Mark Evans Joins b5media as Vice President

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Mark Evans, well known technology writer from the National Post in Canada, announced his resignation from his post at the Post (pun intended), and his intention to join the b5media team as Vice President of Operations. Of course, as a b5media staffer, this excites me and I look forward to working under my new boss.

Mark brings quite a bit of experience into play as well as name recognition throughout Canada. In addition to writing for the Post, he already is a b5er tracking emerging technologies in Canada at Maple Leaf Two.

Mark says of this move:

A little more than two years ago, I wrote a column suggesting blogs were little more than online diaries for love-sick teenage girls. I was wrong. Dead wrong. As readers of my blog(s) have discovered, I’ve embraced blogs as an exciting way to deliver content and have a “conversation” (a word my friend, Shel Israel, frequently uses) with a lots of people that I would have otherwise never met. These are not only bloggers who have become friends such as Rob Hyndman, Stuart MacDonald, Mathew Ingram, Mike McDerment, Om Malik and Alec Saunders but readers of my blog who have enthusiastically and generously shared their ideas and insights.

I guess we’ve all come a long way.

VIP Blogging

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WordPress.com has launched a new service that I recall talking to Matt Mullenweg about during WordCamp. He mentioned back then that folks like Scoble are sitting on top of the WordPress.com servers and that Automattic was thinking about letting other select bloggers do so as well.

Well, the day is here and WordPress.com has launched VIP Hosting. A few select high-profile, high-traffic bloggers will be allowed to jump on their robust infrastructure for a “Powered by WordPress” link, a few template hooks for WP.com stats and $250/mo.

I might mention that Automattic developer, Andy Skelton, is dying to get Dan Rather blogging on WordPress.com so Dan, if you’re listening, WordPress.com is a better solution for you than HDNet.

WordPress Democracy Plugin Exploit (and a New Version)

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Matt told me to cross post this when I went live with this story. Earlier this evening, I released the details of a cross site scripting exploit in the super popular Democracy 1.2 plugin. Read about the exploit here.

There is a new version of Democracy availabe tonight as well as a response. It also addresses the SEO problem that Blog Republic posted last week.

Bloglines Improves Mobile

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Bloglines users may have started noticing this message plastered across the service upon login. Bloglines Mobile has gotten some love from Skweezer.

For those of us who rely on and love Bloglines Mobile while on the go, here’s another reason to dig it. Bloglines has now integrated Skweezer technology to optimize web pages for your personal handheld mobile device’s viewing pleasure.

When you click on a link while reading a blog post in Bloglines Mobile, Skweezer will compress and reformat the content so you get it faster and better looking on your small screen. As you surf, the content will continue to be skweezed. Hints & bonus features:

* Click on the “Hide Images” link at the bottom of the page and skweezed content will load even faster.
* At the bottom of the skweezed page, you’ll find links back to the feed you were reading and a link back to your feed list.
* If you run across any pages that are not in your native tongue, Skweezer will translate to more than a dozen languages.

So if you’ve been wary of venturing beyond your Bloglines Mobile on your fancy new Blackberry (or Treo or other smartphone), free yourself from those inhibitions and click away!

Robyn DeuPree
Senior Product Manager, Bloglines

I don’t personally use Bloglines Mobile. I find any web use on my cell phone tedious and limit my use of mobile web to checking in on my Gmail on occasion. But I’d be blind to think that mobile is not a fast-growing trend. More people than ever use Blackberries and Treos who might find this enhancement useful.

Anyone check it out yet?