The Blog Herald

Did You Know You Are For Sale on Twitter?

Chris Garrett — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:31:42 +0000

Did you know that you are for sale on Twitter already?

Yes, according to BBC NEWS a certain company has already started selling us by the 1,000

Australian social media marketing company uSocial is offering a paid service that finds followers for users of the micro-blogging service.

Followers are available in blocks starting at $87 (£53) for 1,000. The biggest block uSocial is selling is 100,000 people.

Ok, perhaps I am exaggerating my claim just a little ;)

What the service offers to do is introduce Twitter users to the company. It is kind of like an individualized and paid for recommendation. Monetized Follow Friday?

Description on the company site

USocial estimated that each follower on Twitter was worth about 10 cents a month to a company that got them to sign up. The money would be made from adverts and sales on websites that followers click through to.

Obviously there are no guarantees that any of the folks who get sent recommendations will actually follow the person recommended so it can vary how long it takes to get to the 1,000 that you paid for. There are probably many bots getting these recommendations too. I wonder how many people block the account after getting one of these notifications?

What do you think? Let me know in the comments …

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Sam Sethi Talks About the TechCrunch Lawsuit

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:42:57 +0000

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.

The interview spanned a couple of days, and was made via email.

Why have you decided to sue TechCrunch?

To clear up the lies written by Mike Arrington. To seek costs for the printing of a stolen termsheet and to put the record straight.

The termsheet mentioned is a leaked document which TechCrunch published. The source is said to be an anonymous one.

What do you hope to gain from the process?

Vindication and reward for the editors of Blognation.

Would you like to comment on Arrington’s claim that you are or have been sued, and that you are or have been banned from acting as a director or manager in a company as a result of these lawsuits/complaints?

I placed a link to the disqualified directors directory on companies house here in the UK. That is enough to tell you that I am not disqualified. Equally Starr did try to sue me but this was overturned by the courts in UK.

So you are not involved in any other lawsuits at this time, nor are you in any way hindered to run a business legally?

Yes I am closing a case against Oliver Starr but nothing is preventing me from running a business legally.

The mentioned link is Companies House’s disqualified directors directory. A search for “Sethi” doesn’t return any hits, so he is definitely not in that directory right now. The Starr mentioned is Oliver Starr, who posted an open letter to Sethi back in December 2007, regarding Blognation. That’s a story in itself. When asked, Sethi didn’t want to share his side of the story at this time.

I continued to push the issue about Sethi being legally hindered to manage a company the day after. It does shed some more light on the matter.

So you are not involved in any other lawsuits at this time, nor are you in any way hindered to run a business legally?

I answered this last night. I was invovled in a previous business where my business partner stolen monies and put it in his personal bank account. I had to pay back that money in order that I was no associated with the issue and resigned from the company. My partner was however banned as a director which is what Arrington is hinting at and trying to associate with me.

Sethi didn’t want to add anything more than this, and referred to the ongoing lawsuit of course, which is understandable. I did, however, comment on the fact that he’s in the UK and is trying to sue an American company on US servers.

There is TC UK/europe and that is up to a court although right now TC are hiding behind that issue.

I’m not so sure about that, actually. Unless there is an actual TechCrunch company or person responsible in the UK, how will Sethi get to them? Then again, I’m not a lawyer so I wouldn’t know.

So there you have it, Sethi’s take on the lawsuit, why he filed it, and his response to Arrington’s post on CrunchNotes. When asked to comment, Arrington referred to his post and the law firm’s response to the lawsuit within.

Sethi’s answers in this interview does clear up a few things, but until everything surrounding Blognation is on the table, it is hard to know what really happened and who did what. One thing’s for sure though, the voices speaking up against Sethi in this endeavor are numerous, and it is in everyone’s interest that the truth will be unfolded. Except anyone not playing by the rules, of course, but let’s hope there is as little of that in this affair as possible.

Sadly, I doubt this lawsuit is the end of it, nor will it tell all.

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The Inquisitr Hires Sport Blogger, Syndicates Celeb Content

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 11:54:36 +0000

Duncan Riley has announced the addition of Paul Montgomery as the in-house sports writer on The Inquisitr. Montgomery is a journalist by trade, and with the addition the site now features a dedicated sports category.

Riley also announced a syndication deal with BANG Showbiz, which means that The Inquisitr can run up to ten stories from their celebrity content stock, as an addition to the regular celebrity coverage. Finally, Riley also announced a deal with GumGum for celebrity photography. It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out, especially the syndication deal.

As for traffic, Riley reports that pageviews are down in June, 2.7 million to 2.55. He calls it a comfortable level.

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Quick Interview: Matt Mullenweg on the Commercial GPL Themes

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 11:34:21 +0000

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.

Why did the new page get created?

To promote people doing the right thing.

Matt also tells me that there are no plans yet on how to develop this page, nor are there any plans for hosting commercial GPL themes in the WordPress directory. The latter would be great since it would allow updates through the admin interface for the users.

What about commercial plugins, any chance of them getting the same treatment?

Commercial plugins are already seamlessly integrated with the plugin directory.

Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions, Matt.

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Bing to index prominent Twitter users as Microsoft develops real-time search

Andy Merrett — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 08:16:54 +0000

While Google may be looking into making Twitter searchable, Microsoft has already started implementing its own real-time search into Bing.

At present it’s a fairly limited offering, indexing “some of the more prominent and prolific Twitterers from a variety of spheres”.

It seems that you can only search for the latest tweets from certain people who have been indexed, using syntax such as “[name] Twitter” or “[name] Tweets” or “@[name]”.

As a concept, it’s a good start though I’m not interested in using any search engine to find anyone’s latest tweets — I use Twitter or one of its desktop clients for that.

What I’d like to see is Twitter results integrated into regular searches.

Perhaps if I search for information on someone who has a Twitter account, it could return their latest tweets in a results pane alongside web pages, images, video etc.

If I search for information on a topic, it could tell me who the prominent people to follow on Twitter are and who most recently tweeted on that topic.

I can do this from Twitter’s own search page, but I think the job of a good search engine is the aggregation and filtering of information from a variety of sources.

I don’t want another way to search Twitter. I want a way to integrate Twitter into the wider web.

I’m sure it’s coming, but who’ll get there first? Even if it’s Bing, current market share dictates that only when Google jumps on board will Twitter search and integration become really big news.

Official Bing blog

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Glam UK to roll out Tinker microblogging aggregation service

Andy Merrett — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:16:49 +0000

Web network Glam Media is a fan of microblogging, it seems. Following the set up and monetization of a moderated Oscars Twitter feed this year, the company has announced that it’s to roll out the Tinker.com conversation aggregator in the UK over the next few months.

Tinker.com was launched in the US last month and will trial in the UK before being fully implemented and funded by advertising.

Conversations being held across Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed are currently aggregated by the service.

Advertising will include the ability for brands to sponsor certain words, plus embedded widgets on the Tinker interface.

Interesting that third parties are finding ways of monetizing this content while Twitter itself struggles.

(Via MediaWeek)

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Gawker Writer Recruited by CBS

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:10:45 +0000

CBS Interactive has recruited blogger Richard Lawson from Gawker, according to Silicon Alley Insider who also has a quote from Lawson:

I’ll basically be doing what I do now, just probably fewer posts a day plus some actual reviews and stuff. I’m excited/nervous/gassy. All that.

Richard Lawson is one of the key entertainment writers on Gawker, and apparently averaged 2.4 million pageviews per month which is top of the bill according to the SAI story. In other words, a blow to the Gawker Media network, not only by the loss of a writer but also in pure money since it is unlikely that his replacement will reach the same levels quickly.

Lawson will write for CBS Interactive’s TV.com.

