[Updated at 1:05 p.m.] Mariner Energy, owner of the production platform, said in a press release that no hydrocarbon spill has been reported after an initial flyover of the incident.

"Mariner has notified and is working with regulatory authorities in response to this incident," the statement said. "The cause is not known, and an investigation will be undertaken. During the last week of August 2010, production from this facility averaged approximately 9.2 million cubic feet of natural gas per day and 1,400 barrels of oil and condensate."

The company also said no injuries have been reported.

[Updated at 12:48 p.m.] David Reed, a paramedic on board the Rowan Gorilla II oil rig located 14 miles from the platform that exploded told submitted an iReport saying he saw all thirteen workers rescued from the water.

“We were up here in the radio room and all of sudden we saw a whole bunch of smoke coming from the platform," Reed said. "Shortly after all the radios started lighting up like a Christmas tree. They called any helicopters in the area, any boats in the area to respond, they were saying there were people in the water. There were multiple people in the water.”

See Reed's iReport of what he witnessed

WWL: Coast Guard reporting production platform incident

WDSU: Production platform explodes in Gulf

iReport: Did you see the explosion? Share images

[Updated at 12:32 p.m.] White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday that the federal government has "assets ready" to respond to any environmental problems resulting from the explosion of an oil platform off the coast of Louisiana.

[Updated at 12:31 p.m.] All thirteen people aboard a production platform that exploded in the Gulf are accounted for and safely on a commercial vessel according to initial information, the U.S. Coast Guard said in a statement.

"We continue to gather information as we respond with full force, and have oil spill response assets ready for immediate deployment should we receive any reports of pollution," the statement said.

[Updated at 11:53 a.m.] U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Bill Colclough tells CNN that 12 people from the production platform are in water immersion suits as they await rescue.

Colclough told CNN there are reports the production platform, which is for both oil and natural gas, is still on fire.

"We don't know what caused the rig to catch on fire," he told CNN, noting the incident is under investigation.

Asked about concerns regarding oil leaks or pollution, Colclough said "there are reports the rig was not actively producing any product, so we don't know if there's any risk of pollution."

Mariner Energy is a leading independent oil and gas exploration and production company in the Gulf of Mexico. About 85 percent of the company's production comes from offshore assets, with a growing share of that coming from deepwater developments.

The explosion comes nearly five months after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded April 20, killing 11 people and causing oil to gush into
the Gulf of Mexico, leading to one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history.

[Updated at 11:43 a.m.] U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Bill Colclough tells CNN that all 13 workers involved in the production platform explosion are accounted for, but one person is injured.

Coast Guard Choppers are on the way to the site 80 miles south of Vermilion Bay.

[Posted at 11:33 a.m.] An oil production platform has exploded 80 miles off the coast of Louisiana, with 12 people overboard and one missing, the Coast Guard said Thursday morning.

Rescue attempts are under way for at least 12 people, Coast Guard spokesman John Edwards told CNN. 13 people were on board the production platform total, Edwards said, noting 12 have been accounted for, but one person was missing.

The accident took place 80 miles off the coast of Louisiana on the Vermilion Oil production platform 380, which is owned by Houston-based Mariner Energy.

The Coast Guard has multiple helicopters, an airplane and several Coast Guard cutters en route. It's unknown if there are any injuries.

On Lisa Rowan’s blog Quarter Life: The Beltway’s Best Vintage and Thrift, she focuses on showing readers how to clothe themselves frugally and without filling landfills with cast-off fast fashions. Judging by some of her posts, buying vintage and thrifted leaves plenty of money in the budget for a busy schedule of cocktail parties and events around town.

This month, Lisa is teaming with Sisarina and Jobsessed to present an event they are calling Fancy Little Things. In the back-to-school and work spirit of September, this fall fashion swap encourages women to prune their professional wardrobes and exchange their garments for someone else’s. Likely to be a particular boon to recent graduates with their first office that requires dressing up, anyone can benefit from emptying their closet of good garments they just do not wear and replacing them with something they might.

You might look for Lisa’s help if you find yourself overwhelmed at the swap or on your next thrifting mission – she has a knack for pulling the clothes that fit her style from a variety of sources. “Whether I’m shopping new or vintage, I’m drawn to clean lines, subtle details, and crisp fabrics.”

