I’ve been chuckling ever since reading this story about a guy who substituted a gag picture for his engagement photo. But like some goofy New Yorker cartoon, the photo suggests something unparsably poetic (I’m not sure what exactly) about courtship and marriage and shared visions. (Via ObscureStore.)

Washington Post’s media pundit writes: “It seems this morning that bloggers have taken over the world. Or at least the 2004 presidential campaign. Or at least the not-so-invisible primary leading up to the campaign. The pundits are blogging. The journalists are blogging. And now the candidates are blogging. Who needs television? Let’s just eliminate the middleman.” (Via Glenn Reynolds.)

After a week offline in North Carolina — Black Mountain and Chapel Hill — I’m back and plowing through seemingly infinite reams of e-mail. If I owe you an e-mail, I apologize for being slow.

Google finally upped its published estimation of its daily searches to “more than 200 million,” after sticking to “more than 150 million” for more than 18 months. No doubt this revision was compelled by my vicious prodding.

Assuming the original number was accurate and that Google has grown at pace with other web businesses, the real daily search tally is probably more like 300 to 400 million. Why the coyness? (Thanks Steve!)

I’m enjoying walking beneath London’s emerald sky soaking up the heat and velvet haze.

Monday night, Seyed treated me to a fine plate of gnocchi near his house in west London and snapped my first mobile photo. He’s got scores of disruptive twists to explore with Blogshares and I’m glad we’re able to contribute to his cashflow. Seyed’s idea is radical and, having met him, am confident he’s gonna have lots of fun. To my VC friends: drop him a line.

This afternoon, I enjoyed a couple of beers with Phil, who runs the Internet operations for the biggest division of one of the UK local publishing giants; we compared notes about the various dragons breathing down his company’s neck. To advertise the fine boat he’s bought with friend to rent out on weekends, Phil may soon find himself in the perverse position of buying Google Adwords, since conventional media offers neither the volume, granularity or affordability he needs to reach clients. (Assuming my link alone doesn’t give him a page rank of 10.)

What the Agonist did — not putting quotation marks and attributions on stuff he posted — was bad and stupid.

But it doesn’t compare with the harm that can come from quoting (or even worse, misquoting) someone who speaks on the condition of anonymity… as the New York Times did this week.

Far worse than either of these, though, is the act of continuously failing to chronicle a regime’s blatant brutality in order to preserve access to “the story”… as did CNN and, apparently, every other news service with Baghdad bureaus during Saddam’s reign. Why abet a criminal conspiracy? What possible good came from staying to tell benign lies about the Iraqi regime?

Wordsmith, artist and blogadvertiser Witold Riedel explains what he wants from the ads he buys on Google and Blogshares: “We are in a place in time where individuals can use channels of communication formerly only available to large corporations. It is possible for me, as a private person to use very targeted online (and offline) advertising to help you find me. And the great thing about the world wide web is that you can link to me and that I can help you become more visible, by linking to you, by writing about you. Suddenly the world is a bit of a conversation again.” (Via Hylton Jolliffe.)

Doug Arellanes offers images from another fallen regime. I’ve realized that living in Hungary after the fall of communism nudged me, and many others I met there, to the right. But that’s not something to explain in 50 words a few days before taxes are due. (The leftmost image is a menu.)

With hostilities in Iraq winding down and lots of ammunition unused, homefront fisticuffs are rising.

Three of 22 of the items on the Drudge Report this morning are, like the article from my previous post, linked through URLs indicating that the articles were found using Google’s news aggregator, known by many as Noogle. See the “partner=GOOGLE” at the end of the URL. Drudge may be using the Google link because it saves his readers from having to navigate the New York Times’ registration or he may be relying on Google’s news gathering algorithms. Either way, he’s smart and, as always, on the cutting edge.