blogging

The folks at Nielsen have confirmed what we've long suspected--we waste more time on Facebook than anywhere else. The famed media metrics and ratings company says in its latest social-media report that Americans spend more time on Facebook than any other destination on the Web--about 53 billion total minutes in the month of May 2011 alone.

That's even more time than we spend streaming Pandora, which last quarter ate up 1.8 billion hours of listening time, an activity that requires much less interaction, or even being in the room. The Facebook tally is also just short of the amount of total hours spent by gamers playing on XBox Live, which at one point last year Microsoft estimated to be a total of a billion hours a month. That's a global number though, so take away all those overseas game junkies, and odds are that Facebook is still bigger here in the land of the free and the home of the Liked.… Read more

One of the services that Apple offered when it initially released MobileMe was personal Web hosting, allowing users to create Web pages with Apple's iWeb program. While Apple will still be supporting its personal Web hosting service until June 30, 2012, the service will eventually be shut down. In addition, Apple's iWeb program has been discontinued, so while it still works, it too will sooner or later need to be replaced.

This situation will affect anyone who uses either iWeb or MobileMe hosting, but luckily there are a few options for people wanting to transition to alternative services … Read more

After a bloody public battle, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington has officially severed ties with the startup blog he founded.

In a statement posted on TechCrunch's site today, AOL said that Arrington "has decided to move on from TechCrunch and AOL to his newly formed venture fund."

AOL acquired TechCrunch last year for an undisclosed sum. Following the acquisition, the companies agreed to allow TechCrunch to have editorial independence, and keep its staff. However, following Arrington's recent announcement of the establishment of a venture fund, called CrunchFund, the media world debated the ethics of the co-editor of … Read more

Super-simple blogging tool Posterous is getting a major refresh today. The new system, while still dead simple, has more up-to-date social and sharing tools. The new Posterous encroaches on Facebook and Google+ in some ways, although with only 15 million users after three years running, it's not technically in the same league.

The new Posterous Spaces, as it's called, is "really trying to go after controlled and private sharing," CEO Sachin Agarwal told me. Your spaces (formerly sites) on the service can now have members (formerly you had to set up groups). And in contrast to Facebook and Google+ Circles, spaces memberships are symmetrical--everyone can see everyone else, and there's none of the lopsided sharing and following in your tight groups that you can get with Google+ and Twitter. You can set up as many spaces as you want, and each can have different members.

You can also follow (not author) other users' public Posterous sites, and there's a wall- or Twitter-like "Reader" tab now for doing that.

Posterous has always had a strong mobile app, as befits a super-simple, quick-and-dirty blog platform. Posterous Spaces gives you fine-grained and clear control of spaces and members from the app. There's a lot more in the mobile app now, and it's more complicated than the last app, but worth it for the flexibility.

Posterous is not insular, either: Posts on the service can get automatically pushed to existing social sites like Facebook and Twitter. This is a standard feature for a user-focused site today, though.

The company is still not making money, and I would say it's getting a bit old to still be living off VC funding (Redpoint and Trinity), but Agarwal says, "things are going so well, we've been able to focus on user growth instead of revenues." If his funders are happy, I'm not one to judge. And he does confirm that paid professional and business accounts are coming soon.

Posterous plans to roll out the new service from a paid exhibit space at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco today. … Read more

There are surprisingly few blogging apps for the iPad. Sure, you can access your preferred blogging platform through Safari, but why aren't there more apps tailored to the iPad for bloggers? I've used three and have a definitive favorite among the trio. Below, I give a summary of each, and if you click the links, you'll get tutorials that walk you through using each app.

Blogsy The priciest of the bunch, Blogsy is still a reasonable $4.99. What elevates it above the others is how easy it makes it to add and manipulate photos and videos. … Read more

The iPad might finally be an honest-to-goodness blogging tool, thanks to Blogsy. Earlier this summer, I wrote about using BlogPress and WordPress on the iPad and found both apps to be limited. Blogsy, on the other hand, is fully featured yet easy to use--and well worth its $4.99 price. Allow me to walk you through using the app in this brief tutorial.… Read more

The Chinese government can't stand online rumors, and in a commentary today from state-run media organization Xinhua it made that abundantly clear.

According to Xinhua, a mouthpiece for the country's ruling party, the growth of microblogging services, as well as blogs, is helping to fuel "toxic rumors" that, the government says, could lead to the rapid disintegration of the quality of the Internet.

"The rapid advance of this flood has also brought 'mud and sand'--the spread of rumors--and to nurture a healthy Internet, we must thoroughly eradicate the soil in which rumors grow," … Read more

Essentially, Feedly wraps your Google Reader (download) in a neat, feature-rich package. It's much easier on the eyes than the bare-bones Google Reader app, and it plays nicely with a whole lot more third-party services.

When you first launch the Feedly app, it opens up directly to featured content. That's because it comes preloaded with RSS feeds from many of the Web's most popular sites. These preloaded "Essentials" cover a number of verticals such as technology, design, and business. This means that even without syncing with your Google Reader account, you can enjoy RSS feeds … Read more

Twitter is rolling out a couple of new features that should help you find more revelant tweets, especially those that involve you.

As of yesterday, the microblogging site is replacing the familiar Mentions tab with a new tab that displays your username, according to the company's official blog. Clicking on your username tab will reveal more than just tweets in which you're mentioned. You'll be able to see which of your own tweets are considered Favorites or are retweeted by someone also. You'll also see tweets directed to you and which tweets are popular among the … Read more