You may know him as Cyxymu, and apparently some of his views are a smidgen unpopular.

Facebook outages were not, as I speculated yesterday, the effects of Twitter overflow. In addition to Twitter and Facebook, LiveJournal, Blogger and YouTube were also drawn in to the effort to silence Cyxymu. Facebook’s chief security officer Max Kelly explained the motivation behind the attack to CNET:

“It was a simultaneous attack across a number of properties targeting him to keep his voice from being heard,” Kelly said. “We’re actively investigating the source of the attacks and we hope to be able to find out the individuals involved in the back end and to take action against them if we can.”

Kelly wouldn’t voice any suspicions on who was responsible for the attacks, but he did say this:

“You have to ask who would benefit the most from doing this and think about what those people are doing and the disregard for the rest of the users and the Internet.”

The New York Times wasn’t afraid to speculate.

Most computer security analysts did not cite a specific source of the attack on Twitter.

But Bill Woodcock, research director of the Packet Clearing House, a nonprofit technical organization that tracks Internet traffic, said the attack was an extension of the conflict between Russia and Georgia.

It was not clear who initiated the attack, Mr. Woodcock said, but it was likely that “one side put up propaganda, the other side figured this out and is attacking them.” He said he found evidence that the attacks had originated from the Abkhazia region, a territory on the Black Sea disputed between Russia and Georgia.

Everything’s back to normal at the affected sites, but with a Gawker/Consumerist attack also originating out of Eastern Europe earlier this week, let’s hope it doesn’t become the new hotness.

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Related posts:

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2. Why Facebook May Already Be Killing Twitter
3. Twitter hit with DDoS attack, Facebook slow, people forced to talk to those around them

Zemanta is a Slovenian blogging tool that automatically suggests contextual photos and links for any post.

Webware describes Zemanta as “a brilliant product for lazy or otherwise time-focused bloggers” and it’s a fair description. The tool is offered either as a plugin for hosted blogs (WordPress and MovableType), as a browser extension (IE and Firefox) or with hosted platforms including WordPress, Blogger, TypePad and LiveJournal.

Image by Roebot via Flickr.

The video above walks through what it looks like on a Blogger blog, on a WordPress hosted blog I’m currently seeing a Zemanta box directly below the publish options on the right hand side. The plugin updates every 300 characters automatically, offering a gallery of context and legal pictures I can use on the this post. Below is a list of contextual articles I can place in the post at any time. Below the WordPress post box is a box labeled “links” with suggestions for links that can be inserted into the post base on words in it, for example with this post it’s showing Firefox, LiveJournal, WordPress, Zemanta and others. The tag box also gets contextual suggestions as well.

I’ve only just installed it, and have really got to give it a more serious workout, but my first thoughts: this is a really useful tool and I can see myself using it and even recommending it to others. Not having to dig around for pics (well at least less often), less stuffing around with link insertion, tag reminders, even related articles. My only two negatives: what are they getting out of this (where’s the catch) and secondly, it insists on inserting a Zemanta button at the bottom of every post every time you hit a button, so if you’re half way through you’ve then got to deal with code stuck directly after your last word. It’s easy to delete it prior to posting and ultimately it’s only a small annoyance.

Example of a contextual link below, the Zemanta button that the tool auto inserted, and the laptop picture above from their gallery suggestions.

Related posts:

1. Zemanta adds four platforms, tweaks Reblog service
2. New Word On Firefox 3 Add-Ons
3. Outbrain gets a revenue model, and it’s rather clever