Our long awaited upgrade to Propeller was released this morning. As mentioned previously, the Propeller team has been hard at work incorporating features in response to many months of your feedback and our own observations. Our goal was to make Propeller easier, faster and more fun to use. To accomplish this, we incorporated a new design, new technology powering the site, and new features.


By now, social news sites have been around for several years. Yet they are still relatively novel to most of us. The idea of you or I being able to post news we are interested in, and having that news served up to a global audience, gets at a core need: We all want to be heard. The Propeller platform should be the place where you are heard, and to pave the way, we have brought the site's features up to date.

Of course, we recognize that not everybody will start his or her day reading stories on the Propeller home page. There are still many folks who prefer a more traditional, top-down approach to the news. But even among this crowd, many enjoy certain aspects of the social news experience-the sense of community, the discussions, the long-distance friendships. We have designed the new platform with this audience in mind, too. And we have simultaneously begun a deeper integration with AOL News and AOL.com (where Propeller posts have begun popping up in the top box). The future of social news, we believe, will consist of a fusion between these two approaches: the freewheeling community and the fact-gathering capabilities of traditional media.


Now, let's take a closer look at the new Propeller. The new design is likely to be noticed first. The Propeller mascot, who is part professor, part citizen journalist, beckons any and all to visit Propeller and sample our wares. He is placed strategically throughout the site, pointing out features and offering help to new members. The logo has changed as well, which shows our community and stories as moons orbiting the Propeller planet. We also decided that Propeller needed a new engine to keep up with our growing community and increasing traffic levels. With this new power, performance should improve, in some cases dramatically. Here are some other changes you will notice:

• New Ranking Scale: Instead of seeing an absolute count of votes next to a story, you will now see a Popularity Rating from 1-10. The scale is based on a new set of ranking algorithms, which take into account many more aspects of participation when determining popularity.


• Prop It!: We thought that "Vote" seemed too serious, especially with the elections coming up. So we took the root of Propeller and will now encourage our audience to "Prop" stories they find interesting.


• Groups: Users now have the ability to join groups and form groups of their own. Groups can be open to the public, or membership can be limited. Once you have joined a group, you can share stories and start conversations on topics of interest.


• Help!: There is a new Help Central area, where we consolidate Frequently Asked Questions and explain a bit more about Propeller.


• New and Improved Search: Not only has searching for stories returned, but new features allow for searching members and groups. Looking for that long-lost Propeller friend, or for some esoteric group? Now you can find them!


• Featured Groups and Members: To reward the movers and shakers in our community, we will feature members and groups on the homepage. This is an improvement on the old Top Propeller Contributors, since the featured member will have his or her avatar and biographical info displayed front and center!


• This Just In: The Propeller Tracker has a new name, This Just In.


• No More On Shift Icons for Editors and Scouts: Rest assured, we're still on the job! We're always here. But although we love looking at ourselves, we thought we could use the space for something new.


• Category Consolidation: Our categories are now Arts & Entertainment, Business & Finance, Family, Humor, News, Science & Technology, Sports and Style. By reducing the number of categories, we hope to cut down on clutter and ease the story submission process.

These are but a few of the changes in Propeller 2.0. We hope that you come to visit us, give our new features a spin, and let us know what you think. We're all ears!

Since the launch of the NewsQuake blog earlier this year, we've featured quite a few interviews, with personalities as diverse as Geoff Emerick, Michael Musto, William Langewiesche, Rob van Hattum, and Carlo Bonini. In all these cases, we've welcomed comments from visitors. However, this top-down approach didn't feel quite right for a social news site. To a great degree, it still left the community on the margins, which contradicts the fundamental fact about any social news site: the community belongs in the center ring.

So we're going to try a different approach. Below you will find the subjects of three impending interviews here at Propeller. What we're asking is for community members to submit questions in advance. We can't promise that all questions will be included in the final product--there may be duplicates, or questions that simply don't fit into the conversation. We will also experiment with different ways of integrating these questions: they may be threaded into the interview proper, or grouped at the end as a kind of lightning round. But we hope as many members as possible will join the party. We'll probably set up a mail queue for this express purpose, but for now, please do send those questions to James Marcus via Propeller site mail. Here are the subjects, folks, along with some relevant information about each one:

FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA
Francis Ford Coppola is the writer and director of such classic films as The Conversation (1974), The Godfather (1972), The Godfather: Part II (1974), and Apocalypse Now (1979). His new film, Youth Without Youth, is based on a novella by the Romanian philosopher and religious scholar Mircea Eliade, and will open in the U.S. in December.

