Words cannot describe this hysterical and deliciously warped version of AOL’s $315 million acquisition of the Huffington Post by Next Media Animation of Taiwan.

Except BoomTown has hit replay 10 times now.

It takes getting Taiwanesed to an entirely new level of surreal.

In its weirdest yet–and that is saying a lot–here is co-founder and Editor in Chief Arianna Huffington depicted as a giant, green Wizard of Odd head; AOL CEO Tim Armstrong with a crazed Bebo monkey on his back; inappropriate gay references; and an inexplicable appearance at the end by a manically laughing, shark-finned, Apple-iPad-holding Rupert Murdoch of News Corp.

I suggest watching it on pause, as there are tons of really funny details all over it.

Enjoy the video:

In reaction to recent tragic bullying incidents related to gay youth late last year, the It Gets Better Project began soliciting Web videos of encouragement from all over.

The heartening collection of online video messages also includes company-organized ones from a bunch of Internet giants, featuring mostly LGBT, but also straight, staffers telling their poignant stories.

The latest addition is from Yahoo, but Google, Facebook, Microsoft and many others in tech have done them.

(In geek inside jokes, I love the search giant’s little Android mascot with a rainbow flag, as well as some software-making Microsoft folks joking that there are rainbows “in the cloud.”)

As an added plus, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz appears at the end of its video below, and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is at the end of the social networking site’s effort.

Truly worth your time:

“I can’t control what people think this was. I can only tell you my intentions. This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith or people of activism or to look down our noses at the heartland or passionate argument or to suggest that times are not difficult and that we have nothing to fear. They are and we do. But we live now in hard times, not end times. And we can have animus and not be enemies.

But unfortunately one of our main tools in delineating the two broke. The country’s 24 hour political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator did not cause our problems but its existence makes solving them that much harder. The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems bringing them into focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire and then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden, unexpected dangerous flaming ant epidemic.

If we amplify everything we hear nothing. There are terrorists and racists and Stalinists and theocrats but those are titles that must be earned. You must have the resume. Not being able to distinguish between real racists and Tea Partiers or real bigots and Juan Williams or Rick Sanchez is an insult, not only to those people but to the racists themselves who have put in the exhausting effort it takes to hate–just as the inability to distinguish terrorists from Muslims makes us less safe, not more. The press is our immune system. If it overreacts to everything we actually get sicker–and perhaps eczema.

And yet, with that being said, I feel good–strangely, calmly good. Because the image of Americans that is reflected back to us by our political and media process is false. It is us through a fun house mirror, and not the good kind that makes you look slim in the waist and maybe taller, but the kind where you have a giant forehead and an ass shaped like a month-old pumpkin and one eyeball.

So, why would we work together? Why would you reach across the aisle to a pumpkin assed forehead eyeball monster? If the picture of us were true, of course, our inability to solve problems would actually be quite sane and reasonable. Why would you work with Marxists actively subverting our Constitution or racists and homophobes who see no one’s humanity but their own? We hear every damn day about how fragile our country is–on the brink of catastrophe–torn by polarizing hate and how it’s a shame that we can’t work together to get things done, but the truth is we do. We work together to get things done every damn day!

The only place we don’t is here or on cable TV. But Americans don’t live here or on cable TV. Where we live our values and principles form the foundation that sustains us while we get things done, not the barriers that prevent us from getting things done. Most Americans don’t live their lives solely as Democrats, Republicans, liberals or conservatives. Americans live their lives more as people that are just a little bit late for something they have to do–often something they do not want to do–but they do it–impossible things every day that are only made possible through the little reasonable compromises we all make.

Look on the screen. This is where we are. This is who we are. [points to the Jumbotron screen which shows traffic merging into a tunnel]. These cars–that’s a schoolteacher who probably thinks his taxes are too high. He’s going to work. There’s another car-a woman with two small kids who can’t really think about anything else right now. There’s another car, swinging, I don’t even know if you can see it–the lady’s in the NRA and she loves Oprah. There’s another car–an investment banker, gay, also likes Oprah. Another car’s a Latino carpenter. Another car a fundamentalist vacuum salesman. Atheist obstetrician. Mormon Jay-Z fan. But this is us. Every one of the cars that you see is filled with individuals of strong belief and principles they hold dear–often principles and beliefs in direct opposition to their fellow travelers.

