Here are some highlights from Thanksgiving 2007. The Census Bureau is always providing bloggable facts. In a release they say, “In the fall of 1621, the religious separatist Pilgrims held a three-day feast to celebrate a bountiful harvest, an event many regard as the nation?s first Thanksgiving. It eventually became a national holiday in 1863 when President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November as a national day of thanksgiving. Later, President Franklin Roosevelt clarified that Thanksgiving should always be celebrated on the fourth Thursday of the month to encourage earlier holiday shopping, never on the occasional fifth Thursday.” The Census Bureau release also provides other facts about how many turkeys will be raised this year and about the 2007 U.S. production levels of Thanksgiving menu items like cranberries and sweet potatoes. At the end of the release you learn about how many towns in the U.S. are named Turkey (3) and how many places are named Plymouth (28). Holidays are for making new logos – roundups of some of the Thanksgiving logos here, here and here. Neil Kramer started an annual tradition three years ago called Thank Your First Blog Commenter Day where he thanks his very first blog commenter. This year he is up to thanking his third blog commenter. If you want to thank your first commenter it isn’t difficult. Neil says, “Just go all the way back into your archives and there he or she is ? waiting for you!” Some people were up very early to catch those Black Friday deals. Some pictures of what that looked like can be found here. Now the deals move online for Cyber Monday. Consumerist was bummed out by the lack of Black Friday violence early on. The Education Wonk: “We’ve a lot to be thankful for. Every day above ground is good. Sure beats the alternative. We hope that you and yours are well this Thanksgiving Day.” The Onion has a video about all the time people send in the airports on Thanksgiving. The Cranky Flier has also blogged about this video. Some disturbing Thanksgiving diet tips. Over 19,000 videos turn up on YouTube with a “Thanksgiving” seaerch including Thanksgiving Dinner: Will it Blend and Thanksgiving Prayer by William S. Burroughs. Michelle Malkin doesn’t want to hear any griping this Thanksgiving holiday. That said there sure is plenty to grip about this Thanksgiving holiday – like oil spiking to $100 and gas prices soaring out of control. The Friendly Atheist has a thread about what are atheists thankful for – and who do they thank? Gizmodo is thankful for many internal links back to themselves. Snarke: “I am thankful for a family who gets along. Yeah, we?re a bunch of weirdos, but we are a bunch of weirdos who get each other and enjoy each other’s company.” Jeff Pulver really enjoyed his social media Thanksgiving. There were many Thanksgiving tweets on Twitter. Twitter users were feeling the effects of tryptophan – an amino acid found in turkey. Scientists claim that you would have to eat many turkeys before you consumed enough tryptophan to induce sleepiness but many Twitterers were blaming tryptophan anyway. Another video: How to draw a Turkey. More than 130,000 Americans sent text messages of gratitude to U.S. Troops. Britney Spears was spotted on Thanksgiving. She actually looks happy and was wearing clothes. We can all be thankful for that. Some turkeys visited a New York town for Thanksgiving: “The turkeys showed up Thursday morning, drawing crowds of spectators, but left _ marching in single file _ at about 1 p.m.” It’s All For the Best: “Raise your hand if you feel like one of the Macy’s parade balloons!” Leftovers! Craftzine points to a couple websites with advice for dealing with leftovers: LeftOverChef and WiseBread’s turkey leftover ideas. There are a few more leftover ideas here on Bay Area Bites. If none of these ideas work for you there’s always pizza. PopSugar has an overly sweet post about Sacha Baron Cohen, Isla Fisher and Olive’s first Thanksgiving. President Bush phoned some U.S. troops. President Bush also pardoned May, the Thanksgiving turkey. Turkey inflation: The price of a Turkey dinner soared 11% over last year’s prices. That’s probably not a surprise to many consumers who have been facing sticker shock at the grocery store. There may be more shock on the way as higher gas prices starting increasing the prices of food and merchandise. Is eating turkeys for Thanksgiving sustainable?. NewTeeVee has some video picks for Turkey Day. Actors Kirk Douglas, Harrison Ford, Calista Flockhart and Nia Long were some of the celebrities serving food at the Los Angeles Mission. jkOnTheRun has posted a list of mobile technology items that he would be very thankful to see. Some people put giant inflatable turkeys in their yards as this blogger reports. It probably looked like one of these. Somewhat Frank has posted a roundup of Thanksgiving resources. The Bleacher Report has handed out some sports-related turkey awards. Michael Vick was one of the turkeys. Incidentally, Michael Vick ate turkey for dinner on Thanksgiving. Macy’s Parade: Ashley Tisdale, Jonas Brothers, Jordin Sparks, Review, Float pictures From the MSM – Man Bakes Enormous Turkey. UPI reports that a man had “a longstanding big-turkey-cooking rivalry with his sister” so he baked an enormous 72-pound turkey. The turkey was so big it took fifteen hours to cook and it fed 28 people. Someone also put the story here on Truemors. Some posts by bloggers where they posted lists of what they are thankful for: White Trash Mom, Stray Thoughts, Lazy Man and Money, Tan Tan Noodles, Ladies Logic, Projecting A, Chris Pirillo, Goddess of Sewing, Codex Markianus, Dimmi, Two Writing Teachers, The Amazing Adventures of the Kelly-Green Rogue, weaklingrecords, Josh Via, ArmchairGM, Pandanista, Welcome to Illyria, Eternal Echoes, This is Going to be Big and Mommy Bytes. Past Turkey roundups from 2005 and 2006 can be found here. Have a happy Thanksgiving holiday and thank you for reading BloggersBlog.com. Permalink | Recent Headlines | Twitter | WWFeeds.com