ALEX ROSS
Alex Ross writes about classical music for The New Yorker (and occasionally contributes profiles of such hard-to-pigeonhole performers as Björk). He is the author of The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, which was just chosen by The New York Times as one of The Ten Best Books of 2007. Ross blogs about his many musical interests at The Rest Is Noise.com.

GARRETT M. GRAFF
Garrett M. Graff is the founding editor of the blog FishbowlDC.com, and was the first blogger ever to cover a White House press briefing. While still a teenager, he worked on Howard Dean's campaign, serving as the candidate's first webmaster. He is currently an editor-at-large at Washingtonian magazine, and is about to publish The First Campaign: Globalization, the Web, and the Race for the White House. You can learn more about him here, and check out his personal blog here.

Overlooked submission: "YouTube Tackles Bullying Online"
Via Propeller user: idreamed

This week's overlooked story on Propeller concerned the problem of cyberbullying. It's a timely topic, given the recent suicide of Megan Meiers, a 13-year-old Missouri teen who was duped into sending instant messages to a fictitious boy who was allegedly the mother of one of Meiers' classmates.

While the Meiers story shot to the top of the Propeller page, another story about YouTube's efforts to curb cyberbullying--defined as harassment by email, cell phone, IM, or social networking sites--received less attention. Last week, in conjunction with a UK-based group called Beatbullying, YouTube launched a new channel on the topic. Visitors can view UK and American celebrities talking about how to counter cyberbullies, and teens can submit their own related videos.

"If you can't say it to someone's face, then don't post it online," says Isaac Slade, lead singer of the Fray, a popular band from Colorado, in one of featured videos. "There's no shame in being bullied, it's not a sign of weakness...report it."

While it's not clear whether YouTube will launch a US-centric anti-bullying channel (the California-based Google subsidiary didn't return our calls by deadline), the site already has a library of videos on the topic, including a tribute video to teens who've committed suicide as a result of cyberbullying.

Among those who appear on the video is 13-year-old Ryan Patrick Halligan, an Essex Junction, Vermont teenager who committed suicide after a female classmate pretended to have a crush on him, but then mockingly passed their IM exchanges around to friends. John P. Halligan, Ryan's father, launched a web site to commemorate his son. There he writes: "It's one thing to be bullied and humiliated in front of a few kids. It's one thing to feel rejection and have your heart crushed by a girl. But it has to be a totally different experience than a generation ago when these hurts and humiliation are now witnessed by a far larger, online adolescent audience."

While there's conflicting data on the prevalence of cyberbullying, an AP story published this week noted as many as "one in three U.S. children have been ridiculed or threatened through computer messages." The harassment is just an extension of real-life bullying, which many teens likely consider an unavoidable part of adolescence. According to the AP story, "roughly 17 percent of early adolescents say they are victims of recurring verbal aggression or physical harassment."

Because of Halligan's lobbying efforts, Vermont legislatures passed a law a year after his son's death that requires bullying prevention procedures for schools, and similar legislation has passed in other states. If laws may help to curb bullying, grassroots initiatives may have the most impact. After all, Meiers' story reached the mainstream media via the blogosphere. Perhaps YouTube's new channel--and particularly the videos made by actual teens-- will bring more attention to the problem.

So far the response from YouTube users has been largely positive, with a few doubters. Writes one skeptic: "I honestly don't think that there is a way to stop bullying... I think the only way to stop bullying...possibly, is to always be with people...then you can never be alone and you wont get hurt." Another user is more supportive: "This is so important! Bullying KILLS!! We must hold the bullies accountable for what they do. I think we are doing wrong looking the other way, and do not react to the crime that is bullying."

It appears that FOXNews.com may be left with a red face today, after allowing a massive data leak on its own website and that of a major publishing group.

The problem came to light Sunday on the Something Awful website. A user named "Morphie" posted a comment entitled "Fox News Headline Images (some funny, some not)." The images in question had been found on FOXNews.com, and it turned out that the website had left its images directory unprotected, meaning that any Internet user could see every file listed in that particular directory.

