 | | | | | |
|
| |
The charitable streak in bloggers is well documented. In the past we’ve seen blogs used for social causes ranging from spreading democracy to local libraries. The annual Blogathon represents that social consciousness, concentrated into 24 hours.
On July 26-27, hundreds of participants in Blogathon 2003 will blog for 24 hours straight to raise money through sponsors for charities they’ve selected.
I had planned to hold off on posting about the Blogathon until I could
report on the blogging itself, but today almost every blog I looked at, from
Best of Blogs nominations to my regular reads to searches for blogs in the path of Hurricane Claudette (good luck down there!), had some mention of Blogathon 2003, either as a participant or a sponsor. The site says there are (at the moment) 396 participants, which makes it almost twice as large as last year’s event.
If there are readers out there who haven’t noticed the Blogathon buttons spread all over the place, it probably does more good for me to mention it now than to wait for the “thonning” to be over.
Here’s a letter from one participant:
Name: Daphne Santiago
Hometown: Manassas, VA
Hello!
Don’t forget that the Blogathon (started by Cat Connor) is coming up soon - it’s the biggest blogging “party” of the year and all in the name of charity (my site, Villa Santiago, will be blogging for our local chapter of the American Red Cross).
It would be wonderful if you were to mention it - the URL is Blogathon.org and the “short press release” is:
July 26-27, 2003 — Wake up early and stay up late with the third annual
Blogathon! Founded in 2001 by Portland, Oregon resident Cat Connor, Blogathon
is a revolutionary Internet charity drive where sponsors pledge money based
on how long they think the participants can last in an all-day, all-night,
website updating marathon.
With last year’s event drawing over two hundred websites and more
than $50,000 in donations, Blogathon keeps readers riveted with entries from
its many writers, all of whom are raising money for their own individual
charities. Entries range from the personal to the hilarious to the downright
exhausted, with some people posting serialized novellas, telling a retrospective
biography via photograph, or even streaming their own live radio broadcasts
to garner attention and more sponsor dollars!
See http://blogathon.org for a guide to the action during the event. Please direct further inquiries to questions-at-blogathon.org.
What other good works have you seen performed using Weblogs?
From the presidential campaign of Howard Dean to Blogathon 2003, is the Internet changing the face of fundraising? Share your thoughts and links.
Name: Tom
Hometown: Phoenix, AZ
I think in some regards blogs are similar to CB radios. They’re a
trend, and a lot of people have jumped on that trend just to be a part of
something. We’ll see most of these people drop right back out of it as soon
as the thrill of it wears off - I’ve seen it happen quite a few times already.
But there are a good number of people out there for whom blogs are a tool
with which to communicate in ways they may not have been able to before.
I think I probably fall into that category, as I really don’t use my site
as a means by which I point out funny, interesting, or obscure links but
simply as an outlet for my need to write (it’s at Unproductivity.com
in case you’d like to see it.) Blogging will follow the bell-curve of all
trends eventually, and right now we’re on that peak or maybe slightly on
the down-side of it. When it slides down to where it was before, it’ll go
back to being the rich, personal, and rewarding environment - which is what
attracted so many to it in the first place.
Name: Jeffrey
Hometown: Jacksonville
Response to CB/blog comparison:
Weblogging will reach its peak very soon, simply because there are
only so many people who want to post their thoughts for the entire world
to read. But the CB comparison is not accurate, because there are many bloggers
out there who are providing truly useful and interesting information. Good
writing will survive.
Name: Sean
Hometown: Seattle
Howdy,
While I think blogs are a little more exciting than CB radio, I’m
curious what the big “deal” is considering it’s really just another term
for publishing web pages.
Name: Pam
Hometown: Austin, Texas
Both CB radio and blogging are human attempts to counter a solitary
existence. Humans are a social species, and suffer when made to live alone.
Thus, we constantly fight against anything that forces us into that role.
CB’s were created and rose to popularity at a time when the rise of the suburbs
coupled with increased wealth meant that people spent more time alone in
cars. CB radio was a way to counter that. Blogs have come about at a time
when the Internet has made human interaction a background activity for almost
all of the necessities of life. Communication is by e-mail, shopping is done
in your underwear at three in the morning in front of a hypnotically glowing
computer screen. SO the blog was born. “Hear me! I exist!” shouts the blog.
Name: Cindy
Hometown: Dallas
I ran a bulletin board back in the 1980’s in Southern California.
It was a community like you see gathering around Weblogs today. I had message
boards, forums, shareware to download and friends I linked to. Ahhh, the
good old days.
I say the Weblog of today is more akin to the BBS of the 1980’s.
Share your thoughts and links.
Since we do occasionally receive some grumpy mail, and this fellow
hadn’t bothered to sign his name or e-mail address to the comments, first
instincts were to ignore him. But then I spotted a post from tech blogger
Doc Searls entitled, “As if we didn’t need to sound more like CB radio.”
Doc’s entry is about blog slang and the number of terms that have been coined,
particularly using the “bl” prefix, but it reminded me of another instance
in which David Glenn asked in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “Is this a revolution in academic discourse, or is it CB radio?”
A quick look around revealed that blog/CB comparisons are not rare at all. Rebecca Mead’s November 2000 New Yorker article ”You’ve Got Blog” called blogs “the CB radio of the Dave Eggers generation. (via Caslon Analytics)
The analogy is used to illustrate many things, but most of the comparisons draw parallels between the meteoric rise in popularity of CB radios and the relatively sudden and bright spotlight on Weblogs, and anticipate a corrupting sell-out and subsequent crash in popularity for Weblogs as happened to CB culture.
There can be no doubt that Weblogs are breaking into mainstream consciousness.
Some have even cited MSNBC.com’s attention to Weblogs as the beginning of
the end of blogs’ underground status. So given the Web’s inherent counterculture
leanings, it shouldn’t be surprising that we’re seeing a backlash (link contains adult language) against Weblogs and the Internet as a whole.