It is often cited that the average person only wears about 20% of the wardrobe they own, while the other 80% languishes in the back of the closet. Because Lisa’s swap is all about clearing out the stuff you do not wear and finding affordable, quality pieces you will, she seemed like a perfect person to be the first to give us her Washington Wardrobe Essentials – the five items that form the building blocks of her personal uniform.

Lisa’s Five Wardrobe Essentials:

1. Black T-Shirt – “I actually love Forever 21 for basic black crew- and scoop-neck tees. They’re like 5 bucks and they’ve lasted through the many washes and wears I’ve subjected them to. People say black is boring, but I say black is essential. If you’re stumped, start with a basic black tee. The rest of the outfit will come.”

2. Pencil Skirt – “It’s a classic shape that looks great in nearly every color and fabric. Modest, but sexy.”

3. Scarves – “Worn for décor, warmth, or sometimes as a giant belt, I have plenty of scarves. They’re also great for hauling veggies home from farmers markets. And for covering your hair during windy convertible rides, which, really, I should be taking more often.”

4. Patent Leather Shoes – “Flats and pumps, for plenty of options. I have five pairs. It’s still not enough.”

5. Oversized Handbag or Tote – “The Girl Scouts taught me well. I’m prepared for just about anything.”

Thanks, Lisa!

Disclaimer: Lisa Rowan is a community manager for TBD.com, a network of which this site is a member. This in no way affected our coverage of Ms. Rowan’s fashionable life.

Know someone stylish who should be featured here? Be they a blogger, shopkeeper, designer, or just a great-dressed-person, I want to look inside their closet! — Brittany

By Brady Dennis When fall classes began Wednesday at Harvard Law School, Elizabeth Warren was scheduled to be teaching contract law to first-year students. But something happened on the way to the chalkboard. "I'm writing to let you know that Professor Jerry Frug will be teaching your Contracts class this term instead of Professor Elizabeth Warren," law school dean Martha Minow wrote to students on Tuesday, according to an e-mail obtained by The Washington Post. "Professor Warren regrets that she will not be able to teach you this fall and we regret the last minute change." Last-minute change? Cue up another round of speculation about whether President Obama is about to tap Warren to head the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection. The watchdog, created by the massive financial overhaul bill signed into law in July, is aimed at protecting borrowers from abuses in mortgages, credit cards and other such

A picture is worth a thousand words. But if you include an entire database, make it interactive, and add filtering options, the word-to-picture exchange rate is even better.

Infographics at their best are more than just pictures — they can provide new understandings, succinct summaries, or just plain old fun.

In that respect, reading newspaper archives isn’t the only way to get a deeper understanding of current events. Infographics can help us get a better grasp on what’s going on.

Check out these 10 visualizations to learn more about the news with a quick look.

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1. Google’s Appetite for Acquisition

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Last month alone, Google acquired social-search service Angstro, visual shopping search engine like.com, and social currency company Jambool. Google has been on an acquisition binge for some time, and it’s getting tricky to keep track of its appetite.

This graphic shows a timeline of Google’s activity in three categories: “Building Revenue Streams,” “Cutting Competition,” or “A Little of Both.”

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2. Gay Marriage Chronology

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The campaign for gay marriage has passed a multitude of milestones over the last decade. Unfortunately for those trying to keep track of them, the victories and setbacks vary drastically by state. Decisions are reversed and in some cases overturned by higher courts, which makes progress hard to track.

This map from the LA Times shows the status of gay marriage in each state by month. Click on a state for its most recent ruling or watch the country change from being legally similar in its treatment of same-sex couples in 2000 to sharply divided in 2010.

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3. IED Attacks from Wikileaks’ Afghanistan War Logs

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The frequency and fatality of IEDs (homemade bombs) in Afghanistan was highlighted when WikiLeaks published more than 90,000 secret documents about the Afghan war. Anti-war activists published this illustrative video that includes all of the incidents reported in these leaked documents.

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4. Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

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On April 20, an explosion on a BP drilling rig started what has become the largest accidental oil spill in history. Despite numerous strategies that were deployed to plug the leak, it wasn’t capped until July 15.

This video graphic by New Orleans online newspaper NOLA wraps timeline, graphic, and cumulative damage data into one easy-to-digest piece of media.

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5. CIA World Factbook Dashboard

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The CIA World Factbook has always been a great resource for putting news stories into the context of their geographic location. But now it’s also easy to get the information at a glance.

The World Factbook Dashboard allows you to color code the countries of the world by population, population growth, infant mortality, agricultural GDP, industry GDP, services GDP, total GDP, GDP/inhabitant, or inflation. Clicking on a country zooms in for more information.

