Random Thoughts

California court bars unmasking of Web critic
from yahoo news / Reuters
Wed Feb 6, 5:39 PM ET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A California appeals court on Wednesday said an anonymous Internet poster does not have to reveal his identity after being sued for making “scathing verbal attacks” against executives at a Florida company on a Yahoo! Inc message board.

The Sixth Appellate District in Santa Clara County reversed a trial court ruling that would have allowed a former executive at SFBC International Inc to subpoena Yahoo! for the names of her critics.

The appeal was filed by a poster whose screen name includes a Spanish expletive but who is known as “Doe 6″ in the lawsuit filed by former SFBC Chairman and COO Lisa Krinsky in 2006.

Krinsky accuses Doe 6 and nine other Yahoo! Finance posters of libel, fraud and other claims arising from posts they made about her while she was a company officer.

The appellate court concluded that while Doe 6’s messages were “unquestionably offensive and demeaning,” they could not be counted as defamation since they could not be considered assertions of fact.

Without a cause of action, Krinsky could not overcome Doe 6’s First Amendment right to speak anonymously on the Internet, the court said.

The decade-old controversy over pseudonymous posting in invest or chat rooms took a major twist last July when the U.S. regulators revealed that Whole Foods Market Inc CEO John Mackey had been posting in Yahoo! Finance under a fake name for several years.

His messages boosted his own company’s strategy and denigrated those of rival supermarket chain Wild Oats, which Whole Foods later sought to acquire.

(Reporting by Gina Keating; Editing by Gary Hill)

Some Brand-Name Bloggers Say Stress of Posting Is a Hazard to Their Health - New York Times
By DAN FOST
Published: January 7, 2008

Om Malik’s blog, GigaOm, regularly breaks news about the technology industry. Last week, the journalist turned blogger broke a big story about himself. Mr. Malik, 41, blogged that he had suffered a heart attack on Dec. 28.

“I was able to walk into the hospital for treatment that night and have been recovering here ever since,” Mr. Malik wrote. “With the support of my family and my team, I am on the road to a full recovery. I am going to be O.K.”

His heart attack — and his blogging about it — raises the issue of what happens when a blogger becomes a name brand.

“The trouble with a personal brand is, you’re yoked to a machine,” said Paul Kedrosky, a friend of Mr. Malik’s who runs the Infectious Greed blog. “You feel huge pressure to not just do a lot, but to do a lot with your name on it. You have pressure to not just be the C.E.O., but at the same time to write, and to do it all on a shoestring. Put it all together, and it’s a recipe for stress through the roof.”

Mr. Malik has 12 employees, including a chief operating officer, and editors run some of his blogs, Yet, “It’s his name on the door,” Mr. Kedrosky said. “People want to know what Om Malik thinks. People want to see posts with Om Malik’s byline.”

Paul Walborsky, the chief operating officer for Mr. Malik’s company, Giga Omni Media, played down stress as a factor in Mr. Malik’s health. He noted Mr. Malik’s incessant smoking of cigars and cigarettes was a more likely cause.

In his post last Thursday, Mr. Malik blamed a variety of vices. “Friends and family have purged my apartment of smokes, scotch and all my favorite fatty foods — I am even going to be drinking decaf,” wrote Mr. Malik. His online avatar features a drawing of him wearing a press fedora and chomping a cigar, and until he rented an office last year he worked largely out of a Starbucks in San Francisco.

The day after his blog, more than 800 people had posted comments on Mr. Malik’s site wishing him a speedy recovery and offering lessons from their own health ailments. The sympathy rolled in from fellow journalists, start-up chief executives, venture capitalists, public relations professionals and, naturally, other tech bloggers.

Despite joining the exhortations that “we need you,” Mr. Kedrosky also warned, “If you come back to blogging before I give you permission, I’ll be at your door to take away your MacBook.”

Mr. Malik, a native of India, has written for tech and business magazines including Forbes, Red Herring and the recently shuttered Business 2.0. GigaOm started as his personal blog, but he left Business 2.0 in 2006 when venture capitalists financed his idea to turn the blog into a business.

It now operates several Web sites, including Web Worker Daily, NewTeeVee, Earth2Tech and Found/Read, each of which has its own arsenal of staff and freelance contributors.

Michael Arrington, who founded the popular TechCrunch blog, said he did not know to what extent stress had to do with Mr. Malik’s attack, “but the stress is crushing in what we do.”

