Web network Glam Media is a fan of microblogging, it seems. Following the set up and monetization of a moderated Oscars Twitter feed this year, the company has announced that it’s to roll out the Tinker.com conversation aggregator in the UK over the next few months.

Tinker.com was launched in the US last month and will trial in the UK before being fully implemented and funded by advertising.

Conversations being held across Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed are currently aggregated by the service. read more

CBS Interactive has recruited blogger Richard Lawson from Gawker, according to Silicon Alley Insider who also has a quote from Lawson:

I’ll basically be doing what I do now, just probably fewer posts a day plus some actual reviews and stuff. I’m excited/nervous/gassy. All that.

Richard Lawson is one of the key entertainment writers on Gawker, and apparently averaged 2.4 million pageviews per month which is top of the bill according to the SAI story. In other words, a blow to the Gawker Media network, not only by the loss of a writer but also in pure money since it is unlikely that his replacement will reach the same levels quickly.

Lawson will write for CBS Interactive’s TV.com.

The hub of all things WordPress, as in the kind you install on your own, is wordpress.org. There’s both a plugin and a theme directory there, and the latter has now gotten some commercial (aka premium) themes treatment. However, the new page merely lists some resellers of commercial GPL themes, so this is not the marketplace a lot of people has been waiting for.

Some of them you may pay for access, some of them are membership sites, some may give you the theme for zero-cost and just charge for support. What they all have in common is people behind them who support open source, WordPress, and its GPL license.

If you’re selling GPL themes for WordPress you can get listed, just scroll down to the bottom of the page. Personally, I think the themes should be hosted on wordpress.org so that they got automatic updates and so on, but that’s a whole other story. I do hope this is just the first step of many in this area, but we’ll see. An official blog post has yet to outline this addition, which might or might not have been up for some time, I really can’t tell.

The gadget startup gdgt, with Peter Rojas and Ryan Block at the helm, has launched. It is something of a gadget-focused community, mixing in traditional editorial content and reviews, with user generated content and a wiki-like gadget database. That wiki is the killer app, is my bet, although gdgt could do just as well with just its content. After all, they clocked in 4.7 million pageviews with their liveblog from WWDC, pre launch. The power of Rojas and Block is not to underestimated.

And gdgt might very well be an interesting site, surely one to follow. It is not like the predecessors, Engadget or Gizmodo, but more of a social beast, which is interesting. read more

Twitter has applied to trademark the word “Tweet” says the official blog. They think it is an obvious attachment to the Twitter brand, but say they have no intentions of going after users of the word.

We have applied to trademark Tweet because it is clearly attached to Twitter from a brand perspective but we have no intention of “going after” the wonderful applications and services that use the word in their name when associated with Twitter. In fact, we encourage the use of the word Tweet. However, if we come across a confusing or damaging project, the recourse to act responsibly to protect both users and our brand is important.

That’s good, I think. It is also good that they come clean and say that they are “a bit more wary” about the use of Twitter in projects. So cancel that Twitter Herald project and find another name, you might get in trouble otherwise. read more

Pingdom is a widely used service that monitors uptime and notifies you whenever a site goes down, as well as gives you the data you need to whine at your webhost’s 99.99% uptime guarantees whenever they fail to meet their promise. Up until now, it has been a paid service, but now you can get an account for free.

Pingdom Free has all the features of our paid account types. The only limitation is that you can only monitor one website or server, but that should be enough for a lot of bloggers and hobbyist webmasters out there.

You also get 20 SMS alerts for free as well, which is nice. Naturally, you can upgrade your account to monitor more sites and get more SMS alerts (email is free) and so on whenever you like. Which of course is the whole idea.

Give it a go, free is the best price ever and I can, as a user, honestly say that Pingdom is great. Particularly when you don’t hear from them…!

Twitter has added a couple of neat features to your Following List interface. Now you can see the most recent tweets, a straight list as before, and more with a contextual menu to the side. read more

Flickr has finally added support for Twitter, which means that you can send uploaded photos to Twitter using the Blog This link in the top right of the photo page on Flickr, or you can email photos directly to your Twitter stream. The URL gets shortened with the flic.kr URL shortening service, so you’ll see exactly what you’ll click on, and it certainly seems to work well enough. read more

Sam Sethi, the former TechCrunch writer, BlogNation owner, and Twitblogs founder, has filed a lawsuit against TechCrunch. For what, you might wonder? Nothing less than “a series of libelous postings” according to the lawsuit letter exchange reposted on Arrington’s CrunchNotes blog. There are some juicy details about Sethi there too, including claims that he’s being sued and is or was barred from being a director or manager for a company. I’ll not recount that though, since Arrington obviously is a party in this mess.

I’ll say this though, I love the openness of which Arrington treats these things. I know I’d think twice before publishing something from a law firm with this in the heading:

Letter Before Action
Private & Confidential (Not For Publication)

Despite getting rave reviews from bloggers like Scoble and TechCrunch, there are still very few iPhone apps available for Friendfeed. While six iPhone apps have appeared for Friendfeed, only half of them seem to have any active development upon them (at least where the quality is worth the price).

While Buddyfeed seems to have dominated the Friendfeed market (especially with the roll out of Buddyfeed 2.0), it looks as if they may have a new challenger on their hands by the name of Amigo.

Developed by David J. Hinson (of Summer Systems Management), Amigo reminds me of an app in eternal Fiesta, mainly because of its vibrant colors that do not leave one feeling totally relaxed. Priced at $2.99, Amigo costs about the same as Buddyfeed, although the app does have a few features lacking when compared against is main rival. read more