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.

A few weeks ago, Lily Allen started a blog that showed her support against illegal file-sharing. The blog, called It’s Not Alright, was a direct response to the Featured Artists Coalition, a group that supports file-sharing. This group includes Radiohead and Blur.

Allen’s blog is supported by Mark Ronson and Gary Barlow, among others. But the heat that she has been getting from fans, who accuse her that she is against file-sharing because it will affect her financially.

Allen said the abuse she has been getting from fans prompted her to stop the blog. She added that she is “proud of the fact that I’ve been involved with this debate but I’m passing the baton on to other artists.”

Blog blow-hard, and co-founder of B5Media, Jeremy Wright has stepped down as B5Media CEO. He will be replaced by Elaine Kunda at the helmet of the blog network.

Wright used personal and family life conditions as the main reason for his decision:

I was burned out, unhappy in the work I was doing and looking for something more to life. I’m still exploring what that is, but suffice to say it should involve playing around with projects, family time and consulting… while I figure out what makes me HAPPY

Jeremy Wright published his personal statement over at Ensight his blog. He will now take some time off and start his consulting company Netmobs.

B5Media received more than $2m venture capital and went trough a delicate period last year when blogger fees were reduced.

More information over at The Blog Herald.

Bloggers and site owners who have been relying on Performancing themes for their site’s graphical look will welcome the announcement that all of Performancing themes will now receive an update to make them all compatible with current Wordpress Versions.

The announcement was made by Splashpress Media after Performancing released its 19th free theme. The move to update all of the themes came as a result of observations made by the guys at Performancing that a majority of free themes, including those that were submitted at Performancing’s own Free Wordpress Themes site, do not support the theme for users post release with needed upgrades. The upgrade is a good case of foresight from the guys at Performancing because they don’t want to get into the same pitfall as the other sites that offer free themes.

The post is a common occurrence in today’s world and may hold the key to explaining our insatiable desire for the latest and best gadgets as they come out of the production line. People as we all know (yes, you and me) have an insatiable appetite for anything that you can pop into a bag, pocket or purse that makes life a bit easier. Give me an example of an executive with less than one mobile phone, a couple of media players and several LCD TV’s at home and that’ll be a first.
People as a whole have a desire for anything that can make life easier failing to realize that it may be ruling their world from the bottom-up, even turning it inside out from time to time. Like the ever present Twitter and the millions of twitterers out in the world and you’ll see how mobile technology and the software world mixes into a world changing experience for all who uses it. From Larry King and Ashton battling it out to get to a million “twits”, to the ranting of John regarding the invasive character of twittering anytime, anywhere media has indeed changed.
Productivity, effecivity, easy, techy and everything else in between seems to be driven by technology and the way we have molded the internet into a sort of conundrum that has dissolved the thin red line that divides public and private life. The interesting post, “Imagine the Coolest Gadget Ever“, can be seen here which is a good description of the way we live our lives today, read on and enjoy.

From GreenOptions.com’s Sustainablog, a feature on the government’s drive to get people to trade in their old clunky cars for newer more efficient ones is underway. The post started with an idea from a child who suggested that everybody with old cars trade them in for new hybrids to solve the whole global warming thingy’. Bright idea right, well somebody in Washington thought of that too and the “Cash for Clunkers” program was born. The program is designed to make the world a cleaner place by giving incentives to people who trade in their old inefficient cars for newer cleaner cars that use alternative energy for fuel. The program is beginning to catch on and every family who opts to avail of the program helps mother nature and also gets a new car in the process making the approach a viable one that is good for the earth and the US auto industry as a whole.
On another avenue, TechCrunch tackles the moves of the new FriendFeed which they deem to be too fast, not in the speedy sense but in relation to their parent product FaceBook and Twitter. All three web services just happen to be some of the most popular services being offered on the internet (thank GOD Zucker’s gone) yet they see a common problem reminiscent of the good old days of Microsoft when they brought in technology from a little known firm, integrating it into their own product and then buying out the competitor even before the copyright infringement suits could be filed. they cite the fact that the functionality of all three services tend to be the same giving rise to the fear of them becoming one system in time. The newer version of FriendFeed goes on beta testing today before it hits the mainstream, to be unleashed into the wild that is the social net.
Google by the way gets a low blow from Billy Bragg who is a British Musician who just happens to hate Bebo.com and is now pointing the finger at the poor guys down in googling headquarters for lost profit, well what can we say, that is life in the net. Always new, always unexpected and always mundane (crazy even!)

From the Gawker Network, a job they call as one of the most annoying ones so far from the social web, the job which we would gladly coin as the “Twitter Impostor Terminator” or a lawyer who does just as it says, takes down twitter users who are pretending to be celebrities. Well, as if these people need more publicity, it seems the transparency of the social web is still the main detrimental factor which makes the internet dangerous. From sexual predators, spam and impostors, they all use the internet for their dastardly deeds.
Hailed as a joke by most but praised by his clients, the lawyer sends out email and letters to twitter headquarters and the erring twitterers who are using his client’s good name for no good such as fraud and other activities. In effect, this entrepreneurial lawyer creates a whole new field of law that is specifically aimed at these impostors and it is his job to take them off Twitter, one of the fastest growing social media outlets to date. His client lists are mostly people who cannot cope in timely manner to impostors who are using their names for illegal activities. This might just follow the move by the RIAA to halt music piracy and to enforce DRM which has all but collapsed with even iTunes, one of the largest electronic sources of music on the net to begin offering content that is DRM free. The first and only Twitter Lawyer to date (as if people would care) has announced his portfolio and has released a warning to Twitterers out there that they better watch out or they will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law if proven guilty.
Such is the amount of opportunity the social internet has created, with everybody trying to find and build a business even on a lowly mobile or 3G enabled device. one of his success stories is the one that had a fake televangelist doing dirty work in the name of the true one for Crystal Cathedral Ministries where he has successfully booted the impostor from Twittering in the name of the good man’s Servant. The expanding reach of the social web has been creating many such issues, like the claim by Face Book that it earned all content uploaded to it’s servers, much to the annoyance and complaint of all the millions of users who threatened to file suits. That was promptly followed by a retraction of the said site rules which were reiterated again and again on the various media forms to be an ill-thought of statement that has now been revoked. Just hope he can get those annoying celebrity blogs (the real ones) off-line for utterly annoying and useless content.

