Internet News

(Newser) - AOL is cutting two more of its website’s offerings, a blog creator and a data hosting service, Peter Kafka notes on Silicon Alley Insider. Users of AOL Journals, which hosts blogs, will be migrated to an equivalent host. Users of AOL Hometown, which mainly store photos—and, Kafka sniffs, is “as anachronistic as a dial-up ISP”—received a stiffer message: Save it elsewhere. More »

(Newser) - Social news site Digg has raised $28.7 million to fund an aggressive expansion and fend off rumors it will be sold, IDG News Service reports. The 4-year-old site, which allows readers to rank stories, plans to double its staff to 150, revamp its features, and expand internationally. The move is likely in response to Yahoo's launch of its own social news site, called Buzz. More »

(Newser) - On top of co-hosting a PBS travel and cooking show, Oscar-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow has launched a lifestyle website called Goop.com, the Huffington Post reports. In an essay, Paltrow says she’ll share what she’s learned and the advice of her “sages” in the still-empty sections such as "Make," "Go," "Get," "Do," "Be," and "See." More »

(Newser) - The Internet is home to a small but growing trend that would seem anathema to hard-headed bloggers and pithy posters who regularly lay waste to others online: niceness. In Philadelphia, New York, and elsewhere, the Inquirer finds, civic-minded netizens are setting up sites that extol, and even enable, random acts of kindness. More »

(Newser) - A picture may have been worth a thousand words before Facebook and YouTube came along, but in the Internet age the price can be much steeper for going public with one’s—er—privates. PC World presents 12 online photos that cost their owners dearly: “A defense attorney’s worse nightmare”: Two weeks after causing a serious crash while drunk driving, college student Joshua Lipton turned up at a Halloween party in an orange prison jumpsuit. When the pic made its Facebook debut, the judge awarded Lipton’s wit with a 2-year term. More »

(Newser) - Porn is no longer king online, thanks to the social-networking sites where people—particularly 18- to 24-year-olds—have become addicted to less X-rated forms of sharing, a Web analyst tells Reuters. “My theory is that young users spend so much time on social networks that they don't have time to look at adult sites,” says Bill Tancer, who studies Web clicks to take our societal pulse. More »

(Newser) - AOL is overhauling its portal page, incorporating third-party email services and social-networking sites into AOL.com, paidContent reports. The redesigned site allows users to perform global status updates, so a message sent from AOL would show up on Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and more; users will also be able to view friends’ activity from multiple sites on an incorporated feed. More »