Author: Josh Wolford

If you’re an actor/actress hoping to perpetuate age misinformation, IMDb is not your friend.

A 41-year-old actress has lost her bid to sue the Internet Movie Database for publishing her true age on the popular site.

Junie Hoang, an actress with 99 IMDb credits to her name (mostly B-movies and TV shows), claimed that the Amazon-owned IMDb breached subscriber privacy agreements when they used information obtained through her IMDb PRo account to unearth her true age and report it on her page. A federal jury in Seattle has denied her claim.

Hoang singed up for IMDb in 2001, leaving her age blank at the time (not an uncommon practice among aspiring actors). Three years later, she updated her account, providing a 1978 date of birth.

Hoang was actually born in 1971.

Three years after that, she contacted IMDb and asked them to remove the untrue DOB. But IMDb did not comply. Finally, a year later, in 2008, she got IMDb to “go back to [their] files and see if [they] have any documentation, verification or identification” that her birthdate was, in fact, 1978.

It was then that she alleged someone at IMDb found her true DOB info in public records, based on information obtained from her IMDb pro account submission.

In their defense, IMDb said that it was their First Amendment right to publish the truth on their website, and that all of the information was obtained from public records. They also claimed that Hoang failed to adequately prove that she was actually harmed, monetarily, from her true age being published on the site.

Though Hoang failed to prove harm in this case, the Screen Actors Guild says that age discrimination continues to be a big problem in casting. In 2011, when Hoang first filed her lawsuit, the SAG said that they were “disappointed with IMDb.”

“Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists strongly believe that businesses like IMDb have a moral and legal obligation not to facilitate age discrimination in employment. Entertainment industry employers who would never directly ask a potential employee’s age routinely access that information through IMDb and its professional subscription site IMDbPro. IMDb has the power to remove the temptation for employers to engage in age discrimination by accessing this information,” said SAG.

[Variety]

It seems the animators at The Simpsons can’t wait for the final season of Breaking Bad to begin either. On Sunday’s new episode, the long-running show will run a tribute to the AMC new classic in its opening bit.

Check out Marge cooking up some special blue cupcakes, and a special appearance from the Breaking Bad duo.

TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington has just published an extensive letter sent to Jenn Allen by his lawyers, presenting a highly detailed explanation of his side of the story.

As you may recall, Arrington’s former girlfriend Jenn Allen recently alleged that he had been physically abusive, and accused him of rape. In a short response last week, Arrington called the allegations “completely untrue” and said that he would have a full response in a few days. It appears that he has made good on that promise.

“You have posted statements about Michael that are false and defamatory, and that have caused significant harm to his good name. It is my hope that you immediately will take corrective action, by retracting those statements. I have examined your posted statements, and compared them with provable facts. This comparison shows without any doubt whatsoever that, among others, the following of your statements about Michael are false,” says Arrington’s attorney Eric M. George in the letter.

The letter breaks down Allen’s accusations one-by-one, providing emails, photos, texts, and social media communications that refute her story. For instance:

(1) You stated that “he was physically abusive [on] March 5th [of] last year” (April 1, 2013, 2d posting, Gawker.) “[H]e did rape me, on March 5 last year, when he invited me over to make amends from a major catastrophe a couple months prior.” (April 1, 2013, 3d posting, Gawker.)

Your twice-repeated allegation of rape/physical abuse by Michael is not only false, but factually impossible. On March 5, 2012, Michael was in Washington and you were in California. Michael’s whereabouts are confirmed by travel records and credit card statements in my possession, and your whereabouts are proven by a photo of you at a San Francisco party at 1:05 a.m. on March 6, 2012. This photo was posted online but has been removed in the past several days. (The photo, together with screenshots of your Facebook page in March 2012 before and after it was deleted, are appended hereto as Attachment A.)

The letter calls for Allen to retract her accusations publicly by April 15th or face legal action. You can check it out in its entirety below:

Demand Letter to Jennifer Allen

For her part, it doesn’t appear that Allen is backing down from the allegations, as judged by her recent tweets:

Tweets by @JennAllen

You spend countless hours seeking it. You do crazy things to obtain it. You play games over and over again for a chance at it.

