GigaOm reported earlier today that WordPress firm Automattic has raised $29.5 million in a Series B Round of funding. The New York Times Co. is one of the investors in the blog software company. GigaOm says the funding will be used to hire engineers, expand product offerings and possibly add more social networking features. So what does Automattic need the money for? After all, from what I know of the business, Automattic has been bubbling around the break-even point for a while now. Matt explains that they are going to roll out newer, hosted services such as BBPress (forums), and will expand their other product offerings, such as Gravatar and the spam-protection service Akismet. The money will be spent to hire more engineers and build out a more robust infrastructure. That would be a start. Anne Zelenka made an impassioned case for using WordPress to build a social network, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see some social features start to creep into WordPress.com as well. They just boosted their storage capacity to three gigabytes, which indicates that they are serious about allowing bloggers to add video and other multimedia content to their blogs. WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg has a post about the funding on his blog called Act Two. Permalink | Recent Headlines | Twitter | WWFeeds.com

Blogging Valentine’s Day 2008
Valentine’s Day is today. People are celebrating with chocolate and flowers, by dining out and by spending time with loved ones and family members. Romantic Saudis are even celebrating the holiday as they keep their roses hidden from the religious police. Here are some highlights from the blogosphere. People are buying all the typical Valentine’s Day items again – candy, flowers, greeting cards, etc. Bears like these are popular again. More people are dining out for the day. Men continue to outspend women. Treehugger asks if the holiday has been lost in consumerism. Mad crazy love that happens when people first fall in love occurs in a very primitive part of the brain called the ventral tegmental area (VTA). There’s a Valentine’s Day Storm Worm going around. It’s a real virus so be careful opening emails from people you don’t know that sound romantic and heartfelt. This is something you have probably often asked yourself: What Would MacGyver do on Valentine’s Day?. Natalie Del Conte says gadgets are hot and gadget manufacturers like Apple and Microsoft have red or pink Zunes and iPods out. Unfortunately, some of those Microsoft Red Zune shipments might not make it says Engadget. If the Red V-Day Zune is late it might be free. Speaking of gadgets the cute robot dinosaur toy Pleo has a lovey-dovey behavior download available. Heater Cabot at the Huffington Post wants those gadgets totally turned off for Valentine’s Day. There is also a green Valentine’s trend. Some scientist valentines for the romantic science geek inside of you. (via Make) There are over 218,000 photos on Flickr for the keyword: Valentine. There are 74,000 videos on YouTube for the keyword: Valentine. Those little white lies you tell your significant other are OK. Recipes: Delicious Chocolate Pie | Sweet Valentine’s Cupcakes | Valentine’s Day chocolates | Chocolate Pecan Cupcakes | No-Bake Cherry Cheesecake | Chocolate Kiss Cookies | Chocolate Velvet Cheesecake | Valentine’s Day Crepes | Valentine’s Butter Cookies | Red Velvet Cake | Perfect Chocolate Truffles Crafts: Pulsating LED Valentine Heart | One Eyed Heart Valentine | Peep Pops | Plaster Hearts | Valentine’s Day Chair Covers | Origami Valentine Felt Valentine’s Day Cookies | Hugs and Kisses Napkin Ring | Valentine’s Card with a Chewy Twist Cracked thinks if Valentine’s Day cards were honest they would look like these. Nine tactics for a frugal Valentine’s Day. (via Lifehacker) Blood roses in Bogota: “80,000 women from rural Colombia are working for less than 50 cents an hour to pluck those beautiful bouquets.” Photojojo has some photo ideas for Valentine’s Day. Marketers going negative? Are you buying a gift to make someone happy or simply to avoid a fight? (via Consumerist) Luxist says some are taking luxury trips for one this Valentine’s Day. Single? You could also spend Valentine’s Day playing Gotham Racing 4 on the Xbox suggets Jalopnik. The Onion’s brutal take on online dating. (via Nate Elliott). Ghost in the Machine has a detailed love songs post. Shiny Shiny notes that Thumbplay.com is offering some Anti-Love tunes. The Guardian: Are you spending Valentine’s Day in Second Life? AdHack community spices things up with their chocolate love ad. (via Darren Barefoot) AOL and Citysearch hook up locally but Microsoft has a lot to learn planning an executive shuffle on a day like today. Google Docs goes pink. Web V-Day logos also posted here and here. Pet love: Winston gets leecked on Valentine’s Day. Twitters: @Love. Twitter Valentine’s Day searches: Valentine | romance | chocolate | love Virtual Gifts: Popgadget points out this Virtual Flower Pot gift on Google Gadgets. CNET’s blog called The Social says hits to social networking sites are on the rise – “visits to dating sites were up 26 percent in the week ending February 9 in comparison with the equivalent week in 2007.” A Valentine Video from PostSecret. YouTube is featuring many Valentine-related videos today. Yahoo Buzz reveals people’s romantic Valentine’s Day searches. Flowerless celebrity: Katie Holmes never received a flower on Valentine’s Day before. How to buy the right sweet wine for Valentine’s Day. 80% of greeting cards are purchased by women. Men tend to purchase them at the last minute and typically only be a single card for their significant other. More greeting card trends here. Here are some photos of greeting cards from the 1950s on Flickr. (via Boing Boing. Blogging Valentine’s Day entries from previous years: 2007, 2006) Photo: Valentine bugs are coming!: Permalink | Recent Headlines | Twitter | WWFeeds.com

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Library of Congress Launches Flickr Project
The Library of Congress has announced a pilot project with Flickr. They are placing 3,000 photos from two of their most popular collections on Flickr for the public to use. The project is being called The Commons. You can read the Flickr announcement here and below is an excerpt from the LOC’s blog announcement. That’s why it is so exciting to let people know about the launch of a brand-new pilot project the Library of Congress is undertaking with Flickr, the enormously popular photo-sharing site that has been a Web 2.0 innovator. If all goes according to plan, the project will help address at least two major challenges: how to ensure better and better access to our collections, and how to ensure that we have the best possible information about those collections for the benefit of researchers and posterity. In many senses, we are looking to enhance our metadata (one of those Web 2.0 buzzwords that 90 percent of our readers could probably explain better than me). The project is beginning somewhat modestly, but we hope to learn a lot from it. Out of some 14 million prints, photographs and other visual materials at the Library of Congress, more than 3,000 photos from two of our most popular collections are being made available on our new Flickr page, to include only images for which no copyright restrictions are known to exist. The real magic comes when the power of the Flickr community takes over. We want people to tag, comment and make notes on the images, just like any other Flickr photo, which will benefit not only the community but also the collections themselves. For instance, many photos are missing key caption information such as where the photo was taken and who is pictured. If such information is collected via Flickr members, it can potentially enhance the quality of the bibliographic records for the images. The Library of Congress has 4 million prints, photographs and other visual materials so there is much more they could make available to social media sites like Flickr in the future. Permalink | Recent Headlines | Twitter | WWFeeds.com

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