The Washington Post reports that an Iranian judge has sentenced a blogger to 19 years in prison for…well…blogging. Iranian-Canadian citizen Hossein Derakhshan, who wrote his blog from Canada, appears to have been nabbed following a trip visiting Israel, charged officially with cooperation with hostile countries.

The Department of State’s official blog turned three this past weekend.

Alec J. Ross, special assistant for innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, told a rapt audience this week that he typically uses RSS feeds and news digests prepared by erstwhile State public affairs staffers to keep abreast of breaking news on the road. But when he’s been away from his desk, or not connected while riding his daily MARC train from Baltimore to Washington, D.C., he jumps on Twitter feeds. That’s the fastest way to get news bites.

Last week’s four-hour outage of social media behemoth, Facebook, caused global pandemonium across the social media universe. Fans were left with a sense of loneliness and despair of not knowing what their friends and colleagues were thinking, where they were going for coffee, what was happening around the world, or what their latest political thoughts were.

Throughout this blog and the industry, the power of tweeting has been debated many times over. But, who would have imagined that this power translates even when one decides to no longer tweet?

GA is just returning from World Satellite Business Week and the Earth Orbit meetings in Paris, and we’ve learned that geospatial intelligence and orbital imaging is really a geopolitical issue. While countries talk cooperation, make no mistake that the space satellite business is highly focused and highly competitive.

BP this week released its internal investigation into the April 20 accident on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Will anyone care? Well, yes and no.

Bravo to FOX News for their decision to not cover the planned Quran burning that may still be set for tomorrow. “We do not cover every flag burning that happens in this country. We don’t run every hostage tape,” Fox News exec Michael Clemente told the Baltimore Sun. Pastor Jones and his outrageous plans, nonetheless, have stirred rage worldwide as he has received endless cable news coverage all week.

As citizens, we know it is our civic duty to learn the issues, study the candidates, vote! But too often, it seems folks are taking sides just spoiling for the fight. Recent political and spiritual rallies in Washington have remained peaceful and we are glad of that. But it seems our ability to debate, respect opposing views, compromise and come-through with a democratic process has been under siege.

As the hottest summer on record in Washington, D.C., quickly comes to a close, it’s interesting to note that this wind-down isn’t unique to the weather. As communications and media professionals across the city can attest, job openings in the traditional media sector are also winding down. Who hasn’t seen the cuts across all aspects of the traditional media business?