Documentary On Hell Will 'Push Your Buttons'

Writer/director Kevin Miller says Hellbound, due in theaters this fall, is "my attempt to get to the bottom of the debate we're having about hell. . . . And of all the doctrines we could be fighting about, why does hell seem to be at the top of the list?" Miller says he hopes the film will "provoke informed discussion," and suggests that the film will be "somewhat controversial, because no matter what your beliefs on hell, this is gonna push your buttons." Miller says his team interviewed "all sorts of people who have a dog in this fight, from theologians to pastors to death metal musicians to exorcists to people who claim to have seen hell first-hand." -Christianity Today Entertainment 

  Here's the trailer:

  

"Hellbound?" Official Teaser Trailer

Story Of How Mary Poppins Author Regretted Selling Rights To Disney To Be Turned Into Film

The story behind the making of Mary Poppins is to be told in a Hollywood film with Emma Thompson earmarked as Pamela Travers, the author who signed away the rights to Walt Disney only to regret it.

Thompson is in negotiations to play Travers, who created the Poppins character in the 1930s for a series of children's books.

Tom Hanks is in talks to co-star as Disney, the studio mogul who turned the tale of a magical nanny into one of the best-loved children's films of all time.

It took Disney 14 years to persuade a reluctant Travers to relinquish the rights. The resulting film, released in 1964, won five Academy Awards including best actress for Dame Julie Andrews.

But Travers was so horrified by the film that she wept through the world premiere. From that day until her death in 1996 she railed against Disney for "betraying" the character and producing a film that was "all fantasy and no magic".

The new film is titled Saving Mr Banks, a reference to the Disney scriptwriters' attempts to write the character out of the story as they drifted from Travers's original plot.

It was not the only change – Mrs Banks became a suffragette and the family, imagined by Travers as residing in a "dilapidated" little house, lived in Edwardian grandeur.

Travers hated the animated sequences, thought Andrews too pretty to play the role and did not care for the songs.

"I cried when I saw it. I said, 'Oh, God, what have they done?'" Travers said years later.

Born Helen Lyndon Goff in 1899, the author left her native Queensland, Australia for London in 1924. She became a published poet before finding success with the first Mary Poppins novel in 1934, published under the pen name of PL Travers.

She was an unconventional figure, never marrying and becoming a single mother aged 40 when she adopted a baby boy from Ireland. The child, Camillus, was a twin but Travers refused to take both.

Her Mary Poppins character was much darker than the film version: "There was something strange and extraordinary about her – something that was frightening and at the same time most exciting," read one description in the books.

The character of Mr Banks owed something to her own father, a bank manager who fell on hard times.

Disney was introduced to the Mary Poppins stories by his daughter, Diane, in the 1940s. Aware that Travers had turned down other studios, he began a campaign of "attention, flattery, transcontinental telegrams and visits", according to Caitlin Flanagan, who profiled Travers in The New Yorker.

Finally, Travers agreed to a deal that gave her $100,000, a cut of the gross and script approval. She insisted that the film would not be a cartoon, hence her horror at the animated sequences.

During the making of the film, she bombarded the studio with objections to the script. Disney did not invite her to the premiere but she secured a ticket and watched with tears in her eyes.

She said later that the film betrayed her beloved character. "Julie Andrews, a friend of mine, has all the necessary integrity to play the part – she was just directed wrongly." she said.

"[Andrews] was quite prepared to put on a black wig, with a knob of hair at the back, and a turned-up nose. She's a great trooper and very honest. But to her surprise, as well as mine, Disney turned her into a very pretty girl, which really loses the point."

Travers, who died in 1996, became a rich woman thanks to the film royalties but refused to work with Disney again. The new film is a Disney production.

Her experience with Hollywood executives was so bruising that she agreed to a Mary Poppins stage musical by Sir Cameron Mackintosh on the proviso that "no Americans" be involved in its creation. –The Telegraph

Gas Price Hypocrisy

Watch the video above and be amused at the current spin about the rationale to today's high gasoline price in the USA!

The 5 Best Sex Scenes on Film

!! ATTENTION !!

ADULT CONTENT

MAY BE OFFENSIVE TO SOME VIEWERS  

These softcore liberally minded movies keep it hot and left.

One of the most salient critiques of modern mainstream pornography is that it generally revolves around the subjugation of women. Some of these women could earn Oscars for their dramatically faked orgasms, which help normalize the idea among viewers that all women are as subservient and sexually eager as those in porn. Of course, some of us are, but give us a break! This led to the creation of more feminist-minded porn, made by women and men who do not believe in the concept of censorship to subvert mainstream modes of pornography, but in creating an alternative for sex-positive voyeurs.

