The incident apparently began with the FBI monitoring certain web blogs for terrorist activity. Al-Qaeda is known to operate and spread their communication through the Internet, but the odd part about this shut down is that it was a community web service with many users.

The blogging service, Blogetery, reportedly hosted over 70,000 blogs, and most of those users had nothing to do with terrorism. Furthermore, the owner of the service is not being accused of terrorist activity either. The hosting company, Burst.net sent a warning to Alexander Yusupov to take down the sites but did not supply any official evidence of the FBI investigation. The FBI says that it did not order the service to be shut down and that Burst.net took that action on its own.

The sad part of all of this is that possibly thousands of blogs have just been erased from the Web with little regard for the innocent people who used them. The lesson to be learned, however, is that any website or service should have backups, even if the content is created by other users. Furthermore, with as many as 70,000 blogs, they also should have had some type of redundancy in place to prevent total data loss, even if it were accidental.

Source: Times Newsline

Continue reading: Hosting Company Shuts Down Blogging Service

ActionAid is running a blogging and tweeting educational campaign for the third world, teaching people in poor communities how to use social media to tell their stories through .org sites. The project is called TOTO and is an ActionAid Australia initiative which puts bloggers in poor communities for one to two weeks to teach the locals the how-tos of social media.

I can’t help but wonder if it’s just another nice idea for people wanting to make a contribution to the third world in projects whose benefits to these poor communities are difficult to measure. In any case, the idea behind the initiative is as follows:

Poverty is too often hidden from view, but through Project TOTO, ActionAid is helping to shine a light on issues of injustice and human rights violations on the world stage.

Continue reading: The internet and the third world: NGO blogging and tweeting from Bangladesh

Run a hosting site long enough and you are bound to encounter customers who want blogs. Even if you are a customer yourself, there is a good chance you will want a blog. You could get a free one from Wordpress or Blogger, but having your own domain for it just makes sense if you want something professional looking.

Wordpress - The company that offers free service also offers their blogging software as free and open source PHP code. It is easy to install and maintain.

Livejournal - The old kid on the block, Livejournal was a perl-based blogging software with a big following.

Moveable Type - Another perl-based blogging app that is very popular.

Drupal - This blogging software/CMS is uniquely known for its easy scalability. Create a blog for one or hundreds.

Serendipity - I have personally never used this one and know little about it, but it seems to offer a good host of features.

There are many others and no shortage of free and paid hosted solutions. In a future post, we will compare some of their features.

Photo Source: Flickr

Continue reading: Blogging software roundup

Question: I’m torn between two content management systems (CMS). Should I choose Joomla or Wordpress?

Answer: There are hundreds of content management systems and tens of really good ones, but two very popular ones: Joomla and Wordpress, are often highlighted. The truth of the matter is that there are benefits and drawbacks of both, and the one that will work best for you mostly depends on your needs and preferences.

Joomla is a large multi-functional CMS that is highly extensible and very customizable. Your website could be anything from a storefront with an ecommerce shopping cart to photography portfolio featuring a gallery of your work. The frontend, templates, and arrangement of modules are all subject to your imagination. It can also function as a blog or news magazine, but in that category it is a sloppy second to Wordpress.

Wordpress was primarily created as a blogging application. Since then, however, it has grown into a full-featured news creation and management tool. With it you can have a single user blog or a multi-user site complete with user bios, advertisements, etc., all extended through the plugin interface. Installation, setup, and extending of Wordpress has become very easy, arguably easier than Joomla, and Wordpress suits those who do not need all of the extra bells and whistles of Joomla.

Continue reading: Joomla vs Wordpress

Blogs are all the rage these days. It seems like everyone and their dog has one. Not able to justify the expense of web hosting, many new bloggers have turned to free hosts specially designed for blogs only. While it’s a good way for some to save money, there are a number of reasons why a serious blogger should never host on a free service.

1. No domains allowed
No matter how well-read your site is, you will always be stuck on a subdomain. Most free blog hosts do not allow domain names. This is not only an inconvenience, but means all backlinks will point to the subdomain given to you by your provider. For instance, if Nancy wanted to move to a paid host and register nancysblog.com, she would find that she lost all the links and visitors to her freely hosted site, nancytoday.freebloghost.com.

