Internet

Joshua Clark Arrested for Facebook Post: "Hey Madison County Courthouse, Tick, Tick...Boom"

It's never a good idea to post statements online that may look like bomb threats, but with the Boston Marathon tragedy this week, it's especially unwise. Alton, Illinois, resident Joshua Clark, 29, learned that lesson the hard way. The Madison County Sheriff's Office says that an anonymous tipst ... More >>

Reports: Rue Lafayette Closes

The Lafayette Square café Rue Lafayette (2026 Lafayette Avenue; 314-772-2233) has closed, according to multiple reports. We first heard the news from the Twitter account of David Craig's Food Talk STL radio show: Something up with @ruelafayette. Facebook post says "to do divorce Rue had to close ( ... More >>

Amy Dunbar: Tardiness-Hating OB/GYN Now Most Reviled St. Louisan on Facebook

Hey, guess what, Chris Higgins? You are no longer the most reviled St. Louisan on Facebook! Your reign was short, though intense, but the torch has now been passed to Dr. Amy Dunbar, an OB/GYN at St. John's Mercy Medical Center in Creve Coeur (aka the Baby Factory), who had the sheer, unmitigated ga ... More >>

Photocopier Goof Raised $4,000 for St. Louis Food Outreach

Atomicdust's Face Off Against Hunger Campaign was recently named Best Use of Social Media for a Civic Campaign in Riverfront Times 2013 Web Awards. For a full list of winners click here. A little more than a year ago, a few employees at St. Louis branding and marketing agency Atomicdust were work ... More >>

2013 RFT Web Awards Winners

It's been said that employees engaging in social media while at work cost the U.S. economy $650 billion a year in lost productivity. That's $4,452 per company, and it doesn't even factor in the economic losses from plain, old Web surfing. Throw that into the mix, and good lordy: No wonder the econom ... More >>

STLVegGirl Grows Local Vegetarian Community Through Education, Outreach and Twitter

Caryn Dugan's @STLVegGirl Twitter account was recently named Best Use of Twitter to Promote a Personal Brand in Riverfront Times 2013 Web Awards. For a full list of winners click here. Caryn Dugan adopted a vegan diet in 2008 for health reasons: Ten weeks after losing her father to cancer, Dugan ... More >>

For Christmas, What do you Get the Music-Loving Acquaintance who Already has Nothing?

Deep inside Spotify headquarters, at this very moment, some poor marketing team is tasked with the idea of making Spotify gift accounts sound like a good idea for a Christmas present. I know this because I am too cheap to pay to make the Spotify ads go away. So far they've been wise enough not to ... More >>

8 More Cringe-Inducing Fan-Made Songs About the St. Louis Cardinals

Every sport has its fan-written songs, but in Major League Baseball today, it seems like no community seems to write as many as St. Louis Cardinals fans. And most of them are awful. See Also: - Cardinals World Series Fan Songs: A Remix, A Rally Squirrel And A Career High Point - A Whole New Ballga ... More >>

Kansas City Chiefs Tell Fan to "Get a Clue"

To quote a newsroom colleague, sometimes it feels like there should be the equivalent of a driver's test in order to qualify for an account on Twitter. Whoever is running the account for the Kansas City Chiefs seriously wrecked himself before he checked himself yesterday after angrily responding to ... More >>

SwedLife Went From a Streetwear and Hip-Hop Blog to a Career For its Founders

Ed. Musicians may get all the groupies, but there is more to a city's music world than people wielding instruments. To name a few: venue and studio owners, show promoters, assorted enthusiasts and -- the subject of this series -- bloggers. In Music Blogs of St. Louis, we'll talk to the humans behi ... More >>

Get Your Blog Listed on RFT Music

Update: We're updating the list in the next few days, so email us your blog now or forever hold your peace. Or at least hold it until the next time we overhaul the thing. While perusing RFT Music, you may have noticed a section labeled "Links" on the lower right-hand sidebar. This is where we highl ... More >>

Point and Clique: The 2012 RFT St. Louis Web Awards

This Is A Real YouTube Genre: "Riding Turtles With Rap Music"