With that in mind, we were interested in exploring the idea of feminist or sex-positive sex scenes in progressive mainstream films, and how they’re presented. It’s slightly more SFW (slightly!), but here are some of the best rated-R examples of awesome sex scenes in lefty-leaning films: 

1. Don’t Look Now

A complex look at a marriage as it implodes after the loss of a daughter, this 1973 film is actually more famous for its sex scene: Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie in then-explicit passion, filmed through innovative jump-cuts by director Nicholas Roeg. At the time it was highly controversial, not just for its graphic nature but for the rumor that Sutherland and Christie were actually full-on doing it in the film (something both later denied, though it was restated in Paramount exec Peter Bart’s book, Infamous Players: A Tale of Movies, the Mob and Sex). But more importantly: the scene featured a still-rare cunnilingus scene, which for some reason barely happens on camera. Perhaps it was graphic, but we can’t help but wonder if the fact that the scene was about loving parity is what made it so objectable to a room full of dude producers. Just speculating! 

Julie Christie Sex Scene on Don't Look Now - The most popular videos are a click away

2. Coming Home

As the Vietnam war wrapped up, pop culture was beginning to look at its impact in real-life ways. This 1978 film starred Jon Voigt as a veteran who returned a paraplegic, and Jane Fonda as a war wife who reconnected with him, a former high-school classmate, while volunteering at the VA hospital. The film realistically examines the psychological ramifications of Vietnam, including how women dealt with their husbands’ absence—and how an able-bodied woman can find the greatest passion of her life with a man who has become disabled. A good example that sexual pleasure is as much psychological as it is physical. 

Jane Fonda Great Sex Scene - More amazing videos are a click away

3. Brokeback Mountain

Clearly the 2005 Oscar-winning film about the love affair between two closeted cowboys in Wyoming was a feat—based on a short story by Annie Proulx, it revealed a secret and beautiful possibility of love in what is often viewed as a heteronormative existence. When two ostensibly straight leading men (Jake Gyllenhaal and the dearly departed Heath Ledger) united, it was viewed as groundbreaking (and was for the mainstream, even though gay actors portray straight every single day). But the portrayal of love in two tents in the dark was beautiful, and probably one of the most straightforward gay love scenes in a mainstream/critically acclaimed movie ever.

4. Boys Don’t Cry

Ditto with Boys Don’t Cry, the dramatization based on the tragic true story of Brandon Teena, the trans man who was brutally murdered in Nebraska for being who he was, portrayed by Hilary Swank. Before his end, he had a brief love with the cis woman Lana Tisdel (Chloe Sevigny), and the film portrays it as a tender moment in which two people were sharing young love, regardless of how they identified. 

5. Secretary

In this film, Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader play out a classic sub-dom relationship, with tasks and spankings and classic mental mind-fucks. There’s a lot that’s hot here for those who are into S&M, but once they break it down and Spader’s character lets himself psychologically submit, the love scenes get way more lovey—and Spader’s devotional surrealism comes to a head after he bathes and pleases her in a way no feminist could be mad at. 

–AlterNet

Foot Note: Julianne Escobedo Shepherd is an associate editor at AlterNet and a Brooklyn-based freelance writer and editor. Formerly the executive editor of The FADER, her work has appeared in VIBE, SPIN, New York Times and various other magazines and websites.

Cat Uses Sign Language to Ask for Food

10 Things For Celebrities To Remember When Taking Nude Cell Phones Pictures

[Lessons for those of you who do the same]

Glee star Heather Morris recently joined Christina Hendricks and Olivia Munn as the latest to allegedly have their cell phones hacked, unleashing nude photos into the world. The three newcomers join the ranks of everyone from Scarlett Johanssen to Anthony Weiner. You're doing it, guys!!!!!

With that in mind, here are some helpful reminders to celebrities who intend on photographing themselves and sending them to their boyfriends, girlfriends, twitter followers, mistresses, etc.

    > Nobody will ever see these, other than the person you intend to send them to.

    > This is a great idea.

    > Seriously, really fantastic idea that will in no way be regretted.

    > Include no more than two-thirds of your face when snapping the picture. This will create an allure to the person you're sending them to. "Is that my significant other? I think so, who else would be sending me these pictures that are for my eyes only?"

    > No need for makeup or flattering angles as, again, the only person to see these will be your serious boyfriend/girlfriend who has seen you at your best but also at your worst. It's called intimacy.

    > Really feel good about the decision you're making. You got to the top with great decision-making, why stop now?

