New Game Plays Off Miley's Midriff

Academy uses back entrance to boost ratings

(NEWSER) - Not everyone walked the red carpet at last night’s Oscars, and photographers were none too pleased, Variety reports. The Academy asked some stars to enter out of cameras’ reach, to keep fashion choices a secret until the telecast—in an attempt to boost ratings. Some celebs, including Jennifer Aniston and Jessica Alba, complied; others, including Kevin Kline and Miley Cyrus, refused (click the image to the left to see who didn't). More»

(NEWSER) - Britney Spears is returning fire on the paparazzi by mocking them on her website, the BBC reports. The singer plans to post a "paparazzie award" every week along with a video of a bumbling photog. The first clip shows a pap falling over, camera in hand, over the caption: "This photographer eats some dirt while trying to get a shot of Britney." More»

South Korean camp addresses growing Internet addiction problem

(NEWSER) - Internet addiction is such a big problem in the obsessively wired country of South Korea that the government has launched an “Internet Rescue” camp for young men, The New York Times reports. At the tuition-free Jump Up Internet Rescue School – which could be the first of its kind in the world – campers can’t use computers for their 12-day stay. More»

Zero to 60 gossip site ups ante

(NEWSER) - TMZ, the celebrity gossip site that specializes in the self-destructive antics of starlets and B-list celebs, is taking its exuberantly trashy act to TV. No surprise: its 9 million unique visitors in June make it the No. 1 entertainment news site. The surprise, Radar says, is that a major media conglomerate—in this case Time Warner—can (and is willing to) score in the down-and-dirty world of celebrity gotchas and scooplets. More»

New ones are being laid around Atlantic in mammoth engineering projects

(NEWSER) - Our Internet age didn't just happen; it required thousands of miles of cables crisscrossing the ocean like veins and arteries (or, as Neal Stephenson put it years ago in Wired , turning the Earth into a computer motherboard). After a huge boom-and-bust cycle in the 1990s, the world's telecommunications cables are full, so once again ships are braving the oceans to lay new batches of the mammoth fiber optic wires that undergird the modern economy and allow you to order all sorts of useless stuff. Author Andrew Blum, who has a new book on the subject (Tubes), offers an overview in the Wall Street Journal . More»