If you have looked at lots of blogs, you have probably noticed something. Very few of them use the full page feature. There is a good reason for this. Your blog’s sidebar is prime real estate because it catches the attention of your reader immediately. We all love those sidebars. As bloggers, they are calling to us to fill them with good stuff. But since most people are distracted by too many shiny objects, we must be careful with our choices. Sure, we want people to subscribe to our blog or newsletter. And yes, it’s great when they click on an ad and the affiliate bucks roll in,…
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Most Topular Stories
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Smart Sidebar Strategies: How to Optimize Your Blog’s ‘Boardwalk’
BlogWorld & New Media Expo Blog9 Feb 2012 | 6:30 am -
Live LOLCats: Cheezburger Plans Grammy Awards Memes in Real Time
Mashable!9 Feb 2012 | 12:35 pmI Can Has Cheezburger plans to turn the 54th Grammy Awards into a laughing matter by giving viewers an outlet to write funny captions for red carpet and ceremony photos. The “Live LOLing” event starts Sunday at 4 p.m. PT when Cheezburger’s ROFLrazzi site, Twitter profile and Facebook page will begin publishing Grammy images with humorous captions — in lolcat meme format. People can click “Recaption This” to plop their own witty text on the photos. Participants can then share their creations on their social networks. Cheezburger editor in chief Emily Huh… -
Is Perfectionism Stalling Your Productivity?
@ProBlogger9 Feb 2012 | 12:04 pmWe’ve all been there … You sit down to write a post. You get the opening line down, but half-way through the second sentence, you go back to tweak the first. A bit further on, you decide to chop up the paragraphs you’ve done so far and rearrange them … but on second thought, is that really the better option? In two minds, you “finish” the post, then spend a half-hour writing and rewriting the “ideal” headline. Finally, happy(ish!) your cursor hovers over the Publish button … but you just can’t press it. You decide to give it some… -
Boosting the Content Quality on Your Blog or Website
Social Media Explorer9 Feb 2012 | 10:00 amEditor’s Note: This is a guest post written by Samantha Peters, an avid blogger who writes about social media, digital marketing, and online communications. When we talk about blogs and websites these days we often use phrases like “SEO,” “page rank,” and “web statistics.” We pay close attention to our click-throughs, our inbound links, and the way we incorporate advertisers. In short, we approach our sites from a marketing angle and take every opportunity we can to increase and maximize our exposure. Amidst all this positioning, many bloggers and site managers overlook the… -
Twitter site issue
Twitter Status22 Jan 2012 | 4:22 pmUpdate: This issue has been resolved. Some users may currently be experiencing site issues; our engineers are working on resolving this issue.
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BlogWorld & New Media Expo Blog
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Smart Sidebar Strategies: How to Optimize Your Blog’s ‘Boardwalk’
9 Feb 2012 | 6:30 amIf you have looked at lots of blogs, you have probably noticed something. Very few of them use the full page feature. There is a good reason for this. Your blog’s sidebar is prime real estate because it catches the attention of your reader immediately. We all love those sidebars. As bloggers, they are calling to us to fill them with good stuff. But since most people are distracted by too many shiny objects, we must be careful with our choices. Sure, we want people to subscribe to our blog or newsletter. And yes, it’s great when they click on an ad and the affiliate bucks roll in,… -
Are You Cheating on Your Blog?