    > Phone hacking is a creation of the lame stream media and does not happen in real life. And if it does, which it certainly doesn't, it will never happen to you.

    > Send them with complete confidence that these will only be seen and enjoyed by two people.

    > No need to delete them after they've been sent. It's in everyone's best interest that you keep them on your phone's hard drive for future use.

    > Soak in how good you feel about your idea to follow through on this. You almost didn't take sort-of-flattering pictures of your naked body! What a fool you almost were!

-Funny or Die

exypna.gr Ο ΚΑΛΟΣ Ο ΓΕΙΤΟΝΑΣ!!

(Lost In Translation … LOL)

Muppets vs. Goldman Sachs

Now is the time for the Muppets to respond to Goldman Sachs.

Death Watch 2012: Our Fall TV Survival Predictions

The May upfronts are just around the corner! Death is nigh, my friends!

Time to check the status of nearly all broadcast shows. Here's what we're hearing along with each show's current adults 18-49 average rating:

FOX

"Alcatraz": 3.4 rating. Status: Not hopeful: Monday's finale was the lowest-rated episode for the season.

"Allen Gregory": DEAD

"American Dad": 2.8 rating. Status: RENEWED.

"American Idol": 6.7 Wednesdays, 6.2 rating Thursdays. Status: It's now a full-on team sport to bag on the aging music competition, but this franchise ain't going anywhere (yet). The bigger question is how much the judging panel will change next season.

"Bones": 3.0 rating. Status: RENEWED.

"Breaking In": DEAD

"Family Guy": 3.9 rating. Status: Absolutely.

"Fringe": 1.7 rating. Status: We've been hearing Fringe was doomed -- until this week. There's renewed hope for a 13-episode "final season" pickup thanks to the modest performance of Alcatraz.

"Glee": 3.8 rating. Status: Of course! We gotta see what happens next at McKinley High after some of its talented seniors graduate.

"Hell's Kitchen": 3.4 rating. Status: Sure, why not?

"House": 3.5 rating. Status: The doctor is out!

"Kitchen Nightmares": 1.7 rating. Status: Yawn. Isn't it time for this kitchen to close already? Especially if Gordon Ramsay's latest, "Hotel Hell," breaks out.

"Napoleon Dynamite": 2.8 rating. Status: Nah. We aren't feeling it.

"New Girl": 4.2 rating. Status: Oh course, the cutest gal on Fox is coming back for another season!

"Raising Hope": 2.6 rating. Status: Not the greatest performer but the auspices are awesome, especially if Fox wants to continue to try and build a four-sitcom comedy block on Tuesdays. We predict another season.

"The Cleveland Show": 2.0 rating. Status: Probably.

"The Finder": 2.8 rating. Status: Any optimism is unfounded.

"The Simpsons": 3.5 rating: Status: RENEWED

"The X-Factor": 4.4 rating. Status: RENEWED. (But who are the new hosts and remaining judges?)

"I Hate My Teenage Daughter": 2.2 rating. Status: Yanked with two episodes still in the can. Not officially canceled, but Fox never officially canceled Moment of Truth either.

"Terra Nova": 3.6 rating. Status: Canceled by Fox, cuerrently shopping for another home. We're not holding our breath, especially since stars like Jason O'Mara have already booked other shows.

"Touch": 3.3 rating. Status: Kiefer Sutherland returns in this drama from Heroes' creator Tim Kring. Solid ratings for last month's preview episode, and Fox just gave it a prime berth after Idol.

ABC

"Castle": 2.8 rating. Status: A 10 p.m. success on ABC? This crime drama favorite will return.

"Modern Family": 6.1 rating. Status: Grabs ratings AND all the awards.

"Body of Proof": 2.0 rating. Status: The show does well overseas so it's too soon to count this drama out.

"Charlie's Angels (ABC)": DEAD

"Cougar Town": 1.8 rating, 4.9 million. Status: Those awesome winos tried hard, but we don't expect the Alphabet bosses to show mercy after this season.

"Dancing with the Stars": 3.6 rating. Status: Even hitting a series low for its recent premiere, ABC can't live without its fringe.

"Desperate Housewives": 3.5 rating. Status: Buh bye, ladies! Stay fab.

"GCB": 2.4 rating. Status: This serialized drama about a group of shrewy women in Texas can't improve upon its low-rated older sister, "Desperate Housewives." We aren't feeling positive about a second season, but it's too early to say.

"Grey's Anatomy": 4.4 rating. Status: Certain contracts are up this season (here's looking at you, Meredith and McDreamy) but we have no doubt Seattle Grace will be open for another season.

"Happy Endings": 3.0 rating. Status: Young, hip, pulls a decent number. It'll earn another season.

