DudeAsInCool

The readers at Ask Metafilter cover alot of ground today from costumes to other esoteric questions about Halloween, some 44 in all... and you can read up about it right here BTW, Happy Halloweeen, everyone

Bent, a UK electronic-rock band composed of Simon Mills & Neil Tollidayout, have a new album entitled "Intercept" and they are previewing a number of cuts at MySpace including my selection - "Stay Out All Night". You can listen to it right here

Somewhere between Atlanta and Norfolk, Va., a band from Chicago named Bound Stems was in its van, barreling along a rainy highway on the way to the 26th annual CMJ Music Marathon, which starts today. Bound Stems are one of more than 1,000 bands appearing over the next five nights in more than 60 clubs around Manhattan and Brooklyn, hoping that half an hour onstage could change their lives. “Every band in the world is coming,” said Bound Stems’ main songwriter, Bobby Gallivan, through a faltering cellphone. “I’ve heard of bands that made their big splash at CMJ. Obviously that would be awesome if it happened to us.” The CMJ Music Marathon, the music-business convention devoted to independent musicians, was started by the magazine that monitors college radio and was initially called College Media Journal. As the big-time music business struggles to hold on, the small-time music business — self-made bands, independent labels, college radio stations, music Web sites — is more active than ever. Read more at the NYTimes

Oprah Inspired by Sick Puppies Whatever Oprah Winfrey touches seems to turn to gold. That's good news for Aussie rockers the Sick Puppies, who made a video inspired by Juan Mann, a regular Joe whose act of kindness is free hugs. Mann caught the eye of the talk-show queen and makes an appearance on Monday's show, while the Puppies' clip, 'All the Same (Free Hugs),' is abuzz on the Internet. For both the benevolent Winfrey and the Sick Puppies, it doesn't matter if the story is told verbally or visually, so long as it's told. "The concept for the video came about while I was working in the Pitt Street Mall," Sick Puppies singer Shimon Moore says. "Juan Mann appeared one day out of nowhere holding a 'Free Hugs' sign. I gave him a hug and we became friends. I borrowed my father's camera and started filming him giving out free hugs all around the city, as a social experiment. We wanted to catch people's reactions." Read More

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Oscar winner Reese Witherspoon and ''Flags of Our Fathers'' star Ryan Phillippe are separating after more than seven years of marriage, their representatives said on Monday. Witherspoon, whose marriage reportedly had been on the rocks for some time, is the latest best-actress Academy Award winner to suffer marital woes. In January, two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank split from husband Chad Lowe. Read more at the NY Times

Circulation at the nation’s largest newspapers plunged over the last six months, according to figures released today. The decline, one of the steepest on record, adds to the woes of a mature industry beset by layoffs and the possible sale of some of its flagships. Overall, average daily circulation for 770 newspapers was 2.8 percent lower in the six-month period ending Sept. 30 than in the comparable period last year, the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported. Circulation for 619 Sunday papers fell by 3.4 percent. Read more at the NYTimes

Google has begun sharing advertising revenue with the makers of a popular video clip in a groundbreaking deal that could drive up the costs of competing in the fledgling video-sharing sector. The search company has agreed to turn over most advertising revenue generated by the latest video from Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz, creators of "The Diet Coke & Mentos Experiment," according to Peter Chane, a senior product manager for Google Video. In exchange, Grobe and Voltz, who saw their original offering--which shows a version of Vegas' Bellagio Fountains made of 101 2-liter bottles of Diet Coke and 523 Mentos--catch fire with video-sharing fans last summer, have agreed to let Google host their latest video, "The Diet Coke & Mentos Experiment II." Read more at CNet

Calorie Restriction May Extend Life Read more at the NYTimes

British scientists have grown the world's first artificial liver from stem cells in a breakthrough that will one day provide entire organs for transplant. The technique that created the 'mini-liver', currently the size of a one pence piece, will be developed to create a full-size functioning liver. Source

MySpace.com will use "audio fingerprinting" technology to block users from uploading copyright music to the social networking site, the company said Monday. MySpace, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., said it will review all music files uploaded by community members to their online profiles. The files will be run through a music database from Gracenote Inc. "MySpace is staunchly committed to protecting artists' rights, whether those artists are on major labels or are independent acts," said Chris DeWolfe, MySpace chief executive and co-founder. Source Great! Take down the music fan's favorite music - that will make them go out and buy more crap!

The Tennant is one of the most scariest movies I've ever seen

This month Microsoft and Mozilla released new versions of their Internet Explorer and Firefox internet browsers. Surprisingly, Firefox seems to be leading early on in the download race, and it's been more of a hit with the critics. "Within 24 hours of the official launch on Tuesday, there were over 2 million people using Firefox 2, and we were seeing a peak rate of more than 30 downloads per second from our website," said Firefox developer Mike Beltzner in a post to his personal blog. Read more at The Age

Looking for some clip art to dress up your emails or web posts? Find it here - courtesy of Microsoft...

Lifehacker has really gone all out this evening and scoured the web for the best Halloween treats. Wanna learn how to make your own tombstone - this video at Youtube tells you how:

Lifehacker is thankfully still on a Halloween kick and notes that RetroCrush has just listed what they think are the top 100 scary movie scenes of all time. How does this compare with your favorites?

SANTA MONICA, Calif.--When it comes to profits, there's no sharing in the video-sharing sector. Not enough, anyway, fumes Steven Starr, a former talent agent, Bob Marley devotee and now the impresario of Revver.com, the video-sharing site he co-founded in 2005. Revver.com, which recently came out of beta, sets itself apart from video-sharing sites like YouTube by paying its content creators through an ad revenue-sharing agreement. Read more at CNet

glitch 'Cause it's fun :)

Move Your Fat Ass

Teen Web sensation MySpace became so big so fast, News Corp. spent $580 million last year to buy it. Then Google Inc. struck a $900 million deal, primarily to advertise with it. But now Jackie Birnbaum and her fellow English classmates at Falls Church High School say they're over MySpace. "I think it's definitely going down -- a lot of my friends have deleted their MySpaces and are more into Facebook now," said Birnbaum, a junior who spends more time on her Facebook profile, where she messages and shares photos with other students in her network. Read more at the Washington Post

Get Them Here

Hitting the financial jackpot, it appears, may have created some headaches for YouTube, the wildly popular video-sharing Web site that has agreed to be bought by Google for $1.65 billion in stock. The site late last week began purging copyrighted material from Comedy Central, including clips from YouTube stalwarts like “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” “The Colbert Report” and “South Park.” The action was “a result of third-party notification by Comedy Central,” according to one such e-mail message sent to a YouTube user, Jeff Reifman, who broke the news on the Web site NewsCloud. Read more at NYTimes

It's extremely fast...

I checked it out - looks interesting. *** Tahiti 80 - Changes from the album 'Fosbury' KCRW Tune For A Day

I also posted this in the Halloween thread...forget the costumes, I'll take the babes :)