AOL LLC

R.I.P. Hotmail: Five Classic E-Mail Addresses to Honor a Fallen Comrade

As of last week, Microsoft migrated all Hotmail accounts to their new Outlook.com platform ending a run that has lasted nearly 16 years. It was a classic. Yes, it was abandoned by most years ago. Sure, when the box wasn't filled with spam, it was filled with semi-lurid requests from porn sites and p ... More >>

Some Advice for General Petraeus

Roger Clemens To The Sugar Land Skeeters: Who's His Host Family?

The Sugar Land Skeeters have been drawing decent crowds to Constellation Field in their inaugural season, but they no doubt will be turning away fans in the near future on some days. Word has leaked out, first via the indefatigable Mark Berman (as fa as we can tell, at least) that Roger Clemens wil ... More >>

Know Your Local Media: The Houston Chronicle's Dwight Silverman, from Rock Critic to Nerd King

A number of years ago, one of the then music writers at the Houston Chronicle recruited me to write a music blog for Chron.com. I had done some writing for the defunct Houstonist website and personal stuff, but nothing like that. I happily accepted and began writing a music business blog called Brok ... More >>

In Honor Of Tonight's RAW 1000, The Definitive Timeline Of WWE's Victory In The Monday Night Wars (w/ VIDEO)

I don't know that any television product has changed the way we visually consume it more times than professional wrestling. For a majority of its history (which I am counting as the period from "dawn of time" until around 1978 or so), syndicated television was basically a weekly commercial for whate ... More >>

Celtics-Heat Postgame Fun-Fest: Crazy KG, D-Wade's Hipster-ish Fake Glasses, and "Good Job, Good Effort!" Kid (w/ VIDEO)

I love NBA basketball, but I'll be the first to admit that I am oftentimes more compelled by what goes on after the games -- in the press conferences, in the locker room, on the set of TNT -- than I am in the games themselves. I'm the guy who is rooting against LeBron not because I hate him, but be ... More >>

Rearviewmirror: 5 Ways Ticketmaster Survived Pearl Jam

Do you hate Ticketmaster convenience fees? If you don't, it's because you've never been to a concert. The various fees tacked onto admission prices by the global ticketing behemoth can add a pretty penny in a hurry to the face value of a chance to see and hear our musical heroes, and they're one of ... More >>

SOPA & GoDaddy Explained

White and Nerdy: Explaining SOPA vs GoDaddy for the Tech-Challenged

When trying to explain the debate over the Stop Online Piracy Act and the involvement of domain name registrar GoDaddy in a staff meeting this week, my words were met with collective blank stares, as if I were speaking a different language. It is a look I often get from Web-design clients when I tal ... More >>

Five Factors That Will Influence the Growth of Streaming Music in 2012

We all know that in December of 2012, the Mayan calendar ends as will the world, but before that fateful day, I've got a lot of music to listen to and, like many, I seem to be doing that increasingly on my computer and via streaming music services. Whether it is Pandora or Grooveshark or Last.FM or ... More >>

Conroe Native Courtney Smith Crashes Rock-Lit Boys Club

​Introducing music journalism's latest female-penned release, Courtney E. Smith's Record Collecting for Girls. Following suit with like-minded veteran writers like Sara Marcus and Jessica Hopper, Smith's first book boldly tackles the music memoir, a literary genre historically saturated with ... More >>

Pop Rocks: The Case For Internet Piracy

Well, not always.​What follows is a more or less accurate transcript of a conversation I had yesterday: Me: Looks like that charity album for Japan raised $5 million. Not bad. They: Which one, Songs for Japan? I downloaded that last week. Me: You...downloaded a charity album? They: No! I mean ... More >>

Top Six Artist Vs. Record Label Feuds

​Pink Floyd has finally settled its lengthy dispute with their longtime record label EMI. The band, which signed to the label over 40 years ago, first took EMI to court last spring in an effort to clarify their existing contract. Floyd sought to prevent EMI from "unbundling" their albums by se ... More >>

Top 10 Worst Top 10 Lists Of 2010

​Now that's a headline, ladies and germs. It has the added benefit of being succinct as well. That's exactly what we're summing up here, the worst Top 10 lists our peers have written this year. Let's get started, as we've got a lot of ground to cover. 10. This One Not really, this is just t ... More >>

The Five Best Halloween Warnings Forwarded By Frantic Moms

FORWARD THIS E-MAIL TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!!!!!​Oooooo -- Halloween!! So scary for young kids!!And for adults who insist on forwarding every e-mail from some AOL account carrying dire warnings of Halloween horror.Our five favorites:5. That candy has crystal meth!!Subject: HALLOWEEN WARNINGHALLOWEEN ... More >>

Over the Line

As Mexican drug cartels increasingly recruit American teens as runners, a Sugar Land teen goes across the border and ends up dead.

