Global Voices report the sad news that Iranian blogger Omid Reza Mir Sayafi has died in prison.

Omid Reza Mir Sayafi, who had been sentenced to 30 months prison for insulting Islamic Republic Leaders last month, died in prsion today. Human Rights Activists in Iran site says[fa] the reason for his death has not been announced but he was in very bad psychological condition.

read more

If not, then you should get Internet Explorer 8 from the official site and find out. Other browsers that you really should support:

• Internet Explorer 7
• Firefox 3+
• Opera 9+
• Safari 3+
• Google Chrome (if it works in Safari, it usually works in Chrome)

And mobile browsers as well, depending on how you want your readership to follow your blog.

If there ever was a Google Reader app that allowed you to view your entire feeds offline, BoltReader would be it.

Created by what appears to be a small nimble team (note: they did not respond to my inquiries), BoltReader seems to be the first Google Reader iPhone app that allows you to view both text and images offline, without having to rely upon a third party service like Instapaper.

Users may also fall in love with BoltReader’s user interface, which seems to blend the traditional folder view with the “river of news” layout. read more

I don’t really care what the SciFi Channel calls itself, but rebranding itself as SyFy to not alienate people is just plain silly. Most tweeters seem to agree, judging from the search result for the #SyFy hashtag, and here’s the Technorati tag. Science fiction blog io9 offers 25 other names for rebranding the channel, and webcomic Real Life makes a pretty good observation. Penny Arcade is slightly less politically correct, as usual.

I don’t know, maybe they hoped to do a Wii and gain something from all the bad jokes. After all, all the pee jokes proved successful for Nintendo (the Wii prints money), so maybe that’s it? Either way, gotta love the blogosphere for making the most of this thing.

I don’t know about you, but the lack of source links gave the BBspot hoax about Twitter’s premium account business model away right away. Then, reading on, it got even better. Why would a 140 character service offer accounts with more than 140 characters? If you fell for this one, you probably forgot the mobile phone aspects of Twitter.

I especially like this premium account type:

Eagle ($250/month) – Users get 500 character limit, 1000 extra random followers, 3 celebrity followers of their choice, 5 hours on recommended list each month, Twitter Concierge for Tweeting while user is asleep or busy (and more), auto-spell check, “Fail Whale” tuxedo, custom “Fail Whale” page when service is down.

Fun stuff.

TechCrunch wonders what the readership would think about premium accounts, and I’d like to extend that question to the Blog Herald readers. If Twitter were offering premium accounts, what would they offer and how could they be interesting to you?

iPhone for WordPress is in the iTunes store. WordPress Widgets will use new Widgets API as of WordPress 2.8. Security authentication will improve with OAuth in future versions. WordPress 2.8 delayed. WordCamps in Hong Kong and China coming up. International languages embraced on WordPress.tv. And more WordPress news, tips, resources, and help.

WordPress News Changing: Your input is needed to help the Blog Herald WordPress News evolve. See “Changing the Blog Herald WordPress News: Your Help Needed” to share your thoughts on the shape of this weekly report.

WordPress News

iPhone for WordPress: The iPhone for WordPress Version 1.2 is now in the iTunes App Store, ready for you to blog and track comments on your iPhone. read more

When people ask me what the future holds for blogging, I tend to avoid making “on the record” predictions just because, well, I tend to be wildly off target! But I keep coming back to the idea that video will play a huge part … read more

Mummy blogging is taking off in a big way in the UK, with an estimated 175,000 new blogs expected to be launched this Mother’s Day (22nd March) and with 55% being written by women.

By way of encouragement for both the parents who blog, and those who want to discover them, Talking Tots has published its first “Tots100″ index of the best parenting blogs in Britain. read more

I wrote about the tweetbook a couple of days ago, James Bridle’s publishing experiment involving two years worth of tweets in a book printed by print-on-demand service Lulu. Since I find both Twitter in particular and publishing in general interesting, I got in touch with James to find out more about the project.

First of all, tell us a little bit about yourself. You’re in publishing, right?

Yes. I used to be an editor, and I’m now a consultant advising clients such as HarperCollins, Random House, Hachette and Granta on web and new media projects. I also run Bookkake, a small publisher using new technologies to create a new model for publishing, and write about literature and technology at booktwo.org.

read more

Of all of the iPhone apps that I have purchased, beta tested, or inherited from Apple, iNews is probably the first bug free app that I have encountered.

Created by Gudang Data Informatika (from Indonesia), iNews is yet another gReader app that follows the “keep it simple” mentality, sporting bare bone features such as starring articles, landscape mode and emailing your favorite posts to your friends.

Even though the app was not as powerful as Byline (or even the mighty Feeds app), iNews did have a few features that I did enjoy. read more