Splashpress Media has recently retooled 17 of their sites, including:

• Biziki


• Parenting Blog


• Study Driving


• Downloading Legally


• Biz Crunch


• The Health Blog


• Zero Value

For the full list (and background info) of the relaunched properties, read the SP Media press release.

The M-Network, a relatively new finance blog network that we reported on last August 2007, have recently moved to its own dedicated website at www.mnetworkblogs.com, as shared to us by Pinyo Bhulipongsanon.

We’d like to congratulate the fledgling network for this move.

After a long wait, the new 9rules network has seen the light of the day. Quoting Scriv’s relaunch post, 9rules: Vol. 3, Edition 1:

In February I announced that the old 9rules was coming back. That was a lie. The old 9rules was never coming back, just some of the philosophy behind it. We are constantly trying to improve and move forward and saying the old version of anything is coming back seemed like a step backwards for us. So today we are happy to show you what we like to refer to as the 3rd Volume of 9rules, a new beginning with some old time goodness mixed in.

Visit the revamped 9rules.

Blog network b5media has welcomed three blogs to its fold over the past few days:

• Sega Nerds—“the only place you need to visit to get all your Sega news, reviews, previews, and more!”


• Robust Cooking—“will be focusing on healthy cooking, eating, menu planning with a particular focus on diabetes and other health conditions that require special dieting”


• Mom Gadget—“introductions to gadgets that make mom’s life a little simpler, conducting more giveaways and dishing up more entertaining and informative reviews”

The b5media network has welcomed three sites—one on a comeback trail—to its fold:

• The Hawaii Traveler—“Jody divides her time between the mountains of Colorado and the islands of Hawaii, but it’s the latter expertise that she brings to her blogging.”


• Starked DC—“DC’s political news and gossip is back. J-Michael claims that while he has a political slant, he’ll cry foul on all parties.”


• Thoroughbred Fever—“Blogger Jarrod Horak writes about everything and anything related to horse racing in this new blog.”

The Blog Herald’s Andy Merrett reports:

The BBC has launched its blog network, effectively centralizing and promoting its fifty-or-so home-grown blogs.

The BBC embraced blogging, at least in its simplest form, several years ago but seems keen to push them into the limelight. A number of the BBC’s journalists, DJs, presenters, and other staff maintain blogs, usually to support live events and programmes.

Want to know what’s happening in the diamond world? Whether you are trying to get some engagement advice on the engagement ring purchase or you are simply interested in diamonds in world affairs, Abazias.com has a diamond blog that covers these topics and more. You can the latest blog posts via the website or use an RSS feed to collect all the articles that are of interest to you.

For the serious minded diamond purchaser or professional, you can get online and get an education on how diamonds are used in jewelry and many other industries. The fun thing about a blog is that it is an interactive forum. Have a question about an article? Just log in and add your comment. There are plenty of other readers who might be wondering too. And, you will find that a blogging community usually is very keen on sharing their knowledge with other commentators.

For all you fashion and gossip hounds, the blogs are a great way to spot some of the latest trends via celebrity and fashion show postings. You not only get the inside scoop, a blog post is typically accented with a relevant photo of the thing that has made the blogger’s tongue wag. Can’t wait to see the latest pooch jewelry? Find out about London’s Harrods pampered pooch fashion show. Take a look at some men’s diamond watches too. Maybe you’re just curious about what a Claddagh wedding ring looks like. You can find out under the Alternative Wedding Jewelry category. As they say: “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

Secret merger talks between blog network giant b5media and Technorati fizzled out recently, TechCrunch reports:

Blog search engine Technorati was days away from merging with blog network b5media when the whole deal blew up earlier this week, according to a source familiar with the negotiations.

The talks with Toronto-based b5media (they’re big in Canada) indicate that it is taking the blog roll-up idea more seriously than we previously thought. If the merger with b5media had gone through, Technorati would have gained a network of 340 blogs.

Technorati has a big name, but is largely associated with a failure to live up to its billing. B5media has relentlessly stuck to its remit and expanded to 340 blogs.

I’ve long since lost faith in this horizontal model, which basically claims that small-scale content sites multiplied n-hundred times add up to a better business than three or four wowsers, or a tight-niched, product-based network, like Glam or TechCrunch. In this case, less is almost certainly more.

Over the past few days, the b5media blog network has added three new blogs to its roster:

• Ultralight Delight—“Caters to the phoenomena started by such devices like the ASUS eee, Neo Xplore Classmate, MacBook Air and the OLPC”


• Austin Sound Check—“Will cover the influential and breaking music scene of Austin, Texas”


• Pop Music Scene—“Will cover arguably the largest segment of the current music industry. Popular Music is an exciting genre in music as it provides vast amounts of variety and entertainment”

The new 9rules is definitely around the corner.

The network announced on their official blog that April 30 will be the magic day for the revamped 9rules to appear:

To add to how weird we are the launch will occur at 3:00pm Eastern Standard Time. Why? I don’t have any cool reasons beyond “Tyme made me do that time”.

• May 7, 2008


• August 6, 2008


• November 5, 2008