Tugboat Enterprises, publishers of Selkie Software, unveiled their new blog. The Rising Tide includes blog posts on a wide variety of topics - from politics to environmental issues and geek tips and tools. A diverse group of contributors from the IT industry, political arena and general interest areas ensure that The Rising Tide is eclectic and interesting to a wide variety of readers.

Some highlights of The Rising Tide include political and business insights from Gordon Wilson, former MLA, in his weekly posts in "View from the Wheelhouse." "That's My Opinion" by former MLA Judi Tyabji Wilson, is another weekly must-read.
"We have such an interesting, diverse team of people working at Tugboat Enterprises, we thought a blog would be a great outlet for creative expression," says VP Operations Emma Larocque. "A blog is a good venue for people to share expertise - our CEO and our president have both had successful political and business careers - our technical team is made up of true "geeks" in that they spend their free time finding out about what's up-and-coming on the tech scene - and other members of the company have expertise in a wide range of areas. And finally, the blog is a way for us to connect with customers or other people interested in the tech industry. We hope that this will be a great resource for us and others to share ideas. "

Some of the blog categories that will change on a weekly basis include Selkie Links, a collection of fun and/or interesting links found by the Tugboat crew over the course of the week; Transreality Times, a blog about issues and ideas around virtual reality; From the Wheelhouse, Geek Tips and Toys, and the Cameo Club, a miscellaneous collection of ideas from people in the tech industry.”The Rising Tide: Tales from the Land of Selkie" can be found at http://myselkie.com/musings.

PicScout has begun working with b5media, a global new media network featuring a diverse range of more than 350 blogs, to use the PicApp platform of premium, licensed images and photos for enhancing news and creative content across a select group of blogs. PicApp provides licensed images from a broad group of premiere news and stock photo agencies, giving bloggers and other online publisher’s legal access to millions of images, while addressing content owners’ usage tracking and copyright concerns.

Once at www.picapp.com, bloggers can select any of the wide range of images for free and use them adjacent to a news post or editorial content on their sites. When the image is streamed from the PicApp servers, it comes with a non-intrusive ad that provides a monetization tool on the content owner’s behalf.

“PicApp offers our bloggers tremendous selection in terms of the range and types of content they provide,” said Jeremy Wright, b5media chief executive officer. “As content creators, ensuring all the images we use are legal is extremely important to us. PicApp has proven to be a valuable resource for the bloggers involved so far. We look forward to continuing to work together to develop a solution for the entire network, so that all b5media bloggers feel assured they are using legal images at all times.”

b5media includes 12 vertical channels of blogs covering a wide variety of subjects ranging from entertainment, beauty and fashion to technology, general news and sports. Participating bloggers can find great breaking news photos of celebrities and athletes as they make history and pictures of tech industry breakthroughs moments after they are announced, as well as lifestyle stock photography shots on almost any topic imaginable. The b5media network is home to more than 250 bloggers and receives more than 10 million unique visitors per month.

“We were privileged to cooperate with the b5media team ever since we started our closed beta and are very proud they picked PicApp as a source of images for their many authors,” Eyal Gura, chief executive officer, PicScout, said. “Getting their input early on, and now on an ongoing basis, has been instrumental in ensuring that the development of the PicApp platform is addressing the ever-evolving needs of bloggers.”

PicApp is currently in beta. News and photo agencies licensing images to PicApp include Getty Images, Corbis and Image Source with more content partnerships coming soon. Interested bloggers can go to www.picapp.com to start getting images to enhance the content at their sites.

Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Shanda Interactive Entertainment Ltd. (Nasdaq: SNDA), NetEase (Nasdaq: NTES), Giant Interactive (NYSE: GA), The9 Ltd (Nasdaq: NCTY) and Perfect World (Nasdaq: PWRD).

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Here are highlights from Friday’s Analyst Blog:

Restrictions Challenge Shanda

We keep our Hold recommendation on Chinese online gaming company Shanda Interactive Entertainment Ltd. (Nasdaq: SNDA), as we remain concerned about how long it can maintain this growth momentum without new, hit games in this competitive market. Moreover, the industry faces Chinese government regulations. Near term, we believe Shanda’s second-quarter revenue will be affected by its decision to suspend game operation for three days after the Sichuang earthquake.

Shanda operates in a highly competitive and rapidly changing industry. To extend its business, the company will have to contend with players like NetEase (Nasdaq: NTES), Giant Interactive (NYSE: GA), The9 Ltd (Nasdaq: NCTY) and Perfect World (Nasdaq: PWRD).

Moreover, to restrict online-game addiction, especially of underage players, the Chinese government has made it mandatory for online-game providers to limit the use to three hours per session. Besides, the game players are also required to use their real name to get permission. We think this might negative impact gaming companies.

