'Republicrats,' MSN's new satirical presidential series Imagine if Barack Obama or John McCain let their Facebook friends decide the direction of their campaign going forward. That’s essentially the premise of a new comedy series on Microsoft’s MSN, “Republicrats,” which premiered yesterday. The short-form fictional show, which has 25 episodes, will unroll during the last few months of the real presidential race. It’s about a presidential candidate who places a good part of his campaign in the control of web users, and it’s being produced by Generate, the production firm run by former WB CEO Jordan Levin. Sean Masterson plays a voter who is fed up with both ruling political parties and instead creates his own Republicrat party to let America decide who the best candidate is. The interactive series’ creators say it will reflect what’s happening in the 2008 presidential campaigns and satirize both candidates.   Hitwise: Yahoo's Olympics site tops NBC's in share Yahoo’s Olympics web site has taken the gold when it comes to the number of daily U.S. online visits during the Games, but it’s NBCOlympics.com that’s got the staying power. According to online monitor Hitwise, sports.yahoo.com/Olympics has seen 0.37 percent of U.S. daily market share since the games began Aug. 8 compared with NBCOlympics.com’s 0.19 percent. But those visiting the NBC web site are spending on average 16 minutes and 36 seconds daily compared with 7:37 on Yahoo’s site. En.beijing2008.com saw an average visit of 6:28, and visitors spent 6:17 on sportsillustrated.cnn.com. Rounding out the top five was ESPN.go.com/oly with an average visit of 5:46. Following Yahoo and NBC as the top Olympic sites in market share were ESPN.go.com/oly, en.beijing2008.com and sportsillustrated.cnn.com.   Feeling hot, hot, hot! IPods catching fire in Japan. Apple's iPod Nanos are hot. Literally, at least in Japan, where government officials say at least three users have received minor burns after their iPod Nanos overheated and caught fire. Apple and Japan's trade ministry believe the fires were caused by defective batteries. Apple said yesterday in a written statement that the bad batteries that caused the tiny digital music players to melt down came from a single supplier. In two cases, paper and a woven straw mat were scorched while the players were being recharged, but Apple says there haven’t been any reports of serious injuries or property damage caused by the defect in the lithium-ion battery. It’s not the first time Apple has had defective battery problems for iPod Nanos, which are very popular in Japan. A few of the first-generation Nanos, which were sold between September 2005 and December 2006, had the same problem.   Portrait of a young job seeker: Educated and black If you live in San Francisco or Norfolk, Va., you’re more likely to have looked for a job online than those living in any other U.S. city. Sixteen percent of residents in those cities are more likely to search for a job using the internet compared to a national average of 12 percent, a new report by research firm Scarborough Research finds. Job seekers who have conducted an online search in the past month are also 62 percent more likely to be younger, ages 18-34, and 47 percent more likely to be African-American. They are also 23 percent more likely to have some college education. Even those with a job are looking for jobs online. In fact, those who are already employed full-time or part-time are more likely to head to the internet for a job search than their unemployed counterparts. The majority, or 68 percent, of employed online job searchers are white collar, while 32 percent or nearly 7 million, are blue collar.