American Online

'Why did so few people follow the Republican convention on the Internet?" the moderator asked earnestly as I sat on a panel about government and the Net at the recent Democratic National Convention. "What does that say about the value of the Internet?" "What does it say about the value of the Republican convention?" I countered to enthusiastic applause. But the Democratic convention fared little better.

The Motley Fool was founded by brothers Tom and David Gardner in 1994 as a place where investors could meet on American Online. That's still its major role, but now its Web site offers an expanded variety of educational materials and advice, often with a sense of humor. The Gardners (with their Fool staff) run the AOL and Web sites and create this feature.

Seagram Co.'s Universal Music Group is expected to join American Online Inc. today to announce formation of an Internet venture, "Jimmy and Doug's Farm Club," a Web site where unsigned artists can post songs and vie for the attention of top executives at the world's biggest record company. Farmclub.com, the brainchild of Universal Music Group head Doug Morris and Interscope Records co-chief Jimmy Iovine, is expected to be up and running by February.

A tip from an online service company has led to charges of possession and distribution of child pornography against a volunteer Los Angeles Boy Scout district commissioner. Gerald Frederick Curland, 63, of Valley Village is scheduled to be arraigned today in Los Angeles County Superior Court on the separate felony charges, according to the district attorney's office. Curland was arrested Tuesday by sheriff's Special Victims Unit investigators. Bail was set at $40,000, said prosecutor Marc Beaart of the district attorney's High Tech Crimes Division.

Last fall, like so many Americans before him, Josh Reich ended up in a frustrating game of phone tag with JPMorgan Chase over a bill, this one about escalating fees and other bank errors involving his home equity loan. Unlike most Americans, Reich decided to respond not by complaining but rather by contacting a friend from business school and convincing him that they could start their own bank, one that would challenge the old way of doing business. "The idea of starting it came from the realization that banks in America make money by keeping their customers confused," Reich said at the offices of BankSimple, as the product of that inspiration is known.

They called themselves Revolution 2.0. They were film directors, protest organizers and computer whiz kids dressed in J. Crew and Ralph Lauren, men in their 20s and 30s who had come to embody Egypt's restive, tech-savvy youth. They sat in a Cairo living room waiting for the latest news about the upheaval they had helped foment. They had been blindsided by President Hosni Mubarak's speech the night before. Even as victory had felt so close, the longtime dictator had announced he wasn't going anywhere.

A volunteer Boy Scout commissioner was sentenced Tuesday to 30 days in jail and three years' probation after a Los Angeles County Superior Court jury found him guilty of possessing and distributing child pornography. Prosecutors originally asked that Gerald Frederick Curland, 63, of Valley Village serve one year in jail, but the judge reduced the sentence to one month because of Curland's poor health. He surrendered to the Twin Towers jail in December and completed his 30 days before appearing in court this week.

I got dealt some pretty bad hands in the last few days by forces far out of my control. I awoke April 15 to find that the feds had indicted 11 executives on multiple felony charges, including bank fraud and money laundering, at the three top sites in America's online poker market and seized their Web domains. If you logged on to Absolute Poker, Full Tilt Poker or PokerStars, you got to look at the shiny logo of the FBI. I like to play the 50-cent minimum, no-limit game on Full Tilt, and that's what I saw that Friday instead of direct access to the $216.