On Thursday, Google has made a new Blogger layout tool, Blogger Template Designer, available on their "test lab" site Blogger in Draft.  The new template tool allows users to have more custom control over their blog by using professional designs, prebuilt templates and control colors.

According to a Verizon bigwig, the age of flat rate internet is over. This has some analysts up in arms; not surprising, or undeserved. Unlimited internet access for a single flat price is quite frankly, awesome. The loss of such a convenience would do more than just irritate web junkies, but it has the potential of crippling the cloud. Part of the premise behind the marketing of web based tools is the fact that accessing them is essentially free. Every business in a mall would suffer the same consequences if the mall suddenly decided to set up a toll booth at the front door.

We've been discussing today technology blog Gizmodo's leaked information regarding Microsoft's Project Pink, a plan by Microsoft to develop its own line of phones.  It's already been leaked that the phones do exist, there have been initial trials, and that Verizon might be the exclusive carrier.  Now Gizmodo even has leaks of Project Pink's firmware.From the leaked firmware, Gizmodo reports that the carrier is definitely Verizon, but there are also references to AT&T and T-Mobile. The Turtle's screen is 320x240, and the Pure has the same size screen as the exist, there have been initial trials, and that Verizon might be the exclusive carrier.  Now Gizmodo even has leaks of Project Pink's firmware.

As we mentioned earlier, technology blog site Gizmodo received leaked information confirming that Microsoft will, indeed, be releasing their own line of phones, service, and operating systems.  This leaked information and the first looks at the phones came hours after a marketing campaign was leaked to Gizmodo, showing the new Microsoft phone, Turtle, as being a real product which will be offered under Verizon as the carrier. 

One of our favorite technology blogs, Gizmodo, has been speculating about Microsoft's "Project Pink" phones, saying that the company has been working on self-branded phones with services and operating systems.  Well, it has been confirmed to Gizmodo by a "tipster" and the site has gotten a hold of some first shots of the series of Project Pink Turtle and Pure phones.  The photos came shortly after an advertising campaign leaked that pointed to Verizon as the carrier for the new Turtle phone. 

Well, when Google isn’t sabotaging itself, all that “wrench in the gears” mastery is artfully turned on their competitors.  If there’s one thing that they haven’t forgotten how to do, it’s how to ruin the day of someone charging for software that they think should be free.  This time, Google has upped the ante in their freeware crusade against Microsoft office by acquiring DocVerse.

After launching PRManna this month, a site that connects start-ups with tech bloggers, the site's owner, Ryan Waggoner started blogging, tweeting and reached out to hacker news that HARO has sent him a cease-and-desist letter.  He requested that his followers give him ideas of what to do next.  Waggoner got many responses, mainly it seems that the followers congratulated him for having a site good enough for his competition to realize the threat.   Technical Blogging site ReadWriteWeb let Waggoner respond recently to all of the legal publicity. 

Earlier this month, Ryan Waggoner launched PRManna, where startup companies and tech bloggers can form a community where tech related questions can be asked and ideas for blog topics can be created.  The site was intended to be similar to the site Help a Reporter Out (HARO) where journalists and reporters can ask questions of the source community and build information from the network. 

Walmart is one of the world's largest distributors of DVD's on the planet. People don't usually think of them before Blockbuster; but at the end of the day, you can often buy a DVD at Walmart for cheaper than you can at Blockbuster. The amount of money they stand to lose if direct digital distribution becomes the next major format is substantial. What's more, given their bulk business model, Walmart has an enormous stock of DVDs sitting around in warehouses that stand to be made obsolete by a format shift. Why then would they spend time and money creating an environment which would make said shift happen more quickly?

This month WordPress.com has debuted two new mobile blogging apps.  Bloggers can now blog from anywhere on their Android and BlackBerry phones.  Also, the iPhone app has now been updated to version 2.2.  This makes WordPress the only blogging service with three smartphone app option support. 

Because of a misconfiguration, the WordPress servers were down for almost 2 hours on Thursday.  Thanks to the use of Twitter, WordPress was able to keep its users and followers up to speed since obviously they could not inform them on a non-working site.  A tweet on Thursday, February 18th at about 1:45 pm states "WordPress.com is down, we're working on restoring service now." 

For 110 minutes on Thursday a server problem caused 10.2 million WordPress blogs to be offline.  A summary on the WordPress website posted by site founder Matt Mullenweg explains the problem and states that this is the worst downtime in the four year history of the site.  Because of the downtime, not only were 10.2 million blogs affected, but 5.5 million pageviews were lost. 

Sponsors were using social media (Facebook, twitter, websites) to push their advertising even before the games began.  NBC was creating buzz on their social media sites to push the Olympics long before it began (obviously they would, they're the station holding it) and like I mentioned previously, Visa allowed viewers to watch their commercials on youtube before they were set to air. 

The Winter Olympics began last night and this year they are utilizing all options of social media for both marketing and event information.  The official Olympics web page welcomes visitors to follow them on Twitter and Facebook.  On the NBC Olympic website there are tabs for your typical Olympic information; TV listings, results, medals won, etc.  There is also a "Tweets and Blogs" tab that brings you to a plethera of social media. 

Yesterday was Facebook's 6th birthday. Yes, it has been 6 whole years since Facebook came into existence and it continues to dominate our lives by introducing newer functionality, lesser privacy and constant redesign.