Twitter has published a blog post commenting on the internal documents that are running on TechCrunch. They were obtained through an email hack on an administrative employee’s account, which in turn gave access to Twitter’s Google Apps account. They are stressing the fact that it was personal security that faltered, not Google Apps, but it still points a finger to one of the dangers of data in the cloud. No user accounts are compromised either, and naturally there’s legal actions from Twitter’s side.

Meanwhile, TechCrunch and others are having a field day with the income prognosis report, security issues and the fact that these documents are out in the open in the first place. And naturally it all boils down to a Valleywag post on the twitterati’s response to the breach.

That poor administrative employee will probably stick to better passwords in the future, eh?

Ever type something and then lose it? It happened to me yesterday. I was three-quarters of the way through leaving a lengthy blog comment when I stretched my legs out too far, and accidentally kicked the computer plug out of the socket.

After the machine rebooted I had no desire to re-write the comment. Let’s face it…very few people leave comments once – let alone twice. This loss of data sent me in to a Googling tizzy. I knew there had to be a better way. And there is. read more

Most of the bloggers I know are hard-working, law-abiding citizens. However, this morning I could not seem to escape stories about bad bay bloggers.

Kevin Cogill, the blogger who foolishly posted the new Guns N’ Roses tracks before they were officially released, was sentenced to two months of home confinement and one year of probation. The good news? He’ll have plenty of time to blog. read more

This year’s Elite Retreat, which will be held in New York City on October 1st and 2nd, is now open for registration.

This year’s speakers include Seth Godin (keynote), Jeremy Schoemaker, Neil Patel, Chris Winfield and Brian Norgard (check out the speaker profiles for more information).

The event is exclusive (35 places based on merit, not first-come-first-served) and relatively expensive ($4,950 counts as costly as far as I’m concerned), yet it has some high profile fans so is something worth considering. read more

Marshall Kirkpatrick, of ReadWriteWeb fame, has a personal blog as well. Yesterday he posted his new writing routine, and I just love the simpleness of it.

1. Find story idea
2. Reach out to sources for info
3. Research online using various magic research tools, while I wait for sources to get back to me
4. Stop and think
5. Talk to sources, maybe research some more based on what they say
6. Write!

Kirkpatrick needs to spend no more than two hours doing that, but you can steal it for your own writing. It would also depend on what kind of story you’re working on.

How do you find, research and write your blog posts?

The multi user version of WordPress, called WordPress MU, is finally available in version 2.8.1. You can download it from the official site, as always. This is the first WordPress MU release in the 2.8 branch, which might be a bit confusing but the version numbering is tied to the single user version of WordPress, so you’ll just have to live with it. For changes, refer to the WordPress MU trac in general, and the timeline in particular.

Envato’s web template marketplace ThemeForest is changing its WordPress theme licenses. As of August 4th, all WordPress themes will be sold in two licenses: GPL and Standard License. The latter only applies to CSS, JavaScripts and images, not the actual WordPress themes files. Anyone not OK with this should remove their items prior to August 4th.

Why do they do this? In their own words:

1: Technically, we have to. :)
2: It’s important to respect the spirit of WordPress. This is the way it was intended.

Most resellers of premium (commercial) WordPress themes have gone this route, if nothing else but to be included on the wordpress.org featured page is my guess. You might want to refer to our guide to the GPL license for more. You can purchase ThemeForest themes here.

Recently I realized there are two factors that powerfully determine if your blog will be a success. While you think what they might be, let me tell you about a crazy experiment … read more

The NY Times reports on the state of New York ordering a cosmetic surgery company to pay fines for faking online reviews. Reports say that employees have been logging on to online review sites and posing as satisfied clients.

The company had ordered employees to pretend they were satisfied customers and write glowing reviews of its face-lift procedure on Web sites, according to the attorney general’s statement. Lifestyle Lift also created its own sites of face-lift reviews to appear as an independent sources.

Lifestyle Lift was ordered to pay $300,000 to the state for what is said to be an “attempt to generate business by duping consumers was cynical, manipulative and illegal.” read more

British public relations companies are still lagging behind in their use of blogging as a communications tool according to the Digital PR 2009 survey carried out by Bigmouthmedia.

Looking at the 100 leading British press and PR agencies, interest in social media and networking has improved over the past year and the number of agencies publishing blogs has doubled. read more