It, of course, is the elusive (depending on the game) Xbox 360 achievement. Think about that glorious sound. How it reverberates in your ears – the satisfaction of winning points where everything is made up and the points don’t matter.

Well, this is how that achievement unlock sound looks like.

Yes, looks. As Xbox LIVE’s Major Nelson explains, he contracted Born of Sound to make him a “sound-form” based on this special sound. A sound-form is basically a visual representation of sound, specifically how it moves through the atmosphere.

Now, this is what I’ll see in about 5 more hours when I finally beat Bioshock Infinite in 1999 mode.

[Major Nelson]

Twitter is poised to release its rumored standalone music app, Twitter Music, sometime this weekend according to sources.

First rumored back in early March, the Twitter Music app will launch as a music discovery app which suggests artists and tracks based on a number of signals – including who you follow. User of Twitter Music will be able to stream songs via Soundcloud and iTunes, Early reports indicated that no full-streaming services like Spotify would be integrated upon launch.

Alongside the recommended music tab, users will also see a #NowPlaying area that surfaces popular music across the Twitter network.

Sources told All Things D that it could launch today, on Friday, April 12th. But another source said that a weekend launch at Coachella was more likely.

Either way, we know it’s close. Ryan Seacrest is tweeting about it – and the official Twitter Music account is retweeting him.

playing with @twitter‘s new music app (yes it’s real!)…there’s a serious dance party happening at idol right now

— Ryan Seacrest (@RyanSeacrest) April 11, 2013

lovin the app…shows what artists are trending, also has up and coming artists… spinning u now @frankturner

— Ryan Seacrest (@RyanSeacrest) April 11, 2013

The app is partly the work of the team from music discovery app We Are Hunted, which was purchased by Twitter in the past 6 months but only confirmed the acquisition on Thursday.

“While we are shutting down wearehunted.com, we will continue to create services that will delight you, as part of the Twitter team,” they said on their official site.

But it appears that they hand a big hand in Twitter Music.

.@ryanseacrest so glad you’re enjoying it! cc @twittermusic

— We Are Hunted (@wearehunted) April 11, 2013

Twitter trends let users know which topics and hashtags are the most popular at any given time. Although they can often be manipulated to boost the popularity of a Twitter-heavy contingent (looking at you, Justin Bieber fans), trends usually give a pretty good gauge of what people are talking about – you know, what’s important.

Trends can be broken down by country and even city. So instead of looking at the trends worldwide, I can look at the trends in Chicago only. This helps users target the conversation and gives the service a more local feel.

And now, Twitter has announced that their Trends are available in a number of new countries and cities.

In all, Twitter has added trend support for over 160 different locations. Some of these are entire countries which have never had Twitter trends before, like Belgium, Greece, Kenya, Norway, Poland, Portugal, and Ukraine. The rest (around 130 locations) are cities getting support for the first time (inside countries that already have Twitter trends).

“Trends are an easy way to find out what people are talking about right now –– around the world, in your country, or in your city. By checking out Trends, you can easily find breaking news and current hot topics that are most relevant to you. To find these new locations, click “Change” in the Trends sidebar on twitter.com, and select the city or country you’re most interested in,” says Twitter.

If you don’t yet have trends in your city of country, don’t worry. Twitter says they are constantly looking to expand trends to more locations. Just last December, Twitter added trend support for 100 new cities.

LinkedIn has decided to take another step toward being a platform for news, officially announcing the acquisition of Pulse, the news reader app similar to Flipboard.

The transaction is valued at around $90 million, which is at the high-end of the “somewhere between $50M and $100M” range that we heard when rumors of the acquisition began swirling about a month ago.

With this move, LinkedIn says they want to be “the definitive professional publishing platform where all professionals can publish, discover, and share.”

Pulse’s Ankit Gupta and Akshay Kothari say that Pulse will remain the same, and their team is committed to improving upon their apps.

