Media sweetie Colbert also one of the year's top blogs
In many ways, 2006 was the year of Stephen Colbert. His Comedy Central show "The Colbert Report" inspired "truthiness" to be named word of the year by Merriam-Webster, he was named media person of the year by various publications, and tape of his infamous White House Correspondents dinner speech sent YouTube soaring. Now another honor: That performance was the No. 2 blog post of 2006, according to data released last month by Nielsen BuzzMetrics. It appeared on Crooks and Liars. The top blog posts were determined by the number of inbound links through Nov. 30. The No. 1 blog was mother.livejournal.com's petition against changes in the livejournal interface. Politics and blogs about the blogosphere were the overwhelming winners in the blogosphere; No. 3 was Sifrys Keith Olbermann Delivers One Hell Of a Commentary on Rumsfeld while three separate blogs on the state of the blogosphere made the top 10. Other noteworthy blogs: At No. 6, Michelle Malkin's "Support Denmark: Why The Forbidden Cartoons Matter" and at No. 7, Saturday Night Live's "If Al Gore Were President" on Crooks and Liars.

The top console of the holiday season was ... Xbox?
The top-selling video game console of the 2006 holiday season wasnt PlayStation 3 or Nintendos Wii. Actually, it was Xbox 360. Thats according to market research firm NPD, which found that in the period beginning in November and ending on Christmas Eve, 2 million Xbox 360's were sold in the United States. Nintendo finished in second place, selling 1.8 million Wii units. Sony's much hyped but sparsely produced PlayStation 3 sold 750,000 consoles. Xbox's victory may be attributed to several reasons; the unit has been available for a year now, so it has gained a bit of a following and time for Xbox to work out any problems within the manufacturing of the system, while Wii and Playstation both suffered supply issues throughout the season. Microsoft also extended the warranty on the gaming system from 90 days to a year just before the holiday shopping season.

Study: 93 percent of email sent in 2006 was spam
As you've probably noticed on your own computer, spam just won't go away. A study released at the end of the year by Postini, the San Carlos, Calif., internet security company, finds that spam now accounts for almost 93 percent of all email, the highest ratio ever seen by the company. Postini said its systems blocked a record 22 billion spam messages in November intended for the 36,000 businesses that it services. The firm said it filters about 12 spam emails for every valid message. During the last year, the amount of spam blocked by Postini soared 147 percent and jumped 73 percent in just the last three months. With the increased use of pictures and documents in spam, the total size of those running through Postini's systems exploded by 334 percent in the last year. In November, Postini's systems encountered more than 1 million internet addresses used in sending spam and viruses each day.

For anniversary, CBS shedding 'Light' on volunteers
"Guiding Light," the country's longest-running TV show at 55 years, is trying to guide its viewers to volunteerism. The show started a new web site today, FindYourLight.net, to honor the show's 70th anniversary (it began on the radio) and kick off a partnership with Hands On Network starting Jan. 22. It doesn't explain what Hands On Network is but says that the cast and crew members will be fixing up homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina. The web site tells readers to watch the show Feb. 14 to view the results. It also has a section for viewers to upload video and text about things in life that inspire them. And it allows viewers to see similar video and text created by the show's cast members and other viewers. A section of the web site urging viewers to sign up and volunteer along with cast members hasn't been completed yet.