Syria Blocks Facebook
Reuters is reporting that Syria’s government has blocked access to Facebook. There are thousands of Syrians who use Facebook accordign to the Reuters story. Syrian users of Facebook said on Friday the authorities had blocked access to the social network Web site as part of a crackdown on political activism on the Internet. “Facebook helped further civil society in Syria and form civic groups outside government control. This is why it has been banned,” women’s rights advocate Dania al-Sharif told Reuters. “They cut off communications between us and the outside world. We are used to this behavior from our government,” said Mais al-Sharbaji, who set up a Facebook group for amateur Syrian photographers. There was no comment form the government, which has intensified a campaign against bloggers, virtual opinion forums and independent media sites in recent months. Syria may have agreed to attend Tuesday’s Middle-East peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland but they appear to be very serious about silencing opposing political points of view. Ammar al-Qurabi, head of the National Association for Human Rights, told Reuters that there is even a “Internet political crimes” ward at one of Syria’s prison. An article on Human Rights Watch says Syria’s approach to Internet access is consistent “with its efforts to suppress all forms of expression deemed critical of how the country is governed. All newspapers and broadcast media are tightly controlled, and hundreds of political prisoners remain behind bars, many of them serving long terms for peaceful dissent.” Posted in Censorship Permalink | Recent Headlines | Twitter | WWFeeds.com

One Way to Completely Opt-out of Beacon: Delete Your Account
We blogged earlier about Facebook’s annoying Beacon. Facebook’s Beacon was instantly broadcasting information about Facebook users’ online purchases without first getting the users’ permission to do so. Facebook ruined some people’s holiday gift surprises in the process. In response to numerous complaints the social network giant has now modified the way the Beacon news stream functions. Beacon “news items” will now sit waiting on Facebook users’ profiles until they are approved or denied. This at least provides a way for Facebook users to stop information about online purchases and other web activities from being instantly broadcasted to all of their Facebook friends. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really solve the larger issue with Beacon which is that Beacon is aggregating its users online shopping activity. Is there any benefit to consumers in having Facebook compile all this data? The only benefit appears to be to Facebook which will be able to build a constantly improving model of each Facebook user’s shopping behavior. Facebook seems to think they deserve to gather this information about their users simply because they provide them with a free online social networking profile. Facebook is going to really struggle as a company going forward if the only method they have for making money is to violate more and more of their users’ privacy while providing no additional benefit to the users. Facebook is refusing to provide a way to completely opt-out of Beacon so the only way users can get away from Facebook’s invasive new service is to delete their account. Posted in Facebook Permalink | Recent Headlines | Twitter | WWFeeds.com

TinyURL Outage Breaks Links on Twitter
Twitter.com has been working consistently over the last couple days but the redirection tools Twitter users rely on have not been. Today, the popular TinyURL.com link shortener and redirection service has been offline. TinyURL is the most popular URL shortener on Twitter so many links that Twitter users have posted are not working. Twitter is set up to automatically convert long links into TinyURLs which is creating problems since the TinyURL links are not currently redirecting to the appropriate website – instead people see a 500 Internal Server Error message displayed on the tinyurl.com website. A lot of scripts used to post links to Twitter accounts also use TinyURL. There are many alternatives to TinyURL. Urltea.com is one of the most popular alternative choices. UrlTea was offline for a couple of days but it is working today. Other options include SnipURL.com and ShortURL. Joe Messina has a Flickr list of other url shorteners (via CenterNetworks). Twitter needs a reliable URL redirection service to function properly. TinyURL.com has proved pretty reliable until now and hopefully it will return soon. You can follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/bloggersblog. Posted in Twitter Permalink | Recent Headlines | WWFeeds.com