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Commercial GPL Themes Gets Pimped on WordPress.org

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:20:14 +0000

The hub of all things WordPress, as in the kind you install on your own, is wordpress.org. There’s both a plugin and a theme directory there, and the latter has now gotten some commercial (aka premium) themes treatment. However, the new page merely lists some resellers of commercial GPL themes, so this is not the marketplace a lot of people has been waiting for.

Some of them you may pay for access, some of them are membership sites, some may give you the theme for zero-cost and just charge for support. What they all have in common is people behind them who support open source, WordPress, and its GPL license.

If you’re selling GPL themes for WordPress you can get listed, just scroll down to the bottom of the page. Personally, I think the themes should be hosted on wordpress.org so that they got automatic updates and so on, but that’s a whole other story. I do hope this is just the first step of many in this area, but we’ll see. An official blog post has yet to outline this addition, which might or might not have been up for some time, I really can’t tell.

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Gdgt Launches, Goes Down (But Comes Right Back Up)

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:16:20 +0000

The gadget startup gdgt, with Peter Rojas and Ryan Block at the helm, has launched. It is something of a gadget-focused community, mixing in traditional editorial content and reviews, with user generated content and a wiki-like gadget database. That wiki is the killer app, is my bet, although gdgt could do just as well with just its content. After all, they clocked in 4.7 million pageviews with their liveblog from WWDC, pre launch. The power of Rojas and Block is not to underestimated.

And gdgt might very well be an interesting site, surely one to follow. It is not like the predecessors, Engadget or Gizmodo, but more of a social beast, which is interesting.

Block has this to say in the announcement post:

While the core concepts that drive the site — gadgets and community — will always stay the same, what we’re most excited about is the fact that we can use gdgt as the foundation for building tons of new features and tools for the gadget world. Stuff like the gadget finder — which lets you search for devices based on specs (finally!) — is only the start. We’re already working like crazy thinking up lots of new stuff to introduce over the coming months.

Having a hard time to grasping the concept? Veronica Belmont explains in a promo video:

So “G-D-G-T” is it? “Gadget” is cooler.

Anyway, the launch has gotten some coverage already, and maybe that’s why the site went down for “upgrades” for a little while. Update: Traffic right now is a bit bumpy still…

We’ll most likely return to this one later one, with more coverage. For now, check it out, and tell me: Will gdgt be a serious competitor to Engadget and Gizmodo?

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Twitter: Using Tweet is OK, Twitter Might Not Be

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:55:25 +0000

Twitter has applied to trademark the word “Tweet” says the official blog. They think it is an obvious attachment to the Twitter brand, but say they have no intentions of going after users of the word.

We have applied to trademark Tweet because it is clearly attached to Twitter from a brand perspective but we have no intention of “going after” the wonderful applications and services that use the word in their name when associated with Twitter. In fact, we encourage the use of the word Tweet. However, if we come across a confusing or damaging project, the recourse to act responsibly to protect both users and our brand is important.

That’s good, I think. It is also good that they come clean and say that they are “a bit more wary” about the use of Twitter in projects. So cancel that Twitter Herald project and find another name, you might get in trouble otherwise.

In all seriousness, any service or product that wants people to build things around it need to be crystal clear about these things. It is not only completely unnecessary to have to send a Cease and Desist to enthusiasts, it is also really poor PR. Twitter knows that, apparently, but they should probably make sure those promised guidelines and such get rolled out soon.

The Twitter blog post was sparked by a blog post by Robin Wauters on TechCrunch, who got to read an email conversation between a Twitter API team member and a third-party developer.

So maybe we should all poke Twitter a bit more so that they can come clean with some rules about their trademarks already?

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Monitor Your Blog with Pingdom for Free

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:24:05 +0000

Pingdom is a widely used service that monitors uptime and notifies you whenever a site goes down, as well as gives you the data you need to whine at your webhost’s 99.99% uptime guarantees whenever they fail to meet their promise. Up until now, it has been a paid service, but now you can get an account for free.

Pingdom Free has all the features of our paid account types. The only limitation is that you can only monitor one website or server, but that should be enough for a lot of bloggers and hobbyist webmasters out there.

You also get 20 SMS alerts for free as well, which is nice. Naturally, you can upgrade your account to monitor more sites and get more SMS alerts (email is free) and so on whenever you like. Which of course is the whole idea.

Give it a go, free is the best price ever and I can, as a user, honestly say that Pingdom is great. Particularly when you don’t hear from them…!

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Twitter Following Interface Changes

Chris Garrett — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:09:27 +0000

Twitter has added a couple of neat features to your Following List interface. Now you can see the most recent tweets, a straight list as before, and more with a contextual menu to the side.

Changing the list appearance is performed through the button up in the top left of your Following list.

After you hit the expanded version you will now see more detail, including the person’s last tweet.

For each person there is a cog-icon button. This is a contextual menu that allows you to unfollow, block, direct message or @mention the person in your tweet.

One thing I think the Twitter folks have missed is a visual indication for if this person follows you back or not. You can look in the menu to see if you are allowed to direct message them, but it would be nice to be able to see this in the skimmable list.

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Flickr Adds Twitter Support: Get Started in 2 Minutes

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:17:58 +0000

Flickr has finally added support for Twitter, which means that you can send uploaded photos to Twitter using the Blog This link in the top right of the photo page on Flickr, or you can email photos directly to your Twitter stream. The URL gets shortened with the flic.kr URL shortening service, so you’ll see exactly what you’ll click on, and it certainly seems to work well enough.

Setting it up

To start using Flickr2Twitter you need to add and then authorize your Twitter account on Flickr and Twitter respectively. Visit the add a blog page (you need to be logged into Flickr) and choose Twitter from the list. Click the Go to Twitter to Authorize button, which will send you to Twitter, forcing you to login if you’re not already, and then asks you to authorize the application. Do that, and you’ll get sent back.

On the result page, after the Twitter authorization, you’ll find your email address. Sending photos to this address will not only post them to Twitter, it’ll also add them to your Flickr account, which makes it very useful with a mobile phone.

You can also send photos on Flickr directly to your Twitter account using the Share This button.

Simple and smart, this is Twitpic for Flickr users.

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Sam Sethi Sues TechCrunch

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:53:01 +0000

Sam Sethi, the former TechCrunch writer, BlogNation owner, and Twitblogs founder, has filed a lawsuit against TechCrunch. For what, you might wonder? Nothing less than “a series of libelous postings” according to the lawsuit letter exchange reposted on Arrington’s CrunchNotes blog. There are some juicy details about Sethi there too, including claims that he’s being sued and is or was barred from being a director or manager for a company. I’ll not recount that though, since Arrington obviously is a party in this mess.

I’ll say this though, I love the openness of which Arrington treats these things. I know I’d think twice before publishing something from a law firm with this in the heading:

Letter Before Action
Private & Confidential (Not For Publication)

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The Friendfeed War Continues: Amigo Updates App, Challenges Buddyfeed For Domination (iPhone)

Darnell Clayton — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 03:38:40 +0000

Despite getting rave reviews from bloggers like Scoble and TechCrunch, there are still very few iPhone apps available for Friendfeed. While six iPhone apps have appeared for Friendfeed, only half of them seem to have any active development upon them (at least where the quality is worth the price).

While Buddyfeed seems to have dominated the Friendfeed market (especially with the roll out of Buddyfeed 2.0), it looks as if they may have a new challenger on their hands by the name of Amigo.

Developed by David J. Hinson (of Summer Systems Management), Amigo reminds me of an app in eternal Fiesta, mainly because of its vibrant colors that do not leave one feeling totally relaxed. Priced at $2.99, Amigo costs about the same as Buddyfeed, although the app does have a few features lacking when compared against is main rival.

The Good

Even though both apps have many similar features (too many to list here), the first thing I loved about Amigo was (drum roll please) landscape mode!

