Oh, Microsoft. Why do you make it so, so easy to make fun of you? Is it really that hard to hire marketing people who have a single original or interesting idea? You have a lot of money, don't you?

This video was posted to YouTube by Brad Slavin. Here's his description:

The Blackeyed Peas compel the employees at the Microsoft Store in Mission Viejo, California to break out in dance, let their hair down and have some fun. This is an amazing store, the employees seem really excited and engaged, almost happy to be at work. My favorite parts are when people walking in the mall come inside the store, join in the dancing and have some fun. The amazing thing is that people are in the store for hours, they love interacting with the software and learning about new technology.

His website is titled "Subtle Persuasions" and subtitled "Marketing, Persuasion, Technology, Life — Finding Balance." (Let that settle in for a minute.) He has an unusual number of posts about Microsoft stores and how totally, totally, totally awesome they are. Why, he almost seems like a real person! Not at all like a shill, right? He's just honestly amazed at how much the employees and customers love this store!

Really, I'm not anti-Microsoft, I'm just anti-crap, and this is complete crap. Somebody help them.

The first bulletin board system (BBS) was developed during a blizzard in Chicago in 1978.

There is nothing else there. Why a blizzard? Did the blizzard help with the creation of the online bulletin board somehow? Yesterday I didn't know anything about this, and today I find it fascinating.

Has anyone written an Harold Robbinsesque Carpetbaggers-style epic trashy novel of the invention of the internet? Because I would be all over that book. It's got it all: the U.S. military, fabulous wealth, the sudden loss of fabulous wealth, and D&D nerds. Throw a little sex in there and you've just written a bestseller.

Ever since the Motorola Droid was announced, I've heard stories of people ready to dump their iPhones and get a Droid—not necessarily because they want to give up their iPhones, but because they hate AT&T.

It turns out that while AT&T might have spotty coverage, Verizon is actively fleecing the hell out of people.* David Pogue explains...

Starting next week, Verizon will double the early-termination fee for smartphones. That is, if you get a BlackBerry, Android or similar phone from Verizon, and you decide to switch phones before your two-year contract is up, you'll be socked with a $350 penalty (it used to be $175).

That's pretty bad, but this is much worse: Verizon has designed many of their phones to have easy-to-hit-by-accident buttons that connect you to the Internet using their "Get It Now" or other stupid services, and they charge you $1.99 for pushing that button, even if you cancel the action immediately.

Better yet, if you call to have them block your account from accessing online data, those buttons return a message from the Internet saying you can't receive data, and they charge you $1.99 for that error message too.

Whatever carrier you're on, check your bills. These guys are merciless.

*I'm not saying AT&T is NOT actively fleecing the hell out of people—they very well might be—but I haven't found examples as egregious as these from Verizon.** And AT&T quickly got on board with Pogue's "Take Back the Beep" campaign, so they at least understand the value of good customer relations a little. Verizon was the ONLY carrier that didn't respond to that campaign.

**AT&T did charge me $39.95 once to apply a 10% discount to my account. Charging me for a discount was pretty ballsy, I thought.

The Facebook status update that became an iron-clad alibi in a criminal investigation.

Google is working with 47 airports across the country to provide free airport Wi-Fi now through January 15, 2010.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced that it is working with airports across the country as well as Boingo Wireless, Advanced Wireless Group, Airport Marketing Income and others to provide free Wi-Fi as a holiday gift now through January 15, 2010. The gift currently includes 47 airports, including Las Vegas, San Jose, Boston, Baltimore, Burbank, Houston, Indianapolis, Seattle, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando, St. Louis and Charlotte. Additionally, as a result of this project, Burbank and Seattle airports will begin offering airport-wide free Wi-Fi indefinitely.

Well, gee, that's sure nice of them. Note to other multi-billion-dollar multinational corporations: If you're going to have an evil empire, at least be nice about it.

via daring fireball

As far as I can tell, the only important thing about this announcement (and the Kindle and the nook and and Peek's other, e-mail only devices, too) is the fact that you can get lifetime cell service to a device and the device itself for two or three hundred bucks. We need more of that kind of cheap connectivity, not more of these weird, single-use-only devices.

I love headlines that would make absolutely no sense to anyone fifteen years ago.

Anyway: AFP says that Bing has signed a deal with Twitter and Facebook to include information from both of those services in their search results, in real time. The deal is non-exclusive, so Google could play catch-up whenever it wants, but the point is that Google would be playing catchup to Bing, which is maybe the first time that's ever happened.

Google's Eric Schmidt has famously underestimated Twitter for quite a while now. As I said in my piece on Twitter a while back, the thing that Twitter now provides that Google doesn't is a laser-sharp focus into what people are thinking about right now. Even Google is starting to look painfully slow in comparison.

While we're having stone-age debates over whether our citizens should be allowed to die of treatable diseases because they're poor or unlucky, Finland has gone ahead and made high-speed Internet access a legal right.

The LA Times reports that all Finns will have a legal right to 1-megabit web access come next July. The promise to raise this (pretty slow) requirement to 100-megabits (really fast) by the end of 2015.

Look for the U.S. to follow suit... never.

A new study has found that 36 percent of people under 35 admit to checking Facebook, texting, or Tweeting right after sex.

The survey found that guys are twice as likely as women to use social media after sex, and that iPhone users are three times more likely to check Twitter or Facebook after "doing the deed" than Blackberry users.

I think I just became three times more likely to sleep with a Blackberry user.