Bloggers know that a good Apple story is a sure-fire way to precious pageviews and ultimately, cash. Music groups are figuring out how to capitalize on the cult of Steve Jobs, too. Silicon Alley Insider reports that since appearing in an Apple ad on April 27, "Shut Up and Let Me Go" by The Ting Tings shot up to No. 11 on the iTunes charts and No. 93 on Billboard's top 100. Additionally, Apple fanboys snatched up copies of "Music Is My Hot Hot Sex" after Apple debuted the song in an ad on October 28, and then "New Soul" by Yael Naim took its turn on the charts after Apple featured it in its MacBook Air ad campaign. So the capitalist-friendly among us can't help but cheer music group The Bird & the Bee for their video director Dennis Liu's cynical attempt at an Apple-whoring music video, embedded below.

On last night's anything-goes American Idol semi-finale, the remaining contestants—living headshot Syesha Mercado, crowd-pleasing cheese-rocker David Cook, and 400 lb.-black-woman-in-the-body-of-a-Mormon-twink David Archuleta—were to sing three songs: one selected by a judge, one by a star-chamber of Idol producers, and one of their own choosing. Big-hearted, coordination-challenged youngster Archuleta—the Tiny Tim of this year's proceedings—God-blessed-us every one before tossing aside his crutch (that would be his overbearing, rehearsal-banned father) and launching into Chris Brown's "With You."

advertisers can't use Buzz Targeting to serve ads against popular videos uploaded by regular YouTube users, only those uploaded by "content partners" — probably because regular users often don't own the copyright to the videos they upload and it's hard for Google's lawyers to justify YouTube making money off those.

Some day we'll bite the bullet and experience the magic of the Cannes Film Festival first-hand, but in the meantime, there are advantages to keeping one's distance. For starters, we're insulated from the horrors of marketing rituals like the one foisted on the international press this morning, when Jack Black strolled into Cannes with a few dozen minimum-wage costume slaves panda bears in support of his upcoming Kung Fu Panda. As evidenced by the accompanying video, much hammy ass-kicking and a sort of loin-churning, interspecial sexual chemistry ensues.

Union Square Ventures funded Mark Pincus's casual games maker Zynga with $10 million not long after Max Levchin-founded widgetmaker Slide raised $50 million. Competitor RockYou wants a round of funding that would value it at $400 million. We like to scoff at these purveyors of online sheep-throwing tools, but that's serious scratch, people. In this excerpt from a longer interview with Kara Swisher, Zynga's Mark Pincus explains what widgetmakers see in our future — and shows us exactly what kind of pitch VCs are going for these days.

Given that Stephen Colbert's act on Comedy Central consists mainly of imitating Bill O'Reilly, it was pretty much inevitable that he would mock the Fox News shouting head's recently resurfaced Inside Edition meltdown. Colbert's recreation of the cuss out, set on his own supposed TV show in the 70s, is at least as funny as expected — Colbert nails O'Reilly's freakout down to the silent, jacket-throwing temper tantrum at the very end — and includes a clever twist involving NBC's Brian Williams. Watch as Colbert cements "do it live" as a catchphrase, after the jump.

Last night, we tearfully watched as the third season of that Adderall-fueled pity party known as The Hills came to a wisdom-filled conclusion. So what did we learn last night? Aside from newly cropped and suddenly hot Justin Bobby teaching Audrina (and us) that living alone means you can “come home and cook something,” and shockingly, “have people over,” Methanie Pratt managed to summarize the entire season’s course on Lives Of The Blonde And Vapid by telling villainous Spencer that one should always “think really hard before you do anything.” Below we bring you three tidbits to carry with you forever, involving drinking on the job, dieting leessons, and when the appropriate time to “shush” someone is:

Star magazine's new Web show lets the whole Internet read gossip together! It's like commenting on a regular online video, but you have to find the host, Star editor-at-large Julia Allison, on the streets of Manhattan to have your say on last week's stale celeb snapshots. Imagine what will happen when Allison takes her talent for crashing to the next logical level and turns up in the middle of Lindsay Campbell's New York based woman-on-the-street interview show, MobLogic.tv.

Watching Shia LaBeouf recount for David Letterman the amusing circumstances surrounding his arrest last November at a Chicago Walgreens for drunken, public benzoyl-peroxide abuse, we were suddenly left wanting to know how—likable as he is—he so quickly ascended to superstar status. Well, that's the great thing about media-saturation campaigns riding the coattails of massive summer movie releases: Those kinds of wishes are easily granted. According to a profile in the new GQ, it all started when Steven Spielberg saw LaBeouf's Disturbia audition tape, and instantly cast him in Transformers and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. That was easy! But just who is this charismatic, precocious, and ridiculously named young man? And from whence does he come? Not too far, as GQ reports—in fact, as close by as a traveling tubesteak sideshow in Echo Park:

Click to viewIt's already been an exciting week for accidental on-air cursing, with New York broadcast institution Sue Simmons interrupting last night's Medium to ask what the FUCK New York is doing, but Sue and Bill O'Reilly just left us wanting more. So video guru Richard Blakeley (who's explored reportorial bloopers before) collected ten of our very favorite meltdowns by people whose job it is to not curse on TV. Some of these went out live, some were stolen from satellite feeds, but they're all golden. From Jim Ryan telling Dick Oliver that he'll explain how to be a reporter later to broadcast legend Bill Plante throwing a tantrum at the White House to vintage Sam Donaldson and Leslie Stahl, it's a cavalcade of rage and frustration. Like life. Click to watch!

