For those unaware, Francois Truffaut was one of the founders of the French New Wave movement. He made classic films such as Les Quatre Cents Coups and Jules et Jim. He passed away in 1984 at the age of 52 due to a brain tumor.

He won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1973 with La Nuit Americaine (Day for Night). He was a big fan of Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg. He was even invited to star in a lead role in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

The Google Doodle on the front page, as mentioned before, is a slideshow with three different doodles depicting different parts of Truffaut’s career.

Check out the slide show at the Irish version of Google or see the individual images below.

The video is hosted by character actor, Ray Wise, which provides a stylized pseudo-documentary feel. Of course, Soulja Boy makes a cameo as well. Enjoy. Oh, apparently Twitter was created by Ashton Kutcher and hipsters.

(WARNING: NSFW Language)

The BBC attributes weblog’s existence to Jorn Barger, who was involved in "the ‘logging’ of interesting ‘web’ sites."  We wish Barger had thought of some combination that was a little more pleasant-sounding.  Still, the importance of weblogs is impossible to deny.

Think about it: they are the way in which some of the most powerful companies in the world communicate with the public.  Things also work in the other direction, with unknown people putting down their thoughts and getting noticed by international organizations.

Admittedly, those uses goes more into the substance of weblogs than the name, but, well, whatever.  The BBC adds, "Technorati, which keeps an eye on the blogosphere, estimates that there are now 120,000 new blogs being created every day.  Posts are being added to blogs at a rate of 17 per second – a total of 1.5 million per day, says the firm."

Ten years from now, perhaps we’ll be writing about the anniversary of "ogs" and be dealing with numbers in the billions.

FCC Gets Monkey’s Paw From Telco Front Group

It appears as good news. An anti-Net-Neutrality, pro-telecom organization calls for Net Neutrality enforcement. And if the telecoms demand something of FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, you know it will be done.

Must be all the birthday singing they do for him.

After Comcast was busted blocking BitTorrent downloads, HOTI sent a letter to Martin asking the FCC to launch a full investigation to see if the four principles of Net Neutrality had been violated.

Just for review, those four principles are the same ones AT&T had to accept in order for their merger with Bell South to be approved, the same ones Martin himself said had no teeth. They are as follows:

1.    Consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice;
2.    Consumers are entitled to run applications and services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement;
3.    Consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network; and
4.    Consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content             providers

The authors of the letter, Mike McCurry and Christopher Wolf, disagree with Martin’s initial assertion that the principles are unenforceable and believe the FCC "has clear authority" to do so.

What’s interesting about the letter is not just what is between the lines, but also how it plays on Martin’s philosophical inconsistencies. They use his own words to the Senate Commerce Committee against him to drive home just how extensive the FCC’s authority over Internet service providers is (or vice versa).

Another inconsistency to leverage: Martin’s reluctance to regulate or interfere with telecom giants, but full willingness to get his hands dirtied with cable providers. Before the keys were cold again on HOTI’s keyboard, Martin was dead set on stiffening regulations on the cable industry – most likely driven by his conscience, a la carte programming that provides true family friendly programming the trump to his deregulation mindset.

But what is most elegant about the HOTI letter is that it subtly mirrors a couple of very pro-telecom objectives: It puts additional heat on a very large competitor in the Internet and television space (the telecoms are beginning to offer TV); and it appears pro-Net Neutrality in an increasingly pro-Net Neutrality time without actually being so.

Smell that? It’s opportunism.

An FCC that appears to enforce the principles helps build a case that there is no legislation needed. In a perfect free market world, the FCC can hold its own, enforcing its own principles without Congress, even principles its own chairman said were unenforceable.

Just to save you following a link, let’s relive Martin’s words here:

Importantly, however, while the Democrat Commissioners may have extracted concessions from AT&T, they in no way bind future Commission action. Specifically, a minority of Commissioners cannot alter Commission precedent or bind future Commission decisions, policies, actions, or rules. 

The "concessions" are the same principles as listed above. Though a minority of Commissioners cannot bind Commission actions, perhaps AT&T-backed grass roots groups can. They’ve been pretty good at pulling Martin’s strings in the past.