"Last Man Standing": 2.8 rating. Status: Tough one. It's hard to let a star like Tim Allen go, but these ratings aren't exactly upstanding. Could be close.

"Man Up!": DEAD

"Missing": 2.1 rating. Status: Ashley Judd better find her son quick.

"Once Upon a Time": 4.2 rating. Status: Since its the highest-rated new drama of the season, we expect ABC to say yes to more fantasy.

"Pan Am": 2.3 rating, 6.9 million. Status: Not technically cancelled but don't expect Pan Am to make a return trip.

"Private Practice": 3.3 rating. Status: On the bubble for the first time, but our gut says it will stick around.

"Revenge": 3.0 rating. Status: Strange that ABC hasn't already rewarded this critical fave with a renewal. It would have hell to pay if it didn't bring the Graysons back for more beachside fun.

"Suburgatory": 2.8 rating. Status: Has been a pretty stable performer. Yes?

"The Bachelor": 2.9 rating. Status: Nothing official, but its all but a fait accompli.

"The Middle": 2.8 rating. Status: A self-starter. ABC will give the family another go.

"The River": 2.3 rating. Status: Sure didn't attract "Paranormal Activity"-like audiences (The supernatural thriller is from the maker of the colossally successful movie trilogy). Dead in the water.

"Work It": DEAD

NBC

"30 Rock": 2.2 rating. Status: We're hearing a seventh and final season is likely for the critical darling.

"Are You There, Chelsea?": 1.9 rating. Status: We suspect nobody at NBC is drunk enough to renew this show.

"Awake": 2.1 rating. Status: Stronger than "The Firm" and "Prime Suspect," but that's not saying much. Jury's still out.

"Bent": .9 rating. Status: Four episodes have aired, two are left. We suspect those will be its last.

"Chuck": 1.3 rating. Status: So long!

"Community": 1.9 rating. Status: Critics and die-hard fans love it, but delivers a cable-sized audience. We expect a renewal anyway.

"Grimm": 2.2 rating. Status: RENEWED.

"Fashion Star": 1.6 rating. Status: Feels like a Bravo-sized show like "Project Runway."

"Fear Factor": 2.8 rating. Status: What, you don't want to see if someone may still drink donkey semen on national TV?

"Free Agents": 1.5, 3.8 million

"Harry's Law": 1.4 rating. Status: We don't see how NBC can afford to bring this back, and it wouldn't fit with "Grimm" on Fridays.

"Law & Order: SVU": 2.3 rating. Status: A modestly solid crime drama that NBC can't afford to lose right now.

"Parenthood": 2.6 rating. Status: The congenial underdog. Feels likely to return, but really depends on how many new dramas NBC orders.

"Parks & Recreation": 2.2 rating. Status: Such a phenomenally funny show. It deserves another season and will probably get it.

"Playboy Club": 1.5, 4.9 million.

"Prime Suspect": 1.7, 6.1 million

"The Apprentice": 2.4 rating. Status: Celebrity versions do fine; we think another one will come down the pipeline.

"The Firm": 1.2 rating. Status: Never should have been made into a series.

"The Biggest Loser": 2.5 rating. Status: Feels tired, but it's a solid player and relatively cheap to keep in the hopper.

"The Office": 3.5 rating. Status: It's NBC's highest-rated scripted show. So, yes -- even with actors exiting and the showrunner stepping down.

"Rock Center With Brian Williams": 1.1 rating, 4.5 million. Status: Stick with your day job, Brian.

"The Sing-Off": 1.8 rating. Status: Better suited for summer. Seems unlikely it will show up next fall.

"Smash": 3.4 rating. Status: RENEWED

"The Voice": 7.4 rating. Status: Though nothing is official, negotiations are well underway over a third season and deciding which judges will make a triumphant return.

"Up All Night": 2.4 rating. Status: Of all of the new NBC comedies, we think this one is most likely to return next season.

"Whitney": 2.2 rating. Status: Nosedived after being moved to Wednesdays. Girl, you're done.

CW

"Secret Circle": 1.0 rating. Status: It fits nice with The Vampire Diaries ... aside from losing a big bite of it's audience. Probably returning, though might move to Friday.

"Gossip Girl": .8 rating. Status: Not doing well, but this show is CW royalty. We predict a final season order.

"90210": .9 rating. Status: Seems like a sure thing.

"One Tree Hill": .9 rating. Status: Say goodbye to the kids!

"Ringer": 0.8 rating, 1.8 million. Status: Not twinning. Sarah Michelle Gellar's drama will likely get slayed.

