Canada’s a big country, spanning six time zones, so when an election takes place, results from one end can come in well before the other side’s done voting.  Some bloggers recently created a hubbub by ignoring this situation.

Integrating polls into your WordPress blog just got easier. WordPress creators Automattic have acquired poll and survey service PollDaddy.

The right side of the blogosphere is in a snit over a phone interview of Michelle Obama posted by African Press International. Only thing is, the Obama campaign says it’s a complete fabrication.

Technorati announced that it has acquired El Segundo, California-based self-serve advertising network AdEngage in an all-stock transaction, the details of which have not been disclosed. This comes about two months after Technorati’s acquisition of BlogCritics.

"Remember the poor, it costs nothing" — Josh Billings

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Pricing a Link

When trying to understand the value of a link a variety of factors can be considered, including:

Bankaholic is a one-man WordPress blog run by 22-year-old Johns Wu, who just got the deal of a lifetime when he sold it to BankRate for $15 million, proving that blogging dreams really can come true.

As all WebProNews readers are probably aware by now, Bankaholic, a blog run by 22-year-old Johns Wu was sold to BankRate.com for $15 million, a price some people find shockingly high, but enough to change a man’s life dramatically. We’ve covered this inspirational story extensively since we first learned of it.

Although I have ruthlessly defended new media’s potential for legitimacy as a news source, nobody said citizen journalism was a flawless concept. Today a story was posted at iReport.com claiming that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had suffered a severe heart attack. He did not.

Last night Twitter launched an Election site that features Tweets involving the presidential and vice presidential candidates rolling in almost faster than you can read them. In Twitter’s words, "We’re filtering hundreds of Twitter updates per minute to create a new source for gathering public opinion about the presidential election and a new way for you to share your thoughts."

It’s kind of astonishing how swiftly society can shift these days. In 2005, when I started covering this industry, the guys at the local pub would look over the tops of their sports sections with blank or puzzled faces if you uttered the word “blog.”

WebPronews anchor Abby Prince-Johnson was present for the State of the Blogosphere Address and Opening Keynote session at BlogWorld on Saturday.

The answer to the question “Where are we going?” has never been so uncertain. That’s probably not true, what I just said—likely every generation walks that line of dread. Our generation, if we were to follow Dave Taylor, would end up where he did eventually—at some future crossroads equally uncertain—but we’d surely arrive there by different roads.

Google Co-founder Sergey Brin has started a new personal blog called simply – Too. "While Google is a play on googol, too is a play on the much smaller number – two," writes Brin. "It also means ‘in addition’, as this blog reflects my life outside of work."

Google has acquired Korean "blog specialty" company TNC (Tatter and Company). Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Yahoo! News has a new redesign in the works, and in a move that will make many bloggers and "citizen journalists" happy, they are giving some love to blog posts that are covering popular news stories. On what appears to be each article page, there is a section for "most blogged" within the particular category you happen to be in.

Lately, we’ve been seeing blog platforms making moves to become more social. Movable Type started incorporating the ability to set up social networks apart from the Facebook Connect plugin that is available. Blogger discussed adding new features including integrating Google Friend Connect into it.

The New York Times recently claimed that the "year of the political blogger" has arrived. While that might be a true statement, it is certainly not limited to the American political agendas discussed in that article.

The Malaysia Situation

TechDirt has been keeping an eye on what is happening with blogging in Malaysia, and gives a little background:

Google’s Blogger is unleashing some new features to make blogs using the platform more social. They will be rolling out these features over the next several weeks.

 Yesterday, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved new guidance for publicly-listed companies in using traditional websites and social media channels like blogs to meet the SEC’s public disclosure requirements under Regulation FD.

A blog (a contraction of the term web log) is a website, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order.