8 Feb 2012 | 1:19 pmDo you make time for your blog? Twitter. Facebook. Google+. LinkedIn. Pinterest. Email. Sometimes it feels that by the time I’ve checked all my social networks, I don’t have any time left to actually visit my own blog. It’s only a matter of time before I’m caught with lipstick on my collar, so to speak. I love my blog, but sometimes I feel like I’m cheating on it. There are only so many hours in a day, and most of us suffer from shiny ball syndrome. I should really write some new posts today. Ooo, look at all those new pins. Ooo, someone sent me a funny email. -
#BWENY 2012 Registration Opens Now
8 Feb 2012 | 11:39 amOpening registration is always exciting. It means the journey to the show is just beginning. Where we get to learn from new speakers, find amazing new tools and technology that can help us all create, distribute and monetize our content, and maybe most importantly we get to reconnect with our old friends as well as meet lots of new ones. We are all part of a hard-working community, helping one another grow in a challenging economy, and when we get together, simply great things happen. Today we are particularly excited because all of those things are well underway. You can see the first round… -
Remember That a Podcast is Just One Tool in Your Online Armoury
7 Feb 2012 | 10:00 amDuring the January just past, as people look at their New Year resolutions and decided to try out some new projects, I’ve had quite a few people come up to me (okay, pinged me on IM, but you get the idea) and ask about starting a podcast. While many of them are looking for more technical details, I’ve always asked them what they’re looking to get out of the podcast. I’m trying to figure out if a podcast is the right thing for them. In many circumstances, people are looking to explore the podcasting space, to find out how it all works, to see how they get on with it,… -
No, I Don’t Want to Sign Up for Your Mailing List (And Here’s Why)
6 Feb 2012 | 7:00 amI need more emails like I need a hole in the head. I recommend that every online content creator out there has a mailing list, but I actually sign up for very few of them personally. I think mailing lists are great, but some people could have more subscribers if they used their lists slightly differently. Here’s why I don’t sign up for your mailing list…and what you can do to change that: 1. You email me every post you write. I think having your RSS feed available via email is a really great idea. Lots of people prefer reading posts that way. Personally, though, I use…
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Mashable!
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Live LOLCats: Cheezburger Plans Grammy Awards Memes in Real Time
9 Feb 2012 | 12:35 pmI Can Has Cheezburger plans to turn the 54th Grammy Awards into a laughing matter by giving viewers an outlet to write funny captions for red carpet and ceremony photos. The “Live LOLing” event starts Sunday at 4 p.m. PT when Cheezburger’s ROFLrazzi site, Twitter profile and Facebook page will begin publishing Grammy images with humorous captions — in lolcat meme format. People can click “Recaption This” to plop their own witty text on the photos. Participants can then share their creations on their social networks. Cheezburger editor in chief Emily Huh… -
Popularity of an Article Can Be Predicted Before It’s Tweeted [VIDEO]
9 Feb 2012 | 12:24 pmHP Labs says it’s possible to know if your tweet will be a dud before you type the 140 characters. Researchers have developed a formula that predicts the number of times a news “article will be tweeted with surprising accuracy.” The researchers predicted tweet popularity with 84% accuracy based on ranking news articles by four criteria. In the new study called “The Pulse of News in Social Media: Forecasting Popularity, HP Labs used a statistical model to rate the popularity of 40,000 news articles published during nine days in August 2011. The statistical model… -
Yahoo’s New Visualization Beautifully Shows What’s Happening on the Web
9 Feb 2012 | 12:00 pmYahoo has launched a new webpage that visualizes what’s happening on the web in near real time — and it’s totally beautiful. The Content Optimization Relevance Engine (C.O.R.E.) HTML5 site hopes to show users the “behind the scenes” process Yahoo uses to match readers with content on their personalized homepage, using technology developed in a Yahoo research lab a few years ago. While Yahoo’s homepage used to be arranged by editors, it now uses an algorithm to match individual user preferences. “We can provide users with insights through the lens of… -
Who Really Invented the Web? Texas Trial Questions Tim Berners-Lee [VIDEO]
9 Feb 2012 | 11:48 amTim Berners-Lee, who is credited with inventing the World Wide Web, testified this week in a Texas courtroom against a company that claims it has a patent on the same technology. The man who claims to have the patent on the “interactive web” is Michael Doyle. His company, Eolas Technologies, has filed suit against many of the world’s biggest Internet companies — including Google and Yahoo — over the case. Doyle’s lawyers say the companies owe him millions in royalty payments for using such common functions as watching online video or search suggestions pop… -
Mass Effect 3 Gets iPad Version with Action-Packed ‘Infiltrator’ [PREVIEW]
9 Feb 2012 | 11:35 amMass Effect 3 is coming to an iPad near you in the form of Mass Effect Infiltrator, an iOS game aimed at expanding the game’s narrative and give players some mobile combat. Infiltrator isn’t a direct port of the latest Mass Effect game. Unlike its big brother, a sci-fi role-playing game known for its first-person shooter gameplay and massive, branching story-lines, Infiltrator is all about fighting. Mashable got a demo of the game played on an iPad and hooked up to a television at an EA showcase. The story follows a soldier called Randall Ezno as he travels the universe tracking…
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@ProBlogger
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Is Perfectionism Stalling Your Productivity?
