It was only a matter of time, eh? Based on last week’s news regarding baseball manage Tony La Russa’s lawsuit against Twitter, Biz Stone and the gang have announced Verified Accounts – the beta version coming soon to a tweeter near you.

Verified accounts, where a person is ‘vetted’ to make certain they are who they say they are, are not new to the Web. However, they are usually only applied on sites where e-commerce activity is an option. Twitter looks to change that, and hopefully reduce their growing legal fees. read more

It’s sunny. 80 degrees. There’s a nice breeze. I smell flowers. The sky is blue. Off in the distance I hear kids playing and the chimes of the ice cream truck.

I am blogging. In my backyard. Outdoors. read more

The New York Times has a piece on orphaned blogs, as in blogs started and then abandoned. It is an inane article bordering to sensational journalism, masking itself in NYT’s legacy. I’m sorry, but this is just stupid. Some quotes for your enjoyment.

Like Mrs. Nichols, many people start blogs with lofty aspirations — to build an audience and leave their day job, to land a book deal, or simply to share their genius with the world. Getting started is easy, since all it takes to maintain a blog is a little time and inspiration. So why do blogs have a higher failure rate than restaurants?

That’s referring to disappointed (self-proclaimed) soccer mom Mrs. Nichols, who had lofty dreams about $4,000 monthly revenue. And there’s more! read more

Over at Copyblogger Brian had an interesting comment thread about, well, blog commenting. In it I offered the sage advice that a comment can become excellent content for your own blog.

To prove my point, I wanted to expand on the idea here! read more

The BlogTalkRadio CEO Alan Levy announced the launch of two BlogTalkRadio premium packages the other day, with the incentive tha anyone who sign up for these premium services will get them for free until July 1st.

These packages are designed to give hosts more enhanced features, including call screening, dialing out from the switchboard, being able to download, edit and replace episodes, and limited advertisements.

There is a Premium Host Package for $39.95/month (or $399/year) and a Premium Plus Host Package for $99/month (or $999/year). Both add a bunch of new functionality best read in the announcement post.

Users of the free version shouldn’t be concerned. All current features will remain free, so you can continue to use BlogTalkRadio as you have before.

WordPress MU is the multi-user version of WordPress, which basically means that you can run several WordPress blogs within one WordPress MU installation. It is in many ways similar to WordPress, but adds this functionality along with some other small things that is needed for being your very own blog host. The most well known WordPress MU sites are WordPress.com and Edublogs.

And now, finally, WordPress MU and WordPress will merge. The MU lead developer Donncha O Caoimh said this on his blog:

Basically, the thin layer of code that allows WordPress MU to host multiple WordPress blogs will be merged into WordPress. I expect the WordPress MU project itself will come to an end because it won’t be needed any more (which saddens me), but on the other hand many more people will be working on that very same MU code which means more features and more bugfixes and faster too.

Is this good or bad? read more

WordPress 2.8 just recently got a target release date: June 10th, which is Wednesday next week. This was decided on an IRC meetup on June 3rd, and announced on the WordPress.org blog. Other decisions includes a MySQL requirements upgrade for version 2.9, now you’ll need MySQL 4.1.2 rather than just 4.0 that is the current requirement. Naturally, the automatic upgrader will check for compatibility and prevent installation if the host isn’t running 4.1.2 or greater. Another check will also be added to this, one for PHP 5. However, this will only urge users to upgrade from PHP 4 to PHP 5 and not be an actual requirement.

It can’t be understated how important it is to protect your name – both personal and brand – on the Web.

Twitter is at the messy end of a lawsuit filed by St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa. His claim states that someone registered his name on Twitter and made remarks that damaged his reputation and trademark rights.

For example, the alleged impostor stated… read more

Do you want to know how to set up, plan, write and promote a business blog, plus create an audience that loves you, with content that keeps people coming back for more?

Well you are in luck! I have written an information-packed 7 day blogging course for my friends at Simplweb, the Joomla turnkey site people, and best of all it is free. read more

This is sad news indeed. Founder Curt Hopkins is closing Committee to Protect Bloggers, as a result of his need to focus on finding new work.

Rather than look either inept, or like we can’t be bothered to fulfill our function, we would rather close down the organization with the hopes, however slim at this time, that we can restart it when things are better for us.

The site will remain online for now. I guess it is moot to hope for someone stepping in with a big wad of cash to keep Committee to Protect Bloggers rolling. It fills a gap and is an important source about the situation for bloggers across the world.