The Michelin guide ratings for restaurants in Los Angeles and Las Vegas were mistakenly posted on its Web site before Monday’s scheduled announcement.

A lot of big companies – from Google to CNN – are interested in “going local,” and, to be honest, it seems that those companies have the money to do whatever they want.  But “going local” isn’t easy; Backfence.com, which focused on a number of smaller communities, is going out of business.

If you have been watching the Nielson Ratings lately, you know that even whenadvertising on one of the top three shows for market share: even Deal or No Deal, Dateline NBC, or America’s Got Talent (the top three) only reach about 12,000,000 viewers each.

Google Maps can now not only tell you how to reach a business – it can say if you should go there at all.  Don’t worry, this isn’t the fruition of Google’s creepy “total information” plan; the tips are provided by user-generated ratings and reviews.

Filing lawsuits is as routine for lawyers as grabbing a Starbucks on the way to the office. And they’re kind of (to stereotype an entire profession) sensitive about things. So who could have predicted that a consumer website dedicated to rating lawyers would get sued?

This week has seen one eBusiness rumor after another come to light, and the latest nugget indicates that Google may be interested in buying Simply Hired.  If an acquisition occurs, this job search engine would fill in an obvious blank in Google’s arsenal.

A report came out today that Google is working on a project called “Google Health Scrapbook,” and has enlisted e-health companies like WebMD and Intuit.

Here’s as clear as correlation as any between the iPod economy and its potential to impact the media landscape.

Pull up the Washington Post website and you may notice something peculiar. All ad space on the site belongs to MSNBC. Sister publication Newsweek.com has the same MSNBC saturation-as do 800 blogs sanctioned through Blogads. The campaign is part of MSNBC’s effort to test whether online advertising can have an impact on television ratings.

The potential as well as the rapid early adoption of the podcast has the Internet industry buzzing to the point that some media aficionados are singing the dirges of print and traditional radio. At the forefront of the phenomenon is WebmasterRadioFM, a company that is developing the kind of artificial intelligence capable of spidering mp3 files for indexing. Yes, spiders with ears.

The success of Nielsen’s Local People Meters has driven the biggest player in the radio industry to seek a similar model.

Standard & Poor’s lowered its ratings on General Motors and Ford debts to “junk” status.

Explosion of available content for cellular phones coupled with the youth of many users prompts wireless industry to act.

Toyota has appointed its executive vice president, Katsuaki Watanabe, as its new president.

If News Corp. wants to buy the remaining shares of Fox, it may have to increase its offer in order to get the minority shareholders to go along.

Morningstar now provides Fiduciary Grades on mutual funds. How does Morningstar determine these grades? How can mutual fund investors use these grades to better manage their portfolios?