As the New York Times noted yesterday, Scotland Yard has been willfully negligent, if not actively collusive, in its investigation of the hacking into the phones of UK celebrities and crime victims by journalists at News of the World.

But isn’t it obvious by now that the conspiracy to cover up the phone hacking probably goes far wider, likely implicating many members of the UK press itself?

The most aggressive reporting on the UK phone hacking has been consistently led by US journalists, for example in the September 2010 investigative blast in the New York Times magazine?

As the Times reported then, “interviews with more than a dozen former reporters and editors at News of the World … described a frantic, sometimes degrading atmosphere in which some reporters openly pursued hacking or other improper tactics to satisfy demanding editors.”

So let’s assume that, at best, hacking was only perpetrated by NOTW journalists. That premise would still leave hundreds of members of the UK press complicit in the hacking, since they would either have once worked at NOTW and known about the hacking or had friends who worked there.

In an interview (below) before Brooks resigned, a TV journalist asks a spokesman for Newscorp, NOTW’s owner, whether Rebekah Brooks could honestly lead an investigation into actions that had occurred under her own watch as editor of NOTW. The spokesman shivers and jibes, trying to avoid saying the obvious: you can’t investigate yourself. The same logic must be true for many members (and former members) of the UK press itself.

For example…

Tina Brown, editor in chief at Newsweek and The Daily Beast, quipped after the NYT’s expose last September that “I’m shocked, shocked to learn … that the voice mail messages of celebrities have been bugged for tidbits of gossip—can you believe it?—by the Murdoch press in London.” At the time, I’d assumed that Brown’s use of Captain Renault’siconic “I’m shocked” line from Casablanca was just an playful way of saying she’d suspected this might be the case.

In fact, it now seems likely that Brown, a former editor of UK magazine Tatler, was giving a double wink. That, like Renault, her knowledge wasn’t theoretical or speculative. As a former member of the UK press herself, Brown could have intimate knowledge of the hacking. But being friends with some of the miscreants, or friends of friends, Brown would be loath to throw stones herself.

Again, the best case scenario is that no former NOTW staffers took their phone hacking skills to other UK publications when they changed jobs. At worse, obviously, journalists at multiple publications were engaged in the hacking, and the UK presses’ persistent investigative lethargy is not just an act of professional courtesy to fellow club members, but an active desire to not wield a tar brush that might be turned on itself.

For now, the UK press is focused on chasing the scandal ever higher inside Newscorp. It’s obviously exciting to ask whether billionaire James Murdoch will be arrested.

Keeping the spotlight headed upwards helps the UK press from asking hard questions of itself.

So it is up to the US press (or UK bloggers?) to ask: was anyone at The Financial Times involved in hacking? The Independent? The Daily Mail? The Guardian? The Telegraph?

Connecting the dots shouldn’t be too hard. As social network expert Valdis Krebs notes, network analysis might be one good tool for journalists to use in understanding the story. In theory, by tracking which NOTW reporters moved on to which other UK publications, you might find patterns that would reveal the infectious spread of hacking practices. Tools like Influence Networks might help.

Online vendettas, Yelp style. And mob think gets personal.

Virtual currencies congealing?

The history of the corporation.

How good are you at rumor centrality?

“Skill must be culled from a string of mistakes. Lots of them.”

Kilgard speculates that the expanding cortical map is like a search committee. It’s generating a huge range of candidate solutions to a problem the brain has been tasked with, but doesn’t yet know how to solve. (How do I discriminate these tones? How do I get the ball in the basket? How do I solve that tricky calculus problem?) Once a good solution is found, the search committee is disbanded. Efficient changes that impart skill are retained, and the non-meaningful changes are winnowed away as the map shrinks.

Juliette Rossant of SUPER CHEF

Q: When and why did you start blogging?

A: I started blogging soon after my book, Super Chef (Simon & Schuster 2004) was published.  I wanted to keep up with my subjects:  six of America’s top chefs.  I was also tracking other celebrity chefs.

Q: How do you think your blog stands out amongst blogs of the same genre?