While typing away in portrait mode can be fun with one hand, it can become very annoying when you need to post something quickly with two fat basketball thumbs (especially when they get into each others way!).

You can even read your friends collective activities in landscape mode as well, which is really helpful if one of them enjoys posting large images.

Another item I enjoyed was the ability to not only look upon a person’s Friendfeed profile, but individually check out their blog, Facebook account or tweet stream within the app (apart from the Friendfeed stream).

This is extremely helpful if you ever discover someone interesting and you want to subscribe to their blog/twitter account locally, instead of receiving everything via Friendfeed.

Last but not least, I enjoyed how Amigo uses stripes throughout the stream to make it easier to differentiate between posts, which makes it easier to scroll through what your friends have posted throughout the day.

The Bad

Although Amigo does have some great features that I have been seeking in a Friendfeed app for quite some time, there were a few items that I felt were lacking when compared to its main rival, Buddyfeed.

The first feature was the menu bar at the bottom of the screen. Even though Amigo does present a user with the most widely used options, the app does not give users the freedom to select which buttons should appear on the bar (as some users may be more interested in rooms than the public Friendfeed stream).

While I am glad that the latest update to Amigo finally supports uploading images to Friendfeed, they only limit you to one image per post, while two of its rivals (Buddyfeed and Motherfeed) allow more.

Last but not least the search feature on Amigo did not seem to be as advanced as Buddyfeed’s, the latter which allows for one to search for items by their friends, themselves or the entire Friendfeed universe.

Conclusion

Although Amigo is a strong rival to Buddyfeed, it may still need to add some extra features in order to dethrone the current champ from its throne.

While power users would probably be wise to go with Buddyfeed (mainly for its host of features), those seeking simplicity may enjoy Amigo—especially those with basketball fingers (like me).

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One lucky blogger will get to write from Antarctica

Andy Merrett — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:08:35 +0000

Antarctica: Another natural wonder is about to be blogged.

Following on from the lucky Brit who gets to blog about the Great Barrier Reef comes a new dream blogging job.

Quark Expeditions will be sending one couple on a $20,000 cruise to Antarctica in February next year, where they’ll blog about the experience for all to read.

There are currently 191 bloggers registered, and there’s still time to join in.

Alternatively, you can vote for the person you’d most like to send. Visitors only get one vote but can change it as many times as they like during the course of the competition, which closes on September 30. Over 5,000 votes have already been cast.

I wonder where bloggers will be sent next?

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6 Things I Learned from WordCamp Dallas

Jonathan Bailey — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:36:52 +0000

WordCamp 2009 is officially in the books. With two and a half days of some of the best community, speakers and information, it was an incredible event. Over the course of the weekend, I saw some of the best blogging-related presentations, met many of the most wonderful people in the blogging world and observed some of the worst bowling ever witnessed by man (though most of that was my own).

The event was a smashing success with over 300 attendees. Organized by John Pozadzides and sponsored prominently by his company, Woopra, it was, according to those in attendance, the second-largest WordCamp in the world.

But while the best part of these WordCamps is always the community and getting to meet all of the people who share your passion, there were also a slew of great speakers, 16 in total, plus a panel discussion. Even for a veteran blogger, there was a great deal to learn.

So, as I try to digest and take in everything I saw and learned at WordCamp Dallas, a more complete recap is forthcoming on my site, here are five things I’m holding onto dearly as WordCamp Dallas closes up for the year (in no particular order).

6. Using Social Media

Giovanni Gallucci gave a very passionate and interesting talk about ways to use social media to help your site gain traction both with readers and with the search engines. Though I may not have agreed with all of his “blue hat” tactics (tactics that combine black hat and white hat elements) I definitely learned a great deal about how you can use your accounts on other sites to promote your main offering and how to target your content to the keywords that are most valuable to your readers.

It was an incredibly informative talk that has me thinking of ways to alter my site and my presence elsewhere.

5. WordPress Custom Fields

Randy Hoyt gave an incredible talk about using WordPress’ custom fields in your blog posts. As the user of a magazine-style template for my main site, I use these custom fields every day but never really thought about all of the things that they could do.

Hoyt’s talk got me really thinking about new ways I can use custom fields to control the layout of my site including, possibly, the addition of subheads, a better review system and perhaps most importantly, use custom fields to help me organize the front page of my site so I do not have to use my categories.

Hoyt also talked a great deal about plugins that can help manage these custom fields and I will probably be very busy over the next week playing with them.

4. Categories and Tags

Speaking of categories and tags. Lorelle VanFossen gave a great Star-Trek themed talk about the proper use of categories and tags on your site. Like most bloggers, I didn’t have much of a plan when I started categorizing and then tagging posts and it shows.

Lorelle’s talk showed everyone how to cut through that clutter and now that, thanks to Randy Hoyt’s talk, I should be free of the category ball and chain as a site layout tool, I should be able to at least completely redo my categories to provide much better organization, usability and SEO to the site, both for the search engines and my visitors.

I can’t wait.

3. Design and Layout

In one of the more entertaining talks, Liz Strauss “ripped apart” John Pozadzides’ blog layout while he worked in his admin panel to try and fix the layout more to her (and the audience’s) liking.

But as entertaining as the spectacle was, it came with it several bits of advice and ideas as only Liz can provide them including remembering why you are blogging and putting that information front and center. This, in turn, got me to take a new look at my blog layout and, as a result, I’m almost certainly going to be making some changes.

Liz Strauss is simply one of those people that, when you think you’ve almost learned everything she has to offer, you realize you’ve barely scratched the surface.

2. WordPress as a CMS

WordPress is widely known as a blogging platform but it really is much more powerful than that. Through both native functionality and some plugins, you can use WordPress as a content management system, in short, using WordPress to manage a non-blog Web site or a very complicated site where a blog is just a part of the picture.

This was the thrust of Scott Clark’s talk (and musical number) as he discussed both the general usefulness of WordPress and highlighted several plugins that expand this capability, including Pods, one he helped create.

Combined with Randy Hoyt’s talk about custom fields, the power and flexibility of WordPress really began to click. Even better though, his talk is already available on Vimeo (the others will soon be available on WordPress.tv)

1. Multimedia, Multimedia, Multimedia

It was the theme of WordCamp Dallas in many ways. Dave Moyer, David Curlee and Cali Lewis all gave talks that dealt with, in some way, adding multimedia to your blog and the importance thereof.

Clearly this is a big part of the future direction of blogging and it is going to be important for all bloggers to at least try their hand at multimedia content from time to time. Now is the time to begin learning the technology involved in creating podcasts and videos as well as to begin honing those skills. Also, As David Curlee pointed out, the technology is getting much cheaper and much easier to use.

Bottom Line

On top of these presentations, there were many other great speakers including DB Ferguson, who discussed the steps to becoming an authority blogger, Matthew “Spamboy” McGarity talked about how to install WordPress on your home computer for testing purposes and Mark “Rizzin” Hopkins (who was livestreaming last year’s event for Mashable) gave a talk about moving beyond Adsense on your blog to earn more money (very useful for those who run ads on their site).

I was also speaking at the event, in a talk dealing with finding free and legal content for your blog. Douglas Hanna, who works for Automattic, gave a talk about the WordPress showcase and, most important of all Matt Mullenweg, the founder and CEO of Automattic was there to talk about the state of WordPress.

All in all, there was an incredible amount to learn and glean from this even and this post barely scratches the surface of what all went down. It was an incredible weekend in Dallas and I am already looking forward to Wordcamp in 2010.

If you weren’t able to attend live or catch the livestream on GeekBrief.tv, don’t worry, the videos from the presentations will be posted on WordPress.tv shortly. So stay tuned.

