The funniest sock pupped in Silicon Valley is operated by Loren Feldman, the absolutely hilarious comic who runs the cult website 1938 Media.  Feldman's puppet is called Shel and is the spitting image of Shel Israel, an exubertantly vacuous Silicon Valley journalist.  In particular, check out Feldman/Shel's interviews with CNET editor-in-chief Dan Farber, Digg founder Kevin Rose and All Things D impressario Kara Swisher.

Silicon Valley takes itself very seriously. So it's not that hard to make fun of it. But Feldman is really really good.  Expect him to eventually breakthrough from the Internet into mainstream media.

By Andrew Keen

Does truth hate delay?

According to the new American website LiveNewsCameras, it does. LiveNewsCameras allows Internet viewers to look at news as it unfolds around the world. The website streams raw video footage from ABC, CBS, NBC and 150 stations from America and overseas. By disintermediating traditional journalists, LiveNewsCameras brings the news directly to the viewer. Now, when we blame the messenger for bad news, all we'll be doing is blaming ourselves.

By Andrew Keen

Like ill-fated lovers, Microsoft and Yahoo! don't seem to be able to either live together or apart. From maybe having a deal to not having a deal to rejecting a deal to maybe having a deal, every day seems to bring new news of this tumultuous on-off relationship. The latest news is Microsoft's announcement yesterday that they were re-opening talks with Yahoo! on some sort of strategic relationship that would fall short of a formal acquisition.

By Andrew Keen

I'm currently in Seoul attending the biannual Independent Publisher Association Congress. I addressed the Congress yesterday. The Nobel prize winning Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk opened the Congress on Tuesday with a stirring speech about the value of press freedom and the intrinsic value of the book.

The big issue confronting the book business is global piracy and the best panel of the Congress was "Lessons Learned in the Piracy Battle" chaired Deborah Wiley (top left hand corner of the photo) from the British Publisher John Wiley.

By Andrew Keen

Sky News is unbuttoning itself of any semblance of reverence or formality. Sky is launching Sky News Unplugged - a "completely new", "sideways" look at the news presented by Martin Stanford. Only available online and on Sky News Active, the show will be first unveiled to the world at 12.45pm on Wednesday.

But will the world be watching?

By Andrew Keen

Who is the world's top public intellectual? Noam Chomsky? Pope Benedict XVI? Jurgen Habermas? Christopher Hitchens? Umberto Eco? Amartya Sen?

How about Fethullah Gulen, the liberal Turkish Muslim theologian?

So much for the wisdom of the online crowd. It looks like Prospect Magazine's supposedly democratic online poll to determine the world's leading public intellectual has been gamed by supporters of the reformist Turkish cleric (there's a gentle nudge towards the poll halfway down Gulen's personal website).

By Andrew Keen

Back in February, I wrote in my Independent column that Yahoo! was a shipwrecked internet company. The events over the weekend add to the drama of the Yahoo! shipwreck. So what has happened to make Yahoo! the Titanic.com of Silicon Valley?

Three months ago Microsoft made an unsolicited offer of $31 per share to acquire Yahoo!, making the Sunnyvale, CA company worth over $44 billion. Not a bad deal, really, for a company that has been the perpetual runner-up in every race it has ever entered (e-commerce, search, music, portaldom, web 2.0, social networking etc etc). Their reasoning was obvious:

By Andrew Keen

Online democracy is changing the marriage business in America. Can internet democracy also help bring down the rate of divorce?

The wisdom of the crowd is helping brides-to-be who are using the internet's collaborative tools to democratize the planning of their own weddings. According to the Wall Street Journal, "iDo" is now the fashion for wedding planners who are taking advantage of websites like The Knot.com, Brides.com, TheWeddingTracker.com and WeddingWindow.com to determine what their guests want to eat, drink and dance to at the big occasion.