9 Feb 2012 | 12:04 pmWe’ve all been there … You sit down to write a post. You get the opening line down, but half-way through the second sentence, you go back to tweak the first. A bit further on, you decide to chop up the paragraphs you’ve done so far and rearrange them … but on second thought, is that really the better option? In two minds, you “finish” the post, then spend a half-hour writing and rewriting the “ideal” headline. Finally, happy(ish!) your cursor hovers over the Publish button … but you just can’t press it. You decide to give it some… -
6 Powerful Guest Post Tactics that No One’s Talking About
9 Feb 2012 | 6:05 amThis guest post is by Tom Ewer of Leaving Work Behind. Guest posting is a hot topic amongst startup bloggers. It is one of the most widely-adopted blog promotion strategies in existence, and has been made perhaps even more popular by the success of “serial” guest posters such as Danny Iny of Firepole Marketing. His “blitzkrieg” strategy may come across to some as a triumph of quantity over strategy, but nothing could be further from the truth. He understands the key concepts that we will be exploring in this post, and executes them in a highly effective manner. Whilst… -
How to Succinctly Report a Blog Issue to Tech Support
8 Feb 2012 | 6:07 amThis guest post is by Matthew Setter of Malt Blue. How often do you find it happening to you? You discover an issue with your site, or one of your community members emails you to tell you about it, and soon you start to see tweets about it too. Maybe it’s as simple as an error message that detracts from the professional appearance of your site. Perhaps the contact form doesn’t send messages to your contact email address. Or is it that the whole site just displays as a blank page, otherwise known as the white page of death? You’re not a programmer, a software engineer or a seasoned… -
Make Your Blog Load Faster than ProBlogger: Part 2
7 Feb 2012 | 12:05 pmThis guest post is by Devesh of WP Kube. A few months ago, I wrote a guest post here called How to Make Your Blog Load Faster than ProBlogger. Today, I’ll go into some more detailed advice to help you speed up your site even more. If you’re a blogger, you already know about the importance of blog loading speed, and the role it plays in search engine rank and marketing your blog. But if this is new territory for you, here are three quick reasons why you need to speed up your blog: Google includes website loading speed as an important metric in their ranking algorithm. If you want… -
How I Beat my Best Month Ever by Doing Something Good, Better [Case Study]
7 Feb 2012 | 6:04 amMid-December 2010: on my photography site, we launched a new campaign—our first ever 12 Days of Christmas promotion. The result was my biggest month of earnings ever up to that point. The idea was simple: offer discounts on 12 products over the 12 days leading up to Christmas. I used a mix of my own ebooks and products from other photography sites with affiliate commissions. The result was massive. Not only did we see some great revenue generated, it created some lovely buzz on the site. Due to the success of the 2010 campaign, in mid-December 2011 we launched our second 12 Days of…
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Social Media Explorer
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Boosting the Content Quality on Your Blog or Website
9 Feb 2012 | 10:00 amEditor’s Note: This is a guest post written by Samantha Peters, an avid blogger who writes about social media, digital marketing, and online communications. When we talk about blogs and websites these days we often use phrases like “SEO,” “page rank,” and “web statistics.” We pay close attention to our click-throughs, our inbound links, and the way we incorporate advertisers. In short, we approach our sites from a marketing angle and take every opportunity we can to increase and maximize our exposure. Amidst all this positioning, many bloggers and site managers overlook the… -
In Social Media, The Fine Line Between Nimble And Fickle
9 Feb 2012 | 6:00 amA study by The Center For Marketing Research declared, “blogging declines as new media rules.” Based on results of a survey sent to the Inc 500, the article states, “there is clearly a shift in how these nimble companies are communicating.” If it is true that blogging is on the decline, then I’d say these companies are more fickle than nimble. Throwing over — or not starting a blog because it’s easier to use Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest is short-sighted and risky. A blog may be an “old” form of social media but it has five benefits that the newer platforms can’t touch. -
What Happened To Saying Something Nice?
