It sometimes seems that when someone at Mozilla sneezes, there’s someone somewhere writing about it. From Twitter to the New York Times and everything in between, Mozilla attracts an amazing volume of coverage.

This volume is both good and bad. We don’t have the marketing and pr budgets of the software mega-companies so the press buzz we get organically is wonderful. The downside is that because of the sheer volume of coverage, it’s difficult to follow it all and make sure that Mozilla is being represented fairly.

What Mozilla lacks in marketing and pr budget, however, it more than makes up in the enthusiastic and capable community of participants who have already brought Firefox to 130 million users and made Mozilla a household name.

For the Record (FTR) is a community-driven public relations and press response program that will harness the energy and knowledge of the Mozilla community to 1) catalog all of the online coverage of the Mozilla Project, 2) develop a sustainable team of spokespeople who feel empowered to respond to online coverage, and 3) build a collection of talking points and responses to frequently asked questions.

To start participating today, simply add fortherecord@mozilla.org to your email address-book and forward blog posts or articles about Mozilla projects or products that are a) factually inaccurate or misleading, b) relevant to Mozilla, its products, or the Open Web, but fail to mention Mozilla, or c) thoughtful stories that are factually accurate and favorable, or at least fair about Firefox. Please include a short note explaining why you’ve forwarded the story.

The For the Record team, Mozilla’s marketing team, PR representatives, or various spokespeople will take it from there.

Want to join the For the Record team, and help us further develop the program and write a set of FAQs and other materials that will make it easier for the Mozilla community to better tell the Mozilla story and respond effectively when needed? Well, that’s easy too. Simply subscribe to the mailing list. Please note, unless you’re really interested in analyzing the flow of Mozilla news and helping to distill relevant content into documentation, this probably isn’t the list for you. If, on the other hand, that sounds like great fun, we’d love to have you involved.

After a lengthy hiatus, Florida’s legendary band Rocket 88, is performing again. Originally formed in Orlando in 1992, the band consists of vocalist Michael Bales, guitarist Marko Zayas, bassist Chuck Zayas, drummer Steve Plotnick, and pianist Terry Mooney. Back with a vengeance, the original line-up is reunited, performing to packed venues their brand of high-octane rockabilly rock ‘n roll.

In 1994 the band released a four-song EP, Mission to Mars, which received favorable reviews from national publications, such as Alternative Press and Blue Suede News. Two songs from the EP were featured on a compilation CD of American rockabilly, Stateside Rockabilly, released by NV Records and distributed throughout Europe and Japan. The following year, the band released its 15 song CD, Rock Around, which also received numerous favorable reviews. Selected by Florida’s JAM Magazine, the CD won the annual Jammy Award for the “State’s Best Independent Release.” Furthermore, Rocket 88 also received a “Best Band” Jammy Award.

Over the years, in addition to garnering many local music awards, Rocket 88’s eccentric performances on stage have become notorious. The band has performed at some of the most prominent venues in the U.S., including The Windows on the World, The Roxy, and The Supper Club in New York City; The Aragon Ballroom and The Liquid in Chicago; Clutch Cargo in Detroit; and several national House of Blues. In addition, they have performed with such national veteran musical acts as Jerry Lee Lewis, The Cramps, Southern Culture on the Skids, Reverend Horton Heat, Sleepy LaBeef, Dick Dale, Royal Crown Revue as well as many others.

2005 marked the release of Rocket 88’s new CD, Alien Attack, which exemplifies the band’s talent for juxtaposing vintage rockabilly with outer-spaced themes. The CD features ten original, wigged-out “B-movie” influenced tunes with a harder-edged sound. Their rockin’ high energy stage shows are guaranteed to put a bop in your socks and a shakin’ in your shoes.

So strap yourselves in, Daddy-O’s and Lil’ Mamas-you’re goin’ into orbit with Rocket 88!

Google (GOOG - Cramer’s Take - Stockpickr - Rating) already dominates the booming search market.And it figures to extend that lead by exploiting a data advantage that allows it to deliver superior search results and attract even more users.

Having an increasing share of searches run on its search engine is an important, and often overlooked, advantage it has over competitors such as Yahoo! (YHOO - Cramer’s Take - Stockpickr - Rating) and Microsoft (MSFT - Cramer’s Take - Stockpickr - Rating).

This advantage creates a self-reinforcing cycle that draws even more users to Google.

Google’s data advantage, which derives from its large share of user searches, gives the Web giant superior insight into user behavior and intent, which results in superior search results.

This, in turn, attracts more users to the company’s search engine, thereby providing it with even more data. The implications of this phenomenon — the subject of much debate in the search community — are profound for investors.

Of the 61 billion searches conducted worldwide in August, 37 billion were conducted on Google’s search engine, according to researcher ComScore.

“Because they have more data, Google can train their algorithms (the mathematical formulas computers run to come up with the results to search queries, among other things) better than any of their competitors,” says Ani Kortikar, CEO of search marketing firm Netramind.

With Ask.com introducing the AskEraser — a switch that will stop the site from collecting information about a user — it’s worth checking in on the real state of play with the accumulation of data online.

As usual, the reality is very far from the public perception. Ask is far down on the list of sites that anyone who cares about privacy would be concerned about. It is hardly pervasive, so it doesn’t collect much data at all. And Ask doesn’t even run its own advertising system (it uses Google) so it doesn’t have much reason to collect data.

Of course, Ask is simply trying to gain marketing points by differentiating itself from Google, which to some embodies the erosion of privacy in the Internet world.

