Since we last talked about it, Chatroulette has continued to grow. The service has ballooned from 109,000 unique visitors in Jan. to just shy of one million in Feb. As its numbers have increased, it has started to pop up in the mainstream.

First there was Jon Stewart, who took to the random video chat site to satirize his television news colleagues. Stewart's "Tech Talch" segment plays on the infamous "dark side" of the service: the likelihood of encountering less than appropriate behavior while browsing.

Chatroulette's latest high profile user is singer-songwriter Ben Folds, who also recently took to the Web for a YouTube contest that called for a cappella submissions of his music. His Chatroulette use was spurred by a video that popped up of Merton, a man who bears a striking resemblance to the popular artist and performs free-style numbers in real time.

Folds' publicist denied rumors that the two were one-in-the-same, but it didn't end there, as Folds performed an improvisational number to a live audience in Charlotte, N.C. and simultaneously to an unsuspecting audience via Chatroulette.

Check out Ben Folds in "Ode to Merton." (Disclaimer: the video does contain some profanity)

When you eliminate the physical product (a book, CD, etc.), how much is the content worth? That's the question for companies balancing existing production with digital sales.

CD sales have fallen off in recent years, while digital downloads have seen significant growth. Ars Technica projects digital music sales will eclipse that of CDs by mid-to-late 2010.

Universal Music Group (UMG) is taking steps to bolster their flagging CD sales. They are reducing the price per album, so that consumers will be spending anywhere between six and 10 dollars -- a figure that is more competitive with digital services like iTunes.

The decision is a gamble for UMG: the price change lowers the company's profit margin by shifting the wholesale price from $10.35 to about $7.50. Rolling Stone reports UMG is betting on increased sales volume to make the change profitable.

Will the lower price of a physical album entice consumers to purchase? It worked for retailer Trans World Entertainment, which saw sales jump 100 percent during a $9.99 test plan that partnered with Sony, UMG and EMI. With music sales already down 15.4 percent from just last year, success for UMG could signal a broader change from the other major labels.

Canon announced its intention to be the first to bid farewell to .com and replace it with .canon. For someone so young, I found myself balking at the press release. Say goodbye to .com and the other generic Top Level Domains. (gTLDs?) Those have been the standard for as long as I've been alive!

I knew that ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, had previously decided to open Web addresses to non-Latin characters -- a step that acknowledges the Internet's global use.

I missed the bus on casting aside the gTLDs for branded alternatives.

I originally thought this would lead to confusion. If I don't know a URL, a good bet is that it will be found at NAME.com. But one of my colleagues reined in my panic by suggesting that companies will retain their old domains. Plus, if this gains popularity in coming years, we'll likely adjust and first try to reach a Web site through its branded domain.

At the earliest, these new domains will appear in 2011, giving me plenty of time to cast off my old-world constructs and embrace a new way to reach my favorite sites.

By Omar L. Gallaga

I've spent the last week covering South by Southwest Interactive in Austin and on this week's "All Tech Considered," we discuss the annual festival, which brings together Web designers, social media addicts, app developers and others for panels, parties and more.

This year, the Interactive fest grew by about 40 percent over last year and paid Interactive attendance is expected to land at about 12,000-13,000 for 2010, organizers said Wednesday.

You can catch up with all of our SXSW Interactive panel write-ups, videos and other coverage on Digital Savant.

Other highlights and low-lights from the fest:

• The much-anticipated keynote from Twitter co-founder and CEO Evan Williams was not exactly what people expected. Not by a long shot. (Video above by the American-Statesman's Jenni Jones.)
• It wasn't the first time a keynote went horribly awry at SXSW Interactive.
• YouTube introduced Musicians Wanted, a new way for indie bands and artists to get a larger slice of the video-embedding and Web ad pie.
• Location-aware apps like Gowalla and Foursquare had the biggest buzz at this year's fest.
• Other companies with things to say or introduce at the fest included Microsoft, Digg, MOG and Spotify.

When there are only 140 characters, a link can be a major impediment to microblogging aspirations. URL shorteners can free up space, making services like bit.ly and ow.ly indispensable to some. Media companies are even launching personalized shorteners -- including The New York Times and NPR. Two recent studies, however, investigate the speed and reliability of these services and find that they can result in tradeoffs for that extra blogging space.

Reliability is also an issue with shortened links. When just one service goes down it severs the links to hundreds or thousands of sites. Users are left without access to sites the service is supposed to be pointing them to.

Popular websites ow.ly, bit.ly, and su.pr score well with both WatchMouse and another study by Pingdom. WatchMouse gives its highest grade to goo.gl and twt.tl. Both were available 100 percent of the time.

