Traditionally, there are 100 seats reserved for the press at court hearings. For the first time in the history of the federal court system, however, two of these hundred seats will be reserved for bloggers, thanks to Media Bloggers Association.

After two years of negotiations with judicial officials across the country, the Media Bloggers Association, a nonpartisan group with about 1,000 members working to extend the powers of the press to bloggers, has won credentials to rotate among his members.

The fact that this is going to happen at the trial of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who is the highest-ranking Bush administration official to face criminal charges, could help bloggers gain widespread respect within the press and make this special access the norm.

Washington Post has more. [via BoingBoing]

Originally posted on January 12, 2007 @ 12:32 pm

YouTube has announced that they will be opening the editorial control of their homepage to one user for a few days each month. All you have to do to be considered is send them a list of 10 videos that you like and would want to be featured on the site’s homepage.

Being featured on YouTube’s homepage means 100,000s views for each video placed there, and can mean instant YouTube stardom.

It’s an exciting move by the company and an excellent way to respond to concerns that the site is being taken over by the interests of advertisers.

It is definitely an interesting first step, and one that has Marshall Kirkpatrick wondering if YouTube will ultimately go the Netscape route:

With all the Google money behind them, you have to wonder what it would look like if YouTube employed a NetScape 2.0 type strategy and paid a small crew of regular user/editors to dig up the best videos on the site and facilitate community around them.

Here’s the relevant portion of the announcement on YouTube:

We’re opening up the programming of our home page to guest editors. We’ll pick one user a month to take over for a few days. All you’ll have to do is send us 10 videos you’d like to place on home (make sure they adhere to the terms of service!) along with a short video about why you chose what you did and how you found the experience. If you’re interested in participating, please let me know.

Originally posted on January 12, 2007 @ 1:37 pm

It’s that time of the year again! Get our your blogroll and start sifting through it. The 2007 Weblog Awards are accepting nominations now.

The Weblog Awards are a non-profit project created in 2001 to award the best blogs. All the Bloggie winners are chosen by the public. Who are you going to vote for?

Learn more and nominate.

Originally posted on January 4, 2007 @ 11:49 pm

Social networking sites are becoming the next big target for malware, worms, and phishing attacks.

With the rise of Web 2.0 and more social interaction on sites like MySpace, LinkedIn and YouTube, security experts warn that we will see more hackers insert malicious code into dynamically generated Web pages in 2007.

The dangers of being on MySpace are no longer limited to sexual predators. Now you have to worry about being a victim of cybercrimes such as fraud, identity theft, spyware, viruses, and so on.

Most researchers agree that the motivation for malware development is increasingly financial.

TechNewsWorld has more.

Originally posted on January 4, 2007 @ 9:32 pm

According to a study conducted by ABI Research, mobile users accessing social networking sites such as MySpace, will reach 174 million by 2011.

The big stumbling block at the moment is the business model – the more time and use on the sites, the more money they cost the user, inhibiting growth.

If these sites are to be able to sustain their growth and reach the milestone, they will need to dramatically rethink their business models and particularly how they plan to monetize their services.

via Social Media Group

Originally posted on January 4, 2007 @ 1:25 am