Blogs Report on SE Asian Tsunamis

Blog reporting regarding the SE Asian tsunamis is covered by John Schwartz in the Dec. 28, 2004 Technology Page of the New York Times online at Blogs Provide Raw Details From Scene of the Disaster.

Schwartz refers particularly to BoingBoing for keeping up on blogs and sites having information on the tsunamis.

Update, January 1, 2005

For technical information and some excellent maps concerning the earthquake leading to the tsunamis,
see the pages of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)

There is also a report at Nature about how the earthquake moved islands.

To read about how this giant earthquake sped up the Earth's rotation see Nature.

No Escape from Blogs

Why There's No Escaping the Blog is a "Tech Trends" article at Fortune Magazine by David Kirkpatrick and Daniel Roth.

They write in a lengthy article and one of the best on blogging that:

"According to blog search-engine and measurement firm Technorati, 23,000 new weblogs are created every day—or about one every three seconds. Each blog adds to an inescapable trend fueled by the Internet: the democratization of power and opinion. Blogs are just the latest tool that makes it harder for corporations and other institutions to control and dictate their message. An amateur media is springing up, and the smart are adapting."

...

"These are still the early days of blogging, and the form is still morphing. Blogs that host music and video are popping up, people are starting to blog text and photos from their phones, and sites like NewsGator, using a technology called RSS, allow people to subscribe to blogs. Plus, an arms race is building behind the scenes."

Read the whole thing.

Browse Blogs by Author's Birthday

Browse Blogs by Author's Birthday

For all of you out there interested in astrology (even if only for fun), Globe of Blogs has a feature where you can browse blogs by the author's birthday - and also by geographic location.

Blogger Database Server Problems ?

Is Blogger having server problems?

In response to our e-mail question to Blogger.com support regarding what appeared to be a "broken" update feature in Blogger, we today received the following reply:

"Hi there,

We have had to temporarily disable stats collection, which means that post
stats and links will not be updating correctly on your dashboard or
profile. We plan to restore this functionality in the short term but have
needed to stop collecting the information for now in order to stabilize
the database servers. We apologize for any inconvenience this problem has
caused.

Sincerely,

Blogger Support"

When an operation the size of Google needs to "stabilize" its Blogger database servers, then naturally we are curious about the health of Google and Blogger. What goes on there? At least the bloggers should have been notified of the situation without having had to ask.

Crossposted to LawPundit

A Browsable Blog Index by Categories

A Browsable Blog Index by Categories

QuackTrack, not a name to necessarily attract a serious readership,
claims to be the "world's largest browsable blog index"

It divides the blogs into 26 main categories (with subcategories this is 1,157 catergories). The main categories are:

art, corporate, crafts, culture, drugs, education, food and drink, health and medicine, history, hobbies, Internet, law, literature, media, meta, music, news, philosophy, places, politics, religion, social, society, specialist, sports and travel.

In law, for example, 1,427 blogs in 28 subcategories are listed as of today (there is some duplication in the categories):

International Law (European Law, e.g. Law Pundit)
Legal Practice (Business Law, Conveyancing law, Elder Law, Family Law, Immigration Law, Intellectual Property Law (Copyright, DMCA, Licensing, Patent, Trademark), Mediation/Arbitration, Military Law, Tax Law)
Legal Study (Constitutional Law, Forensic Law)
National Law (UK law, US Law)
Religious Law
Tribal Law

The site is useful for browsing blogs by categories.

Blogthings - Cool Stuff To Put In Your Blog

Blogthings - Cool Stuff To Put In Your Blog

Blogthings specializes in various kinds of things to put up on blogs, including quizzes, horoscopes, name generators, etc.

Effect of Blogging on the World

Effect of Blogging on the World

Perry de Havilland of Samizdata.net: was a speaker at "Democracy & the Blogosphere" hosted by the Adam Smith Institute in London on 16 November 2004. Perry noted that most of the speakers were luke warm on the influence of blogging on the world, whereas, as de Havilland writes:

"I did a speech saying that the Internet - and therefore blogging (because blogging is the user-friendly front-end of the Internet - it is for me anyway) is destined (also big deal) to change the entire course of human history."

We definitely agree that blogging is still in its infancy and has a long way to go, but what will make blogging a tremendous world power of the future is its ability to put people into close contact with one another who would otherwise never come into contact at all - and this on an international scale. This development is in the making.... Through blogging, interest groups and alliances will be formed that previously were impossible - some good, and some bad, of course.

