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Ambush kills U.S. troops in Iraq

Snip: The suicide car bomb and ensuing small-arms fire killed at least two Marines and four others were missing and presumed dead. At least one woman was killed, and 11 of the 13 wounded troops were female.

The ambush late Thursday also suggested Iraqi insurgents may have regained a foothold in Fallujah, which has been occupied by U.S. and Iraqi forces since they regained control of the city from insurgents seven months ago.

The women were part of a team of Marines assigned to various checkpoints around Fallujah. The Marines use females at the checkpoints to search Muslim women “in order to be respectful of Iraqi cultural sensitivities,” a military statement said.

The demise of Technorati politics?

What's missing from the new and improved Technorati? It seems as if their overview ofpopular blog conversations still includes movies, books, and the top 100 -- but where is their politics page? Until the redesign, Technorati was home to a nifty slice of political...

Where social software meets social activism

A lot of my recent reading and thinking has focused on how social software -- community-building online tools like blogging, wikis and social networking -- effect small-p political change by allowing groups to self-organize more easily and powerfully. Today, Wired has...

The true hazards of blogging: beyond the EFF

The EFF's recent release of a legal guide for bloggers gives bloggers in the US a great tool for assessing and managing the legal risks of blogging. But as the EFF itself acknowledges, its guide only speaks to the US context: This legal guide is based on the laws in...

100 blog shakers

I suspect that the AO/Technorati Open Media 100 will be the meme of the day. It's a list of 100 movers & shakers in the world of open media -- the world of bloggers, social networks, and social software. For the most part the list includes the people I would hope to...

The latest must-have tech

As of this weekend, my blog is now M3R compliant: Looking over my lor stats from yesterday, I can already see the impact -- not only on n-files but also on the peller processes I've been running to optimize my RTimer performance. But of course what really matters for...

The Latest from the Technorati Rank Wars

OK, it just occurred to me that my Technorati claim might in fact have been slightly messed up by the fact that Technorati was tracking my /blog directory, whereas the blog itself is now in the root directory. I set up a new blog claim directed to the right location...

Irony, thy name is Technorati

It's happened! I am now officially kicking Rob's ass on Technorati, having jumped overnight from a soul-destroying 72,991 to a respectable if not stellar 44,348 (just think...only 44,347 blogs with more links than mine!). One might attribute this leap to the silent,...

A helping hand from Technorati?

I've heard about people whose small-minded partners keep track of things like who does more dishes or who remembers birthdays and anniversaries. And I'm usually sympathetic to my friends who complain that love can't be run on a point system. But that's because typical...

Setting up Bloglines subscriptions

A little more guidance for those just getting started with RSS: some more step-by-step advice on adding RSS feeds to your Bloglines account. When you're on a site that you'd like to subscribe to, click on the "sub with Bloglines" button on your toolbar (the one you...