So is this going to be like TWiT?  TWiB?  Film it in the new brickhouse studios!

Don't forget FeedZeBirds.com launched!  https://bt.irlbtc.com/view/52638.0
Also featured interview on The Bitcoin Show 052:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuLAhZsFc1A&feature=youtu.be

Which member?

You are correct, BT. At the moment, nobody has stepped forward stating that they would do it, even temperately. I was going to draft (ask) someone(s) to do it, or suggest someone. This is just as good of a time as any. Going to do it on now on the appropriate thread.

What notary trick are you in reference to, BT? I've reread the post and it still eludes me. Call me Ishmael dumb!

  I'm way overdue to go read the whole thread. Sadly, I overlooked it assuming the title was in reference to 100 websites, or some such and did not note the author at the time..

  That said, I am assuming the concept is to be able to present to the organization(s) in a more structered manner. With the donations going through a figurehead, if you will, it allows them the controlled situation to be able to discuss with the entitities on what exactly the goal is. Verses a bunch of people randomly 'spamming' emails to them to accept bitcoin. It's just a more professional approach, imho.

  On topic, very awesome list of news. I had not seen much of any of them at all!

  Cheers

The one where the blockchain can be used to unambiguously timestamp documents, up to about 2 hour precision, without really bloating the blockchain. https://bt.irlbtc.com/view/52715.0

LoveBitcoins.org BTC Intro site announces 1,000,000 new users in 2012 goal

Sources: http://lovebitcoins.org/
https://bt.irlbtc.com/view/53680.0

This week, LoveBitcoins.org was announced as a new partnership between Bit-Pay, a POS merchant services provider, and Max Keiser, of RT's Keiser Report.  It is a well designed introduction to Bitcoin focusing on helping new users choosing the right wallet services for their technical abilities.  Might be a good first place to send your friends when they ask where to learn more about Bitcoin.

Twitter Astroturfing with Bitcoin - FeedZeBirds.com

Sources: http://feedzebirds.com/
https://bt.irlbtc.com/view/52638.0

FeedZeBirds is a service where advertisers can set a price and deposit funds to start a "campaign". Twitter users can register an account and get paid, in bitcoin, for each campaign they retweet.  Tweeters are paid proportionally to the number of followers they have. So far 22 tweets have been made by 11 different users.  The top paying campaign currently offers 0.09BTC per tweet per 1000 followers. Today, you can earn about 0.5 BTC per 1000 followers if you tweet all of the offered campaigns, including countercultural messages, bitcoin services, and a chance to win a free AK-47.

Falkvinge named 98 in ForeignPolicy magazine's Top 100 Global Thinkers, citing Bitcoin Evangelism

Sources: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/11/28/the_fp_top_100_global_thinkers?page=0,51#thinker98
http://falkvinge.net/2011/05/29/why-im-putting-all-my-savings-into-bitcoin/

Congratulations! When Bitcoin prices surged up to $30, Richard Falkvinge wrote a series of eloquent posts describing the opportunities and advantages of Bitcoin.  Falkvinge founded of the Swedish Pirate Party movement in 2006 and maintains an active news and editorial blog discussing information policy, technology, and piracy. Foreign Policy magazine's credibility is among the highest rated by influential leaders across government, corporate, and academic sectors.

 New Services:

-Operation Fabulous is a Bitcoin denominated web-advertising platform -http://operationfabulous.com/

-CoinConnect is a Bitcoin Social Network for making friends and sharing links -http://www.coinconnect.org/

-BitcoinsForChristmas emails Bitcoin at a future date, Christmas-themed - http://bitcoinsforchristmas.com/

-TheBitcoinList is a directory of bitcoin services in a variety of categories - http://www.thebitcoinlist.com/

- BTCinstant lets you pay for virtual credit cards with Bitcoin - http://www.btcinstant.com/

 

Note: Coinlab has not tested all of the above services, and noting them does not imply endorsement
 
Special thanks to bitcointalk members julz and evoorhees for suggesting stories.

