Tech writer, author and entrepreneur Sarah Lacy has launched PandoDaily, a daily tech news blog that strives “to be the site-of-record for that startup root-system and everything that springs up from it, cycle-after-cycle”.

Lacy, formerly a senior editor for TechCrunch, has over fifteen years reporting on Silicon Valley businesses. Interestingly, Michael Arrington, MG Siegler and Paul Carr, all formerly of TechCrunch as well, will all be writing for PandoDaily.

Kara Swisher of All Things Digital recently interviewed Lacy about PandoDaily and why she left TechCrunch:

KoPoint Wire is a new opinion and content-aggregating blog focusing on media, politics, sports, and technology. KoPoint founder Dan Patterson is starting off by hitting the road to cover the Republican presidential primaries.

Director Peter Jackson has been video blogging (part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) the production of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, his new upcoming film which is a prequel to The Lord of The Rings trilogy. We recently posted the trailer for the film which is being shot in New Zealand.

Brian Lam, former editor of Gizmodo, has just launched The Wirecutter on The Awl. It is a “new website designed to do one thing: to tell you what the best particular product in a category is at any given moment.” Here’s Brian’s explanation of what it is and how to use it.

via The Awl

This is my 10,000th post on Laughing Squid. Back in April we hit 10,000 total blog posts (we are now at 12,225).

My first post on Laughing Squid, which launched the blog, was on February 27th, 2003 for a benefit that Survival Research Labs was organizing for our friend Tim North at SOMArts in San Francisco.

Thanks for all the support through the years, we never would have made this far without awesome readers like you!

Creative agency Mother New York created Marina, a fashionable Italian 25-foot tall puppet-like doll, for client Target, to launch their new collection, Missoni for Target. Marina not only wears custom-made Italian-designed Missoni clothes but she blogs, tweets, texts and recently attended New York Fashion Week. She’ll be traveling across the United States in the next few weeks and has been “hired” by Target and Missoni “to cover their new collection”.

Keep up with Marina at her own blog, all the way up here and through her Twitter feed, @marinawithstyle.

“Marina’s absolutely must read, incredibly fashionable style blog.” I am going to comment on the world of style, the world I love and dream about. Bags, shoes, belts, dresses, skirts, skorts, pants, shirts, sweaters, leggings, accessories galore. You name it, I’m going to expand our fashionable horizons. And trust me, I have plenty of time to dream. I’m a tall, porcelain doll. Joints, hinges and all. And I’ve decided it’s time for this doll to think beyond the shelf.

via Styleite

image via Styleite and all the way up here

It’s so great having her on board the squid ship.

And now, I turn you over to Rusty…

– Scott Beale

Howdy Squid-lovin’ readers,

For the time I have been contributing posts to Laughing Squid thus far, I have to say, it’s been a tremendous amount of fun. As requested and to give you some background on how I arrived here, I present this short personal history.

As the former Communications Specialist for the now defunct Bigrig Industries, a satirical organization that issued paper zines, I have long embraced the activities of the San Francisco Bay Area underground events scene. A true prankster at heart, I was also a proud member of the San Francisco Cacophony Society for many years and around that same time I was a graphic designer for Burning Man.

At this amazing moment in time, I own and operate Rusty’s Real Deal, an estate liquidation company serving California’s East Bay area. My life-long passion for all things mysterious and thrifty has led me to pursue this natural calling, and – along with the Real Deal’s sister endeavor, Moxie Deluxe – I continue to dedicate my life to showcasing and celebrating all things beautiful and absurd.

It is truly an honor to post right along side some of the most beautiful and absurd people that I know. My tentacle ‘guns’ are a-blazing and I am really looking forward to showing off the skills I learned in Laughing Squid Blogging Boot Camp.

xo,

Rusty.

photos by Lane Hartwell, Scott Beale and Bigrig Industries

archival scans by Ken Dashner

sage advice and writing assistance by DaisyPup and Veek Toastia

Doghouse shares a guaranteed way to getting more comments on your blog.

See Previously: How To Get More Comments On Your Blog

via Geeks are Sexy

WordPress 3.2 “Gershwin” (named in honor of jazz musician George Gershwin) has been released. It’s a faster and lighter version of WordPress featuring a refreshed dashboard design.