First things first: Yes, the accompanying new teaser for Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, features about two seconds of Penélope Cruz and Scarlett Johansson kissing. Everyone else is kissing as well: Cruz on Javier Bardem, Bardem on Johansson, so on, so forth. It's apparently the only thing happening in the film, as no sound emerges from peoples mouths when they speak, and no discernible plot line emerges in a minute and a half. We won't spoil the ending, but... Actually we will spoil the ending: Cruz fires a gun at you, the viewer. And as you try to position your head in front of the bullet, you've never felt more grateful. Thanks again for nothing, Weinstein Company. [YouTube]

Jimmy Fallon popped by Late Night to address yesterday's news that he would be taking over for host Conan O'Brien in 2009, an announcement greeted with wide-eyed, Christmas Eve wonder by the three TV executives who hired him, and, "Wait—that annoying dude from those DJ sketches on Saturday Night Live?" from everyone else.

Maybe you don't know who Engage.com's Julian Brass is? Odd. Because the 43 people tagged in the farewell-to-San Francisco video Brass uploaded to Facebook do. One of them forwarded it to us with this note: "This is the most painful shit I've ever seen in my life from Engage.com's Julian Brass." Really, how would we not share it with you after such a cold tribute from a so-called friend? Our favorite part is when Brass points the camera at his Francisco Street home, where he lived for all of a year and a half, and says, "I always just said: It's the pink one guys; it's the pink one. Ha ha." After viewing our excerpt, go check out Brass's full seven-minute video, slideshows and all. We're out of words to describe it, having previously banned them all.

Sure, we all endured the Rose Ceremony hoops, but was there really any doubt in our minds who Matt Grant—the most British Bachelor ever!—would choose at the end of his lady-shopping journey? The second he laid eyes on Lamas Family acting dynasty heiress Shayne Lamas, our funny-sounding Casanova was a goner. Sad as that was for first runner-up Chelsea, who was commended for her loveliness and offered her choice of Whirlpool appliances in exchange for her time, it resulted in a jackpot romantic payday for Shayne.

From the network that brought you such essential Hollywood lifestyle viewing as Hangin' With the Kardashians As They Talk About Makeup in Their Money-Laundering-Front Dress Shop comes a new reality series that should prove to be no less compelling. In this preview for E!'s Denise Richards: It's Complicated (original title: A Shot at Love with Denise Richards and Her Two Demi-Orphans As a Result of their Sex-Addict Father Running Off to Follow His Cheerleader Orgy Dreams and Falling For the Trampy Love of His Life in the Process), Richards discovers her page on celebrity STD-transmission tracker whosdatedwho.com, and is forced to address some of the questionable life choices she's made.

Well, she's over. (For now. Sigh.) Last night saw the end of the most boring season yet of MTV's already-pretty-damn boring reality gobbledygook The Hills. And, what happened? Well, not a whole hell of a lot. Audrina continued to be sad and lonely, and Lauren still remained (falsely?) clueless to the evil Lo's machinations. Their tearful encounter at the end of the episode was a little bit sad, but completely unresolved. If that is what constitutes a cliffhanger around there, then I think our old bejeweled friend has flat lined. In Speidiland, Heidi continued to square-face her way through meetings with Brent Bolthouse and his swaggering business partner in Las Vegas. This new planned hotel/casino is going to be classy! Just like St. Tropez! Of course Spencer, under the lame "no...don't...don't do it..." protestations of sister Stephanie, had to come and muck everything up. He made an impassioned, scripted plea for Heidi's heart. We already knew they'd get back together, so the only real fun surprise was to watch Heidi treat her job like a real grownup and just, um, not show up for her flight with her bosses. Professional! So that was about it. Little lost, little gained. If this show has any hope of "redeeming" itself next season, the producers need to do one simple thing: for God's sake, don't ignore the fact that these people have become famous.

So, sigh. I could focus on how dismayingly anticlimactic last night's Gossip Girl was. I mean, we had the whizbang cliff-hanger about murder from last week's episode. The show was on the up! Things were happening! And then, like the rushing downturn ("wunnnh") of music that came as Serena uttered her immortal line, we (or at least I) saw all that energy deflate last night. It was... just a drug overdose. Everyone knows about it now and Serena was totes not to blame. Plus mama Lily managed to, um, get in touch with the family of the dead guy on the same night that Serena told her and cart her over to their house to apologize. How exactly did that conversation go? "Hi there, I have the girl who left your son to die here with me. Yeah, she's my daughter. We're in the car, can we swing by? Great. See you in ten." That just felt terribly rushed and silly. OK. So. That's that. That was the bad (well, some of it). But in the spirit of absolutely everyone's forgiving natures last night, I'll instead point out some positives, after the jump.

· There are 27 different movies in this Indy-themed swingstravaganza. (And at least one classic Activision Atari 2600 title.) How many can you name? [Black20]
· Dennis Farina was so preoccupied worrying about gels and liquids, he had a total brainfart about the .22 he was carrying through LAX security. [LAT]
· It seems a certain Chace Crawford is getting invited to George Clooney after-parties and mobbed by the Cruises, and Penn Badgley isn't. XOXO, Defamer Girl [NY Daily News]
· Isaiah Washington filed a complaint with SAG over Grey's Anatomy's use of his photo in a newspaper article about his character on last week's episode. [Reuters]
· Hey—unicorns!