"United Breaks Guitars" costs the airline $180m in market cap

The Times UK claims Dave Carroll's "United Breaks Guitars" video helped cause a $180m drop in United Airlines stock, enough to purchase 51,000 editions of the beloved guitars referred to in his song.

Andy Baio joins Kickstarter - very cool crowdfunding

Andy Baio (of Waxy.org, Upcoming) joined Kickstarter as CTO. Kickstarter is a fresh take on crowdsourcing funding for projects - skews towards artsy, media stuff - sort of like Etsy meets Kiva.

NYC MOMA integrates Facebook

NYC MOMA museum has a pretty Facebook integration where they'll help plan a day at the museum for you.

Wired covers my trip to Iraq

Steven Levy's article about our trip to Iraq is in the new issue of Wired. Here's a picture of me and Steven at the US Embassy in Baghdad.

Waisted Zombies

Why wear an ordinary belt when you can rock one which depicts cowboys shooting zombies? Obviously there is no appropriate answer to this question other than to order your own from Jon Wye or one of the other very cool selections. I picked up one this weekend at the SF Renegade Crafts Fair.

If YouTube weren't owned by Google....

YouTube loves being part of the Google family, but every once in a while "don't be evil" gets in the way of, you know, amusing ideas. The latest one to tickle me is an elaborate practical joke I imagine playing on a friend. Here's how it goes:

First I get a video of a friend doing something goofy but recognizable - it has to be completely unique and out of the ordinary - like chicken dance followed by the running man. Then I pick a random country - say the Philippines - and show this video automatically on YouTube to anyone from that region. Do this for a few weeks and then invent some reason to get said friend over to the Philippines. Once he's over there, every single Filipino will be pointing, laughing and likely imitating the dance. My friend doesn't understand what's going on and is perplexed why he's being targeted for ridicule.

The alternate, even more evil version, is to take this same concept but instead of a goofy dance, create a fake clip where my friend is kicking a dog or running down the street flipping over baby carriages (prop dog/babies of course). Then send him to the country where you've been running the clip and watch a mob form to chase him down for this terrible acts.

Hilarity, right? :)