Good news for aviation geeks, b5media is resurrecting an old blog called the Flightnest, with Mr. Plane (or Jarkko) in the cockpit. This from the launch post:

My name is Jarkko and I am a total plane grazy. I started to turn my head up in the sky about 20 years ago and after many neck pains :) I ended up here.

Among the things covered so far are pilotless airliners, the PiperJet, and today’s airports.

Another two b5media blogs launched recently. Marye Audet edits Simply Home Remedies, which is about just that. This from the launch post:

For the past 20 years or so my family has lived without the assistance of commercial medicines or doctors, except for things like broken arms and emergency surgeries on retro-pharyngeal abscesses. You know, the stuff I can’t butterfly bandage, make a tea for, or put a poultice on! Six of our eight children have been born at home. My nickname around here is Dr.Mom, Medicine Woman.

In the b5media post, Marye Audet is described/hyped like this:

I’ve often joked that Marye is Martha Stewart meets MacGyver.

I’ve personally called on Marye for a few tips and am 100% sold after seeing the quick successes of her suggestions.

The other blog is Canadian Music News, which surprisingly enough isn’t all Celine Dion and Bryan Adams, if you believed it would be. Jeanne Dupuis edits.

Back when I was still managing a blog network I sat down with a piece of paper and mapped out my strategic growth plan. I failed miserably. Largely because I set my goals way to high. But looking at a more realistic approach. I’m going to show the readers here at The Blog Herald what it takes to grow a blog simply and easily.

1. Build Flagship Content
Chris Garrett has long been the king of content online. Check out his great free ebook by subscribing to his blog online. More from Chris at Performancing.

2. Build Flagship Links
Building a core group of links early on in a blogs history is essential to long term success. Authority links will only increase in strength with age and will determine a blogs success in the long run.

3. Build A Flagship Network
Build a strong network of followers is also key. Use social media tools like Twitter,Friendfeed,Facebook and other networks to market your blog, not spam and create communities around your blog. Don’t be afraid that the conversation is going on behind the scenes and not on your blog.

In conclusion,
Track your growth using tools like PMetrics,Google Analytics, and Google Trends, and Alexa and watch your earnings grow by slowly and persistently following steps 1 through 3. It’s as simple as that.

Layered Technologies, one of the world’s leaders in web hosting and server technology, is hosting a two day conference in Las Vegas, June 26-27, 2008, called the LT PACT Conference 2008. The two-day event is free, but registration is recommended.

As bloggers become more server savvy, challenging web hosts to keep up with their growing demands, this is a great opportunity to meet and learn from the industries’ leading experts on SEO, industry trends, virtualization trends and technology, site optimization, web hosting, cloud/grid hosting technology, online storage technology, intellectual property, email and mailing list management and business practices, site automation, business of blogging, security vulnerabilities and threats, backups, and more.

The list of whose who among the list of speakers and the event activities and seminars includes:

• Matt Mullenweg of Automattic and WordPress
• Barry Abrahamson, the server guru of Automattic and WordPress.com
• Andrew Skale, Attorney, Mintz-Levin and expert in patent, trademark, copyright litigation, and entertainment law
• James Staten, Principal Analyst of IT Infrastructure and Operations at Forrester Research, a leading expert on x86 servers and infrastructure and trends
• John Pozadzides of One Man’s Blog, Layered Technologies, and Woopra
• Chris Samson, the Senior Hosting Technology Specialist from CSNA and Microsoft
• Deven Kampenhout, Web Platform Architect Evangelist at Microsoft, Tim Johnson, Senior Manager of Channel Market Development, Global Marketing, at Seagate
• Jonah Stein, blogger of It’s The ROI
• Jimmy Guerrero, the Senior Product Marketing Manager in the Database Group of Sun Microsystems coordinating MySQL’s Web 2.0 and SaaS marketing programs, Dennis Dayman, Chief Privacy Officer of Eloqua, an expert in security, legal, privacy, and public relations issues
• Barry Lynn, the Chairman and CEO of 3Tera, expert on data center innovations
• Andy Schroepfer, the Founder and Hosting Visionary of Tier 1 Research, an expert in the hosting industry

And me, Lorelle VanFossen. I’ll be joining a panel discussion on the Business of Blogging with Matt Mullenweg and John Pozadzides on Thursday.

Jad Younan and Elie Khoury, the co-founders and lead developers of Woopra, a new and popular web analytics program currently in beta, will be flying in from Lebanon for the event, giving everyone a chance to meet these innovators.

There will also be a lot of fun and social interaction, and a lot of food. Among the fun is the LT PACT Poker Tournament hosted by Master of Ceremonies Robert W. Thompson II of NBC’s BravoTV Celebrity Poker Showdown with a total purse of USD $5,000.