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Pirate Bay SOLD, goes the social media route

Jayvee Fernandez — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:07:40 +0000

News as it is, the blogosphere has reported the sale of Pirate Bay, controversial for being a haven for multimedia torrents shared by the world. In a blog post written today, the founders expressed how thoughts about bringing new people into the “organization” was something they’d been hoping to do for some time. More importantly, they are pretty much aware of the ramifications of going into this partnership:

If the new owners will screw around with the site, nobody will keep using it. That’s the biggest insurance one can have that the site will be run in the way that we all want to. And – you can now not only share files but shares with people. Everybody can indeed be the owner of The Pirate Bay now. That’s awesome and will take the heat of us.

The old crew is still around in different ways. We will also not stop being active in the politics of the internets – quite the opposite. Now we’re fueling up for going into the next gear. TPB will have economical muscles to let people evolve it. It will team up with great technicians to evolve the protocols. And we, the people interested in more than just technology, will have the time to focus on that. It’s win-win-win.

From the post, it seems that the direction of The Pirate Bay is that of the social media route, allowing Internet vagabonds the luxury of removing their cowls and becoming friends with fellow media sharers around the world. This brings to mind a study reported by Ars Technica, claiming pirates as the biggest legal digital media spenders.

[Accents are c/o BlogHerald]

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Lucozade Energy Challenge picks James Whatley as Social Media Reporter

Andy Merrett — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:23:25 +0000

Last month I wrote about Lucozade Energy’s search for a creative journalist to report on various extreme challenges taking place this summer.

The results are in, and James Whatley is the lucky man who’ll be jetting off to Namibia on Saturday.

James will need to film, photograph, tweet and blog every aspect of each trip, including capturing footage and interviewing the participants.

He’ll be:

Sandboarding in Namibia
Cattle ranching in Wyoming
White water rafting in Zambia
Yacht racing in the Caribbean
Glacier climbing in the Alps

There are several ways to keep tabs on the adventure. Here’s the official web site and there’s a Facebook fan page too.

You can also read about James’s experience and see what he had to do to get picked.

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Reviewing the Reviewers: The Blog is Alive and Kicking

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 07:45:39 +0000

The New Yorker’s Malcolm Gladwell reviewed Chris Anderson’s most recent book, Free!, and it is an interesting read (with commentary across the web). Just like Anderson’s response on his own blog.

Welcome to the era of blogs, where reviews can be applauded, questioned, and picked apart not only by the masses (aka the readers), but also by the publishers and producers.

It used to be a straight forward thing, reviewing a product. Not anymore, because when anyone can publish a commentary on their own ground (aka the blog), it also means that reviewers suddenly find themselves being constantly reviewed.

We’ve all seen them, the reviews that are out there, dead wrong, downright crappy. Sometimes it is true, and sometimes it is our point of view that just clashes with the reviewer. Either way, there used to be a time when the only means of expressing our thoughts on a review was to send a letter to the newspaper or magazine.

And wait for a response or publication that never came.

Not so anymore. Today, we launch a blog and write what we think. Established authors understanding the means of today already blog and are more or less active in social media, if nothing else but so that they can use it as a means should they come under attack.

OK, maybe we’re not there just yet, but web-savvy authors certainly have the option to respond to criticism thanks to blogging and the ease of online publishing. And when it comes to Chris Anderson and his response, I think it is a sign of things to come.

The blog is alive and kicking, if nothing else but because it is hard to pick critics and arguments to pieces in 140 characters or less.

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Become a Blogger course reopens for five days only

Andy Merrett — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 07:08:21 +0000

Yaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick’s premium “Become a Blogger” course has reopened to new signups for five days only (less at time of writing).

When the course launched, it was selling at $77 per month and sold out very quickly.

Now the monthly price has been reduced to $47 per month, which you pay for the six months course duration.

That’s still beyond the reach of many new bloggers, at whom this course is aimed. As with many of these courses, it comes down to the amount of time and money you have to invest in your blogging. It is possible to find a lot of free resources online (Blogging Pro, Tubetorial, Pro-Blogging and Performancing to name just four of ours) but there’s no doubt that you can benefit from the wisdom of successful probloggers like Yaro and Gideon if you’re willing to invest not only the cash but the time.

Course registration closes at on 11:59pm (EST) on Friday 3rd July.

(By the way, the above course link is not an affiliate link.)

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Share Your Michael Jackson Memories

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 06:27:27 +0000

The official Michael Jackson website invites its visitors to share their MJ memories in classic blog comment form. As of writing there are 354 044 memories “from Michael Jackson fans worldwide”, and growing naturally. Meanwhile, the Facebook page now clocks in 2 414 413 fans. On June 26, the same page had 880 991 fans…

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Movable Type Monday: Melody, Installation, and Edit Links

Billy Mabray — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:00:47 +0000

Happy Monday, folks! The big news this week is the launch of Melody, an open source fork of Movable Type. Several long-time MT developers are contributing to the project, and a 1.0 release is expected this year.

It’s unclear at this point how this project will differ from the existing open source version of MT. Certainly, a different leadership is going to have different priorities. The Melody folks seem to be bending over backward to show this is not a break from MT, but just a separate development branch. And, similarly, Six Apart has welcomed the new project. So I doubt we’ll see any of the commercial MT features rewritten as open source modules, at least in the near term. It’s more likely we’ll see features that are useful to independent developers (and, consequently, small to medium size businesses) instead of the enterprise-level development that seems to be 6A’s focus.

A couple of other items this week. First, Mike T. explains how to install MT over SSH. This is my preferred way to do an install/upgrade, since it eliminates a lot of the permissions issues you can run into with FTP.

Finally, Beau Smith shows us how to add edit links to entries and pages. Combined with a bit of PHP to check for a cookie, this would be an easy way for logged in users to quickly edit posts.

What have you done with MT lately? Let us know in the comments.

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Steve Rubel Quits Blogging

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:09:24 +0000

Notable blogger Steve Rubel is quitting blogging, and is all about the lifestreaming now. He’s apparently blown away by Posterous, but looking at his new site it is all very much a blog to me. Then again the platform he has chosen is a lot less tightened than his old blog (being Micro Persuasion, still online), so I while I think he’s just playing with words here, this probably sums it up better than anything else:

A blog is more structured. It’s posts. This is freestyle.

Related: Louis Gray’s post on blogging still being the foundation to build upon.

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Back to Basics: 4 Forehead-Slapping Blog Promotion Methods

Easton Ellsworth — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 17:55:18 +0000

Ever feel frustrated by the difficulty of promoting your blog and getting more people to discover and enjoy it?

Well, here are four of the simplest – but, wouldn’t you know it, also hardest – ways to promote your blog. See if one or more of these makes you slap your forehead and say, “Snap! I totally forgot about that.”

And then of course all you’ve got to do is do something about it. :)

In increasing order of forehead slappiness:

4. Pick up the phone. You’ve got one of those nearby, don’t you? Hey, you’ve probably got one in your pocket right now. Dial somebody’s number, wait till they answer, and say, “Hey, what’s up? Have you checked out my blog? It’s really cool, you might like it.” Embellish as desired. But seriously, nothing beats direct mouth-to-ear communication for spreading the word about a blog.

3. Put some pants on. And get out the door and go somewhere where you can apply the “hey, I can talk to people” concept from #4 above in a physical, offline setting. Repeat after me: “I need to tell that guy on the street corner with the sweet trumpet skills about my blog.” That, or the group of suits at your next business conference.

2. Blog about … your blog. This one is like, “ouch.” So easy to do, and yet so many bloggers fail to do it. For heaven’s sake, just put out a blog post every now and then (but not much more often than that) saying hi to your readers and letting them know what’s up. What you’ve been working on writing or recording or assembling for them, what that shiny new widget bling in the sidebar means to them, why you think they ought to subscribe to your blog updates by email or RSS, and especially, why they should pretty please (with sugar on top) tell their friends about your blog.