Google indeed collects a lot of data. It sees the bulk of the searches on the Internet and an increasing amount of other activity. And it obsessively files away most every scrap of data it receives. (Google will say that much of this data doesn’t include the personal identity of the user it is tracking. In fact, it actually has enough pieces of information to identify a lot of users if it really wanted to.)

Google, however, has been very reluctant to use all this data in its advertising business. One reason is that it has other information that solves its main problem: picking the right ads to show on each page. It uses what people are searching for on its search site and the content of other pages on which ads appear (including, of course, the content of messages displayed in Gmail).

But as Google gets bigger it is tiptoeing into using more data for targeting. It tries to determine the location of users in order to show ads of local businesses. It also gets some personal information about users from partner sites on which it displays ads — like MySpace — to help it choose ads.

And Google has now started dipping its little toe into the pool that Madison Avenue calls behavioral targeting. That approach is based on the idea that the best way to pick an ad to show you now is to look at your online activity from a few hours or days ago. The classic example is showing car dealer ads to someone who searched for minivans yesterday.

Google is testing this concept by exploiting a feature of the way Internet browsers work, according to a Google spokesman. When a browser asks a site for a given page (such as the search results for a specific term) it sends it the address of the last page the user saw.

Google is using this information to take into account what you just searched for and your previous search when it displays ads. The Google spokesman said the cookies that Google places on users’ hard drives to identify repeat visitors do not come into play here.

Here’s how you can see this in action. Search for “lawyers” on Google. You will see law firm ads, some perhaps near where you are. Then search for “malpractice.” Now search for “lawyers” again. This time the ads will be for lawyers who specialize in malpractice.

So far this is largely harmless. It’s hard to imagine any violation that comes from Google having access to what you did 30 seconds before. What’s interesting is what comes next. As Google moves to place advertising on sites like MySpace, which have no natural advertisers, there is ever more pressure for it to use other sources of information to raise the prices at which it can sell those ads. Google is too quantitative — and it has too many engineers hanging around — not to be trying to calculate the extra money it would earn by using behavioral data for ad targeting. It also knows that it is a company in a fishbowl and anything it does that smacks of privacy invasion will cause a storm of comment and likely protest.

Most significantly, Google would be foolish to do anything that highlighted the way it could use its data until it receives final approval to buy DoubleClick.

One other thought here: Google is a lightning rod for debate about privacy because it is extending so quickly into so many areas. But there are so many other companies that are far nosier about what you do online and are unafraid to exploit that information. (I wrote about this last year, and activity in targeting has gotten more intense since then.)

From the start, Yahoo has seen itself as a company that uses data about users for the benefit of advertisers. And Yahoo already uses what you search for to pick which ads to show you on other parts of its site.

What’s more, there are advertising networks most people have never heard of (including Tacoda and Advertising.com, both owned by AOL, and BlueLithium, recently bought by Yahoo) that are in the business of collecting data about Internet users for advertising. Even creepier, Internet service providers are starting to monitor everything their users do to funnel ads to them.

All this is not to say that there is anything wrong with what Ask is doing. Some people may well want to search on a site that says it won’t remember anything about what they do. But the issues of what data is collected and how it is used is are far more relevant for Google, Yahoo, and a bunch of firms that are hidden from view.

News outlets all across the media sphere yesterday published stories on YouTube’s decision to grow its pilot ad revenue sharing program to encompass interested parties in the general public.

The company, owned by Google, was known for several months to operate a limited, roughly 100-user program to formulate a system by which registered site members would be given a percentage – presumably quite small – of advertising income generated via AdSense.

According to YouTube, however, the site “will now accept partner applications from users in the US and Canada.”

Yes that means YouTube is opening up. That it’s working to satisfy a user demand. But don’t expect all who apply to gain admission to the green pastures way up there in Big G’s dominion.

What’s likely to be the case as time progresses is the company will do a sort of top-down check-off. Popular podcasts will likely get green lighted. As will generally well-known content providers. You know, YouTube “startups” (the LonelyGirl15 clones and so forth) that found themselves sizable viewerships over the course of their development. Those sorts of operations.

Maybe a good number of those viral phenomena, too. That “Evolution of Dance” synopsis that got tons of hits way back when. Tay Zonday at his “Chocolate Rain” clip. Generally speaking, the ones that surpass the million mark.

And that’s pretty much where YouTube will draw the line. No point getting in over their heads, right? Gotta keep things organized. And specialized. Everyone likes exclusives. If everyone were to be granted shares of the advertisement returns, the program would get real boring real fast. Diluted as hell. Besides, lowering the barrier to entry whilst maintaining a selective process touches the right button for many people. It makes people see the possible. That if you try hard enough – or kiss enough ass – you too can enjoy the spoils of the chosen few. And then you’ve effectively become one of the meritocratic elite! Fantastic.

And by the time all the lowly regular folk manage to sneak inside, you’ll have moved on. Pretty awesome, right?

Who knows. It’s all subjective. I get why YouTube’s playing discretionary gatekeeper, though. It’s because YouTube is YouTube. It’s not your average third-party web space with AdSense plastered all over its page(s). It’s Google’s own video land. It’s where Google does what Google wants and what Google thinks is best for you and I. No more, no less.

So let’s take it for what it is. Let’s not bother with any debate as to what’s fair and unfair about YouTube’s expanded revenue sharing system. It’s the company’s own prerogative to play its cards as it sees fit. Capishe?