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Jeremiah Weed Bourbon Liqueur has launched a new official website and blog in support of its 100-proof bourbon liqueur. Through the websites JeremiahWeedBourbon.com and Mr. Jeremiah Weed Speaks, Jeremiah Weed drinkers and other readers are introduced to “The Legend” Mr. Jeremiah Weed, the patron father of Jeremiah Weed Bourbon Liqueur. From his home in eastern Kentucky, Mr. Jeremiah Weed relates stories and anecdotes on the new websites that range from his feud with Evan Williams Bourbon over the political swaying of Presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton -- to his account of recent discoveries by the Phoenix Mars Lander -- to day-to-day hunting, fishing, horseback and military activities and ruminations. Jeremiah Weed has a long-standing presence around many United States military bases and has enjoyed legendary status among U.S. fighter pilots. Given this special history, Jeremiah Weed’s profile can also be found on Military.com. Readers can find Mr. Weed, interact and comment on Mr. Weed’s thoughts at the official Jeremiah Weed Bourbon Liqueur website (www.jeremiahweedbourbon.com) and at Mr. Jeremiah Weed Speaks (www.jeremiahweed.wordpress.com).

Gemstone Development, one of Las Vegas’ largest new homebuilders, announced that CEO Alex Edelstein has launched FrothingDeveloper, a new blog designed to counter the media’s perennially negative spin on the economy and the housing market. Initially inspired by what Edelstein believes are misleading and negative local Realtor® statistics on Las Vegas home inventory levels, Edelstein created the site to expose the inaccuracies prevalent in today's news stories, and to provide a forum for the positive statistics and facts that get buried at the bottom of back page stories, if published at all.

"If you read and believe all of the negative stories in the traditional media and vulture blogs it's easy to get a skewed perspective on what's really happening in the economy and the housing markets today -- particularly in the local Las Vegas market," said Edelstein, “We’ll go hand-to-hand with anyone who knocks Las Vegas’ prospects without an understanding of our market and the real facts. We kept waiting for the media to pick up the positive news here and finally decided we needed to just get the word out ourselves.”

The FrothingDeveloper name and the site’s iconic logo were inspired by Edelstein’s “rational exuberance,” a play on former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan’s famous line about irrational exuberance in the stock market. While other developers are shuttering projects and downsizing staffs, Edelstein is thriving on the perceived economic pullback, and savoring the leverage it gives him to get his costs down and his developments completed quickly. Not just a pundit, Edelstein actually puts his money where his frothing mouth is. In addition to moving forward with his significant real estate projects, he doubles down on his beliefs with sizable bets in Las Vegas housing futures traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Wins and losses are detailed in a regular feature on the site. “I love the smell of recession in the morning,” jokes Edelstein, “The greatest opportunities come when everyone else is paralyzed by fear, particularly when I know that fear is irrational.”

FrothingDeveloper provides homebuyers, real estate agents, and others interested in the economy and housing industry with a daily stream of statistically-backed articles highlighting the strength and future of Las Vegas' real estate market, along with clear explanations as to why the media has the story mostly wrong. Stories range from quick notes on new development in Las Vegas to hard-hitting deconstructions of negative articles from the London Times to Newsweek.

The site is located at www.frothingdeveloper.com, and has published more than 40 articles in its first two weeks.

Solving the myriad of problems that always seem to crop up on PCs can be a very time-consuming and exasperating experience – especially for average users who don’t have degrees in advanced computer science. They might try looking in the manual (rarely a good idea), visiting dozens of hardware and software manufacturer sites, or even performing an online search in a vain attempt to find a solution simple enough to implement. In the end, however, they’re often no better off than when they started.

Recognizing the high level of frustration this causes, PCLive.com, a supplier of online technical support for PCs, today announced the launch of its new blog, For PC’s Sake. The blog is designed to provide an interactive community that helps educate users on how to solve simple but nagging PC problems, and to share troubleshooting tips and tricks from both customers and the PCLive.com staff.

“PCs are subject to all kinds of issues,” said Robert O’Dell, CEO of SecurityCoverage, Inc., PCLive.com’s parent company. “Some, like viruses, spyware, pop-ups, etc. come from the outside. Others come from the inside – for example an incorrect setting that keeps a software application from running properly. Often when these issues occur, the first thought is ‘someone must have figured out how to solve this before.’ Our new blog is designed to draw upon the collective knowledge of PC users all over the world, creating a central location where users can find simple answers to their questions, and share their knowledge of a particular issue with others.”

For the first 10 weeks, For PC’s Sake will offer posts from its first featured guest blogger Dan Gookin, author of the PCs for Dummies book series. Gookin will be discussing the most pressing PC topics and innovations from his perspective to help PC users deal with the common, everyday hassles. Future plans call for other well-known guest bloggers to contribute alongside PCLive.com’s own in-house experts.

“Each day, the blog will feature informative tips to benefit PC users, from tips and tricks for dealing with pop-ups to e-mail safety, to virus hoaxes, to suggestions on when you know it’s time to retire your PC,” O’Dell said. “There will also be posts directing visitors to great freebies and add-ons that are available. We want to create a community that allows PC users to find answers, share horror stories (both technical and customer service-oriented), and ultimately make PC computing a more enjoyable, trouble-free experience.”

The blog is the latest innovation from www.PCLive.com, whose online technical support service promises to instantly solve specific user problems. For $59.95 per incident, PCLive.com technicians will take over a user’s computer (with the user’s permission) and instantly repair it, ridding the PC of viruses, spyware, pop-ups, Internet and browser issues and other problems that are hurting its performance.