1. Be more valuable. Maybe — just maybe — your blog is tough to promote because it’s not really all that special. Don’t get me wrong – you as an individual are plenty special. But what do people really think when they see your blog and partake of its content? Does it jar them awake at 3 AM because they can’t shake the sweet awesomeness? Or does it fade within a tenth of a second into the rest of the ginormous ocean of constantly churning content in their brains? When was the last time you sat and just meditated for a few minutes on what you could do to make your blog more irresistible, more addictive, more magical, more incredible – in short, more promotable?

Hope these get your bloggity brain going. Any other forehead-slapping ideas on how to get your blog out there more prominently?

image credit: Russell D Egan

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Blogging in the Classroom

Andrew G.R. — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:14:14 +0000

Today marks the final day of school here in New York. That means as you read this, thousands of kids, ages 5 – 17, are jumping for joy.

As you would image, computers – and blogs – have crept their way into the classroom. One of the cooler sites is 21Classes. Designed to get your “classroom” blogging, the publishing platform enables teachers, with any level of technology know-how, to set up a portal for their classes.

Each student gets their own blog, a personal space where they can freely express themselves while fostering greater communication/interaction amongst other kids.

There is a central console where the teacher can create accounts as well as a master homepage for the class.

Add in edit/publish features, the ability to upload images/multi-media, and fully customizable templates (via CSS), and you’ll impress your principal!

A free account will handle up to 10 students. But for more robust features, including 100 students, a personalized domain, the ability to upload HTML and adjust security settings, you can expect to pay around $9 a month.

The only question remaining…how young is too young to blog?

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Fixing the Twitter Reply Black Hole

Chris Garrett — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:51:26 +0000

Twitter is more than just status updates

It seems from talking to lots of people there is still some considerable confusion around how Twitter @replies work. The problem is that @replies are a vital part of Twitter, they make it more about discussion than “status updates”.

The Twitter folks have never had a comfortable relationship with using Twitter for discussion. In fact @Replies took a while to come to the service, they were a community invention, then third party tools included buttons and tools to make it easier, and finally Twitter gave in to pressure and added support.

As you can see at the Twitter Blog even back last year they were worried about replies appearing in public streams …

We’re trying to avoid the situation of you hearing someone answer a question when you didn’t hear the question (for instance). Also, you don’t have to hear answers to the question from people you don’t want to hear from. (If you’re not following them, you won’t see their answer.)

They made it so you had to opt-in to all replies. In the end, they took away this ability altogether.

Twitter’s logic is quite compelling, until you realize that some people, me included, like to see discussion with people I am not following! It was a key way that I found new people to follow. If someone I was watching sent an interesting response to someone I did not know, I would hit the “in reply to” link in TweetDeck to get context. This was a key way I found new people to follow, and I miss it.

There is a workaround, but not for followers, it has to be initiated by the Tweeter. Twitter shows any tweet that does not start with @ to all of your followers. So if you want your reply to be seen by the recipient and everyone else, start with a character other than @. For example:

Yes @chrisgarrett Twitter SHOULD fix their reply system

Do you agree that Twitter made a mistake with this change or do you prefer to only see replies to people you are already following? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

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Mashable Launches Branded TweetDeck

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:02:05 +0000

Mashable has announced the launch of MashDeck, a strangely familiar looking Twitter app using Adobe Air. You recognize it because it is basically TweetDeck, the popular Twitter app, rebranded for Mashable, which basically means some minor design tweaks (for the worse if you ask me), and a default Mashable search column. TweetDeck previously did a Blink-182 branded version, so maybe ReadWriteWeb is onto something here: Is this the business model?

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The Death of Michael Jackson: New Media Broke the Story, Old Media OK’d It

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:38:37 +0000

The death of pop icon Michael Jackson is dominating the web right now. TMZ broke the story, went down under the strain, but is back up now. Meanwhile, various sites and tweets talk about Twitter getting some fail whales and massive traffic spikes, which isn’t all that surprising after all. The King of Pop has been in the limelight for so long, it is just huge. At a time, the trending topics on Twitter was more or less exclusively dominated by his death, with people forgetting all about Iran for a little while at least.

People rush to Jackson’s Facebook page, currently sporting 880 991 fans, but expect that number to grow tremendously. Facebook overall is performing sluggishly now, possibly due to the artist’s death. It will be interesting to follow up on traffic spikes and surges later on. Meanwhile, I’m surprised to see that michaeljackson.com is still up and working, but then again it it’s just a simple HTML page with a Sony Music statement.

TMZ might have broken the story, and Twitter is full of discussion, anger, salutations, grief, and slandering, but old media managed to prevail anyway, despite being late to the show. The following quote is from Eat Sleep Publish, which pretty much sums up the media landscape for the masses right now:

Michael Jackson wasn’t, as far as I could tell, widely considered dead until the LA Times independently reported that doctors had pronounced him dead.

It’s not true until I say it’s true. That’s power.

True, for now at least. That’s something to think about.

But that’s for another day. Let’s remember the King of Pop by listening to his music, or at least by keeping it classy (I’m looking at you, Perez Hilton). The circus that was his life wasn’t about all the media nonsense, and it is a shame that Jackson wasn’t able to wrap up his career with the 50 (!) sold out shows in London.

1958-2009. Rest in peace Michael Jackson.

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Darren Rowse Launches Personal Blog

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:28:24 +0000

When Darren Rowse does something, people tend to listen. Just recently he launched the @ProBloggerDeals Twitter account, as a spinoff to ProBlogger.net which he is most famous for. He details these two new products in a post on ProBlogger.net, but you can just as well read the DarrenRowse.com launch post, and check it out for yourself.

I’m not exactly sure what I’ll blog about or how often I’ll post – but whatever it ends up being it’ll be more of a glimpse into what I’m thinking and feeling passionate.

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Chris Anderson on the Wikipedia Controversy

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:20:18 +0000

Controversy? Yes, I think we should call it that since it certainly has made the news. In fact, I read about how Chris Anderson copies Wikipedia in my morning paper. So there you go.

If you’ve been following this story, you might be interested in reading Anderson’s response, in a blog post. Nothing new really, he was open about it from the start, but he does explain how this could happen.

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BuddyPress Updated to 1.0.2

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:37:10 +0000

The community plugin for WordPress MU, BuddyPress, has been updated to 1.0.2. This isn’t a crucial update, but it does fix some bugs, says Andy Peatling, so you should hit that update button from within the admin interface. Personally, I’m happy to learn that BuddyPress 1.1 and onwards will manage language files better, since you need to re-upload those after every update. Very good.

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Reuters editor: Olympics media rules are outdated

Andy Merrett — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:23:05 +0000

The International Olympic Committee’s reluctant acceptance of bloggers and social media’s participation in sharing information from the Olympic Games has been challenged by Reuters’ editor-in chief David Schlesinger.

Speaking to the International Olympics Committee Press Commission, he said that it was now not possible to control how established and new media disseminated information.

“The old means of control don’t work. The old categories don’t work. The old ways of thinking don’t work. We need to come to terms with that,” he said.

“Fundamentally, the old media won’t control news dissemination in the future. And organisations can’t control access using old forms of accreditation any more.”

The IOC does not regard blogging as a form of journalism, but rather as a “legitimate form of personal expression”, and although bloggers are tolerated, Schlesinger was asked by the IOC to remove one of his own blog posts because it included a photo and he was only accredited to use text.

He suggested that by the 2012 London Olympics, citizen reporting would eclipse traditional for getting news out immediately it happened: “”Twitterers sitting in the stadium banging out the result in a Tweet from their mobile phone”.

He said that officials needed to work with the tech and publishing-savvy public, not against them. “Could you imagine gun-toting guards trying to confiscate every phone off every spectator? That would become the story of the Games and it would ultimately fail.”