“With LinkedIn by our side, our team will continue to make Pulse the best it can be. We’re still working together on the product you love, and will continue to provide an innovative and visual news reading experience. For now, the Pulse apps will remain the same, and our two teams are excited to work together to create cool and useful new offerings.”

LinkedIn’s Deep Nishar explains what the Pulse acquisition means to them:

“We believe LinkedIn can be the definitive professional publishing platform – where all professionals come to consume content and where publishers come to share their content. Millions of professionals are already starting their day on LinkedIn to glean the professional insights and knowledge they need to make them great at their jobs. We believe we can help all professionals make smarter and more informed business decisions leveraging all the great business knowledge flowing through LinkedIn in the form of news, Influencer posts, industry updates, discussions, comments and more,” he says.

“Pulse is a perfect complement to this vision. Pulse’s core value proposition is to help foster informed discussions that spark the decisions shaping the world around us through news and information. This shared view that the power of professional information and knowledge can transform lives and the world makes LinkedIn and Pulse a particularly great fit. We couldn’t be more thrilled to be working side by side with the Pulse team to create new and better ways to help professionals contribute to and leverage this collective body of business knowledge to help them be great at what they do and from wherever they work.”

The first sign of integration comes in the form of a new “LinkedIn Influencer” feed on Pulse.

Pulse was founded back in 2010. Since then, it has amassed 30 million users in over 190 countries. It also boasts content from over 750 publishers.

You definitely know that Google is killing Google Reader. You’ve either seen or been part of the outrage. Google will be officially shuttering their popular (but not popular enough) product on July 1st, but as you would expect they’re slowly removing its presence to help ease us all into the transition.

And you probably know that Digg is working to build a replacement. They announced this literally hours after Google made their announcement that they were killing the product. Digg has said from the start that they want to build something that’s fast and simple, and could serve as a true replacement for Google Reader.

Today, Digg has published the results of a survey they sent out to over 17,000 people (8,000+ responses so far), which sought to uncover exactly what people want in the upcoming Digg Reader.

And here’s the most important finding:

What you’re looking at it a word cloud, charting the responses to the question “if there’s one thing you could remove from Google Reader, what would it be?”

Nothing. Google Reader users don’t want anything more. They just want Google Reader. Or, since the second-most tracked word was “google,” they simply want a Reader that functions exactly like Google Reader – with or without Google’s hand.

The survey feedback also uncovered some stats about RSS reader users, like most subscribe to a good number of feeds (roughly 70% subscribe to more than 51) and 80% check their feeds multiple times a day. Nearly 80% said that they use Google Reader for both work and play, and over 40% said that Google Reader is the only RSS reader that they use (the nest most popular feed reader was Feedly).

Some of the feedback gave Digg an idea of what was most important to include in their upcoming reader. For instance, 67% said that they use keyboard shortcuts in Google Reader at least some of the time. That prompted Digg to proclaim that those are “definitely on the list.”

On the flip side, there was search:

“This was an interesting data point. While 25% reported never using search, over just over half said that they sometimes do. Search is a huge investment in terms of development time and infrastructure costs. We don’t yet know if we’ll have the necessary infrastructure up and running in time for our initial beta launch, but it’s definitely on the roadmap,” says Digg.

There’s definitely going to be a hole in the market for a Google Reader-like reader come July 1st when it all goes dark – even with other options already available. Whether or not Digg can step up into that role remains to be seen. Let’s think positively.

Baby, you’re a rich man.

For the 25th consecutive year, Sir Paul McCartney has been named the richest musician in the U.K. on the Sunday Times rich list. The 70-year-old former Beatle is estimated to be the proud owner of a 680 million pound (roughly $1.05 billion) fortune. He shares that fortune with his third wife, Nancy Shevell.

McCartney has topped this rich list for musicians every single year since it began in 1989.

According to Forbes, McCartney racked up $57 million in earnings last year.