Currently, blogging is still pretty much an individual one-man sport, giving many - often opinionated - persons the opportunity to put their views out to the world, but as many bloggers are learning - that is often not enough. Ideas demand audiences and audiences demand a good show. Hence, real dialogue, teamwork and communicative cooperation are increasingly marking the blog world. Many blogs are going from one-man shows to multi-player team productions.

We might note as an aside that one of the most remarkable developments in blogging is the general resistance of older established mainstream academia (except for the younger generations of people who studied law) to enter the blogging scene - we think this is because they are either ignorant of blogging or too afraid to blog. But we think that this will change. The old non-blogging generation will retire and die out and the new blogging generation will take over.

Crossposted to LawPundit.

Multilingual Services for Web Bloggers at Blogger

Multilingual Services for Web Bloggers at Blogger

Via Sifry's Alerts we read in the November 15, 2004 article by Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service, at InfoWorld that "Blogger goes multilingual". Blogger is now available in nine languages as the first phase of "internationalization".

Crossposted to LawPundit.

Weblog Award Competition at Deutsche Welle

Weblog Award Competition at Deutsche Welle

Deutsche Welle ("the German Wave") has a November 14, 2004 article entitled What the US Could Learn About Blogging in talking about its own Best of the Blogs awards ("the BOBs") to be awarded in seven languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, German, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

For those interested in this competition, see
nominees.

Yahoo! Search blog: News Search and RSS

The Yahoo! Search blog has announced "the public launch of RSS on Yahoo! News Search" and in that same posting has some tricks for advanced searches.

See also SearchEngineWatch.

Common Craft - A Blog for Online Community Strategies

Common Craft - A Blog for Online Community Strategies

Common Craft - Online Community Strategies is a blog devoted to "Online Community Strategies", including blogging.

Recent postings include a comparison of blogs and message boards with a well-designed color chart of comparison.

Periodic Table of Blogs

Periodic Table of Blogs

The SaltwaterPizza Blog has a posting on unusual periodic tables which is fun.

There is even a Periodic Table of Blogs, which is interesting, even though not true to the actual periodic table of elements.

They missed
the Kaulins Revised Periodic Table of Elements

and many other periodic table variants at Periodic Tables.

Bloggers at Political Party Conventions

Bloggers at Political Party Conventions

Under the title Bloggers go mainstream at US conventions, BBC reports on the newsworthiness of political party conventions and devotes a lot of copy to the emergence of blogging.

35 Bloggers were accredited for the Democratic Party convention in Boston including Karl-Thomas Musselman, a 19-year delegate from Texas, who not only used his blog Musselman for America to run for the office but also blogs directly from the convention.

Punditmania predicts that the day will come - not very far off - that even most members of Congress will have to have blogs in order to stay in touch with their constituents. Or they will have to answer the question: "why do you NOT have a blog?".

WordPress Encoder Widget

WordPress Encoder Widget
 
Encode HTML Entities with the WordPress Encoder Widget.

For example, if in HTML code you write the following command

<span ><b>WordPress Encoder Widget</b></span>

the result on the website page is as follows

WordPress Encoder Widget

If you want to show the actual text code of the command rather than the result of the command, then you have to use the following code

&lt;span style=&quot;color:#ff6600;&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;WordPress Encoder Widget&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/span&gt;

The WordPress Encoder Widget converts the code for the programmer automatically.

New Blogger Post Editing Features

New Blogger Post Editing Features
 
The July, 2004 Newsletter "Blogger Buzz"  from Blogger announces implementation of a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) post editor which now allows selection of:

fonts, text sizes, bold face, italic, text colors, easy hyperlink, align left, center, right, justify text, ordered lists, unordered lists, blockquotes, and undo.
 
Blogger thus now has a special "compose  page" in addition to an "html-editing page" in addition to a "Preview" and "Hide Preview" page..
 
One problem with the new features is that Blogger now changes html edited text automatically to its own specifications, which is supremely annoying to anyone used to writing html-code in a particular unique manner. 

For example,
a line coded by hand as

<font color=#ff6600"><b>New Blogger Post Editing Features</b></font>

is changed automatically to

<span ><b>New Blogger Post Editing Features</b></span>

This is fine until such a page must be edited in any way, in which case the html coder is forced to learn and adopt the Google html coding system, with which he is now faced. This kind of coding tyrrany is totally unnecessary.

Blogs in Education

Blogs in Education

Punditmania has found an excellent article on Blogging by Bobby Hobgood, LEARN NC's Teacher Education Specialist. It is found under the rubric "Teacher time savers: Web-based productivity tools". The article is well worth a read for its basic premise that "Blogs are great tools for use in education".

