Michael Arrington, founder of Techcrunch, is a known preacher of ethics and disclosure and has hit out regularly at the MSM. Techcrunch has often been criticized to only promote startups who pay to be featured but so far none of these claims checked out according to former Valleywag contributor Paul Boutin.

Last night Arrington reported the upcoming sale of MCHammer’s DanceJam. So far, nothing special, just another acquisition of an online website which was reported by Techcrunch. Another day and people are still dying of starvation and crime. Life goes on.

But there’s one small detail about this news: Arrington is investor in DanceJam. The investment was disclosed in the post, with a small pinch of *whine* as he announced that the company had not announced the sale to him nor did respond to his email request.

Arrington cashes in as early, angel, investor, but things become really interesting when looking at a long post about ethics and disclosure, written by Arrington more than half a year ago: The Rules Apply To Everyone. In the post the former lawyer went as far as saying that Dave Winer’s credibility was shot because he didn’t disclose a sponsored placement in a feed reader: read more

In what is probably his boldest move so far, Nick Denton, Gawker Media Guru, has opened the rights to publish on the Gawker media properties to everyone. Just like on any other blog, readers could send Gawker editors tips via a submission form or via email, but now tips send via the new submission form will be published immediately on the tag pages.

A small redesign across the board introduced the new submission form on all 9 Gawker blogs.

User submissions will have to include a tag, using the Hashtag format, popularised on Twitter. Submissions with tags will then be published on the blogs’ appropriate tag pages. The new move is reminiscent of the once so popular community portals with forums and Denton appropriately called the new asset ‘Gawker Open Forums’.
From the internal memo sent to editors: read more

The Lost Laowai blog has updated its list of blocked website in China. New additions include Friendfeed, Vimeo and URL shorteners Bit.ly and Post.ly, to just name a few. These sites and services join Twitter, YouTube, WordPress.com and TypePad blogs, Facebook, Tumblr, and a bunch of other sites where you can speak your mind. See the post for more on this.

If you find the recent FTC Guidelines on bloggers and other social media participants, unfair and restrictive, well you are not alone. Luckily for us bloggers in other parts of the world, we are not covered by this ruling. (Or are we?).

Anyway, the latest internet and online media player who opposed such FTC ruling was the Interactive Advertising Bureau. The IAB called the new FTC Guidelines as unfair and unconstitutional and they are asking the FTC to withdraw the said guidelines. read more

After spending a couple weeks in Apple’s purgatory, it looks like Newsie has received Apple’s blessing and is now available for the masses.

Created by Instant Voodoo Magic, Newsie seems to be created for bloggers interested in reading their news NOW rather than waiting for the rest of their feeds to sync first (which can be a pain if you are subscribed to over 300 plus feeds).

Priced at 399 pennies, Newsie’s introduction may seem a little pricey to RSS geeks (both newbie’s and veterans), so if you are wondering whether or not this app is worth it, here is the good, the bad and the buggy about this app. read more

Google PageRank, which has caused its fair share of excitement, disappointment, worry and FUD over the years, finally seems to be on its way out.

Although Google has been telling people not to treat its public PR scores as an all-important metric for some time, the statistic has now been dropped from the Webmaster Tools.

Personally, I didn’t notice (I haven’t observed PageRank for years) but SEO Round Table and others found a thread on the Webmaster Central forums in which Google employee Susan Moskwa says: read more

From spelling and grammar to on-the-go photo editing, the folks at Webware have put together a great post on online tools for more productive blogging.

My addition would be Google Voice. I love the fact I can call my own phone number and then receive a transcript (fairly accurate if I speak slowly) of the conversation. It’s easy for me to then clean it up and adapt it as a blog post. I can also embed the audio if I decide to go the audio blog route. and as an added bonus, I can use the audio as part of a podcast.

I also like leaving myself audio notes with ideas for future blog posts.

As a PC user, and a chronic copy-and-paster, I am also in love with ClipMate. This nifty add-on boosts the power of Windows’ clipboard functions. It’s strongest tool is the ability to hold thousands of ‘clips’ in reserve – rather than just one.

What Web tools are you using to be a more productive blogger?

Twitter and Facebook have seen a deluge of hoax messages about an abducted child, according to security firm Sophos.

You’ve probably lost count of the number of times a friend or colleague has sent you an email about a supposed virus that will destroy your computer, or some other urban legend that’s about five years old yet is still doing the rounds.

You may even have tried to educate people about checking out the facts before simply forwarding emails, with varying success rates.

Now, Twitter and Facebook are fuelling the fake AMBER alert about a missing child. read more

Twitter continues to find new mobile carriers to partner with across the globe. The latest addition is Bharti Airtel, which operates in India and reaches 110 million people. This from the Twitter blog post:

Our partnership with Bharti Airtel, the largest mobile operator in India, means a huge population of people can now send tweets at standard rates and receive tweets for free. Bharti Airtel is offering people in every city, every village, every remote taluk and even the smallest panchayat the opportunity to connect to Twitter and enjoy the open exchange of information with no added fees.

They then go on and talks about how Twitter is about people, which certainly have been proven true over the past year.

Did you apply for the ninth 9rules round? Did you win? Do you want to know who did? There’s a list on the official 9rules blog, as usual. This is the first round since Splashpress Media acquired 9rules (disclosure: they own this site too) by the way.