Bloggasm

From a pair of computer screens in a lime green bedroom in Upper Manhattan, a 27-year-old man from China is working to bring about a popular uprising.

Two months after calls shot across the Web for a Tunisian- and Egyptian-style “Jasmine Revolution” in China, he is among the few online dissidents still trying to promote a popular protest movement inside the country. The effort has failed to provoke any major street demonstrations, but it has led to a fierce crackdown by the authorities.

Trying to Stir Up a Popular Protest in China, From a Bedroom in Manhattan

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This is a strange, Twitter-borne tale of flirting, cutouts, and lack of online caution in the intelligence and defense worlds. Professionals who should’ve known better casually disclosed their personal details (a big no-no in spook circles) and lobbed allegations they later couldn’t or wouldn’t support (a big no-no in all circles). It led to a Pentagon investigation. And it starts with a Twitter account that no longer exists called @PrimorisEra.

Unfollowed: How a (Possible) Social Network Spy Came Undone

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The BBC is reporting this morning that Bradley Manning, the soldier targeted in the WikiLeaks scandal who has been held in isolation at Fort Leavenworth, has been cleared to be held as a medium-security prisoner. According to Fort Leavenworth Commandant Lt. Col. Dawn Hilton, Manning will be treated like any other prisoner … Now, Manning will be allowed visitors, mail and three hours of recreation per day–some outdoors and some at the prison library.

Report: Bradley Manning Cleared To Leave Isolation Cell

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Google Arabia announced in a blog post today the search engine’s most recent localized feature for Muslims which provides City specific Islamic Prayer Times highlighted immediately in the results page, kind of.

Muslims pray 5 times a day according to the position of the sun in the sky, which means times shift throughout the year according to the change in the day’s duration.

Google Adds Islamic Prayer Times in Search Results

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For months, word has circled in the journalism business that Bloomberg was on a talent hunt for its new opinion product, and it meant business — up to almost $500,000 worth of business, if the New York Times is to be believed.

Now, a month before it is set to launch, Bloomberg View is finally showing its hand.

The list of columnists stretches from established forces on the Washington media scene like Jonathan Alter, who recently left Newsweek after nearly three decades to write weekly columns for Bloomberg, to newer voices like Ezra Klein, who will contribute to Bloomberg on top of his responsibilities as a columnist and blogger at The Washington Post.

Bloomberg View reveals columnists, editorial board

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For an article on Business Insider, I traveled into AOL’s NYC headquarters to interview one of its advertising executives about the state of online advertising and whether AOL can change the way ad success is measured:

But whereas online publishers have had a host of different tools to manage content and serve it to the web — whether it’s WordPress, Blogger, Movable Type, or a custom-built content management system — brand marketers have been limited in their ability to be their own publishers. Traditionally, ads are served as either GIFs or Flash images (what Rogers referred to as the horse and buggy and the Ford Pinto of advertising), or, if it’s really willing to devote time and money, an advertiser can create a rich media ad (the Ferrari of advertising). Pictella, on the other hand, is essentially playing the role of Blogger when it launched a decade ago: Giving non-coders an easy-to-use content management system to efficiently and quickly deliver content.

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1. Facebook announces new group sharing service with ‘Send’ button

2. Google Blogsearch is almost completely unusable because of spam blogs. I’m surprised no tech writers have been criticizing Google for this.

3. Can YouTube compete with Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon?

4. Google introduces Background Send to Gmail

5. The global broadband adoption at the end of 2010 was about 61 percent

6. Keith Olbermann says his new Current TV show will have “significant web presence”

7. Slate rethinks aggregation (again) with a Slatest redesign

8. Ira Glass’ advice on the creative process

9. Walgreens Corrects Fox & Friends: We Don’t Offer Pap Smears

10. Nobody’s Going To the ‘Atlas Shrugged’ Movie

11. Can you use dynamic pricing for selling movie tickets?

12. Friendster is shutting down its users’ profiles, deleting all its content

13. Not to be outdone, News Corp put Myspace for sale

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