Here's the great and terrible thing about YouTube: If you have an intensely specific desire to see something, like, say, animals riding very slow turtles with an overdubbed hip hop soundtrack, YouTube's seedy underbelly has probably already turned it into a genre of videos with its own playlist. H ... More >>

Student Suspended Over Threats to Kill "Midgets, Fags and Negro Bitches" Loses Appeal

A sophomore in the Hannibal School District fantasized about killing classmates -- but later claimed he was just blowing off steam. ​In 2006, a sophomore in the Hannibal, Missouri, school district confided to a classmate in a series of instant messages that he was angry about (what else?) being sp ... More >>

Check out the Newest LGBT Corner of Cyberspace

​With social media like Facebook and Twitter taking over the world, your social life is probably all about your online connections these days. It's that very connectivity, though, that's making traditional blogs lose out. As we reported back in May, the switch to social media as the preferred onli ... More >>

White Girls Rap Chris Brown's "Look At Me Now", Savagely Assault Themselves

Image via​Look at them now; look at them now; look at them now--they're subverting implicit stereotypes about race and gender! In the last month, Chris Brown's "Look At Me Now" has gone from a hilarious street single by a disgraced-and-then-undisgraced ex-teen-star to the progenitor of an unli ... More >>

Missouri Latest State to Push for Online Sales Tax

Local retailers want to wipe that smug smile off those Amazon.com boxes. ​Two state representatives held a press conference today in the University City Loop, calling attention to legislation that would add sales tax to purchases Missouri residents make over the Internet. State representativ ... More >>

Easy-Bake Oven Undergoing Energy-Conserving Makeover

For anyone who ever baked a package of dry brownies over a 100-watt light bulb, it's a sad realization, indeed. Next year, a federal ban on the manufacture of energy-gobbling incandescent light bulbs means an end to the Easy-Bake Oven as we've known it for almost 50 years. Hasbro, the oven's manuf ... More >>

The RFT 2011 St. Louis Web Awards: Best Sports Blog

Point & Clique: The 2011 RFT St. Louis Web Awards

Nominate Your Favorite Food Blogger for RFT's Web Awards

Is there a local food blog that makes your mouth water?​Do you sit by your iPhone, eagerly awaiting the next Tweet from @RobustWineBar?Are you Facebook friends with Gerard Craft -- and save screen grabs of the renowned restaurateur's most scintillating status updates?Even if you only dabble in the ... More >>

Gut Check Modifies Commenting System

And now for a brief peek behind the scenes at Gut Check International Headquarters: Beginning today, Gut Check and the other Riverfront Times blogs require readers to complete a "Captcha" field when leaving a comment. You have probably encountered this system on other websites. If not, all you have ... More >>

Digg, Digging, Dugg

If you're a social media person, then you probably know that the popular social bookmarking website Digg recently relaunched. Branded Digg Version 4, this new incarnation unleashed some radical changes on its users. Unfortunately, this transformation was not greeted with open arms. Many of Digg's l ... More >>

Payment of $2,500 at Center of Latest Dana Loesch Pissing Match

Dana Loesch: Tea'd off, again.​There's some interesting bickering underway in the G.O.P. primary race for Missouri's 3rd Congressional District. And contrary to what you might expect, it doesn't involve the candidates hurling insults at each other -- at least not directly.The controversy surrounds ... More >>

SBNation St. Louis Launches

Hey, sports fans! As of yesterday, you officially have a new online destination where you can fritter away your working hours. SBNation, a national community of sports blogs, launched its St. Louis site Tuesday, a one-stop repository of news and opinions -- for what value is a conversation about spo ... More >>

Vintage Video: David Letterman's Special Version of the Late Show for St. Louis

Bring on the St. Louis jokes!​A video has surfaced on YouTube of David Letterman's monologue from a 1997 episode of the Late Show featuring an exclusively St. Louis audience. In the video, posted by St. Louis TV and radio personality JC Corcoran, Letterman sings praise for the city, even busting o ... More >>

St. Louis Blogger Adam Shriver Gets National Nod for Online Battles vs. Dana Loesch