The focus for this release was making WordPress faster and lighter. The first thing you’ll notice when you log in to 3.2 is a refreshed dashboard design that tightens the typography, design, and code behind the admin. (Rhapsody in Grey?) If you’re starting a new blog, you’ll also appreciate the fully HTML5 new Twenty Eleven theme, fulfilling our plan to replace the default theme every year. Start writing your first post in our redesigned post editor and venture to the full-screen button in the editing toolbar to enter the new distraction-free writing or zen mode, my personal favorite feature of the release. All of the widgets, menus, buttons, and interface elements fade away to allow you to compose and edit your thoughts in a completely clean environment conducive to writing, but when your mouse strays to the top of the screen your most-used shortcuts are right there where you need them.

I’ve just relaunched my personal website scottbeale.org as photoblog on Tumblr running the awesome new High Res Theme designed by Justin Ouellette.

Tumblr has just launched their new Spotlight section, showcasing interesting blogs on Tumblr. Laughing Squid’s Tumblr blog is being featured in the Culture section of Spotlight.

We’re always amazed by the breadth and creativity we find on Tumblr, and we’re always looking for better ways for you to showcase your talents and other interesting blogs. With the new Spotlight, we’ve set aside a special place to highlight a few of these blogs that truly inspire us.

The blog If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There’d Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats (named after a Charles Mingus song) is “An Ongoing Series of Cultural and Personal Observations” which is edited collaboratively by 5 people and consists of images (usually historical photographs) that fit into an ever-growing list of idiosyncratic themes.

Amongst their dozens of themes are “Adventures in American Filmmaking” (with 144 entries), “The Frame Within the Frame” (with 35 entries), “I Like the Christian Life!” (with 18 entries), and “The Cool Hall of Fame” (with 206 entries).

Artists and Animals (currently at 76 entries and counting) is probably my favorite. Bringing together cute animals and the stars of Hollywood gone-by is a pretty potent combination. Starting above with the singular Harpo Marx upstaging an unwitting, anonymous monkey, these are a few of my favorites from that series.

Audrey Hepburn and a wee donkey

Zsa Zsa Gabor poses with her pink poodle

Salvador Dali takes his anteater for a stroll.

Others in the series include Claudia Cardinale and a Siamese kitten, Billie Holiday with her dog Mister, and Louise Brooks cuddling a koala. And there are many more on the site.

Charlotte’s Weblog by David SchwenDa

Today Tumblr launched their new “Share on Tumblr” button for publishers. We’ve added it to individual pages on the Laughing Squid blog, so now it is super easy to share our posts on Tumblr.

Hopefully WordPress will be added it to Jetpack as well, which would make it really easy for bloggers to implement.

UPDATE: Josh Cagan points out that the “Share on Tumblr” button might not always work as anticipated.

We’re excited to announce that Laughing Squid has won the People’s Voice Award for the best Cultural Blog in the 15th Annual Webby Awards. Thanks to everyone for your support, without you this would not have been possible!

We would like to give a special shout out to our fellow nominees whose awesome blogs that you should check out.

Here is a list of all the winners. Look for us on stage making our 5 word acceptance speech at The Webby Awards ceremony on June 13th in New York City, which will be streamed live online.

What follows is some background on EDW Lynch in his own words.

– Scott Beale

photo by Zachary Lara

Hi Internet,

Shortly after moving to San Francisco from the East Coast in 2003, I started noticing curious and wonderful things going on: costumed pranksters in the streets, odd public events, art cars…and when I started asking around to find out what was what, everyone pointed me here, to Laughing Squid. Scott’s blog introduced me to the Bay Area art community (in which I became an active participant) as well as a wider world of pranksters, geeks, artists and their creations.

I was giddy when Scott first wrote about one of my events (precious, precious eFame™!) And now, here I am, sporting the suction cups of an official Laughing Squid Tentacle. I’m honored to serve, and currently coated with a clear viscous fluid I can only assume is part of my transformation.

If you’re like me, you love Scott’s curation of art, culture & technology. I hope you also enjoy my writing and that of our awesome guest bloggers. Do tweet at me and let me know how I’m doing.

I’ve been writing and creating absurd public events ever since settling in San Francisco. If you’d like to know more about my other works, read on. Or, you can scroll down a bit, and let the tentacles of Laughing Squid drag you deeper into the depths of art, culture, technology & cetera. — EDW Lynch

In 2003 I came out as a corporate-man hybrid, the EDW Lynch Corporate Manglomerate. More recently I began holding press conferences, mainly in regards to my romantic operations, which culminated in the selection of a Chief Snuggle Officer (aka girlfriend.)

photo by Ed Hunsinger

Since 2005, I have orchestrated Santa’s vast security apparatus for his visits to San Francisco, in the guise of Santa’s Little Secret Service. In 2009, we provided an elaborate security motorcade for Santa’s friend, the Easter Bunny.

