Nick Hanauer, a major player at Amazon, recently gave a presentation at a TED conference on wealth inequality. The general theme was that the rich, like himself, are not job-creators, but rather that jobs come from the prosperity of middle-class consumers. Taxing the rich, Hanauer said, is an excellent way to make that happen.

Much of what Hanauer said in his six-minute speech was not new information, though it was uncommon to hear it from someone that wealthy. But because of what was alleged to be a strong political bent in the speech, TED declined to post it online.

A minor online furor erupted over what was perceived by many as censorship, and the scrambling began.

"Many of the talks given at the conference or at TED-U are not released,” TED curator Chris Anderson wrote, in an email to the National Journal. “We only release one a day on TED.com and there's a backlog of amazing talks from all over the world. We do not comment publicly on reasons to release or not release [a] talk. It's unfair on the speakers concerned. But we have a general policy to avoid talks that are overtly partisan, and to avoid talks that have received mediocre audience ratings."

After a day of being berated online, the video was released to a non-official account. It is posted below.

Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker has consistently made headlines as a dedicated public servant in the political realm. But this morning, he made them for a very different reason: charging into a burning building to rescue his neighbor from a house fire.

After Booker tweeted about the experience, and the ensuing flurry of news coverage, a new hashtag arose on Twitter: #CoryBookerStories, and also the inaccurately spelled #CoreyBookerStories, both of which chronicle his exploits in a manner similar to the infamous series of Chuck Norris jokes.

BW collected some of the best below:

Now if only we could get #DaveBieterStories going. ... Anybody? Anybody?

The crowdsourcing website Kickstarter is the current go-to for artists and musicians looking to raise money for their next big project. In February, we wrote that Kickstarter was on track to distribute more money than the annual budget of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Boise's Lynn Allison launched her first play, Boise Weekly's Josh Gross released a new book, and local musician Bill Coffey recorded a new album, all using Kickstarter and money from local fans.

If new upstart LoudSauce has its way, Boise could see crowdsourced advertising and media buys, too. The New York Times reported that one campaign purchased a Times Square billboard ad to promote Greek tourism, raising more than $20,000 for the project.

"The ads are made possible by donations, totaling $20,352, from 333 people, including Greeks, people of Greek ancestry who live in other countries, and friends of Greece," wrote Stuart Elliot.

Other projects include national TV spots for an Occupy Wall Street ad and an online advert for a kid's show with an environmental message, Pacha's Pajamas. According to LoudSauce's website:

"By bringing unexpected ideas and creative solutions to mainstream channels, we will ultimately build momentum for some of the best work happening in the world."

Come Christmas, the masses won't be clamoring for the latest Apple iPod/Pad/Phone—they'll be lusting after Terminator-esque glasses courtesy of Google's Project Glass.

As reported by The New York Times, the California search giant has already begun testing production models of futuristic-looking glasses that lay information from the Internet over the user's field of vision.

The article calls the new project the company's "first venture into wearable computing," a sure-to-be-buzzword for the utopian future promised by Aldous Huxley.

You'll remember, though, that in Brave New World, all that glittered was not gold. This is also made evident in the Project Glass promo video released by Google, which shows the test subject haphazardly engaging in every pleasurable experience he encounters.

Catch a glimpse of the future below:

If you haven't seen GGN, Snoop Dogg's news vlog yet, it features bizarre rants from Snoop and friends about the news of the day. And the unbelievably strange news headlines running on the ticker at the bottom of the screen are possibly the greatest thing on the Internet.

"Rick Ross remixes Rihanna's 'Birthday Cake,' not sure if 'remix' is a new slang term for 'ate all of,' the ticker announces.

In a new episode, Snoop Dogg's news persona "Nemo Hoes," takes on race relations and the Trayvon Martin case with Mario Van Peebles, which involves both a discussion of why Van Peebles won't let his kids have an Airsoft Gun, and how Jesus wore a hood and was probably Korean. Now that's in-depth coverage.

While BW is glad to swing by the Idaho Press Club Awards to collect kudos for best use of the net and social media, apparently, there are larger accolades out there for Twitter: the Shorty Awards.

The award show is now in its fourth year and offers Oscar-like prizes for Best Actor and Best Actress, right alongside Best Fake Account. @TheFakeESPN took that one home this year.

A complete list of the "winners" can be seen here.

But if that sounds like too much work for someone with an attention span fine-tuned by Twitter, then just enjoy this promo video of Tracy Morgan explaining Twitter, a challenge for a man that "needs more than 140 characters to esspress hisself."

The AP is reporting that a bill before the Senate to repeal the Securities and Exchange Commission guidelines that prohibited investments of less than $100 has passed.

This bill would legalize the practice of crowfunding for investors, an increasingly popular way of raising money through the power of social networking online.

Though the bill has strong by bipartisan support, including support from President Barack Obama, there were a few critics.

From the AP:

According to Security News Daily, when a group of Anonymous hackers decided to launch an attack on high-profile targets after the Jan. 20 raid on Megaupload, they unknowingly exposed their personal banking data to online thieves.

As Anonymous hackers downloaded a denial-of-service attack tool, they also downloaded a Zeus Trojan device, which was designed to take their personal banking info.

Read all the details at securitynews.com.

The New York Times recently reported on the case of a South Korean man who re-tweeted messages from the official North Korean Twitter account. Park Jung-geun, a 23-year-old photographer, now faces charges for violating a draconic South Korean National Security Law, which prohibits "acts that benefit the enemy" without outlining such acts explicitly.

While some governments go to extreme measures to crack down on crime committed online, other countries like Finland make fast Internet a legal right.

Local attorney and social media guru Lisa McGrath has focused her practice on Internet law. She chatted with Boise Weekly in 2011 about the shifting battlefield of legislating the Internet.

"If you went to my Twitter stream and they had admitted something against me—maybe I checked in on FourSquare—it's all admissible," McGrath said. "Facebook is the number-one place that attorneys are going to for evidence."

McGrath will be included in a forthcoming Boise Weekly feature story on the perils of over-sharing and social media.

Click here for an example of North Korea's fascination with Twitter, somewhat accurately translated by Google: twitter.com/uriminzok

After years of being a tightly controlled private company, Facebook is expected to file its Initial Public Offering this week and open itself up to investors on the stock market.

As part of that filing, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote a letter to potential investors about the company's mission. And though parts of it are a little wishy-washy—as mission statements tend to be—it reveals much about the way the company does business.

Section headings include: "We hope to strengthen how people relate to each other," "We hope to change how people relate to their governments and social institutions," and "The hacker way."

Here are some excerpts:

Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission—to make the world more open and connected.

By helping people form these connections, we hope to rewire the way people spread and consume information. We think the world’s information infrastructure should resemble the social graph—a network built from the bottom up or peer-to-peer, rather than the monolithic, top-down structure that has existed to date. We also believe that giving people control over what they share is a fundamental principle of this rewiring.

The word “hacker” has an unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers. In reality, hacking just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done. Like most things, it can be used for good or bad, but the vast majority of hackers I’ve met tend to be idealistic people who want to have a positive impact on the world.

The filing also includes data on the company. Here's a fun fact: Though Zuckerberg's net worth—estimated at $17.5 billion—dwarfs Mitt Romney's $200 million fortune, Zuck's base salary is a paltry $500,000 a year, compared to Romney's approximate 2010 income of $20 million.

The complete letter, along with the data required to be filed about the company, can be read here.