Permalink: http://www.coinlab.com/2011/12/this-week-in-bitcoin-lovebitcoins-feedzebirds-falkvinge/

My understanding is that it was published in a magazine then republished online.

http://coinlab.com/2012/01/deposit-cards-the-good-wife-vending-machine/

Bit-Pay Announces Deposit Cards

Source : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UmynaPg8hw, https://bt.irlbtc.com/view/57303.0;topicseen

Bit-Pay's new service, Deposit Cards, allow non-technical BitCoin beginners to accept BTC without ever handling it themselves.  Bit-Pay is offering wallet or key-chain sized cards which include your name, a picture, and a QR-code for a bitcoin address.  Whenever Bitcoins are sent to this address, Bit-Pay automatically changes them into USD and sends a text message to the recipient with the USD value that was just deposited.  The following day, the funds are directly deposited into the recipient's bank account.  They have also launched PimpCoin.com, an identical service, branded as a way for strippers to accept bitcoin tips.  Bit-Pay is also selling Bitcoins from their booth at CES this week.

BitcoinBeta's 2011 Bitcoin Awards Results In

Source: http://bitcoinawards.bitcoinbetas.com/

Bitcoin Betas recently announced the winners of their community-voted awards for the year.  Special congratulations to Gavin Andresen (won Person, Developer of the Year), Bit-Pay (Company, Start-Up, Merchant Services of the year) and Casascius (Most Interesting Bitcoin Project)!

Armory - A Seriously Promising Client

Source: https://bt.irlbtc.com/view/56424.0

Armory is a new alternative to the official client that incorporates a huge number of feature requests from the community.  Features include: Multiple wallets, deterministic wallets, paper wallets, Read-only wallets, stronger encryption, corruption and error correction, batch importing of addresses, offline transaction creation, zero-confirmtion transactions, private key accessibility and more.  Currently for Windows and Linux.  The project is still young however, so it may not be stable, and it still has some bugs, such as needing to load the entire blockchain into memory and needing to run the Satoshi client simultaneously.  Could Armory overtake the Official client?

Bitcoins to be featured in CBS's The Good Wife on Jan 15th

Source: http://bitcoinmedia.com/the-good-wife-bitcoin-for-dummies-promo/

The show synopsis indicates that this episode will be about the protagonist legal team defending the lawyer representing the mysterious creator of Bitcoin.  Though it seems the show will likely be alarmist, making Bitcoins seem shady, the general consensus of the Bitcoin community is, "All PR is good PR", for now.  Tune in this Sunday to see it for yourself.

Bitcoin Vending Machine Developed

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDOcLros-w0

Stuart W. Card of Critical Technologies Inc. announced the first ever Bitcoin Vending Machine transaction.  While leaving plenty of room for improvement, Card has made a functional vending machine which lets customers buy snacks using a wallet on a smartphone which can read QR-codes.  The process is still somewhat cumbersome, but we look forward further innovation in this space.

A Visual History of Bitcoin Development

Source: http://codinginmysleep.com/2012/01/bitcoin-development-history-visually/

Using Gource, a development history visualizer, the Coding In My Sleep blog has created a video which shows how the Bitcoin codebase has grown and changed over the past three years.  Very cool!

Pay to Script is up for vote

Source: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0016

Bitcoin Core Developer Gavin Andresen implemented a pay-to-script-hash solution this week, and put it out for vote to BitCoin miners. The proposal is named "BIP0016". It adds significant functionality to the Bitcoin block chain by allowing users to send coins to a script, the script to be executed later.
In a simple form, the script might validate any two out of three possible signatures on a 'send' request to a new address, providing an escrow service enforced by the blockchain. UI for functionality like this is some time out; many months at the least.
Especially of note  is that Gavin asked miners who agreed with the proposal to add the string "P2SH" in blocks they mine; he will count blocks mined during January to determine how the BitCoin mining community 'votes' on this issue. This is an interesting and novel development in BitCoin governance, and we look forward to seeing how this 'voting' mechanism evolves.