I want the Fast Lane to be a true on-line community, and I encourage you to submit your comments and thoughts. After all, if I'm going to insist on twenty-first century solutions for our transportation system, I better communicate in a twenty-first century way!

The blog has received about 11,000 site visits since 10 a.m. compared with 13,000 daily visits to the main DOT Web site, the agency said. Comments are reviewed to make sure they're free of personal attacks, slurs or inappropriate language. If a topic attracts hundreds of comments, an agency spokesman said a representative sample of them may be posted instead.

The agency also plans to start hosting Web chats with Peters and other senior DOT officials as well as building a YouTube.com video page some time this year.

In Peters' second post, she announced from Chicago that the city was awarded a $153 million federal grant to reduce traffic congestion and pollution. Guest blogger Mayor Richard Daley followed with a post of his own thanking the department.

Darrell West, a public policy professor at Brown University, said that government blogs represent an opportunity for officials "to shape and be shaped by public opinion."

"Blogs inherently are interactive and help agencies learn what is on people's minds," he wrote in an e-mail. "I see this as a plus for agency responsiveness."

Unlike eBay's existing blogs and forums, which focus on more traditional (and sanitized) corporate communications, eBay Ink aims to give readers a peek inside eBay's internal operations. Brewer-Hay has pledged to write unbiased entries about what he observes as an all-access employee of the $7.7 billion dollar company.

Though eBay Ink is not a direct response to the recent seller boycott and frustration over ongoing changes, eBay's communications team says that a forum for frank discussions is long overdue. "There hasn't been one place where investors, industry analysts, employees, [eBay] buyers and sellers, and PayPal and Skype users can talk to someone from the company, or listen to someone from the company discuss what changes mean from a high level," said company spokesman Jose Mallabo.

Brewer-Hay was hired in January and has spent the past two months learning the ins-and-outs of the corporation. Fortune Small Business got first crack at him; below are edited excepts of our conversation about his ambitious mission and why he believes eBay Ink, launching in April, will change the dynamic between eBay's top executives and its user community.

eBay will launch a new blog in April that it told Fortune Small Business would be an unfiltered link between users and the company. Two things just jump out at me. First, the newly hired blogger has never sold anything on eBay. And secondly, while he says the first thing he did when he got to eBay was to meet with industry bloggers to find out "how we can work together," he has never reached out to AuctionBytes.

Other industry bloggers who linked to the FSB article do not mention having heard from him either: Randy Smythe, PowerSellers Unite and Tamebay, for example.

FSB: Your blog will be linked from eBay's PR webpage. How much influence will eBay have on what you write?

RBH: My words go straight up onto the blog, unedited.

It's got to be transparent. There's got to be an authenticity to it, an honesty to it, otherwise there's no point in doing it in the first place. I'm going to open up my e-mail to questions from folks. People can comment, too, and comments are going to be open. You're going to get the good, the bad, and the ugly.

It kind of goes back to what I was saying at the beginning. They hired from outside the organization. I have no prior agenda with any of the execs or people in the company. I'm still in the process of getting to know them. I haven't met a lot of them yet. That's a big, important thing.

The other thing is, this is my job. There are no other jobs that I'm doing. Some corporate blogs are just side gigs for existing employees, but I'm doing this 100%, day-to-day.

When we launched the Google Grants program, we set out to harness the power of Google search to support organizations that share our philosophy of community service. Through the in-kind advertising awarded to grant recipients, organizations have been able to reach a wider audience for free with their messages. Since our debut early in 2003, the number of grant recipients has grown steadily, and we're excited to help even more of your good causes make a bigger impact on the world.

With more and more people looking for information and joining the program all the time, we want to make sure that we can answer your questions quickly and give you what you need to make your group more successful. So we're starting this blog as a place to read about the latest Google Grants news and information - whether you're a 501(c)(3) organization looking to join, or a current recipient who wants to learn how to make your campaigns more effective.

