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What's Hot in Blogging: May 2011

The first week of every month, contributor Amy Phillips will recap what made waves in blogging for the previous month.

Try as hard as I could I couldn’t come up with one theme for May. However, by far, the biggest story occurred less than a week into the month; the death of Bin Laden in Pakistan. What it means for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is still up for debate. It does present an interesting case study on how the news spread on twitter even before the President could make an announcement. While the administration decided not to release the photo of Bin Laden’s body, the operation did produce a famous photo.


Although even that photo was not without a little bit of controversy.

Apple was asked to explain why it was tracking it’s customers through a hidden app. This creepy bit of information was fixed by a patch released later in the month. That wasn’t the only trouble Apple had in May. A phishing virus has gone after Mac users. Many consider this a rite of passage for the now mainstream computers. and plenty of blogs have written on the virus and how to protect your machine. Although, Apple’s response left a little to be desired.

Humorously, the two stories above had be combined, because that is what the internet does;

Sony also had a
rough month. The PlayStation Network was taken down by hackers and
remained down for most of the month. It seemed each time they tried to bring the network up, it came under attack again. Sony spent most of the month apologizing to its customers.

In the States, a massive tornado ripped through Joplin, MO. The devastation has been shown on the news and on blogs. This video of the tornado is pretty powerful.

In New York, the first Blog World on the East Coast took place. It was a great conference (I was there, and hope to make it yearly occurrence!). There are some great wrap-up posts on the BlogWorld site, but this one was one of my favorites.

The Arab Spring continues, and a blogger from Syria has gone missing. Read some of her posts from May, she is a unique voice. Our thoughts are with her and her family.

As for viral videos, the choices were a little thin this month. However, my favorite is actually from Australia from 4 years ago. I leave you Amy Poehler’s commencement speech at Harvard. Classic. Until next month!


 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7N_L_pu74k&w=560&h=349]