A: SUPER CHEF evolved from blog to magazine in 2007-2008.  Contributors include chefs Norman Van Aken, Jody Adams, Kelley Liken and Nora Pouillon.  I have worked as a journalist for magazines like Forbes:  I strive to have SUPER CHEF reflect that professionalism.

Most food-related blogs cover just that:  food, recipes, restaurant reviews and gossip.  SUPER CHEF covers the businesses and brands of celebrity chefs.  SUPER CHEF analyzes their TV shows, their books and their activities outside the kitchen.  SUPER CHEF has expanded to include articles relevant to kids (alternate Thursdays) and videos we call “Food Flicks” (Fridays).  As editor, I look for broadly food-related news, like Hurricane Katrina (in which emergency food helped victims).  When First Lady Laura Bush started looking for a new executive chef at the White House, SUPER CHEF ran a nationwide poll that helped identify candidates—and predicted Mrs. Bush’s choice.

Q: What does your family think of your blogging?

A: They are all enthusiastic.

My son was born just as I started writing my book, so he has grown up immersed in the culture of good food.

Q: Which blogger most inspires you to keep blogging?

A: I pay attention to a lot of blogs, including blogs outside of food.  I particularly inspired by political blogs in Middle East where freedom of speech is so curtailed.  Since I lived in Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and traveled all over the area, I pay attention to developments in the area – even for food.  I have tried to cover Food TV as it expands in the Middle East.

Q: How much time daily do you spend blogging?

A: It depends.  I do a lot of background reading.  An interview with, say, Chef Jose Andres alone can take more then an hour, plus follow-up. Other articles, like book reviews, need even more time.

Q: How many times have you redesigned your blog since it started?

A: At least twice, with a major re-launch in October 2009.

Q: How much do you correspond one-on-one with readers?

A: Often.  Readers write to me and suggest books or issues. Recently, I published a book review about Willa Cather—a great American writer and journalist—suggested to me by a reader.

Q: What joys did you not expect when you started blogging?  What pains?

A: It is especially fun to put out breaking news.  I was very pleased to be interviewed on ABC World News Tonight on the White House Chef poll.  It really struck a chord.  I’ve been following women chefs on SUPER CHEF, and I’ve written more than 20 profiles of women.

Last week, the New York Times cited me for the lead story in their Dining section about Todd English—one of the chefs in my book.  That was rewarding—to see the continuing impact of my work.

A few readers post spam or don’t read articles before responding, but most readers are very good about commenting.

Q: What’s something your readers don’t know about you?

A: Most know that my mother, Colette Rossant (who also contributes to SUPER CHEF) is a long-time food writer, cookbook author and memoirist.  I got my start helping her review restaurants when she was the “Underground Gourmet” for New York Magazine.  I considered going to culinary school myself, but instead I ended up starting my journalism career in Istanbul — a great place to eat!

Q: What’s your personal favorite blog post?

A: That is a tough question!  I’ve been publishing SUPER CHEF since 2004.  However, recently I published an article about French Chef Michel Bras inheriting his father’s famous restaurant. Chefs in America face the same tough problem: what to do with their empires when they want to retire.

I love to use cartoons and humor in my writing.  So, one of my favorites is a review of Chef David Burke’s New American Classics, with a pictures from the movie The Incredibles.

My other favorite of late is an article that captures how food memories are formed—by a 10-year old author.

ADVERTISERS! Want to target SUPER CHEF’s audience? Use offer code “SUPERCHEF” until June 14, 2011, to receive 50% off of any ad on Rossant’s site!

Tweetable Ads

We added tweetability to our ads in January. With the click of a button, advertisers can add a “tweet this” button that automatically suggests a twitter update, complete with URL and hashtag. This feature is already one of our most popular, and you can see how successful it’s been for two of our advertisers: PETA and Simon & Schuster. Even President Obama used it to kick off his 2012 campaign!

Live Preview

This simple but useful update lets an advertiser see a live preview of her ad as she builds it in our DIY system. Before the updates, the preview was displayed on a separate page. Now our advertisers can save time and make changes on the fly, rather than clicking back and forth between pages.

