OnSugar is a new blogging platform with a twist. The service has added several functions usually found on other social networking sites so that it feels like a blend of WordPress mixed with Twitter. For example, on the homepage you can view the public timeline which updates with posts from all blogs or just those you follow. You can also follow bloggers and their blogs and send them private messages (just like Direct Messages).

One of the most useful features is the dropdown menu that allows you to jump from one of your blogs to another. The other menu item (see right image) displays all of the tasks that you can perform on the blog you’re currently visiting. For example, you can create a new post, edit drafts, change themes, widgets or pages. You can also change your site settings or invite other bloggers to guest blog on your site.

Speaking of themes, you can use existing themes or copy them and change them to make them your own. You can also create your own original theme from scratch if you want.

The Start Following link appears on all blogs and acts like the subscribe to RSS feed option that we see on all blogs these days.

When you create a new post you’re presented with a great deal of choices, which is another thing that makes this blogging platform different than most standard platforms. You can create many different types of blog posts. Besides the standard text post, you can also create polls, question and answer type quizzes, quotes, links and more. As for media, you can upload audio and video files or embed them.

The home page has a cool filtering system that lets you display whatever you want to see. For example, you can choose to see all new posts from all blogs or just the sites you subscribe to.

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You can select what kind of posts to view too, such as only posts with audio, video, polls, quizzes, links, etc. It’s a unique way to let users manage and control their blogs and those that they follow.

The service might appeal more to women because of its initial look and feel, but there seems to be a significant amount of men on the service already. The platform is different so we’ll have to see what shakes out when more traditional bloggers give it a try. Is it a good idea to mashup social media services with the blogging platform model? I think it is. WordPress and Blogger have made strides (ever so slowly) to give their users more social media tools and functions. Time will tell how much farther they will go to make their blogging platform more social.

Blogger has announced a new “following” feature that enables members to list themselves as fans of other members’ blogs.

By following a set of blogs, your username and avatar will not only show up among other followers in a MyBlogLog-like gadget that can be placed in the sidebars of these blogs. You can also view the latest posts from the blogs you follow in a special feed reader on the Blogger dashboard.

Say you were to step back in time, to the moment before you were aware that copying and sharing music, either through tangible media or virtual transfer, was illegal - and could be a crime prosecutable with steep fines and perhaps even a jail term (if you happened to be convicted of particularly heavy violations). Would you prefer to see damages conditioned to fit considerably less intense profile? One described as “innocent infringement,” perhaps? That’s what the defendant in Maverick v. Harper is hoping to realize.

The case takes place in San Antonio court, and involves what originally was a 16 year old girl (now college age), who admitted to copyright infringement but has sought “‘innocent infringer’ status,” according to Ray Beckerman of the website Recording Industry vs The People.

The RIAA, according to Beckerman, aimed for summary judgment in light of the defendant’s plea of ignorance about her transgression(s). But interestingly enough, the court has “denied the RIAA’s motion…unless (it) agrees to accept $200 per infringement.”

That number is rather meaningful, actually. The court details its position thusly:

The damages provision of the Copyright Act provides that a plaintiff may elect to seek

minimum damages of $750 per work. 17 U.S.C. § 504(c)(1). However, it also provides that “where the infringer . . . was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright, the court in its discretion may reduce the award of statutory damages to a sum of not less than $200.” 17 U.S.C. § 504(c)(2). The defendant has the burden to prove the lack of intent necessary for innocent infringement.

The court then explained the defendants stated position on the matter:

Defendant admitted that she owned compact discs. However, both in her affidavit and in her deposition, Defendant claimed that she believed using KaZaA and similar products to be akin to listening to radio over the internet and did not know that the Recordings were being either downloaded or distributed. She further claimed that prior to this lawsuit, she did not have any understanding of copyright infringement.

Insofar as the defendant’s need to “prove the lack of intent necessary for innocent infringement,” the court had this to say:

At the summary judgment stage, all factual disputes must be construed in the light most favorable to the non-moving party—in this case, Defendant. Anderson, 477 U.S. at 255. Defendant has the burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that her actions constituted innocent infringement. 17 U.S.C. § 502(c)(2). Plaintiffs have not introduced any evidence to contradict that Defendant did not have an understanding of the nature of file-sharing programs and copyright sophisticated enough to have reason to know that her actions infringed Plaintiffs’ copyrights. Therefore, the Court finds that a fact issue exists as to whether Defendant was an innocent infringer.

There you have it. A lesser charge for the defendant, it seems. But I must say, even with the -$550 “voucher” put up by the court, $200 per work still puzzles me. If we’re to take $0.99 as the generally accepted price for a digital music track today, a 2,000% premium is peculiarly high for an infraction. Yes, the real damages to the RIAA could be quite high, given the amount of illegal proliferation of music on the Web. But one could perhaps just as convincingly argue the opposite. That they are not so high on an individual basis. As it goes in the peer-to-peer realm, the number of seeders, like leechers, is high. Given the fact that there is room for “doubt,” as it were, at least in a legal sense, damages could do with a major decrease. All the more so if a defendant is judged an “innocent infringer.”

