Two of Hollywood's most famous over-sharers on the microblogging website Twitter.com - Ashton Kutcher and his wife Demi Moore - are threatening to boycott the service if the company decides to go ahead with plans for a television show. Kutcher not only tweeted his disapproval, but also convinced his wife Demi and director Robert Luketic to join him in his protest.

Luketic subsequently tweeted: "If this is true my shop is closed", and Demi followed up with: "I hope this isn't true — if it is, our Twitter time may come to a quick and sad end!"

Though the Catholic Church is steeped in thousands of years of tradition, it doesn't mean they aren't keeping up with the modern world. The Vatican is now taking new technologically savvy steps to bring its messages to social networking sites and smartphones through new Facebook and iPhone applications available through the new Pope2You web portal.

Launched Thursday, the Facebook app allows web users to send virtual postcards of Pope Benedict XVI to their Facebook friends. The Pope2You portal - located at www.pope2you.net - will even allow you to follow the Pope's travels using an iPhone. The iPhone app also works with iPod Touch, and gives surfers video and audio news on the pope's travels and speeches, as well as Catholic events around tehw orld.

On just its first day of operation, the Pope2You portal acquired 45,000 contacts and 500,000 pageviews, and the new Facebook app was used about 10,000 times.

The introduction of the iPhone and Facebook apps are just the latest efforts in the Vatican's efforts to reach young people and broaden the pope's audience. This past January, the Pope got his own YouTube channel (which is now linked on the Pope2You portal).

Elizabeth Taylor is currently hospitalized for her what publicist has described as a "routine visit". But, the 77-year-old actress hasn't been laying around all day watching soaps on the TV. Instead, she's taken to the internet and has been regularly posting to her Twitter page, which is pretty hip for someone her age.

In response to the kind words that Kathy Ireland tweeted her, Taylor wrote:

"Thanks Darling for the beautiful flowers and all the prayers. Now can you just get my puppy past hospital security."

According to her spokesman, Taylor is expected to be leaving the hospital "soon."

Facebook, Google and Microsoft have all been interested in acquiring Twitter at some point or another. But according to the latest rumors, it's Apple that is actually closest to finalizing a deal. And it could be for as much as $700 million.

Apple and Twitter are reportedly in seriously negotiations, with a goal of unveiling the deal by June 8, which is when Apple holds their annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, Calif.

While Twitter seems like a decent fit for Facebook, Google and Microsoft, who've all dipped their toes into web apps, an Apple acquisition just doesn't make as much sense. They're known for their hardware and their software, but not so much their web development. Maybe Apple has finally realized that it is time to begin competing in this realm as well.

Whoever buys up Twitter, let's hope it's soon. I was hoping for a Google acquisition simply because of the server power they have that would ensure the dreaded "over capacity" messages at Twitter were a thing of the past. I don't see any reason why Apple couldn't get that worked out as well, however.

The latest Nielson Online ratings for the list of the top 30 newspaper websites in March is now out, and the results are quite interesting. Formerly a member of the top 30 club was Seattlepi.com, the online home of the now-defunct Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which has now dropped to No. 32.

One of the first major daily newspapers in the U.S. to shut down print operations in favor of an online-only publication, Seattlepi.com posted a 23% drop in traffic from March 08 to March 08 with just 1.4 million unique visitors monthly. This trend will most certainly worry others in the industry who may also be considering downsizing to an online-only publication in an effort to salvage at least part of their failing papers.

In February, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer was ahead of its competitor, The Seattle Times, in terms of online website traffic. Seattlepi.com had 1.8 million uniques, compared to just 1.5 million at the Seattle Times. The Seattle P-I published its final edition on March 17, and that month the Times was able to surpass them while their traffic nosedived. The Seattle Times grew 70% over the course of the year, picking up 2.2 million uniques in March 09.

According to a new study by Ohio State University, American college students who routinely use the social networking site Facebook.com typically have lower grade-point averages than those who do not.

Research Aryn Karpinski said that the education department's survey, which was completed by 219 undergraduates and graduates, found that those who regularly used Facebook had lower grades. She added:

"Our study shows people who spend more time on Facebook spend less time studying,. Every generation has its distractions, but I think Facebook is a unique phenomenon. It is the equivalent of the difference between getting an A and a B."

The study also found that 79 percent of participants that admitted to Facebook usage felt that their online activities did not impact their studies. No margin of error was given for the study, and because the sample was so small, it would be interested to see if the results could be replicated in a larger study.

The Associated Press would love to conquer the web, but there's one little problem: they're not quite clear on how it works. The AP recently demanded that a radio station in Tennessee take down videos embedded from the AP's very own YouTube channel.

A vice president from the AP's office in Chicago sent WTNQ, which also happens to be a member of the AP, a letter asking them to stop posting the AP's YouTube videos on its website. Frank Strovel, and employee at the radio station, gave an interview in which he describes how he called the executive, a VP of affiliate relations, who he discovered was not even aware that the AP had a YouTube channel.

By posting a video to YouTube, the copyright holder must grant a license that allows anyone to embed the video on their own website, unless they choose to disable the embed function. The AP has not disabled the embedding function.

Paul Colford of the Associated Press sent out this email explaining the situation:

Fox News entertainment columnist Roger Friedman was fired for advocating the watching of illegally pirated television and movies for free online. After finding the as-of-yet unreleased Wolverine film online, Friedman posted a positive review of it and wrote Friday about the great variety of free streaming media that is available online. That article has since been deleted.

Friedman was apparently surprised at how easy it is to find pirated movies online, and how widely available they are online, and raved about it in his "Fox 411" column. Big mistake. Rupert Murdoch and News Corp., like all major Hollywood Studios, take piracy very, very seriously, as evidenced by his immediate dismissal. Fox News is owned by News Corp., which also happens to own 20th Century Fox and Fox Television, so you can see why they would be concerned when one of their own starts encouraging the downloading of illegal materials online. The FBI is now investigating how 20th Century Fox's big summer blockbuster, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, managed to find it's way online.

In addition to his review of the Wolverine film, Friedman also posted:

The search giant Google is reportedly in talks to buy Twitter, the free micro-blogging web site that has exploding in popularity this year. Just what Twitter might go for isn't exactly clear, but it is likely to be above the $250 million mark, according to TechCrunch.

TechCrunch says that Twitter is just something that Google doesn't have - a real-time database and search engine - and that is why it is so appealing to them. It would really add something to their empire. According to unnamed sources close to the investigation, Google would pay for the Twitter purchase in cash or stock, or a combination of the two.

Mark Cuban is among the growing legions of celebrities and major players in the business world using the micro-blogging site Twitter.com on a regular basis. Last week, Cuban made a comment on Twitter about Denver's J.R. Smith and questioned NBA officials. In turn, the NBA fined him $25,000. On Sunday, Cuban took to Twitter again to comment on the fine.

In the Twitter posts which earned him the $25k fine, Cuban questioned why the officials had not given Smith a technical foul for coming off the bench during a match between the Denver Nuggets and Cuban's Dallas Mavericks:

how do they not call a tech on JR Smith for coming off the bench to taunt our player on the ground ?

And then he posted a second post on Twitter about that same game:

scary part of that play: Same crew chief from game in Denver where they missed call - last play of the game & 1st JRSmith/Wright issue.

The original incident to which Cuban was referring was during a January game where Smith elbowed Antoine Wright in the head, and the refs failed to make a call. The incident that occurred last week was again between Smith and Wright.