Video Ads

It takes a lot of work to create a great video, so getting quality views should be the easy part. With our new video ads feature, an advertiser can add his own Youtube or Vimeo masterpiece to an ad by dropping the URL into our DIY form. That’s it. No rich media fees. No extra production costs.

Multi-Column Ads

We’ve always encouraged publishers to customize their Blogads ad zone to fit the unique look and feel of their blogs. Now we’ve made our as zones even more customizable. For the blogger who wants to fill the space in her wide sidebar, or place a row of Blogads between posts, we’ve added the mult-column function to all Blogads. Now our bloggers can display up to six columns of ads to any of their adzones.

New Homepage Design

In January we radically simplified our home page design. This allows advertisers and bloggers to find the information they need with minimal clicking. With a front-and-center video player, we can highlight new features as they roll out. The design also makes our community features more prominent, with links to blog posts, tweets, and Facebook page in the footer. We liked the new header and footer so much that we’ve added it to the blog, too. Just scroll up and down to check them out.

Other New Blogads.com Layout

In addition to the home page, we’ve also rebooted our “Why Buy” page for advertisers and “Sell Ads” page for publishers. The clean new layout of these page brings the most important information above the fold, highlighting out unique features and success stories from past advertisers and bloggers we’ve worked with.

We’re always working to improve the Blogads experience for bloggers and advertisers alike. Is there a new feature you’d love to see? Let us know!

Milltown Glass by Flickr user abbyladybug

For seventy years, North Carolina law capped ABV for beer sold in the state at 6%. In 2005, thanks to the efforts of the Pop the Cap initiative, that limit was raised to 15%. Today, North Carolina is home to the most microbreweries in the South, and at local restaurants and bars, you can usually find more craft beers on tap than watered-down domestics. Here are our favorite spots in Carrboro and Chapel Hill to grab a bite and a brew.

Panzenella

If you’ve ever been to Carrboro, you’ve likely been to Weaver Street Market. The local co-op grocery is the heart of Carrboro, geographically and figuratively. What you may not have realized is that Panzanella, the Italian restaurant around the corner, is also owned by the same community. Panzanella is committed to keeping it local, with a seasonal farm-to-table menu and a summer beer dinner series featuring all local breweries.

Blogads Recommends:

If you can make it, you must go to a beer dinner, where they pair up their farm-fresh cuisine with a variety of brews from each brewery. And the vegetarian options at these dinners are just as good as the non-veggie.

flickr user yTravelBlog

Top of the Hill

Top of the Hill is probably best known for its excellent view of Franklin St, Chapel Hill’s downtown strip. With front-row seats to the annual Halloween Parade and UNC Championship “celebrations,” this is a true Carolina institution.

Oh – and they also brew a wide range of beers.

Blogads Recommends:

Top of the Hill’s all-American menu has something for everyone. Our favorite dish is the Arizona Chicken, served on gemelli pasta with southwestern veggies. From lagers to ales, they’ve got  all tastes covered, but in this hot weather, we recommend cooling yourself down with the Blue Ridge Blueberry Wheat.

Milltown

In a word: Beer. The website says everything you need to know about one of Carrboro’s most unique restaurants:

A Gastropub located in downtown Carrboro featuring 18 specialty drafts from around the world, 150 more in the bottle, menu items inspired by and made with beer…

Blogads Recommends:

No matter what you get, you must order a side of pommes frites – especially if you’re ordering a Belgian ale to drink. For lunch, you can’t go wrong with the Prime Rib sandwich. Covered in cheese and served with French onion soup, this is the sandwich to compliment your poutine frites. Just make sure to bring a friend to cart you out.

Tyler’s Taproom

With locations in Durham, Apex (near Raleigh), and here in Carrboro, Tyler has the Triangle covered. Known for its delicious appetizers, local taps, and back-room Speakeasy, this is where team Blogads usually goes for post-event beers and fried pickles. Yes, fried pickles. And they’re awesome.

Blogads Recommends:

While it’s totally possible to fill up on their southern-inspired appetizers, nothing says North Carolina more than pulled-pork BBQ. To drink? Check out their beer menu, and look for anything that says NC.

Q: When and why did you start blogging?