Weblog popularity is only increasing. Recently the Google search engine
added a “blog this” feature in the latest version of its popular toolbar, and it was recently announced that AOL has created blogware, and mainstream mainstay Dear Abby has answered a blogging question. (via Megnut)
The question now is what determines whether popularity solidifies
a trend or destroys it -and are those the only two choices? Are there CB
radio buffs who are smug about their contribution to the wireless communication
revolution we’re currently experiencing? Are Weblogs not an end but means
to some larger goal like the democratization of the media or the supplanting
of government as spokesman for the citizenry?
Are Weblogs the new CB or the new newspaper or something else entirely?
July 7, 2003 / 12:22 PM ET
WHAT’S A WIKI?
If you’re interested in online communities and staying abreast of
developments in the field, you’re likely already familiar with blogger Ross Mayfield.
Mayfield is one of my regular reads as a barometer of what the smart people
are thinking about. I don’t always understand what he’s saying, but I’m always
confident that if he’s talking about it, I should try to pay attention to
it if I want to know what’s going on. So when he mentioned a form of online
community called “Wiki” I paid attention, and I was particularly thankful when he pointed out a helpful primer on the subject from McGee’s Musings.
At first a Wiki (named for “wiki wiki,” Hawaiian for quick) seemed
to me to be like a metablog without the handy linear organization. But seeing
it that way misses the point, which is collaboration. Jim McGee compares
it to a whiteboard, which is apt given that a lot of people are using them
in conjunction with group projects at work. The analogy that speaks a little
more clearly to me, however is the barn raising comparison made on the Meatball Wiki.
The idea is that a group of people can all work on a project or problem or
idea together on the same page. Unlike metablogs, such as Metafilter or Fark
in which someone posts a focus piece and everyone else’s comments follow
in a nice neat row, with Wikis everyone contributes to the focus itself.
If this post were part of a Wiki, everyone reading it could make edits
and adjustment and additions to the post. There could also be comments and
questions and tangential discussions. The result would be (ideally) a fuller,
more accurate explanation of a Wiki from which all of the participants learn
from being part of the process.
It’s not hard to imagine how such a forum being completely open to
the public could turn into a real mess, which is why Wikis seem to be primarily
tools for smaller, contained groups like business work groups. For an actual
real world example of a public Wiki that is working, Clay Shirky offers a
helpful description of how the Wiki format has been useful to the Echo Project, the drafting of a new common standard for Weblog syndication.
Of the public Wikis, Wikipedia, a “project to create a complete and accurate open content encyclopedia” is probably the most often cited.
Naturally, the Web has already produced variations on the Wiki theme. The Fotowiki is a fun idea with potential that’s easy to imagine.
Share your thoughts and links.
July 1, 2003 / 10:31 PM ET
HOW WILL WE HATE?
New York Times op-ed columnist Tom Friedman set the blogosphere abuzz with his column on Sunday,
a discussion of the global reach of the Internet. One of the people he quotes
says that the all-knowing-ness of the Google search engine, combined with
the omnipresence of wireless internet access (WiFi) is “a little bit like
God.”
Once the cheers and applause from the fans of
the Internet die down, Friedman goes on to make the point that if and when
everyone in the world has ready access to the Internet, enemies of the United
States will have an easier time recruiting like-minded people to the cause
of anti-Americanism. In essence, the Internet will help them hate us more
effectively.
His advice to America is to be more attentive (though not necessarily
more accommodating) because hatred around the world will matter more when
the Internet is able to serve as an organizing tool.
While the point is well taken that the Web is often able to rally people effectively — the global protests against the Iraq war being one good example, the success (so far) of the Howard Dean presidential campaign being another — equally important is the diversity of voices the Web allows.
Of course, what I’m talking about is the arguably already global phenomenon
of Weblogs, but more specificially I’m thinking of the subversive nature
of Weblogs. No one can argue that there are no hateful Weblogs, and they
probably do attract other hateful people as Friedman describes. What I wonder
though, is how the questioning and analytical style of Weblogs will affect
how hate is directed and what it’s directed at.
Will a person tapped into the Internet hate America if they’re learning
about Americans they don’t hate? Will they learn to focus their hate on specific
Americans? Will corporations, politicians, or other power-holders become
more of a target and countries less so?
The answer may be that nothing changes at all. New information may
not change anyone’s mind. To this day I don’t understand how the Sept. 11
hijackers visited New York City, saw what a wonderful place it is, and still
sought to destroy it. It may turn out that the broadening of access to the
Internet results in nothing more than a greater number of benign searches
for “sex, God, jobs, and ... professional wrestling” (Friedman learns during
a visit to Google’s offices that these are among the most searched subjects
in the world) and hatred will be conducted as it always has.
As people gather their own information and make up their own minds
about things, we might expect new borders to be drawn, and they won’t be
geographic.
When the Web goes literally “world wide,” how will we hate?
July 1, 2003 / 11:20 AM ET
A NEW ADDITION
A few bloggers noticed last week the mention in the L.A. Times that NBC News has been putting together a new politics weblog.
The blog, First Read, launches today.
The editor writes, “Today NBC News and MSNBC.com launch “First Read,”
a daily memo prepared by NBC News’ political unit, analyzing the morning’s
political news and giving MSNBC.com readers an inside look at NBC’s plans
for covering the day in politics.”
Go check it out!
June 25, 2003 / 2:47 PM ET
BLOGS SAVE
I probably shouldn’t have been surprised but it did catch me off-guard
to receive a small amount of anti-Harry Potter mail in response to last week’s
highlight of Harry Potter blogs.
Gerald from Ohio warned, “Beware of Harry Potter books. It may look
fun and popular but it’s very dangerous to get involved with. It is anti-God,
anti-love, and leads to destruction in the long run.”
