“Awesomeness” doesn’t necessarily have to mean “life-changing wisdom from the fountain of genius.” Sometimes it just means holding yourself to a higher standard in your day-to-day content and avoiding getting into a rut just for the sake of consistency. And wherever you produce content — videos, podcasts, blogs, ads, Facebook — it’s more important than ever that you focus on what you have to offer instead of searching for widgets and plug-ins and toolbars to help you offer it slightly better. The days when people would idly surf the Web, grazing on what they could find, are largely over. Today, we've largely surrendered the discovery process to our social networks, feeding off the great links our friends have found and liked enough to share. Which means that consistency and audience loyalty aren't going to be enough anymore. You're going to need to make sure that everything you create is erupting with potential to be shared. Then you'll find the process is all around a heck of a lot easier. 

a medium without a message is little more than static

The Associated Press has been looking in some detail at the likely effects of the royal decree. While some Saudis view it as pointing the way to a modernisation of religious teaching, others see it merely as an attempt to assert state control. The AP report points out that the officially-approved clerics – Council of Senior Religious Scholars – are far from progressive and many of them can be considered hardliners. "Beyond strict edicts on morality, they reinforce a worldview whereby non-Muslims and even liberal or Shiite Muslims are considered infidels, and their stances on jihad, or holy war, at times differ only in nuances from al-Qaeda's," it says.

commentary in the Arab and Israeli media showed little optimism for the future of negotiations

Opposition to settlement building is widespread in opinion columns, with a prominent exception in Michael Freund's "Rev Up the Bulldozers," published on Arutz Sheva, a right-wing news site. Mr Freund, expressing a view widely held by settlement supporters, argues that:...settlements are not the obstacle to peace. They never have been. The true obstacle to peace remains what it has always been: the Palestinian refusal to accept a permanent and sovereign Jewish presence in the land of Israel. In the right-of-the-centre Jerusalem Post, however, David Newman argues that as the settlements grow, evacuating them as part of a two-state solution becomes increasingly difficult, writing that "every additional house, family and road make a peace agreement less plausible." He continues, condemning Netanyahu's decision:Israel is the stronger side in this ongoing conflict and, as such, is the one able to make the critical concessions and lead the way. They should be seen as concessions from a position of strength and not, as the right wing argues, a sign of surrender. [...] Back to square one. No settlement freeze, no significant peace talks. All of us, Israelis and Palestinians alike, will suffer the consequences.

To read full translations and further commentary, please go to Meedan.net

About 46 per cent of the world's people believe that al-Qaeda launched the 9/11 attacks, while 15 per cent think the US government was behind the assault, and seven per cent blame Israel, according to a2008 world public opinion study carried out by the Program on International Policy (PIPA) Attitudes at the University of Maryland, which interviewed 16,063 people worldwide. But Ahmadinejad views himself as a leader in the Arab and Muslim worlds. And, in these regions, surveys show significant sectors of the population believe that the US and Israel launched the 9/11 attacks to meet their own geopolitical goals. In Jordan, 31 per cent of those polled by PIPA believe Israel was behind the attacks, while only 11 per cent blame it on al-Qaeda. Likewise, 43 per cent of Egyptians blame Israel, and 12 per centthink the US was responsible, while only 16 per cent think al-Qaeda brought down the towers. A 2006 poll from Scrippsnews says 36 per cent of Americans consider it "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that US government officials either allowed the attacks to be carried or launched the attacksthemselves.

Ahmadinejad is speaking to a significant global constituency. There is little evidence to suggest that they include "the majority of the American people, as well as most nations and politicians around the world", as the Iranian leader said in his UN speech. But the 9/11 "conspiracy theories" are not a fringe phenomenon either.