"Supernatural": .9 rating. Status: We think fans will be pleased.

"The Vampire Diaries": 1.3 rating. Status: CW's buzziest show and highest-rated series? Hell yes.

"Hart of Dixie": 0.8 rating, 1.9 million. Status: Feels more on-brand, and more likely to survive, than "Ringer."

"America's Top Model": Status: RENEWED.

"Nikita": 0.6 rating. Status: James say no, Lynette is thinking yes.

CBS

"A Gifted Man": 1.4 rating. Status: So long, Patrick Wilson: We only hope there's time for you to book another show for fall.

"CSI: NY": 2.0 rating, and CSI: Miami: 2.5 rating. Status: We predict Gary Sinise and company says goodbye this spring, followed by David Caruso next year. CSI the mother ship was just renewed for another season, thanks to a great performance by newbie Elisabeth Shue.

"Criminal Minds": 3.9 rating. Status: RENEWED.

"Hawaii 5-0": 3.5 rating. Status: RENEWED.

"How I Met Your Mother": 4.4 rating. Status: RENEWED.

"How to be a Gentleman": DEAD.

"Mike & Molly": 4.0 rating. Status: RENEWED.

"NCIS": 4.2 rating. Status: RENEWED.

"NCIS: LA": 3.7 rating. Status: RENEWED.

"Person of Interest": 3.3 rating. Status: RENEWED.

"Rob": 3.7 rating: Status: Did pretty well, but CBS expects big numbers from a show with a "Big Bang" lead-in. Might go down to the wire.

"Rules of Engagement": 3.4 rating. Status: Still in flux. CBS likes this show to patch a hole when new comedies drop out.

"Survivor": 3.4 rating. Status: RENEWED.

"The Amazing Race": 3.3 rating. Status: RENEWED

"The Big Bang Theory": 5.7 rating. Status: RENEWED.

"The Good Wife": 2.5 rating. Status: RENEWED. Yey!

"The Mentalist": 3.2 rating. Status: RENEWED.

"2 Broke Girls": 4.7 rating. Status: RENEWED.

"Two and A Half Men": 5.6 rating. Status: The future of the aging comedy is uncertain, because CBS doesn't have a new deal with Ashton Kutcher and Jon Cryer. So we still don't know for sure whether Kutcher will return. (But he'd be a fool not to, right?)

"Undercover Boss": 2.7 rating. Status: RENEWED.

"Unforgettable": 2.6 rating. Status: The Poppy Montgomery drama performs fairly well without anybody saying a word about it, which makes us think it's got a decent shot.

-CNN Entertainment

Keller's Riverside Store CHL Radio Ad

Life in the glorious American South.

You can't make this stuff up! God bless Amurrica!

Keller's Riverside Gun Store is located in Mason, Texas.

America's 10 Largest Websites

The 10 most-visited websites in America may share a few characteristics, but interestingly enough, none are in the same business, with the exception of two portals. Each has a different business model as well. An analysis of these largest sites shows that no single model has helped one type of Internet property or another to dominate the web in terms of traffic. The collection of media that is the Internet shows how essential web diversity has become to Americans’ lives.

This list of the most visited sites includes the world’s largest search engine, web portal, video site, software company, social network, encyclopedia, and e-commerce site. One of the sites on this list, Wikipedia, is a nonprofit that runs on a budget of a few million dollars a year. Another, Google, has revenue that will be well above $50 billion. Revenue is not essential to size online, but size can be essential to revenue.

Internet giants have been in particular focus recently, mostly for three reasons. The first is that large sites collect millions and millions of pieces of information about their visitors. Governments, both inside the U.S. and, especially, in Europe have become concerned with how this information is gathered, to whom it is given, what is done with it, and for what financial consideration. Naturally, sites with the largest number of visitors are at the center of this because their inventories of user data are so vast.

Another reason large Internet properties are of interest lately is the upcoming initial public offering of Facebook. The online social networking site has close to one billion members, many of whom spend hundreds of hours each month on the site. The company’s value is set at about $100 billion ahead of the public offering, which is extraordinary because Facebook’s revenue was less than $4 billion in 2011. There is a great disparity among the value of the most visited websites, causing a debate about why users of an e-commerce site are worth any more or less than users of a search engine or a social network.

Finally, sites with tens of millions of visitors are in focus also because of the mass movement of Internet users from PC to smartphones. Smartphones have browsers that operate nearly identically to those on PCs. Strong processors and high-speed wireless connections allow smartphone users to visit the same sites and use them in the same way as they do on computers. The owners of all sites are in a frenzy to see if they can hold onto their user base in the smartphone environment. What happens to the very largest sites will at least be instructional.