Several anonymous comments were submitted saying something similar
to, “Harry Potter should not be released anywhere in the world. It is witchcraft
and does not belong in the laps of children or anyone for that matter.”
Born-Again in Rockford said, “I pray for the innocent children of
this world being corrupted by the teachings of Harry Potter’s movies and
those like it.” He compared to the Potter following to “sheep being led to
slaughter” and added, “I pray your eyes and ears are opened before it is
too late.”
While I certainly don’t want to be guilty of hyping this angle of the story, it is a good opportunity to take a look at Weblogs being used to debate an issue other than justifications of the war in Iraq.
Past “Best of” blog, Blogs 4 God has compiled an extremely helpful collection
of Christian blog commentary on the matter. I say it’s helpful because to
be honest, none of my regular blog reading includes religion or religious
blogs, so I would have been hunting in the dark trying to come up with a
similar list myself.
Perspectives I found interesting ranged from La Sabot’s,
“If your child’s grasp of Christianity is so tenuous that Harry Potter can
turn him to the dark side, then you have failed in your covenant duties as
a parent,” to Junkyard Blog’s exploration
of the attempts to draw parallels between Harry Potter and Jesus Christ —
something blogger Chris Regan is not a fan of, by the way.
The Mighty Barrister also doesn’t appreciate efforts to find Christianity in the Potter books:
“How could it not have Christian imagery? First, Christianity has
defined who we are for 2000 years. Second, if de debbil wants to tempt you,
you think he’ll do it with something spectacularly evil-looking, like bizarre
pr0n or human sacrifice? No, he’ll create a world you know, one in which
you will feel comfortable enough to drop your guard.”
Regardless of whether you feel you have a spiritual stake in the Harry
Potter series, blogs have demonstrated once again the ability to present
broad coverage of an issue and include a variety of perspectives, from the
pedestrian to the scholarly.
Share your thoughts and links.
June 24, 2003 / 7:03 PM ET
BLOG DAYS OF SUMMER
What do you call it when your brain can’t quite find the blog groove?
What is it when you go through your daily blog reads and don’t come away
with inspiration for an entry of your own? Whether it’s the blog-burnout
or just simply the nice summer weather, Steve Covell calls it the Blahgs.
June 20, 2003 / 7:12 PM ET
BEST OF THE BLOGS
Today is a good day to update the boxes on the right with another
Best of Blogs post. For those not familiar with the practice, Best of Blogs
is a list we make periodically of reader-recommended blogs.
Steve from Queens, N.Y., was a little frustrated with my choice of sports bloggers:
“Basketball blogs by nine-year olds? How about a hockey blog by a 27-year-old? Cool, right?”
Steve in Boston offers, “Hot Girls, Cold Beer, Fresh Links!” at his Off on a Tangent blog. My visit there was for mostly the latter, but that’s good enough for the Best of Blogs list.
Greg Ransom writes from Ladera Ranch to recommend his Presto Pundit
blog with “coverage of money, trade cycle and economic theory, politics and
philosophy, academia, etc., and coverage of F. A. Hayek, the Nobel prize
winner.”
Mary in San Diego explains that The Future of Real Estate is a real estate blog that connections to GrowABrain.net.
David in Tel Aviv says, “‘The Future of Real Estate’ is the first
real estate blog that I’ve found. It sounds boring, but is not. They are
using it for linkage to everything unusual that happens.” For me it’s the
eighth real estate blog I’ve found because I happened to have stumbled upon
a whole list of them earlier this week.
Adam from Downingtown, Penn., (although he apparently blogs from China) describes Gecko Blue
as having a “particular sarcastic style and treatment of issues that’s unique.”
He adds that the author is using gambling $200 a week to stay motivated about
weight loss. If the weight loss quota isn’t met each week, the first reader
to post a comment wins the money.
Speaking of gambling, Boomshock
has been keeping track of the poker hands that can be made with the most-wanted-Iraqis
playing cards — including the recent addition of the Ace of Diamonds. When he’s not counting cards, he’s blogging about politics and his hometown Dodgers.
The Sarcastic Journalist
from Anytown, USA, asks, “Can I add myself? I’m the sarcastic journalist...though
I’m not always sarcastic. Maybe I should be the lying journalist — oh wait..there
is no distinction needed there!” This blogger is a nice foil to the images
we are so often presented with by media conspiracists of corporate moguls
plotting editorial strategy.
Joan in San Diego wrote in a nice story:
“I met my boyfriend through blogging, believe it or not. We both read QuinnMacDonald.com
and would leave comments. Somehow, we started a casual flirtation, an exchange
of witty banter, and began to visit each other’s sites. Comments turned into
e-mails. E-mails led to chats. Eventually we decided we had to meet.
Here we are, six or seven months later, cohabitating.”
If that’s not a recommendation for QuinnMacDonald.com I don’t know what is.
Lisa Firke in Wallingford, Conn., highlights a quote blog called ”If...” This is the first I’ve seen of its kind, and the layout is novel as well.
Earlier this month, Cindy from Dallas advised, “You really should check out the latest craze in the blogsphere, Blogshares.
It lets you buy and sell stock in blogs. Even though I may never be a real
life millionaire, I am one in the virtual blog world.”
Even if you don’t play, Blogshares is a nice resource for finding new blogs, so I’ll add it to the Weblog indexes list.
Speaking of Weblog indexes, N.Z. Bear has a New Weblog Showcase that’s fun to click through — especially if you’re feeling stuck in an A-list rut.
Colleague Jonathan Dube’s Cyberjournalist.net scored an enviable spot dead center on the blogs-of-influence chart in a recent article by Mark Glaser. This reminds me that his list of cyberjournalists is glaringly absent from our list of Weblog lists.
Blogarama is another list of lists I came upon recently while checking out a blog stat tool called Blog Patrol.
