KUOW's excellent Weekday program featured a few local bloggers today who discussed several issues related to the challenge and opportunities for hyperlocal online publishing.

The West Seattle Blog and OlyBlog were included among the guests, but surprisingly (to me, anyway) no one from T-town was on the list. Seems like Derek Young or Kevin Freitas would have been able to offer some interesting perspectives. But the session also illustrates the active local online communities growing in locations outside the 253 area code.

On the morning drive to work this morning I was fortunate to hear the third installment from KPLU's series on The Impact of War on Children. The focus is on local families dealing with the separation of deployed fathers and mothers. It's very well done and available on the local NPR station's web site as a podcast or individual audio files. I recommend it.

A few weeks ago, you might have noticed a new advertising feature on thenewstribune.com. Just below the navigation bar near the top of the page, a large billboard ad would appear and expand vertically down the page, pushing the news and photos down with it.

This is a form of interruption advertising which, of course, has been around for decades (and it most popular on TV). It really only works if the interruption isn't so great that it aggravates the audience and drives them away. So we agreed that our new expanding billboard ads would come with limits: no visitor to the web site would more see than two per visit.

The problem was the ads were scheduled incorrectly and there didn't seem to be any limit. Naturally, this frustrated many users and we received about a dozen emails complaining about the intrusion. To further the problem, the "Close" link on some of the ads didn't work properly and sent visitors to the advertiser's site instead of closing the ad. This resulted in more frustration.

I'm happy to report that both problems have been fixed. So, while you'll still see a couple expanding billboard ads on our site each time you visit, we hope you understand that we will continue to look for new ways to deliver attractive audiences (that's you!) to our local advertisers and support the news gathering and web publishing operation here. We just need to work harder to do it right the first time.

Like many other news organizations, we've been experimenting with Twitter for publishing breaking news and other information in short bites. It's been interesting to work with reporters and editors to wrestle with how to use it, as well as the interaction with our meager number of followers. Even for those in our newsroom who admittedly don't quite "get it," the exercise of publishing a new way has been healthy and for that I encourage all news organizations to being dabbling. (If you're new to Twitter, here's an explanation in plain English.

Steve Rubel pointed out the potential of FriendFeed today, which takes the content stream concept to a whole new level. I've been meaning to check out FriendFeed for a while, but it took Steve's blog to get me to go sign up. Rubel writes:

People are increasingly turning to their peers for news, information and recommendations. And Friendfeed is more than an aggregation site or a community that's layered on top of others. It's a recommendation engine that surfaces content (both pro and amateur) via your peers - and that's huge. Sure there are things wrong with it, but I believe Friendfeed is incredibly disruptive. It's the next big thing online for consumers. It may even become the next Google.

So while we can't see where all this is going or how it will affect news consumption, it's important for news publishers to be involved in the exploration and experimentation, not just waiting on the sidelines for the early adopters to figure it all out.

So what do you think about Twitter? Game-changing communication technology or flavor-of-the-month fad?

Just a quick note to let you know about our latest addition to the TNT blog lineup: GO Arts. Rosemary Ponnekanti, who follows the local arts scene, will keep readers informed on galleries, theaters, classical music and more (with a little help from other TNTers).

Check it out.

Joining our usual suspects of sports and crime stories on the most popular list from May are a pair of stories about bikini-clad baristas. Do you think we would have known how popular those stories would be prior to the internet age when we can track everything?

Most popular stories:

1.	Semaj tries to sneak on jet again at Sea-Tac Airport
2.	‘Bikini baristas' stirred up other cities
3.	Not a happy camper: Bobby Engram a no-show
4.	Seahawks' new crop of rookies just a little giddy
5.	Seahawks camp reveals new faces, plenty of promise
6.	Bonney Lake wants lids on baristas
7.	Little Smart Car fares well in crash tests
8.	Sims opts to move, not mope
9.	Seahawks and Julius Jones run to future
10.	New agent puts Hill, Seahawks on hold
11.	Seahawks minicamp comes to quiet close
12.	Robber got off free, then got killed
13.	Lakewood officer helps make way for ducklings across Highway 512
14.	Time served, now back to court
15.	Outbreak of violent crime stretches Tacoma police

Most popular blogs:

1. Seahawks Insider
2. Lights & Sirens
3. Ed's Diner
4. Political Buzz
5. Bring the Noise
6. Mariners Insider
7. Prep Blog
8. Biz Buzz
9. Sonics Insider
10. Inside the Editorial Page
11. Huskies Insider
12. Grit City
13. FOB Tacoma
14. Open House
15. Adventure Guys

Most popular multimedia:

Tacoma Marathon

Jet-powered human flying machine...it's about time

Paradise Inn rebuilt

Seabrook

Fort Lewis homecoming

The Seattle Times published an interesting editorial Sunday, cheering on a group of French-language newspapers in Belgium who have filed suit against Google.

The Times editorial writers suggest the surging stock price of Google and the plummeting stock prices of newspaper companies are evidence of the need to change copyright laws. The store shelf metaphor doesn't work for me, however. This is about a new era of information and access and we can't try to force our previous models to fit. The fact that newspapers are struggling financially to evolve (along with many other industries) doesn't mean the rules need to be changed just because the game has.

All I know is that I wouldn't want to try to ramp up a business model for news online without traffic from Google. And if this lawsuit is successful, then Yahoo must be sued, too. And other news aggregators after that.

We should be focusing our energy on innovating and taking advantage of new possibilities, instead of hoping that the rules will change so we don't have to.