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:RIAA Trial Over: Thomas Found Guilty of InfringementRIAA’s Sacrificial Lamb Appeals Damning Court RulingEMI and RIAA To Call It Quits? Me Thinks No.EMI to Cut RIAA Funding; Death of RIAA Near?RIAA’s Sacrificial Lamb Brought to TrialMan Defeats RIAA In Copyright Case. Who Should Pay His Legal Bill?In Your Face, RIAA. The University of Oregon Takes A Stand.

Source:Mashable!

If you are a Windows user and follow any of the vast number of blogs that specialize in talking about Microsoft and Windows chances are you will have heard about Long Zheng and his istartedsomething.com blog. Long has been blogging for quite sometime about both and has acquired quite the reputation for breaking stories that have to do with Microsoft and its operating system. The great thing about this is that he is still going to school full time while he builds what could end up being a very successful Web business along side his already popular blog.

It all came about nearly six months ago when on what was originally just a whim he created the first version of his Windows UX Taskforce web site. The idea was simple enough – to provide a single place where people could document the problems they were finding with the user interface in Vista. In a very short time the site became very popular with Windows users and apparently caught the eye of Microsoft employees on the Windows team. The site became so popular that Long then revamped it to provide a more robust reporting system for the users of the site as well as recoding the whole backend with an eye to the future.

Recently he changed the name from Windows UX Taskforce to Areo Taskforce and is in the process of redoing the graphics to better resemble the Vista interface colors and style. He is doing this because just recently at the behest of many Mac users he has created the same Taskforce site for Mac users – appropriately enough called Aqua Taskforce. As Long said in the post announcing the new service:

One of the first requests I received after launching the Windows UX Taskforce was “when can you make one for Mac OS X.” This came at a surprise to me because I didn’t know OS X had user experience flaws, but apparently it did and still do. Having said that today I’m proud to launch Aqua Taskforce, a taskforce site for Apple users to submit, vote and comment on OS X user experience quirks.

While it might still be early days for his Aqua Taskforce site it is already beginning to see items being added. Now whether the site will see the same involvement from the Mac OS team at Apple as the Area Taskforce does from Microsoft remains to be seen, but hopefully they will be paying attention.

As Long noted in his announcement post about the Aqua Taskforce site, he has completely revamped the back-end code so that even a single log-on will work for both sites. It also has been re-engineered so that the codebase can support multiple task-force sites with a single log-on as well.

This is were the accidental success could be something that Long Zheng didn’t anticipate. With this re-engineering he has created a backend to a system that will allow him to deploy any new taskforce site in literally minutes. So any company that would find something like this useful could be up and running with their own task-force site minutes after contacting Long.

Literally out of a single idea Long has utilized the power of the Web to provide easy to launch services and built himself what could be a nice profitable business – and he’s still in school. It is amazing how sometimes such a simple idea that would seem to be out of the norm of what we expect a web business to be these days can with some imagination take off.

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Just as online sites have grown increasingly niche as interest groups continue to find each other and flourish within environments filled with like-minded users, Glam Media’s advertising empire has been launching multiple niche channels in order to better target ads within its quickly growing network. Having rolled out verticals for topics like Entertainment, Living and Family, the latest new channel in the Glam Media network is Glam Wellness, which encompasses mind-body-spirit, empowerment, and a healthy planet.

Those brands related to this particular category, including Glam Wellness launch sponsor SOYJOY, can take advantage of Glam’s network in order to better target interested consumers. Glam wouldn’t be able to offer such targeting without the enormous reach it has, spanning a very wide array of female-oriented sites that participate within Glam Media’s network. Having recently raised more than $80 million, Glam is continuing to push out more verticals, further branching out its advertising network and potentially providing more quality targeting capabilities to participating brands.

Aside from display ads and other basic advertising methods, Glam has recently introduced its Glam Applications Platform. We’ve also seen other branding pushes come through Glam with a more recent partnership with Flock, which features direct delivery of Glam network content to users that utilize the fashion- and entertainment-centric Flock web browser. Such partnerships allow Glam to explore various forms of unique advertising opportunities as well.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Glam Launches Distributed Media PlatformGlam Reigns over iVillage as the No. 1 Network for WomenGlam Signs Google for Ad Brokerage and SearchGlam Media’s Acquisition of StyleMob RevealedGlam Media Steals Executive Talent from MySpaceGlam’s New Ad Exchange Connects Marketers, Publishers, & Ad NetworksLifetime to Use Glam’s Managed Vertical Network