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The Third Annual Podcast and New Media Expo Is This Weekend
The third annual Podcast and New Media Expo, formerly known as the Portable Media Expo, started today in Ontario, California and runs throughout the weekend. The event has become a favorite of podcasters and video creators from all over the world.Keynote speakers at the conference this year include serial investor Howard Lindzon, creator of the CBS acquired video blog Wallstrip, Jim Louderback, CEO of Kevin Rose-affiliated Revision3 and Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine of Ask A Ninja.You can keep an eye and an ear on the action at the Expo in a number of ways, including an official Twitter feed and audio interviews both live and rebroadcast from the surprisingly successful startup BlogTalkRadio (see our review of the service last month). Live BlogTalkRadio coverage will be provided by About.com Guide to Podcasting John C. Havens and will will start tonight at 5:30 PST. Coverage kicks off with an interview with Paolo Tosolini of Microsoft on the value of corporate podcasting...

Digg bug? Hacked? What's going on here?
I just tried to digg a story on Center Networks recapping what appears to have been a successful first get together for fans of the blog (I was bummed that I wasn't able to attend). I thought it was odd that a recap post had over 40 diggs -- usually those only appeal to people who attended and don't fair very well on sites like Digg, unless maybe they're about a big conferences like the MacWorld or DEMO. When I clicked through, however, I was sent to this story, entitled "echouchou.cn," has a description in Chinese and links to nowhere. Huh?Reading through the comments, it appears that a lot of external (and even some internal?) diggs are being redirected to this page. As I write this, the story has 46 diggs and comments indicating 6 sites (not including Center Networks) that are apparently unknowingly sending diggers its way. The story is 348 days old, but the comments are all within the past couple of hours. Bug? Hack? Who knows... it sure is odd, though.Does anyone...

Top Sites for Logophiles
Some people love words. They are delighted by the appropriate thunder of the word "cacophony," or amused by the ironic spelling of the word "phonetic," or tickled by just how difficult it is to remember how to correctly spell "mnemonic." So where do lovers of language gather on the web? We've hunted down the top sites for logophiles and listed them below. Be sure to leave your favorites in the comments.WordieWordie calls itself a site "like Flickr, but without the photos," which is an apt description. The web site is a social network for word lovers who list, discuss, share, and keep track of their favorite words. So far their 5,000 members have listed over 275,000 words. The current favorite? "Schadenfreude," an unfortunate word that describes taking satisfaction or pleasure in the misfortune of another.My Favorite WordAs the name would imply, My Favorite Word is a directory of people's favorite words. It's run by the people behind The Word Detective, a newspaper column...

Hitwise: Slide Passes Flickr, Threatens Photobucket for Top Spot in NZ
The always interesting Hitwise web traffic analysts have released statistics this morning indicating that Slide.com has overtaken Flickr in at least one country (New Zealand, the birthplace of Read/WriteWeb) and has doubled its market share over the summer. Slide.com now trails only Fox's Photobucket in NZ, thanks largely to the company's wild success on the new Facebook platform. Hitwise says Facebook drives more than 59% of the traffic to Slide.com. Slide was one of the first companies to take the strategy of releasing lots of little mini-apps in Facebook, many of which have been incredibly successful. Slide has raised tens of millions of dollars in VC backing. The company saw big early growth on MySpace when it hired a legion of young people to push its widgets in that social network. It's also been accused of violating the MySpace terms of service in its early days by using user credentials to autopublish to user profiles. Unsurprisingly, Hitwise also reports that...