By Alicia Dorset

Proving that BlogHer is the force to be reckoned with when it comes to women and blogging, the site has received an additional $7 million in funding, according to a recent post by Kara Swisher of All Things Digital.

Swisher reports that BlogHer now employs 30 people and the network itself reaches more than 14 million unique visitors a month.

If you haven’t had the chance to read some of the great content on BlogHer’s site or attend one of their conferences, make sure to spend some time at their web site. You can read the entire All Things Digital report here.

By Andrea MacLean

Google wants to change the way people communicate online by blending instant messaging, e-mail and document collaboration into a new service, called Wave. The free service will eliminate the need to use multiple tools to communicate online, according to Google execs, and will be available to the public later this year.

Software developers are being encouraged to create features that are compatible with Wave and web site owners or bloggers will be able to incorporate Wave’s messaging features as a bulletin board, for example.

Pretty cool, although we will have to wait and see whether consumers will be willing to leave behind their current e-mail, IM, etc and ride the Google Wave. Is there anything Google can’t do? Sigh.

By Lyndsay Hoban

Groundswell author Josh Bernoff gave the keynote speech at the IAB Marketplace: Social Media last Monday, emphasizing the need to look at social media as a long-term trend.

Bernoff outlined the Groundswell P-O-S-T process (People, Objectives, Strategy, Technology) and highlighted successful examples of P-O-S-T in practice, including Tampax’s BeingGirl community and Hershey’s use of Houseparty.com for the launch of the Bliss line of chocolates.

He concluded his address with a focus on measurement, stating that successful use of social media must have meaningful metrics and clear objectives. “When it comes to social media, people really need to hear this,” he said.

Read his measuring sticks and the full article here.

It’s a morbid topic, but an important one nonetheless. Given the boom in social media in recent years, think about all the accounts you’ve established: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, Flickr, eBay and so on. What happens to your digital life after you die?

Companies have already started projects to address this quandary, from virtual graveyards and memorial pages to cyber lockers used to store digital assets. CNN investigates several posthumous Web 2.0 services here.

By Don Martelli

Ever wanted to know the population of Wales, Wisconsin? What plant family a pea is from? How many single-spaced pages 35,000 words in Finnish equate to? How about the heart disease risk of 50-year-old men?

Ask no more, Wolfram|Alpha is here (from the Web site):

Wolfram|Alpha’s long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries.

Wolfram|Alpha is a computational knowledge engine (read: not Google) that provides answers with real supporting data and facts. On the surface it sounds like a great concept, but the jury is still out on its use and whether or not it is a true Google (or Wikipedia for that matter) competitor.

Mashable has put together “5 Lessons Celebrities Can Teach Us About Facebook Pages.” From Vin Diesel to Lenny Kravitz, Britney Spears to Michael Phelps, check out their Facebook tips here.

Mobile ad spending could nearly double this year to $200 million, due largely to the iPhone’s runaway success, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Companies are keen to access the iPhone’s desirable owner base: young, well paid, highly engaged with mobile tech and currently over 20 million strong. While numerous advertisers offer streaming video ads to smart phones, an increasing number are creating—or redesigning—downloadable apps to lure in a demographic that is minimally responsive to TV advertising. Not only do iPhone apps tend to be cheap, they also capture higher levels of engagement. For example, a recent and successful hamburger app for California-based CKE Restaurants Inc. cost $12,000, while a Burger King app launched for Valentine’s Day was downloaded by 14 percent of its mobile audience. Compare those with a less-than-one-percent interaction rate for online banner ads.

By Nicole Burguess

A recent study by the Marketing to Moms Coalition identified the top activities for moms online by surveying 1,033 English-speaking moms.

It’s no surprise that e-mail is a very popular activity for moms online, even topping out TV as the most popular media habit in two of the three age groups. When it comes to spreading the word via e-mail, moms are most likely to share jokes and information about upcoming events. They also frequently share news clips and inspirational phrases. However, they are somewhat less likely to share videos and images. Young moms frequently share blog posts, whereas moms in the 25-44 and 45+ age ranges do not.

There has been a surge in traditional media adapting to social media trends, and Mashable’s Woody Lewis shares his thoughts on the ‘5 Ways Traditional Media is Going Social.’

Topics include:
* Widget TV: Verizon FiOS customers will soon be able to connect set-top boxes to the Web. Verizon is building widgets that integrate Facebook and Twitter. Lewis writes, “These are base cases, where the viewer can send messages from her set-top box to her social network while she watches programs. Verizon will offer the SDK to third-party developers.”

By Nichole Mrasek

ABC has given fans a new way to celebrate the on-screen romance of Meredith Grey and Derek Shepherd. In case you aren’t a fan of the show, Grey and Shepherd are main characters on the drama, and after years of viewers waiting for them to get serious, they are getting married. To promote their engagement, the show has created a wedding site for the couple via The Knot.

They aren’t registered at Macy’s for the gift registry; instead fans can donate to charities.

By Eden Litt

A few years ago, Justin Kan attached a webcam to his hat, recorded his every move and then streamed it live to a Web site. The site, Justin.tv is now one of the largest online networks for users to broadcast and watch live videos.

Looking for your big break? Chris Pirillo, self-proclaimed geek and president of blogging network LockerGnome.com, offers tips to starting your own live stream on CNN.com/technology.

A recent ReadWriteWeb post accusing Facebook of having “Twitter envy” said: “Facebook blew past MySpace and managed to keep Google at bay. It firmly won the race for the social web. But now it has begun a brand new race, this one against Twitter.” RWW cautioned Facebook from trying to adopt Twitteresque approaches, noting that: “Facebook at its core is about friends, not news.”

By Alicia Dorset

Twazzup is the latest in Twitter search engine options. Launched last week, Twazzup tries to “tries to bridge the gap between Twitter’s real-time search and a more traditional search engine.” Twazzup reports on real-time Tweets in addition to the top Tweets of the day.

Other noteworthy features include assigning authority rankings to users and the ability to define search terms. There are a lot of search engines to choose from when it comes to Twitter, so Twazzup might be the next best bet.

Learn more about Twazzup here.