Da' blogger: Adam Shriver​One of the Riverfront Times' favorite local bloggers, Adam Shriver of St. Louis Activist Hub recently received props from national political blog Media Matters for America. The left-of-center site used the contents of one of Shriver's recent posts to pick apart the "jour ... More >>

NPR Pays Tribute to Local Flack Who Coined the Term 'Blogosphere'

www.bradlands.comHe coined the term 'blogosphere.'​Blogasm...blogarrific...blogviate. Good God, who'd have thought we'd now have some 300 terms of argot employing one of the worst-sounding words ever. It all started with St. Louisan Brad Graham.Graham, the erstwhile publicist for the Reportory The ... More >>

Gut Check: An open call for food-writing freelancers!

Is MySpace Dead Yet?

Even with fewer and fewer people using it, MySpace is still a behemoth. The social media company has over 125 million users and is still clocking about 70 million page views a month. Revenue averages $250 million a year. But none of this really means anything without some context, and the announceme ... More >>

Random Links: Beacon Takes on Blogging, Placebo's Brian Molko Talks, New Local Music Blog, Barry Mazor Interview

I'm swamped doing a story this week, so here are things written elsewhere to keep you occupied.*The STL Beacon did a great piece on music blogs and blogging (with an interview from yours truly and RFT contributor Todd McKenzie). It's really well done, and explores the conundrum between promotion/pub ... More >>

Not To Be Outdone, St. Louis County Police Launch Twitter, Facebook Profiles

Yesterday we told you how the Chesterfield Police Department recently launched a Twitter account. Now the St. Louis County Police Department has followed suit. Apparently new police chief Tim Fitch (promoted to the position just last week) is more of a techie than predecessor Jerry Lee. In a press r ... More >>

St. Louis Video: Left Arm, "Rock N Roll Stereo" and "Black and Bluetooth"

More YouTube fun: Left Arm at the Kemper Art Museum last Friday, playing "Rock N Roll Stereo" and "Black and Bluetooth." I love posting these local live videos I see on YouTube, so if you played a gig and filmed some -- or discovered a few random ones via searches -- send 'em my way!

Andre the Dodger Has a Food Blog

diningwithdre.mlblogs.com Sometimes it seems like everyone on the freakin' planet has a food blog. Still, when someone you really don't expect to have a food blog -- like, say, a baseball player who casual fans of the might have trouble placing -- and it's pretty entertaining, it's worth noting.So i ... More >>

The Virtualous Life

Live's better with a reset button

Every Tweet Counts: Local Pols on Twitter

The politicians on Twitter -- that trendy micro-blogging service -- get free reign to speak directly to their constituents without being filtered by handlers, all in 140 characters or less. It seems like a deliciously easy tool for policy-makers bred on the sound-bite. However, there are a few head- ... More >>

CDC Goes New-Media Crazy over Salmonella Outbreak

www.cdc.gov Regular Gut Check readers know that the recall of peanut-butter products possibly contaminated by salmonella has dominated the food-news headlines these past few weeks. Now the CDC, FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services are turning to so-called new media to convey the lates ... More >>

Journey Finds Its New Singer, Arnel Pineda, on YouTube

Press Release of the Day

New Bruce Springsteen single on iTunes -- for FREE!

I Want My MP3

Digital music just gets better. See ya later, major labels.

The Re-Entroducer

Oliver Wang’s shares his soul-sides.

Download Mozart

The Saint Louis Symphony is ready to hit the high-tech notes.

Wired 4 Wireless

How did AT&T manage to be the only company bidding on the contract to bring Wi-Fi to St. Louis?

YouTube: Anyone Else Feeling Anything Right Now?

Local Motion: DJ Mike Gow

Thursday, March 9, at 9:30 p.m. Miso on Meramec (16 North Meramec Avenue, Clayton)

When Online Got Off Base

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

For the Record

Big-box stores deal big blow to old-time music retailers

Digital Dilemma

Wave bye-bye to the bootleg -- in the MP3 domain, a digital file is replacing an artifact

Ransom Notes

Can one man convince millions of people to pay for their "free" music?