paidContent is reporting that AOL is trimming up for sale, and is also doing some belt-tightening just like everyone else.

Part of its trimming is “asking some its bloggers, who get paid by the post, to stop blogging until July 31 to save on costs.”

The affected blogs are: Diylife.com, The Unofficial Apple Weblog, and DownloadSquad.

You pick the news. At least that’s what Propeller wants you to do. Netscape’s Digg clone slash phoenix rising from the ashes has undergone a redesign.

Gone is the traditional up/down voting system. Present is a brand new mascot who looks like Mr. Belvedere and Ask Jeeves’ love child with a George Jetson twist.

The site will still rely on a team of editors and feature a limited number of categories. Personally, I’ve never experienced the Propeller-effect, which by all accounts is much smaller than the Digg-effect. Perhaps this will change as AOL continues to raise the profile of the destination.

The good news is, currently, all stories are entering with a 10.0 rating – so get your butt over there and submit – and you might land on the homepage!

BlogCatalog has launched its Political Channel to take part in what it calls as the most participatory presidential election in history.

“As we approach the Democratic and Republican conventions, BlogCatalog’s Political Channel will serve as a benchmark of what is on the minds of mainstream political bloggers across America,” stated Tony Berkman, BlogCatalog CEO. “With almost 5,000 political bloggers and 114,000 non-political bloggers already part of the BlogCatalog conversational ecosystem, BlogCatalog is the Internet’s leading destination for mainstream political bloggers to have their political voices heard, engage in the political debate, increase their blog’s exposure, and participate in lively discussion.”

If they are successful in creating conversation with all the bloggers within BlogCatalog, this new channel can be a good breeding ground of political opinion.

Several weeks ago I wrote about Randall Butisingh, one of the worlds’ oldest bloggers at 95 years old.

At the time, I didn’t realize what a spring chicken Randall was.

We now pay our respects to Olive Riley, born 1899. The 108-year-old Australian woman passed away over the weekend.

From recounting life through two world wars to sharing her thoughts on Washing Day…

You 21st century people live a different life than the one I lived as a youngster in the early 1900s. Take Washing Day, for instance. These days you just toss your dirty clothes into a washing machine, press a few switches, and it’s done.

I remember scratching around to find a few pieces of wood to fire the copper for Mum. Sometimes I’d find a broken wooden fruit box that I’d split with a tommyhawk. Sometimes I’d gather some twigs and dead branches, and use them for firewood.

When the water in the copper began to boil, Mum would add a cupful of soap chips, and throw in a cube of Reckitt’s Blue wrapped in a muslin bag to whiten the clothes. Then she put in all the dirty clothes, first rubbing out the stains with a bar of Sunlight soap. She used a corrugated washing board for that.

Olive will be missed.

ChicagoTribune.com reports that Arianna Huffington is planning to launch a version of The Huffington Post website in Chicago. It will be staffed by a single editor. This move is seen as the first of dozens of local websites for U.S. cities.

“We are aspiring to be a newspaper in that we want to [be] covering all news, not just the political blogging the way we began,” Huffington said.

LiveJournal concluded its inaugural LiveJournal User-Representative Election with Jennifer Brady of Mesa, Arizona emerging as winner. Ms. Brady will formally join the LiveJournal Advisory Board on June 1, 2008.

Ms. Brady is a long-time LiveJournal user. Her current LiveJournal account is under the name of legomymalfoy. After garnering the required number of endorsements, Ms. Brady announced her candidacy on May 16. Following her election victory, Ms. Brady will join current Advisory Board members danah boyd, Esther Dyson, Brad Fitzpatrick and Lawrence Lessig.

As earlier announced, LiveJournal allocated two positions on the Advisory Board for elected representatives from its user base. This move is unprecedented for a major social network and will offer LiveJournal users a defined role in the development of the service for the first time.

Ms. Brady received 36.5% first place votes, which led to an instant run-off under the terms of the election. Under the terms of the instant run-off, Ms. Brady was the ultimate winner. Candidates ‘jameth’ and ‘rm’ came in second and third, respectively. All told, 25,875 votes were cast in the election.

PicScout has begun working with b5media to use the PicApp platform of premium, licensed images and photos for enhancing news and creative content across a select group of blogs. PicApp provides licensed images from a broad group of premiere news and stock photo agencies, giving bloggers and other online publishers legal access to millions of images, while addressing content owners’ usage tracking and copyright concerns.

PicApp is currently in beta. News and photo agencies licensing images to PicApp include Getty Images, Corbis and Image Source with more content partnerships coming soon.

This is a welcome move from b5media as it professionalizes the job of blogging, including the proper usage of licensed images.

This is an example of a good feature and a bad interview. The hosts could have taken advantage in drawing the best responses from Dooce, except they showed their moronic side.

Independent blog for teen media and marketing professionals Ypulse.com has added Casey Lewis to its team as assistant editor

Lewis, a journalism student at the University of Missouri, began her career covering fashion for About.com. She is also the author of the fashion blog: TeenFashionista.com.

LiveJournal is opening nominations for its first ever Advisory Board user elections. LiveJournal, Inc. has allocated two positions on the Board for elected representatives from its user base, a unique effort that is seen as giving users a role in developing its service.

The elected users will join a distinguished group of social media influencers on the current Advisory Board: Danah Boyd, Esther Dyson, Brad Fitzpatrick and Lawrence Lessig.

Users will be elected for an annual term, with the right to stand for re-election the following year. The Advisory Board will hold quarterly meetings via conference call and meet at least once a year to consider the challenges and opportunities for the LiveJournal community. The management of LiveJournal has formally committed to listen and engage with the board members and reflect their discussions in the executive decisions that they make.

It’s a good effort from LiveJournal and we can only hope that this would serve as precedent to other groups.