It was soon discovered that the site's admin directory was also publicly accessible. And that's when the situation went from an amusing faux pas to a serious data breach. At 3:23 AM, another user on Something Awful posted the login information for a Ziff-Davis server, which he had found in one of the files in the FOXNews directories. This was a major catch: Ziff-Davis is a big publishing company and the owner of ZDNet. The information soon circulated through the social-networking world at Reddit and the IT community at Slashdot.

Unfortunately for Ziff-Davis, that particular server contained phone numbers, email addresses, and street addresses for many of its users. Wikinews estimates that as many as 1.5 million users may be at risk, with several gigabytes of data at least temporarily accessible. This number cannot be independently verified, however, since the security hole has since been fixed.

What is particularly interesting about this leak is that it was very basic and easily preventable. Even small websites are advised to avoid publicly accessible directories, and many network administrators would immediately turn them off. Security expert David Utter called it "surprising" that Fox would leave such an integral part of its website unprotected, going so far as to accuse the webmasters of outright "sloppiness."

Not surprisingly, the network itself is downplaying the incident. Contacted by NewsQuake, Jeff Misenti, General Manager and VP of Fox News Digital, addressed it this way: "It was a server communications error which was fixed immediately and steps were taken to make sure it doesn't happen again."

Let's give credit where credit is due: the opening moments of the YouTube/CNN Democratic debate did promise something out of the ordinary. Instead of being greeted by some elaborately coiffed network drone, the candidates were welcomed by a goateed slacker from Portland, Oregon. You almost expected Wayne Campbell to pop up in the background. True, this Video Everyman quickly ceded the role of ringmaster to Anderson Cooper. But there was at least a whiff of ordinary life afoot, and the applause from the audience at the Citadel suggested the hearty approval and high spirits of a good rock concert.


Cooper, whose jacket looked a little tight across the midriff, first treated viewers to a series of outtakes: in other words, video submissions that were too freaky or facetious to make the cut. There were nutters in Viking hats and chicken costumes. There were quite a lot of children, too--a practice frowned upon by Cooper: "People seemed to use their kids to ask adult questions." The most viewed video on YouTube prior to the debate, which equated Arnold Schwarzenegger with a heroic cyborg, was conspicuously excluded. And Joe Biden was chided for attempting to game the system, a charge he acknowledged with a nod and a wolfish grin.

The opening video, from Zach Kempf of Provo, Utah, immediately threw down the populist gauntlet: "How are you going to be any different?" With public approval of the Democratic Congress plummeting almost as quickly as the president's own ratings, this was a tricky question. The candidates had to position themselves as simultaneous insiders and outsiders, a task fumbled by Christopher Dodd, who huffed his way through some familiar riffs about "new ideas, bold ideas." Barack Obama was quicker on his feet here, insisting that no real progress will be made "unless we change how business is done in Washington."

The next question, from Davis Fleetwood of Easton, Massachusetts, was a replay of the first one: "How would America be better off if you were president?" Dennis Kucinich, generally in good form, fired back some rather canned paradoxes: "I believe in duty through honor.... We achieve strength through peace." But Hillary Clinton shaped the question to her own purpose, getting in some non-too-subtle digs at Obama's slender resume. "We are united for change," she granted. "The issue is which of us is ready to lead on Day One."

Obama, meanwhile, took his own shots at the preferred target of every candidate in attendance: the special interests. It's a convenient gambit, since nobody cares to defend bloated energy conglomerates or the insurance industry. Yet the candidates tend to tilt at abstractions, without specifying exactly how these predators would be driven from the governmental chicken coop. "We've got to get the national interest up front," Obama argued, "as opposed to the special interests." Hear, hear. But how?

Next, the contenders were handed a semantic hot potato: "How would you define the word liberal?" Depending on your view of Clinton, she either hit that one out of the park or did one of the end runs so favored by her nimble husband. The word, she explained, "has been turned on its head... [and] made to describe big government. I prefer the word progressive," she said, with the satisfied look of somebody who's conquered a particularly vicious tongue-twister. "I consider myself a proud, modern, American progressive." Mike Gravel, to the amusement of the crowd, refused to endorse either epithet. Then he went on to denounce the whole pack, promising that "you're not going to see any change if these people get elected." (He also accused Obama of lining his pockets with contributions from Swiss financial giant UBS. You head it here first: if Obama gets elected, look for compulsory cuckoo clocks and the immediate relaxation of cheese tariffs.)