A: Unofficially, when I was 16 I started a site called Lady Epiphany, but I didn’t really understand the whole dynamic behind running a site. Officially, I started my original blog, Da Vinci’s Blog Log, which was later known as D.V.B.L in 2007.  I like to think of it as the blue print for what Your Life After 25 is, which launched earlier this year. D.V.B.L. was my baby that taught me a lot of lessons in the blogosphere. The blogging world has grown and changed so much for the better. I’m just happy to have a blog that people receive well, can relate to and learn from. I started blogging because I truly wanted to reach and help people.  Whether it’s through physical appearance or just inspiring others, I wanted to help and build a sense of community among women.

Q: How do you think your blog stands out amongst blogs of the same genre?

A: I like to think of Your Life After 25 as a lifestyle “blogozine”. It stands out because it’s about LIFE; we’re all living life and trying to figure it out, and as our motto states “believe it or not it does go on”. Our name really speaks for itself. So many women experience that pivotal moment in life where they wonder where their lives are going at age 25. For men, it usually happens at 35, lol. We try to address things in life from 25 and over. Our mission is to entertain, educate and inspire.

Q: What does your family think of your blogging?

A: Truthfully, not all of my family knows about my blog, lol.  That is partially because I go by the alias Da Vinci; however, the ones that do are very proud of me and are avid readers.  I consider it a blessing; they really don’t have to read it just because they’re family.  When I hear their positive feedback and constructive criticism, I value it and take the opportunity to improve the site.  They get to be my informal focus groups.

Q: Which blogger most inspires you to keep blogging?

There are so many bloggers out there who blog straight from the heart and with so much passion. Those are the ones that inspire me most. To name a few blogs that I love: http://socialwebtools.info, http://fashiongrail.com, http://www.shoesmitten.com, and http://focusorganic.com.

Q: How much time daily do you spend blogging?

A: This is a funny question. It might be easier to ask how many hours I DON’T spend blogging.  Truthfully, as a blogger you really need to love what you do.  I find that most of the time is spent running the site, maintenance, etc.  I would say that I spend a minimum of 7hrs a day on my blog.

Q: How many times have you redesigned your blog since it started?

A: Your Life After 25 is fairly new, but since it launched there have been 2 major redesigns.  I wouldn’t want to change it too often; readers value familiarity.  However, I’m about constant improvement, so I always make changes that are beneficial to the reader experience, and I try to ask questions before I implement them.

Q: How much do you correspond one-on-one with readers?

A: I really do encourage my readers to reach out to me with many avenues. I’m an active tweeter, skyper and I respond when there are facebook comments and site comments.  I also have an “Ask Da Vinci” page on the site in addition to the contact page.  I love to hear stories of how people have been helped, inspired or just about their overall feedback.

Q: What joys did you not expect when you started blogging?  What pains?

A: I honestly didn’t realize how much it would touch my heart to hear reader’s stories and positive feedback.  I learn from my readers and receive inspiration from them just as much as the site is able to do the same for them.

The BIGGEST pain I didn’t anticipate is the constant checking of how your site functions and runs on ALL browsers, lol.  It’s a blogger’s worst nightmare in my opinion.

Q: What’s something your readers don’t know about you?

A: Most of my readers don’t know my real name; I like the sense of mystery.  Da Vinci was a name given to me by my big sister because she says I’m like Da Vinci; I’m creative, innovative, etc. I loved the nickname and stuck with it. I’m also a HUGE foodie; I love long walks on the beach… oops wrong interview . I’m a big jokester.

Q: What’s your personal favorite blog post?

A: I have 2 favorites thus far:

1) Life Before 25 vs. Your Life After 25

It’s the introduction to what Your Life After 25 is about and what we want to accomplish over time. I love that it inspired so many women.

2) HELP SUPPORT IMPOVERISHED ELDERLY WITH MICHAEL’S HOUSE!

This is another favorite, because it shows how something as small as a giveaway for a gift card can help someone do something really kind and inspirational.  It really was a touching story; I LOVE seeing people show social responsibility.  I think what Michael’s House has been able to accomplish is a beautiful thing.