Hope to see you there!

b5media launches Bravo Fan, a blog dedicated solely to the Bravo channel, edited by Victoria Lutz. I don’t really get that niche, focusing on the type of shows that the channel airs, fine, but just the channel? I don’t know, what do you think? Is it a good niche?

A highly unusual occurrence, the entire Weblogs Inc blog network is down, and has been for several hours. I noticed it first thing this morning UK time, when I tried to check in to Engadget, but it seems it’s affecting the entire Weblogs empire.

It’s uncommon for an entire network to go down for so long, though individual sites (usually on smaller networks) do have problems from time to time, either due to spikes in traffic (Steve Jobs keynote, anyone?) or technical problems.

I haven’t looked far, but I haven’t seen any gloating about the situation — though I’m sure some are capitalising on the situation and benefiting from it, if not publicly. Echoing Pete Cashmore’s words, if it had to happen at all, then a West Coast Sunday night isn’t a disastrous time for it to go down — that is, unless all of AOL’s web engineers are tucked up in bed? Perhaps they’re reading Chris’s post on what do do when your blog goes down.

At time of writing, a number of sites are behaving erratically. Engadget came and went, so the problems may not be fully solved yet. At least the news is still being written, even if we can’t read it.

(Via Mashable)

One thing I’m a bit impressed by is the central pushing from b5media. Other networks might not bother so much with what the sites in the network do, but b5media profiles and makes pushes and events in different ways.

The last event is more of a PR stunt, with charity benefits. There’s 24-hour-blog-a-thon to be held, with Accion International (small loans to small business etc.) as the benefiter from the Business Channel, and The Actor’s Fund gets the support of the Entertainment Channel.

The whole stunt is described like this:

The Great b5media Blog Off will begin on June 20th at 12:01am (in each writer’s respective time zone), to celebrate the summer solstice, which hasn’t occurred on any date other than June 21st since 1975 – this year it lands on June 20th. Writers from the b5media Business and Entertainment channels will be posting fresh news at least once per hour for a full 24 hours.

See also, the press release.

You might note that there’s not a word on money here. Sure, there’s a small $30 contest for participating readers (i.e you can chip in), and you’re urged to donate to these organizations, but that’s it. The exposure is a good thing, however I do think that this is an editorial event before a charity one.

Yet another b5media blog launches, this one called GirlsDigSports.com. The blog is edited by self-proclaimed tomboy Lyndsey D’Arcangelo (profiled here). Kori Ellis writes:

Lyndsey will be blogging about the world of sports from a female perspective. She’s a feisty sports fan, who is always up for a good argument.

Lyndsay expands in her introduction post:

It doesn’t matter if its baseball, hockey, football, soccer or basketball. If it’s a competitive sport of any kind, chances are pretty good that I’m into it. I also know that I’m not the only girl out there who loves to watch and talk about sports. There are just as many girls who “dig” sports, as there are guys. The only difference is that we don’t have that many outlets or forums to discuss the sports we love. I read sports blogs daily. And I have yet to find a blog that is devoted entirely to girls who have a vested interest in sports.

That is until now.

The blog is dressed in pink on black. Sooner or later, the b5media designers will have to face the fact that pink isn’t the only color that attracts female readers, but it can, however, alienate the male crowd.

Anyway, congratulations on the launch, and check out GirlsDigSports.com if you will.

I won’t do an Om Malik and write “NewTeeVee” every time online video, perhaps being the new TV, is mentioned. I understand why he does it, since NewTeeVee is a site in the GigaOM network. And now it’s gotten a new section, called NewTeeVee Station, airing online video.

Editor Liz Gannes writes:

NewTeeVee Station is your guide to online video, pointing you to hot new memes, following the emerging stars of the web, and just generally indexing this new entertainment medium. Whereas in the past we covered online video shows like Ask a Ninja, Obama Girl and Wallstrip from a business perspective, now we’re also reviewing content for content’s sake.

I wouldn’t call this something new, just a repackaged way to offer online video only. A good call, and possibly a most excellent site.

Syntagma Media announced Syntagma Photographic, what John Evans calls a satellite business around Syntagma Media, a while back. There’s still no website or anything, but that is surely just a matter of time. The idea is to snap photos for the sites in the network, and offer them for sale as well.

All our photos will be flagged Copyright Syntagma Photographic and will be appearing here soon.

We haven’t had a major expansion of the public business for quite some time, so it obviously gives us great pleasure to start growing again in the midst of this dangerous downturn.

I think more blog networks should shoot their own photos when possible. Creative Common pics from Flickr is all well and good, but original artwork is always better.