The blog is getting a rather "blah" response from aviation analysts and passengers advocates who say it will do little to improve process or perception. http://www.tsa.gov/blog

"This will just make it easier for them to receive complaints for them to ignore in the name of national security," said David Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Association.

In the blog's initial post, TSA Administrator Kip Hawley said the goal is to provide a forum for the agency to explain why travelers must go through certain steps at checkpoints since interaction at airports is often harried and halted, resulting in "feedback and venting ... circulating among passengers with no real opportunity for us to learn from you or vice versa."

"We will incorporate what we learn in this forum in our checkpoint process evolution," Hawley wrote. "Our postings from the public will be reviewed to remove the destructive, but not touch the critical or cranky."

Terry Trippler, a Minneapolis-based airline expert, applauded the idea but said TSA "was in the right church, just not the right pew yet."

The plan is to bring in news feeds from other sources, and build a reputation for good industry analysis from regular contributors including marketing guru Guy Kawasaki, venture capitalist Fred Wilson, and blogger Matt Marshall. The site will also contract with freelance journalists to write 300-to-500-word posts on Web companies and technology topics. Each contributor will be limited to three posts a week, to make sure no one writer dominates the conversation. "It's like the Huffington Post," says general manager Derek Butcher, "with the key difference that we will actually pay our contributors." Breaking news will be included too, but mostly as feeds from other sources.

Aside from tech news, the San Francisco-based site will also feature a "prediction market" where users place virtual "bets" to forecast events in the industry, such as mergers, or how many of a certain gadget might sell by year's end.

For instance, when news breaks that Microsoft wants to acquire Yahoo, betters can begin voting on whether Yahoo will accept the deal.

Users will have profiles and be able to bet against a group of friends or the whole market.

Those with the best track records will accumulate the most net worth and be able to wager more virtual cash on their next bet, Butcher said.

"Page Six" has made a new move in its aggressive push to take over the world and make it canoodley. They've launched the new version of PageSix.com! The site is slick, a little bit more glamorous, and a lot more bloggy. They've got feeds from other gossip sites, a running blog (which, so far, seems to have mostly party pictures and items from the print version of the column), and even Gawker Stalker Maps.

I wonder if that is what makes us so fussy and impatient when it comes to the rare occasion - such as getting on a plane - when we have to leave the controls to someone else and are at the mercy of forces (other humans) who haven't been bookmarked in advance.

This holiday season we're going to hear endless stories of travel nightmares from our families, friends and the press. So I'll start with a contrarian statement: Air travel is in fact as comfortable and reasonable today as it's ever been.

42 Surfboards, one of the world's few builders of traditional chambered wood surfboards, has a brand new website. In a nice synergy of old and new, you can now check out the latest wood fishes, single fins, longboards, and big-wave guns without getting covered in wood chips and sawdust.

At 42 surfboards.com, you can see some of the more common custom shapes that 42 Surfboards has been turning out. And at 42surfboards.blogspot.com, you can see some of Lars Bergstrom's clients' unique wood boards as they make the transition from log to longboard or from sapling to singlefin.

The boards you see posted are the ones that are available. There were 21 boards available between October and December. All of those except the 5'10 Fish that was finished on 11/23/07 have now been sold. If we are able to finish anything else between now and the end of the year, it will be posted here. If you see something you want for Christmas, it is first come first serve as the boards are posted.

DVICE - formerly SciFi.com's Tech Blog - is the latest extension of the Sci Fi brand. It has a staff of writers and contributors who will aim to keep readers current in the ever-changing world of technology. The new site will feature innovations that make their lives less complicated, not more, and only the hottest and best will be featured. Peter Pachal, who edited the Sci Fi Tech Blog, will be DVICE's content editor.

DVICE's strategy is to combine entertainment and information when reporting on the latest gadgets. The site will also produce an original weekly broadband show.

In the show, host Vanessa Rae (MTV.com) will try out some of the more adventurous gear, such as the speed and height-enhancing Power Risers; and offer on-the-street product tests and opinions from unsuspecting passers-by. The show is produced in conjunction with NBC Universal's Peacock Productions.

