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Blogging is taking new dimensions and increasing in its functionality as witnessed by a Professor who was introduced to the world of blogging by his students.



He is benefited by blogging in the following way:

Until about three months ago, I thought that a blog was a particularly big clog in my kitchen sink. But over the last few months my students have introduced me to a world I hardly knew existed. Recently, the technology director at my school taught me how to set up and manage my own blog. Now I use the Internet site to showcase my own writing and to communicate with my students about coming writing projects.

The popularity of a being has taken shape of a commodity in the online worlds, which is being bought and sold in the online market. FakeYourSpace.com, which is an accompanying service for MySpace, Friendster and Facebook, will be introducing a new service from March 1 that will let the users to buy attractive “friends” for displaying on their profile pages.

The site’s welcome note reads:

If you are tired of seeing everyone else with the hottest friends and want some hotties of your own, then this is the place for you.

The profiles of the popular meagerly clad men and women have been created by founder Brant Walker and his team. A monthly rental of 99 US cents rents one friend, who will leave the client two comments a week. Customers are even at an ease to select the exact wording of those comments, which are then displayed prominently on their MySpace, Friendster or Facebook profiles.

For now, a ‘free friend’ is being offered to the users registering with the site.

Via: theage

If you are interested in the geoweb or where maps meet the Internet, Google has come up with a geographical blog known as Google LatLong from the Google Earth and Maps team that you may want to bookmark. The latest blog is touted to communicate developments in Google Earth and Google Maps and showcase the latest and greatest in geowebbing. The blog is literally new so there isn’t much there yet but they do have some striking imagery of Greensburg, Kansas tornado damage.

And that the most striking part of the blog is one of the posts that displays Greensburg Kansas, the small town that was devastated by an F5 tornado, with before and after side-by-side satellite images. The results like this are really surprising. Check out a couple of the pictures, before and after at the Google LatLong blog.

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People suffering from psychological problems like depression, anxiety and addiction prefer discussing their problems online and feel more comfortable doing so, according to study.

WebTribesInc operates four MYSpace-type sites for depression, anxiety and addiction. A survey was conducted by this company and the participants were asked the place where they would feel more comfortable expressing and sharing their problems.

It was found that 68% of the participants said they were comfortable discussing their problems on “online community”, while 23% said they would see a therapist and 9% said they would share their problems with family and friends.

Although a number of celebrities including Brooke Shields and Tipper Gore have shared their stories of coping with depression, there is still a very large stigma attached to seeking formal treatment for mental health conditions,

said Ryan FitzGerald, president of WebTribesInc.com.

There is a stigma associated with being diagnosed with psychological disorders and people who are suffering from depression and anxiety are worried that it might hamper their career in case the information is shared with their employer.

That explains why more people are turning towards ‘online communities’ to share their worries and anxieties. People feel comfortable as their identities are protected and may feel better when they see that there are people going through similar situations are not alone.

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Noah Shachtman, the founder of Defensetech.org, the blog that brings to us the military, national security and law enforcement news, has now launched a new blog dubbed DangerRoom for the Wired blog network. The DangerRoom will cover “what’s next in national security” and the contributors to the blog would be same as on the defensetech.org. The new blog will keep a tab on killer drones, electronic weapons, nuclear threats, new strategies in national security, and ‘behind the scene’ political issues. Well, for me, both the defensetech.org and DangerRoom seem to be alike.

Social networking sites are getting niche by the day and social book marking seems to catch on the niche route. Sk*rt.com is a social book marking site that takes the art of ‘Digg’ing to women who find it hard to source their favorite topics on Digg. Sk*rt was founded by a group of four women-Gabby, Laura, Laurie and Rebecca, who thought it was a cool idea for women to have their own version of digg.

The title says Sk*rt is “For Women. And for the men who want to get into their heads” and has all the usual categories women find appealing like - home, fashion, entertainment, food, parenting, arts and crafts, etc. Women submit the stories of their interest and they get voted by other readers. Ladies, if you are more into technology, business or sports, you’ll be disappointed to find that there are no such categories yet on the site. (Maybe digg is the place for people like you!)

