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.

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)

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.

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.

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

Why do you publish photos or articles on the web if you don’t want people using or criticizing them? This is perhaps one of the standing issues that caters to the hyperlinking issue of blogs today.

We all know that blogs are more of critics at work. While some may provide good viewpoints, there are also bad ones. People may use photos or images from published sites but the fact is, a link back is a form of respect to which owner’s rights are still being observed. But for some people, this does not seem to be enough.

For purposes of not wanting people to “borrow” or “use” your stuff, then why publish them on the web? Keep them on your computer or your digital camera if you don’t want people using them!

He’s facing three lawsuits for copyright infringement, but that’s OK with notorious celebrity blogger Perez Hilton, who sees himself as something of an activist for bloggers’ rights.

“In a perfect world, you’d rather not be sued than be sued, but I think from his standpoint all these lawsuits essentially stem from the same exact issue,” his lawyer, Bryan Freedman, tells The Showbuzz. “It’s the rights of bloggers to the fair use of published photos that are on the Internet and the right to use them for satire and commentary. I think Perez is excited to be the one that makes the law in this area and is fully prepared to go all the way if he needs to in order to make that law.”

Perez, whose real name is Mario Lavandeira, takes celebrity photos, doodles on them, posts them on his popular blog, perezhilton.com and adds commentary.

“He uses them in a transformative way and then opens a dialog of commentary. Whether you like the commentary or not is a different story,” said Freedman.

“I totally disagree, obviously, that what he does constitutes fair use,” Brandy Navarre, VP of X17, which sued Lavandeira in November for more than $7.5 million, told The Showbuzz. “I don’t feel that what he does qualifies (as satire). These are not all newsworthy photos, (and) he’s not altering the photos enough to make a difference. Sometimes just writing a question mark isn’t satirizing significantly enough to make a difference. And the volume at which he uses the images is out of bounds.”

Universal City Studios Productions LLP filed a lawsuit against Lavandeira in February, claiming a stolen image of a topless Jennifer Aniston from the set of her movie “The Breakup” was posted on Lavandeira’s site.

In late April, five photo agencies joined together to sue Lavandeira for $7 million for using their photos and videos.

His lawyer argues that Lavandeira has merely used photos that were already published elsewhere on the Web.

“If it’s not already out on the Internet, it’s protected,” argues Freedman. “He’s not in the business of taking watermarks or anything like that. I can’t for the life for me understand how a photographer has been hurt when the photograph has already been published on the Internet.”

Navarre claims Lavandeira’s actions have hurt her company’s bottom line.

Source: Perez Hilton, Defender Of Bloggers Rights?

[tags]blog news, blogger news, disputes, copyrights, infringement, hyperlinks, links, violations[/tags]

The advent of blogging has served as a good alternative towards the usual web pages that people have been conceptualizing as of late and TypePad developers know this all too well. With this in mind, blog sites have become the ideal alternative towards putting up web sites, focusing more on content rather than images.

TypePad has offered a new TypePad page that allows users to setup websites as an individual blog. With the trend imminent, it is certain that this new offering will be taken up by millions. Here are some excerpts from this new development news of TypePad:

“If you’re a TypePad blogger, we know you’re serious about making a great blog. But what about the parts of your site that don’t fit into your blog? A detailed contact page listing all the ways someone can get in touch. What about a biography that explains just how you became such an expert on the topic you blog about? Or, maybe your business’s blog needs a good set of directions to your office, along with a map. A couple extra pages on your site would add a lot of power and flexibility to your blog.

With the new TypePad Pages, you can use all the power of TypePad’s posting tools to create as many individual web pages as you want. And those pages have all the power of TypePad’s widgets and rich media features, automatically inheriting the look and feel you’ve chosen for your blog.

The TypePad interface you use every day to update your blog now lets you create a web page as easily as you’d write a post. (That means you don’t have to learn any complicated new tools.) And you can even set a Page to be the home page for your blog, so it’s the first thing readers see when they go to your URL. “
Go beyond blogging with TypePad Pages

[tags]typepad, blogging, blogger, problogger, problogging, web sites, web pages[/tags]

It is evident that this new wave of advanced marketing strategies using blogs and content writing has been the new resort of most companies in the world of business today. These are the new elements that have helped businesses evolve into better managed companies aimed at attaining set goals.

Marketing is the life stream of any business entity and all marketing people will exhaust all means to use any advanced and new ways of making marketing strategies work. Hence, the new age of marketing has turned to these technology driven gifts called blogging and content writing and have had headway in doing so as we can see today.

In a time where marketing automation is a big focus, it’s important not to forget that your website is, “...the place that brings everything together in a unified place…” This is a very important point. Think about the times you’ve received marketing communications from a company, gone to their website, and been confused because what you encountered there was nothing related to their marketing communication. Consistency of story is hugely important to having your content drive action. – New Rules of Marketing & PR

[tags]blogging, blog marketing, marketing practices, marketing strategies, advertising, promotions[/tags]