Also going on the resources list this time around is blogware called Easyjournal.
A reader named TJ writes, “My friends and I use that because it’s really
easy for anyone to get started and you don’t need any software or stuff like
that. Anyone can do it and one of my friend’s Grandma even uses it.”
Wrapping things up this week, Huge from Dallas wrote in to say, “Just
wanted to let you know about a service I’m developing: Voice Monkey. It lets you add audio messages to blogs, websites, and email using your telephone.”
What blogs do you recommend?
June 19, 2003 / 5:44 PM ET
HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE BLOG
Unless you’ve been living in a cupboard, you know that author J.K.
Rowling will be releasing the fifth book in the Harry Potter series this
weekend, and she has been kicking up quite a cloud of media hype
in the course of doing so. I can’t be too cynical, though. I already own
the first four and will likely add “Order of the Phoenix” to the collection
before Monday.
So it is in the spirit of joining instead of fighting that I share this letter from Charlotte in Boca Raton, Fla.:
“I am a huge Harry Potter fan. (Almost obsessive, not quite). But
I’d like to point out that in the Cyber-Harry Potter world of fandom, there
are some really great blogs. Now there are absolutely hundreds, but some
of my favorite sites are DarkMark.com, The-Leaky-Cauldron.org, Mugglenet.com, and The Harry Potter Lexicon. The world of Harry Potter blogging is huge. It is my suggestion you simply take a look.”
As much as I’d love to slog through the lists and Webrings, Charlotte’s recommendations have brought me to my saturation point.
There are so many spoilers out there; blogspotters who want to find
out what happens next in the Potter saga at their own pace will want to click
with care.
Share your thoughts and links.
June 18, 2003 / 6:32 PM ET
AZADI, ARAK, ESHGH! *
* (translation)
In July 1999, students across Iran participated in the largest anti-government demonstrations
that country had seen since the Islamic revolution in 1979 that resulted
in the overthrow of the Shah. The students were protesting againt Iran’s
spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameni, and other hard-line clerics, in favor of freedom and democracy. The protests were brutally repressed.
The July 9, 1999, anniversary of the student uprising has been commemorated to varying degrees in the years since.
With the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, Iranian officials have recently tried to crack down
on potential dissidents who might take inspiration from the newly “freed”
Iraqis. This has not escaped the notice or criticism of as many as 20,000 Iranian bloggers worldwide.
Increasingly, American bloggers (and their government) are supporting the idea of a free Iranian society. With the July 9 anniversary approaching, Iranian students are again fomenting protest, and blogging icon Andrew Sullivan has proposed that bloggers rally in solidarity:
“Many people have theorized about the power of the web to bring about
change and the young generation in Iran must know this as well as any group
of people. So let’s try and use it - if only to send a symbol of solidarity
with those resisting the theo-fascists who have wrecked Iran for three generations.”
Already many steps ahead of the plan, blog ambassador Jeff Jarvis has been working with Hossein ”Hoder”
Derakhshan, an Iranian expatriate blogging in Toronto, to help guide readers
to English-language Iranian blogs or find translations of the ones in Farsi.
Jarvis has shared a list of some of his favorite Iranian blogs.
Share your thoughts and links.
June 16, 2003 / 6:32 PM ET
WHO CARES ANYWAY?
Of what real importance is Google ranking
to bloggers? Since almost everyone who blogs does so as a hobby, isn’t it
really just a fun challenge and entertaining diversion to see how one stacks
up in various searches? That certainly seems like sound reasoning, but I
noticed something recently that made me realize that in some cases there
is more at stake than bragging rights.
Earlier this spring, Eugene Volokh of the Volokh Conspiracy blog answered a reader’s query about how to promote a Weblog to attract more viewers. Volokh’s answer and subsequent follow-up drew a lot of attention, and rightfully so as he was offering good advice.
More recently, another set of helpful hints — this time appealing
to bloggers with a different motivation — rose in popularity on the Blogdex list.
Jared Blank wrote a piece for ClickZ to answer the question, “What if you built a Blog and No One Came?” The article appeared to be intended at least in part to promote last week’s ClickZ Weblog Business Strategies 2003 Conference & Expo. Among Blank’s suggestions is the purchasing of Google keywords to improve search ranking.
At the same time that the Blank article was published, LLRX (Law Library Resource Xchange) posted an item by lawyer Jerry Lawson in which he pointed out the relative success of the Ernie the Attorney
blog. “How would you like to have a web site that is more popular than those
from the best law firms in the country?” he asks in his opening.
So it’s clear that blogs are making ripples beyond amateur punditry
and media criticism. A blog’s Google ranking can be more than a popularity
contest; it can be a marketing advantage. The Weblog Business Strategies
conference may be the first of its kind (or so the promotional literature
claims, even though the idea is not new), but I don’t imagine it will be the last.
THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD?
There’s certainly nothing wrong with professionals blogging, or Business
Blogs (B-Blogs), or making money/drawing business from one’s blog. But I
wonder if Weblogs are doomed to follow in the footsteps of the mainstream
media so many of them were created to counter. No one claims that Weblogs
are objective, but it is generally understood that a blog’s biases run no
deeper than the personal opinions of the blogger. Common wisdom in the blogosphere
holds that the individual blogger is more trustworthy than the mainstream
media outlet because he/she is beholden to no one — no advertisers, no corporate
underwriters, no hidden agenda, no editorial politics. As the profile of
blogs increases, along with traffic, and more people realize the business
(and political) potential of the movement, will blogs be able to retain their
status as an antidote to mainstream media? Or will they become lumped in
as “agenda media”?
NOTES ON NOTES
Since I was on a completely unplugged vacation
last week, I’m trying to catch up on what I missed in the blogosphere and
particularly what the feedback was on the Weblog Business strategies conference
mentioned above. Finding information on the conference is exceedingly easy
as, by many accounts, it was the most live-blogged conference ever.