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6. Geography of a Recession

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This map from The New York Times illustrates not only which areas suffered the highest unemployment rate after the recession, but also offers the option to filter data by metropolitan areas, areas with housing bubbles, rural areas, and manufacturing centers.

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7. Afghanistan and Pakistan Regional Violence Map

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The Wall Street Journal updates this map constantly with violent conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan. If you want to learn about the day-to-day details of the war or understand its scope, there’s no better visual resource.

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8. What Does the Health Care Bill Mean to Me?

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Even if you read through every health care bill article, it could be hard to exactly pick out what the law would change about your insurance coverage and taxes. The Washington Post made it easy by providing this nifty tool. Input whether you have insurance coverage, your family size, your income, and your marital status, and it will tell you how health care reform will impact your life.

For the broader picture on healthcare reform, see this subway-style map from GOOD Magazine.

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9. Obama’s $787 Billion Economic Stimulus Plan

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The government is still busy spending much of the $787 billion it allotted for the economic stimulus in February of last year. This infographic effectively illustrates how that huge chunk of change is being distributed.

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10. American Casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Beyond

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This chilling interactive graphic from USA Today simply illustrates the deaths in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Information seekers can search deaths by personal factors like name, age, gender, race, or home town as well as by military service details, date, cause, or place.

CNN has a more elaborate version here.

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More Graphics Resources from Mashable:

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- 5 Fab Twitter Follower Visualization Tools
- 10 Beautiful Social Media Infographics
- 5 Amazing Infographics for the Health Conscious
- 10 Essential Free E-Books for Web Designers
- 12 Beginner Tutorials for Getting Started With Photoshop

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Reviews: Google

More About: afghanistan, bp, current events, gay rights, graphics, healthcare reform, infographics, iraq, News, oil-spill, stimulus, visualizations, wikileaks

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A fire, which one employee is describing as "serious," broke out at the Phillips Collection this morning. Firefighters set up outside the Phillips, located at 1600 21st Street NW, and proceeded to climb onto the roof, where they were operating with saws and hooks.

"I work there, and we aren't allowed in the building yet," said an employee at the Collection, who wished to remain anonymous. "Looks like some pretty severe damage to the old historic part of the museum. No word on the cause of the fire."

Artwork is being moved now by emergency responders, who worked with curators on an overhaul strategy. D.C. Fire and EMS spokesperson Pete Peringer said that the gallery's "sprinkler system did control the fire," which took "about 10 to 15 minutes" to extinguish. Peringer also noted that there was some smoke in the air, which obviously has the potential to cause some issues with the art. We haven't been able to get any confirmation regarding any potential damage of artwork at the gallery, but we will certainly update when that information becomes available -- we tried to contact someone over at the gallery, but their phone lines appear to be down at the moment.

Traffic in the surrounding area has also been detoured around Q, R and 21st Streets NW.

UPDATE (10:42 a.m.): TBD is reporting that the fire might have been caused by the construction that is going on at the building. They also provide the following update.

Construction damage is not significant. All four floors suffered smoke and water damage. "I'm not a curator of art," says a Deputy Fire Chief Kenneth Crosswhite. "But anytime you have smoke and water you have damage."

The fire, Crosswhite says, was in section where permanent collection and masterworks are.

Doesn't sound too good, although friend of DCist Kriston Capps notes that many of the gallery's most important works were not currently on display.

UPDATE (11:15 a.m.): And now, the official word from the Phillips Collection. The good news is that none of the artwork suffered "significant" damage and no one was injured -- the bad news is that the Museum is closed until further notice. The full release, from Phillips spokesperson Cecilia Wagner:

This morning, there was a renovation-related fire on the roof of the Phillips House.

The fire was contained and extinguished. No one was injured. All artwork is safe and secure. Museum conservators are currently evaluating the artwork but nothing has incurred significant damage. The building condition is being evaluated as well.

The Museum is closed until further notice. Phillips after 5 has been postponed. This evening’s GW class, "The Peformative Impulse in American Art," will take place as planned at the Center for Study of Modern Art from 6-8:30 pm.

The plot thickens!

While two official Apple pages tout an ability to use Facebook to find friends on its new social music offering in ITunes called Ping, which would be very useful, the feature is now not available on the service.

CEO Steve Jobs, in fact, told me at the Apple (AAPL) event where Ping and more was unveiled yesterday that the lack of Facebook integration was due to unspecified “onerous terms” that the social networking giant had sought and Apple declined.

