As part of b5media's growth strategy, we've overhauled our home page to make it more of a "discovery tool" for bloggers, blog readers, advertisers, and the media. Of course, this process requires an awful lot of work to build something that reflects your company's focus, culture and energy. Fortunately, we found a terrific designer, Ben Bleikamp, who delivered something wonderful. I also have to offer a huge "thanks" to b5media's in-house tech guru, Aaron Brazell, who toiled away for many hours to help make it all come together. Well done! For more on how the new home page was put together, check out Aaron's Technosailor blog.

How much is the Web impacting newspaper readership? It's a question that was thrust into the spotlight again earlier this week when many newspapers in North America posted sharp declines in paid circulation for the six months ended Sept. 30. Kevin Restivo and I spent a lot of time on our Talking Tech podcast looking at whether newspapers are being impacted by the Web, iPods, PVRs, satellite-radio, etc. We also discuss how the income trust dreams of Telus and BCE were burst by the Canadian government, which is freaked about the loss of tax revenue. Finally, Kevin provides some "colour" on a launch party (open bars, models, beautiful people) put on by LG to unveil the Chocolate phone. It caused both of to look back fondly to the go-go party days of the dot-com era.

The Internet doesn't suck - contrary to Maclean's magazine's preposterous claim - but there are concerns that things are getting out of hand. One of the critics is Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web. In a recent interview with the Guardian, he said among the many dangers, blogging ranks right up there. Blogging? What about all those things Maclean's highlighted such as pornography, academic plagiarism, gambling and fraud? Berners-Lee contends blogging is a threat because "there is a great danger that it becomes a place where untruths start to spread more than truths, or it becomes a place which becomes increasingly unfair in some way". He also said people who read blogs have too much trust in their accuracy. To be things in perspective, Berners-Lee made the comments during the launch of a new project between Southampton University and MIT to create the first degree in web science, which they hope will improve Web content standards. While Berners-Lee is an Internet Idol and I'm just a D-List bloggers, his concern about blogs comes across as alarmist. Sure, there are plenty of blogs that are inflammatory and inaccurate but is this really a bad or evil phenomena? If Berners-Lee wants to clean up the Web, there are other more bigger battles to fight.

Mea Culpa: As my friend, Mathew, pointed out in a comment, the Guardian apparently did a nice job torquing Berners-Lee's comments. (I read Berners-Lee blog post, which comes across as far more positive about what's happening on the Web.)