I followed the notes of Timothy Appnel to conference blogging star Denise Howell.
And pretty much everyone is pointing to the super-human feat by Heath Row
to transcribe almost every word of almost every conference in his blog. Those entries are helpfully organized by Vince Mease.
A few years ago, one of the ideas we had in mind for news chat
was that people could report the news in the chat room from their location.
Obviously, chat-reported news couldn’t really be counted on to be credible,
but taken as a whole volunteer reports from the scene of news are worthwhile.
Due for the most part to limitations in the medium, chat news reporting never
got much farther than describing local natural disasters — although we did
have the unique situation of my reporting in chat live from the World Trade
Center on Sept. 11.
Blogs have already proven to be an excellent source of regional journalism, from reporting in the path of hurricanes to regional perspectives on terrorism and the panic over SARS.
The fact that so many people were ready to keep such a detailed record of
the conference, and the wireless technology they used to do it, bodes well
for the future of amateur news reporting.
Share your thoughts and links.
June 6, 2003 / 1:30 PM ET
BASKETBALL DIARIES
or
I HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE AND IT IS BLOGGING
For those non-sports fans out there who may not be aware, we are presently in the midst of the NBA basketball finals.
So it is with pleasure that I relay a note from Alex in St. Petersburg,
Florida: “Basketball - I ... love that sport. I share my opinions about the
NBA with you. Come check out my site!”
Before the the blognost
seizes upon my ellipsis and slams me with a Dowdian fact-checking, let me
reveal that what I left out was that Alex is nine years old.
How does a nine-year-old come to blogging?
Alex answers, “I have lots to say about basketball and when my mom
learned about blogging she thought it would a good place for me to write
about [my] favorite sport. I type the blogs sometimes or dictate them to
my mom. Then we read over and edit them so I make sure the spelling and grammar
is right.”
Way to go Mom. It will be interseting to see what the future holds for the Weblog generation.
June 3, 2003 / 8:57 PM ET
THE SCIENCE OF NAVEL-GAZING
It is not uncommon for bloggers to be accused of excessive navel-gazing, but John Walkenbach, the man responsible for the Nigerian E-mail Conference parody that has been receiving a lot of link attention lately, has found some folks who have turned omphaloskepsis into a science.
The folks at Australia’s ABC Science Online conducted an informal a study of how belly button lint accumulates and migrates on the human body.
This kind of story is par for the course on Walkenback’s J-Walk blog which mixes interesting and humorous links with technology commentary.
Between the link to the site with photos of mattresses living on the streets, and the newly started journals of three guys
who up and decided to walk from Chicago to San Francisco (usually I wait
to see if new blogs are acutally updating before I mention them here, but
this one might be fun to watch from the start), and the amazing 20 questions game that guessed double bass and motorcycle before I stumped it with “news reporter,” and the weird penguin tossing
page, I had to force myself to close the browser and step away from the computer
for a few minutes in order to get back to focusing on other things.
Maybe I should have put a warning on this entry?
What blogs have you spotted lately?
June 2, 2003 / 9:21 PM ET
WHOSE LIFE IS IT ANYWAY?
In talking about Weblogs with people involved in traditional journalism,
one question that often comes up is whether anyone has ever been sued for
what they wrote. There are examples of people losing their jobs, offending
family members, losing friends, even putting custodial rights at risk in
divorce cases, but as far as I know, no one’s ever been the subject of legal
action, civil or criminal, for their blog. Even when the Agonist was found
to be plagiarizing material from a news service, the result was a negotiated
settlement. But that’s not to say the law isn’t getting close.
The Technorati current events list today highlights a New York Times story (registration required) about an invasion of privacy case in Florida involving a former Miss Vermont, Katy Johnson and a man who wrote about his relationship with Johnson on his Web site.
In an unusual ruling, the West Palm Beach judge ordered the man, Tucker
Max, to stop writing about Johnson. According to the Times, Max was ordered
not to disclose “any stories, facts or information, notwithstanding its truth,
about any intimate or sexual acts engaged in by” Johnson, on or off his Web
site. He was further told that he could not use “Katy,” “Johnson,” “Katy
Johnson,” or “Miss Vermont” on his Web site — nor could he link to Johnson’s
Web site from his own.
Pieces of what Max was forced to remove, a graphic and unflattering
account of the pair’s time together, can still be found in Google’s cache.
It is ironic to note Max’s offer to Johnson: “If I got something wrong or
left something out, please let me know and I’ll be happy to change it. In
fact, I’ll go farther. If you want to write your own version of our relationship,
I swear to my god, that I will post it, COMPLETELY UNABRIDGED, right next
to mine. This is your opportunity to rebut anything I say here.”
It would seem she did him one better.
Max is not a blogger, but given the number of people who blog about
their dating habits and general social experiences, the implications for
blogging are clear. Thinking surely this story would leave the law bloggers
(blawgers) screaming about the First Amendment, I followed a link to TechLawAdvisor.com. While there, I came upon an interesting parallel:
At the recent D: All Things Digital
technology conference, the comments made by high-profile guest speakers were
meant to be off the record to journalists in attendance. The restrictions
on journalists however, didn’t stop bloggers from reporting what was being
said in their blogs.
(Disclosure: CNBC, the business
channel owned by NBC, was one of the sponsors of the event, and Microsoft
Chairman Bill Gates one of the speakers. MSNBC.com is a joint venture between
NBC and Microsoft.)
Journalist/blogger Dan Gillmor points out the unfairness in his being made to agree not to write about comments made at the conference, while blogger Denise Howell (she’s a lawyer, not a journalist) and others were free to blog through the entire conference.
So the lesson today is that bloggers cannot write about their past
girlfriends, but can record off-the-record comments on their blogs. (?)
WADDAYAGONNADO?
