Michael Arrington has closed TechCrunch UK after a dispute with the editor, Sam Sethi. It all started with a critical post to the Six Apart event Le Web 3, where TechCrunch is a non-financial partner according to Arrington. Organizer Loic Le Meur posted a negative comment, called Sethi an asshole, and then got the comment deleted by Arrington after talks. Meur then posted an apology to Sethi in the comments.

Sethi wouldn’t let it rest though, and posted a follow-up focusing on the asshole part on the comment apparently. Sethi also talked about upcoming TechCrunch events in the UK, presumably while bashing Le Web 3, which ticked Arrington off. That post was deleted.

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Originally posted on December 14, 2006 @ 3:04 am

During my morning RSS round I spottet these two Google Adsense units, with the Google logo instead of the traditional text (click for large version):

While they’re both better than the one I blogged about yesterday, I still feel it’s an unnecessary way to go for Google. Everybody knows who they are and is aware of their corporate identity, so why push the logo out there?

Originally posted on December 13, 2006 @ 3:49 am

I just noticed that Google is linking to Picasa in Gmail, at the top. The link is called “Photos” and sits together with officially launched services like Groups and Docs & Spreadsheets.

It looks like this, in case you don’t see it:

Now if they just would but a link to Google Reader there so I don’t have to type in the URL myself. Makes a lot more sense than some web photo album service, right? Now, the public Picasa link isn’t the same as the one i Gmail, but take a look anyway if you like.

Originally posted on December 13, 2006 @ 3:14 pm

As a designer I certainly don’t approve on putting dozens of social bookmarking and sharing icons at the bottom of each page, because just as badges and ye olde 88×31 pixel buttons it looks bad. Also, I question the actual benefit of the icons, but that’s a whole different matter.

WordPress personality Alex King agrees, and therefore he has launched the Share Icon Project, with a universal icon for social sharing. I think I like it, although it feels like I’ve seen it before.

Right now I’ve got my initial icon concept up there since that is the one that got the most support here. This isn’t to say that this design is the final decision, I’ll be quite happy if additional concepts are submitted for consideration.

What do you think? Contribute if you can, I think this is a great idea. Check out the Share Icon Project page.

Originally posted on December 13, 2006 @ 6:00 am

Scoopt, a site that helps amateur photographers sell their photographs to mainstream media, has added a feature that allows you to make your images directly available for sale through Flickr. All you have to do is sign up with Scoopt and tag the images you want to make available with the word scoopt, and they will automatically be made available for sale through the company’s site.

Here at Scoopt, we love Flickr. We love Flickr because Flickr members are some of the best snappers on the planet.

Some of your photos are worth hard cash to newspapers and magazines… but media buyers don’t have time to contact you individually, agree prices, make one-off payments etc.

Scoopt wants to change all this! We want to license your great photos commercially and split the profits with you.

Originally posted on December 11, 2006 @ 11:37 am