Pingdom analyzed data from Jul. 18, 2009 to Aug. 16, 2009 for Bit.ly, TinyURL, Ow.ly, Is.gd, Su.pr, Snipurl, Cli.gs, Tr.im and Twurl. WatchMouse's study took place between between Feb. 14, 2010 and Mar. 16, 2010. Theirs sampled a different group of URL shorteners from the earlier Pingdom report: binged.it, bit.ly, fb.me, goo.gl, is.gd, ow.ly, snurl.com, su.pr, tom.ch (bitly.pro), tinyurl.com, tr.im, twt.tl, twurl.cc and youtu.be.

Yelp is being accused of using its user-review system as leverage to get companies to advertise on its site, where customers rate and comment on stores ranging from hamburger joints to veterinarians.

When stories first came out about places that were angry with their status on Yelp, it was easy to think that perhaps these were old-think businesses that didn't realize that the reviews were written by average customers. After all, maybe some of those 2-star shops (out of a possible 5) had been doing shoddy work for years, but there was no way to track there broader reputations before the Web.

Tail Wagging The Dog? In a perfect service to irony, the pet shop Wag My Tail is involved in a lawsuit accusing Yelp of playing favorites. (Screenshot / NPR)

But these new lawsuits -- filed by a range of businesses in several cities -- might suggest a pattern of behavior to some Yelp users that could leave them questioning the information they find on the site.

Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp's CEO, has consistently defended the company from the perception that it plays favorites. He's insisted that Yelp doesn't remove negative reviews in exchange for money.

But in a recent blog post, Stoppelman seemed to acknowledge that the company does remove some ratings -- to "protect users from fake, or shill, reviews."

Could it be that the practice of culling bogus reviews -- a necessary step for any site trying to maintain its credibility with an astute group of members -- is what creates the impression for some that Yelp tinkers with the overall ratings?

Stoppelman seems to think so. He says those who feel wrong are "confused" about how Yelp works.

A common theme of the business owners who say they've been wronged is a scenario in which the owner refuses a salesperson's offer to buy an ad slot on Yelp -- and soon after, some of the store's positive ratings on the site go missing, they say. As for bad reviews, the owners claim that Yelp offers to shift those to the bottom of the pile -- if they advertise.

Tech Crunch reports that in the case of Renaissance Furniture Restoration in San Francisco (where Yelp is based), the store's owner claims that he lost 10 of 11 five-star reviews after saying no to an ad rep from Yelp. A recent visit to the store's Yelp page showed it with a 4.5 star rating, based on 3 reviews.

Boris Levitt, the store's owner, has filed suit. Last week, law firms from Miami and San Diego filed a federal class-action suit against Yelp over what they call unfair business practices. The lawsuit, as you might guess, has a site of its own.

These allegations aren't new -- an article last year detailed the shakedown one restaurant owner claims to have gotten from a Yelp employee. As for Levitt's complaint, Tech Crunch has the full text on its site, where it's been following these cases closely.

These cases, and the doubts they might bring, could be a real blow to anyone who relies on Yelp to find a good lunch in a strange town, or to see if the new sushi place in their neighborhood is a ripoff -- information that I've personally found to be very reliable on Yelp.

What makes Yelp useful is its Average Joe quality, mixed with the wisdom of crowds. When I'm using Yelp on my phone to find an awesome cup of coffee, I don't want to wonder whether somebody's got their thumb on the scales.

As for the lawsuits, Yelp's Stoppelman says they may be the result of some lawyers looking for a big payday -- likely attracted by news of the company's successful rounds of financing. Founded by two former PayPal employees, Yelp has received tens of millions of dollars from venture firms.

Still, it won't really surprise many people that Yelp is a different animal from, say, the nonprofit Consumer Reports, known for scrupulously avoiding mixing advertising with its ratings.

On Yelp, sponsored reviews are often sprinkled into the search results themselves. And that's something you just have to hope most people on the Web are savvy enough to recognize -- after all, Google does the same thing with the whole Internet, as Stoppelman wrote in another recent blog post.

Whether the complaining business owners' stories about disappearing stars are hokum, or not, the allegations show how hard it can be to maintain trust and credibility -- let alone usefulness -- when a review site goes from being a startup community to an influential sensation.

Twitter unveiled a new app platform at its SXSW keynote presentation that is meant to extend its reach across the Web. The new platform, called "@anywhere," partners with a number of quickly recognizable names: Amazon, AdAge, Bing, Citysearch, Digg, eBay, The Huffington Post, Meebo, MSNBC.com, The New York Times, Salesforce.com, Yahoo! and YouTube.

Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone outlined the possibilities presented by @anywhere on the company blog:

Imagine being able to follow a New York Times journalist directly from her byline, tweet about a video without leaving YouTube, and discover new Twitter accounts while visiting the Yahoo! home page -- and that's just the beginning. Twitter has proven to be compelling in a variety of ways. With @anywhere, web site owners and operators will be able to offer visitors more value with less heavy lifting.

CEO Evan Williams described the new platform by comparing it to the hover cards that already appear on the Twitter Web site. Through Javascript integration, a similar window would be present on the partner sites, from which users will be able to participate in the Twitter community without every leaving the original location.

The news comes as Barracuda Labs only recently concluded that a small percentage -- 27 percent -- of Twitter's more than 75 million users posted updates more than 10 times in 2009.

Forrester social media analyst Augie Ray believes people will "be more likely to sign up for a Twitter account and become part of the conversation, instead of consuming information in a one-way fashion."

No release date has been announced, but more details are expected at the Twitter Developer Conference to be held in April.

New data from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism suggests that few consumers of news on the Web would consider paying for the content.

The report comes as media giants such as The New York Times look for new revenue via pay models. So far, The Wall Street Journal has been the only major publisher to make a pay model stick. It charges $79 per year for full access to its site.

But the statistics suggest that it won't be an easy battle for an industry seeking profit from its online audience.

Only 35 percent of news consumers report having a favorite site. An even slimmer 19 percent of those "faithful" users say they would pay for news online. Put another way, the report concludes that 82 percent of "faithful" users would seek the news elsewhere if charged. All told, only 7 percent of online news consumers with a favorite Web site indicate willingness to pay.

Data from the research firm Outsell may suggest one reason consumers are so willing to do without their choice news source when asked to pay. Outsell says 44 percent of visitors to Google News never click to read the full article, only scanning headlines. Many people are apparently satisfied with skimming the news without ever diving into it.

Whether it was the 24 hour news cycle that turned American news consumers into sound-bite seekers or the reverse (the chicken or the egg?), the news industry faces a distinct challenge in the digital age. If people are only interested in a broad representation of the news, then they are less likely to discriminate one source from another -- except when one would charge for what is free from another.

A commenter at The Globe and Mail shares their opinion:

The problem is that you can get news 24/7 from online media almost anywhere in the world. If site X tries to charge me I can find it at site Y. This might not apply to some investigative stories, local news and editorials, etc., but the majority of news can be found somewhere for free. I read articles from Canada, the US and Europe online daily. It's hard, if not impossible, to compete with free content.

The Pew report on online economics and consumer attitudes is part of a larger study, "The State of the News Media 2010," which can be read in full at stateofthemedia.org.

This past month, game industry sales declined by 12 percent over January sales last year. However, the industry still raked in nearly $1.2 billion dollars domestically for the month. Over the past years, this multibillion dollar industry has grown at exponential rates, and its growth seems likely to resume later this year.

Opportunities for games are arising in new devices like the iPad, iPhone, or Android devices. And at a time when jobs are being lost in other industries, the gaming sector has proven to be resilient. But only a relatively small percentage -- about 18% -- of the workers in the gaming industry are women or minorities.

Sheri Grainer Ray is a game designer and author of the book Gender Inclusive Game Design, expanding the market. She says that in 1989, when she began working in the games industry, women made up only three percent of the workforce. Now the workforce is roughly 10 to 12 percent female, while both Latinos and African Americans comprise less than five percent combined.

Ray says that one-third of the game-playing population is women aged 18 and up. So why don't games reflect that diverse consumer base? She says the problem is that women and minorities are not drawn to work in gaming companies or in technology.

Ray tells people, "If I ever want to find a game designer, I go to the storage closet, and when I open the door there will be six people standing there with their resumes. The problem is that none of them will be female, and none of them will be people of color. They will simply be white males."

Joe Saulter is chairman of the International Game Developers Association Diversity Advisory Board. He says that there are very few African American game developers. And because of the lack of diversity in the workforce, games are targeted at white males. There is a void of content targeting African Americans, Latinos and women. Although the market clearly exists, there is no model to make companies want to invest.

Saulter says: "The game industry hasn't seen that model yet... but there are ideas in the African American, Latin American, and Asian community that are bubbling with innovation, all we have to do is bring them to fruition."

One of the companies trying to create this model is Nerjyzed Entertainment Inc. It has a game called the Black College Football Experience or BCFX, which is a cross between Madden and Rock Band. Using drum lines and traditional Black college football teams, Nerjyzed tries to create a different experience and cultural perspective. It is one of the few examples of a company or game specifically aimed at a minority audience.