If they can hurt a competitor while ensuring Net Neutrality remains unenforceable (while making others think that it is), then that fits squarely into a win-win corporate strategy.

" AT&T’s front group calling out Comcast is like Exxon calling out Texaco — they’re all bad faith actors with business models built on attacking competition in the marketplace and hurting consumers," says MoveOn.org’s Adam Green.

But what is equally disturbing, is the extent to which AT&T is involved in the workings of our federal government. Recently it was revealed that the secret room at AT&T HQ reserved for NSA personnel was used not only to snoop on phone calls, but all Internet traffic coming across the backbone as well.

If worded right, Net Neutrality legislation could put a stop to that, too. You know, if certain legislators don’t grant immunity to them in the meantime.

The dark conclusion, as usual lately: The government, including the FCC, the DOJ, the Administration, and a good portion of Congress don’t work for the people anymore. They work for shareholders and contributors.

And Kevin Martin? He’s made it very clear over the years whom he serves.   

Google Turns Nine(-ish)

The event’s being marked by the incorporation of a piñata into the company’s logo.  Otherwise, Google’s taking it easy – there aren’t yet any blog posts or press releases related to the birthday.

That’s okay, though, because the rest of the world appears to have generated plenty of coverage; a Google Blog Search for “Google’s birthday” returns 261,435 results, while a search for “Mexico’s independence” – which was achieved on this day in 1821 – yields just 17,543 hits.

Other events that Google seems to have outshone include the birthdays of Meat Loaf, Avril Lavigne, and Gwyneth Paltrow.

All these comparisons return us to the matter of when Google’s birthday really falls, though, and various accounts would put it on some very different days (and years).  Danny Sullivan did a great write-up of these histories, for anyone who’s interested.

I’m willing to stick with the corporate line, however, so long as the company doesn’t get too crazy about this.  Happy b-day, Google.

Fred Thompson’s Webmaster Doesn’t Know Dmoz

A Knoxville TV station reported the confusion at the Thompson camp over what Google has to say about the candidate’s I’m With Fred site:

Type the phrase “Friends of Fred Thompson” into Google, and the first link returned by the search engine describes the Web page as the “Official site of Fred Thompson for President Exploratory Committee.”

An exploratory committee would be a major step between Thompson’s less formal “testing the waters” committee and an official bid for the Republican nomination for president.

But spokeswoman Linda Rozett called the description inaccurate. Rozett said she doesn’t know how the description got on Google.

We’re pretty sure we found the reason why, and our readers probably figured it out too. On the Dmoz Open Directory site, take a look at this page about Thompson, particularly the starred entry near the top:

I’m With Fred – Official site of Fred Thompson for President Exploratory Committee.

Google has pulled the description seen in its search results from Dmoz. The ‘I’m With Fred’ webmaster doesn’t seem to know this little bit of HTML-fu, which will help the campaign stop this from happening:

<META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOODP”>

That tag will keep search engine crawlers from using the description on the Dmoz Open Directory. If the candidate is feeling grateful for this help, he can offer me the position of Ambassador to Tropical Places if he is elected.

Sponsorships Work Better Than AdSense

Plenty of ‘make money blogging’ ideas abound on the Internet. They range from contextual advertising to affiliate marketing, to placing ads in RSS feeds.

Just as Web Analytics World marked its first year, Manoj Jasra looked at three approaches that didn’t pay off. He listed Google AdSense first as one of them.

"Embedding AdSense is a simple way to attempt to make money but if you’re not getting tens of thousands of page views, I am not sure if it’s worth it," he said.

A couple of affiliate programs delivered nothing despite a few hundred referrals sent to their sites.

As for Google’s latest purchase, Feedburner, its ad program returned about 22 cents after approximately three months.

In his site’s first birthday post Jasra did credit three sponsors, including his employer, Enquiro, with making the blog’s continued work possible.

It is fairly routine to see prominent blogs with display ads appearing on them.

No vagaries of whether an ad may or may not be clicked; those publishers generally enforce some semblance of ad quality, and most importantly they keep the money in-house.

People get into blogging for the right reasons and get out for the wrong ones.

Getting in should happen because someone is passionate about whatever it is they are going to blog.

Starting one up for purposes of monetizing it with ads is a lot more work than people realize.