Blogstreet Services

Blogstreet Services

I sent an inquiry to Blogstreet about their services and notices concerning inactive accounts, particularly since the site has recently been revamped. Here is their reply of July 3, 2004:

We do send notifications about inactive accounts after 30 days. However, we definitely appreciate your interest in the site.

RSS.Blogstreet aggregates RSS feeds and sends updates in the form of mails in your INBOX. Further, it not only provides you facilities to look at other popular RSS feeds on our service but also lets you subscribe to subscriptions of other users (provided they are public).

Other features include posting interesting updates to your Weblog, exploring blog neighbourhood of other bloggers etc. We hereby take this opportunity to invite you to use our service to the fullest.

BlogOn 2004 July 23 Berkeley California

BlogOn 2004 July 23 Berkeley California

This just in from Becky Sniffen....

"A new blogging & social media conference called BlogOn 2004 ... takes place July 23 in Berkeley, CA. BlogOn explores the business end of blogging, seeking to marry the inventiveness of blogging companies to the investors and tech leaders who will support the humble blog’s rise to the top of the corporate communications ladder. Prominent technology conference host Chris Shipley, along with speakers from the best-known blogging companies, will illuminate the business stories behind social media: the business models that will succeed and fail, the impact of the blogging phenomenon on tech and business culture, the ways in which new social media technologies will drive the next-generation Web, and how corporations can best use this rising technological toolset to achieve their goals."

Spam accounts for 2/3 of all mail

Spam accounts for 2/3 of all mail

The recent issue (7, 2004) of the German language PC Magazin reports that Brightmail, the spam filter specialist, filtered 96 billion e-mails for its customers, of which 64% were spam, up from 50% in July 2003, and 60% in January 2004.

The Brightmail website reports for May, 2004 that it hit the 100 billion mark for filtered e-mails, of which 64% were spam. 3.3 billion e-mails were fraudulent.

Internet Alive and Kicking - 63 million internet registrations

Internet Alive and Kicking - 63 million internet registrations

The Asia Pacific Media Network carries a June 9, 2004 article from the South China Morning Post reporting that worldwide internet address registrations had surged to 63 million in the first quarter of the year 2004, up 4.7 million from the previous quarter - a record increase.

The Internet is alive and kicking.

Catherine Seipp on Bloggers on National Review Online

Catherine Seipp on Bloggers on National Review Online

At the National Review Online, at her "From the Left Coast" column, Catherine Seipp, who also has a blog at Cathy's World, has an intersting article on politics, color and blogging.

OK, so why was I not invited?

Read the article to understand my question.

RSS at the New York Times

RSS at the New York Times

Here is a NY Times article by John R. Quain of June 3, 2004 handling RSS feeds. The article is by no means complete but has some useful information about "fine-tuning your filter for online information".

Online Journalism - Learn the Lessons of Blogs

Online Journalism - Learn the Lessons of Blogs

Dan Froomkin is posting a series of articles on how to improve online journalism.

His first article includes discussion of Learn the lessons of blogs.

This is definitely worth a read for all bloggers and non-blogging journalists as also for those running media outfits and information and content services.

Blogging Software Compared

Blogging Software Compared

Via TVC Alert at the Virtual Chase we are directed to a blog comparison chart at Asymptomatic
and a blog comparison of:
b2Evolution, bBlog, Blosxom, Expression Engine, MovableType, Nucleus, Pivot pMachine Pro, Serendipity SPIP, .Text, TextPattern, and WordPress. Definitely worth a look.

Internet Content Testable by Google Search

Internet Content Testable by Google Search

Here are our Google Hits of May 3, 2004 for various terms selected by us.
A lot can be learned about the general content of the internet by testing it through the Google Search Engine.

