LiveJournal on the Verge of Collapse

At the midst of the terrible recession, on the day, when Microsoft announced 5,000 employees workforce cuts, information on the 12 to 20 employees lay offs by LiveJournal does not look neither surprising, nor unexpected. However, if think about the total number of employees in the LiveJournal San Francisco office as 28 employees only, you understand that this cut might be really fatal for the LJ bloggers platform functioning. Valleywag reports that the social-media pioneer laid off all of its product managers and engineers, “leaving only a handful of finance and operations workers - which speaks to a website to be left on life support.” Matt Berardo, a Yahoo executive hired on last summer, has also left.

Founded in 1999 by Brad Fitzpatrick as a way to keep his friends from high school updated about his activities, LiveJournal was among the first blogging services and social networks. The company was bought in 2005 by blogging-software company Six Apart and then sold two years later to Russian online-media company SUP.

According to the statement from LiveJournal, the company’s servers, technical operations, administration and customer-service teams will remain in the United States. However, global product development and design now will be coordinated out of the Moscow office.

Andrew Paulson

The company’s Moscow-based management has told employees it blames the "global economic downturn" - the kind of pat excuse every boss is giving for layoffs, even when mismanagement or a bad business plan is really to blame.

The brutal, abrupt cuts suggest something different: That Sup founder Andrew Paulson (above), who paid an estimated $30 million for LiveJournal a little over a year ago, has realized his expensive mistake in buying at the top of the bubble. Someone familiar with the company tells us Paulson lost the CEO job last summer to Annelies van den Belt, a former News Corp. executive, and was given the meaningless title of chairman; he’s essentially out of the company now.

BlogIt - New Facebook Application for Bloggers

Six Apart, makers of Movable Type, Typepad and other popular blogging services, has launched a new Facebook application designed to broadcast your posts to several of the most popular external publishing systems at once.

Blog It allows you to compose and post updates within the Facebook interface and have them simultaneously appear on any one of the ten supported services, including Movable Type, TypePad, Pownce, Twitter, Blogger and WordPress.

The idea behind Blog It is to simplify the process of updating all the various sites and services you use, offering a single interface for updating all your sites. It’s a bit like turning Facebook into a fire hose that sprays your thoughts across the web.

FriendFeed is also toying with similar, though much more limited cross-posting features, like the ability to send comments to Twitter. Blog It, however, offers far more complete updating capabilities.

Which isn’t to say that Blog It is feature complete just yet. For now, you’ll miss niceties like a rich text editor or the ability to upload and include pictures in your posts. In the video below, Six Apart’s David Recordon makes it clear that the company is aware of the application's short-comings and promises feature upgrades in the near future.

But while Blog It may be a work in progress, even in limited form, it’s the easiest way I’ve seen to broadcast posts across platforms. It offers the ability to pick and choose which posts go where on a per-post basis so you’re always in control of who sees what. Every time you add a new service to update, Blog It offers the option to automatically post to that service, though you can always uncheck any of the services when you actually post something.

Blog It is a pretty slick Facebook app, perhaps the best I’ve used. And while it still lacks a few features (OAuth support is reportedly in the works, but for now you’ll have to give Blog It all of your passwords) it definitely makes it easier to broadcast your life to multiple locations. It's a nice cure for the fatigue of having to keep up with all of your data streams by logging into each service separately.

Recordan has hinted elsewhere that Six Apart may expand Blog It to work from other platforms — like Plaxo’s Pulse, or perhaps even as standalone AIR application like Twhirl — but for now Blog It is tied to Facebook.

To get an idea of what Blog It looks like in action, check out the video below where Recordon walks you through the process of setting up and using Blog It (and also offers the best OAuth metaphor I’ve heard: “it’s like a valet key for the web”). If you’d like to jump in with both feet, you can go ahead and add Blog It to your Facebook account.

BlogIt - New Facebook Application for bloggers

Source: http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2008/04/six-apart-launc.html

WordPress Blog Optimization with All-in-One SEO Pack Plugin

One of the most popular WordPress plugin will assist the blog owner to achieve high levels of Automatic Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This plugin is streamlined for the best practices for Wordpress SEO. While it gives you many options ready for tweaking, blogging specialists recommend for starter using the default settings.

Among the plugin features:

• Automatically optimizes your titles for search engines
• Generates META tags automatically
• Avoids the typical duplicate content found on Wordpress blogs
• For Wordpress 2.3 you don’t even have to look at the options, it works out-of-the-box. Just install.
• You can override any title and set any META description and any META keywords you want.
• You can fine-tune everything
• Backward-Compatibility with many other plugins, like Auto Meta, Ultimate Tag Warrior and others.

