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With all the people all around the world now getting their information online, TechCrunch has created a nice niche in the information market. The weblog, founded in June of 2005, specializes in profiling and reviewing new and existing internet products and companies making a significant commercial or cultural impact on the web. Edited by founder Michael Arrington, TechCrunch focuses on Web 2.0 companies and websites, with companion blogs and websites looking at tangentially related products and companies, such as the mobile Web 2.0 and new hardware and gear.

TechCrunch is lauded by internet industry and venture capitalist insiders, but has also received its fair share of controversy in its short existence.

Many people believe that a write up in TechCrunch can be a make-or-break proposition for fledgling tech companies. A post puts a company on the forefront, exposing their flaws and successes. According to The Wall Street Journal Online [1], “For many Silicon Valley venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, TechCrunch has become a must read. Internet companies mentioned on the blog often report huge increases in business after they’re featured. Others get unsolicited calls from venture capitalists who want to give them money.”

No way has this been felt more prominently than by the recent acquisition of YouTube by Google. TechCrunch was the first to break the story, helping to secure their reputation as being at the leading edge of the technology industry.

Which leads to some of the concerns about TechCrunch. Criticism has been lodged that because of its prominence in the industry TechCrunch can favorably influence the industry and that Arrington, a shareholder and advisor to several technology companies, would want to influence those companies. Other concerns have been raised that TechCrunch could be in a position to want to write favorably (or not disclose potentially damaging information) about it’s advertisers or sponsors.

TechCrunch has been proactive to combat these concerns. The website’s About page discloses these potential conflicts of interest, and posts that may contain a conflict are notated as such (along with a disclosure of the potential conflict). Additionally, TechCrunch has hired a dedicated advertising salesperson to separate the business-side of their company from the reporting/blogging side.

Internet video is booming. Apple’s iTunes store has sold a gazillion videos since its debut. YouTube gets more traffic than the New York Times web site. And politically-oriented video is on the rise:

I formed Hot Air Network, LLC, to bring ideological diversity—because we all love diversity–to the videoblogging world. And because it looked like a lot of fun. Two of the most cutting-edge bloggers on the Right have joined me in my cyberquest: video editing whiz Bryan Preston and the almighty Allah Pundit. Allah likes to think of us as a little Internet garage band. Only we’re playing in three separate home offices and a basement. But you get the idea.

Recruit dynamic, enterprising people with creative skills from across the country to help us challenge (and CONQUER!) the dinosaur broadcast media outlets;

This description for Hot Air is excerpted from the website.

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The Smitten Kitchen is 80 square feet of fourth-floor circa-1870 New York City walkup tenement building joy with a skylight on top. It has one counter, a small stove, a pot and pan rack we nabbed from a former apartment, a marginally obsessive spice rack and a grapefruit knife with actual grapefruits on the handle, if you can get your head around something so precocious. My favorite things in it include a set of stainless steel measuring cups and spoons, the very first kitchen-related item I ever bought myself to cheer up a blah day, and a husband who picks at things as I chop them.

The description for Smitten Kitchen is excerpted from the website

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The description about Zen Habits is Excerpted from the website:

First of all, thank you all for reading, subscribing, and commenting on this site. You’ve all helped to make Zen Habits so much more than I could, and I appreciate that. I also thank all those who’ve helped spread the word about this site so far … telling friends and family, emailing it, and bookmarking it on such social networks as Delicious, Stumbleupon, Digg, Reddit and Netscape. If you’re not doing that already, feel free to help out by doing so!

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Twitter is the world’s most popular microblogging service. By signing up for a free account at Twitter.com, you are allowed to send 140 character messages (called “tweets”) to your friends that follow your stream, and you can follow the streams of others. Messages are public to anyone by default, but you have the option of protecting your updates. In addition to your real life friends and acquaintances, a multitude of public figures (such as political candidates and members of Congress) and news organizations (such as CNN and NPR) use twitter to keep you up to date on the latest news from around the globe.

Here’s a demo video about Twitter

Twitter