24/7 Wall St.: The 10 Most Hated Companies in America

With each year, the Internet becomes increasingly crowded with websites of various sizes, features and functions. The most-visited sites have been among the largest ones for several years. That tells a great deal about the real interests of Americans, probably as much as any other set of markers.

24/7 Wall St. used data from Quantcast to rank the sites. The rank is based on the number of people in the United States who visit each site in a month. The data are updated daily. Revenue figures are based on SEC filings for the public companies and for those in the process of going public. For others, the information is based on data from third party analysts. Revenue data or estimates are for full year 2011.

10. Microsoft.com

    Monthly audience: 61,981,128
    Year founded: 1975
    Revenue size: $69.9 billion

Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) website traffic does not include visits to content sites it controls such as the MSN portal, MSNBC news site or the Bing search engine. The visitors counted are for the online corporate destination of the world’s largest software company. Microsoft’s site primary purposes are to sell, download and support its most widely used software products -- Windows and its business suite of tools. Microsoft.com is also the destination for public company information, including financial data and the company’s significant patent and intellectual property legal activity.

(Msnbc.com is a joint-venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

24/7 Wall St.: How America's richest companies invest their cash

9. WordPress.com

    Monthly audience: 63,933,088
    Year founded: 2003
    Revenue size: $10 million

WordPress has two large online destination sites. One is WordPress.org, a place where millions of bloggers download basic open source software they can use to create and maintain their own websites. The WordPress.org traffic is not included in WordPress.com’s traffic figure. WordPress.com is the destination for a broad spectrum of users -- from small bloggers to large companies -- that use the site to post information and design their blogs. WordPress.com is operated by Automattic, which sells custom design, custom domains and upgrades to the basic WordPress open source software. While the WordPress for-profit business has products used by a large number of different media and large companies, Automattic does not charge high enough fees to make the “upgrade” business a large one.

8. Wikipedia.org

    Year founded: 2001
    Monthly audience: 77,354,504
    Revenue: $20 million

Wikipedia is operated by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation. The work of the foundation is to support a collection of open source encyclopedias. This already includes dozens of encyclopedias written in the world’s most common languages. The number of articles created for the sites is huge. The English version alone has 3.9 million articles. The German language edition has 1.4 million articles. The tiny budget of the foundation is being used to drive global traffic to the level of one billion readers and the number of articles to 50 million. All of the capital for these projects is donated to the nonprofit foundation. Wikipedia is most famous for making information on a universe of subjects available for free to anyone with access to the Internet. But with such a large amount of content and small staff to monitor its quality, Wikipedia is also infamous for being inconsistent with mixed quality in different subjects.

7. MSN

    Monthly audience: 78,095,128
    Year founded: 1995
    Revenue: $2.5 billion

MSN.com is one of the three largest Internet content portals, along with Yahoo! and Aol (NYSE: AOL). Its business is supported by display advertising and search revenue. The portal model is based on providing millions of visitors access to a large range of content. This includes a number of areas that used to be exclusively the role of national magazines, newspapers, radio and television. News posted by the portals is among their most visited content, and so is content about sports, entertainment and self-help. The portals have expanded into areas that can get some local advertising revenue, particularly automobiles and real estate. Premium news and entertainment content have recently become a large part of the offerings of these sites as well.

24/7 Wall St.: 10 companies profiting most from war

6. Twitter

    Monthly audience: 90,790,080
    Year founded: 2006
    Revenue: $140 million

Twitter is described alternatively as a “microblog” and as a “social network.” Users, which by many estimates exceed 300 million, can post messages of up to 140 characters at a time. This is microblogging to the extent that the “tweets” are available for large numbers of people to read. It is a social network to the extent that it allows users to exchange details about their lives, plans and interests. The problem Twitter faces is that it has not been able to turn what some industry experts believe is 200 million tweets a day into a viable business. Advertisers have shown a reluctance to put marketing messages into these tweets because they are so short and because Twitter users have often rejected using a service that has become partially commercialized. Some of the Twitter users with the largest followings, mostly celebrities connected to millions of fans, use these followings as a way to promote causes, products or even their own careers. So far, this has proved a more successful way to exploit the service than traditional advertising.

5. Yahoo!

    Monthly audience: 94,840,280
    Year founded: 1995
    Revenue: $5 billion

Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) has been at the center of a number of controversies over the past several years. It rejected a rich bid by Microsoft in 2008, had three CEOs in four years, and executed a large series of layoffs. Recently, a substantial portion of its board of directors resigned. Yet, the remarkable size of the website’s traffic has not changed, and the parent company continues to be profitable, despite a lack of revenue growth. Some of the sites on this list would welcome Yahoo!’s profits. The Internet portal makes money from a combination of display and search advertising. Yahoo! runs far behind Google in terms of search engine traffic, and it holds only 14 percent of the U.S. market for search activity, according to Comscore. But it still manages to capitalize on that small share.