But if ads are the motivation, keep in mind something Jasra noted about his search referral traffic.

94 percent came from Google. Knowing how and why Google users arrive at a site has to be the key piece of intelligence a publisher needs to understand these days.

Flickr has a fascination with the number 3 as its next birthday approaches. The Flickr 333 event offers the Flickr community a chance to enjoy some cupcakes and see plenty of amazing photography.

Part of the 333 party involves a benefit auction of photographs. Proceeds from the auction will go to Kids with Cameras, a non-profit organization that teaches the art of photography to marginalized children in communities around the world.

Photographs for the auction have been donated by 460 of the top shutterbugs on Flickr. They also noted printing services have been donated by art community site Imagekind.

Flickr touted the numbers it has achieved during its third year of existence. A spokesperson said Flickr now has 23 million unique visitors per month, who have posted over 400 million photographs on the site.

Late in 2006, Flickr brought some new features online. Flickr’s mobile site came back to life at http://m.flickr.com, and they enabled a “guest pass” feature for private photos, allowing them to be shared with non-Flickr users.

Visitors to Flickr can search the site by camera model as well. That feature gives people an idea of how a given camera will perform in the hands of a competent photographer, by showing pictures taken with it by Flickr members.

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Users around the world have dropped Opera Mini onto their mobile devices around the world. Opera said in its notes on the first birthday of the product that the free browser has had an impact on the mobile marketplace.

“This is a celebration for our users,” said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software. “Thanks to the more than 10 million people who use Opera Mini, we’ve changed the way users and mobile operators think about the mobile Web. Because of the tremendous grassroots support, Opera Mini is now a movement.”

It’s not just the people and the mobile providers who have noticed such interest. The major Internet players – Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, AOL, and Ask – all have efforts of varying complexity and strategy aimed at mobile users.

Opera recently made a move involving two of those companies. Until January, Opera had Google as its default search. They switched to Yahoo as the default at the end of the one-year agreement with Google, and said Yahoo had the best proposal “both on a commercial and strategic level.”

To mark the first year of Opera Mini’s availability, the company invoked the spirit of the ninja to celebrate. Their birthday card features a crimson-clad ninja freeing people from the walled garden of the telecoms to enjoy the wonders of the Internet.

A big selling point of Opera Mini has been its ability to deliver complete web pages to mobile devices. Opera said its users have viewed 3 billion cumulative pages through the Mini browser, and their servers deliver 300 complete web pages per second to them.

If you are in the United States reading this article, there’s a good chance you are using a Motorola RAZR V3, BlackBerry Pearl or BlackBerry 8700 as the hardware containing Opera Mini. In Europe, Sony Ericsson or Nokia devices will be more likely. You could win a bar bet by knowing Brunei Darrussalam has the world’s greatest penetration of Opera Mini users per capita.

That’s a ninjarific fact to know.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

The commemoration isn’t unprecedented, though, with people also noting Google Base’s first birthday, and the 21st birthday of Windows. Yahoo has worked hard to branch out from its traditional role as a search engine, and AT&T, “the nation’s leading high speed DSL Internet and consumer voice services company,” is in a key position to help this expansion continue.

Steve Boom, Yahoo’s senior vice president of Broadband and Mobile, gave a statement that emphasized past benefits. “Our partnership with AT&T has given Yahoo! the opportunity to create truly innovative Internet experiences, not just for the PC but also on consumer televisions,” he said.

The companies gave vague hints as to what may follow. “In the coming months, Yahoo! will celebrate its fifth anniversary with AT&T by offering new features and incentives to consumers.” And yet, despite the overall cheery tone of the statement, some onlookers predicted trouble.

Om Malik wrote that “the past . . . has been perfect for these two partners, but deep down the future has to be tense . . . . The email accounts, the photo services or even the start page – those are Yahoo’s preserve. When a person switches from AT&T DSL, the relationship goes with Yahoo.”

Malik also noted, “A senior executive at one of Yahoo’s other phone company partner expressed big concern over this end-relationship, and posited that in the end it would become a thorn in their side.”

Perhaps it isn’t really confetti that we’re seeing at this celebration . . . . Perhaps the AT&T people just took out their frustration on a big stack of colored paper.

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Doug is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest eBusiness news.