“I was a corporate lawyer and an entrepreneur, and I know about working all the time. But now, you’re always worried a big story is breaking in your e-mail, and if you wait an hour, you’ll miss it. Every morning when I wake up, the panic hits and I have to see my e-mail as soon as possible.”

So I’ve been talking to some people about doing a radio show again, or really a podcast call in radio style talk show for the web, with the intent of getting syndicated with satellite radio at some point. A few days later I see this article on the web:

Aspiring radio hosts need only a computer & phone
From yahoo news / Reuters
By Paul Thomasch Thu Dec 27, 1:21 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Anyone with dreams of being a talk radio star — ranting about sports and politics, chatting with callers, sharing recipes or car-buying tips — can play host on their own show, right on the Web.

BlogTalkRadio, Talkshoe and Skypecasts are among the Web sites that have become popular for would-be radio jocks, and all it takes is a computer and a telephone.

“You can create a show within five minutes and be on the air within 15 minutes,” said Alan Levy, the CEO of BlogTalkRadio, a site he started shortly after his father fell ill with non-Hodgkins lymphoma in 2006.

At first, Levy created a blog for his father, allowing him to easily keep in touch with family and friends. Later, Levy decided he wanted something more than a blog.

“I wasn’t feeling like it was a conversation — it was all text.” So he came up with the idea of creating broadcasts for bloggers, and BlogTalkRadio was born.

With BlogTalkRadio, hosts use a telephone and computer to create live, call-in shows. Unlimited participants can join, and the service is free because it’s advertising-supported. After airing, the shows are archived and become available as podcasts for other listeners.

So far, nearly 46,000 shows have been created — with subjects ranging from entertainment to politics to sports and lifestyle. Actor Brad Pitt, politician John Kerry, baseball player David Wright and author Jodi Picoult are among those who have been interviewed.

“Some shows are good, some aren’t so hot,” said Levy. “The cream rises to the top.”

Around 350 shows are on the air each day, some hosted by established bloggers, like Ed Morrissey (http://www.captainsquartersblog.com) or Flylady (http://www.flylady.net). Others are from people who are just beginning to gain a strong following on the Web site.

“There’s a whole network of budding stars,” says Levy, who himself hosts a program.

DAILY SHOW

Shaun Daily is one such example. As a host of a radio show on BlogTalkRadio, Daily become involved in a campaign to save the CBS television show “Jericho,” which had been canceled before the 2007-08 season.

Daily invited producers and stars from “Jericho” to his radio program, invited fans to call, and urged listeners to send nuts to CBS headquarters — a reference to a line used by a character in the TV show.

At one point, Daily’s broadcasts on BlogTalkRadio were attracting 10,000 listeners a night. CBS eventually relented, extended “Jericho” by 7 more episodes, and wrote a letter to fans urging them to “please stop sending us nuts.”

Like BlogTalkRadio, Skypecasts are another option for aspiring radio hosts. Essentially, they are free programs that can host up to 100 people from anywhere in the world.

A host can control who speaks and eject people if they wish, just like a radio broadcaster. Skype then chooses the most interesting or popular broadcasts and displays them on the home page. Skype is a unit of eBay.

Talkshoe, another site, requires users to download software for its “Talkcasts.” Those who want to listen are then directed to a “Live Now” page to see what shows are playing. They can also download recorded shows, or podcasts, from the site.

Otherwise, you can host a “Talkcast” using features like phone muting, chat muting, request-to-talk queuing, and recording from a Web-based dashboard. You choose the topic of your show, schedule it on the site, and, unlike traditional radio, can have listeners from anywhere tune in or participate.

“We have some extremely loyal users,” said Mark Juliano, a senior vice president and founder. “The kind of service we are providing is something people were paying thousands of dollars for not too long ago.”

(Editing by Brian Moss)

Unfortunately the domain names that I want for the show are currently taken. But I’m putting my creative cap on. Time to take the blogging to the next level.

Fond a company today that will make a wordpress template to match your existed web site design.

the make wordpress site

I like the idea of having templates made to look like existing sites. I wonder how much they charge for this service on average…

This is pretty interesting, I hope it gets off theg round and gets going strong! Very forward thinking, and there are a lot of plugins adapted for it it could do well.

Habari blogging software info