8 Feb 2012 | 6:00 amSocial media has certainly given the power back to the consumer. But sometimes the consumer doesn’t do nice things with that power. While it could be a matter of perception (the overwhelming sentiment of most brands in online conversational analysis is positive), it certainly seems like the only time we take note of brand mentions online is when someone is whining or bitching about them. AT&T is one brand that gets unnecessarily beaten about its head and face a lot online. I’ve never quite understood this, perhaps because I’m A) Practical in nature and understand… -
Get Out of Your Own Way: 5 Excuses Marketers Use to Avoid Social Media ROI
7 Feb 2012 | 6:00 amYou see it everywhere. Management teams and marketers desperately want to understand how social media is delivering to the bottom line. Marketers are getting tons of pressure from their management teams and are desperate for a way to prove their strategies are working. With so many chomping at the bit to get at true return on investment (ROI), how has it remained so elusive? Has social media become the marketing channel that we know we need to have, but can’t demonstrate why? What if Social Media ROI was really simple, but we let a bunch of excuses get in our way of measuring it? -
Empowering Your Employees With Social Media
6 Feb 2012 | 10:00 amEditor’s Note: This is a guest post by Emily Eldridge, Senior Vice President of Pure. It’s tempting to think that employees’ online discussions about your company should be curbed. Most company policies in the modern workplace exist to protect us from lawsuits – and to ostensibly protect employees from themselves. While it’s understandable to want control over our corporate image, this fear dimishes our employees’ ability to communicate. A stronger approach is to empower our staff to be brand advocates. Advocate for Your Employees Companies should decide whether their…
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Twitter Status
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Twitter site issue
22 Jan 2012 | 4:22 pmUpdate: This issue has been resolved. Some users may currently be experiencing site issues; our engineers are working on resolving this issue. -
Streaming Delivery Delay
4 Jan 2012 | 3:11 pmUpdate: This issue has been resolved. Clients of the streaming APIs may be experiencing delivery delays. Our engineers are currently working on this issue. -
Twitter Site Issue
31 Dec 2011 | 7:47 amUpdate: This issue has been resolved. Users may currently be experiencing some site issues; our engineers are working on resolving this issue. -
Twitter Site Issue
14 Dec 2011 | 2:17 pmUpdate: This issue has been resolved. Users may be experiencing an issue with our service; our engineers are currently working on this issue. -
Twitter Site Issue
14 Nov 2011 | 1:40 pmUpdate: This issue has been resolved. Users may currently be experiencing some site issues; our engineers are working on resolving this issue.
