Philip F. Lawler, the editor of Catholic World News, has written an interesting column for USA Today that questions the Vatican’s public relations savvy.

Lawler suggests that the Vatican look at better ways to communicate stories and control the ‘spin’ of certain news items.

Does that mean Pope Benedict XVI should set up a Twitter account?

Hey, if surgeons can deliver real-time updates about ongoing medical procedures, anything is possible.

When I first heard the news about the chief resident at Henry Ford Hospital Tweeting during a cancer operation, I quaked in my boots. However, after some time to digest the concept – and as someone who has sat in a waiting room for hours desperately waiting for ‘news’ – the idea might not be that bad.

We all know that Tweeting when driving is just dumb. Tweeting during sex is even dumber. But people do it.

Is there anyone who should not Twitter? Any situation where Twitter, in your mind, has no place?

Duncan Riley’s news site The Inquisitr continues to grow, this time setting a new monthly record in pageviews (2,315,920 if you want to know). As usual, Duncan is pretty open about it in a blog post. However, The Inquisitr is also a good example of how the economic situation is hitting sites leaning on ads. Duncan has let a writer go, which is the common solution these days.

Going forward we’ve done everything we can to run a lean ship. Our cost base is down, and despite being down a writer the traffic went up. However there are risks ahead. We’ll likely do less traffic this month (we tend to go on two month cycles), and a similar drop in advertising rates will hurt. The only question now is when will the online ad market bottom, and how much further will it fall.

As good an example as any on how online publications are coping with the current financial climate.

Asus, manufacturer of a number of desktop, notebook and netbook PCs, is offering Brits the chance to blog about one of its products in a new competition.

In association with Mobile Computer, Asus will pick six bloggers who will each author a month-long blog about a particular machine. At the end of that time, the person whose blog has received the most visitors will win the machine they’ve been blogging about. read more

When I first started blogging over three years ago, blog search engines including Technorati and Google Blog Search were my favorite tools for keeping on top of who was talking about my topics, who was linking to my site and finding posts to comment on and offer help to.

However, over the years, the usefulness of these services have dwindled to nearly nothing. Where once nearly every great tip or connection came from either a Technorati Watchlist or a Google RSS feed, now I seem to get the best results from Twitter and more targeted searches.

The days of punching in a few keywords into Technorati and getting a stream of useful results is over. What follows now is a kludge of spam, off-topic posts and other noise that has to be sifted through to find the few grains of great content.

If blog searching isn’t dead, it certainly is very ill and it is time that something is done to fix it. read more

Splashpress Media has recently announced the launch of Twitter Buttons, which easily lets bloggers create “Follow me!” buttons for pasting into their sidebars, social social network profiles, or just about anywhere you could insert HTML into.

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It’s often said that one of the best ways to keep yourself financially afloat during difficult economic times is by moonlighting while ‘on the clock’ at your full-time job.

Not only do you have the ability to make more money, but you also can fill a creative void that your ‘real’ job does not fill.

Of course this ‘double dipping’ comes with great risk; it could even cost you your job. However, many of you are rolling the dice.

Here at BlogHerald I always like to take the pulse of what my fellow bloggers are thinking. I truly believe the more we can understand one another in this medium, the better we all become.

So let me ask you this: If you blog at work, do you do it for the love or the money? And has the recession changed your blogging habits?

Be honest. Far too often I read comments from bloggers who are quick to point out that a truly successful blogger does it all out of passion. But the cynic in me finds that hard to swallow. While that’s part of the your motivation, I’m willing to bet that 90% of bloggers want to get paid for their work.

If I had just one SEO tip to recommend to my fellow bloggers, it would be to write guest posts.

I recommend guest posting because link building is so important in SEO. Many webmasters neglect to build links so you’ll have a competitive advantage if you guest post. And the quantity and quality of your backlinks is the most important factor to ranking well for a wide variety of keywords and the competitive keywords with high search volume.

Sure, you can try other link building methods but these days guest posting gives you the best return for your time.  Here are a couple reasons why. read more