In the same “selfless humanitarian” vein, I also established a UN Commission concerned with abnormal cultural events such as flash mobs and Burning Man: The United Nations Unconventional Culture Commission. UNUCC is probably best known for its ill-fated mission in 2009 to stop the San Francisco Pillow Fight.

And last year I helped stage an absurdist nonsense protest of First Amendment beta testers the Westboro Baptist Church.

I sometimes moonlight unofficially for the BBC (without their knowledge or, presumably, approval.) Here’s a report on San Francisco’s Mission Neighborhood I did with fellow reporter David Cairns.

Alright, that’s enough from me. Tentacles, away!

Missing e is a browser extension for Tumblr (it adds the “e” missing from “Tumblr”) by Jeremy Cutler that adds a many additional features and improved functionality. It’s a must have for any Tumblr power user.

Missing e is a set of tools, features and interface changes for Tumblr. What started out as a bunch of userscripts has been incorporated into a full-fledged browser extension for Chrome, Firefox and Safari!

Nobody Reads My Blog on Sticky Comics

via The Daily What

Last Friday, April 1st the 10,000th blog post was published on Laughing Squid since our first post in 2003. Number 10,000 was the post about the Helmet Cam Footage of Wingsuit Skydiving by our new contributing editor EDW Lynch.

Of the 10K posts, 8885 were written by me and 1115 by our awesome guest bloggers.

Thanks to all of you for your continued support and reading all our posts over the years!

BlogWorld & New Media Expo, an industry-wide conference, tradeshow and new media event, is coming to New York City from May 24-26 in conduction with BookExpo America. They are offering Laughing Squid readers a 20% regisgration discount, just use the code SQUID20 when you register.

BlogWorld & New Media Expo, the world’s largest social media business conference and new media industry tradeshow, will expand to two events in 2011, including a new East Coast event in New York City. The East Coast event will be co-located with BookExpo America, North America’s largest annual book industry convention, which will take place May 24 – 26, 2011 at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City.

BlogWorld & New Media Expo is also doing a 2nd event in Los Angeles November 3-5.

Pia Jane Bijkerk, Erin Loechner and Yvette van Boven created this handy flowchart that shows how to properly provide credit for images used on blogs and websites.

via swissmiss

illustration by Pia Jane Bijkerk, Erin Loechner and Yvette van Boven

Our friends over at Geekosystem have just launched their new sister blog The Mary Sue, a guide to girl geek culture.

So come one, come all, girls who are geek, guys who are geek, and everything above, below, and in between. We’re going to discuss movies, and comics, and science, and the internet. We’re going to talk about geek girls, and we’re going to let geek girls talk. We’re going to call it like we see it, and we’re going to have fun.

Alexia Tsotsis has more on the launch of The Mary Sue on TechCrunch.

AOL has announced that it has agreed to buy the Huffington Post for $315 million. Arianna Huffington will become Editor In Chief of all of AOL’s media properties, including TechCrunch and Engadget. Here’s AOL CEO Tim Armstrong’s internal memo to AOL’s employees.

Take a trip through New York City with fashion photographer/blogger Scott Schuman of The Sartorialist, in this short documentary for Intel’s “Visual Life” campaign.

Just before the holidays I had the honor of being the subject of a short documentary. They must have worked very fast because the film is already done.

In the film you will see how several of the recent images were made, including the shot of the duct-taped boots. – Scott Schuman (The Sartorialist)

via Michael Sippey

Danielle Strle has just released RSS5000, a new Google Reader subscription browser for the iPad.

RSS5000 stacks up the web pages from your RSS feeds so you can flip through them in their original browser format. Simply swipe your finger across the iPad to flip to the next webpage from your feed.

Once you start paging through your content, the already-minimal interface can disappear entirely, leaving the websites you love as the sole focus of the app. Because RSS5000 uses a live web view, you can click on links, play embedded videos, and enjoy your favorite websites in the format their creators intended.

The feeling is much more magazine than mouse. The result is less clicking and more browsing. The experience is like flipping through your favorite websites on magic internet paper.