And so it went. Asked to name his favorite Republican, John Edwards got in his licks at those damn special interests: "I have been fighting these people my entire life, and beating them." A question about reparations for slavery elicited a negative answer from Edwards, an evasive one from Obama ("I think the reparation we need right here in South Carolina is investment in our schools"), and an attack by Kucinich on... special interest groups.

It took a few more questions about race to jog the candidates out of their populist rut. For example: was Obama an authentic black person? Here, it must be admitted, was a question that never would have made it past the radar--or at least the decorum--of a conventional debate panel. And Obama had an amusing, non-automatic answer: "When I had to catch a cab in Manhattan in the past, I was given my credentials." On a more serious note, he noted his belief "in the core decency of the American people," and insisted that the elimination of social and economic disparities "is what will solve the race problem in this country."

A question about gay marriage also produced some unusually straight (as it were) talk. Kucinich said yes, while Dodd, Richardson, and Edwards all stuck by the man-and-woman model for holy matrimony. Edwards seemed to want some credit for his tortured conscience ("I feel enormous personal conflict about this issue"), and then shifted into reverse with his statement that no official may use his faith "to deny anybody their rights. I will not do that as president." Does this mean he would support gay marriage as public policy while personally viewing it with disapproval? A follow-up might have been helpful, but Cooper--who generally did press the candidates for specifics--had already moved along.

Next: foreign policy. A video filmed near a refugee camp in Darfur put that issue on the table, and opened up some interesting fissures among the field. Biden came out in favor of immediate American intervention. "Where we can," he exclaimed, "America must!" This may smooth over the complications of dropping 20,000 U.S. troops into a war-torn African nation, but as a call to arms, it was pretty stirring stuff. Bill Richardson argued for diplomacy and a U.N. peacekeeping force; Clinton added to that divestment and a no-fly zone. When pressed by Cooper, she did draw an additional line in the sand: "American ground troops do not belong in Darfur at this time."

How novel, and how refreshing, to hear some specifics! Half the time the candidates still hedged, and flailed away at the straw man of the special interests; but the rest of the time, this interrogation by the vox pop did seem to prompt some actual answers. When would the assembled company withdraw all American troops from Iraq? They named their dates--April 2008 (Dodd), January 2008 (Richardson), July 2007 (Kucinich)--or at least attempted to explain why they thought a specific timetable was impractical. Biden also put in a pitch for partitioning Iraq into a loose confederation, and ridiculed the pie-in-the-sky scenarios floated by his colleagues. "Time to tell the truth," he practically snorted. "It would take one year to physically withdraw 160,000 troops from the country."

Before the event wrapped up, Gravel got off another jeremiad ("The Clintons and the DLC sold out the Democratic Party to Wall Street!") and everybody raised a hand for an increased minimum wage. It's hard to say who won, or at least dominated the evening's political theater. Edwards, his blue eyes luminous in close-up and with a bit of Nixonian perspiration on his upper lip, turned in a solid, imperturbable performance. Biden made a good case for himself as the grizzled realist. Kucinich and Gravel staked out the margins, with Richardson and Dodd in the less-than-captivating center.

And again, Obama and Clinton failed to knock each other out of the running. The latter couldn't help but stand out, wearing a shiny salmon-colored jacket that her detractors will inevitably deride for its Dragon Lady overtones. But Clinton has shed much of the robotic demeanor that dogged her senatorial campaigns. And despite one pointed question about the evils of dynastic rule, she has delicately put some distance between herself and Bill, and learned to project mature competence and the odd glint of spontaneity. Obama still seems awfully young; you wonder whether he's ever shaved. On the other hand, he can play the outsider card much more effectively than Hillary, and his distance from the business of politics-as-usual may yet tip the balance in his favor.

That leaves the process itself. It would be hard to argue that the voices of ordinary men and women dramatically changed the rules of the game. In many ways, it was a political debate like any other in this country--meaning not a debate at all, but a Kabuki-like ritual in which the candidates studiously ignored each other and refused to budge from their comfort zones unless the moderator waved a flaming brand in their faces. Yet there were moments of candor and specificity that were truly encouraging, and made me curious to see how the Republican field fares with the same YouTube-driven procedure. The questions from the citizenry weren't more probing or smart than the standard fare, but they were often attractively blunt. More to the point, they were posed by human beings, rather than by maniacally triangulating pollsters or focus groups. And sometimes, at least, the candidates seem determined to answer in the same spirit. Can that be bad?

