Update: Mat Ingram also notices it, but now it looks like its been (manually?) removed from Techmeme.

Either that, or its not always perfect. :)

In Toronto, it seems like almost everyone’s on Facebook. Good thing too, as when some local public health officials were looking for a certain woman who had contact with a bat who had rabies, they *didn’t* turn to other venerable online institutions to find people … they turned to Facebook.

Which, ironically, is actually banned as a tool (other otherwise) for public servants.

The story had a happy ending, as they were able to find the woman within the hour and had her on rabies treatments — this was good as rabies can kill you.

Geeky Medical Facts:

• There is only a single case of someone who had survived a rabies exposure without having taken a rabies vaccine before onset of symptoms. It happened in 2004 to a 15 year old girl who had been exposed to a bat bite 1 month before presenting to a physician. While she did survive, no one’s quite sure if it was the unusual things that were done to help her (an experimental protocol that involved medically induced coma), or something else. She’s not yet made a complete recovery either, as she was left with difficulties speaking, walking, and trouble with fine motor activities.
• The actual vaccination schedule is rough (but lifesaving): after your initial vaccination, you need to get four additional shots spaced over the course of the month. They’re also administered right into the muscle which is usually more uncomfortable. But did I mention that they’re usually life saving?

Headlines that I thought were otherwise interesting today.

• Amanda Congdon leaves ABC: Mat Ingram has the best explanation so far — her considerable “assets” were special as a vlogger, but on a mainstream outfit, they’re quite … flat. Now, Ms. Congdon claims she’s got something great lined up, although it will only start “next year”. If everyone will still remember her … “next year”.
• Google Planning Multi-Terabit Cables To Cross Pacific Ocean: Actually, only one part of a larger plan for Google — the company that most people associate merely with search and ads — to build or acquire physical assets, so that it literally owns the bandwidth to fuel its future plans for world domination. [Do I *sound* like I’m kidding?]
• PirateBay Strikes Back: Wonder what the *real* result of an embarassing leak of internal emails last week from MediaDefender? Well, it turns out that your favourite p2p site (PirateBay) is using them as evidence of illegal activities, and is bringing a very familiar fight back *to* MediaDefender. I, too, love the pure schadenfreude.
• Smart People Can Be So Stupid: A popular MIT student claims that a taped electronic blinking device on her chest — while gripping a piece of silly putty — was merely “art”, after being arrested at gun point at Logan Airport, in Boston. Right. That’s about as real as the hair dye you’re using, honey.
• Google Continues to Pwn Search: … according to the comscore report for search in the month of August. Google pulls in 56% of searches, which is actually *up* a couple percentage points since the last report (July). Nothing else to see here folks, just Google doing its best to own search … keep it moving …
• Firefox Memory Leaks Evidence Open-Source Not Infallible? … merely the corollary of “Firefox continues to have memory problems even though the whole community is trying to plug those leaks”. Somewhere Bill Gates is having a chuckle, I’m sure.

Even though the Google top secret conference had its members sign NDAs, that hasn’t stopped at least three of them from blabbing to Mike “Mr. Access” Arrington about it.  Details of course at TechCrunch, but it sounds like Google is secretly rallying its resources to build a social network that is going to “100%” open.

Again, I’m not going to regurgitate the details, save that from the sounds of it, the really geeky minds behind Google are going to out-geek Facebook on the “open” issue.  Whatever their social network is going to be like, its going to be so open, everyone and their mama is going to be able to push and pull data right from Google applications.  Look for November 5th to be the date that a whole bunch of API’s will be published so that folks can get right into it.

Now, I think that a whole lot more is going to come out of the wash — and there are going to be a whole lot more opinions on this the entire weekend.

But, I think there’s one thing that doesn’t quite add up with Google’s efforts.  While yes, its one thing to be able to drag out Google’s social graph information by being 100% open, and yes, Google is Google — their user base is pretty large — the *only* way that *any* of the “we’re going to out-facebook by being more open” strategy is ever going to *matter* is if people actually use Google’s social network.

That is to say, it runs into the thinking (my thinking, maybe your thinking) that social networks are sort of zero-sum game.  Most people don’t have the time or attention to cultivate identities on more than a few social networks.  And that’s *besides* the fact that there’s the locked-in part where social networks only work if your friends are in the same social network.

In this preliminary-half-baked-information-that-still-needs-to-be-verified-bordering-on-sheer-speculation …

… I mean if its half true, Google’s putting the cart *way* in front of the horse.

There’s a reason why Facebook only introduced opening its social network years after it started.  Hey, you’re right, maybe they didn’t think of it.  But I suspect that the powers that be probably *did*, but realized that it won’t work if you don’t have a robust social network in the first place.

Who *cares*, wants to write applications for, develop products that access a social network if there isn’t a critical mass of users to begin with?

Now, yes, I will remind myself that it *is* still Google.

But on the other hand, yes, they are *still* Google, who have had failures in the past too, who is still really only king of one thing: serving ads.

Well, not *completely* free, but word comes from the LA Times that Fox is following the footsteps of other major US TV networks in a move to make their primetime shows more accessible — and more important, freely *available* — via a variety of online schemes.

Fox is planning to use iTunes, to showcase the premiere episodes of its fall season shows, including Prison Break [did anyone else find the season premiere kind of meh?], K-Ville, and a few others. ABC is partnering with AOL to push full episodes (not just premiere’s) of its prime time dramas, like Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy, while NBC made some waves (and possibly in the early stages of scuttling Hulu in the process) about doing the same with its own shows, such as Heroes (yeah!) through its own “NBC Direct” programming.