Which is why it is odd that Apple’s SVP of worldwide product marketing Phil Schiller said in the interview below that I also did at the confab minutes apart that “you can use your Facebook contacts to find friends who are also on Ping and hook up to them.”

So what happened? A last-minute yanking of Facebook, it appears.

BoomTown has inquiries into all the parties, but until then, here my video interview of Schiller talking about Ping’s Facebook love before it was spurned in a Silicon Valley mystery and more yesterday:

A new study by email software purveyor Xobni confirms what we bloggers know to be true, there’s actually no such thing as a day off in the Internet age (Want more visceral proof than an email study? Check out the timestamp of this post).

Information anxiety has pretty much put the kibosh on “time off” as two out of three Americans and Brits check their email outside of regular business hours (ha) and half of Americans email while on vacation (double ha).

The Xobni study, an online survey of 2,200 British and American adults conducted in August, holds that the traditional 9-5 work day has gone the way of the Dodo, due to the fact that Americans and Brits can’t stop checking their email. Apparently we sneak a peak at out inboxes while on vacation, weekends, sick days and even when we are (gasp!) in bed.

The press release blames this behavior on the down economy and the iPhone, but I blame it on the fact that we now live most of our lives online, and we feel compelled to check our email/Facebook/Twitter because that’s where most of the exciting stuff is happening anyways.

More highlights from the study/the life we have chosen:

* The 9-5 work day has gone the way of the Dodo. 72% of Americans and 68% of Brits say they regularly check their email on vacations, sick days, and at home in bed.

* Yes, IN BED. Conveniently for Xobni, work email in bed is apparently, you know, like a thing, with 1 in 5 Americans checking email as the first thing they do in the morning or the last thing they do at night before falling asleep (Again I can personally vouch for this).

According to Xobni, email has become an addiction, and like most addictions it is fueled by peer pressure:

* 27% check email outside of regular working hours because they feel it is expected.

* 26% of Americans feel they can’t handle/overwhelmed by the number of emails they receive during vacation.

Everyone in the world agrees that managing email has become a challenge to our sanity. And various companies are scrambling towards solutions including Google with its recent Gmail Priority Inbox launch and Xobni, obviously. My favorite low-fi way to deal with the bottleneck is a service called Sentenc.es which makes it clear to your email reader that you are limited to short responses.

Even though I’m not sure how well that will work, in bed.

Video, vaguely related.

Email overload image above: Ario_

Of all topics, this is one of the perennials. People want more traffic, more attention, more awareness to their blog. It’s fair. We work hard on our blogs. We want more attention and traffic. If your business depends on volume, this is especially important (for instance, if you’re using ads). Getting traffic is a tricky business, and it requires a lot of experimentation. I’ll tell you what’s worked for me, so far, and I’ll tell you what you might try. Maybe others will educate us both in the comments on their best methods.

Great Titles Help

The first few seconds of someone’s attention are the hardest to pass. If you have a lame blog post title, no one’s going to want to read the post. For whatever reason, we react to “how to,” we react to “7 great,” we react to all kinds of things. Not sure where to look? I stole this advice from Brian Clark years ago: go to the grocery store, buy some ladies’ magazines like Cosmopolitan, and learn how THEY write headlines on the front page.

Graphics Don’t Hurt

This entire series (and most of my blog posts) use graphics to catch your eye. It’s an easy way to get one’s attention. Screen captures help. Video helps. There are tons of ways to get people into a receptive space with your material, and graphics are just the easiest one.

Now that we’ve got a decent title, decent graphics, let’s be quick about your content.

Brevity Is the Game

Keep your posts brief (unless you want tons and tons of bookmarks). People don’t have all day to read. If you can keep your posts between 250-500 words, that’s in alignment with most people’s attention spans. Hey, you’re welcome to write whatever length you want. You asked me how to grow traffic to your blog. I can only give you results that I’ve tested. When I write a super long piece, I get much less involvement with it.

Share Your Blog

I’ve written about making shareability a priority. If you don’t have easy-to-share buttons on your blog, you’re missing the easiest way for people to see your stuff on Facebook, on LinkedIn, on Twitter, and all the other sites where it would matter. Sharing out is a great way to make some more traffic happen. I also automatically push my posts into Facebook with their notes feature. I have an automated post into twitter via @broganmedia, but don’t do this same effect on my primary @chrisbrogan account.