And yet these millions of cars must somehow find a way to squeeze one by one into a mile long 30 foot wide tunnel carved underneath a mighty river. Carved, by the way, by people who I’m sure had their differences. And they do it. Concession by concession. You go. Then I’ll go. You go. Then I’ll go. You go then I’ll go. Oh my God, is that an NRA sticker on your car? Is that an Obama sticker on your car? Well, that’s okay–you go and then I’ll go.

And sure, at some point there will be a selfish jerk who zips up the shoulder and cuts in at the last minute, but that individual is rare and he is scorned and not hired as an analyst.

Because we know instinctively as a people that if we are to get through the darkness and back into the light we have to work together. And the truth is, there will always be darkness. And sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t the promised land. Sometimes it’s just New Jersey. But we do it anyway, together.

If you want to know why I’m here and want I want from you, I can only assure you this: you have already given it to me. Your presence was what I wanted.

Sanity will always be and has always been in the eye of the beholder. To see you here today and the kind of people that you are has restored mine. Thank you.”

*Note that this isn’t coming from the most obvious sources: Viacom’s own Daily Show site, which carried a live stream of the event but doesn’t have any record of it anymore, or C-SPAN, which is running a loop of the rally, but doesn’t have a handy way to excerpt the three-hour event. Too bad Hulu can’t help here….

[Image credit: Cliff1066]

Here at All Things Digital, we’ve always prided ourselves on our journalism efforts, while also fully embracing the fast-paced new world of blogging.

So, we could not be more thrilled to announce the hiring of Ina Fried as our new reporter and blogger, covering the critically important mobile beat. She is pictured here.

Her new beat will range from wireless carriers like AT&T; to handset makers, such as Nokia and Research in Motion; to the smartphone kingpins, Google and Apple.

And if Facebook ever does make a phone, Ina will surely have the scoop.

Mobile is a beat that reaches across companies and is at the dead center of Web 3.0.

Ina is one of several new journalists we will be announcing over the next week, part of an expansion of the ATD universe. That includes a recently announced new conference series, beginning with D: Dive Into Mobile.

There is much more to come, but let’s focus on the stylings of Ina first.

As most people know, she has been at CNET for the past 10 years, most recently covering Microsoft as a senior writer.

And although she hasn’t been focused solely on mobile, Ina has been covering the area since 2000, when folks like Kyocera were trying to shove a Palm Pilot and a phone together, most recently doing a behind-the-scenes series for CNET on the birth of Windows Phone 7.

During her time at the tech news site, she also covered Apple for four years and led CNET’s coverage of the Hewlett-Packard-Compaq merger, as well as covering all manner of gadgets from the Palm Pilot to the Audrey (I have no idea what that is, but Walt Mossberg does).

Before that, she covered the chip industry for financial wire service Bridge News and also worked at the Orange Country Register and Orange County Business Journal.

She’s a graduate of Miami University (she reminds me that’s the one in Ohio not Florida, pointing out they are better at ice hockey than football.)

Beyond breaking all kinds of stories on the Microsoft beat, Ina has closely followed Bill Gates in his shift from software titan to global philanthropist, interviewing him frequently and tagging along on his college speaking tour earlier this year. (Last week she published separate interviews with Gates and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on the same day.)

Ina also traveled to Brazil and Colombia to explore the impact of computing in emerging markets.

She’s a former vice president of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association and has won a number of journalism awards, including some that she says would be seriously dangerous during an earthquake.

For example, she was named three times as one of the top 30 financial journalists under 30 by TJFR and has also been honored by the Society of Professional Journalists and Western Publishers Association, among others.

A huge softball fanatic, part of the reason she won’t start at ATD until late November is that her women’s softball team is headed to the gay softball World Series in Las Vegas (I wonder if Audrey is going).

In the meantime, you can keep up to date with Ina by following her on Twitter at Twitter.com/inafried.

Here at All Things Digital, we’ve always prided ourselves on our journalism efforts, while also fully embracing the fast-paced new world of blogging.

So, we could not be more thrilled to announce the hiring of Ina Fried as our new reporter and blogger, covering the critically important mobile beat. She is pictured here.

Her new beat will range from wireless carriers like AT&T; to handset makers, such as Nokia and Research in Motion; to the smartphone kingpins, Google and Apple.

And if Facebook ever does make a phone, Ina will surely have the scoop.

Mobile is a beat that reaches across companies and is at the dead center of Web 3.0.

Ina is one of several new journalists we will be announcing over the next week, part of an expansion of the ATD universe. That includes a recently announced new conference series, beginning with D: Dive Into Mobile.

There is much more to come, but let’s focus on the stylings of Ina first.

As most people know, she has been at CNET for the past 10 years, most recently covering Microsoft as a senior writer.