Gawker media, one of the blogosphere’s biggest blog networks has adopted the Atribution-NonCommercial license for all their original content which makes them one of the few networks who allows use of their materials for free. This doesn’t however a free for all fir there are limitations on how, what and where such original content can be used which can be found in their very extensive Legal Page. This maybe the trend for most of the blogosphere’s biggest names for as said in a previous post, policing content is a practice in futility. The practice of plagiarism is quite widespread and it seems the wide expanse of the internet and the many social networks that inter-twine in between have been so much for people to search fpor instances of content copying they simply gave up.
Splashpress on the other hand has put a new face on BlogHerald, which has had a lot of revisions through the many years it has graced the blogosphere. This may be timely for as people love familiarity with most things they do, it does tend to make things boring, seeing the same faces each and every day. Part of the new face of BlogHerald comes with a new theme and layout to refresh those tired eyes and a breath of fresh air. Also from the network, another new blog has been launched, Ceylon Luxury, a land which the blogosphere has failed to reach and wonder in for a long time. Along with the network’s other travel sites, the new one features country specific news regarding the hidden gem that is Sri Lanka, giving it it’s own niche in the blogosphere releasing it’s natural wonders to the world for all to enjoy. So what are you waiting for, check it out and learn about the wonderful culture the Sri Lankan’s have developed, distanced from the rest of the world and true luxury in Ceylon.

From the Gawker network, the ever updated source on information on new media has raised the alarm on the adoption of new media by traditional print publishers. This has become the norm of today’s economically challenged firms, go to the net but many questions have been raised about such a move since the net was born and began to spread its global reach. This would not only be wise, but would allow these traditional print media to maintain their diverse talent pool while they try to find a way of salvaging their other businesses in print. They however sight the should we call lack of sight on the importance of reliability wherein many a story have had to be told, re-told and then edited just because they are getting the news out so fast, that traditional editing and even spelling checking isn’t possible.
The infusion of traditional print in electronic form has plagued the realm of new media making it more muddled than ever before. i mean, new media is already on the rocks with the advent of blogging and twittering which has rattled the realm so much it needs a reality check to separate the factual from fiction. Though new media may be a jumbled mess of everybody who wants to say anything about anybody, it is part of the evolution of the net which was seen as the next big leap for the aging technology that started out as a cold war defense network. Much of the net has information that can be called anything other than factual but that is what the social internet is all about. Getting the masses to control what is in and what is out, where the truth outlives the tons of lies that gets indexed by spiders just as well if anybody foolish enough just happens to want it.
Traditional print however electronic it will be will always be traditional for they rely on good old responsible journalism, the only problem they face is that are they ready for the influx of criticism that we have all gotten used to on the net. They used to be the authority on information with the headlines and printed news deemed as truth, with the internet, they get the information out faster but any inconsistencies are quickly quelled and made apparent. Imagine a newspaper that has already been printed with a million copies and getting each one, changing a misspelling or headline. the speed the internet offers is the bane for traditional print media entering the fray, they’re simply not used to it. They’d better do more work on their publishing skills if they are to continue their ventures into the realm of virtual space, for their sake and ours.

From the Blog herald: The recent issue that involved John Stewart on his unwarranted rap on social media or the new internet is a bit unwarranted for as the post in the Blog Herald says (by : Chris Garett), there are a lot of truths but also misconceptions about the whole social thingy. First, for example blogging, it started out as a medium on the internet where anybody who wanted to write about anything (mostly their pitiful lives and their utter uselessness roles in society), much like newspapers of days past which started out as mere advert pages that were finally congealed into a more compressed form that included advertising as well as some useful stuff to gain the interest of the reader. Get hold of any newspaper (if you can still find one) and what do you see? Headlines, articles, commentary and advertisements, wait a minute, ads. We’re getting warmer! Don’t tell me you haven’t earned a buck from social media(your bosses companies sure have!)
Now head to the couch and turn the TV on to watch a re-run of his performance(John’s), what comes after and in between takes, adverts. Almost alight! I mean we all love a laugh or two from time to time, who doesn’t? At this time in history when people are losing jobs, companies are closing shop and everybody else is saying that life is gonna get worse, a laugh would be nice. All the facts about social media is that it is surely aimed at two of many things, marketing and content. Take away content and you’ll get a glimpse of why blogging has become one of the most prevalent forms of social media, then comes twitter, which took social media to new heights and places on all those tiny devices. There are truly a ton of junk on the new internet, especially from social media sites and applications but all of this stuff are aimed at (ding……ding …..ding) like humanity, the right to expression. Don’t say he doesn’t blog or twitter himself, come on, everybody does. Now whether its for their love life, miserable life, community life, responsible life or whatever purpose they want their lives to become, they have the right to do it just as John has the right to ridicule our art, craft, trade and lives.
More power to you my friend, and may Twitter…. well, Twitter you back! Laughter is still the best medicine.

Follow Up: Hands up John, your show and network have gained thousands of links and thus hits on your episode meaning people are watching you and your network is earning moolah!