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With LJ Media, LiveJournal to start promoting hot blogs

If you're a fan of celebrity gossip, crafting, or cats, you may want to start heading to LiveJournal for your latest fix.

This morning, LiveJournal unveiled LJ Media, a new "social publishing group" that is designed to take some of the social blogging service's most popular communities and give them an extra push toward prominence.

The idea is that the best LiveJournal communities deserve to get special treatment--including valuable space on the service's front page, as well as other marketing help, a free custom redesign, and a few new technical tools--to get even better visibility … Read more

Cosmo editor ponies up $30 million for the future of news

Journalists and engineers could come together to shape the future of news thanks to a new joint Columbia-Stanford media innovation institute funded by Cosmopolitan Editor Helen Gurley Brown.

The David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation will be an East Coast/West Coast collaboration. Housed at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City and Stanford's Engineering School in Palo Alto, Calif., the institute is thought to be a first of its kind initiative aimed at helping the foster a new era of communication between the editorial and technical sides of news organizations.

The … Read more

Ford C-MAX Energi garners 2012 Green Car Vision Award

Green Car Journal dubbed the Ford C-MAX Energi winner of the 2012 Green Car Vision Award yesterday at the Washington Auto Show. This is the second consecutive year Ford has won top honors; the Ford Focus Electric garnered the award last year.

The Ford C-MAX Energi, which will be available in late 2012, is built on the same global C-car platform as the Ford Focus and future Ford models, the automaker said.

The C-MAX Energi bested four other finalists, including the BMW i3, the Cadillac ELR, the Mercedes-Benz B-Class F-Cell, and the Tesla Model S.

"The C-MAX Energi delivers … Read more

Green Car Journal announces five finalists for 2012 award

Green Car Journal announced five finalists for the publication's annual Green Car Vision Award. The award recognizes innovations in fuel efficiency, low emissions, alternative fuels, or electric power.

To be considered for the Green Car Vision Award, vehicles must be in demonstration on public highways today or nearing commercialization but not yet widely available to consumers, Green Car Journal said in a press release.

The five finalists include the BMW i3, the Cadillac ELR, the Ford's C-MAX Energi, the Mercedes-Benz B-Class F-Cell, and the Tesla Model S.

The 2012 Green Car Vision Award winner will be announced at … Read more

News of the World reporter: Phone hacks 'perfectly acceptable'

There's a certain entertainment to be had from an inquiry currently being held in the U.K. to examine the prevalence of phone hacking by journalists at the News of the World.

The latest evidence presented today by Paul McMullan, a former reporter for the paper, offered that phone hacking was a perfectly normal activity for a newspaper that was read by 5 million adults every Sunday.

The Telegraph reports that McMullan told the inquiry that it was Piers Morgan, currently a rather charming presence on CNN, who "set the trend" for an ethos in which the … Read more

Honda Civic Natural Gas chosen as 2012 Green Car of the Year

LOS ANGELES--The 2012 Green Car of the Year was announced at the Los Angeles Auto Show today. It's a 2012 Honda Civic, but it's not the hybrid model.

When the curtain dropped on the stage where the 2012 Green Car of the Year was announced this morning, it was the oft-overlooked 2012 Honda Civic Natural Gas that stood before the room full of journalists.

Green Car Journal cites natural gases abundance in the United States, low tailpipe emissions, and lower fuel cost (by about 30 percent) than gasoline among its reasons for selecting the Civic Natural Gas as … Read more

A better Notepad

Mac users have many choices when it comes to note-taking apps, and MacNote3 is a solid choice for anyone wanting one with good search capabilities and AppleScript integration (especially if you're a fan of the venerable built-in Notepad app of yore).

MacNote3 is a heavy-duty version of the original MacNote, with a good balance between simplicity and power. In addition to basic formatting and editing controls, MacNote3 lets you use links that can launch anything from URLs and files to messages in Mail, which makes this app perfect for to-do lists. You can also search for strings across multiple … Read more

Flipboard editorial chief on how magazines are flipping out (Q&A)

Veteran Time Inc. journalist Josh Quittner completed his defection from print media by joining Silicon Valley startup Flipboard--the popular social-magazine app for the iPad--this past July. Quittner is Flipboard's first editorial director. Before joining the company, he directed Time Inc.'s digital magazine strategy and ran editorial for Time.com. In the mid-1990s he was the first writer to cover the Internet exclusively for Time. And he's also had stints running editorial for Fortune and Business 2.0. So why leave a namesake publishing conglomerate for an unproven social-media experiment? Anyone familiar with consumer technology knows Flipboard … Read more

Wall Street Journal to unveil app for Facebookers

The Wall Street Journal is launching a Facebook app today that will draw from Journal content to create a socially oriented news publication housed on the popular site, according to a report.

With the new WSJ Social app, readers will choose to follow various streams--some curated by staff, others by fellow readers--which will determine what stories they see, writes Forbes reporter Jeff Bercovici. Readers with the most followers will be eligible for prizes.

The Journal will get all revenue from ads within the app, and Facebook will place ads around it. Paid content on the Journal's Web site will … Read more

TechCrunch's Michael Arrington fired by AOL?

AOL executives have decided to terminate embattled tech blogger Michael Arrington's employment with the company, according to a Fortune report.

Arrington, the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, ignited a firestorm of debate during the past week after it was announced Thursday that he was forming a venture capital fund to invest in some of the startups he and his bloggers write about. The investors in Arrington's $20 million CrunchFund reportedly include AOL, which bought TechCrunch last year.

AOL and Arrington did not respond to requests for comment.

A journalist writing about companies he or she has a financial … Read more