And although she hasn’t been focused solely on mobile, Ina has been covering the area since 2000, when folks like Kyocera were trying to shove a Palm Pilot and a phone together, most recently doing a behind-the-scenes series for CNET on the birth of Windows Phone 7.

During her time at the tech news site, she also covered Apple for four years and led CNET’s coverage of the Hewlett-Packard-Compaq merger, as well as covering all manner of gadgets from the Palm Pilot to the Audrey (I have no idea what that is, but Walt Mossberg does).

Before that, she covered the chip industry for financial wire service Bridge News and also worked at the Orange Country Register and Orange County Business Journal.

She’s a graduate of Miami University (she reminds me that’s the one in Ohio not Florida, pointing out they are better at ice hockey than football.)

Beyond breaking all kinds of stories on the Microsoft beat, Ina has closely followed Bill Gates in his shift from software titan to global philanthropist, interviewing him frequently and tagging along on his college speaking tour earlier this year. (Last week she published separate interviews with Gates and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on the same day.)

Ina also traveled to Brazil and Colombia to explore the impact of computing in emerging markets.

She’s a former vice president of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association and has won a number of journalism awards, including some that she says would be seriously dangerous during an earthquake.

For example, she was named three times as one of the top 30 financial journalists under 30 by TJFR and has also been honored by the Society of Professional Journalists and Western Publishers Association, among others.

A huge softball fanatic, part of the reason she won’t start at ATD until late November is that her women’s softball team is headed to the gay softball World Series in Las Vegas (I wonder if Audrey is going).

In the meantime, you can keep up to date with Ina by following her on Twitter at Twitter.com/inafried.

Here’s the new trailer for the upcoming movie “The Dilemma,” minus a joke that used the word “gay” in a negative manner.

Universal Pictures replaced the original teaser trailer after there were protests about it. In it, actor Vince Vaughn said: “Ladies and gentlemen, electric cars…are gay.”

With the recent spate of bullyings of gay teens that have ended in tragedy, such a move is probably wise and not too surprising.

More surprising was the video below it, in which gossip blogger Perez Hilton vowed to stop being so mean on his popular Web site.

Since a lot of his repertoire consists of nasty drawings and comments scrawled over photos, along with cruel nicknames for celebrities, it will be interesting to see how this change impacts his dubious success.

Here are the videos:

Clementi committed suicide after his roommate allegedly secretly taped footage of Clementi having a sexual encounter with another man, posted it on the Internet and also tweeted about it.

We asked CJ Pascoe, a sociology professor at Colorado College, who studies the role of new media in teen sexuality and dating, about how the Internet has been both a help and a hindrance to gay teens.

“It offers both resources and risks, and I don’t think we’re fully prepared to balance the two,” said Pascoe in an interview. “On the one hand, when I talk to gay and lesbian teens, it is a lifeline for them. They are able to find community–especially isolated teens. When I talk to transgender teens, they say they are able to give a name to what they are feeling when they go online.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Responding to a petition posted on the Web site for Number 10 Downing Street, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown late Thursday apologized for what he characterized as the “appalling” treatment of Turing 55 years earlier by British officials. Turing, who was gay, was convicted in 1952 of gross indecency and given two choices, prison or “chemical castration” by a series of injections of female hormones. Two years after choosing the latter punishment, he committed suicide.

Turing had helped lead the team of British codebreakers at Bletchley Park whose work gave the Allies crucial advantages against German forces during the war, and formed a basis for later generations of computers.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

“According to complaints from many residents, Google’s English language search engine has spread large amounts of vulgar content that is lascivious and pornographic, seriously violating China’s relevant laws and regulations,” foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a regularly scheduled news conference. “I’d like to stress that google.com, as an Internet enterprise providing services in China, should earnestly abide by Chinese laws and regulations.”

The disruption of Google (GOOG) services follows a widely criticized mandate from Beijing requiring all computers sold in the country to include Green Dam, an application designed to prevent citizens from viewing “offensive” content, which in the Chinese government’s case includes all manner of material. From a report by the Open Net Initiative, an academic consortium dedicated to the study of censorship and surveillance:

The version of the Green Dam software that we tested, when operating under its default settings, is far more intrusive than any other content control software we have reviewed. Not only does it block access to a wide range of web sites based on keywords and image processing, including porn, gaming, gay content, religious sites and political themes, it actively monitors individual computer behavior, such that a wide range of programs including word processing and email can be suddenly terminated if content algorithm detects inappropriate speech. The program installs components deep into the kernel of the computer operating system in order to enable this application layer monitoring. The operation of the software is highly unpredictable and disrupts computer activity far beyond the blocking of websites.

