In these tough economic times no one can be assured of job security so it is quite refreshing and inspiring to hear about little triumphs that happen despite these trying times.

Brianna Karp’s story is one of those success stories that encourage people to persevere and give the blogging community a positive boost.

The 24-year-old Karp was laid off from her executive assistant work in July 2008. She made do with temp jobs and getting unemployment benefits but when she went through her personal savings she was forced to let go of her apartment and basically became homeless. The one thing she had to her name was a trailer she inherited from her father who committed suicide. Karp found herself living in the trailer that was parked in an LA-area Walmart parking lot.

Armed with her laptop, Karp banged out resumes and continued to look for a new job and because of the free WiFi at a coffee shop, started blogging. Her blog, the Girl’s Guide to Homelessness, was her personal account of adjusting to her new life.

Her voice was heard. People started reading her blog and her often hilarious takes on what it is to be homeless and the issues that surround her situation. Matt Barnes, a formerly homeless man who runs a web site on homeless issues in Scotland, even contacted her and asked her to write for his site. The two eventually became involved.

Karp’s great writing skills even endeared her to Elle Magazine advice columnist E. Jean Carroll. Karp unsuccessfully tried to audition for a reality show where contestants vie for a position as an assistant to Carroll. After the failed audition, Karp emailed Carroll personally and the message grabbed the columnist’s attention. Carroll offered Karp an internship and a chance to write a fashion blog for the magazine.

Perseverance and a real opportunity to use blogging for something fresh was Karp’s ticket to success.

The Beauty Blog Network is holding an Open Invite program for bloggers desiring inclusion to their stable of blogs. Quoting their announcement:

At The Beauty Blog Network, we pride ourselves in selecting and having members that are truly the best. The Beauty Blog Network is not a directory of beauty blogs. It’s a by invite only selection of the best beauty blogs out there. What makes a beauty blog catch our attention? Quality. Quality in the writing, the information, and the intent of the blog. I can tell by reading a blog if they are passionate about it. I can tell about their commitment, in how much they put into it. Videos, tutorials, images, step by step, reviews… I’m sure you can to.

Nominate your blogs/friends’ blogs in their comments section.

Blog network owners, you might get some of your writers from this pool. From a recent email we received:

Good Morning:

I’m the Project Manager at Smartoutsourcing. We are an international consulting firm that manages different BPO teams around the world. We have a team of journalist specialized in the generation of quality contents. Currently they are working on our blogs but we are expanding scope and that is why I’m writing to you. I would like to suggest you our journalists for your blog network. Our team is specialized in wordpress and they have a lot of experience. In addition, we offer good prices.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you are interested in our offer. I will be glad to help you.

Sincerely,

Rebeca Toribio, Project Manager
marketing@smartoutsourcing.es

Performancing.com has announced the winners of their 2007 Performancing Blog Awards. An excerpt from their announcement:

With help from our readers, Performancing chose 28 awards categories (one half of our collective brain wishes we could have done more, the other half wishes we had done less;-) and nominated six candidates per category.

With over 61,000 votes in one week of voting (Readers’ Choice) and ongoing behind the scenes deliberation (Editors’ Choice) we’ve selected the winners of this year’s Performancing Blog Awards.

Read the list of winners here.

First off, the BNW team would like to wish our readers happy holidays!

Speaking of holidays, you can now nominate several bloggers who you think should be having really joyful times soon by the merit of their blogs. The 2007 Performancing Blog Awards is now open!

From our sister site:

Official Categories For The 2007 Performancing Blog Awards:

1. The Best Overall Blog
2. The Most Influential Blogger
3. The Best Blog Design
4. The Best Blog Typography
5. The Best Blog Name
6. The Best New Blog
7. The Best Blog Community
8. The Most Improved Blog of 2007
9. The Best Blogs You’ve Never Heard Of
10. The Best Blog Podcast
11. The Best Use of a Corporate Blog
12. The Best Video Blog
13. The Best Writing/Blogging Blog
14. The Best Science/Technology Blog
15. The Most Controversial Blog
16. The Best SEO Blog
17. The Best Celeb/Style Blog
18. The Best Business/Money Blogs
19. The Best Photo Blog
20. The Best Sports Blog
21. The Best Blog WebHost
22. The Best Family and Parenting Blog
23. The Best Political Blog
24. The Best Food/Health Blog
25. The Funniest Blog

It’s the people’s awards afterall…

26. The Best Travel Blog
27. The Best Education Blog
28. The Best Entertainment Blog (Music, TV, Movies)

Read the official announcement here.

Is Your Blog Worthy of a $10,000 Scholarship? Do you maintain a weblog and attend college? Would you like $10,000 to help pay for books, tuition, or other living costs? If so, read on. We’re giving away $10,000 this year to a college student who blogs. The Blogging Scholarship is awarded annually.

Via CollegeScholarships.com.

