There’s a pretty interesting piece on Twitter’s Biz Stone in San Francisco Chronicle. Actually, it hit the web two days ago, and I glanced it, deciding not to cover it here. After all, there really wasn’t anything new there.

Then I read this post by Silicon Alley Insider, built around a bullet list of trivia pulled from the SFC piece, and headlined by the shocking fact that Stone’s first name is Christopher. Granted, the Silicon Alley Insider piece is light-hearted, but come on? Isn’t this what Twitter is for, tweeting links and trivia stuff like this?

Happy Monday, folks! We talk a lot here about making Movable Type easier for customers to install. Many have hoped that MT would start showing up in some of the “one-button install” systems available to hosting providers. We’re starting to see that happen, most recently on the Etelos Marketplace. These kinds of easy installs go a long way in convincing businesses to give MT a try.

A couple of useful things this week for plugin developers. First, if you’re new to plugin development, David Raynes has started a series of posts on plugin writing 101. This looks to be especially useful if you have some Perl experience, but aren’t sure where to start with MT.

Also, for more advanced developers, Six Apart released their unit test suite for plugin development. To learn how to use the test module, check out the first full tutorial in David Rayne’s series.

Speaking of plugins, we’ve got some new ones to tell you about:

Tidings — Also from Six Apart, Tidings is a content filter based on HTML Tidy. You can use it to clean up HTML, XHTML, and more. It can be especially useful for ensuring user-submitted code doesn’t break your site.

SyntaxHighlighter — For those of you that blog about programming, this will definitely come in handy. Written by Makoto Kawasaki, this plugin lets you post syntax highlighted code.

MediaURLs — This plugin, created by Scott Boms, makes it easier to take advantage of separate domains and subdomains for different media files. This is an important technique for speeding up page loading, so it’s nice to see a plugin to simplify the practice.

What have you done with Movable Type this week? Let us know in the comments.

Story Updated 04/08/09 (see end) Jon Engle is a graphic designer from New Mexico. He has done work for many TV shows and TV networks as well as countless Web sites.

However, a recent series of events has put Engle’s reputation at risk. According to a post in Engle’s blog, a stock art site has accused him of copyright infringement. They have presented him with an $18,000 bill, threatened him with a lawsuit and even contacted his previous clients, claiming that he was under investigation for infringement and that the work he did for them “may have been stolen from their client.”

The problem, according to Engle, is that he created the works himself and that he believes someone uploaded them to the stock photography site without his permission, and in violation of that site’s terms of service. But the company, feeling that the uploads were legitimate, are aggressively protecting what they see as their intellectual property, using their copyright attorney.

However, it doesn’t matter who is in the right in this case. For either side to clear their name, they are going to have to prove that the work is theirs. Unfortunately, as Engle admits, this will not be a simple matter as he “would never have thought to plan for something like this”. Though he has some incidental proof, namely upload dates to LogoPond and metadata in the files themselves, these are hardly ideal since Engle is not completely sure when the images were lifted.

Engle’s story highlights the need for writers, artists, photographers and other creators to be aware that there are a million ways their work could come into dispute and to prepare for such a situation in advance. The end goal is be in a situation where, no matter what happens to your work, you always have proof that you created it first. read more

Micro-blogging service Twitter may be the latest rage with celebrities and their followers but it has yet to catch on as a marketing tool for British businesses.

According to the latest web analysis from WebTrends, just two per cent (one in fifty) businesses in the UK are using Twitter for marketing, while six per cent are blogging or podcasting.

Only the likes of direct email marketing, detailed web analytics, traditional online advertising and search optimisation really made the grade, with at least one-third of companies using always or often. read more

Valleywag, ie Gawker these days, runs a story about a rumor stating that Google might stop pumping money into Firefox, and start pushing their own web browser instead, Google Chrome. The angle is pretty aggressive against Google, and the story is wrapped up with this paragraph:

It makes sense that Google would want to support its own Chrome Web browser. And yet bullying a nonprofit would seem to clash with Google’s “don’t be evil” motto. Perhaps “don’t lose money” has become more important.

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I thought it would be interesting to find out the top link building tips of the Blog Herald audience. What things would you recommend for getting links?

Here are my top three tips. Feel free to leave a comment with your best tips. read more

New WordPress Widgets API Feedback Wanted: The WordPress developers are seeking testers and feedback on the new Widgets API which will be released with WordPress 2.8.

Time to Say Bye-Bye to Kubrick? Weblog Tools Collection asks if it is time for Kubrick to retire. Known as the Default WordPress Theme that comes with every installation of WordPress, many have been calling for a replacement.

Integrating bbPress with BuddyPress: While many are working with WordPressMU to integrate bbPress, Trent Adams writes about integrating bbPress with BuddyPress. read more

When I learned about the MarchTweetness site, a Twitter powered thingy much like ExecTweets but focusing on NCAA March Madness basketball, using Twitter to cheer on your teams, I really wanted to see it. Well, I never could, and now we know why. NCAA made Federated Media, responsible for the site, take it down, due to trademark infringement. Ouch. Nothing about that in the FM blog post though, they’re blaming it on technical difficulties. Fine, in a way I guess it was!

Well, basketball fans can check it out now, under the new name of TitleTweets. Still sponsored by AT&T. This may not be Twitter’s business model, but it sure is an interesting one for ad agencies like Federated Media.

As the G20 Summit convenes today in London, many bloggers across the world may be wondering what they can do to bring about change in the offline world through social media.

As a community outreach coordinator for BloggersUnite.org and a veteran of the Blog Action Day 2008 organizing team, I can personally attest to the colossal power that blogs and social media tools have to spread ideas and change human minds.

I asked BloggersUnite.org’s Richard Becker and Antony Berkman about their attempts to inspire social action by harnessing the power of the blogosphere. Here’s what they said.

How did Bloggers Unite start? Whose idea was it?

Antony Berkman, CEO, BloggersUnite.org: I noticed that Internet social networks from MySpace to Facebook were receiving a ton of media and Internet attention in 2007, but we had yet to see an online social community come together to raise funds for a good cause. So, I saw what would later become Bloggers Unite as an opportunity to empower and recognize bloggers who collectively focus their blogs for good rather than writing about Paris Hilton and Britney Spears all the time. read more

While some published (and not yet published) authors have been using blogs for some time to promote their work, and even create books based upon their blogs’ content, the UK-based Writing Magazine has decided that one of next year’s top five trends will be the use of blogging to promote a best-selling book.

For example, Kate Hardy is the author of over 25 Mills & Boon novels, and she updates her blog several time a week.

“Blogging means that readers get a glimpse into the ideas behind my work — whether it’s an awards do, a research trip or random musing. It also updates my website frequently to bring readers back; I use it to interact with my readers and my publishers can use it on their website as a publicity tool.”

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