Get more information and download:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

http://wp.uberdose.com/2007/03/24/all-in-one-seo-pack/

A nice video presentation for the plugin:

WordPress Blog Optimization with All-in-One SEO Pa

Be carefull: Blogging might be dangerous!

Blogging is Dangerous

Twenty-two-year-old Lisa called in sick one Friday afternoon. But she wasn’t really sick. She was planning to start the weekend early by going to the beach with her friends. Days later, she posted pictures of the outing on her blog. Someone in her office found the link. Soon, she was called to her boss’ office. She didn’t lose her job, but she got into a lot of trouble.
Eighteen-year-old Anne enjoys an independent life. Both parents are in the US. She blogged freely about her misadventures—drunken nights out, failed tests, her penchant for bad boys. She thought her blog was being read only by her friends.
But a concerned relative sent the link to her parents who immediately jumped to action, calling Anne up and threatening to fly her to the US where she could be put under their watch. Anne is still in the country but has deleted her blog.
The two girls have experienced blog backfire. Things they posted online ended up working against them.
Make sure it doesn’t happen to you, too. Here are some things to think about when you blog.
1. You don’t know who is reading your page.
Unless your entries are locked and you have total control over who has access to them, you’re never sure who is reading your entries. Your parents, your teachers—they’re all just a google search away from unlocking your deepest thoughts.
2. What you post can make or break your career.
While some people have gotten book deals after building a huge blog readership, most bloggers need to realize that employers have started using Google searches as a tool to scan job applicants.
3. Will your post hurt anyone?
It is easy to vent online your anger with a friend or a family member. But let the anger simmer before hitting the “publish” button. Sleep on it, think it over because once it’s online, it will not be easy to get rid of—not with the cache features of online searches.
4. Can your entries be lifted and used against you?
Your blog entries may be lifted anytime by anyone who knows how to highlight and press Ctrl and C. Your photos may be stolen as easily and defaced, like some have been on gossip blogs. It may be smart to add javascript that prevents readers from right-clicking on your page. It’s not total protection, but it may save you from the less-techie lurkers.
5. Will your entries attract the wrong kind of people?
Most blog readers are kind. They leave comments, they send you e-mails and sometimes, you even find people you can be friends with. But some of the more popular bloggers have had problems with blog stalkers. High internet traffic is a good thing, but not when it leads to scary encounters.
Source:
http://showbizandstyle.inquirer.net/you/blogaddicts/view/20080401-127751/Yes-blogs-can-ruin-your-life

Blogging is Dangerous

New Version of WordPress 2.5 is Released!

There are good news came to the WordPress Blogging Platform fans. New software WordPress 2.5 has been released today, marking significant improvements and bringing new functional features to the bloggers. Among the obvious software enhanced features are multi-file uploading, one-click plug-in upgrades, built-in galleries, customizable dashboard, salted passwords and cookie encryption, media library, a WYSIWYG that doesn’t mess with your code, concurrent post editing protection, full-screen writing, and search that covers posts and pages. One of the biggest changes is related to better appearance of the administration backend, which is described as being a “Cleaner, faster, less cluttered dashboard.” It is now widget friendly, and users can include items such as stats, matching the functionality of MovableType Blogging Platform.

Some User Features Details:

Dashboard Widgets- the dashboard home page includes different widgets, showing fun stats about your posting, latest comments, people linking to you, new and popular plug-ins, and WordPress news. All the widgets are customizable for the administrator’s convenience.

Multi-file upload with progress bar - in the previous software release, uploading large files or multiple files was a long and unreliable process. User could upload just one image at a time. Now you can select a whole of folder images or music or videos at once and software will monitor the progress of each upload.

EXIF extraction - if you upload JPEG files with EXIF metadata (like camera make and model, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, et al.) software will record all the data into custom fields you can use in your template.

Search posts and pages - in the previous version search used to cover just posts, now it includes pages as well, and new themes can style or sort pages differently in presented results.

Tag management - you can now add, rename, delete, and managed your tags from inside WordPress, with no additional plug-ins.

Password strength meter - software reports the strength of your password, helping you to pick a secure one.

Concurrent editing protection - a big improvement achieved in the editing abilities for multi-author blogs. Now if you open a post at the moment when someone else is editing, WordPress locks it and prevents you from saving your changes until the other person is done.

Plug-in upgrades - automatic downloading and installing the upgrade for plug-ins you use. Depending on your host setup, you may, however, be asked for your FTP password.

Visual post editor- Authors express the improvement to the editor by the statement “it doesn’t mess with your code anymore.” Software is now using version 3.0 of TinyMCE, which ensures a better compatibility with Safari, and improves integration and interaction with complex HTML.