Anchoring the changes is today's launch of the "Readers' Representative Journal," a new blog (http://www.latimes.com/readersrep) aimed at bringing the public deeper into the process of how editorial decisions are made. Hosted by readers' representative Jamie Gold and assistant readers' representative Kent Zelas, the journal will feature a Q&A-oriented conversation to engage reporters and editors in addressing reader queries and observations. Among the rotating features will be "Ask a Staffer," a chance to get the story behind the story; "Whatever Happened to ... ," where readers can ask for updates on past stories; and grammar critiques. Users will be able to view a staff directory, peruse the L.A. Times ethics guidelines and get answers to frequently asked questions about newsroom practices, as well as outside-the-newsroom operations such as how to buy back copies. The Readers' Representative Journal will explore virtually anything readers want to know about the editorial operation of the Los Angeles Times, online and in print.

"The ongoing changes reflect The Times overarching goal of becoming a more transparent and integrated news organization," said Los Angeles Times editor, James O'Shea. "Most important, we're further opening the lines of communication with our readers and using new ways to make the newsroom more accessible."

Still no sign of baby #2 yet! I am having some contractions at night that make me think it may happen soon! I have been having a hard time getting out of bed… especially because I get up at least 4 times, either for the bathroom, or for Grace…

Perhaps driven to compete with former View cohost Rosie O'Donnell (long famed for her haiku-riffic stream-of-consciousness bloggery), Elisabeth promises "12 personal stories recounting her experiences and emotions both before and after the birth of her second child, due later this month, along with photos of the new baby."

Shelby Bonnie left the company he co-founded with Halsey Minor, CNET, just about one year ago. This morning he launches his next startup, PoliticalBase.

The site, which focuses on local, state and national elections and other political matters, is timed perfectly to take advantage of the 2008 presidential elections and the estimated $4.5 billion that will be spent on advertising to promote candidates and issues.

PoliticalBase is a structured Wiki that encourages research and debate. Users can edit most of the text but can't change the underlying database structure. That allows the site to slice and dice data for comparison purposes (something that can't be done with the free-for-all Wikipedia) but still gives the site's community the ability to create and edit content.

The site is broken down into interconnected categories, including money, people, issues, elections, etc. Clicking on, say Rudy Giuliani shows information on that presidential candidate, including the amount of money raised to date, his religion and party affiliation and biographical information. At the bottom of the page his position on key issues is also shown (for fun, register for the site and click that you do not support him - see how his picture changes).

Blog Cabin is DIY Network's newest hit series, featuring popular expert hosts who pitch in to bring the Kinzel Springs retreat to life. Watch us build the cabin one blog at a time, then enter daily for a chance to win it!

From February until early April, 2007, DIY Network.com invited visitors to vote each day on 13 design areas for a future cabin to be built in the Great Smoky Mountains. Thousands decided on such areas as the floor plan, roof, countertops, even the front door. The results are here, and so are the build projects.

What program viewers see is a structure designed, discussed and even tweaked by Internet bloggers. Thirteen parts of the building, from floor plan to front door, were voted on and blogged about on the channel's companion Web site, www.DIYnetwork.com, from February to early April this year.

The Web site's blog cabin section has had more than 2 million page views since February. More than 2,800 blog comments were posted and 4.2 million votes cast to select the cabin features.

"I was surprised by the sheer numbers, frankly," says Freddy James, DIY vice president for programming. "It's amazing how much having creative input in a home-building project really resonates with people."

The hip hop artist swore off MTV after losing out yet again at the channel's Music Video Awards, and since then, he's been working overtime to post on his site. Yesterday alone, Kanye posted five times. He's a regular Michael Crichton.

What's Kanye blogging about? Everything from his fave YouTube clips (he's a big fan of Feist and Brit indie band Bat for Lashes), to his favorite sneakers. But Kanye's favorite subject? Himself, of course. The blog is chock full of pics, videos and news clips confirming Kanye as "the king of rap."

