After a spasm of irrational exuberance pushed shares of Netflix to new highs over the past few weeks investors abruptly reversed course late Monday, hammering the shares in after-hours trading after the company's Q1 earnings report included lower-than-hoped for guidance for the rest of the year. After officially closing up almost 2% on the day, the shares plunged more than 14% in the after-hours market, losing $5.52 a piece. The company shaved 1 cent off the upper end of its projected full-year EPS to $1.29, quickly deflating a bubble of expectation that had lifted the shares by nearly 50% over the past year.

Pity the poor regulator who, someday soon, will be faced with evaluating some proposed combination of all or parts of Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL and/or News Corp. (is there anyone else left?). What yardstick would you even apply? Someday, they're all going to be in the same combination of the content creation/distribution business, online advertising, applications development and platforms and social networking anyway. It's really only a question of how they get there and when, not whether or even should they. Trying to come to grips with that through the keyhole of any one deal or company is probably not a formula for a coherent regulatory framework for the future of the digital media industry.

Last week, scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory were able to listen to a play back of what is believed to be the earliest mechanical sound recording. Made in 1860 by the French typesetter Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, the "phonautogram" features the voice of a woman, believed to be Scott's daughter, singing a line from the French folk song, "Au Clair de la Lune." It was made with a device invented by Scott that used a stylus to etch patterns onto paper coated with smoke from an oil lamp.

From Future of Television Forum West - What will be the evolutionary path of the digital living room? Will devices drive functionality, or will it happen the other way around, where functionality dictates the design of devices? Speakers at the Future of Television conference disagreed.

Or is the Google CEO crazy like a fox? He certainly has been talking some crazy smack lately about Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Yahoo, as in this recent exchange in Portfolio in which me suggests that a Microsoft/Yahoo combo might "break the Internet":

I'll say this for the folks at New Medium Enterprises: They're nothing if not persistent. The British company has continued to put out press releases and pester reporters for years with tales of imminent developments and breakthroughs for its red-laser based HD VMD disc format despite few of its promises actually being borne out. And yet the company refuses to give up, recently going so far as to hire Michael Solomon, a well-regarded TV industry veteran, as its new chairman to try, once again, to attract interest in the format from U.S. program suppliers.