The folks at Gobama RI have a new website. Peep it. More importantly. Do some shit for Obama. Like make a phone call.

The demand for Scrabble articles has been tremendous — people can’t seem to get enough. I’m doing my best to keep up but I’m only one person and the phone won’t stop ringing. We have new developments in this fascinating battle. Writing for Business Week, Catherine Holahan reports that heartbroken, jonesing and angry Scrabulous nuts are hacking into Hasbro’s new online Scrabble game ( launched recently to supplant Scrabulous) just to mess things up.  They’re hurt, and they are lashing out. Meanwhile, back in India, the Agarwallas have not been sitting on their hands; they have already launched a new Scrabble-ish game on Facebook called Wordscraper where you make up your own rules and the tiles are round and the points are different and it’s a completely new thing this time… promise.

I’m not sure how you guys feel about Magic 106.7, Boston’s adult contemporary radio station. You know, the one that’s mainly notable for having Teri Garr in its old TV ads and for still having songs from the freaking Duets soundtrack on its playlist.

I do, however, know how this guy feels.

Calling himself Earnest Sludge, he blogs about how much he hates the station as often as ten times a day, and has been for about five months now. In fact it’s taken over all of his posts about Asian restaurants and Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

After the jump, some highlights:

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Oh no! Scrabulous has been taken down from Facebook at the request of the Agarwalla brothers who can apparently see the writing on the wall and might be hoping to mitigate their damages. (The battle between Scrabble copyright owners Hasbro and the creators of Scrabulous started about a year ago when it was first launched on Facebook.) According to the ProJo the Agarwallas have blocked the game in the United States and Canada; the brothers state that they will continue to pursue their legal defense. Mattel owns the overseas rights to Scrabble, and has launched its own online version. But people playing on the Hasbro version (at Club Pogo*) can’t play with their Mattel counterparts and the whole thing is a big mess. Hasbro’s case against Scrabulous is as strong as these things ever get, but will they win the battle only to lose the war? Have they forever alienated the roughly 3 million fanatically loyal players registered with Scrabulous? Stay tuned.

*Club Pogo seems to have some kinks to work out. I clicked on Scrabble and the screen gave me two options — ‘the United States and Canada’ or ‘other countries’. Curious about what this last could possibly mean I clicked on it to find a screen that said ‘Sorry’ etc. But then I couldn’t get out of that and back to the ‘United States’ not back through ‘home’ not no way, not no how. Okay Hasbro, there’s a couple of brothers in India who could probably figure this out for you.

Now that Hasbro has launched its own online Scrabble game, the company has filed suit in federal court against Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, the Indian brothers who created Scrabulous on Facebook in 2005.

The suit claims that Scrabulous has violated Hasbro’s intellectual property rights. Facebook is not named as a defendant, but has been notified of the suit. The new Hasbro version is available in the U.S. and Canada, but Mattel owns the overseas rights to Scrabble and they launched their online version in March. It’s complicated.

Attention everybody here it is — the thing no one was waiting for because they are perfectly happy with the thing they got already. Rhode Island game and toy colossus, Hasbro, is launching its answer to Scrabulous — Scrabble at Club Pogo. I’m not big on this online stuff. I prefer the click of the tile bag and the knowledge that if my tiles suck it’s the universe conspiring against me and not some computer algorithm. I suppose it will take a little while for people to try it out and see how it compares. But what if no one bothers to try it out? I certainly want this to work. With our state economy tanking, who isn’t cheering on Hasbro ( My Little Pony notwithstanding)?

Above is a sample screen-shot and right away I have a problem. I’m picturing all these people naked. And clammy? Why is he clammy?

Thanks to Joe.My.God, I just discovered Cake Wrecks, a new blog that hilariously analyzes the worst in professional cake decorating. It covers everything from tacky airbrushing to mysteriously inappropriate photo cakes [See right. Under what circumstances would you give that cake to someone you address as Mister?] It also has cakes disguised as meat, and a number of cakes with baby motifs, making you wonder what sort of person would ever want to spend their baby shower dissecting a marzipan newborn.

And, to make up for my lack of ability to post that Marissa Nadler video earlier, here’s something I just found on the Youtube.

Who knew there even was a clean version of this song? Or that the clean version would take out the line about the Vietnam War?

Rhode Island toymaker Hasbro Inc. will be launching its own online Scrabble game later this month in the hopes of scooping up all those Scrabulous players (according to today’s ProJo that’s nearly 3 million registered users). It is unclear what they have to offer that will tempt these people away. According to the Chicago Tribune,

Hasbro’s initial response to Scrabulous was to ask Facebook to take down the game. Hasbro and Mattel, which own the international rights to Scrabble, also reportedly made the same request of Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, the creators of Scrabulous. News of the game’s possible demise stirred protests from avid players, with a “Save Scrabulous” group on Facebook attracting more than 45,500 members.

