From Free Speech TV: A new campaign (and cool video) about freedom on the Internet.

From BeatBlogging.org

Micah Sifry from Personal Democracy Forum has a great post on Change.org

A Change.org is Gonna Come (to Your Non-Profit Org)
"Change.org —
the social network that seeks to connect people around social issues —
recently announced a major new addition to its platform. Calling itself the “Ning for nonprofits,” the site now lets nonprofit organizations create “branded networks” that can tap into Change.org’s community of users but retain their own look and feel."

This could be used by any of our education reporters, Matt Nauman at the SJ Mercury News and perhaps the Seattle Times reporter.

Find of the day: KickApps
I'm automatically skeptical of any web application that tries very hard to be an all-in-one solution. Ning is the only one I've seen pull it off very well. But perhaps I missed KickApps:

TechCrunch describes KickApps as "The overall KickApps experience is thorough. Nothing obvious is left
out. White label sites have a full choice of 13 features; profiles,
guest books, video and feeds are some of the options. The backend is simple to use and smart at the same time. The moderation of videos option doesn’t just present the uploaded video; numerous screenshots are automatically generated to immediately give a reviewer a good idea of what is contained in each video."

An example of what is possible with Ning.
Assignment Zero alumni Edward Domain, has built TroopSpace.Net. It's not even a week old and as Ed says, won't be done for another two weeks. But considering this is a side-project from his day job Ning was just the right fit and Ed appears to be using it to grab a specific niche, soldiers.

Not related to journalism, but in the social networking world: The Facebook controversy continues to flare. Assignment Zero soldier Tish Grier has a good summation of the drama. Robert Scoble makes an excellent point about the real problem Facebook faces (staying silent on the situation only makes matters worse) and the latest update I could find: It's an opt-in option only.