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WordPress.com to let bloggers earn money through ads

WordPress.com bloggers will now be able to earn a few bucks on their posts courtesy of advertising.

The popular blogging site is kicking off a new feature called WordAds, according to a blog posted earlier today by WordPress.com ads lead Jon Burke. Partnering with Federated Media, WordPress.com will display advertisements on qualifying blogs, letting their owners earn some cash from each ad.

WordPress, which Burke said signs up 50,000 new blogs every day, had apparently received requests over the years to allow advertising on the blogs created by its users, but resisted the temptation because of … Read more

Google Music debuts, with downloads and sharing (live blog)

Editor's note: We used Cover It Live for this event, so if you missed the live blog, you can still replay it in the embedded component at the end of this post. Replaying the event will give you all the live updates along with commentary from our readers and CNET reporters. Or you can read the edited transcription below. And to get the key points from today's announcement, in which Google opened up its music service to all users and debuted music downloads and Google+ music sharing, you can check out a summary story here. In addition, there's video of the Google Music event, Greg Sandoval's analysis of what Google has accomplished, and Jessica Dolcourt's Google Music-themed interview with Busta Rhymes.

Google is holding a music-themed extravaganza Wednesday, and we'll be there live to bring you the news.

The event is expected to bring the launch of Google's online music download store, the latest such digital storefront from the search giant. Google already operates a digital store for books, as well as for software applications on both its Android and Chrome platforms.

Alongside the formal launch of that service, Google is expected to unveil deals with most of the big record companies to sell digital music downloads from those catalogs. Purchased tracks can then be accessed from both the Web and on mobile devices, including those running Google's Android operating system. Social features could let users share purchased tracks with their friends via Google+. … Read more

Two new money-making platforms for social content creators

"If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold." That simple comment by Andrew Lewis on a MetaFilter post in 2010 did a great job, I think, of capturing some of the subconscious discomfort users accumulate as they put more and more of their lives on social networks like Facebook. But two new social products on display at the Web 2.0 Summit earlier this week, Chime.in and Mightybell, turn the equation around a bit, allowing social network contributors to take some of their content and turn … Read more

Sassy Siri even performs musical duets

Everyone's talking to the iPhone 4S' personal assistant Siri and posting their favorite exchanges. From witty banter to borderline insults, Siri has us fascinated.

Musician Jonathan Mann, for example, managed to sing a hilarious duet with Siri, which is posted below. Mann uses some of the most popular questions people have been asking Siri, like "will you marry me?" and "what is the meaning of life?"

You'll have to watch the video to see Siri's snarky answers. … Read more

Apple's iPhone event plus Buzz Out Loud: Join us Tuesday (live blog)

Editor's note: We used Cover It Live for this event, so if you missed the live blog, you can still replay it in the embedded component below. Replaying the event will give you all the live updates along with commentary from our readers and CNET writers Josh Lowensohn, Scott Stein, and Declan McCullagh. For those of you who just want the updates, we've included them in regular text here. To get the key points from today's announcement, you can check out our summary of what got announced, in our story here and see a complete list of … Read more

Create personalized news feeds with ChannelCaster

ChannelCaster for Android lets users create and publish personalized "channels" that aggregate news from thousands of supported news sources. In addition to all of the expected big-name publications and blogs, ChannelCaster can pull feeds from Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and Twitter. Its design is clean and visually appealing with its sharp, vibrant thumbnails, and its navigation is incredibly simple with only three main tabs along the top of the app.

The Favorites tab is really the heart of the ChannelCaster experience. This is where you save your most frequently visited channels, and presumably where you'll spend most of … Read more

At F8, Facebook talks Timeline, media, more (live blog)

Editor's note: We used Cover It Live to cover CEO Mark Zuckerberg's opening address at the company's F8 developers conference today in San Francisco. So if you missed the live blog, you can still replay it in the embedded component at the bottom of this post. Replaying the event will give you all the live updates along with commentary from our readers and CNET reporters. You can also read our edited transcript below, or a summary story on the company's key announcements, including a revamped profile page it calls Timeline and changes in Open Graph that … Read more

Facebook sucks up Americans' time

The folks at Nielsen have confirmed what we've long suspected--we waste more time on Facebook than anywhere else. The famed media metrics and ratings company says in its latest social-media report that Americans spend more time on Facebook than any other destination on the Web--about 53 billion total minutes in the month of May 2011 alone.

That's even more time than we spend streaming Pandora, which last quarter ate up 1.8 billion hours of listening time, an activity that requires much less interaction, or even being in the room. The Facebook tally is also just short of the amount of total hours spent by gamers playing on XBox Live, which at one point last year Microsoft estimated to be a total of a billion hours a month. That's a global number though, so take away all those overseas game junkies, and odds are that Facebook is still bigger here in the land of the free and the home of the Liked.… Read more

'iWeb to Wordpress' converter offers potential for iWeb bloggers

One of the services that Apple offered when it initially released MobileMe was personal Web hosting, allowing users to create Web pages with Apple's iWeb program. While Apple will still be supporting its personal Web hosting service until June 30, 2012, the service will eventually be shut down. In addition, Apple's iWeb program has been discontinued, so while it still works, it too will sooner or later need to be replaced.

This situation will affect anyone who uses either iWeb or MobileMe hosting, but luckily there are a few options for people wanting to transition to alternative services … Read more