Subscriptions or No?

In my case, subscriptions to my blog matter. I want people to subscribe, because I don’t necessarily survive on ad revenue. If you’re trying to monetize via ad revenue, and if your ads are in the header and the sidebar, a subscription really won’t help you get more traffic. If for whatever reason you want people to come to your website directly instead of via your RSS feed, you might want to obfuscate where you put your subscription information.

If you’re like me, you ask for the subscription all the time. In fact, I’ll ask now. You’re not yet subscribed? Enter your email (I respect your privacy):

Guest Posts

Over in the Third Tribe, we talk about guest posts quite often as a great traffic-builder to your blog. Find someone who has a very similar kind of blog topic to yours (not sure where to start? Check out Alltop), and offer a guest blog post. Oh, and then actually follow through. I have heard recently from my friends who accept guest posts that often, people ask for something, get approval, and then don’t take an action. That doesn’t sound like a good plan. Just FYI.

Consistency

This is one of those points where people disagree. I blog daily. Truth be told, I’m up to 2x a day most days. Why? Because the more I blog, the more people subscribe. I learned it from some of the larger blogger sites out there.

Lots of people justify once a week, or once every two weeks. That’s fine. But if you want to grow traffic to your blog, that’s a very long slow crawl towards that growth. That said, no matter which frequency you’ve chosen, stick to it. The moment you drop off the map, people who haven’t yet subscribed to you lose sight and move on.

Market Your Blog

You can always market your blog the good old fashioned way. I’ve had people hand me business cards at events that had a compelling question or interesting graphic, and then a URL to their blog. More often than not, I’ll at least check out the post. You might make postcards and bring them to the places where your prospective readers might congregate. For instance, if you write a restaurant blog, why not have a business card tray by the mints? Make an offer, just like you do with any other kind of marketing.

Often times, we sit around inside the fishbowl of social media and hope people from outside will find us. Here’s a hint, hero: the people you need are out there wondering what they can do to learn more about the thing you’re talking about. Go get ‘em, tiger.

How Do You Grow Traffic To Your Blog?

I’m a big fan of the basics: write about what they need, make sure they see that you wrote about it, make it easy to carry on the relationship, make it easy for them to promote you to others.

Seems like a simple formula, and yet, we go through all kinds of hoops to come up with trickier methods. Try this one first. What do you say?

I will be leading a webinar this afternoon for the Online Media Campus, Developing a Mobile-First Strategy. My slides are below. Here are some previous mobile-first posts that may help participants in the webinar:

• News organizations need mobile-first strategy
• News companies need to help local businesses pursue mobile opportunities
• How news organizations need to change to pursue a mobile-first strategy
• A mobile-first project for your community on the go
• Students’ media use shows journalism’s future
• Tomi T. Ahonen’s view of the present and future of mobile
• Experts’ view of mobile: the opportunity of our lifetime
• 4 ways to measure the local mobile advertising opportunity
• Mobile-first strategy questions and answers

Filed under: Mobile opportunities Tagged: mobile first, Online Media Campus

Excited about your new Facebook page but don’t know what’s next?  What does a truly advanced company look like in social business?  They can say yes to seven or more of these ten criteria.

We’ve been interviewing the most sophisticated brands in the world when it comes to social business for our upcoming report on “Enterprise Social Strategists Role”.  We’ve come to learn which companies are advanced and why.  Secondly, I meet a variety of companies who tell me they are “Very advanced, having done this for a few years, and have dozens of Facebook efforts” but when I ask them some specific questions on their sophistication, they often retract their statement.

How to tell if your Company is Advanced: 10 Criteria Of Social Business Maturity.
Corporations that have these and other following elements in place, may truly be sophisticated when it comes to social business:

1. Clear understanding of their customers socialgraphics. Clear understanding of how their customers use social media by knowing the socialgraphics of your customers.  Granular knowledge of where their customers are, which behaviors they use, who they trust for information, and how they influence their peers in the context of their own products.
   The true test? Your company can adjust budgets of your integrated social strategy based on data –not gut feel.
2. Your organization is in Hub and Spoke, Dandelion, or Holistic formation. Social technologies enable all employees that want to talk to customers to do so.  This means a massive change inside of your organization to get ready.  Your company is sophisticated if you’ve organized in the Hub and Spoke, Dandelion, or Holistic and all employees clearly know their role, process, and contact points.
   The true test? A product crises has emerged on YouTube on a Friday evening before a three day weekend and you can sleep peacefully.
3. Corporate website integration: Social sign on. When customers come to the corporate site, they can see which one of their friends uses which product, and what they think about it.  Common technologies would include OpenID, Facebook Connect, and other social sign on technologies.
   The true test? You can disable your corporate registration page and use social logins instead.
4. Personalized corporate website based on social data. When a prospect (someone who’s never logged into you website before) arrives to your corporate website, they receive a customized experience based on their social IDs.  This would be based on Social CRM infrastructure, social sign on technology and a large inventory of personalized content.
   The true test? The voices of the consumers real world friends emerge above that of the brand right on the corporate website, see Levi’s foray.
5. Thriving advocacy program: customers are actively selling on your behalf. The sophisticated marketing program isn’t really the company talking much at all, instead they’ve a thriving advocacy program and word of mouth program that encourages customers to recruit prospects for them –all unpaid.  Learn how to do this, by reading this piece on Forbes.
   The true test? most leads are coming in through existing customers –not your sales team.
6. A community of customers supports each other, reducing support center calls. A company that has a thriving branded community where customers are self-supporting each other with little aid from the brand or the support team is a sign of a sophisticated social support program.
   The true test? A majority of customer support issues are resolved by community faster, with greater satisfaction than your dedicated support team.
7. Anticipation of prospects and customers using Social CRM technology.  Brands can anticipate before a customer has a problem, or grab leads “right out of the air” by using brand monitoring software, intelligent keyword monitoring and responding to be faster than real time using Social CRM strategies.
   The true test? sales and marketing are getting leads before the consideration phase, and the support team reduces inbound calls by triggering the community to resolve a potential issue before it’s escalated.
8. Innovation of new products with customers using web collaboration.  Companies that use these same tools to glean input from customers (ethnographic data collection) or create private communities, or use collaboration and innovation tools like Ideastorm or Uservoice and build new products and services demonstrate true sophistication.
   The true test? faster time to market on products because consumers have dictated the specifications, and less inventory as the product is built on spec.
9. Supply chain is influenced by social data in real time. Social media isn’t just about marketing and support, but is very valuable in listening to customer signals then to anticipate which products, services, and teams should be when and where.
   The true test? Your company is sophisticated if you’re using social data to adjust your supply chain in real time based on customer signals from checkins, tweets, and plancasts.
10. Real time reporting of revenues, costs and efficiency:  I’ve met with some of the most advanced teams, and they have clear reporting and can measure the increased revenues (over the total cost of the program) to tell their executives the true ROI of their business program.
    The true test? Real time dashboard measures the health of all social channels revenues, CSAT, sentiment and overall program costs.

We’ve done research on the roadmap for companies to reach these 10 levels of nirvana, but have found few companies that have done a few, or even a majority of them. If you know of any companies that have achieved five out of ten of these criteria, we’d love to know, please leave a comment.

Mashable is excited to announce MashBash BlogWorld, the opening party for this year’s BlogWorld & New Media Expo in Las Vegas on October 15-16. To kick off the Expo, we’ll be hosting the first night’s official party at Haze at Aria Hotel.

We would love for you to join us, so we’re giving away passes to BlogWorld. To enter, answer the following question — “What is the future of blogging?” — in the comments below. Readers with the best answers will win one of five “full access” tickets to BlogWorld, which includes MashBash. Winners are invited to attend this industry celebration where the online world comes together to meet, relax and make important business networking connections.

Date: Friday, October 15
Time: 8:00 p.m.-10 p.m.
Location:Haze at Aria. 3730 Las Vegas Boulevard, Las Vegas, NV.
Tickets: Must have BlogWorld Badge to enter.

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How To Win Tickets

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• Simply click the “Like” button on our Facebook Page (below).
• Respond to the question: “What is the future of blogging?” by noon ET on Monday, September 6, in the comments section of this post.

Please use your real identity so that we may contact you via e-mail, Twitter or Facebook to let you know that you’ve won and how to redeem your prize.

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About the Blog World Expo

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BlogWorld & New Media Expo in Las Vegas on October 15-16: “Join us at the World’s Largest New Media event and learn about Content Creation, Distribution and Monetization strategies, step-by-step techniques and bleeding-edge tools from the most successful Bloggers, Podcasters, Social Media Pro’s, Internet TV and Radio Content Generators and New Media Marketing Pro’s! From the premier educational sessions at the Social Media Business Summit and BlogWorld Conference, to the resource-rich New Media Expo, to Amazing Networking events…it’s One economical trip, One weekend, One Big Show you can’t afford to miss!”

