Its mission is simple and wrapped up with its motto: “Share a story. Change a life.” Happy Posts has struck a chord with the Internet community as the new hangout place for positive and uplifting content. The site, a radical change from what normally is seen online, is an open forum for people to share positive stories from their lives.

“Every day, we are hit from all sides with negativity,” said Mark Hager, founder of Happy Posts. “We wanted to create a place where anyone from any background could tell about the good things that happen to them. We’re not concerned about where you’re from, what you do or what you believe,” Hager said when asked about their target demographics. “We’re looking to create a grass-roots movement with the sole purpose of creating the world’s largest repository of every day miracles.”

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee today proposed the Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act, a bill that intends to replace the Internet gambling prohibition instituted last year with strict regulations and policing of violators. Those regulations include deep criminal background checks and financial disclosure for companies looking to offer Internet gambling services.

This bill comes 6 months after the controversial Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 was passed into law. The Internet Gambling Prohibition Act received a lot of criticism for infringing on American freedoms and is equated with censorship.

In a quote from CNet’s News.com article, Barney Frank dissented upon the current law, saying:

The existing legislation is an inappropriate interference on the personal freedom of Americans and this interference should be undone

Furthermore Frank points out that since almost all states have legalized some form of gambling that we should hold the same precedent to their online counterparts.

This is something I pointed out the other day: there’ll always be a market for instant blogging services such as Meshly, Jaiku, Tumblr and Twitter, though at some point they have to monetize. Download Squad has outlined six ways that Twitter can earn money. Evan Williams, the founder (and who founded Blogspot), offered a couple of those suggestions. Here they are below, with my own comments:

(1) Twitter Pro. Paid service, with lots of addtional features. Very cool.

(2) Merch. T-shirts, etc. I’ll pass – rather boring logo. If they come up with a graphic, maybe so. I’m not a big “t-shirt with logo” type of person. That doesn’t mean this won’t work.

(3) Biz. Twitter for business? Hmm, very interesting. This could work for employees to stay in touch. But then it’d be up against established players like Lotus Notes’ IM and others. Pimp Your Work offers some other ways to use Twitter for business.

(4) Forums. Ad-supported. Really? Would you spend time in a Twitter forum rather than just tweet? Seems odd and time-consuming in comparison. On the other hand, it’s hard to “talk” to another member if they are not one of your followers. I follow 27 people but only have 10 followers. That’s fine, but if one of the other 17 tweets something I’d like to reply to, they’ll never see it. Forums might work. I should point out, however, that I do have other means of contacting these people, but a quick tweet in reply is more appropriate than an email.

(5) Ads on site. Obviously, with a great volume of users, this will pay off. Will it pay off enough? Will current users get pissed and quit, maybe move to Jaiku, etc.? Probably, but that’s normal. I never “get” those people who think everything should be free for their taking.

(6) Biz, part 2. Charge a fee for marketing/commercial use. There are a few sites, such as Woot, who are doing that. I don’t know if they’re paying, but since this suggestion (and #5) are from Evan Williams, they might soon be.

(7) Sell it. This from a reader in the comments. Of course, someone is waiting, no doubt, to scoop up Twitter and monetize the traffic.

Why Web 2.0 Sucks
When the term “web 2.0″ first started appearing en masse, I hated the term because it just seemed like hype. I even said so on Tim O’Reilly’s blog. (He’s the publishing genius behind O’Reilly and the guy that came up with the term.) Since then, I’ve written dozens of articles on Web 2.0 and haven’t thought twice about how much I disliked the term. Now, I don’t think about the term and I’m caught up in all the incredible applications. Though not everyone feels that way. This Is Going To Be Big gives a critical but insightful look at their top ten reasons why Web 2.0 sucks. While it’s definitely worth a read, I’d say many of the reasons apply to the Web in general, not just Web 2.0.

What Meshly’s Really About?
Read/Write Web has a better explanation of what Meshly is really about. I might have gotten it wrong, saying it was like Twitter with Digg voting. RWW says its more for bookmarking through IM. So it’s kind of like Twitter over IM rolled up with del.icio.us and Digg. I think. Though if you’ve how many steps you have to go through just to post a bookmark, you might think twice about using it that way. Delicious takes about 1.5 steps, especially with the bookmarklet button I have on my Firefox browser. I’m not discounting the potential value of Meshly, just saying it takes too many steps to do what should take about 1-3 steps. And that’s inherent in the medium (IM), not so much Meshly’s fault.

Are Blogs Offensive?
Ars Technica writes about a ScanSafe “Global Threat” report that finds that 80% of blogs have offensive content. No kidding, big surprise. I don’t know about the 80%, but they apparently scanned seven billion page requests to come up with this waste of paper. I really don’t know whether to laugh or cry – stupid arse sniffing gits :)

Razz, Inc. announced its official launch as content service provider of next-generation audio entertainment for mobile content and social network users.

Razz enables users to enrich their voice communications using premium or user-generated audio content. Via its proprietary technologies, Razz allows users to interject their favorite sound clips including music, movie lines, comedians, and celebrity quips into live phone calls or onto personal web pages. Whether it’s conversations, voicemail messages, outgoing greetings or enhancing web pages, Razz’s products add a new level of personality and interactivity to social communications.

