Perez Hilton’s upcoming “women’s blog” is named CocoPerez (!) and while you can’t visit it just yet, the folks at Evil Beet Gossip managed to get around the passwords wall to take a sneak peak. And some screenshots of course. I’ll not repost theme here, but you might want to giggle for a little while about the logo:

Perez Hilton in the middle, that’s what women want in a blog? Jezebel’s Tracie Egan isn’t too worried, and said site also picks CocoPerez to pieces in a post. Sure, they’re a bit biased, but it is a funny read nonetheless, snarky and with a touch of the old days when the blogosphere sucked even harder. I think this will be fun to watch.

CocoPerez is slated to go online sometime today if reports are to be believed.

Disclosure on blogs is one hot topic at the moment. The FTC is already looking at regulating blogs and this week the National Advertising Review Council (NARC) has called out two companies for unethical practises.

The group found that Herbal Groups, Inc. and Urban Nutrition had posted reviews for products they owned, yet failed to disclose that fact.

Urban Nutrition has since added disclosure to its web site, stating “Urban Nutrition sponsors this Web site and distributes Miracle Burn, Miracle Burn Cream, and Arctic Essentials. Reviewers compensated by Urban Nutrition.” read more

Facebook has decided to keep its platform clean from advertisements ran by its users in a proposed update to the Statements of Rights and Responsibilities Site Governance.

2. You will not use your personal profile for your own commercial gain (such as selling your status update to an advertiser).

Facebook users have time to leave feedback on the proposed changes until 18th August 10.00PDT. read more

WordPress.com launched today a redesigned homepage. The new style is much more visual and uses thumbnails to display random content published by the WordPress community users.

The first thumbnail prominently displays today’s statistics for the platform. The redesign comes only days after WordPress.com published its stats wrap-up for July 2009.

How do you like the redesign? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Nambu have resurrected the tr.im URL shortener service. Why?

We have been absolutely overwhelmed by the popular response, and the countless public and private appeals I have received to keep tr.im alive.

We have answered those pleas. Nambu will keep tr.im operating going forward, indefinitely, while we continue to consider our options in regards to tr.im’s future.

So the URL shortener is back from the dead, but for how long? That is a valid question, despite the fact that they are “overwhelmed by the response”, they still think that all the reasons they initially listed for shutting down tr.im are valid.

Would you trust tr.im with your shortened URLs after this affair?

WordPress 2.8.4 is out, and it is yet another security release. Matt Mullenweg describes the issue like this:

Yesterday a vulnerability was discovered: a specially crafted URL could be requested that would allow an attacker to bypass a security check to verify a user requested a password reset. As a result, the first account without a key in the database (usually the admin account) would have its password reset and a new password would be emailed to the account owner. This doesn’t allow remote access, but it is very annoying.

As always you can upgrade automatically from within your admin interface, or download from wordpress.org.

Update: The WordPress MU 2.8.4 version is out too. Download or upgrade automatically.

The Royal Opera House has announced that it’s opening up the writing of lyrics for a new opera to users of Twitter.

It’s simple: search for @youropera and then add a line of 140 characters or less.

Tweets will be compiled and sent to be scored by composer Helen Porter, and will be performed at the Deloitte Ignite 09 (4-6 September, Royal Opera House, London). read more

In the wake of the Facebook buys FriendFeed news, Twitter CEO Ev Williams’ mind is probably elsewhere. At least one would hope so, given the fact that his wife Sara Morishige is giving birth. And tweeting it.

That is one hardcore supporter you’ve got there, Williams!

Huge news! Facebook nabs FriendFeed, which totally makes sense when you think about it. This from the FriendFeed announcement:

The FriendFeed team is extremely excited to become a part of the talented Facebook team. We’ve always been great admirers of Facebook, and our companies share a common vision. Now we have the opportunity to bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world and to work alongside Facebook’s passionate engineers to create even more ways for you to easily share with your friends online.

They seem happy enough, and while no immediate changes are planned, it doesn’t take a genius to understand that we’ll see new features roll out on Facebook. Question is if FriendFeed will live on as a separate identity or not. My guess is no, but we’ll see.

More in the Facebook press release and on Techmeme. No financial terms have been released.

In copyright law, the big news is always made by cases such as the Jammie Thomas verdict, the Tenenbaum trial or even The Pirate Bay trial in Sweden. As importance as these cases are, their legal applicability to the average person is dubious, especially since the RIAA has stopped suing file sharers.

For the cases that could have a direct impact on your life, you often have to dig deeper. This is true for the case of Brayton Purcell LLP v. Recordon & Recordon, a seemingly dull case about two law firms in a dispute over content posted on their respective Web sites.

However a recent decision by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in the case, if upheld by other circuits or the Supreme Court, could have a drastic impact on the way copyright issues are litigated in the United States.

How big is the difference? The dissenting judge on the panel said the following, “Under the majority’s opinion, every website operator faces the potential that he will be hailed into far-away courts based upon allegations of intellectual property infringement, if he happens to know where the alleged owner of the property rights resides.”

In short, if you are accused of copyright infringement, it is no longer safe to assume that you would be sued in your own district, but rather that you could be forced to litigate in the plaintiff’s court, enduring the extra costs and expense that comes with it. read more