4. Amazon.com

    Monthly audience: 99,374,352
    Year founded: 1994
    Revenue: $48 billion

Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) is the primary website for the world’s largest e-commerce company. It is an online superstore with an immensely diverse virtual inventory. It sells nearly anything brick-and-mortar retailers such as Walmart (NYSE: WMT), Best Buy (NYSE: BBY), Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS), Home Depot (NYSE: HD) and Kroger (NYSE: KR) sell. And that is to list just a few. Amazon has used the traffic and customer base it has established over the years to enter a number of new, lucrative and even revolutionary businesses. This includes electronic books, which barely existed five years ago. It includes the e-reader business, which Amazon pioneered with the 2007 introduction of the Kindle. And it includes the online video-on-demand business. Amazon has recently been transformed from a company that competes with other retailers to one that also competes with the likes of Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) in the content delivery business and with Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) in the consumer electronics sector.

24/7 Wall St.: The most profitable stores in America

3. Facebook

    Monthly audience: 149,488,208
    Year founded: 2004
    Revenue: $3.7 billion

Facebook, the world’s largest social network with nearly one billion members, plans to raise enough money through an IPO this year to value the company at nearly $100 billion. The site is not even 10 years old. The meteoric rise of the business is largely due to how it altered people’s use the Internet. Before Facebook, Internet use was mostly passive. Visitors went to a portal to get information, to a search engine to get research results, and to video sites to watch content. Facebook helped the Internet evolve into a two-way interpersonal medium on which people voluntarily offer a great deal of their personal information to interact with friends, family and business associates. In the process, Facebook has been at the core of one of the most revolutionary changes in human interaction. Despite this, Facebook has not been able to find a way to make a great deal of money from its huge membership, particularly when compared to Google and Amazon.

2. YouTube

    Monthly audience: 159,975,920
    Year founded: 2005
    Revenue: $1.6 billion

YouTube is the largest video site in the world. To give an idea of its dominance of the U.S. market, 18.6 billion videos were viewed at this division of Google in January against the a total of 40 billion nationwide for all websites. The average number of minutes per viewer for Google’s video content, almost all of it on YouTube, was 448 minutes in January, compared to 57 minutes on Yahoo! and 22 minutes on Facebook. YouTube’s sales are only 5 percent of Google’s total revenue, an extremely small amount given its size. To a great extent, this is because most of the content posted at the site continues to be low-quality, user-created videos, and these videos do not create an environment attractive to major marketers. YouTube has found other ways to pursue revenue. Premium content owners have started to use YouTube to build audiences, and they often pay YouTube for traffic. YouTube also has set up a paid video rental business and joint ventures with several studios. Despite all of this, its revenue was only $1.6 billion in 2011, as based on several estimates. YouTube is the only site on this list that could not have existed before the advent of the broadband technology that allows the transfer of large amounts of data online.

1. Google

    Monthly audience: 185,167,472
    Year founded: 1998
    Revenue: $37.5 billion

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is the largest search engine in the U.S. Its dominance goes beyond that. It is also the largest search engine by market share throughout most of Europe. The only large markets where it has stiff competition happen to be emerging markets with huge populations such as China, India and Russia. Google has two substantial challenges now that will determine whether its business can continue to expand at the extraordinary rate of the past decade. First, there is a great deal of competition to become the primary search engine on new tablet PCs like the Apple iPad and smartphones like the iPhone. As more Americans turn to these portable devices to use the Internet, it is not certain that Google will be able to hold the dominant position it currently has against Microsoft and Yahoo! The second challenge Google faces is expanding its other offerings beyond search. It is unclear whether it can use its Google.com site as a means to help it successfully market these products, including applications that compete with Microsoft’s Windows products or e-commerce products like Google Wallet. Google has yet to demonstrate that it is more than a single legged company -- at least so far as sales are concerned. –The Bottom Line

Emmanuel Kelly

The X Factor 2011 Auditions Emmanuel Kelly FULL

Success! Ellen Foes Abandon JC Penney Attack

One Million Moms, who has been petitioning to have Ellen Degeneres fired from being a JC Penney spokesperson, has announced it’s giving up its campaign.

One Million Moms director Monica Cole told religious conservative rag OneNewsNow that OMM is so busy with its other campaigns that they’re going to let this one go.

