Global Crossing's regulatory filings have revealed a previously undisclosed deal between GX and a unit of the Blackstone Group. Blackstone, for those of you keeping score, is GX's bankruptcy advisor -- the people who shopped GX to Singapore Technologies Telemedia and Hutchison Whampoa. Blackstone stands to earn millions in fees for a successful outcome.

the deal in question involves Centennial Communications, a New Jersey wireless communications company. Centennial agreed to purchase $150 million in capacity from GX while GX, in turn, agreed to buy $30 million in services from Centennial. not only did Blackstone own 30% of Centennial, but Centennial board member Jack Scanlon also sat on the board of Global Crossing. Scanlon was a former CEO of Global Crossing, and is the current chief executive of Asia Global Crossing (an independent-ish company whose largest shareholders are Global Crossing, Softbank, and Microsoft).

to make matters even more confusing, Scanlon resigned his Centennial board seat due to the appearance of a conflict of interest with another position he held: a board seat with PrimeCo Wireless Communications. if PrimeCo rings a bell, it's because the company was at the center of another Friends-of-Gary-Winnick deal-fest.

the FBI and the SEC are investigating Global Crossing's accounting practices.

oh, yeah -- GX used to be audited by Andersen, but you knew that already. (via NY Times)

the volume of my bitching and moaning about cross-platform, cross-browser web development has increased because i've been working on a redesign of blogaritaville. right now, the site's not reliably compatible with a large number of browsers, so i'm trying to strike a balance between usability, simplicity, and compatibility (all the while keeping maintenance to a minimum).

i have to do this in my spare time, as i do actually have other things to do.

Radio UserLand users awoke to a nifty new feature today: newsfeeds from the New York Times. now Radio users can use the familiar XML Coffee Mug to add the Times to their News Aggregator page.

for those of you who haven't tried Radio, it's worth a look. after you've got your feet wet with something like Blogger, Radio offers a number of interesting possibilities to take your weblogging to the next level. let me put it this way: everything i accomplish with Movable Type, Apache, AmphetaDesk, and Interarchy (i know, that last one's not free -- i had it lying around -- you can use rsync instead, if you like) can be found in a coherent package in Radio.