Ben Hammersley makes a plea for better self-policing
by the blogging community: “If we’re going to want these sorts of conferences
with this sort of people, with wifi and unrestricted access, and all sorts
of other lovely attractions, then we must, as a community, respect people’s
wishes.”
Perhaps the only other alternative is fair warning.
What won’t you put in your blog?
June 1, 2003 / 12:05 PM ET
GOOGLEWASHING
The most recent twist on the Weblog popularity debate comes as a result of new scrutiny into the workings of Google’s search engine.
Playing with Google search results has long been a source of amusement for Net users. Some bloggers use special tools to look at referring links and search terms (this link may contain adult language) to see how Google ranks them for different searches.
Part of the way Google works is that in addition to searching for
a specific keyword on a page, it also takes into account how many links others
have pointed to that page using that keyword. It uses the number of incoming
links as a way of gauging the popularity of a result’s connection to what
it’s searching for.
Armed with this knowledge, some advertisers attempted to trick the
search engine into giving them higher ranking for certain terms (and thereby
driving more traffic) through the practice of Googlebombing. Googlebombing
is when a link and keyword are deliberately paired excessively, making Google
think the pairing is more popular than it really is. There are many examples
of bloggers trying (and succeeding) to work with others to Googlebomb their own names to claim the top spot on Google.
Since Google’s purchase of Pyra Labs, the makers of the widely used Blogger
software, greater attention has been paid to the connection between Google
and Weblogs. There was initial speculation that blogs would help Google be
more accurate. If bloggers are already talking about a major news story,
then a search for that story will be more successful because all of the blog
links to the story will help cause it to appear at the top of Google’s search
resutls.
But new thinking is that blogs may be getting in the way of Google searches and possibly even perverting them. The “blog clog” argument has been hotly contested, with several prominent bloggers speaking out against making too much of the impact of Weblogs on searches.
Arguments aside, the issue of blog influence opened the door for accusations,
or at least declarations, of Googlewashing. Like Googlebombing, Googlewashing
is based on the property of Google that uses incoming links and keyword association
to determine that page’s relative popularity. The difference with Googlewashing
is that it may not be a deliberate campaign to improve the ranking of a page,
it may simply be through the natural discourse taking place on the Web.
The issue of Googlewashing really hit the fan with the Andrew Orlowski complaint in the Register
that the term “second superpower” coined by Patrick Tyler of the New York
Times to describe the strength of (anti-war) world public opinion, had been
co-opted by the Internet, and specifically the blogosphere — and more specifically
than that, the blogging “A-list.”
Blogger Jim Moore wrote an essay
based on the idea of “Second Superpower” with an added emphasis on the role
of the media and online communities. Many bloggers, being interested in the
political potential of online communities, paid more attention to Moore’s
essay than Tyler’s Times article and the influence it was having on global
sensibilities, and thus Tyler was washed from the top Google search for “Second
Superpower” and replaced by Moore, who continues to hold that spot by way of a link from Joi Ito.
Again the charge met refutation and dismissal, but it was enough to put bloggers on the defensive.
THE PRINTWASHING SOLUTION
An alternative perspective in the Googlewashing debate is that it’s
not the fault of bloggers that their links figure so prominently in Google
searches. Instead, it is the fault of print media for keeping its archives
from being accessed by Google. In telling the Tyler/Moore story, there is
no link to the Tyler piece because it has already disappeared into the New
York Times’ paid archives.
Blogger Doc Searls proposes a counterbalance to Googlewashing: Printwashing. Though there are some obstacles,
the idea behind Printwashing is that a greater online presence by the print
media would dilute the power of blogger-generated content. (hat tip to I Never Knew for some of the above links)
GET YOUR WASHING DONE
As long as we’re washing, some consideration might be given to TV-washing.
With increasing frequency I am running into bloggers linking to transcripts of shows (MS)NBC shows like Meet the Press and Hardball. The other day, blog icon Josh Marshall linked to a transcript of CNN’s Crossfire. And one local station has taken to posting the promptor scripts for its news broadcasts. (via Lost Remote)
If the FCC rule change goes through on Monday, and a result is a greater Web presence for print and TV (as colleague and publisher of Cyberjournalist.net Jonathan Dube recently predicted in an Online Journalism Review article), then perhaps we’ll see greater effects from TV-washing.
IF IT EVEN GETS THAT FAR
In the end it may prove unnecessary to do any “washing” at all. The
folks at Google are always making adjustments to how data is collected and
ranked. There is some speculation that Weblogs are already being de-prioritized. (via memeufacture)
At the rate they’re working to upgrade search engines, who knows what we’ll end up washing in the future. A recent Wired story
mentioned other ways that a search engine might prioritize results. How long
before the blogosphere finds itself in an uproar over cookie washing?
May 29, 2003 / 10:22 PM ET
THE WORLD’S HIGHEST BLOG
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the ascent of Sir Edmund Hillary
and Tenzing Norgay to the summit of Mount Everest. Not surprisingly, the
anniversary was accompanied by a lot of news coverage, including here on MSNBC.com. So much has been published about this mountain that I’m surprised no one has written a ....
Just kidding. Of course there’s an Everest blog. Lorenzo Gariano is on a quest to climb the highest peaks on each of the seven continents. His most recent conquest was Everest and those of us left who still haven’t gotten around to making the hike ourselves were able to follow his journey through his audio blog (made by satellite phone) and the corresponding text, photos, and video from his climbing colleagues.
Gariano completed his expedition this week, so this adventureblog
is probably on hold — at least until expedition leader Scott Woolums embarks
on a new trek for the summer climbing season. For folks who can’t live without
multiple Everest updates a day, there is still the Everest blog at EverestNews.com.
May 28, 2003 / 12:36 PM ET
ARE ALL BLOGS CREATED EQUAL?
