It’s hard to know who to listen to when it comes to the effects, both beneficial and harmful, of using various Internet services.

While some have suggested that all forms of social networking sites may harm development and relationships, a British psychologist is bucking the trend by suggesting that the use of Facebook may boost memory recall.

Sterling University’s Dr Tracy Alloway said that users who spent more time using Facebook had a boost in intelligence, and may have the same positive effects as playing video war games or solving puzzles like Sudoku. read more

An IBM engineer/inventor has added a number of wireless sensors to various appliances and can now be alerted via Twitter if anything isn’t quite right.

Dr Stanford-Clark’s Isle of Wight cottage now has sensors installed that can monitor power and water usage, taps, lighting, even whether mouse traps have been triggered.

He suggested that the systems would help to reduce his carbon footprint and energy bills, saying that costs had already fallen by one-third in the last year. read more

It’s something I often hear when I attend events where I’m invited for being a blogger: What exactly do I do? I know a lot of people are familiar with social media. And at one point or another, everyone encounters blogs when surfing the web. But not everyone is familiar with what a blogger does. More particularly, not everyone is familiar with what makes an event relevant to a blogger’s field of expertise. read more

Happy Monday, folks! Big news this week: Six Apart announced the beta for Movable Type 5. The plan is to have a two month beta period, with the release coming sometime in November. Let’s take a look at some of the big new features in MT 5:

* Websites — MT 5 will have the concept of a website, which includes blogs and pages. This makes it more of a CMS, and makes it much simpler to use MT to maintain your entire site.

* Revision History — Entries, pages, and templates will all maintain a revision history. I’m particularly excited about this feature. The ability to modify templates, and return to previous version, is very useful.

* Custom Fields — Custom fields are now available on more objects and can be imported and exported. Plus, you can map them to a category/folder, so that they only appear if an entry/page is within that category/folder.

* Themes — MT 5 will have a whole new theme engine, which allows the bundling of templates, CSS, images, etc. together as a complete website theme.

…and lots more. MT5 will be a huge change from previous versions, pushing the platform more towards a CMS and further away from being a personal blog engine. We should get more details about these other changes in the coming months. read more

Former blogosphere darling and Search Engine with capital S, Technorati, is looking to hire bloggers to feature original content on their site. In the midst of Twittorati and ad networks, this is a somewhat surprising move, since it means that the main Technorati site is moving even further from its search engine past.

I’d like to say that’s a shame but can’t really commit to that statement. The Technorati we once knew and actually used doesn’t fill a need anymore.

Obviously this is because of other search players in the blogosphere. It is tough enough to battle with Google, but they are joined by the likes of Twingly. All the while, Technorati haven’t been able to keep up with real time or anything, they should’ve been at the front. They must have other plans. read more

The ever important Committee to Protect Bloggers are promoting a campaign that borrows from the Banned Books Week. The idea is to show that you’re reading banned blogs, just like some of you might have pins that state that you read banned books to promote freedom of speech. There’s also a design contest in the Flickr group if you want to participate in the campaign.

Anyone who suggests that Twitter and the like are killing real community should take a look at “Tweet Crawl 2.0″, taking place tomorrow on the Sunset Strip.

Following July’s successful event, organisers have decided to do it again, with participants simply tweeting as they crawl their way down various clubs on the Strip.

Starting at The Standard, Hollywood at 6.30pm, it takes in The Andaz, The Comedy Store, Book Soup, The Viper Room and The Roxy Theatre.

“We’re having a blast turning a burgeoning online community into a real world party,” said Nathan Levinson, marketing director, Viper Room. “We’re all ecstatic about Tweet Crawl 2.0 (#StripCrawl) just two days before the kickoff of the Sunset Strip Music Festival. Count on festival tickets to be among the prizes up for grabs on this go. We’re also proud to announce the addition of The Standard hotel in West Hollywood and Book Soup, making this Crawl a six-stop venture, which will kickoff poolside at The Standard, Hollywood, with gourmet hot dogs and drink specials.”

So expect some increasingly nonsensical tweets on #StripCrawl as tomorrow evening progresses.

Actor and comedian Danny Devito finally joins Twitter. Two things: the guy’s definitely on fire and this is probably the reason why he’s not wearing a top. Of course, the public’s response is immense.

We’re not sure if Danny will be Tweeting much, as he’s only had one update in the past 6 hours — but yeah, his profile pic is Tweet bait right there.

If you haven’t yet upgraded to the latest version of WordPress 2.8.4, then it is bout time you did. Self-hosted WordPress installs prior to this version is under attack and the potential damage to its users is high. Matt writes,

Right now there is a worm making its way around old, unpatched versions of WordPress. This particular worm, like many before it, is clever: it registers a user, uses a security bug (fixed earlier in the year) to allow evaluated code to be executed through the permalink structure, makes itself an admin, then uses JavaScript to hide itself when you look at users page, attempts to clean up after itself, then goes quiet so you never notice while it inserts hidden spam and malware into your old posts. [source]

Lorelle enumerates some symptoms to know if your site has been affected by the worm:

There are two clues that your WordPress site has been attacked.

There are strange additions to the pretty permalinks, such as example.com/category/post-title/%&(%7B$%7Beval(base64_decode($_SERVER%5BHTTP_REFERER%5D))%7D%7D|.+)&%/. The keywords are “eval” and “base64_decode.”

The second clue is that a “back door” was created by a “hidden” Administrator. Check your site users for “Administrator (2)” or a name you do not recognize. You will probably be unable to access that account, but Journey Etc. has a possible solution.

WordPress.com blogs are not impacted as they are up-to-date. Only versions prior to WordPress 2.8.4 are impacted.

Upgrade now!

Today Erin Pettigrew announced the total traffic Gawker Media has generated in little more than 7 years. Nick Denton announced the first Gawker blog, Gizmodo, on August 14th 2002, some weeks after Peter Rojas started the blog with 6 daily entries. Denton called it a low-risk experiment and wanted to know if someone could make a living from blogging.

I have no idea how much Gizmodo can bring in revenues. All I know is that weblogs are a compelling form, gadget addicts are all online, and Amazon.com’s API makes it easy to connect product with content.

Most importantly, this is a low-risk commercial experiment. Most media companies suffer from overblown editorial, an ad sales force with padded expense accounts, and overly complex publishing systems with a team of primadonna sysadmins to maintain it. By contrast, Gizmodo will be a couple of hours a day of Pete’s link-picking skills, some automatically generated Amazon.com links, and $150-worth of Movable Type. Media has never before been this lean. read more