Kanye West Apologizes On Jay Leno

Kanye West Apologizes On Jay Leno

Jay Leno premiered his new television show, "The Jay Leno Show," on NBC on Monday night, and Kanye West appeared, apologizing for the third time for upstaging Taylor Swift last night at the VMAs. "It's been extremely difficult, I'm just dealing with the fact that I hurt someone," West told Leno. "I only wanted to help people, my entire life, I always wanted to give and do something… I immediately knew in this situation that it was wrong… It was actually someone's emotions that I stepped on. I'd like to be able to apologize to her in person," he went on to say.

When Jay asked what Kanye's mother Donda, who passed away in November of 2007, would have thought of his behavior, Kanye paused for a very long time, and then answered, "Yeah, obviously I deal with hurt and so many celebrities you know, they never take the time off, I've never really taken time off. … I'm just ashamed that my hurt caused someone else's hurt."

He added that what he did was wrong and he wasn't going to try to justify it, and also said, "I need to, after this, take some time off and analyze how I'm going to make it through the rest of this life, how I'm going to improve. If there's anything I can do to help Taylor in the future, to help anyone, I'd like to." After speaking with Jay, Kanye took the stage with Jay-Z and Rihanna for a performance of "Run This Town." Others appearing on Jay's first episode included Jerry Seinfeld and Oprah, who chimed in via satellite.

Jay Leno Ratings

Jay Leno Ratings

Jay Leno's new prime-time comedy hour debuted Monday night, garnering underwhelming reviews across the blogosphere and conservative estimates of audience size. Indeed, the show closely resembled Leno's old "Tonight Show," with few of the promised new elements in sight. Now, the $10 million question: Once the novelty has worn off, how many viewers will watch night after night? In a decidedly unscientific survey of audience response, the Monitor tuned into three demographic groups in the Los Angeles area for some insight on what the future may hold for "The Jay Leno Show."

"I would tune in again," says Katherine Carter, a 20-something who gathered with three friends in Marina Del Rey to take in the debut. "I thought it was really funny, but some of the skits went on too long." She adds, "It was a bit slow." Her buddy, Eva Fedderley, has stronger reactions, saying she found the new Leno show "boring, with very little to actually sink my teeth into." She elaborates: "It was bland, and everyone seemed nervous and awkward." Sacha Bollas chimes in with a bit more support for the comedian. "I like Jay," he says. "I'm glad to see him back, although," he adds with a laugh, "he still kills punch lines." The clinical psychologist adds that although he did enjoy the show, he wouldn't tune in intentionally. "I might stay with it if I found it channel-surfing," he says.

Over in Whittier, a younger group gathered in the living room of the Harris dorm on the campus of Whittier College. One student expressed surprise that Leno was still around, but a few said they were looking forward to seeing the show. "I appreciated seeing Kanye West," says Nick Santoro, a sophomore from Boston. He questions, though, whether there is a need for yet another talk show. "Jay's had his time," he says. "Now everyone has to have a show, even [actress] Tori Spelling. Jay won't last," he predicts. "Maybe he'll outlast Tori, but not by much."

Fast Flip Google

Fast Flip Google

Google Labs has been very active lately. The most recent service launched in Google Labs is Fast Flip, a visual version of Google News that encourages serendipitous discoveries. "Fast Flip is a new reading experience that combines the best elements of print and online articles. Like a print magazine, Fast Flip lets you browse sequentially through bundles of recent news, headlines and popular topics, as well as feeds from individual top publishers. As the name suggests, flipping through content is very fast, so you can quickly look through a lot of pages until you find something interesting," explains Krishna Bharat, the man behind Google News.

The homepage shows thumbnails of the news articles and clicking on the thumbnail loads a screenshot of the article. You can't read the entire article in Google Fast Flip, so you need to visit the original source. The service shows articles from a small number of sources, including BBC News, New York Times, Newsweek and Slate.

The nice thing is that you can quickly go to the next preview by clicking on the blue right arrow or by using the right-arrow key. The service provides recommendation based on the articles you read, you email or explicitly like.