The mission of the U.S. Department of State is to create a more secure, democratic, and prosperous world for the benefit of the American people and the international community.

Through its websites and other online resources, the Department offers broad public access to a wide range of information. Blogs.state.gov offers the public an alternative source to mainstream media for U.S. foreign policy information. This blog offers the opportunity for participants to discuss important foreign policy issues with senior Department officials.

Initial response to the blog was mixed. "John from Oregon" wrote, "It's great to see some extra sunlight coming into the State Department's long dark corridors with the launch of the new blog today. My hope is that this tried and tested 'disinfectant' can help restore some of the luster to the reputation of the U.S.A. here at home and among our friends throughout the world."

However, "Cynthia from California" noted that, "This new blog seems to be an effort at transparency, but given the U.S. State Department's warlike actions, I'm skeptical that this will actually encourage dialogue. I'm curious to know if this will be a two-way conversation, whether postings will reach people in positions of authority at the State Department. In other words, [will] the public's opinions and concerns be considered and [will] they will have any influence? [Will] the Bush Administration's viewpoint will be promoted here to the exclusion of independent and humane thinking and to the detriment of our country's standing in the world? [Is] this blog simply a PR tool for the Administration disguised as a dialogue? I'm not optimistic for a real exchange of ideas, but I hope I'm wrong."

Toth dresses like Elvis, sings an employment law rock 'n' roll anthem and asks interactive questions in what he claims is an effort to encourage companies to pay more attention to employment law.

"Don't get me wrong. I like attorneys. I am an attorney," Toth said. "It's just that I'd like to help companies avoid paying lots of money to attorneys unnecessarily."

The blog is designed to "make employment law fun and engaging, but educational at the same time," Toth said.

We hear all the time that Burning Man participants want to feel in touch with their Black Rock City "home" year round. Blogs provide an ideal medium to offer a timely touchstone, while keeping our community informed about the latest goings-on, tips, hints, and ideas.

Welcome to a new blog from Microsoft. The focus of this blog is likely to be a little different from most other blogs you'll see on blogs.msdn.com. Microsoft employs some of the best hackers in the world and actively recruits them and develops them. They work on all kinds of projects, whether it be in development, research, testing, management and of course security. Of course, there is controversy even in the word "hacker" but I don't think that should stop us from using it in the manner I think is the most appropriate. At his or her core, a true hacker is someone who is curious and wants to learn how systems work. This can and of course at Microsoft is done in an ethical, legal manner. We employ "white hat hackers" who spend their time pentesting and code reviewing applications and software looking for weaknesses and vulnerabilities so that others don't once we've released that code into the wild. We employ many many smart testers who know more about some of our software then perhaps the architects who designed it. We also employ some of the top researchers in their industry, dedicated people working on the bleeding edge of whats going to be common place in the next 5 or 10 years of computing. So yes, Microsoft does have hackers, and its time to introduce you to some of them and show you what it is, exactly that they do.

Our third major change is the launch of a brand new blog: Gadgets.boingboing.net. While Boing Boing has always covered personal technology, the four of us (Cory, David, Xeni, and I) believed a critical, intelligent, optimistic, and selective blog about personal technology and consumer electronics would be a fine addition to Boing Boing. But who could we trust to oversee a tech blog that the four of us would want to read? Actually, it wasn't hard to find that person. We went straight to Joel Johnson, a former Gizmodo editor and founder of Dethroner. Joel is smart, funny, knowledgeable, and curious about technology. He was our first, and unanimous, choice to run Gadgets.boingboing.net. And we're grateful he agreed to come on board.

Office Snapshots shows you the inside of the offices you care about. This will generally be from Web/Tech companies, and perhaps larger companies that people will be familiar with.

