Was it just me, or did anyone else do a Silverlight "upgrade" for Macs that resulted in constant browser crashes and forced me to re-install Adobe-Macromedia's Flash player?

AOL is opening up more of its core IM technology in an effort to establish it as a mash-upable platform. The Open AIM developer forum has the details, and TechCrunch offers its very positive early take. Here's a couple of additional points, derived from my conversation with AOL.

- This is not the strategy to integrate the other big two IM players, Yahoo and Microsoft. There's still some talking about working together to integrate those products into a "multi-headed" network, but that's deep talking, not SDKs and APIs.

- On the other hand, AOL feels this strategy could accomodate just about anybody else, including Google, any social networks who might be trying to do their own IM, and all of the other multi-headed products (think Trillian). And contrary to what some are saying, while this is a lot better than suing and shutting people down, it's a pretty heavy embrace if you join the party.

Honestly, it doesn't really bother me when "memoirs" are faked, as long as they're good literature reading. But this is too funny. Yeah, it's probably a good idea to cancel the author's book tour.

In “Love and Consequences,” a critically acclaimed memoir published last week, Margaret B. Jones wrote about her life as a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child among gang-bangers, running drugs for the Bloods....Margaret B. Jones is a pseudonym for Margaret Seltzer, who is all white and grew up in the well-to-do Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, in the San Fernando Valley, with her biological family. She graduated from the Campbell Hall School, a private Episcopal day school in the North Hollywood neighborhood.

Umm. Oops?

Ms. Seltzer’s story started unraveling last Thursday after she was profiled in the House & Home section of The New York Times. The article appeared alongside a photograph of Ms. Seltzer and her 8-year-old daughter, Rya. Ms. Seltzer’s older sister, Cyndi Hoffman, saw the article and called Riverhead to tell editors that Ms. Seltzer’s story was untrue.

Her editor, who has some distant connection with the Times, appears equally foolish.

I've said several times in this forum, that ESPN is the very model of a modern media company (since the Times is using that headline elsewhere today, I'll steal it back). However, I dunno about this one. Aren't sports movies by definition corny? How does that fit with the ESPN brand and audience demo -- i.e., tongue-in-cheek insider commentary for 14-24 year-old boys of all ages? Maybe these should be branded Disney after all...

ESPN said it would collaborate with Creative Artists Agency and Walt Disney Studios to produce and distribute theatrical films with sports themes. As part of the network’s expansion in filmed entertainment, ESPN is also hiring 30 filmmakers to produce one-hour mini-movies to appear on the channel starting in September 2009.