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Copyblogger
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How to Recover From a Social Media Hangover
9 Feb 2012 | 3:00 am“Hello. My name is Cori and I’m a social media addict. “Today is day 1 of my commitment to give myself a regular break from technology and the foggy, uncreative haze it can unwittingly lead to.” I was reading a post the other day by blogger Michael Brenner at B2B Marketing Insider, talking about getting your social media game on. Of course, being the skimmer that I am, the first thing that caught my attention and made me go back and read the whole thing was his mention of having a Social Media Hangover. His hangover was induced by sometimes (as we all do) forgetting to… -
The “New” SEO Secret Weapon
8 Feb 2012 | 3:00 amIf you have a web site, you may have noticed one of two things about the traffic you get from search engines. Your search traffic may have dried up overnight, with once-healthy streams turning into a sad little trickle. Or you may have noticed a nice, steady improvement as you’ve climbed higher in the SERPs (search engine results pages), while other sites that used to outrank you suddenly evaporated. There’s a super-secret new ingredient in SEO. It was always a factor, but it’s become even more important recently, as the Google team relentlessly declares war on what they see… -
8 Quick Tips for Writing Bullet Points People Actually Want to Read
7 Feb 2012 | 3:00 amIt’s a Twitterized world, we’re just living in it. Blog posts, Tweets, quick videos, Google+, the Facebook Timeline, and tens of thousands of images pinned to digital boards are flying past us faster than we can read them. Faster than we can even scan them, depending on the time of day. What does this mean for writers trying to cut through it all? At least two things that I can think of: You’d better know how to write a compelling headline You’d better know how to write bullet points that grab (and keep) your reader We’re not telling you to keep your copy short. -
7 Crucial Tactics for Writing a Wildly Successful Guest Post
6 Feb 2012 | 3:00 amWe all know that guest posts grow blogs. But not many people realize that tactical guest posting grows careers. Most bloggers I see pump out these articles while reciting the mantra “quantity over quality”; there’s no real strategy and there are no real long-term benefits. In this post I am going to show you the seven crucial tactics for writing a radically successful guest post. Done right, these strategies will get you more email subscribers, coveted Google ranking positions, and a big head-start on your content marketing goals. Who am I to teach you about guest blogging? -
7 Smashing Social Media Marketing Links
4 Feb 2012 | 3:00 amThis week on The Lede … What really works on Twitter One thing social media copywriters should never do 9 productive social media hacks A reminder of the power of the original social media If you just can’t wait for The Lede every Saturday, and you want even more practical, useable links than the seven we highlight here every week, follow @copyblogger on Twitter. It’s painless. Really. // 9 Social Media Hacks You Need to Embrace Now Mr. Baer makes a good case that though social media is inexpensive in monetary terms, it can get good and costly when it comes to spending your…
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Television Without Pity
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The River - The Dry Spirit
9 Feb 2012 | 10:07 amMagus: Reality TV crew goes looking for dead hippy, finds Smokey instead. -
Ringer - Trying To Get The Feeling, Again
9 Feb 2012 | 9:45 amWhat Are You Doing Here, Ho-Bag?: Juliet's mom visits. Bridget calls Tyler. Shiv meets up with Henry. I still don't care much, but weecapping was less of a chore than I expected on first watch. -
Pretty Little Liars - Challenged A
9 Feb 2012 | 8:20 amThe Naked Truth: Caleb yells at Jenna, provoking a day-glo apocalypse; Holden is a ninja. -
Fringe - Angel of the Mourning
9 Feb 2012 | 7:15 amMaking Angels: The Farnsworthbot pays a surprise visit to our universe, and is such great help on a case that Walter considers trading in our Astrid for the newer model, like you do with an iPhone. -
Top Chef - Tears of Joy
9 Feb 2012 | 6:33 amMentors: Beverly returns, and then Sarah wins immunity and doesn't have to cook this week. Those who are competing have to cook a meal for his or her culinary mentor, plus there is a lot of crying, mostly from Paul.