2. No ads allowed
Check the requirements of your free provider. Some large notable hosts do allow users to display their own advertisements, but many place restrictions on the type of ads and how many you can place on your blog.

Continue reading: The caveats of free blog hosting

Wordpress is best known as the world’s most popular blogging platform. Now it’s the owner WP.me, the only two-letter .me domain in the world.

The name will be used for a free URL redirection service for bloggers hosting on the Wordpress site, similar to Bit.ly on Twitter. Wordpress not only makes a great CMS, but also provides free subdomain hosting for blogs.

Wordpress was able to obtain the name through a special agreement with the .ME registry. Most domain operators do not allow the sale of names under three letters.

WP.me seems to have been given as a gift, which was probably a good PR move for .ME. Wordpress’s use of the domain will likely give the extension some much-needed attention.

Source | The Domains

Continue reading: Wordpress acquires world's only two-letter .me

Last April, blogger Mike Morgan got a cease and desist letter from financial firm Goldman Sachs. The letter demanded that he take down his website, GoldmanSachs666.com, a blog critical of the company. Goldman claims it violated its intellectual property rights. An attorney himself, Morgan fought back, and won.

Though “Goldman Sachs” is a trademarked term, the site falls under fair use guidelines and does not violate American trademark law. Rather than go to court on Goldman’s terms, Morgan filed a preemptive lawsuit in his local district court, asking it to verify the lawfulness of his site. Yesterday, Goldman Sachs backed down, agreeing not to interfere with the blog so long as it is not used for commercial purposes and a disclaimer is displayed on every page.

On his site, Morgan declared:

True knuckheads that think they can bully anyone. Well . . . they bullied Bush, and they’re bullying Obama and his Gang of Goofballs, but I hate the bad guys . . . and Mike Morgan never backs down

The site owner was lucky in this case because, as an attorney, his legal costs were drastically reduced. Everyone can and should challenge abusive legal claims like the one from Goldman Sachs, however. The investment giant knew it had no legal basis to take the site down, but thought it could do so by threatening Morgan with costly legal proceedings. Most of the time, this tactic works, but if you hold your ground, you’d be surprised how much power you can hold against big business.

Source | The Domains
Photo | Flickr

Continue reading: Goldman Sachs gives up domain claim

Last week the New York Times ran a feature about several bloggers who had abandoned their blogs. They quoted statistics from Technorati stating that 95 percent of blogs are abandoned, the ruins of the lost World Wide Web. They cite many reasons. Some people thought they would become financially independent. Others thought they would become famous and suddenly have an audience without a major publishing deal. Still others simply no longer had the time to blog.

The question the article does not answer is: why do some people keep blogging? According to Technorati, there are 7 million to 10 million active blogs at any one time, but only 50,000 to 100,000 generate the most page views. Nevertheless, those people who have not become famous or rich continue to blog and probably get visits and comments from people they know with an occasional stranger here and there.

The truth is that some of us blog because we love to write. Blogging is a quick and easy way to get something off your chest. People may read it, or they may not. Writers write because they love it. Moreover, many bloggers who quit undoubtedly thought that the would be the center of attention, but as with most social media (Twitter and Facebook included), it is a participatory culture.

Continue reading: Why people keep blogging

Every year, blog search engine Technorati publishes the State of the Blogosphere. Though the report has been out for some time, I find myself going back to it from time to time because it has so much information about blogging:

• Bloggers write nearly one million posts per day collectively.
• Mean revenue for bloggers is $6,000 per year.
• In general, Americans have been blogging longer than their Asian and European counterparts. Despite putting up to 5 times as much money into their sites, those in the States make no more money than any other group on average.
• European and Asian blogs are read nearly 25% more than others.
• Among Asian bloggers, 57% are single. Compare that to 31% for Europeans and 27% for Americans.

The fact that so much attention is being paid to bloggers is good for domainers and web hosting professionals, too. As more and more people see the Internet as a legitimate source of income, it will get more respect.

Continue reading: Who Knew That About Blogging?