McCartney narrowly beat out Andrew Lloyd Webber (£620 million). In the third spot was U2 (as a whole), with an estimated worth of £520 million. Other top finishers on the music rich list (in order) were Sir Elton John, David and Victoria Beckham, Sir Mick Jagger, Michael Flatley, Keith richards, Olivia and Dhani Harrison, and Sting.

The Sunday Times also puts out a Young Music rich list, which was topped by Adele this time (£30 million). She was followed by Cheryl Cole, Leona Lewis, Katie Melua, and Florence Welch.

Recently, you may have seen McCartney close the opening ceremony at the 2012 Summer Olympics and perform alongside the surviving members of Nirvana at the 12-12-12 Hurricane Sandy relief concert. That was seen by approximately 2 billion people worldwide.

Just a day after Netflix told investors that they would regularly use their various social media accounts to disclose material information, even mentioning CEO Reed Hasting’s Facebook account specifically, Hastings has done just that.

In a Facebook post, Hastings announced that Netflix users have streamed 4 billion hour in the past 3 months. Of course, he would probably argue that this type of tidbit isn’t really material information anyway – but it’s nearly identical to the post that got him in trouble with the SEC last December.

Hastings posted that Netflix users were now streaming 1 billion hours of content per month, and that ruffled the SEC’s feathers. They claimed that it violated Regulation Fair Disclosure, as the bit of info didn’t come in an official filing or press release. Hastings hit back, saying that 1.) it wasn’t really material and 2.) Facebook does count as a network for disclosure.

The SEC eventually cleared Hastings of all wrongdoing in the incident, and updated their rules to allow for social media as a dispersion channel for investor info – so long as the company alerts investors beforehand that they will be using the social media channels.

And on Wednesday, Netflix revealed that they would be doing just that in a regulatory filing.

“The information we post on social media could be deemed to be material information…In light of the SEC’s guidance, we encourage investors, the media, and others interested in our company to review the information we post on the U.S. social media,” said Netflix.

It looks like this is the future of social media disclosure. Here’s Netflix CEO Reed Hastings informing his 264,000 followers on Facebook that Netflix users have streamed over 4 billion hours of content in the last three months. It turns out to be only part of a post that references House of Cards and the upcoming Hemlock Grove. Oh, and it’s not even a status update, really. It’s additional comment on a link that he posted.

Reed Hastings1 hour ago

House of Cards fav quote: “look at the bigger picture.” Over the last three months, you all watched over 4 billion hours on Netflix. Next up, some real monsters from Eli Roth…

Netflix series Hemlock Grove: 'People want their horror horrific,' says Eli Roth

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The state of Louisiana is looking to crack down on another activity that threatens the safety of its commuters: Facebooking while driving.

Really, this includes any sort of social networking while driving like tweeting or posting photos to Instagram.

The bill, Senate bill 147, has passed committee without objection.

Louisiana already bans texting while driving, but this bill would extend the banned activities list to posting to or even viewing content on any social network.

No person shall operate any motor vehicle upon any public road or highway of this state while using a wireless telecommunications device to access, read, or post to a social networking site.

The bill goes on to define “social network” as “any web-based service that allows individuals to construct a profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and communicate with other members of the site.”

You would think that this is a unnecessary addition to current anti-texting while driving laws, which already exist in the state. But the bill’s sponsor, Senator Dale Erdey, says that police have actually cited cases where they’ve pulled someone over for texting while driver only to be told “Hey, I’m not texting…I’m Instagramming!” Or Facebooking, or tweeting, or any other social network activity.

He says the current law isn’t comprehensive enough to cover these loopholes.

Sorry, drivers. We know that bumper sticker on the truck in front of you is absolutely outrageous. But your Twitter followers can wait to see it.

This isn’t the only smartphone activity outside of texting that’s getting challenged around the country. Earlier this week, a California judge upheld the illegality of using a mapping product while driving.

[Louisiana Senate bill 147 via The Daily Dot]

Over the past few years, humanoid robot technology has gotten better and better at, well, making robots seem more human. We’re talking the look, the feel, the movements, and the AI. And this technology is only going to get better in the coming decades.