Now, yes — this is definitely a win for viewers. Yes, yes, we can roll out the tired clarion call of “we want to watch what we want to, where we want to and when we want to”. Plus, its all free.

But the studios are getting a *real* benefit out of this as well, and its a direct function of what many critics are calling a new Golden Era of television — which, over the past few years, has been triggered by many things. Not the least of which has been the de-stigmatization of TV as a medium for ‘proper’ actors and actresses, and the development of many very good shows on prime time television, not just stuff you might see on cable.

But I think the problem that studios are having is that while many television shows are *good*, many of them also follow extended story arcs, some of which only develop over an entire *season* (or, multiple seasons, or, never — *LOST*, cough cough).

This is very good for the writers, as they get a chance to flex their storytelling muscles.

This is very *bad* for the studios, because it forces viewers to pick and choose where they want to emotionally invest their time in, allowing some dramas that would otherwise be *good*, languish, and pretty quickly evaporate.

So why are free television shows good for network studios?

It allows fans (or would-be fans) in their own time and at their own pace catch up with shows they haven’t seen — or, more importantly, *try* new shows.

For many television shows, its impossible to start watching in the *middle* of a season, or sometimes, even difficult after you’ve missed the first few episodes. You might then rationalize to yourself that you’ll just catch it when it goes on DVD. [A great example is the show “24″, where the whole season is one entire story (one day, actually), where it is virtually impossible to start watching without understanding what happened in the show prior.]

Well, for first run series, they may never get that chance if the viewership is low, and second of all, studios lose out on lucrative sponsorships if people *aren’t* watching this season for a *chance* at “buying” the DVD.

Now it actually remains to be seen if all of this free giving away *does* make a difference. I suspect it will, but ultimately it hinges on the supposition that there will be some people who are happy to watch these multi-million dollar productions on a tiny screen.

But there are *more* who would be happier watching it on their television.

And if the studios are right, and these shows are actually downloaded, then they’ll probably see viewership increase *slowly* for shows that may have never succeded in the first place, and probably bigger numbers through sweeps season — as they advertise prominently about the resolution of plot twists, and the introduction of new ones.

In a bit of blogging-centric news, TechCrunch has recently hired Erick Schonfeld as its co-editor, Mr. Schonfeld being the former editor of the late Business 2.0 magazine. It does beg the question with the hiring earlier this year of Heather Harde, who was then the SVP of Mergers and Acquisitions at Fox Interactive, how “mainstream” TechCrunch is really getting — and perhaps more to the point, if TechCrunch is really still a “blog”.

I think the answer is still a definite “yes”, as in my mind as TechCrunch still sticks to a blogging structure in the way it organizes its news and commentary — with a reverse chronological order, comments, feeds and so on.

But will TechCrunch still maintain the spirit of a blog over time? Highly opinioned, shooting from the hip, breaking-the-news-first-everything-else-be-damned, still acknowledging and participating in the blogosphere (and not be above it), pull-no-punches kind of spirit?

Hey, I hope so.

Clearly, however, as TechCrunch continues to grow and solidify itself as amongst the super-tiered blogs, it has in its own right become a mini-media empire. Its responsible to its readers, its reputation, and just as importantly, its sponsors and advertisers.

And over time, I think its natural for complacency and inertia to set in, to find safety in the absence of risk, and above all, avoid biting the hand that feeds you.

I have no idea if this is what’s in store for a super-blog like TechCrunch, but watching things evolve is proving to be a fascinating case study in how a new media giant has grown and evolved. And I think it remains to be seen if it falls to the same kind of content and editorial doldrums as it becomes increasingly perceived *as* the “mainstream” publication for “web2.0″ news.

You may have heard that Google is launching a social bookmarking-type service today, called Google Shares. Loads of coverage from the usual suspects, most of whom aren’t all that impressed, as its a pretty unsophisticated service that “even” allows you to bookmark *other* socially driven sites like Del.icio.us amongst other sites.

What’s the bloody point in all of this?

Is this yet-another half-baked Google product that is doomed to mediocrity? I think that we won’t really know until it all pans out, but in this case, I think its an issue of Google creating something that is quite deliberately a “me-too” type product.

Usually these fail. But this just isn’t “any” company — this is Google, the 900 lb Gorrila that only needs to break wind to turn Steve Ballmer into a quivering mass of incoherent insults (although, granted, it doesn’t take much to do that).

No, I think Google will probably do just fine in copying many features as it finds necessary, and then rolling it out quietly between its users who are also, quietly, using iGoogle, Google Reader, Gmail, Google Docs, and Picasa. While it _could_ do so, I don’t think Google needs to do anything extra other than keep up with other social news / bookmarking features, and keep itself at parity.

And let the non-early adopters who are familiar with Google to start having fun with this service, as it can probably be integrated fairly easily into its own suite of products.

Another rosy-glasses way to look at it is that by joining the social bookmarking / news group, particularly as you’ll be able to share stuff from other social sites, is that it will increase awareness *of* these other sites as well.

You know what they say about a rising tide and all that.

So, yes, you might think that Google Shares is “meh”. And it might be. But I don’t think Google’s really worried about it at this point, for a whole bunch of reasons. And even if it doesn’t really evolve into a killer product, there are reasons for _that_ as well.