Sci Fi Channel Spins Off Gadget Blog
The Sci Fi Channel is spinning off its tech and gadget blog to a new site called DVICE. Multichannel news says Peter Pachal will remain the blog’s content editor. There will also be a weekly video show hosted by Vanessa Rae. DVICE – formerly SciFi.com’s Tech Blog – is the latest extension of the Sci Fi brand. It has a staff of writers and contributors who will aim to keep readers current in the ever-changing world of technology. The new site will feature innovations that make their lives less complicated, not more, and only the hottest and best will be featured. Peter Pachal, who edited the Sci Fi Tech Blog, will be DVICE’s content editor. DVICE’s strategy is to combine entertainment and information when reporting on the latest gadgets. The site will also produce an original weekly broadband show. In the show, host Vanessa Rae (MTV.com) will try out some of the more adventurous gear, such as the speed and height-enhancing Power Risers; and offer on-the-street product tests and opinions from unsuspecting passers-by. The show is produced in conjunction with NBC Universal’s Peacock Productions. There is enormous competition in the gadget blogging field but apparently still enough readers to go around. You can see a list of many gadget blogs on the left side of howtoweb.com. Posted in Gadget Blogs Permalink | Recent Headlines | Twitter | WWFeeds.com

Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s Baby Blog
Now that Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s new baby Taylor Thomas Hasselbeck is here (congrats Elisabeth!) will she keep blogging? She kept fans up-to-date with a few posts before her baby was born on her blog called Elisabeth’s Baby Blog. The blog lives on Dreft.com, which is a Procter & Gamble website. Here’s an excerpt from her most recent post. Still no sign of baby #2 yet! I am having some contractions at night that make me think it may happen soon! I have been having a hard time getting out of bed? especially because I get up at least 4 times, either for the bathroom, or for Grace? One would assume that any baby blogging deal she cut with Procter & Gamble would have her continue blogging once the baby arrived. According to E Online she will be back. E Online also wonders if she is blogging out of a desire to compete with Rosie O’Donnell. Perhaps driven to compete with former View cohost Rosie O’Donnell (long famed for her haiku-riffic stream-of-consciousness bloggery), Elisabeth promises “12 personal stories recounting her experiences and emotions both before and after the birth of her second child, due later this month, along with photos of the new baby.” If the blog was on Elisabeth’s personal website or on a blogging service like Blogger than maybe we could buy E Online’s suggestion that she is trying to compete with Rosie but since the blog is on the Dreft detergent website it is much more likely that it was a financial deal. We would love to know how much The View co-star was paid for baby blogging but that information is not readily available. Posted in Baby Blogs Permalink | Recent Headlines | WWFeeds.com

Sports Analyst Stephen A. Smith Bashes Bloggers
Here’s a good one for the blog pessimism file. ESPN personality Stephen A. Smith thinks “internet writers” do not have the right to reach a large audience. Smith also thinks bloggers have sabotaged the print media. SportsbyBrooks has excerpted Smith’s blast at bloggers. Smith first claims to Hoffarth that “internet writers” have no right to reach a large audience (we take it he’s actually serious): “And when you look at the internet business, what’s dangerous about it is that people who are clearly unqualified get to disseminate their piece to the masses. I respect the journalism industry, and the fact of the matter is …someone with no training should not be allowed to have any kind of format whatsoever to disseminate to the masses to the level which they can. They are not trained. Not experts.” The fun continues as Smith tells Hoffarth that bloggers have “sabotaged” the dinosaur print media: “The people who suffer are the common viewers out there and, more importantly, those in the industry who haven’t been fortunate to get a radio or television deal and only rely on the written word. And now they’ve been sabotaged. Not because of me. Or like me. But because of the industry or the world has allowed the average joe to resemble a professional without any credentials whatsoever.” Farther off the Wall has a seven-part series about Stephen Smith’s comments. Deadspin writes that Smith imagines a “utopian society without bloggers.” Love Without Nagel does a good job of taking apart Stephen Smith’s comments in this post: “Is Stephen A. Smith flying to Darfur to save the people? No, he is bitching about Isaiah Thomas and Rasheed Wallace. His true professional assets are speaking loudly and ranting about SPORTS. I can do that.” Posted in Blog Pessimism Permalink | Recent Headlines | Twitter | WWFeeds.com

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