“In conjunction with our aggressive product development and client service strategies, we are now pursuing our own direct to consumer efforts,” said Jeff Malkin, CEO of Razz, Inc. “And, as we enter our fifth year of operations, we’re also re-branding the company to reflect our singular focus of providing next-generation audio entertainment to the mobile/social networking crowd. Everyone should and will be Razzed… we look forward to becoming a household name.”

A new survey from Scansafe has found that 80% of blogs contain “offensive” content, ranging from “adult language” to pornographic images.

In a report at Ars Technia, ScanSafe says that it discovered the “offensive” nature of blogs by analyzing more than 7 billion web requests coming from their corporate customers.

Further, 6% of blogs were also said to contain some sort of malware.

Now I know that MySpace blogs aren’t pretty, but does bad layout and bright graphics make for offensive content, or is it just that ScanSafe’s Corporate customers have a predilection for porn?

Apparently, any blog that contains the F word is considered offensive by Scansafe, which pretty much means this blog, along with every over blog I read would be marked as offensive, at least at one point in time. I suppose it could be worse, they could find terms such as “freedom online” and “surveys are stupid” offensive as well :-)

Celebrity blogger Perez Hilton is once again facing another multi-million dollar lawsuit. Perez Hilton, Mario Lavandeira in real life, is the blogger behing the popular celebrity gossip website that generates hundreds of thousands of visitors daily.

Splash News and Picture Agency, Bauer-Griffin, Insight News and Features, Flynet Pictures, and London Entertainment Pictures filed the lawsuit in the federal district court in California, claiming more than 25 counts of infringement. The group is asking for $7 million in damages. Ouch!

“Perez has achieved his fame and fortune by unlawfully taking and exploiting other people’s work,” said Splash News’s CEO Gary Morgan in a post on the company’s blog. “Using someone else’s only means of earning money to make yourself rich at their expense is most un-American.”

Blogging, microblogging, miniblogging, moblogging, vlogging. What next? Humans are social creatures, and as such, we like to express ourselves, usually verbally, but print will do, whether on paper or online. Science Fiction legend Harlan Ellison wrote a story called I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, which isn’t relevant other than for me to suggest that Twitter and its alternatives will always find a following, even if we end up with a dozen of these tools. (Though there must be some saturation point, since at some point they have to monetize their service. I doubt all of them can be profitable.)

The latest to the collection of Twitter-like digital soapbox tools is Meshly. Webware describes Meshly as a “nanoblogging platform” built around instant messages. And Meshly lets you vote on each item posted. Right, sort of like Digg, but on each tiny little message. Sorry, but you’d have to have no life whatsoever to want to watch and vote on minutiae of thoughts. (Am I missing something?) Take away the silly voting, however, and I think this could actually be useful.

So we have Twitter/ Jaiku/ Tumblr from a web browser, MySay from cell phones, Meshly from IM clients, and who knows what else. And I’ve just registered a domain where you’ll soon be able to post to your lifestream thoughts and posts just by imagining your text. You will, however, have to attach a USB cable to your noggin. Then anyone can know all of your thoughts, all of the time. I have a mouth and I plan to scream.

Build Your Own News Site With Newsvine
If you build it, will they come? If you think so, then check out the newly relaunched Newsvine, which lets you create your own news site. We’re talking going beyond something like Pageflakes- or Netvibes-like customization because apparently your customizations are reflected on the homepage. Techcrunch explains.

Our Hive Mind
Brady Forrest reflects at O’Reilly Radar on Jordan Schwartz’s writings about bees and the hive mind and how humans exhibit similar behavior online, especially at social websites.

Twitter Beginner’s Guide
I can’t imagine that it would take much to learn how to use Twitter, but Robin Good has produced a very indepth beginner’s guide to Twitter, detailing what it is, why use it, how it’s being used, why people love it, why people hate it, and a big list of tools to extend Twitter – including many I’ve never heard of.

Of interest to those (such as me) who wish Twitter could pull in feeds from elsewhere, there’s TwitterFeed and RSS2Twitter. I was also complaining about the lack of search. Well, there’s TwitterSearch. And there’s even a way to insert ads into your tweets. That’s a bit much, but if you get the urge…

Just when we thought we are overdosed with reality shows, MySpace and Mark Burnett announced that they are teaming up to launch INDEPENDENT, a groundbreaking political reality show. The show will find the nation’s next great politician through an online, offline, on-air multimedia campaign expected to launch in early 2008.

INDEPENDENT is an interactive television series that will engage and empower young Americans to participate in the political process at an unprecedented level. The show is a reality-based competition where America will select a candidate whom they feel will best reflect the voice of young Americans.

“INDEPENDENT represents a giant leap in the re-democratization of American politics,” said Chris DeWolfe, CEO and co-founder of MySpace. “MySpace puts political power back in the hands of everyday people and INDEPENDENT takes it to a whole new level,” added Tom Anderson, President and co-founder of MySpace.

“Through this new network television series and the partnership of MySpace, we’re going to discover in a big way, what America really thinks, and bring to light the issues that are closest to those who now finally have a chance to be heard,” said Mark Burnett. More →