Keyword Term Number of Google Hits

Google Hits May 3, 2004
for English Terms

the 5,750,000,000
of 3,830,000,000
and 3,790,000,000
to 3,640,000,000
a 3,550,000,000
in 3,120,000,000
for 2,200,000,000
.com 1,940,000,000
www 1,910,000,000
on 1,530,000,000
I 1,330,000,000
with 1,260,000,000
this 1,250,000,000
is 1,160,000,000
at 1,130,000,000
it 1,110,000,000
all 1,010,000,000
from 943,000,000
your 795,000,000
home 795,000,000
new 745,000,000
html 744,000,000
not 697,000,000
more 691,000,000
us 665,000,000
no 651,000,000
about 587,000,000
free 584,000,000
http 566,000,000
site 554,000,000
search 552,000,000
we 552,000,000
will 540,000,000
can 516,000,000
if 497,000,000
one 491,000,000
online 486,000,000
you 473,000,000
other 472,000,000
our 461,000,000
do 461,000,000
news 439,000,000
web 438,000,000
has 426,000,000
up 418,000,000
my 414,000,000
time 408,000,000
htm 402,000,000
net 387,000,000
what 375,000,000
org 369,000,000
out 369,000,000
next 351,000,000
help 348,000,000
their 344,000,000
only 341,000,000
use 339,000,000
there 323,000,000
info 319,000,000
mail 319,000,000
me 317,000,000
when 316,000,000
he 313,000,000
see 310,000,000
first 310,000,000
internet 307,000,000
index 306,000,000
view 304,000,000
business 303,000,000
back 303,000,000
who 303,000,000
list 301,000,000
email 295,000,000
price 293,000,000
links 287,000,000
how 285,000,000
name 285,000,000
am 284,000,000
date 283,000,000
its 282,000,000
find 277,000,000
over 270,000,000
software 274,000,000
world 265,000,000
like 255,000,000
people 252,000,000
best 248,000,000
go 246,000,000
buy 245,000,000
data 233,000,000
system 229,000,000
products 229,000,000
used 224,000,000
download 217,000,000
sex 216,000,000
year 214,000,000
health 212,000,000
dvd 212,000,000
work 211,000,000
games 209,000,000
order 208,000,000
shop 206,000,000
books 202,000,000
company 202,000,000
general 199,000,000
after 199,000,000
privacy 196,000,000
should 195,000,000
high 195,000,000
add 194,000,000
full 191,000,000
her 188,000,000
computer 187,000,000
center 187,000,000
through 186,000,000
group 186,000,000
art 184,000,000
man 183,000,000
life 182,000,000
cd 180,000,000
public 179,000,000
each 177,000,000
previous 176,000,000
website 176,000,000
many 175,000,000
pc 174,000,000
school 172,000,000
version 172,000,000
great 170,000,000
user 167,000,000
type 166,000,000
program 166,000,000
guide 166,000,000
know 164,000,000
map 164,000,000
car 163,000,000
tv 162,000,000
research 161,000,000
before 161,000,000
travel 159,000,000
terms 157,000,000
black 157,000,000
edu 155,000,000
take 154,000,000
code 153,000,000
office 153,000,000
send 152,000,000
women 151,000,000
family 151,000,000
sports 150,000,000
report 150,000,000
pdf 150,000,000
text 149,000,000
could 149,000,000
results 148,000,000
must 148,000,000
article 143,000,000
american 141,000,000
were 141,000,000
open 141,000,000
any 141,000,000
action 140,000,000
place 140,000,000
want 139,000,000
read 139,000,000
personal 138,000,000
phone 138,000,000
media 137,000,000
old 137,000,000
Amazon 136,000,000
file 136,000,000
resources 135,000,000
technology 134,000,000
pictures 133,000,000
photos 131,000,000
end 128,000,000
content 128,000,000
Yahoo 127,000,000
house 127,000,000
image 126,000,000
project 125,000,000
live 125,000,000
days 125,000,000
print 124,000,000
love 122,000,000
visit 120,000,000
start 118,000,000
low 117,000,000
every 115,000,000
white 114,000,000
team 114,000,000
children 114,000,000
digital 114,000,000
money 111,000,000
science 110,000,000
source 110,000,000
press 110,000,000
server 109,000,000
login 107,000,000
think 107,000,000
chat 107,000,000
second 105,000,000
him 104,000,000
why 103,000,000
location 103,000,000
around 103,000,000
government 102,000,000
red 101,000,000
week 101,000,000
air 99,000,000
jobs 99,000,000
food 98,900,000
topic 97,300,000
save 97,000,000
study 95,300,000
jpg 94,900,000
war 94,600,000
star 93,900,000
legal 92,600,000
porn 90,700,000
give 89,500,000
tips 89,300,000
join 87,300,000
staff 87,100,000
sun 86,600,000
play 86,300,000
journal 86,200,000
welcome 85,900,000
magazine 85,600,000
sign 85,500,000
hours 84,000,000
Microsoft 83,800,000
browse 83,400,000
password 83,100,000
ad 83,000,000
against 82,700,000
learn 82,600,000
hand 82,300,000
color 81,400,000
age 81,300,000
less 81,300,000
ebay 79,900,000
things 79,900,000
hardware 79,300,000
head 76,800,000
land 76,700,000
entertainment 76,600,000
night 76,500,000
future 76,400,000
logo 75,600,000
database 74,900,000
space 74,900,000
Mr. 74,800,000
enter 74,300,000
interest 73,400,000
paper 72,700,000
daily 72,500,000
try 72,400,000
stock 71,900,000
log 71,000,000
fast 70,900,000
away 70,200,000
Europe 69,500,000
write 69,100,000
weather 69,000,000
word 68,600,000
green 67,600,000
past 67,500,000
trade 67,000,000
Sony 66,400,000
specific 66,000,000
golf 65,500,000
faq 65,400,000
gold 65,200,000
third 64,200,000
basic 63,400,000
record 62,700,000
menu 62,200,000
finance 61,400,000
close 61,300,000
nature 61,000,000
God 60,800,000
click 58,700,000
sell 58,000,000
tour 57,500,000
talk 56,800,000
bank 56,300,000
camera 56,300,000
death 55,800,000
win 55,600,000
commercial 55,400,000
water 55,400,000
weight 54,800,000
official 54,300,000
cat 53,600,000
effect 52,100,000
domain 51,900,000
gif 51,900,000
watch 51,300,000
advice 49,600,000
loss 49,200,000
yellow 47,200,000
communications 47,000,000
standards 46,900,000
editor 46,600,000
motor 46,300,000
doc 46,100,000
Google 45,700,000
fire 45,000,000
browser 44,600,000
law 44,500,000
have 44,000,000
class 43,800,000
deal 43,300,000
dog 42,600,000
brown 42,100,000
by 41,900,000
purpose 41,900,000
earth 41,700,000
client 41,600,000
silver 41,600,000
happy 41,200,000
political 41,200,000
oil 41,200,000
wish 41,100,000
font 41,100,000
some 41,000,000
football 41,000,000
graphics 40,400,000
xml 40,100,000
medicine 40,300,000
investment 38,400,000
ftp 38,100,000
here 37,300,000
blog 36,000,000
retail 35,400,000
cam 34,900,000
foot 34,600,000
IBM 34,500,000
messages 34,200,000
restaurant 33,000,000
teaching 32,300,000
gray/grey 32,600,000
AOL 30,200,000
orange 30,200,000
racing 30,200,000
hear 29,500,000
are 28,900,000
farm 28,600,000
peace 28,500,000
baseball 27,500,000
wind 27,200,000
or 25,200,000
tennis 25,200,000
horse 25,000,000
basketball 24,900,000
now 24,700,000
breakfast 24,700,000
freedom 24,300,000
profit 24,100,000
soccer 23,100,000
she 23,000,000
moon 23,000,000
boat 22,400,000
wholesale 22,400,000
cooking 21,200,000
agriculture 21,000,000
drink 20,200,000
music 20,100,000
newspaper 19,900,000
today 19,800,000
page 19,300,000
slow 19,300,000
headlines 19,000,000
lose 18,500,000
yesterday 16,600,000
ancient 15,900,000
blue 15,800,000
tomorrow 14,900,000
swimming 14,700,000
smile 13,100,000
present 12,800,000
worst 12,700,000
prayer 12,100,000
luck 11,800,000
politics 11,700,000
religion 7,600,000
png 5,620,000
tolerance 2,170,000
megalithic 266,000
megaliths 86,900
blawg 80,600
stars stones
scholars 31,700
Andis Kaulins 4,170
decipherment
megaliths 807
megaliths astronomy
geodetics 38

Toolbars Tested and Compared

Toolbars Tested and Compared

"REVIEW: Toolbars Offer More Than Searches" is an article by ANICK JESDANUN of Associated Press which appeared in the Miami Herald on April 19, 2004 (free registration required to view article).

Jesdanun tested a number of toolbars, outlining the strengths and weaknesses of each: Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, AOL, Dogpile, Ask Jeeves, Alexa, AltaVista, EarthLink, GGSearch, GuruNet.

The article is a valuable read.

The Future of Blogging and Web Feeds (e.g RSS and ATOM)

The Future of Blogging and Web Feeds (e.g RSS and ATOM)

Two articles at Newsday.com contain AP reports involving blogging on the one hand and web feeds on the other. Although apparently contradictory, the news reports are in fact complimentary.

Anick Jesdanun writes in an article entitled
Study: Blogging Still Infrequent
that blogging is not as pervasive as it was expected to be, although the expectation that everyone will "blog" privately is in my opinion a false expectation. The world can not merely consist of "writers", there must be "readers" as well.

The fact is that blogging types of communication and their offshoots are expanding.

In an article by Frank Bajak entitled Enthusiasts Call Web Feed Next Big Thing, we find important discussion of one of the spin-offs of blogging, i.e. the increasing popularity of web feeds by RSS or competing ATOM technology (used by Google's Blogger).

I myself already have the reasonably priced news aggregator Newsgator integrated into Outlook and can confirm what Bajak writes in his article, that web feeds via RSS, ATOM and coming technologies are here to stay.

Moreover, web feeds of blogs will be one of our major sources of news and information in the future, and I predict that web feeds will become one of the primary methods of information interchange in the sciences and a host of other areas where "subscription" to selected information and sources is an effective alternative to more antiquated methods of data gathering.

BlogShares - LawPundit

At BlogShares - LawPundit
we were amazed to find that what is billed as a "fantasy blog market" actually gives a great amount of superb information about a blog - information which is often not found on the more "serious" blog analysis sites. This is curious. Nevertheless, we can heartily recommend Blogshares as a great source of information about blogs.

Here are some interesting - excerpted and truncated stats, for example, for LawPundit as of January 26, 2004.

GeneralURL http://www.lawpundit.com/blog/lawpundit.htm
News feed Syndic8.com

StatisticsIncoming Links 42
Outgoing Links 258
Outgoing Link Value B$22.68
Market Share 0.0044 %

Top 100 Incoming LinksThis is a list of the most valuable incoming links at the time OTHER blogs are indexed. It is indicative of FUTURE value not CURRENT value.

Vertretbar.de (B$450.58)
Lenz Blog (B$318.61)
Transblawg (B$231.44)
Airblogger (B$227.26)
Bag and Baggage (B$226.06)
Corp Law Blog (B$202.65)
unbillable hours (B$179.61)
.......... (B$168.88)
Delaware Law Office (B$162.62)
Disability Law Blog (B$153.36)
OfficialPundit (B$146.33)
TVPundit (B$143.44)
jurabilis - Yet Another Lawyer's Blawg (B$142.91)
WordPundit (B$141.40)
StarPundit (B$139.28)
VoicePundit (B$132.28)
Vertretbar.de (B$128.31)
JournalPundit (B$124.47)
ArchaeoPundit (B$123.81)
WatchPundit (B$112.85)
SportPundit (B$110.00)
SportPundit (B$107.60)
Inter Alia (B$105.25)
LiteraryPundit (B$98.53)
Notes from the (Legal) Underground (B$95.16)
Tax & Business Law Commentary (B$88.33)
ArtsPundit (B$84.64)
Disability Law Blog (B$78.72)
GolfPundit (B$75.63)
Southern Appeal (B$74.90)
LenzBlog Deutsch (B$58.93)
jurabilis - bLAWg - Alexander Hartmann (B$57.01)
Transblawg (B$49.16)
vertretbar.de (B$47.83)
The Blogbook (B$44.80)
Politics & Law (B$39.19)
The Blogbook (B$32.72)
PunditMania (B$25.88)
Classical Values (B$24.00)
The Blogbook - Style (B$18.33)
The Blogbook - Citations (B$18.33)
The Blogbook - Legal Ethics (B$18.03)
PunditMania (B$7.91)
All Outgoing Links
This is a list of all recognised outgoing links from this blog. It may not be accurate or complete.

A Fistful of Euros
AdamPolselli.com
All About Latvia
All Things Distributed
Amidst a tangled web
Amy Campbell's Weblog
Andrew McLaughlin
Andrew Raff: Shameless Self Promotion
ArchaeoPundit
ArtsPundit
Asymmetrical Information
AtlanticBlog
Bag and Baggage
BarlowFriendz
BeldarBlog
Benefitsblog
bIPlog
blo.gs
blog 702
blog.org
blogcount
Blogger
bloglet
Blogmatrix
Blogroots
Blogwise
Boing Boing Blog
Bot a Blog
Burningbird
BuzzMachine
By No Other
Calblog
CamBlog
Carlson's Chronicles
Chad Dickerson
Channeling Cupertino
Christopher Lydon
Civilization Pundit
Classical Values
CNet News
Code The Web Socket
Common Craft - Online Communication Planning
commonplaces
ComPundit
Consensus at Lawyerpoint
Cooped Up
Corp Law Blog
Crescat Sententia
Critical Mass
Cronaca
Crooked Timber
Cyberspaces: Words-Not-Deeds
Daily Dish
Daily Kos
damnum absque injuria
Dan Gillmor's eJournal
Daniel W. Drezner
David Harris' Science and Literature
David's Blogware
Daypop Top 40
Dean's World
DeanLand.WebLogs.Com
debbie's blog - Debbie Weil is publisher of award-winning WordBizReport.com
Delaware Law Office
DennisKennedy.blog
Diary Date
Digital Practice of Law
Disability Law Blog
Discourse.net
disLEXia 3000 blog
Disruptive Technology
Donna Wentworth
Dowbrigade Weblog
E M E R G I C . o r g
e-Government @large
e-Learning
Eaton Portal
EdCone.com
Edublog News
Educational Bloggers' Network
eLawyer Blog
En Banc
Enetation UK
EuroPundits
Family Medicine Notes
Fedlawyerguy.org
Feedreader - new.media.tool
Feedster
Feedster
Freedom to Tinker
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Furdlog
Geo URL
Gideon's Promise
Gizmodo
Google Weblog
Gotzeblogged
gtetxs
Halley's Comment
HaloScan.com - Free Weblog and Website Commenting
Handakte WebLAWg
Heath Row's Media Diet
homoLudens
house of warwick
How Appealing
Ignatz
Incoming Signals
Incorporation Blog.com
Infothought
Instapundit.com
Insurance Defense Blog
Insurance Law & Disruptive Technologies
Internet Marketing for Lawyers
Invisible Adjunct
ionarts
Ipse Dixit
ItSeemstoMe
Jack Bog's Blog
James Farmer's Radio Weblog
Jarrett House North
JayAllen.org
Jeffrey Zeldman Presents
Jim Flowers' Radio Weblog
JoanneJacobs.com
Joel on Software
John Palfrey
JournalPundit
jurabilis - Yet Another Lawyer's Blawg
JURIST's Paper Chase
KevinSmokler.com
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kottke.org
L.T. Smash - Live from the Sandbox
La-Legal annotated
Larry Bouthillier's eLearning and eContent Blog
Law Offices of Erik J. Heels
LawMarketing Blog by Larry Bodine
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LAWTECH GURU BLOG by Jeff Beard
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Legal Outreach
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Oliver Willis: Like Kryptonite To Stupid
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Seblogging
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The Doc Searls Weblog
The Edge Of England's Sword
The FuzzyBlog!
The Green[e]house Effect: a Weblog
The Legal Reader
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The ResourceShelf
The Roller Weblogger
The Scobleizer Weblog
The Southern California Law Blog
The Speculist
thinking with my fingers
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tins ::: Rick Klau's weblog
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tonypierce.com + busblog
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UK Criminal Justice Weblog
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WatchBlog: 2004 Election News, Opinion and Commentary
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webloggED
Weblogs.com
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Wendy Seltzer's Weblog
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WordPundit
www.gadgetguy.de via carmina
X-log
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[BLOG]@IP::JUR

The Guardian Blog Awards 2 - a Thank You for our Analysis of the Awards

Punditmaina also received a very nice e-mail about our posting on the Guardian blog awards, stating, among other things:

"I had to write to say thanks so much for posting a great comment...."

The Guardian Blog Awards

In response to my recent posting in Punditmaina on the - in my opinion - very poor recent Guardian blog awards, I received the following commentary by e-mail (the identity of the writer is not divulged since this e-mail was sent to me personally):

Having followed a link ... I was interested to read your less than glowing comments of a number of the sites recommended for awards by the Guardian...." Clearly, the Guardian were looking for originality, common interest, insight or maybe just plain humorous. This was contained in some of these sites in abundance, which is more than can be said for the parts I read of your site. All you have been able to do is to churn out your own opinion (often very negative) of other peoples efforts. I am not in the market to trash other peoples attempts to lighten life or educate the masses, but I feel your attempts are banal and uninformative. If you feel others blogs are not worth visiting, I would suggest you keep it to yourself. At least most of them have done something worthwhile, which is more than can be said for your sad effort."

Here was the general tenor of my general answer to that e-mail, taking out some items that might identify its sender:

When the Guardian - a newspaper read throughout the world - makes blog award selections to be read by the public - they better be good - or they should expect PUBLISHED criticism. The fact that you suggest that people having a different opinion than the Guardian should have no right to publish THEIR opinion - but only that the Guardian's opinion should be published - says some very negative things about your state of mind concerning people's freedom of speech - other than your own, of course."

Is it not remarkable that some people truly think that their opinions should be published and others' not, simply because they disagree with them. What is this world coming to?

Blogs - Youth is on its Way

Emily Nussbaum's January 11, 2004 article in the New York Times at My So-Called Blog confirms the growing popularity of blogs among the younger generation.

Indeed, the average age of bloggers is now under 30, i.e. 29.

Best British Blogs from the Guardian

Best British Blogs from the Guardian

Simon Waldman, chair of the judges, reports on the Guardian's 2nd British Blog Awards at The best of British blogging.

Their first choice for blog design is the blog The Big Smoker. I found this choice to be a bit of a disappointment - the blog pages are not even centered on the screen - which is just sloppiness in programming. Just because each blog posting has a nicely affixed graphic does not make a blog a design champion. We found this blog to be good, but it would never be our pick. Frankly we find the design stodgy and boring.

The Guardian placed The Bunker second in the design category, another blog which is not even centered on the screen. When the mouse cursor runs over the funny nearly invisible boxes at the top of the blog page, one is not sure whether these are links or whether the screen is just doing a blip. The colored text boxes are nicely done, but this blog too can not be regarded as a blog champion by any means.

The NYCLondon.com photography blog was chosen first in the category of best use of photography. In a day of color photography, I find it hard to select black-and-white photography as being top. Perhaps black and white mirrors how the Guardian sees the world, as the blog also has photos of anti-war protesters prominently displayed. We do not think awards of this kind should be jaded by political allegiances. Some of the photos are nice, but we would never have picked this blog for this award. As someone who has lived in New York, my view of the Big Apple is vastly different than this collection, although some of the photos are definitely good.

Camerantics (the URL given by the Guardian is false) was also considered for the photography award, commended by the Guardian and is surely the far more interesting photo site as each day of the blog is marked by a new unique photo resembling wallpaper - if that is one's bag.

Apparently Nothing.com was also commended in the photography category, with some good shots. It was a bit more than "apparently nothing" - I am not sure it was a lot more.

I am quite appalled by the backwardness of the Guardian's selections which bypass the entire emerging realm of mobile photosnapping (moblogging) which are a mark of our times and so I can only say that none of the above sites would figure in my selection of best photography on the web - they are good - but they do not represent what is going on in the mass of the new media and internet world.

Teenager blogs were also selected by the Guardian - I am not competent to comment on those. The kids themselves should decide which blogs they think are great.

In the "best specialist" category the Guardian considered the excellent London Underground Tube Diary, which has a nice design, good photos and readable text postings. One can see immediately that this site is "alive". Strangely, the Guardian did not give the award there but went to Pepys' Diary, a nice site but not even remotely comparable to the overall effort and quality of the London Underground blog. One can surmise that the Guardian is still engaged in a love affair with an age that is long past and perhaps it is time to give some more sensible priority to OUR own modern day.

Beyond Northern Iraq was the blog chosen as the winner in the category of "best written". I find the January 9, 2004 posting "juvenile" and would not visit this site again - as a lover of the "best" of British humour, this is the kind of somewhat off-color humour I can live without, thank you. Postings like that do not improve my life, nor am I interested in reading about the trails and travails of boarding or not boarding airplanes, the most recent posting at that blog.

Call Centre Confidential is humorous and informative but was only commended by the Guardian, as Belle de Jour, Diary of a Call Girl, took the blue ribbon. Selections like the latter convince me that your average Guardian reader must lead the life of a dullard, getting his vicarious kicks by reading about things he would not speak to mama about. Sex sells everywhere, but I am not sure that blog awards should be given for it.

A Special Award was given for LinkMachineGo, but I am not into mindless profanity and what is merely a link collection of news. See the December 18, 2003 posting at that site. Sorry, not my bag. Perhaps there will come a day when people will realize that gutter-level swearing is neither the mark of intelligence nor creativity, nor anything else positive for that matter - but I am not optimistic about that development in the near future.

Your average man, as Berlusconi stated, has the intelligence of a 14-year old. Perhaps this explains most of these awards.

All in all, we thought that a country that produced all that stuff that Paxman (The English) writes about could do better than what the Guardian has selected.

I am going to blogroll the London Underground and in the future will look elsewhere - other than to the Guardian - to other "best blog" lists for top new blog material. This brought very little.

Blogging at Macromedia

At Brian Chin's blog Buzzworthy we find an article on The business of blogging which discusses the fact that Macromedia uses blogging very successfully.

Weblogging and Smart Pens

The New Scientist has a January 4, 2004 article entitled Webloggers upload digital doodles using smart pens .

Use of the Anoto pens (a Swedish company) for creation of weblog entries made while mobile has been dubbed "handwritten moblogging".

Moblogging is the short form for mobile blogging.