What do you do if you already own a stake in Craigslist, but yearn for a bigger slice of the online-classified pie? If you're eBay, you launch a U.S. version of Kijiji, with the hope of rivaling the San Francisco-based market leader.

Already well known internationally, Kijiji launched in China in 2005, and currently does business in 27 countries. In terms of unique visitors, it is the most trafficked site in Canada, Germany, Italy, and Taiwan, according to eBay communications manager Jose Mallabo.

Like Craigslist, Kijiji, which launched in the U.S. earlier this month, has a relatively simple interface and a wide range of categories. The similarities aren't accidental: eBay purchased a 25 percent stake in Craigslist so "we could learn how to do this," says Mallabo. He adds that the new site is more user-friendly than the market leader, requiring only two pages to post an item for sale, versus up to seven pages on Craigslist.

Kijiji and its corporate parent won't interact on a technology level, but the two sites will complement each another. "Let's say you want to put a mattress on eBay," says Mallabo. "You can also list it locally on Kijiji. So this is on a more grass-roots level."

On some of its overseas sites, Kijiji charges posters or allows users to pay $1 fee to bump up a listing to the top of a page. The U.S. site hasn't ruled out charging users for listing certain items, according to Mallabo.

What does the management at Craigslist think of Kijiji? Largely due to its decision to forgo traditional web advertising, the 12-year-old market leader has already become the go-to place for listers, publishing 17 million classifieds every month and generating a reported $25 million in revenue last year. In an email to Newsquake, Craigslist CEO and President Jim Buckmaster said he is unfazed by Kijiji's entrance into the marketplace.

"We generally don't think in terms of competition, or concern ourselves with what other companies are doing," wrote Buckmaster. "Certainly there are hundreds if not thousands of companies offering online classifieds."

Meanwhile, users are slowly discovering Kijiji. "It's something different," says Kevin Emerson, a Los Angeles resident looking to sell his Buick Centurion. A friend recommended the site to Emerson, who says he had previously posted the car for six weeks on Craigslist, but had received no offers. It takes less time to post on Kijiji than on Craiglist, says Emerson. But has he gotten any offers on that car? Not yet, he says.

An image from Skid Row in Los Angeles

Japanese homeless youths sleeping in 24-hour Internet cafes. The latest in high-tech cardboard street "tents." A review of Yosemite International Airport's plan to donate toiletries--seized from travelers during security checks--to local shelters.

These are just a handful of the stories recently posted on LA's Homeless Blog. Founded in 2004 by Joel Roberts, the L.A.-based site was launched to "create a virtual dialogue on homelessness," he says.

"I wanted to talk about how communities deal with the issues," says Roberts, the CEO of PATH Partners, a local non-profit organization providing shelters and services. "Not only in Los Angeles, but everywhere."

His blog could easily just cover Los Angeles, which has the largest homeless population--45,000 people--in the country. But if local topics, such as the latest developments in Skid Row, a 50-block section of downtown Los Angeles where an estimated 8,000 homeless people gather every day, frequently appear on Roberts' blog, he also looks at the larger social, political and economic issues related to homelessness.

Roberts, 45, says the majority of his blogs' readers work on homelessness-related issues. He also receives email from readers like Michelle, a mother of two children living in a hotel in Santa Clarita, California.

"It is wonderful work that you do--and us homeless thank you so much," she writes. "If this city would open its eyes you would see all of the hotels /motels in this area are packed with families that have fallen on hard times... please tell me where I can go with my 2 daughters to live on an income of $720.00 a month?"

As is often the case, Second Life has been in the news over the past week. The celebrated online community continues to gain traction with real-world businesses and advertisers, who are eager to cash in on the theoretical population of 7.2 million residents--many with deep (if virtual) pockets. In this piece from the Raleigh News & Observer, David Ranii runs down just a handful of these early adopters, including Reebok, Nissan, and Intel. He also quotes a 3-D Internet Champion (an actual job title) at IBM, who wants Big Blue to climb aboard the Second Life bandwagon as quickly as possible:


Where there's money, of course, there's eventually litigation. And according to Eric J. Sinrod's piece in Silicon.com, the ball has already gotten rolling. In a recent case, Bragg v. Linden, a plaintiff sued the website's proprietors--Linden Research and CEO Philip Rosedale--for confiscating a piece of virtual real estate he had bought, freezing his additional assets, and subsequently barring him from Second Life itself.