New York - BlogTalkRadio, the provider of a service that lets anyone host a live radio talk show over the Internet, has raised $4.6 million in a new round of financing led by The Kraft Group, The New York Times' Bits Blog reported.

Palo Alto, Calif. - Jaxtr, a provider of Internet phone services for social networks and blogs, said on Tuesday that it has raised $10 million in its second round of funding, led by new investor Lehman Brothers Venture Partners.

New York - The Associated Press (AP) has released a statement saying that it has settled an issue with a blogger whom it had demanded remove several posts that quoted short excerpts from AP stories. "In response to questions about the use of Associated Press content on the Drudge Retort web site, the AP was able to provide additional information to the operator of the site, Rogers Cadenhead, on Thursday," the AP said in a statement. "That information was aimed at enabling Mr. Cadenhead to bring the contributed content on his site into conformance with the policy he earlier set for his contributors. Both parties consider the matter closed."

London - Left-leaning political news blog Huffington Post plans to expand into local news across the U.S., and is pursuing a third round of venture capital to help fund the initiative, founder Arianna Huffington said at a conference hosted by U.K. newspaper the Guardian.

San Francisco - Seesmic, a developer of live video webcam communications technology, has raised $6 million in new funding, led by Omidyar Network and Wellington Partners, VentureBeat reported.

In the Web 2.0 era, simplicity is king. No matter if you're talking about user interface, ease of use or the idea for a blog. To take the latter as an example; there are a number of great blogs out there using other people's images in creative and somewhat controversial ways. The concept is as simple as it is genious: 1. Find a topic that people can releate to. 2. Search for user generated pictures that relate to that topic on a photo-sharing service such as Flickr (the best one) or a social network. 3. Post the picture to your blog with witty commentary. 4. Watch traffic grow and comments flowing in. Three hilarious blogs built using this recipe for success that I recommend to check out is Sorry I Missed Your Party, Hot Chicks With Douche Bags and Demonbaby's MySpace Stupid Haircut Awards. Do you have any other good examples, perhaps using videos instead of photos, post a comment and share the fun!

San Francisco - Blog search engine Technorati on Tuesday launched its own blog advertising network, Technorati Media, TechCrunch reported. The service has been in testing with a number of partner blogs, including BlogTalkRadio, BlogCritics, BlogTV and several other others that count a combined 17 million unique monthly users. Initial advertisers include Honda, Toyota, T-Mobile, Microsoft, Sony, Paramount and Universal Pictures. The network is currently only courting larger blogs, but is expected to open it up to any interested blog publishers in 2 or 3 months.

New York - The principals at New York-based music marketing firm Cornerstone Promotion have created a network of music blogs -- including their own TheFader.com, TheTripwire.com and 1200squad.com -- and Gizmodo founder Pete Rojas' RCRD LBL, that is now attracting blue-chip advertisers, Fortune reports.

New York - The Associated Press (AP) newsgathering agency will attempt to define how much attributed borrowing constitutes "fair use" of its news articles and broadcasts for bloggers and other websites, The New York Times reports. The AP last week asked a blog called the Drudge Retort to remove seven posts that contained quotes from AP articles that ranged from 39 to 79 words.

San Francisco - Technorati, a search engine for blogs, has called down $7.5 million of a $10 million fourth round of venture capital financing, PEHub.com reported, citing a regulatory filing.

Los Angeles - Metallica have blamed their management company Q Prime for asking bloggers to take down their reviews of rough mixes of the band's new album -- bloggers who were invited to a listening party to hear said tracks, according to a post on Metallica.com. "Our response was 'WHY?!!! Why take down mostly positive reviews of the new material and prevent people from getting psyched about the next record... that makes no sense to us!' So after a few rounds of managerial ear spank and sentencing everyone at Q Prime to 20 push-ups each, we figured why not take matters into our own hands and just post the links here on our site."

Sausalito, Calif. - Former PC World editor-in-chief Harry McCracken on Tuesday announced plans to launch Technologizer, a new independent technology news blog that will be part of online ad network Federated Media Publishing, also home to TechCrunch and GigaOm. FM will also help develop the site in partnership with McCracken, as it did for previous clients WebbAlert and Boing Boing Gadgets.

New York - Glam Media, a group of vertical content and advertising networks targeting women, on Thursday announced that it has partnered with Russell Simmons-backed hip-hop social network Global Grind, to launch a new vertical network of sites and blogs targeting the hip-hop community. Earlier this week, the company announced the launch of another new vertical content network, Glam Family, to be headed by former SheKnows.com president and CEO Mike Meyers. Glam Family will launch in the third quarter, and focus on parenting, pregnancy and baby-related content.

Hollywood, Calif. - Buzznet, a social media company that operates sites centered on music and pop culture, on Tuesday announced the beta launch of Celebuzz.com, an online social network for fans of celebrity news and gossip.

As a marketing blogger with a fairly decent audience, I tend to make it onto a lot of marketing lists. And they are pretty popular these days. Sometimes it seems like each month I get placed on several of these new lists (along with the accompanying requests to include a list to the lists on my sidebar). Recently I got yet another one over the weekend and realized that this tactic is likely to get more and more popular as companies continually try to find ways to connect with prominent bloggers. If you are considering coming up with your own list, you might want to take a look at a few relatively successful marketing lists and what you can learn from each one:

Los Angeles - Twitter, a microblogging service, has raised $15 million in its second round of venture capital financing at a pre-money valuation of around $80 million, GigaOM reported.

New York - Redlasso, a Web service that lets bloggers search national and local TV and radio broadcasts and create clips for posting to their websites, has received a cease and desist notice from broadcasters NBC (NYSE: GE), CBS (NYSE: CBS) and Fox (NYSE: NWS), who allege the site is violating their copyrights, Reuters reported.

If you're among the social media initiated, chances are you are Googling yourself more than once a day. In fact, you probably have Google alerts set up with your own name to notify you (and your ego) whenever anyone mentions you. It's ok, you can admit it. As many of us build our digital profiles and publish content online, seeing who else is talking about us has become more than a voyeuristic thrill ... there is a personal ROI that is rapidly emerging, and it relates to your personal brand. I have lots of thoughts about personal branding, including something that I'm planning to share very soon which will hopefully be quite useful for any of you trying to build your personal brand.

San Jose, Calif. - CellSpin on Tuesday introduced its mobile application that allows users to post audio, video, photos and text on social media sites including Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Blogger, Picasa, Flickr and even live eBay auctions. The San Jose, Calif.-based company, which debuted its technology at DEMO Conference in January, said CellSpin currently works on over 300 mobile phone models, and supports Symbian, Windows Mobile, and BlackBerry operating systems.