Blog network Gawker Media apparently had a great February, up as much as a fifth from last year, according to a leaked email from Nick Denton to the staff. Denton naturally doesn’t want to get overly optimistic, especially since he’s made so many changes the last few months to his network.

February 2009 wasn’t nearly as dreadful as it could have been. A lot of sites struck traffic records — including io9, Gawker, Deadspin, Jalopnik and Jezebel. In total, we drew 297m pageviews — some 34% over last February’s level and 50% up if you account for the sites we spun off in the meantime. Comments — so much improved in the last year — grew even more rapidly. Now that Defamer has been consolidated under Gawker, we don’t have a single weak site.

It seems like niche is king in these days of economic turmoil.

Important Note: This review is based upon Doppler 1.4.4.17, which has yet to receive Steve Jobs blessing. The current (approved) version is 1.4.1.

After appearing on the scene last year, the Doppler iPhone app has continued to refine itself over time, implementing features that may end up being duplicated by the competition.

Created by DopplerRadio, this iPhone app sports not only the basics (such as landscape mode, counter icon tag, the ability to star/favorite articles, etc.) but also a few extra items that I found lacking in some of its larger rivals. read more

There are many tools out there that simplify the process of making a wiki, and the latest to hit the Web is GagaPost.

If you’re looking to start a collaborative blog, and are willing to share authorship and ownership, than GagaPost is for you.

After posting your thoughts on a topic you can invite friends to comment or contribute their own post. Free accounts receive a space limit of 100MB.

Comment threads can be started anywhere in the post which is an interesting twist on the current blog model. As bloggers, we often rally about how important reader participation is. Yet ever notice how comments are always at the bottom of posts – as if they were an afterthought? Contextual commenting flips that model on its head.

An iPhone app lets users use the site directly from the portable device.

There’s certainly no shortage of blog platform options. Let us know if you give GagaPost a try.

Adjix, a revenue-sharing advertising network, is introducing a new ad format that allows text ads to be embedded within Twitter tweets.

Benefits to advertisers include:

• Advertisers set the price they’re willing to pay for an ad
• Advertisers can allow anyone to run their ads, or limit them to specific Twitter accounts; they can also limit how frequently an ad can run within a specific Twitter account
• Advertisers can target Twitter users in specific cities
• Adjix offers precise targeting, transparent pricing, and link click data

read more

One of the most powerful and useful social media business tools I’ve found for using Twitter is TweetLater. With recent feature improvements, it is turning out to be a social media third-party application I return to more and more.

TweetLater was developed by Dewald Pretorius and served as one of the first Twitter applications to permit future scheduling of tweets to Twitter. Tweet now, publish later, thus TweetLater was named.

Called a “productivity tool for busy tweeple,” TweetLater manages all your Twitter accounts from a central console to publish tweets on a schedule or in a timely manner. I use it to publish my daily WordPress Tips and WordPress Plugins on my @lorelleonwp Twitter account, creating tweets months in advance at one time, saving time and energy while adding value for my Twitter followers. read more

Citrix Online has demonstrated its new GoView service, which can be used to record, edit and share the computer screen complete with audio, at this year’s DEMO conference.

Screen casting isn’t a particularly new idea now, and there are other online services that will help you to create one, but this software comes with the backing of a pretty heavyweight company. read more

Flickr’s video hosting features puzzled me when they launched. 90 seconds, why would I limit myself to that really? But fine, if you shoot a few vids with your digital camera then that might cut it, most won’t support long clips anyway. Video used to be available for pro (as in paid) users only, but they’re opening it up to everyone now. Still 90 seconds limit, and 150 MB/video. Pro users can upload videos in HD (where 150 MB might be a tad small, as Webware points out), and so can regular users but it’ll play in SD only. Also, there’s an upload cap on regular users, just two videos/month.

No, I’m still not sold on Flickr Video. Sorry. I do appreciate the lifted set limit on free users, that really bugged me before I went pro.

My hat’s off to Gina Trapani (whom I interviewed recently) for an excellent reviewish post about netbooks. Or mini-PCs or whatever we’re allowed to call them these days (Psion has a patent, claims to be using it). You know the type, the small cheap computers made popular with the Asus Eee PC and now available in a plethora of models from a whole bunch of manufacturers. I myself have had an Eee PC 900, and a Kohjinsha SH6 before that (still around actually), and the current one is a Lenovo S10e, which I just won’t let go.

I could write a review on these machines, these products. It would start with my initial thoughts on the design, I’d go through the hardware aspects, and then I’d ramble on, do some benchmarks perhaps, get a photo gallery up there… You know the deal, it’s been done a thousand times.

Or I could do a review 2.0. read more

Happy Monday, folks! The big news this week is the release of Movable Type 4.24. Both a security and a feature release, this version is considered a mandatory upgrade. Here are a few details you should know, straight from the official announcement:

• Release Type: Security Release. This update fixes a serious potential vulnerability which has not yet been exploited in the wild.
• Mandatory? Yes, this is a mandatory security upgrade.
• Performance Implications: None.
• Plugins Affected: None. Your current plugins should continue to work as expected.
• Templates Affected: None.
• System Requirements: This release has no new or additional system requirements.
• Licensing considerations: None. MT 4.24 is a free update for users of any version of MT 4.x.
• Upgrade Fatigue: No further mandatory updates are planned for Movable Type 4.2.

read more

Update (3/9): Please read the last two paragraphs below for an update about these reviews.

Many, many moons ago in a blog post not so far away their were only handful of iPhone apps for Google Reader.

While most apps took the import only route, only two apps (Byline and Doppler) embraced bidirectional syncing, freeing gReader fans everywhere from dependence on the Google Reader web app. read more