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Reviews: Facebook, Twitter

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Twitter has just announced the service’s official iPad app.

It’s free and comes with a slew of touch interface bells and whistles built right in. The app is intended to allow for seamless navigation between tweets, photos, web pages, videos and other media and updates. It’s also usable even for those who don’t have Twitter accounts.

Twitter for iPad [iTunes link] has a few new UI touches that you haven’t seen elsewhere. These features are custom-designed for the larger screen and touch capabilities of the iPad. It also caters to what the iPad was made for: media consumption rather than creation. Twitter’s Leland Rechis, a mobile UX designer, writes on the Twitter blog that the iPad is “a device that really lets content shine.”

The main interface is a series of panes that can expand and retract based on the kind of content the user wants to access. “Tapping on a Tweet opens a pane to the right. Depending on the content in that Tweet, you’ll see a video or photo, or maybe a news story, or perhaps another Tweet. You can continue tapping on Tweets, opening new panes, and getting new content as long as you’d like,” wites Rechis.

Media viewing is optimized for the iPad, as well. Videos play in-line with other content and can be loaded while you’re browsing through your timeline. You can pinch a video to view it fullscreen, too.

Finally, Twitter has really done some interesting things with touchscreen capabilities in this app. When you pinch a tweet, you’ll see details about the author and have a list of actions you can take, including reply and retweet. A two-finger pull-down gesture will show the entire conversation around a tweet.

It’s a creative way to approach multitouch app building, and we look forward to playing with it ourselves. We’re also really looking forward to what apps may come to other tablets in the future.

The iTunes release is rolling out right now; if you can’t get the latest version of the app right now, wait a bit and try again. And of course, let us know what you think of Twitter for iPad in the comments.

More About: apple, ipad, twitter

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Nearly one-in-ten Americans incorrectly identify former Justice Thurgood Marshall as the chief justice of the Supreme Court.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution | Time.com
"We don't see this as the magazine being dead," says Paste editor Josh Jackson. "We just see it as taking a break right now. We've been trying to raise capital for a long time, and we had a deal that was about to close. And it just fell apart." || Charlie Duerr: "Sorry to see you go, Paste."
> It's possible a buyer will want Paste's digital assets

Samsung has finally spilled the details about its long-awaited tablet computer, the Galaxy Tab, during a press conference at the IFA consumer electronics fair in Berlin.

Samsung calls its tablet a “smart media device,” and Galaxy Tab definitely has the specifications to back it up: Android 2.2 support, a Cortex A8 1 GHz processor, 512 MB of RAM and 16/32 GB of internal memory with the possibility of upgrading through microSD memory cards.

Furthermore, there’s a 7 inch TFT-LCD display with 1024×600 pixel resolution, a 3 megapixel camera with autofocus and LED Flash plus an additional fron 1.3 megapixel camera for video chats (that’s got to hurt iPad owners at least a little bit) as well as WiFi and 3G connectivity. The dimensions of the device are 190.09 x 120.45 x 11.98mm, with 380 grams of weight, and the battery should last through 7 hours of movie playback.

In other words, the iPad got a worthy competitor, not only because of the capable hardware the Tab is sporting, but also because it has the latest and greatest version of Android. Although it’s smaller than the iPad, whose screen measures 9.7 inches, Galaxy Tab does a lot of things the iPad cannot do: it has two cameras, it supports Flash and a wide variety of multimedia formats, including DivX, XviD, MPEG4, H.263, and H.264.

Samsung has partnered with Vodafone for the launch, and the Galaxy Tab will start selling in October in the majority of Vodafone’s European markets and later this year in the U.S and other markets.

More About: android, samsung, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Tablet

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Longtime CBS News broadcaster Dan Rather came to The Poynter Institute this week to talk about what it was like to cover some of the world's biggest stories throughout the past half-century.

I sat down with him to hear his thoughts on the state of the news industry and how to improve it. Rather shared his take on the untold stories in politics; the effectiveness of sites that fact-check the news; and the ways in which his experience with bloggers during the Killian documents controversy still shapes his view of them today.

Big businesses' negative impact on political news coverage

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		You can read a full transcript of the interview here. Rather: 'If we'd had spell check back then I'd still be in the newspaper business'

Rather, who is now anchor and managing editor of HDNet's "Dan Rather Reports," said too much of today's political coverage is reduced to horse-race reporting and public opinion polling. Such polls are valuable to the extent that they can provide a snapshot of a given moment, he said, but that moment changes.