Blog Stars

Ten local sites that rock our world

The Yelp Effect

​Although there was no shortage of food-related panels at the Interactive portion of South by Southwest (SXSWi) this year, none were as insightful or as incendiary as The Yelp Effect, a frank discussion on the effect that online reviews and criticisms have on the restaurant industry. Led by A ... More >>

While You Weren't Tweeting: Tigers, Wires and Pairs, Oh My!

What was life like before the Internet? Does anyone really remember, anyway? 'Cause, you know, some kids've been choking the cyberchicken since birth, we hear. Even we fogeys certainly don't recall much before the Invasion of the Interwebs, but we'll posit a guess that we were thinner, friendle ... More >>

Memories of Michael

Also: Secessionist Session

ID Theft

Someone gets your social, ruins your credit, upends your life. And gets away free and clear.

Flannel File: Quicksand

Speaking of the early days of the Warped Tour, let's talk about Quicksand. Along with Helmet, Quicksand developed and popularized a particular type of post-hardcore that took the metal-influenced hardcore punk of 1980s New York, cut the tempo in half and filled up the resulting space with melody and ... More >>

The Search For A Lonely Houston Web Phenom

This is the story of an overweight, lonely, possibly lesbian, cheating, married, Christian and, at the moment, anonymous Houston woman. She was one of 650,000 AOL users whose Internet queries were publicly posted by the company for three days in 2006. By the time AOL removed the data, it was too lat ... More >>

Don't Make Me Beg

The rumor mill has it that AOL Sports is about to start hiring beat reporters to cover the various sports in the professional leagues. This is supposed to be like what Yahoo! and CBS Sportsline have done - those of you who have read those sites know how those work. It's just like with the newspap ... More >>

Don't Make Me Beg

The rumor mill has it that AOL Sports is about to start hiring beat reporters to cover the various sports in the professional leagues. This is supposed to be like what Yahoo! and CBS Sportsline have done - those of you who have read those sites know how those work. It's just like with the newspap ... More >>

The Ballad of Richard Justice and Stephanie Stradley

Might As Well Face It, We're Addicted To E-Mail

Haunts

They'll scare the crap out of you

Beast of an Actor

Comeback Clips

A music-video renaissance is afoot -- but it's strictly on the download

Electric Avenue

Is MySpace.com the future of the music business, or just another Web site?

Family Man

Christopher Titus turns dysfunctional into comical

An Avril Afternoon at the Mall

Lavigne's top-secret tour comes to Katy

Pats and Cats Bring It Back

The biggest of them all returns to Houston

Of Boobs and Blood

Troma's Lloyd Kaufman has guts, all over the floor

No Free Meals?

Plus: Movie Props, Blame the Magnets, Crossed Out

Damming the Streams

The major labels want the Internet to be as arid as the airwaves

When Online Got Off Base

Or: How Mark Cuban would have--and could have?--saved the music biz

Net Loss

The government killed TV, and Hollywood's begging it to revive the corpse

What the Doctor Ordered

Letters

Amplified

Rick's World!

News Hostage

FAT! SO?

Cathy Woods weighs 500 pounds, wears a 50DD bra and an XXXXXXL dress. She loves her body. And so does her man.

Get The Goods On All The Bads

We Snitch on HOUSNITCH! What's really behind City Hall's whistle-blower Web page?

Changing the Music Industry Bit by Bit

More options mean more choices mean more meetings

Tired and on a Farewell Tour?

Can't Get Up

If only Fallen were as tightly and shrewdly constructed as its ad

A Whole Lot Country

And quite a bit rock and roll add up to No Depression music

The Watchman of the Electronic Frontier

As the cyber-future creeps toward Houston, one group stands guard: EFH