One of the more celebrated aspects of Weblogs is the populist notion
that the power of publishing and punditry is in the hands of the people —
at least, the people with a computer and Internet access. This ideal (along
with efforts to build the most comprehensive and functional Internet search
tools) drives constant discussion and introspection about the balance of
power in the blogosphere.
Most commonly we see relatively small power struggles and shifts at the peer group level. Some groups of blog friends become too big
for the “A-list” bloggers at the nucleus of the group to maintain, so either
resentments grow or the more peripheral members lose interest and find a
new focus.
Sometimes issues of blog inequality rise beyond social circles and affect the blogosphere as a whole. Back in February the blogside was abuzz with discussion of Clay Shirkey’s essay, “Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality,”
in which Shirkey explained that most of the link attention in the blogosphere
is directed at a very few bloggers. Somehow the blogosphere had created its
own elite “rich get richer” situation.
Many bloggers set about trying to balance the scales a little better. Jason Kottke crunched some numbers and proposed
using mathematical formulas to level the playing field. David Sifry followed
a similar line of thinking in creating new lists for his Technorati.com. Sifry added a list of Top 50 interesting recent blogs and Top 50 interesting newcomers
in an effort to provide a more diverse list than simply the “most linked”
blogs. “What I wanted to do was to break that power law, and give more exposure
to the lesser known, but still interesting bloggers, especially on days when
they stand out and do something interesting,” he explained in his blog.
When we talk about power in the blogosphere, what we really mean is
reader traffic and the ability to drive that traffic through a given link.
A recent Bill Thompson article on Spiked.com called “Blog Eat Blog”
raised the notion that blog power is more that just readership. The article
itself is a bit of a rant in which Thompson criticizes blogs, along with
a certain group of A-listers and his perception of their political views.
Though much of the article was heavily disputed as it made its way through
the blogmill, the idea that popular bloggers wield not just click-clout but
also some political, economic, and even creative influence over their fields
of interest is certainly reasonable. It follows then that Weblog egalitarianism
is more than just a quaint notion. In some cases it might actually matter
when someone is more popular, particularly if the growth of that popularity
is partly a property of the Weblog system.
The argument
can be made that since everyone with access to a computer and the Internet
has access to the same simple publishing software to make a blog, that’s
all the equality anyone needs or deserves. Everyone has an equal opportunity
to keep a blog and if some blogs are better and draw more traffic, good for
them and ultimately good for Weblogs on the whole. The blogosphere as a meritocracy
is not objectionable.
Perhaps the reason this subject comes up so often is because Weblogs
are alternative by nature, if not outright subversive, so it makes sense
to see some bloggers rise to prominence only to be torn down by the very
spirit that created them. For those who blog in this spirit, the role of
underdog will always be the most comfortable fit.
For others, the blogosphere represents a chance to build a society from scratch,
so abandoning ideals is not something they’ll do readily.
How important is blog equality?
May 20, 2003 / 6:51 PM ET
READER RECOMMENDATIONS
Since I don’t have an automatic journal generator,
this space had to sit idle while I was engaged in other projects last week.
To climb back on the blog horse, let’s look in the Blogspotting mailbag for
a new installment of reader-recommended Best of Blogs.
Sarah in Austin, Texas, writes, “Pamela Ribon’s pamie.com
started as a journal and then became so hugely popular she ended up getting
interest from a publishing house. She has a novel coming out this summer
from Simon & Schuster about the world of online journaling called Why Girls Are Weird. She still maintains her journal.”
Not only does Ribon maintain her journal, but she’s also been using it to spearhead an operation to help underfunded local libraries. With more than 400 donors, a significant portion of whom are bloggers, she may have a blog movement on her hands.
Cindy in Yucaipa, Calif., offers The Dissident Frogman as “a fantastic French blog very much worth reading — and this from (me) a long-time French-dissing American.”
I’m still a believer in the notion that international blogs are a
good thing for global relations. That said, when I saw Cindy suggesting a
French blog, I was ready to gain some insight into the French anti-war, anti-American
attitude we hear so much about. If you’ve already clicked the link above,
you know that what I found is quite the opposite. If nothing else, this is
further evidence of how blogs can prove generalizations wrong. And for English-speaking
students of French, what could be more useful than a blog written in both
languages at the same time?
For more perspectives from France, check out Weblogues.com. (Thanks Colin)
Brian tells us that ”Great Minds Working is a blog devoted to A.I. research with special emphasis on language acquisition.”
Farid in Brooklyn, N.Y., says, ”Idle Type is a fave of mine.”
Idle Type is the kind of links-laden blog that pulls you in and leaves
you blinking an hour later wondering where the time went. Take a look, for
example, at yesterday’s topics: neuroscience art gallery, proper peeing,
mating Simpsons, Spike’s root beer reviews and ratings, a giant gallery of
women with their hands on their hips, and debunking religious-based Internet
hoaxes.
I’ll add that Farid’s thoughtful introspective blog, ”Somewhere Over the Brooklyn Bridge” is an interesting read. Today also marks a full year that he’s been drug and alcohol free. Congratulations Farid.
Matt Rice from Rochester, N.Y., submits a blog tool he created for the list. ”BlogAdNet.com
is a new blog advertising service. I believe the site is even more of a signal
that businesses are taking a serious look at blogs. Your readers might find
the site and idea interesting.”
From what I gather from a quick read of the FAQ page,
the blogger makes some amount off ad traffic; the service keeps 25 percent
of it, and sends you a check every 15 days or when you reach $50.
Hate seeing ads on blogs? Matt discusses the idea in the comments section of a post at Macrofun.
Michelle submits her own blog, Vacuity Real,
from Leipzig, Germany. “My personal website includes detailed biography,
pictures, downloads, own creations, updated several times a day.” Michelle
is also living proof that while Michael Jackson may be a horror show in the
U.S., he’s still got a fan base overseas.
