b5media launches Fly Away Cafe, a flight attendent blog:

To join our several travel-related blogs residing in the lifestyles channel, I am happy to launch Fly Away Cafe, written by flight attendant, Mary Jo Manzaneres.

In Fly Away Cafe, Mary Jo talks about travel from a different point of view, from one who travels as a career nearly every day. She talks about the nooks and crannys and unknown delights of cities that she has visited as well as offers a boat plane-load of tips and insider secrets about traveling conveniently and in style – all in a casual, friendly tone. Mary Jo is a great writer and just a really charming and fun person in general – except when she is rubbing my face in the fact that she is lounging at the beach and I am not.

Syntagma Media has launched Sailing Latest:

Syntagma Media’s 16th blog, Sailing Latest, goes live today with an up-to-the-minute report from the Clipper 05-06 Round the World Yacht Race.

The new site will cover news, boats and gear, and report from the world’s premier sailing grounds.

This is Syntagma Media’s first “sports” blog, and will not be the last.

b5media adds a baseball blog to their sports channel with the launch of Knuckle Curve:

We’re coming fast and furious in the Sports Channel. Today’s launch is a blog by a guy who knows his sport, baseball, best – Tyler Gregson and Knuckle Curve.

I immediately took a liking to Tyler because he’s a fellow member of Red Sox Nation. In fact, he’s tied by bloodto the Red Sox organization, a fact that is sure to make Yankee blood boil. But this blog covers all of Major League Baseball… including the New York Yankees, much to my disappointment.

Metroblogging is publishing a “River of News” style newsfeed for their entire blog network:

Want to get feel for what is going on over the entire Metroblogging network, but don’t want to click through 44 sites to do it? Well, now you don’t have to. This feed: http://feeds.metroblogging.com/allcities.xml contains all the posts from all of our cities. A word of warning, it’s a lot to go through, but it paints a pretty cool picture of what we’re doing and we’re very excited to show it off. Enjoy!

Weblogs, Inc. has launched PS3fanboy:

This makes six, but who’s counting? Six game-specific satellite blogs surrounding the flagship Joystiq, that is. The latest, birthed last night, is dedicated to the PlayStation 3 console, and features gonzo bloggers Dan Choi and Adams Briscoe.

b5media has launched a NBA Blog – NBA Obsessed:

When I first made the pitch internally about finding a blogger who was passionate about basketball, little did I know that Jayvee Fernandez, blogger extraordinairre at Cellphone9, would refer his brother Angelo to me.

I was impressed with Angelo from the start. He was excited and chomping at the bit to blog. It was like trying to restrain a kid in a candy store – wasn’t going to happen.

And his excitement is contagious. Angelo absolutely loves the NBA. Hopefully with NBA Obsessed, you’ll catch and share his passion for the court.

Know More Media is featuring many guest bloggers this month across their network. Some good reading to be had…

I have never liked lawyers.

Growing up in a family where one side are mostly criminals and the other side mostly police officers gives one a unique perspective on lawyers. To my father’s family, mostly criminals, lawyers were the folks that didn’t do anything to help you out when you needed help. To my mother’s family, mostly cops, lawyers were the defense attorneys trying to get a criminal back on the street.. or a prosecutor that couldn’t prep a case well enough.

But to a business, lawyers are invaluable. Yes, they are bloodsuckers, but they’re invaluable because they keep your tail out of trouble.

I learned this lesson early on. Back in the mid 1990s, we were working on a relatively large contract for a client for his first real interactive website. We were plugging along in Perl and some old flatfile databases and wrapped up his project. We published it for him.

And then he refused to pay.

We really had no recourse – because we didn’t have a contract, we didn’t keep documentation, and we didn’t even have all of his proper contact information.

So we learned a tough lesson.

From that time on, one way or the other, I’ve always had a lawyer involved in our business.

This became much easier when one of my friends from college finished law school and passed the bar – but hey, who’s counting.

I’ve written before that some blog networks lack the business savvy to be successful:

Business can be brutal. It’s all about the ability to build a lasting operation for me – one that will withstand the test of time – that will be able to compete not only against what’s out there today – but against what’s coming down the road. And as I look around the blog network world, I am going to call things as I see them. Many blog networks simply do not have a viable business model, viable leadership, and a solid infrastructure.. and thus some networks are simply not going to survive.

In the last four months, we’ve relied on counsel’s advice a number of times to resolve issues both public and private. Sometimes these have been simple things, such as reviewing and editing our blogger contracts. But it’s that simple question.. has a lawyer reviewed your blogger contract.. that I think most blog networks would answer in the negative. And that’s where your trouble begins. Copyright issues, ownership of content issues (these are different questions), payments, obligations on either end, and so on.

In our few short weeks owning Blog Herald, we’ve fired off four DMCA takedown notices for individuals using our content without our permission. While we use a form letter for this process, that letter was drafted by counsel. It’s very effective, by the way.

One of the more expensive issues that can arise when you’re in the content creation business revolves around copyright. I’ve been involved as an observer and forum participant in a private forum where one member sued several other members for copyright violations. The crux of that issue was stolen humor content – which certainly wasn’t a pretty one to watch go down inside of a “community”. In the end, some cooler tempers prevailed, but not before several thousand dollars in legal fees were spent.

My advice for the blog network owners out there – get an attorney, do things right, take your business seriously. It will save you more money in the long run.

And.. I still hate lawyers.

Instablogs has redesigned CIO Central:

We already told you about our many technology blogs but we forgot to mention an important blog, namely CIOCENTRAL, our blog for CIOs. CIOCENTRAL provides essential reading for the CIO, covering topics ranging fom Digital Security and Enterprise Software to Project Management and Open Source Software.

Original Gawker editor, Elizabeth Spiers, will launch her new blog network this week with the Dealbreaker.com on Wednesday.

Much coverage in the blogosphere about this pending launch, beginning with Weblogs, Inc. CEO Jason Calacanis:

I targeted three people to blog for us when we started WIN: Peter Rojas, Malcolm Gladwell, and Elizabeth Spiers. Peter signed up, Gladwell wasn’t into blogging (at the time), and Spiers told me she was done with blogging. She made the Gawker brand before disappeared at New York Magazine for a while . Then she doubled MediaBistro’s traffic *instantly* with her FishBowl series of blogs (you can check the Alexa charts on that one).

Now she’s about to launch her own Weblogs, Inc/Gawker.. the first blog is called DealBreaker and IWantMedia interviews her about it today. In the interview she calls out Denton’s publishing philosphy: “Turn up the level of harshness and make it meaner, and people will pay more attention.”

Jason mentions the interview at IWantMeda, here’s an excerpt:

Q: How will Dealbreaker differ from other financial news sites?

Spiers: Our editorial approach will be something like “The Daily Show” does CNBC — very sophomoric. We’ll be wrapping finance news in entertainment.

I had drinks with Jim Cramer a few weeks ago. His “Mad Money” is one of the highest-rated shows on CNBC. I explained Dealbreaker to him. I think he thought it was going to be a lot more serious.

I thought he would intuitively understand it, because “Mad Money” takes dry financial information that people don’t want to digest naturally and wraps it in candy coating. And that’s kind of what we’ll be doing with Dealbreaker. Jim’s show is engaging because it’s entertaining and people learn something in the process.

I’m not a fan of the Wall Street world, so I’m looking forward to getting a few laughs from what Spiers has created…