After splashing on the scene nine months ago, it looks as if BlogPress has (finally) caught Google’s attention for their iPhone app.

While Google has already created official apps for a variety of services for the iPhone, they are anointing BlogPress to represent them in Steve Jobs backyard, and have even convinced the small team from China to create a lite version for free. read more

One of the unforeseen perks of posting a job for your blog, is the unexpected content that is generated.

Guest Posts
With so many people applying there is a good chance that applicants will be willing to write a sample post. I’ve been on the other end of these before, and that’s why I always offer to pay a few bucks for a sample post (whether it gets published or not). Time is money, and even though blogging can be a business, I always like to put the writer’s craft first and respect the industry. But there are plenty of people who generate content via unpaid sample posts. Proceed as you see fit. read more

At its annual conference, Nokia has announced a new feature that will be added to its Ovi platform next month and showcased on the new N97 mini mobile handset.

Nokia claims that “Lifecasting with Ovi” is the first service that allows users to update their Facebook status directly from the home screen of their cellphone.

Don’t get too excited — this isn’t 24/7 lifecasting allowing you to strap the phone to your head and broadcast everything you’re doing in realtime video. In reality, it’s simply making it easier to update your Facebook status while on the move.

Nokia NSeries’ VP, Jonas Geust, said, “People want to bring their physical and online worlds together via the internet. The Nokia N97 mini is designed for this new social internet and to help navigate people and places. With lifecasting, the Nokia N97 mini and Ovi usher in the next chapter of personal and location-aware internet.” read more

VentureBeat runs a story on author Scott Rosenberg who says that Twitter has set blogging free. Or, more precisely:

“Blogging has always had this word ‘trivial’ hung from its neck,” Rosenberg said. “Twitter has finally liberated blogging from that, from all these charges from the media, all these dismissive putdowns of trivialities.”

It’s an interesting thought, the notion that the blog bashers have moved to Twitter. What do you think, is Twitter helping traditional blogging in this way?

Hitwise claims that Twitter has overtaken MySpace in the UK. That’s probably true, but the stats are completely uninteresting. While there obviously are a lot of people using the web interface, the numbers won’t show how many are actually using the service from an application of any kind. You know, like TweetDeck, Tweetie or Twhirl. Third party services are huge with Twitter, it’s as simple as that.

So yeah, Twitter overtook MySpace in the UK. Thing is, it probably happened a lot earlier than the graph suggests.

Bruce Everiss is a well-known video game marketer who writes a blog on the topic entitled, quite appropriately, Bruce on Games.

In recent weeks Everiss has been very critical of the online role-playing game Evony, perhaps most famous for it increasingly sexualized ads, and highlighted what he saw as misconduct by both the company behind the game, Evony LLC, and the software itself.

Everiss was always careful to support his allegations with research, either his own or referencing work performed by others, but he nonetheless found himself on the receiving end of a threat of a defamation lawsuit.

While this is not completely out of the ordinary in and of itself, what made Everiss’ case more unusual is that the threat was coming from an Australian solicitor and was threatening action in an Australian court. This is despite the fact that Evony LLC is, by all accounts, a Chinese company and Everiss is a UK-based blogger.

Other authors who have written about Evony, including the UK newspaper The Guardian, have received similar threats. The case is controversial because much of what is being disputed as defamatory is widely viewed as being true, with at least some evidence to support it, or appears to be personal opinion. However, clearly Evony disputes this and calls Everiss’ statements “clearly defamatory” in their letter to him.

But as interesting as the case itself is, it highlights another threat to bloggers, one very similar to what I reported on with copyright and jurisdiction, since works published to the Internet are distributed all over the world, you can defame the reputation of a company and/or a person in any country or jurisdiction. That, in turn, means you can be brought into almost any court in the world for a defamation suit. read more

Attack of the Mommy Bloggers!

Gosh there are a lot of mommy bloggers out there. I always knew that blogging was appealing to stay-at-home moms who are looking for a way to express themselves, but I never realized just how many child-bearing females are ready to post. Over 13% of the applicants for the Jobacle writing gig mentioned that they were a mommy within the first sentence – that’s almost 100 people! And while I have nothing against mommies who blog, I did find it interesting that many people applied thinking that the mere fact that they had offspring would get them the gig. My advice would be to only mention you’re a mom if it is relevant to the blogging job. In this case, a snarky career blog could benefit from a mother’s experience, but it by no means should be the #1 selling point. read more

For someone making a living writing, traveling is frustrating when on a deadline. That is the primary reason I always travel by train if possible and the time loss isn’t too great. There’s room to write, and always wifi when traveling in Sweden. Airlines are a different matter. Cramped and no wifi isn’t ideal for working. Obviously I’m not alone in wanting to get some work done traveling, at least according to a Wi-Fi Alliance survey, conveniently wrapped up by GigaOM.

Still, of the 480 travelers surveyed by the Wakefield Research on behalf of the Wi-Fi Alliance, 55 percent were willing to move their flight times by one day in order to catch a plane with web access. Seventy-one percent would rather have Wi-Fi than a meal. For those who have not used Wi-Fi in-flight, 87 percent expected they would use it to tackle email, and 63 percent said they would to sign into other online productivity tools for work.

Personally, I would pay for wifi on a flight, and reschedule to make it happen. I would, however, demand leg space first so that I could actually fit the MacBook Air to get some work done.

Would you pay for in-flight wifi?

Digging through patent applications can bring up some interesting designs, such as this idea from IBM, filed last year and just now being talked about on blogs.

Realizing that there is still a degree of separation between mainstream home entertainment (TV) and mainstream blogging/social networking (Twitter/Facebook), IBM has come up with an idea to combine the two so that the everyday user can blog or tweet about something they’re watching on TV via a specially crafted remote control unit.

The geekier among you (me included) will probably roll their eyes and suggest that the separation needn’t matter — I can already tweet or blog from my laptop or iPhone while watching TV and it doesn’t matter to me that the devices are distinct. In fact, having tested out accessing basic web services from remote control units, I’d say it can be a pretty painful experience. read more