in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Maryland, on behalf of former, present, and future employees and job applicants, then held a press conference about the case in Washington, D.C.

The Boston Business Journal reports: Study to be conducted on local jewelry industry

Excerpt:

A study is being done of the jewelry industry in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, which is expected to lose one-third of its work force to retirements over the next 19 years.

Innovative, but not too bright.

Joi Ito has been meeting some interesting people lately, like Larry Page of Google.

Google has 3 billion pages indexed. Wisenut is making noises about some big announcement coming soon. But they are still at one to one and a half billion pages. The amount of processing involved in analyzing and categorizing that much data is mind boggling.

All of these companies have probably created their own database systems from scratch just so that they are optimized for the requirements of a search engine.

This field has been full of announcements lately and I bet that a big player is behind the acquisitions and will soon acquire the acquirer. Yahoo has something up their sleeve and Bill Gates most certainly has to have something planned. Stay Tuned.

The Cola Wars are alive and well.

From April 23-27, Roger Ebert is hosting a Film Festival celebrating some "overlooked" movies.

Fort Frances Times reports: Fight between N.W.T. and diamond company over polar bear trademark settled

Excerpt

A dispute between Sirius Diamonds Ltd. and the Northwest Territories government over use of a polar bear trademark has been settled.

Sirius has used a particular four-legged pose of the polar bear to market its fire and ice diamonds from the Ekati mine northeast of Yellowknife.

The government has always said the trademark is theirs and Vancouver-based Sirius, which has a manufacturing facility in Yellowknife, had no right to use it.

The settlement stipu