Of course, if there’s anything we can count on humanity to do, it’s sexualize things. And naturally (unnaturally?), the evolution of androids means that eventually, people are going to start having sex with robots. Duh.

It’s not like this isn’t already happening, but the future could open up so many more opportunities for robot sexy times. The Huffington Post and YouGov recently conducted a poll about Americans’ attitudes toward the future of robots, and our interactions with them.

And the results concerning sex robots tip my bullshit meter all the way to maximum bullshittery.

When asked if they would use a sex robot for its (his/her’s?) designed purpose, only 9% said yes. Nine. As in less than one in ten. Ok, sure.

18% said that they think sex robots will be available by 2030.

Last year, a New Zealand study published in Futures magazine painted an interesting picture of the pay-for-sex world in the next few decades. Researchers envision a version of Amsterdam’s red light district that’s completely run by android prostitutes by the year 2050.

“[They] are clean of sexual transmitted infections (STIs), not smuggled in from Eastern Europe and forced into slavery, the city council will have direct control over android sex workers controlling prices, hours of operations and sexual services,” they said.

These sex robots could be fully customizable and offer a wider variant of body type, ethnicity, age, language, and various sexual features. In their future, it’s goodbye sex trade and hello clean, safe, sex robots.

And there’s obviously no emotional toll to be taken on sex robots, that is of course until they become sentient. But we don’t have to worry about that for at least a few hundred years. Probably.

HuffPost’s poll also asked about whether or not sex with a sexbot is considered cheating. 42% said that it would be. And the younger the respondent, the more likely they were to say it’s not cheating.

So, reddit user XsimonbelmontX has made me extremely jealous, as he has created a undeniably awesome Monopoly-like board game based on Fallout. Did I mention it was awesome?

“I spent about 8 months making this. It is a birthday gift for my wife, who is a huge Fallout fan. It is based on Monopoly, but aside from purchasing properties, collecting rent, and a few other things, the mechanics of the game are completely different,” says user XsimonbelmontX.

Nuka Cola and Sunset Sarsaparilla caps serve as the currency, with Nuka Cola Quartz worth $1 – all the way up to Sunset Sarsaparilla Star caps being worth $500.

And here are the seven game tokens:

The “Chance” and “Community Chest” cards:

The wife chimed in on the reddit thread, adding this little tidbit:

“He was working on this for 8 months and I had no idea what it was. He would take people into our music studio to show them and I would piece together the things that I knew and still had no clue!”

When another user asked if they could marry him if they ever divorced, she responded “I wasn’t planning on it even before this, he’s a keeper!”

Yeah, dude scored some major points.

You can check out the whole Imgur album of photos here.

A week after the Securities and Exchange Commission clarified its rules to allow for public companies to use social media outlets to announce key company information, Netflix has already decided to take advantage of it and make it official.

On Wednesday, Netflix told investors via a regulatory filing that it plans to disclose material investor information via social media channels.

This includes Twitter, Facebook, and its own blogs. It specifically mentioned CEO Redd Hastings’ Facebook page as a source of possible disclosure, fitting since the whole controversy surrounding the SEC and social media disclosures began with Hastings.

Last week, the SEC concluded a report into the Facebook activities of Reed Hastings. Back in December of 2012, Hastings ran afoul of the SEC when he posted information to his Facebook page that the SEC deemed material. What he said was that Netflix had just topped 1 billion hours of streaming per month.

The SEC claimed that the Facebook post violated Regulation Fair Disclosure, as the material information didn’t appear in an official filing or a press release or some other form of traditional notification channel. Hastings hit back with a two-pronged approach. First, he didn’t think the post constituted “material” investor info. And second, and more importantly, social media is a proper channel for any sort of disclosures – especially his own page which sports over 260,000 followers, many of which are journalists.

The SEC eventually cleared Hastings of any wrongdoing and took the opportunity to update their own policies regarding social media disclosures. The new rules say that it’s fine, as long as the company makes it known to investors beforehand that they will be using the social accounts for such purposes.

