My “day” work is in magazine publishing – the past two years with men’s interest magazines. Over coffee, two friends from the IT industry asked why can’t more women in technology be featured in the magazines (one of them was referring to the lack of “beauty and brains” in model spreads). This does make sense — more often than not, the bikini + pretty face combination seems to work in the mainstream setting. But really, haven’t we had enough of that?
read more

Don’t mess with my Facebook! That’s the gist of the user outrage that followed the Facebook redesign. And now Facebook is accommodating this by outlining changes, updates, and fine-tuning. Some things are undoubtedly good, like the real-time updating of the activity stream, while others might or might not prove to be a solid move. I won’t review proposed updates to a site, but I will say that site owners should beware of reverting too much to users’ requests. It’s always a good thing to listen to the users, and take criticism (good and bad) to heart, but one should always remember that most users view change as something bad, out of habit.

In other words: You might have a brilliant new concept, but if you don’t give the users the chance to realize it, and just reverts back to what they’re used to, you’ll never know. This might or might not be the case when it comes to the Facebook design, I don’t know and I’m not the target audience or user either, but I’m just saying.

Did Facebook turn around to fast? Share in the comments.

Duncan Riley’s news blog The Inquisitr is looking to hire writers, and the payment model is CPM based. That by itself isn’t anything new, but being up front with the reasoning perhaps is, Duncan writes extensively about it on his blog.

Personally, I wouldn’t go for this model unless the numbers looked really really good, but it is interesting to see publishers looking for payment solutions in today’s struggling economy. It’s even more interesting to read about the reasoning behind the decisions, and knowing Duncan I think we’ll find out how this experiment falls out.

Video browsers in general, and bloggers in particular, should know that China has blocked YouTube. The Reuters report tells us that the ban has been in place over the past 24 hours, and the reason is supposedly unknown. However, Committee to Protect Bloggers posted this:

Xinhua, the Chinese news agency reported that the government blocked access to the site after a fabricated video showing C hinese police brutally beating up Tibetans during the riots last year. The description of the offending video fits one that was posted by the Tibetan government in exile and is a collage of varios clips showing the police putting down the riots brutally.

This is not the first time YouTube is banned in China. Several other countries have bans in effect as well. More on Techmeme.

The Google Summer of Code^TM 2009 is on and applications for the WordPress aspect of the project is in full swing with student applications now being accepted.

In a comical typical dialog between a son, desperately trying to explain web technology and terminology to a father, thrilled his son might get paid for what he’s long considered was “time wasting computer stuff,” Jane Wells of Automattic spells out some of the basics of this year’s WordPress Summer of Code 2009. read more

Style trendsetter Rocawear has launched Roc4Life.com, a social destination that offers exclusive lifestyle news, fashion, and cultural connections. The new social network is powered by Ning.com and has partnered with several digital websites including NecoleBitchie.com, AllThatsFabulous.com, FlyGuyChronicles.com, Blogxilla.com, Str8NYC.com, DefSounds.com, LolosCube.com, and FlyStyleLife.com.

“For the past ten years, the people at Rocawear have been tapping into a vibrant and thriving culture in the real world,” said Ning’s CEO and co-founder, Gina Bianchini. “Roc4Life.com gives them the opportunity to translate this conversation in their unique and authentic way online.”

Zemanta, the third-party blogging service that recently extended its reach to Safari and Chrome users, has announced that its users can now gain access to the Last.fm music database.

Bloggers using the service can now add contextual links to relevant tracks, videos, artist pages and other content stored in the Last.fm database.

Practically, this means that users who write about musicians and bands will gain access to a variety of information including biographies, artist photos and music video pages — and it’s all legal.

This will probably suit music and entertainment bloggers more than others, but others may find it useful to be able to link to this trusted information from time to time without fear of breaking copyright.

Zemanta

I’m surprised to see all these posts about ExecTweet and how Twitter found its revenue model. ExecTweet is Twitter spinoff site that just displays tweets from select executives, making it easier to track the big shots on Twitter if you’re a corporate buff. It is published by ad firm Federated Media, and sponsored by Microsoft. read more

Tim Ferris has done the “unreasonable” in his terms. With the recent Tweet to Beat charity gaining 6k++ more followers, Tim is now upping the ante by giving out $3.00 to each and every follower.

There’s a reason why he’s doing this and it is all about the experience. In the same way that we were exposed to immersions to help out our community back when we were in school, Tim wants us to experience the gratification of giving the $90,000 ourselves — that’s $3.00 each.

He has outlined very detailed steps to make the donation (the first stage of gratification), and show that we made the donation in our Facebook timeline (the second stage of gratification).

Happy Monday, folks! The big news this week is the official launch of Motion, Six Apart’s social networking application built on top of Movable Type. Motion is included with MT Pro 4.25, so if you have a license for MT Pro you can grab the new version now.

With Motion, you can pull content from multiple social networks as well as create a community of bloggers on your own site. Motion is designed for a variety of uses, including private aggregation of content based on keywords, publishing a moderated version of that content, and setting up your own social network.

We told you about Motion back in December, and we’ll have a more in-depth look at the release version later this week. For now, check out the official announcement and let us know what you think in the comments. read more