By now, even your toddler knows where and how to locate just about anything on the Web. But unless your friends are all dialed in to the same social network, a white-pages-style directory for finding actual people is often harder to come by. These five services aim to change that.

Over the long weekend, the servers of the Internet TV site Revision3.com were brought down by what is called a "denial-of-service" attack (DoS)—one of the most common methods used to disrupt the operations of a Web site or server by flooding it with an overload of simultaneous connections. These attacks are not uncommon, but in a fascinating blog post written by Revision3's CEO Jim Louderback today, he reveals that the source of this particular attack was not a pimply basement hacker with a grudge, but a major anti-piracy organization called MediaDefender whose clients include all the major entertainment companies and the RIAA. The hitch? Revision3 is a perfectly legitimate business that does not deal in pirated content.

This probably seemed really funny until they heard about the court order.

A few anonymous Facebook users—most likely students—created a fake profile for the dean of Roncalli High School, a Catholic prep school in Indianapolis, then sent out messages and images from the account to other students. The profile has since been pulled down, but the dean sued Facebook to find out who created it.

Broadband over Power Lines, or BPL, is a technology developed to send data over lines also used for electric power transmission. Simply put, it's high-speed Internet through your electrical outlets. Right off the bat, the appeal of a system like this is attractive for a lot of reasons. It could provide broadband service to rural areas without the physical infrastructure for DSL or cable and would require only minimal hardware installations by the power utilities.

Bertelsmann AG announced plans to release a single-volume, printed and bound version of the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, in September. And it's already out of date.

The Soviet Union has been history for going on 17 years now, but there is one place where the former superpower continues to live on, even with the semi-endorsement of a major international standards agency. That place is of course the Internet, where for 500 rubles (around $25) per year, it is still possible to own a little chunk of Soviet real estate by parking your website at an official ".su" domain name.

Ah springtime: trees blooming, bats cracking, nerds ROTFLTAO. Last week, the Mets announced that their (filched) year-old tradition of an eighth inning, stadium-wide sing along of "Sweet Caroline" would be updated. They gave fans 10 pretty lame choices and, in true 21st century fashion, let them utilize the power of the Interweb to voice their preference. Of course, the following happened:

Newspapers are still struggling to find their place in a world increasingly overwhelmed by digital media. Readership is down, ad revenues are down, even revenues on the Web editions of many papers are down. Some papers—the Guardian and Telegraph in London, for example—have even experimented with a printable PDF version of their sites in an attempt to reach those who browse online but ultimately want a paper copy in their hands. At this intersection of print and Web comes another concept, one which is proving both popular with its readership and economically successful: the Flying Pickle.