Netflix, in its filing, makes that clear:

“The information we post on social media could be deemed to be material information…In light of the SEC’s guidance, we encourage investors, the media, and others interested in our company to review the information we post on the U.S. social media.”

[Wall Street Journal (paywall)]

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has pulled the cover off his immigration reform group, outlining its position and naming its advocates in a Washington Post op-ed.

He starts off with an anecdote about a young, undocumented student that he teaches in an after-school class on entrepreneurship. The kid’s family is from Mexico, but he’s live in America basically his whole life. Zuckerberg recalls how the student relating his worries about being able to go to college, given his situation.

“These students are smart and hardworking, and they should be part of our future,” says Zuckerberg.

And with that, Zuckerberg announced FWD.us.

“I am proud to announce FWD.us, a new organization founded by leaders of our nation’s technology community to focus on these issues and advocate a bipartisan policy agenda to build the knowledge economy the United States needs to ensure more jobs, innovation and investment.”

And here some of those tech leaders that have joined Zuckerberg on the project:

Reid Hoffman, Eric Schmidt, Marissa Mayer, Drew Houston, Ron Conway, Chamath Palihapitiya, Joe Green, Jim Breyer, Matt Cohler, John Doerr, Paul Graham, Mary Meeker, Max Levchin, Aditya Agarwal and Ruchi Sanghvi.

“Today’s students should have the same opportunities – but our current system blocks them. We have a strange immigration policy for a nation of immigrants. And it’s a policy unfit for today’s world,” says Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg gives a basic outline of FWD.us’ agenda. He says that comprehensive immigration reform starts with effective border security and also allows a “path to citizenship” that lets America benefit from its best and brightest. He also calls for higher standards in schools and “investment in breakthrough discoveries in scientific research and assurance that the benefits of the inventions belong to the public and not just to the few.”

Not too specific on the goals thus far, but the message is clear: we have to start keeping the talent here, instead of letting it slip away to other countries.

Zuckerberg says that the group will “work with members of Congress from both parties, the administration and state and local officials. We will use online and offline advocacy tools to build support for policy changes, and we will strongly support those willing to take the tough stands necessary to promote these policies in Washington.”

You can visit FWD.us, today, and connect via Facebook (surpirse, surprise). FWD.us’ landing page asks visitors to “join the tech community in passing immigration reform.”

Foursquare has announced that the company has secured $41 million in funding from private equity firm Silver Lake Waterman, as well as existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, Spark Capital, and Union Square Ventures.

CEO Dennis Crowley announced the funding Thursday morning.

“The stuff we’re building takes a lot of work. Look at yesterday’s big update, for example. The most amazing thing about it is that it tells you interesting things around you, anywhere in the world, the second you open the app. That’s not easy. We have to crunch your 3,500,000,000 check-ins, layer your social data over it, semantically analyze our tens of millions of tips, and take a look at real-time activity around you. We do all that in under a second, all to recommend two or three places that are perfect for you,” says Crowley.

“We’ve got a ton left to do. We’re building tools for local businesses to connect with their customers. We’re making search better, every single day. We’re building that location layer for the internet – the platform that all other companies use to power location in their apps. This takes time and a lot of work, and great investors.”

On Wednesday, Foursquare launched version 6.0, a significant update to both their iOS and Android platforms that puts local search and recommendations front and center. This update is more in line with the vision that Crowley has for the service – to move well beyond the check-in.

And along with the stated goals of expanding the service and building better tools, you know that Foursquare has to now focus more on monetization.

According to Bloomberg, Foursquare is planning on a whole new slew of ad partnerships, letting every merchant it works with buy ads. They’ll also be expanding their sales team to around 40 people. Foursquare has had ads for a while in the form of sponsored location posts inside the feed and in search results in the app. But they haven’t really taken off, with reports alleging Foursquare only generated about $2 million in revenue last year.

The majority of this $41 million comes in the form of a multiyear loan from Silver Lake, and everything else is convertible debt which can be exchanged for shares later. Taking on this debt allows Foursquare to buy itself some time to figure out how to monetize.

