The murder of a couple in Florida became headline news all over the US, but the pronouncements of a blogger has turned the case on its head.

Byrd and Melanie Billings, a couple with 13 adopted special needs children, were murdered in their home after an apparent robbery attempt. This was the official police report. But if you ask Rick Outzen, a local blogger and publisher of an alternative weekly, the real reasons for the deaths are far more sinister.

Outzen said that based on what he has heard, Mr. Billings has a seedy reputation and that according to some of the seven people who were charged with the murder, it was actually a contract killing.

Outzen shared his thoughts on the killings on his blog by posting a 277-word post. This has obviously made him quite a controversial figure and his blog an overnight sensation. Six weeks after the incident, Outzen has proven to be quite a pivotal figure in the investigations. In an interview, the Escambia County sheriff (where the killings took place) said that Outzen’s anonymous sources are largely correct in the information that they give.

Outzen’s case has put blogs in a very different light. Blogs are something that can also be taken seriously and also becoming an integral part of the fourth estate.

As expected, the recent elections have sparked anger over the blatant disregard of personal freedom for supporters of the opposition leader Moussavi who say they have been cheated. As expected, the closed state tries to silence protests and other forms of civil disobedience by blocking or interrupting mobile phone services and of all internet-based services Twitter which has been one of the best sources of information, responsible for the organization of protests in the capital Tehran that has managed to go through the information blockade. The portability and effectivity of Twitter to bring instantaneous news out to the rest of the world has put supposedly elected President Ahmadinejad mad as hell at attempts of what he calls are Western powers who have been giving the Iranian political system a shaking it should not have been subjected to. read on

The network discusses the growing rift between Steve Jobs and his former CFO regarding and issue that surfaces regarding Jobs landing in hot water with the SEC over some stock options that were seemingly over the edge. Stock options to major companies have always been part of corporate culture and the same is with Apple, one of the biggest earners in today’s technology driven world. The scandal has some millions of dollars in question regarding the value and amounts of shares the former colleagues used to share that some accuse the former CFO of blowing the whistle out on which led to his eviction from the board of directors in 2006. After all the finger pointing and accusations, Steve lands in the sights of the SEC read on

News that all major players in the electric car race have standardized their plugs for a combined effort is welcome news indeed. but is it really a question of feasibility and inter-cooperation? Nope, it’s about dominance in a rising green car market that rivals the likes of events in the IT industry where profits is a direct result of dominance of a budding market worth billions. From Europe to the US, these auto makers have seemingly agreed to take up read on

Years back when the industry was still in infancy and Microsoft has been ruling most of the IT industry in terms of profits or should we say overall dominance, Yahoo and Google came up with the bright idea of a system that would allow subscribers of their free web-based email service to do lots of nifty stuff with contacts and friends who also had accounts with the same email services. Microsoft has introduced the same functionality to their long standing HotMail web-based messaging service which many have been waiting decades for. Yahoo and Google read on

Well, it ain’t actually Twitter’s fault, for some teen who was bored just happens to get the bright idea to make a worm of a headache that has been plaguing the micro-network since Easter and has surfaced time and time again since. The worm is linked to the StalkDaily.com site that Twitter promptly warned their users to stay away from, for a visit would lock you out of your account. While Twitter tries to address or at least rid the Twitter world of the darned creepy crawly, they are advising people to stay away from their user profiles to prevent infection. read on

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.
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From the networks, Gawker’s Valleywag tackles the resignation of founding FaceBook CEO Mark Zuckerberg who resigned from the company after a threesome of disastrous corporate decisions. The first nail in his corporate coffin was the revision of the FaceBook TOS debacle which angered so many users they flooded the site with negative publicity and everything in between. It even got the attention of lawmakers who informed them that the move as an utter disregard for their initial statement. The company revised their view of owning everything that was uploaded to their servers after, well, a ton of headaches, calls, email and some bottles of aspirin maybe.
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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.
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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. read on