BloggerCon is a user-focused conference for the blogger community. Dave Winer, who organized the first 2 BloggerCons, describes the event as an unusual conference. They don’t have speakers, panels or an audience. They do have discussions and sessions, and each session has a discussion leader. This year’s BloggerCon was held in San Francisco on the 23rd and 24th of June, 2006 and you can download the MP3s from the event at http://www.bloggercon.org/

Roberto Mancini (59), from Aosta-northern Italy, was convicted of defamation last month and was sentenced to pay $16,900 in fines and damages. He was sued by 4 people which included 2 journalists because they felt he reported on local news in a sarcastic manner.

Reporters Without Borders, who are based in paris, said “It looks like the blogger is being punished for his bad language and not because he posted false information, which is unacceptable,”

What would you do if you were in Roberto’s place?

The IndyCar Series, which began blending its methanol fuel with 10 percent ethanol this year, is on track to switch to 100 percent ethanol next year, the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council said Thursday.

“The switch this year to 10 percent ethanol was the first fuel change since 1964,” said Reece Nanfito, senior director of marketing for EPIC, the ethanol council. “The switch had no impact on performance; if anything, it improved performance this year. Next year, all the cars in the IndyCar Series will run entirely on that fuel.”

Jamie Schwartzkopf, head of the racing program for ethanol company Renova Energy, said the Indy news will have a big effect on ethanol awareness.

Nielson Media research is a company that measures television viewing and now, it will roll out new technology during the next few years to measure viewing over the Internet, on cell phones and on TV sets outside of the home. This is the kind of thing that Google would be interested in as well.

Google recently won an award for a paper (PDF)on interactive television applications that wirelessly link your computer to the television. The paper explored the possibility that a laptop, or other computing device, could “hear” what’s on television and serve up social interactive programs and, most likely, contextual advertising.

Seems pretty interesting, doesnt it?