Bill from Freehold, N.J., says, “I like the blog run by Hank Kalet, Channel Surfing.
It is run by the managing editor of a local newspaper and covers local, state,
national, international, music, TV, etc. Very good.”
Mr. Shanti Braford has another blog project up and running.
”Metapop
- A Collaborative Weblog. Anyone can contribute by posting a link and their
comments. It was started by 18 of today’s premier and up-and-coming bloggers.”
The ostensible purpose of Metapop is to blog about the items that show up
on the Popdex list, but it’s a good read on its own.
Viswanath Gondi writes from Cambridge to offer Usable Design Media, describing it as “interesting things from information technology, user interfaces, social psychology and architecture.”
Rose from Florida says of Norman Augustinus,
“This guy is great. I found him after reading about him in the newspaper.”
I can’t quite figure if this actually is a blog. I’m always open to new interpretations
of the Weblog format, so I don’t want to rule it out just for being different.
The notes section is kind of bloggy, and the vignettes even more so. Let’s put it on the list and see if anyone complains.
What are the best blogs you’ve spotted?
May 9, 2003 / 5:29 PM ET
A BLOG BIRTH
Last week, in discussing author-bloggers, I linked to novelist Jennifer Weiner. If you followed that link you learned that in addition to being a blogger and a writer, Weiner was also an expectant mother. Expectant
might not be quite accurate as her baby, affectionately named “The Bun,”
passed the due date, leaving Weiner bordering on being an impatient mother.
That changed today as blogspotters were told a blog birth is imminent.
“The Bun has decided that today is a good day for a birthday. Labor began
last night.”
The soon-to-be-mom’s parting pre-delivery comments — “More soon.....” — are an understatement to be sure.
Popular politics blogger Daily Kos recently announced
his wife’s pregnancy after keeping it private through a tense first term.
The couple’s previous pregnancy ended in an early-term miscarriage. (There
are few things more upsetting than when a baby doesn’t make it to term. The
most heart-wrenching blog entry I’ve ever read was when Sue, an American
living and blogging in Holland shared, “There was no heartbeat.”)
The Daily Kos will not change topics from politics to parenthood,
however. For that purpose a separate Weblog has been created: Fishyshark, An Expectant Father’s Journal. Today is day 81.
BABY BLOGS
Blogs for, about, and by babies are a genre unto themselves.
Kerry in Phoenix writes her O. Baby!
blog to her the newly arrived Ceili Morgan. A loving gesture to be sure,
although one can’t help but wonder if it will one day be the stuff of guilt
trips in Ceili’s future:
“You had been completely
sound asleep. Poor baby. Then I nursed you and put you to bed. You looked
happy and content, and I dragged my aching body to bed. Then you woke me
up at midnight. And 2 a.m. And 4 a.m. When you figure 30-45 minutes minimum
for nursing each of those times, well, I didn’t get much sleep. The last
one, daddy helped you by suctioning your nose (you sounded stuffy) and changing
your diaper, but you were still mad.”
Kerry also maintains a substantial blogroll of pregnancy blogs and new baby blogs.
Futuremom became a present mom almost exactly a year ago but continues to document her baby’s progress.
Benjamin’s mom uses Benjamin’s Baby Blog
as a way to catalog the links to parenting information and recreation that
is guiding her through his upbringing, thus creating a useful resource as
well as a record of Benjamin’s earliest moments.
Sounds like Aren
has been blogging since before he was born. “In August, I was so small that
my parents didn’t even know I existed. Only the cats knew, but they didn’t
tell anyone.” “But soon Mommy and Daddy discovered the cats’ secret - they
discovered that Ortho-Tricycline isn’t completely effective! Ooops.”
This week Aren delivers some photoblog commentary on his trip to Disney World.
Like Jennifer Weiner, Heather also had some frustration with her due date (“Due Date...Schmu Date”) but came home three weeks ago with a beautiful baby girl. Of course, now comes a whole new challenge:
“She didn’t much care for her bath and even seemed a bit insulted
that we felt she needed one. To show her displeasure, she pooped in her cute
little hooded towel.”
No look at baby blogs would be complete without mentioning Raising Hell,
a collaborative effort by seven parents who record their child-rearing anecdotes
for the benefit of each other and their readers. The posts range from humorous
to serious, but are consistently absorbing.
THE KID YOU MARRIED
There is an old joke that some women (though surely not my wife) like
to tell: that their first child is the one they married. To that end, PickUpYourOwnDamnSocks.com is a nice place for the family care-giver to vent a little frustration.
How are you mixing blogging with raising your child?
May 7, 2003 / 5:15 PM ET
SALAM PAX, ALIVE AND BLOGGING
Salam Pax, the only known Iraqi blogger, mentioned on this page several times in the past,
is back online, laying to rest speculation that he’d been killed or captured
during the U.S.-led war on Iraq. Turns out Salam maintained his journal throughout
the war, but didn’t have Internet access to post to his blog. He was finally
able to get in touch by phone with his American friend-through-blogging,
the pseudonymous Diana Moon, whose own blog, Letter from Gotham,
recently mysteriously disappeared from the Web, rekindling rumors about the
fate and authenticity of the Baghdad blogger. Salam then sent Moon a Word
document containing 16 journal entries over 45 days, and Moon posted them
onto his blog today.
The entries take some time to read through, but it’s worth it.
In the early days of the war, bombs naturally dominated Salam’s attention.
March 30-
“Last night saw one of the heaviest bombings, just after I wrote the entry
in my diary last night all hell broke loose. There were two explosions, or
series of explosions which shook the house like nothing till now. You could
feel the floor shake under your feet and the walls rumble before you hear
the sound of the explosions.”
During the war, U.S.
television news frequently remarked on how ineffective the Baghdad air raid
sirens were. Salam shows that there was an alternative in place that served
his fellow citizen | |