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Business Blogging - How to Build A Better Blog
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What Business Bloggers Can Learn from Hobby Bloggers
6 Feb 2012 | 6:15 amThis is a guest post by Linda Dessau of ContentMasteryGuide.com While business bloggers have the ultimate goal of attracting prospective clients, hobby bloggers have a whole other set of motives. Here are just three of them, along with some ways you can apply them to your business blog: Free Your Passion Hobby bloggers have the liberty to indulge in deep exploration of their passions, wherever that journey takes them. In an earlier article about what happens when artists call their art a hobby, I noted how that "means freedom from the creative constraints that might be involved once you… -
Six Essential SEO Strategies for Bloggers
27 Jan 2012 | 6:20 amBloggers can never get enough advice about SEO. This is a guest post by Chrisian Arno at Lingo24. Six Essential SEO Strategies for Bloggers When a blog forms part of your marketing strategy, you need to be confident your words will reach the right people. With search engines constantly refining their algorithms, not to mention the huge amount of information competing for your readers, this can seem like an impossible task. Here are six strategies that can help you regain your confidence with SEO.Do Your ResearchIf you are someone who dashes off blog posts when inspiration strikes, slow… -
Blogging Without Dates - The pros, the cons and meeting in the middle
6 Jan 2012 | 6:45 amThis is a guest post by Linda Dessau of ContentMasteryGuide.com In his October 2011 post about why you no longer need a blog (in the traditional sense), John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing predicts that soon our content will "no longer be consumed in chronological fashion." When Jim Connolly of Internet Marketing Jam explored the question of why people remove dates from their blog posts, in the end, he came to the conclusion that for his blog, the benefits far outweighed any risks. What are the pros of blogging without dates? What benefits did Jim Connolly see? People were spending more… -
Pitching to bloggers - the do’s and don’ts of blogger pitching
22 Dec 2011 | 6:25 amThis is a guest post by Kristy Shaw of Punch Communications. Pitching to bloggers… the do’s and don’ts of blogger pitching Life as a PR has certainly changed over the last few years; with the rise in popularity of blogs it has meant having to adapt the way I pitch to different types of media. Bloggers can be just as influential as many print publications and therefore should always be on PR agencies radars. Pitching to bloggers is a world away from traditional pitches to journalists; there are many more things to take into account. For example, in contrast to traditional media… -
Two Tips for Generating More Leads on Your Business Blog
19 Dec 2011 | 6:55 amRecently I joined the Social Media Biz School as an instructor. In the video below, I share a couple of the business blogging tips to give you a taste of the kind of strategies, tactics, tips and tools you'll be learning in the free 27 minute webinar on demand: How to Generate More Leads with Social Media... [Can't see the video in your blog reader? Click here to watch on YouTube.] You can get instant access to the free webinar here. Your instructors are: Viveka von Rosen (LinkedIn), Lori Gama (Twitter), Andrea Vahl (Facebook), Lou Bortone (Online Video) and me (Blogging). Get…
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Holy Kaw!
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Romance survey [infographic]
9 Feb 2012 | 12:02 pmVia Hotels.com. Infographics to put you in the mood. Permalink | Leave a comment » -
Do aliens go invisible by 'going green'?
9 Feb 2012 | 11:24 amAs we discover more and more planets around other stars, the Fermi Paradox is becoming, well, more paradoxical. The Fermi Paradox simply asks the question "where are they?" Our Milky Way galaxy is so big and so old -- and we are estimated to be accompanied by at least 100 billion planets -- that aliens should have visited us by now. Instead, when we peruse the heavens, we are faced with the Great Silence, which is one of the biggest challenges to modern astronomy. Full story at Discovery News. More news from Discovery Communications. Photo credit: Fotolia Permalink | Leave a… -
Mysterious sounds reported around the world
9 Feb 2012 | 11:23 amPeople around the world have reported hearing strange sounds from the skies over the past month. Sometimes they describe it as a hum or low rumble; other times it’s a whine, thump, or even a melody. Often the sounds have been recorded and posted online, fueling rumors and conspiracy theories. One blogger wrote, "either the world is ending, aliens are landing or everyone is getting hoaxed. Or, possibly, there’s an actual scientific explanation for the mass amount of YouTube videos capturing bizarre sounds that are being heard around the globe. Are we witnessing the beginning of a… -
Costa Concordia: an ecological time bomb
9 Feb 2012 | 11:21 amAs workers begin to extract the half-million gallons of fuel in the shipwrecked cruise liner, locals are worried that their pristine waters are in danger. Reporting by Rossella Lorenzi. Written and produced by Rossella Lorenzi and Martin Berman. Full story at Discovery News. More news from Discovery Communications. Permalink | Leave a comment » -
Inside Syria's capitol: nervously normal
9 Feb 2012 | 11:18 amAs the violence in Syria continues to escalate, Syrian citizens are arming themselves to resist their oppressive regime. For days, Homs, the third-largest city in Syria, has endured shelling, tanks and attacks by heavy weaponry. Syrian protestors react with more violence against forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, resulting in all-out war zones in some residential neighborhoods. Full story at Discovery News. More news from Discovery Communications. Permalink | Leave a comment »