After the 14-hour plane ride from the Dominican Republic, it feels good to be on the ground again. I'm also delighted to be back in South Africa. It's been nine years since I was the first U.S. president ever to travel to this wonderful country. On that first visit, Hillary and I laid a brick at a women's center in Johannesburg, marking the beginning of my personal commitment to help rebuild a new South Africa. Since then, I've tried to return as often as I can. Almost a decade later, my Foundation carries on this commitment through its work here and throughout the continent, and I'm eager to see firsthand the progress we're helping to achieve.

Johannesburg is one of the cities partnering with my Clinton Climate Initiative to perform energy'saving renovations to their buildings. These simple, cost-effective measures, which we are working on in 16 cities around the world, will have a tremendous impact on lowering carbon emissions from urban areas while actually saving money for the buildings' owners and creating jobs.

Based on all the scientific evidence, it's impossible to deny that our planet is warming. Africa stands to suffer the most from global climate change, so it's only right that we partner with cities like Johannesburg to help them do their part to stop these alarming trends. By implementing eco-friendly policies and deploying green technologies, African countries have a remarkable opportunity to emerge as leaders in the fight against global warming.

Throughout our trip, my staff and I will be keeping an eye on what supporters like you are saying on our blog, so please share your thoughts with me. I look forward to reading your responses as soon as I have a chance. Until then, I hope you'll support my Foundation and the important work we have begun. It's a great day to be in Africa.

We are launching our latest blog - Earth2Tech, a site devoted to the business of clean technologies, its innovations and everything else. While there are many sites that help consumers live "greener," we are focusing our energies on the business of clean and green.

One part clean tech startup coverage - (a quick look at clean tech venture numbers shows the growing ranks of startups in hot areas like solar and biofuels); One part reviews of tech giant's eco-initiatives (is Google's carbon neutral initiative more marketing or responsible plan?); One part a resource page for entrepreneurs and Valley types looking for green tech [tools, rules, tips] - LBS meets ethanol?

It took a bit to convince Om to go GigaGreen - read his rendition here. But if investors and founders like Sunil Paul, and the oft-quoted John Doerr, and Vinod Khosla, are all aiming at energy over IT and the web, then he felt we're in pretty good company. It might be a bubble, even mainstream pubs like NPR and the Economist are now debating that fact. We're agnostic. As always, through bubble or boom we'll keep the same GigaOM skepticism on this new site.

I'm not denying that the thought that one of those bombs could have gone off, bringing Baghdad-style carnage to the streets of British cities, was playing in the back of my mind as well. As I suggested earlier, were that to happen, a blog, updating every 20 minutes or so, rather than a conventionally crafted news story, could well be the best way to do justice to such a disaster.

Thank God we haven't had to blog on that sort of news event. But we have launched "Making News" in an understated, sotto voce sort of way. It is, in that deathly phrase, something of "a work in progress". And, already, we've drawn some conclusions from the first few posts and made some changes.

For one thing, users shouldn't have to click to "read more". They should be able to read as much of the post as possible from the blog's home page. So brevity and minimum use of pictures, unless they actually enhance the story or there is relevant video to be embedded in the page, will be the order of the day.

From 1 pm - 5 pm EST, our bloggers will be at work, chatting about the action on the TV screens. Feeds will come in from around the world, and we'll throw some opinions out there. Who rocks harder, Foo Fighters or Fall Out Boy? Who has more stage presence, Madonna or Shakira? Figure it out and get back to us on Saturday.

The weblog, which is being run by Gamasutra and GameSetWatch writer Leigh Alexander, has been set up because "...the staff at Game Developer Research will be launching multiple reports on the state and future of online worlds over the next few months." Thus, the new blog will report on virtual worlds as the staff compiles information on this increasingly important market.

The importance of online worlds to the game industry is explained in a recent Gamasutra interview with Raph Koster, in which the MUD and MMO veteran notes:

"Consider the statistics. Webkinz, 2.5 million uniques in December; you buy a plush toy. Runescape: we still don't think of Runescape as being part of our industry, but it's probably the most popular MMO in the world, more popular than WoW. Toontown is up to more than 2.5 million uniques now. We never talk about Toontown because it's web deployed.