Built-in galleries- when you take advantage of multi-file upload to upload a bunch of photos, you can much easier embed picture galleries into your page. It will display all your thumbnails and captions linking each picture to a page where people can comment on the individual photos.

The software downloading link: http://wordpress.org/download/

A brief video tutorial for some of the features:

Brief Overview of WordPress 2.5

Sources and Additional Reading:

http://wordpress.org/development/2008/03/wordpress-25-brecker/

http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2008/03/catch-a-sneak-p.html

Utterz-Updating your Blog through Mobile Phone

How can you keep regular posting to your blog, if you out in the mountains for backpacking trip? How to be the first reporting hot news in your blog, while you are not in the vicinity of any computer? Utterz have an answer for you. This service is available for the end of last year, but it just now came to my attention, and I am going to test it next week. For, now, wanted to share with you the information available on this free online service. With Utterz, you can instantly blog your experiences, thoughts and
ideas, anywhere, using the capabilities of your mobile phone. Utterz combines together the voice, video, pictures, and text you call or send in and creates an
complex multimedia message that can be immediately posted on your existing blogs on the most popular platforms, as Blogger, WordPress, Facebook, LiveJournal, MySpace and more. You do not even have to be a registered member to use the company services, but you have some nice additional features, if and when you join the site. If you do not have a cellular phone, you can leave a voice message through any phone, and your post will appear on your blog in 10 minutes. The easiest way to get started is just call a listed on the Web Site phone number 712-432-6666 and record a voice message. Then snap a picture or video from your phone and send with some text to go@utterz.com. You can choose one of the options: or posting message to Utterz and your blog or web page, just Utterz, or just your web page.

Access the site: http://www.utterz.com/
Review the brief video tutorial on the services use outline:

Updating your Blog through Mobile Phone

Additional reading:
http://www.cultcase.com/2007/09/utterz-speak-your-blog-entry.html

http://www.rev2.org/2008/01/02/utterz-mobile-blogging-done-right/

Blogger vs WordPress: Review for the Newbie Blogger

I am still a newbie blogger. When I started, somehow I naturally get to the Blogger. However, moving forward, I am trying to define is the Blogger platform right for my purposes. There is a choice, and all the alternative solutions should be investigated. Usually, you can find anything on the Internet, but it appears to be challenging to locate a comparison tables, highlighting vital features of different blogging platforms. The best comparison I found on the Online Journalism Review page. The table updated for the last time on May 18, 2006. For the blogging platforms development, almost two years are ages. So, what is new there? In the PC World top blogging platforms review (January 22, 2007), the only two free platforms presented are Blogger and Wordpress with slight Blogger priority. Based on that post, and in order to limit the spec of this review, I will focus on these platforms comparison.
There are indeed serious differences between platforms that might influence on your informative decision on using one or another. Bear in mind that I am referring to the developer hosted wordpress.com, not the self hosted wordpress.org. So, let’s review several factors on the platforms differences:

1. Blog Import: In Blogger - limited availability to import and export only in the same blogging platform; in WoordPress - you can import from several other platformd, including from Blogger.
2. Image Storage: In Blogger - 300 MB; in WordPress - 3 GB.
   
3. Static Pages: In Blogger - not available; in WordPress - static pages can be listed in separate menus.
   
4. Post by Email: In Blogger - accepted; in WordPress - not.
   
5. Categories: In Blogger - not available; in WordPress - arranged with no problem.
   
6. File Uploading: In Blogger - not available; in WordPress - files can be uploaded.
   
7. Indexing Time: Here Blogger produces far better results, as due to the tight connections with Google, it can appear in the Search Engines very fast.
   
8. Blog Monetization: WordPress has serious restrictions on the publishing ads, so if you plan to use AdSense, your preferences will probably lean more to the Blogger.

If you are shooting for the blog monetization, there is no doubt that it is much easier to get started with Google Adsense if you have a Blogger account. In fact you can now apply for Adsense from within a Blogger account. Not entirely surprising considering the fact that both are owned by the same company.

With Wordpress, it can get tricky. The default installation is not enough. You’ll need a couple of plugins and even a better theme to really maximize the Adsense potential. However, this seems to be getting easier and there’s even “Adsense revenue sharing” plugins around that allow you to share ad revenue with other contributors and writers for your blog.

Based on all information available, I would definitely recommend Blogger for all the beginners, while WordPress might be considered preferable for more experienced bloggers.

Additional Reading:
http://onestoryeveryday.com/blogger-vs-wordpress-10-features-for-beginners.html
http://pulsed.blogspot.com/2007/07/blogger-wordpress-chart.html
http://michaelsync.net/2007/04/01/wordpresscom-vs-bloggercom
http://www.searchforblogging.com/index.php/2008/03/11/blogging-wars-wordpress-vs-blogger/