We recently got an email from the Scholarship Coordinator for the Daniel Kovach Scholarship Foundation. You can check out her message at BNW’s partner site BloggerJobs.biz.

Kudos to the Foundation for such a noble and novel idea!

Know More Media, fresh from attaining two milestones a few days ago, has just beefed up its talented roster with a dozen new authors, each of whom can be considered experts in their respective fields.

From the Know More Media announcement:

We’re very excited to have these highly qualified and skilled professionals join our group of business experts. They bring with them many successful years of experience in their specific industries.

View the full list here.

Jayvee Fernandez, b5media’s technology channel editor asks on his blog: If a network problogger left the blogosphere, would anyone care?

Jayvee compares network bloggers to editors of magazines. Jayvee comes from the print/publications industry (a fact I know), and I can surmise that he has quite some experience with the inner workings of print magazines. And in these, the editor in chief plays a big part in terms of the creative direction of the publication. So whenever there is a change in the editor, everything also changes.

So then the big question mark: what happens when the EIC leaves the magazine, taking with him all the personality and direction he set up throughout the many months, years and yes, even to the very point of taking the entire magazine staff with him?

The publisher is stuck. The staff becomes confused. Morale is low.
In the new media publishing business, can the same be said?

So same with editors in print outfits, many things change whenever a blog changes hands.

So when a problogger leaves the networked owned blog, the blog manager of the network has to find a new writer through word of blog, personal recommendations, advertising, and email blasts. A new blogger eventually comes who is fit to take over the content. Now here’s the thing. There are several things happening between the time the original blogger leaves and the time the new blogger makes his first few posts …

I have seen this happen myself, and not only with blogs of small audiences. I have seen quite popular blogs (like the Blog Herald and 901am, for instance; you can even include JOAB, Wisdump, and even this very blog.) go through a change in ownership and change in authorship. And in these instances, it’s the community built around the readership that notices the changes almost immediately.

So to answer Jayvee’s question, yes people would care. Some might even feel strongly against the change in authorship. I’ve quite a number of “I’m unsubscribing from your feed” comments on some blogs after being sold or after changing authors.

But then the point here is not to keep things static, is it? The great thing about a changing of the guard (so to speak) is that the incoming blogger or editor of a blog can make changes for the better. You don’t have to try too hard to become the blogger that once handled a blog that you inherit. You should establish your own voice and identity.

And to answer yet another question, yes network bloggers are sometimes like magazine editors.

One of the main differences between professional bloggers and journalists (and this is never highlighted) is that bloggers have that extra task of plotting a the direction, voice, and focus of his site. This is what differentiates a good problogger from a so-so one.

Whew, that’s a big responsibility!

So much for the power of blogging, but employees who are not careful on what they post on blog sites may end up losing their jobs if they are caught incidentally by their employers when they post something negative about their company and workplace.

Many would say, this is not something in the employee handbook, but then again, this can always be amended at anytime that companies and organizations would wish.

“If there is a negative impact on the organisation’s corporate image which is so serious that it breaches the implied term of mutual trust and confidence, the employee could be dismissed for gross misconduct,” she warned.

Cautioning employers to pay attention to worker’s blogs, Dowling added that blogs could provide evidence of other conduct issues, uncover workplace discrimination or bullying or even leak confidential financial information or new product details.

With the prospect of supremely cheesed off employees whistleblowing dodgy company practices, Dowling added that, “Employers need to ensure that they carefully consider the impact of blogging on their organisation and take appropriate steps to minimise any potential risk.”

Source: Digital Lifestyles. Blathering Work Bloggers Risk The Boot

[tags]blog news, blogger, problogger[/tags]

Taking the initiative in the growing concern for blog sites that are being infected or hacked, Google has launched an online security blog to take on the issue at hand. Some of these malicious practices include that of browser hijacks and spyware infections, most of which are not immediately detected by the site owners and make the lives of online viewers very much inconvenient. Here is an excerpt from the latest move by Google regarding online security:

Online security is an important topic for Google, our users, and anyone who uses the Internet. The related issues are complex and dynamic and we’ve been looking for a way to foster discussion on the topic and keep users informed. Thus, we’ve started this blog where we hope to periodically provide updates on recent trends, interesting findings, and efforts related to online security. Among the issues we’ll tackle is malware, which is the subject of our inaugural post.

Malware — surreptitious software capable of stealing sensitive information from your computer — is increasingly spreading over the web. Visiting a compromised web server with a vulnerable browser or plugins can result in your system being infected with a whole variety of malware without any interaction on your part. Software installations that leverage exploits are termed “drive-by downloads”. To protect Google’s users from this threat, we started an anti-malware effort about a year ago. As a result, we can warn you in our search results if we know of a site to be harmful and even prevent exploits from loading with Google Desktop Search.

Source: Introducing Google’s Online Security Efforts

[tags]online security, blog sites, blog networks, blog news, google blog, google news[/tags]