To my dismay the New York Time‘s blocks this functionality with a nasty little ToolTip script that forces you to research highlighted words with there terrible meta-definition system (in a pop-up, no less!). This script also blocks the ability to copy-and-paste text; probably a paranoid reaction by the Times that a blogger, heaven forbid, may want to blockquote some text from an article.

After a bit of digging around in the page source, I found the offending scripts and excised them with AdBlock using these rules:

||graphics8.nytimes.com/js/util/tooltip.js

||graphics8.nytimes.com/js/common/screen/altClickToSearch.js

Light testing shows these rules don’t break any other site functionality.

On a side note, when I first sought a solution, I searched Google for “new york times copy paste script,” which brought up Free Copy & Paste JavaScripts and other Scripts as a first hit, from About.com, which is owned by the New York Times company. At least one of their branches doesn’t fear basic information sharing.

This error message pops up on an embedded a video of ducks being knocked over by the wind accompanied (inexplicably) by Nas’ Hate Me Now. Sony is cool with you watching ducklings in distress while listening to low-grade rap as long as it’s not outside of the YouTube.

I can’t help but imagine an intern in a gray cubicle mulling over whether this video should be embeddable or not.

As seen on invertedsoapbox.com.

This is the sentence I changed in editing at the the sacrifice of flow to break up the monotony of repeating the same initial word. Here’s the sentence I ignrode in editingbecause I paid too much attention to the previous sentence. This sentence allows me to use a word that no-one has ever superrealized, yet you’ll accept it because clicking “Read more” means you’re already hooked on my post. Also, quotation marks make me seem more authoritative. Now I mention the mundane thing that happened to me today that triggered this blog post. I follow with a description of my outrage that will fly way over your head. Here is a relevant link.

This is an awkward transition. Now I mention something relevant in pop culture that will pique your fading interest. This next sentence won’t really relate that well, but you’re still thinking about the pop culture reference so it doesn’t matter. Then I post a video which you’ll draw your own conclusions from.

Here’s where my point runs out of steam and I realize it doesn’t have enough heft to sustain a four-paragraph post. This is where I try to cover up that I’m an amateur writer by pretending to achieve enlightenment through pacing out my unedited criticisms of something too far removed from real life. This is where I notice my run-on sentences and then take comfort in knowing that all great modern writers use them.

Here’s a hasty conclusion because I just saw a Twitter post about the death of the blog and I need to post a comment post-haste about how the blog is still a vibrant and exciting expression of our new media frontier. A pithy comment follows that, though profound at first, makes less and less sense after you stop reading.

Gypsy Rhythm Machine Crazy Beatbox - Watch more Funny Videos

I can’t find this guy anywhere online. Is he homeless?

This guy is good, but he obviously didn’t win whatever obscure TV contest this is.

This guy’s good, but his collection of narcissistic series of videos worries me.

These are drunk Spaniards who were surprised by dawn and sangria.

I don’t want to alarm anyone, but it looks like the central source for hipster satire and transplant hate, diehipster.com, is dead. Is this a nefarious plan perpetrated by some hipster who has finally had it? Has Brooklyn been nuked from orbit and I’m only just finding out? What is the American Apparel connection?

Beware those who poke fun at the weak-willed and poorly dressed of Brooklyn. They, too, will come for you.

(Or perhaps their hosting company has just hit the “website off” button.)

From Craigslist.org NYC:

“young jabba the hut looking for a temporary apartment, prefers something cool and damp, like a basement, and most preferably near washer and dryer (he loves the smell!) also he is neat and tidy (get him now before he becomes a huge ball of slime) and likes to fall asleep being read love poetry, preferably in arabic though fractured french is also accepted. good cuddler, too, and just so darn cute. check out the artist’s rendering: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bearandbird/3707464588/in/set-72157621227964172/“

$550 very specious Brooklyn apt. to share

At least they’re honest, just like my previous spammer.

Chris Anderson’s “bitch-ass” speech:

V. MC Double Def DP‘s Don’t Copy That Floppy! from 1992 (with extra whitey hate)

Bonus: DCTF sequel coming soon (with extra prison rape)!

P.S. If your game/movie/television show is so bad that only pirates will watch it (read: no one wants to pay to watch it – I’m looking at you, Michael Bay), then you need to re-think your media. Shit’s changin’, yo!

Aside from being updated only four times in two months (!), the site is woefully underwhelming. The newest innovation? A photo mosaic of Destiny’s Child made completely out of thousands of pictures of other celebrities. Both the subject and the technological method are over a decade old.

Next on the list is an obnoxious flash application about iPhone “killer apps” that doesn’t fit on the screen, is hardly navigable, and which forces you to watch commercials. No, thanks.

After that is a 360 panorama from Venice. Again, late-90s stuff here.

I have been trying to believe this is some sort of April Fool’s joke that won’t die, but sure enough the “innovation” blog is still linked to on the front page of the Post’s website. Who the hell on their web dev team came up with these ideas? Creating blurry pictures of celebrities and obnoxious flash interfaces are not going to save newspaper journalism. In fact, it just drives away serious users and seriously damages the credibility of a once-venerable institution.

Update: Seems the Post “accidentally” tried to sell access to its reporters and to Obama administration officials. Now that’s innovation.