It’s no competition for digg, but is an interesting storehouse which complements it. There are have been comments like it caters to the interests of traditional women and not for the modern woman. Like I said, it is niche site that caters exclusively to the topics that women would be interested in, though personally I would like to see technology and sports getting included in it.(Maybe more with women oriented stuff here too)

At the moment, it looks like it is for women in ‘skirts’and maybe they’ll add some more categories for women in ‘pants’too! This is one site which the women (men too!) will love it or hate it, but can’t ignore it!

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In an effort to strength its video search offerings, Ask.com has reached out an agreement with Blinkx, one of the leading search engines for video and audio content.

With this deal, Ask.com will access to Blinkx’s 12 million hours of audio and video content and incorporate them into its own search service. As per the joint agreement, Blinkx will get the fee for the Blinkx’s content search by the Ask.com users.

Unsurprisingly, Ask.com is not the first search engine to have association with Blinkx for video search. The search engine giants like MSN, AOL have already tied up with Blinkx to power up their video searches.

In a press release, Blinkx CEO, Suranga Chandratillake has expressed,

Ask.com’s momentum is impressive and we’re very proud to be powering their new video search offering. This relationship further demonstrates our technology leadership in the video search space and is an exciting development for our 130 or so media partners whose content can now be accessed through Ask.com.

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Taking some sort of inspiration from Digg, Dell has launched a customer relations site by the name of Ideastorm. The site allows the users to submit product and feature requests, policy changes or any other things that they want to discuss with the Dell community. Other than IdeaStorm, Dell also introduced a video sharing site dubbed StudioDell where the users can view company videos as well as the videos submitted by the users.

They say ‘Think of Dell IdeaStorm as a combination between a message board and Digg.com.’

Two-way online communication is gaining wider popularity these days and I am pretty sure that we will be witnessing more and more companies following the Dell’s move.

Om Malik reports about the reported spamming done in the popular bookmarking service of del.icio.us. The fact that spamming can be alluded to ‘decent hacking’ and is increasing over the past few years in the blogging and media arena is made quite clear, especially after the spamming done in the most dependable and resourceful area surveyed by the bloggers.



Via: GigaOM

Amid the innumerable sites on the web, four new start-ups have made their debut. All the four are bit different and have put tidbits of innovation too. The newly launched sites are 4Marks, OnlyHuman, StyleSpy, and Wine Labels.

4Marks: This social site can be taken as a new MySpace for Catholics. It would be safe to call it a religious network where Christian community can meet and share their views. 4Marks aim to provide the Catholics a platform to intensify their Christian values. The site also allows features photo uploading, forums, polls, folio, and Christian dating via a sister site called CatholicMatch.

OnlyHuman: Well, sites like OnlyHuman have ben launched earlier also but God knows where they vanished. Anyway, OnlyHuman is a social network or community where people can post stories about the mistakes they have done and give advice to others. They have employed a very simple format where users can post their mistakes in detail and commentary or bookmarking them as ‘lesson learned’. I appreciate the idea but doubt its future.

StyleSpy: The new fashion site made a debut on 15th of this month. The layout is quite simple in the form of modules on the screen. Users just need to click ‘YES’ or ‘NO’ to have their say on the particular product such as cellphones, attire, and fashion accessory. Users can submit their own items manually on the link too and look for the newest and hottest random items.

Wine Labels: Now, this is interesting. Wine Labels is a social site launched by WineLibrary a few days back that allows the users to find labels via searching or tags, commenting on them, and post them to MySpace and other blogs with the help of embed code. These tags will help the users to find the forgotten name of wines. It means if the wine had a tag of bike on it, I will just visit the ‘bike’ tag and get the name of the wine. Wine Labels is in talks with wine social networks Cork’d and BottleTalk for possible partnerships.

Via: mashable