ADVERTISERS! Want to target Your Life After 25′s audience? Use offer code “YLA25SAVE” until June 25, 2011, to receive 25% off of any one ad on this great site!

My dog just iced me, bro.

As our SUXORZ panel noted at SMNYC, Smirnoff shut down the popular site brosicingbros.com, rather than embracing it, because they didn’t want to associate themselves with such irresponsible behavior. But you can still use Smirnoff’s own Facebook app to brand a photo of yourself being iced and share it with all of your friends. Is this what Zuckerberg meant when he said Facebook is in the business of advertising?

As part of our Blogads Gives Back initiative, we volunteered some time at the Ronald McDonald House in Chapel Hill. The RMH-CH provides a clean, safe, and healthy place to stay for over 1800 families a year while their children undergo treatment at area hospitals.

Many thinks to Cathy and all of the great staff and volunteers of Ronald McDonald House for helping us contribute to the great and important work they do.

Oil Painting by A. Fudyma-Powers

The Facebook “Like” is having a great year. After pushing the “share” function into oblivion, the ubiquitous verb-turned-noun-turned-baby name has become a coveted honor badge for brands. Why? Quick and easy word of mouth. “Like” a post using Facebook’s social plug-in, your friends see it in their news feed, and more free traffic heads to the post. Same with pages, which also give brands easy access to your own stream. Facebook’s Page Discovery browser let’s you see which pages are most liked by your friends, and which brand wouldn’t want to show up there?

So is all of this “Liking” more valuable than advertising? In AdWeek’s coverage of the eG8, Michael Wolff quoted an exchange between Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Publicis head Maurice Levy:

“If you think about advertising, what’s going to be more effective than any advertising you show is something your friend says they like,” says Zuckerberg.

To which Levy, in the business of showing, rushes to say, “I agree that recommendation and endorsement from a friend is sometimes more powerful than the greatest ad.”

Was Levi conceding the point? Probably not. As commenter Mark Rukman points out, word-of-mouth and advertising are old friends:

advertising/marketing/organizations create brands. brands create a short cut for meaning or perception. we hope for meaning, we usually only attain perception. perception in turn influences word of mouth. i don’t see that as long as most rationale c-level decision makers believe in game theory, advertising is going anywhere anytime soon. digital is what the world is becoming, but advertising with every successive new medium, has adapted and grown.

We can’t discount the impact Mark Z’s company has had on the life of brands, but in this case, we tend to agree with Mark R.

The part of North Carolina we work in is a bit of a foodie utopia. Here in Carrboro, our downtown streets are lined with restaurants serving up everything from French cuisine, to New York-style pastrami, to traditional comfort food. Chapel Hill, a two-minute walk from our office, has many culinary delights of its own, including two 2011 James Beard winners.

In the first of our Blogads Local series, we’ve pick our favorite two restaurants in Carrboro and Chapel Hill.

Our Absolute Favorites

It’s only a small coincidence that our favorite restaurants were also honored by the James Beard Foundation earlier this year.

Lantern

As Food & Wine magazine put it, “everyone who comes to Chapel Hill loves Lantern.” Listed by Gourmet as one of the top 50 restaurants in America, this farm-to-table pan-asian restaurant is a Blogads favorite for dinner. Chef Andrea Reusing was recently crowned the Best Chef in the South by the James Beard Foundation. So yeah, it’s really good.

Blogads Recommends:

Dinner: White meat or the other white meat. Check out the Tea-smoked chicken or the pork shank. You can’t go wrong either way.

Dessert: When it’s in season, you must try the basil mint sorbet, served with a home made fortune cookie.

Crook’s Corner

Chef Bill Smith is no stranger to the James Beard Foundation either. In 2009 and 2010, he was a finalist for the Best Chef of the Southeast Award. This year, the Beard Foundation gave the well-loved Crook’s Corner the America’s Classic award for its “timeless appeal” and “quality food that reflects the character of their community.” The seasonal menu boldly explores Southern cuisine, with incredible specialties for every course of your meal.

Blogads Recommends:

Hey, there’s a big pink pig on their sign for a reason. Try the Carolina sampler: pit cooked pulled pork served with hoppin’ John, collard greens and black pepper cornbread.