Inertia is not the only obstacle…

Hasbro faces several challenges in converting Scrabulous fans to the official version. Thousands of Facebook users are already comfortable with Scrabulous and are running multiple games with friends. Also, since Electronic Arts and Hasbro control the rights to Scrabble only in the U.S. and Canada, users based in those countries can’t play with people elsewhere in the world. RealNetworks created the international Facebook version of Scrabble for Mattel, and that game has about 5,600 daily active users.

As to the legal status of Hasbro v. Agarwallawallawallawallabro?*

The controversy over Scrabulous isn’t over … Hasbro is still considering its legal options and insists that the unofficial version infringes on the company’s intellectual property.

*(I made that up. Paul Grimaldi, writing in today’s Providence Journal, states that “Hasbro has not filed a lawsuit in this matter.” But I’ll bet there was a strongly worded letter.)

Get ready to OD on cuteness !

The Providence Animal Rescue League just put up a flickr page where people who adopted from the shelter can post success stories and pictures of animals they’ve adopted.  The totally freaking adorable fellow to the right is Cappy, who’s currently living it up with a new owner in Hartford.

If you’ve adopted a pet from the Rescue League in the past and have some pictures to share, send them on over to adopt@parl.org with a story about how your pet’s doing.

* Dennis Kucinich gets a just little less lonely as Florida Congressman Robert Wexler, of Colbert/Cocaine, and more recently Obama-backing fame, co-sponsors articles of impeachment for Dubya. Maybe he read Vincent Bugliosi’s book?

* Only an Obama-caliber uniter could bridge the gap between sci-fi overlord George Lucas and traditionally conservative Evangelical Christians. Plus, he wears a helmet!

* Scientists create souped-up, 100 mpg Prius; The experimental uber-car is then fed to Truckasaurus.

* Rhode Island schools closed for the heatwave; local students work on “sweat your ass off at home” independent study project.

* Lil Wayne is finally getting his due: an New York Times article praising his emotional vulnerability.

* Google Founder Brin heads to space to meet with Data, Captain Sisko, and swarthy Cosmonauts.

* And, bringing it back to one, President Bush is sorry about all the messed up shit he said; messed up actions still ok, though.

Phrases such as “bring them on” or “dead or alive”, he said, “indicated to people that I was, you know, not a man of peace”.

Obama has hit the number, and then surpassed it. He will be the nominee. HRC, in her speech last night, made no promises, and said she needed some time to think about what to do next. She then gave her oft-cited “millions of supporters” a homework assignment: “Go to my website at HillaryClinton.com and share your thoughts with me.”

But when your intrepid reporter went to Hillary’s website to write a “Dear Hillz, ur great but cmon its time to drop” letter, it was discovered that by “share your thoughts with me,” HRC meant, “sign a petition urging me to stay in.” That’s one way to win the veepstakes!

Obama’s full victory speech - delivered, in a major “up yours,” at the same spot that the GOP will be convening in a couple months - after the jump. (more…)

Beth’s probably got the most reason to worry:

• Putin has the last laugh - or none at all

• US blogger charged in Singapore over ‘prostituting’ comment

• Egypt blogger freed after ‘weeks of torture’

•  Chavez decree will force citizens to inform on each other?

I’m liveblogging it over here, if you care (and I know you do!)  If you’re a shut-in or hate nice spring days, then you should go to eurovision.tv to follow along with all the tacky splendor.

Wednesday, May 15, 2008, 5:30 – 9pm
AS220, 115 Empire Street, Providence, RI

FREE (buy your own food and drink – it’s cheap)

‘This week’s Geek Dinner will feature a presentation by the Founder and CTO of The Search Agency and Providence Geek regular, Carl Dunham. Carl and team are enjoying a great spring having just announced a major investment by JMI Equity (JMI knows something about picking winners in the online advertising space, having invested in a few including a little outfit called DoubleClick).

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How come i didn’t know about Providence Palate sooner? It’s the hip new online spot for discussing “Rhode Island Food Culture: Dining, Drinking & Food Stuff.”

The site has forums, photos, videos and a special search function that focuses on relevant local news sources for information about rhode island food. Members can post blog entries, forum topics and be a part of other conversations. There are currently only 103 members but the site already has a lot of good looking content.

If you’ve got hours and hours of free time, I suggest you turn your browsers over to the UBU film and video archive, which contains such gems as Bunuel’s Un Chien Andalou, Agnes Varda’s Black Panthers - Huey!, Guy Debord’s Refutation of All Judgments, The Ten Commandments of Gilbert and George, and David Wojnarowicz and Tommy Turner’s Where Evil Dwells, among many, many, many other films by the likes of Rene Clair, Yoko Ono, Peter Greenaway, Samuel Beckett, Banksy, and about a million other fancy artypantses.  Sure, a lot of these are on Youtube, too, but the quality here’s a hell of a lot better and you don’t have to deal with compulsively looking at comments that say things like “ummm that was so weird OMG like what happened this is SO gay LOL.”

If you don’t have hour and hours of free time, look away, look away!

[via Jockohomo]