…The deeply intrusive nature of the software opens up several possibilities for use other than filtering material harmful to minors. With minor changes introduced through the auto-update feature, the architecture could be used for monitoring personal communications and Internet browsing behavior. Log files are currently recorded locally on the machine, including events and keywords that trigger filtering. The auto-update feature can used to change the scope and targeting of filtering without any notification to users.

The issue of gay marriage is always good for controversy and lots and lots of rancorous lobbying on both sides of the issue. These days, of course, that includes a battle of online videos.

A few weeks ago, a group called the National Organization for Marriage put out a striking video commercial called “A Gathering Storm.”

In it, with a backdrop of menacing clouds, a clutch of people talk about their fears about allowing gay marriage.

It has garnered 576,319 views so far.

Now, a passel of celebrities on the Funny or Die comedy Web site has released a spoof version of the NOM commercial, called “A Gaythering Storm.”

It features a “gay rain army” and a giant gay repellent umbrella. Oh, snap.

It has 440,616 views, although it just went up yesterday.

Here are both of them, so you can vote with your click. But watch both, whatever you think–and that includes you, Miss California!

NOM:

Funny or Die:

Please see this disclosure related to gay marriage and me.

Last fall, a small but vocal group of Twitterers managed to shame Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) into apologizing for one of its Motrin ads.

This weekend’s replay: a howl of outrage, amplified and directed via Twitter at Amazon (AMZN), which may or may not have instituted a boneheaded policy  regarding “adult” books on its site. Or “adult” books aimed at gay and lesbian readers. Or something.

What happened? It’s not clear. But search for “#amazonfail” on Twitter and you’ll find that many Twitterers believe that Amazon has stripped the sales rankings from all manner of books that deal with gay and lesbian, and/or “adult” topics, making them less likely to appear on the site. In essence, the Twittersphere charges Amazon with trying to hide material it finds distasteful or that it thinks some customers will find distasteful.

Example: Amazon’s listing for Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain” doesn’t have a sales rank. But the author’s newest book does have one.

From what I can tell, the meme started up on Saturday, but didn’t start building steam until Sunday afternoon, when I noticed mild-mannered types like New Yorker writer Susan Orlean railing about Amazon on Twitter.

And it’s still going. As I type this, after 10 p.m. Eastern on Sunday night, the “amazonfail” keyword is generating a dozen hits on Twitter’s search page every couple of seconds.

Amazon hasn’t helped its case by remaining more or less mute throughout the weekend. But, by Sunday evening, the retailer had issued the same line to me and several other reporters: “We recently discovered a glitch to our Amazon sales rank feature that is in the process of being fixed. We’re working to correct the problem as quickly as possible.”

Not a terribly illuminating response, and I’ve asked for more information. But no matter what really happened, Amazon now has a real problem on its hands: A vocal group of people believe the retailer has discriminated in some way against gays and lesbians.

When Johnson & Johnson got caught in the Twitterstorm last fall, it had a relatively easy way out: A profuse apology to people it had offended. But Motrin has a very specific customer base and Amazon has a much broader one, and anything it says or does regarding gays, lesbians and “adult” material of any stripe is bound to upset some people.

But the company should do the right thing and clear the air anyway.

UPDATE: Here’s an apology from Amazon, which doesn’t really explain what happened, but says the problem didn’t just affect books aimed at gays and lesbians.

For those not following this sordid tale, the hot social-networking site stumbled badly in its handling of a new ad product that broadcasts your purchases from external Web sites back to your Facebook news feed.

Facebook has had to backpedal a lot on Beacon, including issuing an apology last week for it from Founder Mark Zuckerberg.

In the wake of Beacon’s dimming (sort of), clever Simon thought up some more ideas for the feckless Facebookers, such as Facebook Questioning:

Writes Dumenco:

Are you a closeted homosexual in a small Southern town? Facebook Questioning will automatically suggest to those friends and colleagues who are able to ‘read between the lines’ that maybe you’re ‘questioning’ your sexuality. It does this by comparing Beacon data with thresholds of what’s considered ‘normal’ heterosexual behavior by marketers. ‘The purchase by an unmarried, middle-aged male of more than two movie-musical soundtracks or DVDs per quarter doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s gay,’ says a Facebook veep. ‘But it will raise a rainbow-colored flag within our algorithm and might even help certain in-denial Facebook users with their own voyage of self-discovery.”

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, as Seinfeld says a lot below: