How do you know when people REALLY like you?

When you’re defended by schleb gossip bible Popbitch.

Many kilowatts of power where wasted this week when a Times article asserted that a Google search produced as much carbon as boiling a kettle. The story went all over the world and the blogosphere positively buzzed – before the carbon expert quoted in the Times piece asserted that he’d been misquoted and never said such a thing – so there. Then Google went and set the record straight by publishing the real carbon footprint of a search.

Then I see this in today’s Popbitch email:

The carbon footprint of two google searches is the same as boiling a kettle? Not true say Google. It’s more like 0.02g. Not 7g.

So there. Is this a comment on the Times newspaper’s quality of research – despite there being no mention of the hack or the newspaper. Or does Popbitch just like Google and won’t have anything said about it? We think the latter given yet another search engine themed comment in the very same email:

The only internet two search terms more popular than sex? “Google” and “Yahoo”. Yes people go to Google and then type in “Yahoo”. And vice versa.

Why the search theme Popbitch? Is this some nifty bit of email based SEO trickery I’ve yet to learn of?

MediaGuardian hacks now write for paidContent

Cross promotion is inevitable when one content site buys another, but it gets a little complicated when the publisher of a big content buys another smaller content site which covers the same sector – and decides to keep the smaller one going as a standalone entity.

Such is the case with the paidContent site and its recent acquisition by the Guardian. The mainstream media owner has wasted no time at all in pulling paidContent, er, content, into the MediaGuardian’s own digital news pages. Not sure how this impacted the existing digital news team there, namely Jemima Kiss, but hey, who are we to second guess one of the most successful publishers in the UK?

But integration and cross promotional thingies have increased even more with today’s inclusion of a post from the MediaGuardian’s own PDA digital news blog on paidContent’s site. Not sure if the byline format works for me, but it’s interesting how this is slowly developing into something interesting. Assuming this is step two in a defined long term game plan.

Separately, the paidContent blog talks about a new website by the creators of Dazed & Confused called Dazed Digital. Not a magazine extension site it appears, but a destination in its own right. Quite nice, but no obvious sign of comments or UGC services for us fickle read/write/rip consumers of content. Also, most of the videos seem to suffer from poor lighting, making each interviewee look like they’re in silhouette. Artistic fancy or handycam hitch?

Prominent UK media blogger locked out of his site

Scamp, a prominent blogger in the ad industry, had his blog suspended after someone complained about a comment someone had added to the site. The blog’s since been opened up, but this raises the issue of  how unclear thousands of semi-professional bloggers may be on the strict terms and conditions of many of the free blog hosting platforms.

Do you know what rights you have as a blogger if someone makes a complaint about its content? Know what would happens to your content if the shutters came down and access was suddenly suspended by a hosting provider? In fact, do bloggers actually own the content on their free blogs? What happens if a complaint is made and isn’t resolved quickly (or at all)?

Should all bloggers now assume that they don’t 100 per cent own their content, as suggested by Scamp?