Earlier this week the news that Sam Sethi is suing TechCrunch hit, and as was expected Michael Arrington posted the legal documents, just as he has done before. The responses to the law firm’s letter to TechCrunch and Arrington have also been reposted, so if you want to dig into what has been said thus far, this is the only place I know of. The TechCrunch stance is obvious, of course:

Needless to say, we think these claims have no merit, otherwise we would not have written the posts in the first place, or would have retracted.

I did an email interview with Sethi, after he got in touch with me and wanted me to correct or retract the news story (which I didn’t do, obviously). I figured an interview would be the best way to get Sethi’s side of the story. read more

There is a page on wordpress.org that promotes a select few premium theme marketplaces, as we reported yesterday. The only criteria is that the themes need to be GPL and provide professional support a well as give a professional impression.

I caught up with Matt Mullenweg for some quick questions about this via email. This is what he had to say. read more

One of the initial writers on Duncan Riley’s news site The Inquisitr is leaving today. JR Raphael is a heavyweight in the tech sphere, with a contributing editor gig at PC World and a lot of other big workplaces under his belt. And now he’s leaving The Inquisitr to launch his own site, eSarcasm.

I caught up with both Duncan and JR for a brief interview about what sparked this move. Duncan had this to say:

JR Raphael was with you from day 1 with The Inquisitr. What did he bring to the table?

We were always fortunate to have JR’s services. I’ve never judged applicants by their resume alone, and always looked at writing style and eye for content, but in JR’s case I saw both. As well as writing for MSNBC, PC World, The Washington Post and Yahoo Tech, he’s also won two Emmy’s. Yeah, if that sounds like an insane resume to you, imagine how I felt. The resume should have frightened me off, but none the less he got the gig.

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If you’re involved in the WordPress community you have probably heard of Ian Stewart. He’s the fellow running the ThemeShaper blog, home to lots and lots of posts on WordPress and its future. Ian is also responsible for Thematic, a popular WordPress theme that he proposes to be used as a framework for other themes.

And now he’s also responsible for a WordPress link site called Wpazo, and that was what sparked this interview, that also touches on his view of premium themes as well as the GPL and the proposed WordPress admin redesign. read more

BlogTalkRadio is you chance to host your very own radio show, participate in, or just listen to one. The service’s been around for some time, and has attracted quite a few celebrities, both online and the more traditional kind. With that in mind, I got in touch with Community Manager Deborah Ng to hear what she had to say about BlogTalkRadio, podcasting, and other things. The interview was a treat to good to pass up. read more

If you’re into netbooks (you know, those small laptops that keeps popping up every 10 seconds and making the computer industry shake) you probably have Liliputing in your feed reader, and if you don’t, well you should! It is one of my daily reads and quite a success at that. Since the launch in April 2008, Liliputing has clocked over 6 million pageviews (not counting the forum) and 4 million unique visitors, all according to Sitemeter statistics. That’s really impressive, and something I didn’t know when I initiated this interview with Brad Linder.

Liliputing is truly a success story. read more

Do we really need yet another URL shortener service? I guess we do, if nothing else but to get even shorter URLs for our slightly compulsive microblog link pushing. The most recent one is to.ly, created by Jonas Lejon, who also did the Twitter backup service. So why did he venture into URL shortening? Aren’t the competition good enough?

I’ve got so many crazy ideas about what is possible to do with an URL shortening service and I needed to use one for my projects. Also, I couldn’t find any PHP code examples on any of the popular services.

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Paul “Scrivs” Scrivens is perhaps best known for being one of the triad behind 9rules. If you thought that running the popular blog networks was all that the 9rulers did, you either didn’t pay attention, or you just don’t care. Either way, the guy known as Scrivs has plans, and they include an ebook on women as well as establishing brands online.

The ebook is called The Guidelines Vol. 1 and is released under the Forever : Pimp brand. While that might or might not excite you, the pre-ordering concept probably will. In true Radiohead manner, you pick your price. Or almost at least, you can pre-order the book, which will cost $29.95 on May 19, for as little as $5, or as much as $50 (which includes a t-shirt). I like this price structure, and naturally I got in touch with Scrivs to talk a little bit about his plans. read more

As the G20 Summit convenes today in London, many bloggers across the world may be wondering what they can do to bring about change in the offline world through social media.

As a community outreach coordinator for BloggersUnite.org and a veteran of the Blog Action Day 2008 organizing team, I can personally attest to the colossal power that blogs and social media tools have to spread ideas and change human minds.

I asked BloggersUnite.org’s Richard Becker and Antony Berkman about their attempts to inspire social action by harnessing the power of the blogosphere. Here’s what they said.

How did Bloggers Unite start? Whose idea was it?

Antony Berkman, CEO, BloggersUnite.org: I noticed that Internet social networks from MySpace to Facebook were receiving a ton of media and Internet attention in 2007, but we had yet to see an online social community come together to raise funds for a good cause. So, I saw what would later become Bloggers Unite as an opportunity to empower and recognize bloggers who collectively focus their blogs for good rather than writing about Paris Hilton and Britney Spears all the time. read more

Buzznet, which operates the web’s largest community of pop culture web sites with an audience of 40 million unique monthly users, has changed its name to Buzz Media. The newly-named company will focus on the continued growth of its socially programmed web sites, including Celebuzz, Buzznet, the Superficial, SocialiteLife, What Would Tyler Durden Do, Stereogum, Idolator, Just Jared and Absolute Punk.

Buzz Media announced that it has secured a new round of financing totaling $12.5 million. Focus Ventures joined the latest round. Existing investors, including Anthem Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Redpoint Ventures and Sutter Hill Ventures, also participated in the round.

Buzz Media will use the funds for the continued growth of its portfolio of leading pop culture properties. More than 40 million people worldwide visit Buzz Media properties every month. The company’s pop culture focused portfolio includes leading online music and celebrity destinations.