We’ve seen how the reporting of news and collation of eyewitness accounts has changed dramatically over the past few years — you only have to look at Iranian protesters’ use of Twitter to see that. Trying to control how the public share information is near-impossible, and the IOC is just one organisation that needs to work out how it can avoid alienating an increasingly powerful force… US.

(Via Press Gazette)

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UK retailer Habitat spams Twitter hashtags, apologises

Andy Merrett — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:42:07 +0000

Well-known high street furniture store Habitat has issued an apology (via its PR company, via a social media blog) for its misuse of popular hashtags on Twitter over the past few days.

Among fair game for whoever was posting on behalf of @TwitterUK were the hashtags #Iran, #iPhone and #Apple – all completely unrelated to any marketing efforts the retail chain was pushing on the service.

The tweets, which unsurprisingly caused quite a backlash from users, have since been removed.

Habitat’s PR company contacted Social Media Today with the following statement:

I know people have been waiting for a response tweet from us; we are treating this very seriously and wanted to offer a longer message. We have been reading everyone’s comments carefully and would like to make a very sincere apology to any Twitter users who were offended.

The top ten trending topics were pasted into hashtags without checking with us and apparently without verifying what all of the tags referred to. This was absolutely not authorised by Habitat. We were shocked when we discovered what happened and are very sorry for the offence that was caused. This is totally against our communications strategy. We never sought to abuse Twitter, have removed the content and will ensure this does not happen again.

It has been really valuable to hear how users would like us to use Twitter and we are determined to do better for the Twitter community.

Claire
Habitat Head Office
London

An apology is definitely a good move, given that a businesses effective use of Twitter is much about building trust and transparent dialogue with consumers, though it does raise some interesting questions.

The statements at the start of the second paragraph implies that:

Habitat has limited control over who posts to the official Twitter channel
Habitat (or the designated representatives) don’t yet understand Twitter basics

Hopefully lessons have been learned from this incident. Twitter isn’t particularly complicated, but it’s easy to get things wrong if you don’t know what you’re doing and what various things mean.

Update: The Habitat Press Office has since stated: “In response to speculation, we would like to clarify – this was not done by an agency. The hashtags were uploaded without Habitat’s authorisation by an overenthusiastic intern who did not fully understand the ramifications of his actions. He is no longer associated with Habitat.”

(Via IDG)

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Is WordPress.com Bad for WordPress?

Chris Garrett — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 15:18:58 +0000

The discussion around the Chris Anderson goof episode raises an interesting issue.

Is WordPress.com bad for the WordPress brand?

Think I am being to strong? Check out this from Mark Jaquith

What about the following, which I’ve all heard?• “You can’t edit your CSS on WordPress unless you pay.”
• “You can only use the themes that come with WordPress.”
• “WordPress doesn’t allow Adsense.”
• “Embeds don’t work on WordPress.”

Those statements, which are absolutely true for WordPress.com, are false and damaging for WordPress

I see this confusion occasionally too in my forum and in conversations. Not a lot but enough that I know it is a problem, and I also know that the “WordPress is for non-commercial” meme has spread far and wide …

Now if you support the idea that WordPress.com is causing confusion for the WordPress brand, and I think many people will agree that it is, what to do about it?

Well, it is not like all those thousands of *.WordPress.com sites are going to be happily redirected to new domains. I can only think that rebranding the software would be the (inelegant, or even downright ugly) solution :(

What do you think? Am I blowing this up to be a bigger problem than it is? Is there a better solution? Please share your thoughts in the comments …

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ReadWriteWeb Does Sponsor Posts

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:39:01 +0000

I was a bit surprised to see that ReadWriteWeb published a sponsor post (about the .me domain, which is cool, check out tdh.me /shameless plug), something I haven’t noticed them doing before. This is how they, well, defend it I guess:

[...] we offer our long-term sponsors the opportunity to write ‘Sponsor Posts’ and tell their story. These posts are clearly marked as written by sponsors, but we also want them to be useful and interesting to our readers. We hope you like the posts and we encourage you to support our sponsors by trying out their products.

Right. I’m not sure I like this kind of sponsored post actually, it is too much marketing. I don’t mind thanking sponsors in posts though, as in “thanks to our sponsors, June 2009″ or something like that. This? Too much marketing, but at least RWW are transparent about it.

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Fake Steve Jobs Is Back, Why?

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:19:08 +0000

In July last year, the Fake Steve Jobs blog closed down to become Real Dan Lyons. The joke was up.

And now he’s back, with pops on the liver transplant and some longer posts. Did you miss him? The amount of comments on the blog seems to scream yes…

Update: It seems as if Fake Steve hit Gawker, and that hit Techmeme. I guess you did miss him.

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Chris Anderson’s Free! Borrows From Wikipedia

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:03:57 +0000

Wired editor Chris Anderson is soon to launch his latest book/theory, following up on The Long Tail, titled Free!. There’s definitely nothing wrong with his ideas if you ask me, and you can read them for yourself on Wired, but the book seems a bit, well rushed perhaps?

First there was the WordPress incident, where Anderson probably was making the famous wordpress.org/wordpress.com mixup. He should know better, and a technical reviewer should have caught that.

Now there’s copy-pasting from Wikipedia.

Fast Company found the Virginia Quarterly Review blog post detailing how Anderson copy-pasted an entry from the Free lunch entry on Wikipedia, and illustrates it with side by side comparisons. Just look at all that yellow text marking the similarities!

It doesn’t stop there. Obviously, Anderson has been relying a lot on Wikipedia, because the VQR blog post finds a bunch of these. Sure, the title is Free!, but that doesn’t mean the author shouldn’t actually write some words of his own, no matter how many examples there are.

The real problem, however, is that the references are lacking. That’s right, the source aren’t cited, a huge mistake of course. And Fast Company found this from Anderson:

All those are my screwups after we decided not to run notes as planned, due to my inability to find a good citation format for web sources…

This all came about once we collapsed the notes into the copy. I had the original sources footnoted, but once we lost the footnotes at the 11th hour… Obviously in my rush at the end I missed a few of that last category, which is bad.

And also the following, about how to solve this, since it seems as if the book won’t get pushed back because of this.

I think what we’ll do is publish those notes after all, online as they should have been to begin with. That way the links are live and we don’t have to wrestle with how to freeze them in time, which is what threw me in the first place.

Naturally, this is on Techmeme and Gawker is having a field day. Go figure.

Free! is due July 7, and will be available for free in the formats that allow it (digital), and will cost you money in print if you prefer dead trees. It is, after all, the freemium model in essence.

Hat tip: Jonas Lejon of to.ly

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iPhone: Twittelator Pro Makes Tweet Casting Possible (Audio And Video Now Included)

Darnell Clayton — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 01:25:59 +0000

It seems that not a week goes by without something interesting happening within Steve Jobs playground (i.e. the iTunes App store). The same could be said for the numerous twitter apps, especially now with Tweetdeck hitting the scene (which TechCrunch has a glorious review of).

While most Tweet apps like Tweetie, Twitterfon, etc. support image uploading (via services like Twitpic and TweetPhoto.com), Twittelator goes one step further by allowing users to attach an audio message or even video to their tweet, a feature that may not make the mullahs in Iran very happy.

Users who have upgraded to version 3.0 (of both the iPhone OS and Twittelator) will notice the new multimedia button. Upon clicking it, you have the option of recording either an audio sound bite or a video of any length (within reason of course).

Once recorded, Twittelator will attach the media to your tweet by uploading it to either MobyPicture or yFrog (who seem to be fighting it out in the media microblogging space).

Despite the fact that hearing ones horrible voice (especially mine) may not appeal to many Twitterholics on the go, this extra feature may be helpful to those of you loathing the 140 bit sized limits established by our Twitter overlords.

