Bloggers are becoming the favorite target of lawsuits.

A local business owner in Salisbury has filed both a criminal and civil lawsuit against a news blogger.

John Robinson, the owner of Robinson’s Jewelry and Clock Store, filed the lawsuits against Joe Albero, a Delaware native. Robinson claims that Alebero has been harassing his family and has published defamatory statements about them for more than two years already in his blog. The civil lawsuit also charges Albero along with two other contributors to Albero’s blog.

It will be interesting to see where these lawsuits will lead. Most defamation cases, according to the Media Bloggers Association, never reach the trial stage because the case is either dropped or settled out of court.

It’s not unheard of for a person to gain notoriety for writing a blog. There’s just so many examples all over the world that you can probably name one yourself. Most of these “notorious” bloggers have parlayed it to fame and popularity. But not everyone enjoys popularity and obscurity at the same time.

One of these people was the blogger who hid under the pseudonym Belle du Jour. Her titillating blog, Belle de Jour: Diary of a London Call Girl, chronicled her experiences working as a call girl. It was such a huge success, the blog was collected and published in two books, and was even turned into a hit TV series “Secret Diary of a Call Girl”. But for years, no one knew who she was, which even led others to doubt if her blog was just a work of fiction.

But after years of speculation, Belle du Jour finally outed herself. Dr. Brooke Magnanti, a research scientist, finally revealed that she was the woman under the nom de plume. She revealed that it feels better not having to hide and tell lies to her family anymore.

I think it’s a brave move on her part to reveal her true identity considering how polarizing her journal is. It does make you wonder why she decided to reveal her true identity at this stage. But then it’s her life. She’s been non-apologetic about her past, why should she start doing so now?

College Blog Network recently announced that it has transitioned into its new site CollegeBlender.com.

According to CollegeBlender’s Spencer March, the new site will still have all of the blogs visitors have come to love and are faithfully following in College Blog Network. But the blogs have also undergone major improvements in terms of tagging, advance comments, and an iframe toolbar. Other improvements include new ranking algorithms. The blogs have also shifted focus to enable it to grow into an online community, especially with the addition of updated profile settings and other features.

The guys at CollegeBlender hope that the new site will evolve more from College Blog Network’s initial objective of being a home for college bloggers. The goal for CollegeBlender is to become the online home for all things connected to college media.

CollegeBlender still maintains a strict registration process. Only real students can register in the site and this is enforced by requiring registrants to provide a .EDU email.

TypePad has been a reliable blogging service and it has been faithfully catering to bloggers who are willing to pay money to use a blogging platform. But recently, as part of Six Apart’s attempt to probably expand its service offerings, it is introducing TypePad Micro.

TypePad Micro is a new service that will cater to very casual blogging. The first version of this service will be offered for free. Micro is described as a feature-reduced version of TypePad Pro.

TypePad Micro is going to be aimed at quick and informal blogging and photoblogging. Think of it as a service that straddles both blogging and Twitter-like status updates. This is actually not a really trailblazing service because Tumblr has already gotten to the microblogging idea first. The company thinks that existing TypePad clients will appreciate having a new platform for microblogging and who want to start a microblog site. They also think that current TypePad community members who don’t blog will be enticed to blog this time.