"If we really want to reach a diverse audience, then our workforce has to reflect that," says Ray, "we are not reaching our full potential, because we only have one set of experiences, and one set of viewpoints that we are building from."

The topic of profile pictures is one often talked about around our cubes here at work, especially Twitter avatars. They're so small (so mysterious) that what a person looks like on Twitter is often very different from what they look like in real life. In some cases it's a good thing, in others it's not so good.

I know this is shallow, but I'm willing to bet a few bucks that many of the little square pictures that end up online take a whole lot of time to create. Of course, I won't name names.

I think a new Samsung ad does the topic justice. The ad hawks a new point-and-shoot that makes self-portraits a cinch because it has an LCD screen in front of the camera.

Mobile coupons are now available from retail giant, Target. (Screenshot from Target)

Coupon clippers may or may not rejoice when they hear about Target's latest idea. The retail giant wants to eke sales out of the mobile phone craze by offering scan-ready coupons directly to your phone.

The coupons are delivered monthly via SMS. The text messages contain a link to a mobile Web page, where customers will find ads for a variety of products. Signing up for the messages is straight forward. To receive the SMS from Target, users can either go to http://m.target.com or text COUPONS to 827438.

For those who, like me, are averse to spending Saturday morning clipping ads from their local papers this spells a welcome relief.

Whether or not it will spell effective for Target is another story altogether. Leah Guimond, a spokesperson for Target, doesn't seem to be outwardly concerned about the company's returns. A Wall Street Journal blog post quotes her saying, "We know our guests are relying more and more on mobile devices, so we're providing convenient, on-the-go mobile solutions to help them make the most of their Target shopping experience."

By Alan Greenblatt

One of the annoying things about travel is eating out. Don't get me wrong -- I love to try new stuff wherever I go. But I've always found it hard to get locals to point me in the right direction.

Maybe it's just me. But too many people, it seems, eat mainly at Subway and aren't sure where else they should send a visitor.

The great thing about Internet review sites such as Yelp and OpenTable is that you can get help from people who aren't shy about expressing opinions and have, collectively, tried just about every place in town.

It's true that every review site has its problems. As my friend Ken points out, one person's bad experience gets magnified 100 times over. And owners and competitors do not shy from trying to stuff the ballot box on customer feedback sites.

The Washington Post had a story the other day about hotels "hounding" guests to write positive reviews.

Relying on the Web for dining advice requires more caution, anyway, than reading online reviews of stereo systems or new digital cameras, because eating is more subjective. Other people are going to have legitimately different taste than you when it comes to determining what's too spicy or simply what's yummy.

And when you're traveling, you notice that online reviewers are just as prone as guidebook authors to tout famous but past their prime restaurants. "We had to wait a long time for a table and the food was kind of bland, but we had a good time. Four stars."

Run the other way.

There's also a problem with places that get legitimately praised, which may turn out to be more trouble than they're worth. Case in point: Recently, The New York Times ran a story about a sandwich shop in San Francisco that has gotten so busy due to online reviews that people have to make reservations or wait in line for two hours --- for a take-out sandwich!

That's the new reality: Web review sites are an increasingly popular place to get dining advice. A National Restaurant Association survey last fall found that about one in five adults post or read reviews on such sites and 26 percent are likely to turn to them for advice about finding new restaurants.

The Internet has forever changed word of mouth when it comes to restaurants.

"In an age of rapid information sharing, the real excitement over a new place happens far in advance of the published review in the paper or magazine," Todd Kliman writes in the current Oxford American. "Someone gets a tip and passes on the news, and a following quickly builds -- a kind of culinary equivalent of insider trading."

NPR.org will soon update its Web site for 3D capability.

OK, that isn't true, but with the current mania for all things 3D, the plausibility of that statement may have had you believing me for at least a moment. Three major electronics brands have announced plans for 3D TV, including Panasonic, Samsung and Sony. They hope to capitalize on the huge 3D theatrical success of James Cameron's Avatar, which has grossed more than $721 billion in domestic revenue -- nearly 81% of which comes from 3D sales.

Efforts to revitalize 3D began to gain public momentum in 2009 with the theatrical releases of movies like My Bloody Valentine 3D, the first horror film to show in 3D, and the animated tale Coraline. It was another animated feature that had DreamWorks' Jeffrey Katzenberg calling 3D "the future of filmmaking." A commercial for his film, Monsters vs. Aliens, was the first Super Bowl ad to be shown in 3D.

Three concerns -- two professional and one personal -- stand in the way of 3D's success, as far as I can tell.