While overall this is an impressive feature from Twittelator, its only drawback is that users are unable to upload previous audio pieces, which may not be very helpful if you are trying to show the world what your friend sounds like when they are snoring. ;-)

For those of you who prefer a video, Twittelator supports that as well, although you will need an iPhone 3GS for that (a phone this author is trying to save up money for).

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ProBlogger.net Branches Out, Launches Deal Account On Twitter

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:23:41 +0000

ProBlogger.net is launching a blog deals account on Twitter, to pass out coupon codes, discounts, special offers and more. Darren Rowse explains his decision to launch @ProBloggerDeals on Twitter like this:

I’d love to promote everything on ProBlogger but the reality is that ProBlogger.net is a blog that focuses more upon tips on how to blog rather than a blog about products or tools for bloggers.

It’s an account for promotional tweets only, and some of the links on it will be affiliate ones. Rowse is open about that, naturally, and you should be aware of it too. That being said, when he claims he’ll stick to promotions for good stuff, I tend to believe him. After all, Rowse has a great reputation.

Read more about the account, and follow it on Twitter if you’re into that sort of thing. Personally, I keep thinking how much more open and fair this sounds than Perez Hilton including promotional tweets in his ad campaigns. But maybe I’m biased.

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How Do You Get RSS Subscribers To Visit Your Blog?

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:15:01 +0000

Oh look, VentureBeat rebranded itself a bit. I hadn’t noticed, despite glancing through all the updates from this blog on a daily basis. I read it through my RSS reader, and that is a problem for the publisher.

We already deducted that the massive footer ads will get you nowhere, unless you can sell them from a fixed price (don’t accept that, media buyers!). That means that you probably want your RSS readers to pop in on your site every now and then.

How do you get your RSS subscribers to visit your blog? Share in the comments.

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Iran: Just What Twitter Needed?

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:07:19 +0000

The situation in Iran continues to be widely discussed on Twitter, with Iran as the number one trending topic, and #iranelection as number two. It goes downhill from there… Anyway, Sedef Onder needed Iran to understand the importance of Twitter. She blogs about it at DigitalNext, wrapping up like this:

I daresay Twitter is starting to grow up. And though it’s taken some getting used to for a skeptical Twitter user of a couple of years now, I’m feeling a bit like a proud parent. Here’s hoping we’ll continue to see similarly inspiring uses of social media, whether for more effective marketing to new customers, or for plain ole’ communication sake. Tweets have finally come of age.

That got me thinking. What if the disastrous events in Iran is exactly what Twitter needed to take the next big step? Not just tech industry approval, but old media approval as well? I know, I know, it’s a cynical way of viewing things, but sometimes world events can spark things. And I think it just did. We’ll see more journalists on Twitter from now on.

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Google AdSense pushing local currency reporting for many international publishers

Andy Merrett — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 07:10:27 +0000

When I logged into my Google AdSense control panel last night I found a new option to have my earnings listed in local currency (UK pounds) from now on.

This has been developing for some time but it’s the first time I’ve been prompted by Google to change to local currency.

What appears to be new is that, once the change has been made, it’s not possible to change back to US dollars (either reporting or payment method). Before, Google had said that “you can still choose to receive payments in US Dollars”.

Does this make any difference to international publishers?

On a positive note, you’ll know exactly what money will be sent to your account once you reach a payment threshold rather than waiting for an end-of-month currency conversion.

However, this can also work against you. Perhaps you’d set a payment hold, hoping for the exchange rate between the US dollar and your local currency to improve. This will now have little bearing on what you get paid, because earnings are converted daily using the current exchange rate.

You don’t have to switch yet, but Google makes it clear that soon you won’t have any option but to convert to local currency reporting.

Local currency reporting is currently available in the following countries:

Australia: Australian Dollar
Austria: Euro
Belgium: Euro
Denmark: Krone
Finland: Euro
France: Euro
Germany: Euro
Italy: Euro
Japan: Yen
Netherlands: Euro
Norway: Krone
Portugal: Euro
South Africa: South African Rand
Spain: Euro
Sweden: Krona
Switzerland: Franc
United Kingdom: British Pound

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Movable Type Monday: New Version and New Plugin

Billy Mabray — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:00:30 +0000

Happy Monday, folks. Only a couple of items on the agenda for this week. First, Movable Type 4.261 was released. This is a very minor update, mainly to fix the schema upgrade issue we told you about last time. If you upgraded to 4.26 and you’re not having any problems you can safely hold off on this update.

Finally, Dan Wolfgang released a new plugin for Action Streams. Dan’s Delicious Tags plugin lets you pull any Delicious tag results into your Action Stream. It’s particularly handy if you’re tracking search terms related to your industry.

What have you done with MT lately? Let us know in the comments.

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Six Apart and VideoEgg partner on video ads

Andy Merrett — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:59:24 +0000

Bloggers using TypePad will find it easier to integrate video ads into their content thanks to a partnership between VideoEgg and Six Apart announced today.

Six Apart will offer AdFrames ad units including Twig, which is an ad that stays in the browser window and can be expanded upon mouse over (one of the types of ad I hate, for what it’s worth).

The press release implies that the video units will be available to all publishers, though I’d be surprised if there was no quality control/bar to entry at all. It mentions that “launch partners” include Orbitcast, MediaBlab, Geeks are Sexy, Make Use of and Blog Net News, so perhaps it is fairly selective.

Six Apart’s executive VP, David Tokheim, said that it was the company’s goal to help publishers make money on the content they work hard to create.

“By partnering with VideoEgg and incorporating their proven performance-based AdFrames unit into our advertising solution, Six Apart provides great service and meaningful ad revenue to our publishers,” he said.

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WooThemes Goes GPL, More Will Follow

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:46:17 +0000

Premium themes marketplace WooThemes are changing things, going GPL on all themes, and launches a theme club, along with the WooCamp blog. There’s a bunch of membership options for the themes club, and the whole site got a makeover. More will follow. It is hip to be GPL these days.

So yet another premium themes seller goes GPL. I think that’s good, but as Alex King pointed out (and then at least somewhat rephrased), the pure fact that themes are GPL’d means that anyone can do anything with them. Including buying them and uploading them to wordpress.org, or cut-and-paste whatever they might like from them. Then again, my guess is that a lawyer looking into the WordPress license in the first place, would say that all themes are GPL, no matter what the theme author say and think. That’s my take on GPL anyway, and that’s why I’ll offer my upcoming theme for free.

Support, updates, and freebies is the way to go if you want to make money selling multiple access to themes.

That’s what I think, what say you?

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Chris Anderson Doesn’t Get WordPress

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:30:21 +0000

I’m a big fan of Chris Anderson, the Wired editor and The Long Tail author. His most recent book is Free!, due anytime soon (for free in some versions, paid in others), and it is all about content online. I especially like his thoughts on freemium, free+premium that is, being what Flickr does with paid pro accounts that more or less makes the service free for non-paying users.

But he doesn’t get WordPress. At least not if this tip sent to WordPress developer Mark Jaquith is true.

The following snippet is supposed to be from the book Free!:

2. Feature limited (Basic version free, more sophisticated version paid. This is the WordPress model.)

Upside: Best way to maximize reach. When customers convert to paid, they’re doing it for the right reason (they understand the value of what they’re paying for) and are likely to be more loyal and less price sensitive.

Downside: Need to create two versions of the product. If you put too many features in the free version, not enough people will convert. If you put too few, not enough will use it long enough to convert.

This is dead wrong. There is no limited free WordPress model, the one you download from wordpress.org is the full real deal.

My guess is that Anderson really is talking about WordPress.com, and the fact that you can get a free account there and then buy additional services, but he phrases this extremely poorly if that is the case.

Hopefully Anderson will be able to fix this before the dead trees version of the book is rolled out.

See Mark’s post for more thoughts on this.

