“Is that trouble or not?” That’s the question posed by Florida optometrist Jack Moss, who captured this previously unseen footage of the 1986 Challenger explosion. Watching this video so many years later has been gripping, despite the fact that the Challenger launch was broadcast live, an images of the explosion have reached near-iconic status — [...]

In the year since Imgur was founded by undergrad Alan Schaaf, the minimalist image hosting site has sprouted into a hotbed of online culture, with a dominant presence on social bookmarking sites like Reddit and Digg and almost 20 million pageviews this past month. This weekend, Schaaf announced that Imgur had added individual user accounts and paid pro accounts.
Recently, Mediaite swapped emails with Schaaf about the rise of Imgur, the impact that personal accounts will have on the site and its vibe, and — yes — his plans when he graduates from college in June:

A big day for Brooklyn’s own Boxee: in addition to revealing more details about the previously announced Boxee Box, the company’s existing software transitioned into a public beta. Therefore, we should probably answer this question: the f*ck is Boxee?

Yahoo! Buzz, the search engine’s Digg-like social bookmarking site, seems to be confused about the difference between Nigeria, the country, and the racial epithet of sort of similar spelling. In a link to an AP story, the blurb used to tease the article begins: “A n****ian man’s claim that his attempt to blow up a U.S. plane originated with al-Qaida’s network inside Yemen…” N****ian, really?

The year 2009 had many media bright spots, break-out stars, dominating networks and game-changing technologies. The Mediaite 50 collects the finest, most exemplary innovators and influencers of the year, defining a media moment in time and setting the agenda as we move forward. See the full list after the jump:

The Financial Times recently wrote about News Corp and MySpace, and describe a strange tactical decision regarding a social media program, saying “that News Corp. dragged its feet over implementing Ajax, a program that allows users to send a message, an e-mail or to post a comment on their friends’ pages without having to open a new browser window.” Yeah, no it isn’t.

Today’s Gawker Media redesign unveils a new feature that attempts to optimize the loyalty of the network’s already robust fan base. Gawker Open Forums now exists on all of the group’s nine blogs, integrating social networking, crowdsourcing and standard discussion forums, leaving each blog as not only a conversation starter, but a channel where news can be broken, shared and commented on by readers, all in one place.