And what about the glasses? For its Monsters vs. Aliens commercial, DreamWorks distributed over 125 million pairs of free glasses. Katzenberg predicts "3D eyeglasses will become as common as the many choices as exist in sunglasses today." I remain skeptical, though, wondering if viewers will find the eyewear an inconvenience. And at $133 a pop, I certainly hope people don't lose, misplace or break them like they do the remote control.

With a full slate of 3D movie releases ahead, we're not likely to forget about this recharged technology. Yet it remains to be seen if electronics brands can successfully sell this product, taking 3D out of theater screens to make it the preferred home viewing experience.

If Frank Deford is writing about video games, you know something's up. The lion of sports writers mostly explores the idea of "pure" sports -- and he often finds the corrosive spots that threaten to tarnish the game.

In the NCAA's partnership with Electronic Arts, Deford has found a patch of rust.

The NCAA and its member universities are already on thin ice for giving college athletes only one droplet of the absolute monsoon of cash broadcasters pay to air their games. And as if cashing in on these guys during their young, un-enfranchised years wasn't enough, the NCAA and EA Sports has also used the likeness of former players to sell video games.

That's gotta sting for anyone -- I know I'd be mad (and, I admit, baffled) if somebody started selling a video game based on my college life.

But imagine the sting for former big-time players, like Ed O'Bannon (UCLA) or quarterback Samuel Keller (Arizona State, Nebraska), who see their name and likeness being used in yet another million-dollar industry -- but who don't see a penny from it.

At presstime, it was not evident if the Duke Blue Devil plans to take part in the lawsuit. (EA Sports)

After seeing a virtual image of himself in the EA basketball game -- left handed, tall and rangy, wearing UCLA jersey No. 31 -- O'Bannon told Yahoo! Sports that what bugged him was the idea that someone was getting paid, and it wasn't him.

So, O'Bannon decided to sue, using a law firm that has previously won a case for Holocaust victims against Swiss banks. (I know, right?)

Keller's suit, which focuses more on the games' use of current athletes (who are forbidden by the NCAA from "commercializing" their own image), is not quite as wide-ranging as O'Bannon's, which targets the video games along with DVDs and memorabilia. And Keller's suit notes a loophole, in which EA allows gamers to upload "custom" rosters of players -- so they get the real names, stats, etc. from an outside source.

And here's where it gets a little weird. In trying to get Keller's suit dismissed last month, EA trotted out a defense that may surprise anyone who's played a modern sports game. They said the games are protected under the First Amendment (free speech), because they transform the players into avatars.

Isn't that kinda funny? The company that goes to extreme lengths to convince us that playing a game is true to life -- like really stepping in with Derek Jeter, or dunking with Kobe -- now says it's all a sham. Despite all the ping-pong-ball bodysuits and 3-D cameras, EA said, it's all an interpretation so complete as to be totally unlike the original.

By that measure, the actors "transformed" in films like Avatar, District 9, or (you knew it was coming) Transformers better look out... or at least count their blessings that they're not in college.

At any rate, Electronic Arts might fall prey to the success of their own marketing.

Football fans might recall that a group of retired NFL players already won a similar case against their own players' union, for $26 million. The case hinged on Electronic Arts' use of players' likenesses in the Madden NFL series.

The union agreed to pay for failing to protect the players' rights -- because in 2001, the NFL Players Association told EA that it should scramble real players' appearance and jersey numbers to avoid paying for the source material/being sued.

Since you're probably wondering: yes -- after the college athletes' suit was filed, EA began to mix up college players' numbers and appearances. And at least for now, it has discontinued future work on the NCAA basketball series.

Scrambling the players' identities might keep a multimillion-dollar court settlement at bay, but it also kind of ruins the in-the-game authenticity that real fans are looking for when they play these games.

It seems that EA may have finally found its "uncanny valley" -- the distasteful gap when something that's fake becomes a bit too real -- and is frantically trying to step away from the ledge. For gamers, it's a shame that the move is inspired more by finances than by technical ability.

By Omar L. Gallaga

This morning, Google was expected to announce at the National Bike Summit in Washington, D.C., that is is adding bike routes to its popular Google Maps service.

The service will display in about 150 cities bike trails, roads with bike lanes and roads without bike lanes, but which are bike-friendly. Bicyclists will be able to submit their own corrections and routes, which will be reviewed and potentially added to the general database.

You can read my full story in today's edition of the Austin American-Statesman. Austin is one of a handful of cities that helped inspire the new service; a former Austinite started a petition site that garnered more than 50,000 responses urging the company to add bike routing to Google Maps.