According to Crowley, 1.3 million businesses and 33 million users have “given a try” to Foursquare.

Back in November of last year, Amazon launched the Amazon Wine Marketplace. It would be wrong to say that they did so quietly – they announced it, and it received moderate coverage. But for some reason it just seemed like it launched, and then we kind of forgot about it. Maybe that’s just me. For shame.

Anyway, it’s still in beta. But today, Amazon has announced the addition of a major state to the mix. Amazon Wine is messing with Texas.

“We’re very excited for Texas wineries to share their highly-ranked selection with our millions of customers through the Amazon Wine store,” said Peter Faricy, vice president for Amazon Marketplace. “Our customers tell us they enjoy our wine-country selection combined with the convenience of finding detailed wine information in one place. We want to connect customers with wineries around the country and provide a destination where they can learn about and purchase wines directly from wineries on the platform they trust.”

Adding Texas to the list of available states means two things. First, wine drinkers in Texas will be able to ship wine directly to their doors. And second and more importantly (for the rest of us), Amazon Wine customers will be able to purchase wines from Texas – including Messina Hof, Becker Vineyards, McPherson Cellars, Brennan Vineyards and Llano Estacado, among others.

As of now, Amazon WIne boasts 350+ wineries and 2,200+ labels.

Amazon Wine puts most of the work on the wineries, who process and ship all of the orders. “When you order wine on Amazon.com, you’re ordering directly from a winery,” says Amazon. And due to that, there are only a handful of states that allow customers to receive intrastate wine transactions.

Amazon started out with 12 states back in November, and have since added a few more. As of today, Amazon Wine is available in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Washington, Wyoming, and the District of Columbia.

Amazon Wine offers enthusiasts the ability to browse by region, wine style, price, pairings, and more. It also offers a wine mailing list. According to the company, more states will follow.

Jimmy Kimmel has a thing where he makes people on the streets read the tweets of some of his guests, you know, when the guest is particularly prolific on Twitter. He did this a few weeks ago when he had comedian Rob Delaney on the show.

That time, it was the elderly who were made to read the oftentimes obscene tweets. This time, it’s adorable little children and the Twitter comedian is Kelly Oxford (who just published a book).

This is predictably hilarious:

Can you believe that Gmail is 9 years old? I haven’t felt this old since last week, when Twitter informed me that it was the 19th anniversary of the death of Kurt Cobain. Yikes.

Anyway, Google is now officially 9, having launched in beta on April 1st, 2004. In celebration of that, Google has posted a fun little infographic that deals with the evolution of the product.

“Gmail was inspired by one user’s feedback that she was tired of struggling to find emails buried deep in her inbox. So we built a new email that leveraged the power of Google Search. You told us you were tired of spam, so we set to tackling that, and today your feedback makes it possible for Gmail to filter out well over 99% of incoming spam. You also said that you needed tools to deal with information overload, so we introduced Priority Inbox to help you manage your email (and we’re still exploring new ways to it even easier),” says Google software engineer Zohair Hyder.

As you march through the past 9 years of Gmail, you remember that it took Google nearly two years to add Gchat to Gmail, and how long it took for Google to open up signups Gmail (three years after the beta launch). Not everything that’s happened with Gmail has been a hit with users (for a recent example, check out the reaction to the new compose box), but with hundreds of millions of active users, I guess we can say that we’re pretty happy that Gmail is around. It’s a lot more useful than most 9-year-olds I know, let’s put it that way.

Check out a trip down Gmail memory lane below (click to enlarge):

By my count, we are less than 7 weeks away from the premiere of Arrested Development season 4 on Netflix. The season, which will become available on May 26th at 12:01 am PT, will be dropped all at once – all 15 episodes. Get your extra sleep in now, folks.

Arrested Development fans are no strangers to waiting, so this piddly wait shouldn’t be that hard to manage. But then again, OHMYGODITSREALLYCLOSE.

To whet your appetite, Netflix has unveiled some nice, minimalist promotional posters for the new season. Check ‘em out below: