Here's an interesting interview with Meredith Badger (who writes Invisible Blogger) by Natalie, who writes Pixel Kitty. They both belong to the Melbourne Blogs group and talk about that and the general world of blogging. [Link][2 comments][Karma: 13 ( + / - )]
Another example of never fully believe what you read: Tom Tomorrow today disavowed any comments on others' blogs "signed" by him. Just because it's posted in a blog (or written in a diary) doesn't make it so. At least blogs have a mechanism with which we can argue about and refute others' postings. [Link][comments?][Karma: -3 ( + / - )]
An interesting story posted on Slashdot talks about a temporary Microsoft employee who was fired for posting to his blog a picture of a bunch of Mac G5s that Microsoft had just purchased. Here's the text posted on Slashdot and here's the guy's post on his blog. The immediacy of blogging creates a temptation to post anything that you think is interesting. Whether or not this guy's posting is particularly interesting, the lesson we learn here is to not give into this temptation when dealing with company information. The cool factor of being able to immediately share tidbits about a company is inversely proportional to the grief of losing your job. [Link][comments?][Karma: 9 ( + / - )]
The Society for Technical Communication started a blog about how the society should transform itself to meet the needs of technical writers in the 21st Century. [Link][1 comments][Karma: 14 ( + / - )]
In an earlier post, I mentioned how some companies are trolling blogs for consumer information. On a related note, Bill Thompson on BBC News vents about the latest blogging trend: the spamming of blogs via comments. As Thompson points out, spam filters will never be foolproof. Even if filters are used, the blogger has to delete each spam comment by hand to ensure that no legitimate comments are deleted. If 30 spam comments are posted every day, maintaining a blog could become quite time consuming, which sort of defeats the purpose of blog software. Thompson wonders if spammers are targeting blogs in part to increase their page rank on Google. I hope this doesn't become a serious problem. I would really hate it if people started abandoning their blogs because of spam drowning out legitimate comments. [Link][1 comments][Karma: 9 ( + / - )]
The NY Times (free membership required) reports that a survey (speak of that devil!) of blogs maintained using blogging services (not self-rolled blogs developed and maintained by an individual) taken by Perseus Development found that: "fully 66 percent of the 4.12 million blogs, or online journals, created on eight leading blog-hosting services have been "abandoned'' - that is, not updated for at least two months. And 1.09 million of those were one-day wonders." The story goes on to say: "The study went on to puncture other bits of common wisdom about blogs, like the frequency with which they are updated. Fewer than 50,000 of the sites in the study were updated every day. As for the notion that most blogs comment on the news, only 9.9 percent had a main-page posting that linked to a traditional news site. Perhaps most biting, the study found that the typical blog is written by a teenage girl who uses it twice a month to update her friends. Are blogs just that old friend from the 90's, the Web diary, dressed up in new tools?" First of all, who says that they're updated frequently? I don't remember reading that blogs are usually updated every day. What I read is that blogging software allows users to easily update their blogs every day, should they be inclined to do so. And who says that most blogs comment on the news? Yes, it's true that a lot do, but come on. The only blogs that comment on the news are by bloggers who care about the news. Which is OK because a blog should be whatever the writer wants it to be and whatever the blog morphs into given participation by the blog's readers. And the amount of people keeping a blog is growing: "Mr. [Jeffrey] Henning [chief operating officer of Perseus] provided a number not released as part of the study: the growth in active blogs, rather than abandoned ones. Last year there were 1.62 million active blogs, according to Perseus's research. This year that number is expected to rise to 3.3 million. In 2004, Mr. Henning predicts, the figure will rise to 5.86 million." And each one of those blogs will prove to be unique. [Link][comments?][Karma: 8 ( + / - )]
TellShare announced its new blog service: mLogs, to which you can quickly post "images, SMS/MMS, video or audio" taken from your camera-cellphone. You can also use the service to post to your Blogger or Moveable Type blog. The pictures in mLogs' featured blogs are pretty blurry, so I hope these camera-phones improve in the next few years. I'm still waiting for my PDA-camera-MP3 player-phone... [Link][comments?][Karma: 10 ( + / - )]
Now you can give your blog's readers a quantifiable voice by adding QuestionPro questionnaire software to your blog. It automatically posts the results in a blog entry. I just conducted my own informal poll and 9 out of 10 Helens agree that this software could be very useful. [Link][1 comments][Karma: 12 ( + / - )]
One interesting quote from Williams: "One sort of high-level way to look at that is that blogging is a way to collect stuff and comment on it as you're navigating the Web; search is a way to find stuff." For me as well, this is what blogging boils down to. A means for the average Joe to have his say about, and at the same time, contribute to the content of the Web. Hopefully Google will improve their search engine so we can more easily find the stuff. Williams also says: "The biggest one is that blogs are all about online diaries, revealing your life online. Some people think: Why would I want to do that? But for people in the blogging world, they can be political or a number of other things." This handily points out the focus of my thesis. While I'll touch upon everything a blog can be (which is everything), I'll be discussing the personal journalling aspect of blogging. And this interview also reminds me to research pictorial personal journals, both online and print. Since our culture is more heavily communicating visually these days, I really must discuss this in my thesis. The interview even touches on using blogs as content management - something I'm interested in. I think blogs can be useful for a company's technical assistance Websites: customers and the company can collaborate with each other in fixing problems or coming up with new ideas. Anyway, read the article, it's good! [Link][comments?][Karma: 15 ( + / - )]
The Scobleizer Blog is written by a Microsoft employee who talks up the company. He started the blog before he was hired. According to an eWeek article, he forwards negative comments he receives on to Microsoft. Steve Ballmer encourages employee blogs. Perhaps because of those handy non-disclosure agreements? Are these unofficial blogs a source of meaty information, or just a cheap way of preaching the gospel of the company? [Link][1 comments][Karma: 8 ( + / - )]
Then again, the World's story doesn't list what they think the most-read blogs are, so I take this story with a grain of salt. [Link][comments?][Karma: 6 ( + / - )]
Google search results have been clogged by empty Trackback pages. Trackbacks let bloggers know that other bloggers have read their post and have referred to it in their blogs. Each trackback generates an empty web page. Apparently, Google isn't smart enough to tell that these are empty web pages and even gives them high rankings in search results. The Register has been tracking this story here and here. [Link][comments?][Karma: 11 ( + / - )]
As if we needed more evidence, the San Diego Union-Tribune gives us more of the anecdotal kind that blogs help us connect with other people. As opposed to traditional diaries, which are usually not meant for public consumption. Case in point, if you ever read Why Not Me by Al Franken, you'll know that some diaries (like those kept by bungling presidential candidates) just shouldn't even be written, much less released to the public. |
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