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New Media News Every Morning

Yoono releases “Buzz It!” plugin for Firefox

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yoono.jpgYoono announced the public beta of Buzz It!, its free social Web clipping/annotation plugin for FireFox. Now at 650,000 Yoo’sers strong, the company is expanding its popular social search community to help surfers capture and share the most interesting things they find on the Web.

Yoono Buzz It! is an extension to its patent-pending recommendation engine for Firefox and IE that combines search, research, annotation, and the ability to share packaged content with friends and associates. Buzz It! allows people to clip interesting text, links, images, and video and capture personal notes while surfing. Whether they’re researching topics, comparing prices for their next vacation, shopping for music or movies, or archiving favorite content, Yoono Buzz It! allows them to organize and save their information, and it’s accessible from any PC or Mac.

“Yoono Buzz It! is the easiest, most versatile tool for capturing and sharing information around topics, text, images, and video,” said Pascal Josselin, CEO of Yoono. “Surfers can create or access their Buzz notes from from any browser, on any PC and sharable with others through RSS, email, and published on their blogs and social networks. And most importantly, all of this content is indexed in the Yoono database to help enhance and personalize the online experience for our users.”

Originally posted on May 25, 2007 @ 4:39 pm

WordPress.com passes 1m blogs, adds domain e-mail

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1 million blogsCongratulations to the good folks over at WordPress.com on them reaching over 1 million blogs! I tried to keep an eye on it but this was as close as I could get…

Expect a formal announcement from Matt & Co. later on.

In other WordPress.com news, they have added domain mapping for e-mail using Google Apps. That means that if you connect your e-mail to your WordPress.com blog they can give you access via Google Apps, as in Gmail for your domain. Nice.

Originally posted on May 24, 2007 @ 2:42 am

Scott Karp: Journos should start blogging

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Journo at workScott Karp over at Publishing 2.0 have a post up, basically saying that every journalist should start a blog. And of course, there’s rebuttals to this stance, which also shows in the post and comments.

I’m not sure I entirely agree with Scott. While journalists have lots to gain from blogging, there’s also the fact that a lot of them suck without an editor bringing out the best.

There, I said it. Self-publising isn’t necessary a good thing, editors save us from crappy grammar and hollow stories in the print world. Editors also tend to miss out on lots of that, proving that it’s not a universal law that print is better than web. But at least it’s another set of eyes on the writer’s piece of work, and that ups the chance of getting rid of errors. I know a lot of journalists, and have edited some, that definitely can’t be left with a Publish button.

Not all journalists should blog, it might end up biting them in the neck. In other words, just the good ones should get into blogging – the rest would do us all a favor by shutting up.

Originally posted on May 24, 2007 @ 3:32 am

Technorati “refreshed”

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homepage-tm.pngTechnorati unveiled its redesigned site ushering in Technorati’s widening of scope. Actually, it was a “major refresh.”

“The world has changed. This isn’t just about blogs anymore. And to be of service to you, we have changed too,” David Sifry, founder of Technorati said in a blog post. “This is only scratching the surface, and we’re going to be rolling out lots more updates and innovations throughout the rest of the year. We’re going to continue to work on performance, making things faster and more stable. Every now and then searches still fail for our users or take too long to respond, and that’s a top priority for our backend team to fix. We’re going to keep listening to you, our users – It is an honor that you give us your time and attention – over 11.7 Million people last month visited Technorati. We’ve tripled in visitors and traffic in under 5 months. Thanks for telling your friends about us. Thanks for putting your faith in us.”

Okay, enough said. Go check out the refreshed site.

Originally posted on May 23, 2007 @ 8:19 am

TypePad gets Pages, Blogs go Beyond

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TypePadAs a convinced WordPress user it’s hard not to snicker when reading the announcement that TypePad gets static pages. Old news for WP users, but fine, it’s a good addition and if you use TypePad you can enjoy it right away.

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.

Why are they adding pages, by the way? Most likely because the users want it, but it also shows that blogs are more than just blogs these days. Blogging software powers major websites, it’s not just journals and quick reports anymore. Which makes me wonder if the term “blog” isn’t a bit worn out in a lot of aspects…

Originally posted on May 19, 2007 @ 7:20 am