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5 Tech Things Every Blogger Should Know

Jonathan Bailey — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:42:55 +0000

Where 15 years ago, having a Web site was something of a badge of nerdiness, today having a site doesn’t require much technical knowledge at all. Someone with almost no technical expertise can set up an account on WordPress.com or Blogger and be blogging within minutes.

However, this doesn’t mean that a blogger can get away with being a technical dunce. Though getting words on the Internet is pretty simple, building and growing a blog does require one to know a bit more than how to flip on a PC. Social networking sites make it easy to get online, but blogging, especially over the long haul, takes something more.

So what are those things that every blogger should know? There are many, definitely more than what is on this list, but here are five things every would-be blogger should know before, or at least shortly after, getting started.

1. The Basics of the Web

The Internet is a pretty amazing thing. Data travels all across the world on the back of a system that, when explained correctly, seems like it should never work. It’s both breathtakingly complicated and brilliantly simple at the same time.

Though a blogger doesn’t need to understand every technical detail about how the Web does its thing, a basic understanding of how a browser goes from a “.com” and then loads a site is probably a good idea. This should include at least a basic understanding of how domains are registered, how DNS works and how data gets from A to B on the Web.

One doesn’t need to know how the TCP handshake works, but a fundamental understanding of the “big picture” when it comes to Web infrastructure is pretty useful.

Why it is Important

Even a basic understanding of the workings of the Web can help you be a better blogger. First, if you go to set up your own hosting, you’re going to need some of that understanding to make everything work and understand the process of setting up your own domain.

However, even if you host with a free site, it can help you understand site outages, how to speed up your blog and why visitors often have very different experiences based upon their location.

Where to Learn It

How Stuff Works has a very thorough article about the basics of the Web, including DNS, IP addresses and more.

2. How a Web Server Works

Similar to the Web itself, a server is a thing of beauty. How a machine receives contact from the Web at large, processes the data and then returns a response is both a simple and an amazing thing. On most blogs this process involves the use of several different programs, operating in several different layers and working in tandem to pull together the information requested and present it in a human-readable format.

To make matters even more complicated, one physical server can, and often does, run hundreds, even thousands of different Web sites. It is even common for one physical machine to house several different virtual machines within it.

Though one doesn’t have to be ready to manage their own server to run a blog, understanding the basics of how it works can prove infinitely useful.

Why it is Important

First and foremost, a basic understanding of a server will help you set up your blog so that it works with the hardware, not against it. It helps you understand how WP Super Cache can improve the performance of a site and what you can do to keep your site running quickly.

However, perhaps more importantly, it helps you understand communications from your host. Knowing the basics of how a server works will help you better grasp what went wrong when your site goes down, how bad it is and also enable you to ask smarter questions of your support team.

Where to Learn It

Nebraska Wesleyan University has a simple, effective and visual guide to how a server processes a request.

3. Basic HTML (And Maybe PHP)

If you’re used to using nothing but a word processor, HTML code can look very intimidating as it comes with strange symbols and syntax that can look like an alien language. Many understandably confuse markup language for programming language and do everything they can to avoid even looking at it. Some, thanks to WYSIWYG editors, can avoid it for a very long time.

Fortunately though, HTML is not nearly as complicated as it looks at first glance and most of the code one would need for blogging is very basic. However, not knowing it can be very costly.

Why it is Important

Though WYSIWYG editors are much better now than they were just a few years ago, they are still not perfect. At some point, if you are going to get something to look how you want it to, you’re going to need to get your hands dirty at least a little bit.

Also, if you’re using a self-hosted WordPress installation you may want to have at least enough understanding of PHP so that you aren’t intimidated if you have to make a few changes, as it is a part of updating and customizing many themes.

However, even if you don’t customize your theme at all, the first time your table isn’t aligned exactly right or the text doesn’t wrap correctly around an image correctly, you’re going to want to have that basic knowledge to fall back on.

Where to Learn It

W3Schools has a great basic overview of HTML and is also a great reference for those who know (but sometimes forget). Likewise, Tizag has a good overview of PHP.

4. Image Compression/Sizing

Image compression is something of a black art and even those who are veterans will argue over the finer points about it. What file type to use (GIF, JPG or PNG), how much to compress and the size of an image are often areas of intense debate among the Web-savvy.

However, there are still some things one should never do as they can cause problems and knowing how to avoid the pitfalls is critical when running a blog.

Why it is Important

If you don’t compress your images correctly, you can wind up with a Web page that is many times the size it should be. A logo that is 100 K will slow even broadband visitors down. Couple that with a poorly-compressed background and some heavy inline images and your visitors may be leaving before reading a single word.

It is important to keep your site as lean as practical and a big part of that is keeping your images down to a reasonable size.

Where to Learn It

JISC has a good guide on what image type to choose. However, every application has a different set of instructions for image compression, you should look up a guide for your preferred image editor. MyJanee.com has a great guide for creating Web-friendly images in Photoshop and the official Gimp documents have a similar one for the Gimp image editor.

5. Online Security

The Web can be a very dangerous place and keeping yourself safe on it is vitally important for everyone, not just bloggers.

Online security can involve everything from not posting your personal information to making sure your operating system is patched. It is about keeping you, your data and the information of those close to you as safe as reasonably possible.

Though there is no way one can be completely secure on the Web, there are definitely things one can do to ensure that they are as protected as possible.

Why it is Important

Online security is important for everyone, whether they blog or not. However, bloggers face additional challenges in this area. Having a site not only gives attackers a new target, but also new openings. Blogging systems can be hacked, servers can be broken into and sites can be shut down.

Online security for bloggers includes everything from keeping software up to date, backing up data, not putting critical information your server and choosing good passwords. It’s a wide swath of items to cover but all of it is vitally important.

Where to Learn It

Realistically, there is too much to learn in just one guide but CCL has a good overview of the basics of computer security, much of it which applies to bloggers.

Bottom Line

In the end, you don’t have to be a geek in order to run a blog, but a little bit of technical knowledge will go a very long way. A basic understanding of some critical technology will help make you a better blogger and make it easier for you to grow your site and expand on the Web.

If you don’t have this knowledge now, taking the time to develop a basic understanding will serve you well, especially in the long run.

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The FTC to Start Regulating Blogs?

Andrew G.R. — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 12:44:59 +0000

It’s not as bad as if the FCC were to step in and start censoring blogs, but it is a step closer to government regulation…

According to a report in The Washington Post, the Federal Trade Commission is expected to rework guidelines that will permit the agency to go after bloggers who file phony claims on products – or fail to reveal if there is a conflict of interest.

For example, if you work for Company XYZ and log on to your personal blog and post that Product A manufactured by Company XYZ is the best thing you’ve ever used…you better be willing to fess up that you’re an employee.

Do you think a uniform disclosure policy will help or hurt the blogosphere?

One school of thought says that this type of FTC regulation could filter out a lot of the “junk” and add even greater credence to the medium. Others, however, feel that such a move shifts blogging closer to a “police state.”

It’s reported that the same laws would apply to both blogs, Twitter and other social media avenues.

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iPhone Blogs: 7 of the Best to Follow

Easton Ellsworth — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 17:57:44 +0000

Unless you’ve been living under a rock with Internet access so limited that you get is The Blog Herald — and if that’s the case, please leave a comment because we’d love to interview you — then you probably already knew that Apple has come out with a new iPhone.

Which probably would mean that you’re also at least vaguely interested in what the blogosphere has to say about the iPhone and what some of the highest-quality blogs are that talk about it regularly.

Here are seven of them. Please add your favorites in the comments.

iPhone Buzz
MacRumors
The iPhone Blog – How’s that for a name?
iPhone Hacks
Top iPhone News
iPhones Talk – not “iPhone Stalk”
Fast Company

Are you reading this blog on an iPhone? :)

image credit: The Pug Father