Then of course there’s was Club Penguin, with 4.5 million uniques in December alone...When you compare the numbers, all of those are larger than the number two MMO in the western world, every single one of them. So yeah, I think people are missing something."

The 18 bloggers were invited to join the CNET Blog Network to bring fresh perspectives; CNET will be adding more topics and bloggers in the coming months. These bloggers are expected to uphold the same journalism standards as the CNET editors, so users can expect the same level of editorial quality from contributors to the CNET Blog Network as they do from CNET editors. The Blog Network will comprise 14 new blogs, including:

Cellular Obsession - Popular talk-show host Ronn Owens from San Francisco's KGO Radio has talked so much to his listeners about the latest cell phones that it's become a passionate hobby. Owens offers his opinions on the latest phones with the CNET audience.

Design and Technology - Design enthusiast Jean Aw finds the most incredible things in the most unlikely of places and loves bringing them to the attention of her readers.

(parent.thesis) - Author of a book titled, "Mojo Mom", Amy Tiemann and her husband Michael Tiemann offer the latest news and musings about raising kids in today's hyper-connected, 24/7 world.

Sports Tech - As one of the founders of golf's leading fitness resource, the Titleist Performance Institute, Dave Phillips writes about technology's significant impact on golf today, and the sports gear that is giving today's players an inside edge to every game they play.

Additional blogs include: The open road with Matt Asay, a blog focusing on open source; The digital home with Don Reisinger; The Macalope, a blog focusing on Apple; Politics, Policy, and Technology with Donnie Fowler; Speeds and Feeds, with Kevin Krewell, Peter Glaskowsky, and Jim Handy; Green Tech, with Vinod Khosla, Neal Dikeman, and Martin Tobias; The Web Services Report with Harrison Hoffman; Music and Technology with Matt Rosoff; Media Sphere with Josh Wolf; and Searchlight: an SEO blog with Stephan Spencer. In addition to this original content, CNET plans to syndicate blog content from Marc Andreesen and Mark Cuban.

Instead of doing what everyone else has done and create a blog to leak music to people ahead of release dates illegally, I thought (largely since I work in the industry and people's lack of care or respect for the hard work artists and the people who put out records appals me) I'd create a little blog to post the names, indelible and set out for all to see, of those people who've been given the care of having an early copy of a release and have set that responsibility aside and leaked the record they were entrusted with.

I feel perhaps a bit vindictive doing this, but on the other hand, the lack of care brought to the table by the other parties whose names will be listed here is more than grossly inappropriate.

The guy has a point. It's not terrifically original, and it falls on the side of the greedy music industrialists and copyright law Nazis, and it assumes that mp3 bloggers are some sort of masked supervillains, but it is a point. And it's something to think about, especially if you're us, and you have the access (promos!) and the tools (Interneting!) to share these things: Why do you want to deliberately hurt the artist you love?

Maybe you're tired (read: jealous) of seeing flashy cars and expensive chains on videos, or you're familiar with the way major record labels throw around cash (read: make it rain). It's more likely you wanna hear more music, and you don't always have the dough.

PlayStation.Blog is a bit of work in progress, we see it as a place where we can share with you our company's collective insights, opinions and perspectives on all things related to SCEA, PlayStation and the industry we play in.

At the moment, we're thinking about sharing all sorts of things here, ranging from product news and title announcements to developer updates and industry opinion posts - all of which will come straight from the people here inside SCEA who are working, thinking and playing with this stuff every day. Look to the categories on the sidebar for some initial thoughts we have on future post themes.

Now, what we've learned, perhaps the hard way, is that a blog like this is really about you and the things you want to hear, share and discuss with us. With that in mind, you'll notice that comments are enabled - and encouraged - so tell us what you want to see here and we'll do our best to make it happen. And yes, like most blogs, we have a comment policy, please just keep this in mind when you're leaving a comment.

We imagine it may take us a short while to find our pace with this, but bear with us as we get underway and we promise we'll quickly make this blog a valuable stop in your daily info hunt for PlayStation news.