NEWS
May 19, 2013 | By Rita Giordano, Inquirer Staff Writer
Just as the Internet made Caleb "Kai" Lawrence McGillvary a cyber celebrity, viral news of him as a fugitive - wanted in the slaying of a North Jersey lawyer - led to his capture, law enforcement agencies said in interviews Friday. And while McGillvary, "the Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker," lived large for months as a YouTube sensation, he looked slight and dazed Friday night as he heard the fugitive charge against him read on closed-circuit TV. Arraigned about 5 p.m. in Philadelphia before Magistrate Sheila M. Bedford, McGillvary responded, "I hear you," after she asked if he understood the charge.
NEWS
May 13, 2013 | By Michael Smerconish
Show us your face. That's my solution to the online issue of incivility to which Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie recently fell victim at Philly.com. Vitriolic postings about his recent marriage illustrate the need for media-sponsored websites to implement the same rules that apply to a speaker sounding off in the town's square: Say what you want, but the public gets to see who you are. John Featherman, a Philly.com columnist, reported that as soon as word of Lurie's nuptials to a woman of Vietnamese heritage was published, a blogosphere barrage began.
NEWS
May 3, 2013
DAN ROITMAN, chief executive of the Center City -based Stroll, is no fan of the Marketplace Fairness Act, the so-called Internet sales-tax bill expected to be voted on in the U.S. Senate on Monday. The legislation would empower states to reach beyond their borders and compel online marketers - like Stroll - to collect state and local sales taxes for online purchases. The sales taxes then would be sent to the state where a shopper lives. Stroll is an Internet-based marketing platform that sells audio language-learning products and had more than $80 million in revenues last year.
NEWS
April 29, 2013 | By Karen Heller, Inquirer Columnist
This weekend is my mother's birthday. A big one: 80. We will do little to celebrate. She has been gone for an eternity, 16 years. My daughter was then in diapers, scampering over the hospital bed, giving my mother her last moments of unbridled bliss. My mother - Barbara to people who didn't know her, Bobbie to those who did - adored the new. Babies, trends, the latest anything. She was an enthusiastic, early adopter of gadgetry, some of it questionable, which she was often slow to master.
BUSINESS
April 26, 2013 | By Stephen Ohlemacher, Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The Senate moved closer Thursday to passing a bill to tax purchases made over the Internet, but a final vote was delayed until members return from a weeklong vacation. Although opponents hope senators will hear from angry constituents over the next week, they have a steep hill to climb to defeat the bill. The Senate voted, 63-30, to end debate, setting up the final vote May 6. That vote will require only a majority, so 14 supporters would have to flip to stop it. President Obama supports the bill, but it faces an uncertain fate in the House, where some Republicans consider it a tax increase.
NEWS
April 21, 2013 | By Jeff Gammage, Inquirer Staff Writer
A friend who is raising money for Jeff Bauman - pictured bloody and ashen in a photo that has defined the Boston Marathon bombing - has collected more than $205,000 in two days. The sum grew by the minute Friday as donations arrived from around the world to "Bucks for Bauman!" - set up by the sister of Bauman's best friend. The fund-raising goal was increased from $200,000 to $1 million as money poured in. Bauman, 27, grew up in New England but has extensive family ties to Philadelphia and South Jersey.
NEWS
April 18, 2013 | By Mari A. Schaefer, Inquirer Staff Writer
Described as a "dangerous sexual Internet predator," the Virginia man who befriended a 13-year-old Radnor Township girl online and lured her out of state was sentenced Tuesday to 15 to 30 years in jail after pleading guilty to sexual-assault charges. Investigators continue to look for other possible victims. After pleading guilty to involuntary deviant sexual intercourse, aggravated assault, and corruption of minors, Ashley Ryan Hareford, 20, will also have to register for life as a Megan's Law offender.
NEWS
April 12, 2013 | BY GARY THOMPSON, Daily News Staff Writer thompsg@phillynews.com, 215-854-5992
WE ALL remember the heady days when the internet was an ingénue, at our door with candy and flowers and utopian come-ons about the free flow of information. Well, as much as we like Ms. Web - can't live without her, after all - it turns out that she's not Ms. Perfect and, frankly, we're having second thoughts. And we're not the only ones. Behavioral scientists who scrutinize news feeds and social filters believe that we're becoming more blinkered in our thinking. Others studying online comments see that trolls make all readers more reactionary.
NEWS
April 6, 2013 | By Emily Talamona, LITTLE FLOWER HIGH SCHOOL
Meg Hoechlin is an average teenager. She plays several sports, is involved in her school, and likes to hang out with friends. There's just one thing. Hoechlin is not able to hang out with a lot of her friends in person because she has never met them outside of a computer monitor. Many of her friends live in far-flung places across the country. And she met them through social media. "Some of the people I trust most in the world are Internet friends, simply because they are judgment-free," said Hoechlin, a 17-year-old senior.
NEWS
March 24, 2013 | BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
A possible meteor that blazed briefly but spectacularly across the Friday night sky was reported all along the Eastern seaboard, including the Philadelphia area. On Twitter, Alyson White of Philadelphia excitedly announced that she had seen a "huge shooting star. " "It was crazy," she wrote in an e-mail to The Inquirer. "I saw it at about 7:53. There was green, blue, and white rays coming off of it, and it was soaring through the sky, then it just like exploded and it was gone.