The 78-year-old advocated for deeper investigative reporting that looks at the money involved in politics, and he suggested that journalists ask: "Who is giving what to whom, expecting to get what?"

'"The public is not well-served by political coverage as it is today," said Rather, who did not exclude himself from this criticism. "In many important ways, very big business is in bed with big government and whoever's in power in Washington, whether it be Republicans or Democrats ... and this seriously affects news coverage."

Too often, he said, political coverage is governed by the large corporate entities that own news organizations and that don't always have the public's best interest in mind.

"An independent, a truly independent and truly free press, a fiercely independent but necessary press," Rather said, "is the red beating heart of freedom and democracy, and it's absolutely essential to our system."

Political fact-checking sites need to expand reach

Rather said he doesn't think PolitiFact and other efforts to fact-check political news reach a wide enough audience, despite efforts to expand. Still, he applauds them.

"This is what every good newspaper, every television station, every network ought to be doing. But in so many cases -- it's not unanimous, there are some exceptions -- but by and large, this is not what they do," Rather said. "So often, particularly covering politics, enterprises that describe themselves as journalistic enterprises, and journalists who describe themselves as journalists, in fact just become transmission belts."

He said journalists can quickly become transcribers who simply write down what they hear without asking tough questions, partly out of fear that they'll seem unpatriotic.

Leading up to the Iraq war, most journalists blindly accepted the government's statements without checking to see if the information matched up with the facts, he said. (There were some exceptions, Rather said, such as McClatchy's Washington bureau, which didn't accept the Bush administration's claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.)

"What happened in the run-up to the Iraq war is that the administration of that time commanded the narrative, and the press bought that narrative," Rather said. "And this led to, by any reasonable objective analysis, a strategic blunder of historic proportions."

"Highly partisan, political" nature of the blogosphere

Rather has acknowledged that he never realized the power of bloggers until after he reported the infamous story about the Jerry B. Killian documents that criticized Bush's service in the Army National Guard. At the time, conservative bloggers questioned whether the documents were falsified and began a debate about it online. No one has yet to prove the authenticity of the documents.

Rather said the Killian controversy shows how the blogosphere lacks accountability and can be used for "highly partisan, political and ideological purposes." He stood by his belief that, despite what all the bloggers said at the time, the Killian story was true.

"It was true then, it's true now, and evidence of that is neither the president nor anyone close around him, so far as I know, (and I think I would know if they had), has ever denied the narrative of the story," Rather said. "I don't seek to go over this ground all over again, but I do think it's important to point out that the story was true, and for those who didn't like the story, for their partisan, political, or ideological reasons, that's the reason they had to attack it so fiercely and, as it turned out, so effectively, I'm sorry to say."

Need for new business models to replace old one

Despite the growing influence of online news, Rather said he still thinks we're in the early stages of the Internet's potential. He called for more original, shoe-leather reporting on the Internet and less aggregated content, particularly when it comes to international and investigative coverage.

The old business model for news is crumbling, he said, and the Internet has not yet risen in its place. He's said before that he wishes President Barack Obama would form a commission to help save journalism jobs and establish new business models.

"In the past when we've had these crises, for the automobile business, for the early stages of the microchip business, for the steel business and what have you, it's not that unusual for the president to call together the best minds and say we may or may not have the government intervene," Rather said. "I thought it would be a good idea for him to call together some of the brightest people in the country, including those in journalism but not confined to that, and say, let's see what we can do."

The idea has not gone anywhere, and Rather said he doesn't think it will anytime soon.

Social media is "increasingly important" in politics

Twitterers criticized Rather earlier this year for making what some believed to be a racially-charged comment about Obama's efforts to get health care legislation passed. Rather later responded to the buzz on Twitter, saying, "Much of what we tweet, or post, or chat away at under the guise of news, are distractions."

Rather told me he's since found that, in general, social networking sites can be an important tool for journalists.

"I think it's increasingly important in politics and in business and in personal relationships to have these so-called social media. And I think there'll be more of them, not fewer," he said. "Some of them will go by the wayside. Twitter is the big thing now. Who knows what's going to be post-Twitter."

Though Rather has both a Twitter and Facebook account for "Dan Rather Reports," he said he doesn't spend much time updating them because he'd rather be doing what he likes best -- being out in the field reporting.