She did try to put a positive shine on the national criticism the group received over its bigoted campaign, saying:

“But we have heard back from so many of our members,” she claimed. “We have heard back from men and women – not just moms – saying they will no longer shop there at JC Penney, as long as Ellen DeGeneres is their spokesperson.”

She goes on to say:

“Everyone works hard for their money, and they want to spend their money with companies that have the same values as them. And JC Penney stated that Ellen DeGeneres shares the same values that they do. So obviously, it’s not the same as Christians or conservatives, which is unfortunate [because] JC Penney was founded by a Christian man.”

Apparently only the kind of people who founded a company should be allowed to work for said company, so by that ill-logic that would just be (dead?) Christian men then, huh One Million Moms?

Just in case you were wondering what kind of “Christian” beliefs One Million Moms has been spouting recently, you may remember the letter they sent to JC Penney over this, which in part read:

“Their marketing strategy is to help families shop and receive a good value for their money. Degeneres is not a true representation of the type of families that shop at their store. The majority of JC Penney shoppers will be offended and choose to no longer shop there. The small percentage of customers they are attempting to satisfy will not offset their loss in sales. [...] By jumping on the pro-gay bandwagon, JC Penney is attempting to gain a new target market and in the process will lose customers with traditional values that have been faithful to them over all these years.”

Ellen fired back on her talk show, saying that her”haters” were her “motivators” and showing how much support she had received on the One Million Mom’s Facebook page alone.

The Moms were dealt another blow last week when it was announced that an Archie comic they had been protesting over its gay marriage storyline had sold out in stores.

Unfortunately, it seems the Moms’ boycotts aren’t going that well, though apparently they do make good promotional opportunities for those they’re meant to be protesting.

Thank You to the 3,200+ who signed a petition thanking JC Penney for standing behind Ellen. Your advocacy has sent an important message to the store that its shoppers and potential customers value a business that supports equality. –Care2

Trayvon Martin Update 03/27/12 @ 11:16

Montel Williams Defends Suicide Wish On Bachmann Moments After Decrying Limbaugh 'Slut' Comment

As he appeared as a guest on Friday's Piers Morgan Tonight on CNN, moments after decrying Rush Limbaugh's recent "slut" comment, liberal talk radio host Montel Williams defended his infamous suggestion that Michele Bachmann should kill herself by decapitation as being unrelated to the recent Limbaugh matter.

While he was discussing his encounter with a wounded American soldier, he bizarrely brought up Limbaugh as if to suggest that the conservative host's strong words were a dishonor to the people who fight to defend the country. Williams:

I stop and think about all those guys, and they're over there looking back at us. And they're saying: You want me to die for you? You can't even communicate with each other respectfully, you can't even live up to the dream of our Constitution, "We the People," you got to call people names.

He tied in Limbaugh as he continued:

I find that the most despicable, disgusting piece of journalism I've ever seen. And, you know, I don't know if there's an apology that's great enough because I do have three daughters. And, though I may say things about people I don't like because of this political stance or that political stance, I'm never going after a person's soul. That was somebody's child. How dare you?

After host Piers Morgan asked, "You mean the Rush Limbaugh [controversy]?" Williams responded, "Yeah."

In the next segment, Morgan called out Williams's hypocrisy by bringing up his harsh words about Bachmann from September 2009, leading Williams's unconvincing claim that his words were not as bad as Limbaugh's and that shining a light on his own words "is absolutely really part of the problem."

He first tried to rationalize his words by asserting that they were spoken "jokingly." Williams:

I don't know why the media decided to deflect Rush Limbaugh's comment and put something I said two and a half years ago on Air America in this context, but let's play it out. Ms. Bachmann said in some speech - and I don't have the exact words - but we should all slit our wrists and form a blood covenant. Those were her words.

And I was jokingly in the morning of my Air America show. When she said that, I played that piece, but, like I said, well, heck, if you're going to do that, just move it up about a foot and a half. What, how stupid is this? Now, I didn't say how stupid it is, we're going to slit our wrists because we want to help people and be compassionate.

He continued:

Now, somehow, that's been equated to what Rush Limbaugh had to say. Which to me is absolutely really part of the problem here because the network that did that is a network that doesn't understand what news is and doesn't understand how to make a report because if you can try to find an analogy between those to, I don't know where you're at. –MRC

Foot Note: Brad Wilmouth is a news analyst at the Media Research Center

Proof You Should Never Give Up Your Dreams!

Opera duo Charlotte & Jonathan

Britain's Got Talent 2012 audition - UK version

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Sam Kelly sings on Britains got talent 2012 auditions

Messiah in Passover