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.

Is Google good for you? - BBC News

BBC NEWS | Technology | Is Google good for you?: "Is Google good for you?"

Technology analyst Bill Thompson gives an up-to-date resume on Google ® - which he says has become the Coca-Cola ® of search engines in spite of becoming more ad-oriented and less consumer-oriented in recent years.

See here.

The ABCs of Management

Mullings: An American Cyber-column by Rich Galen writes:

"Some of you might remember my very excellent management theory which holds that:
'A' people hire other 'A' people. 'B' people hire 'C' people.
That is, in any organization the brightest and most creative will tend to clump together. The 'A' people.
And those who are not so will also tend to clump together. The 'C' And the leader of that group will not be comfortable around 'A' people because he or she will believe that surrounding himself with weaker folks will make him look stronger by comparison.
Nothing you can say or do will dissuade a 'B' person from hiring 'C' people. And nothing will tempt an 'A' person to hire a 'B' person - or, if a 'B' person is hired, nothing will tempt the 'A' person from keeping the 'B' person around long.
And all concerned are happy with this arrangement."

Bravo. That is correct.

Wizbang Weblog Awards 2003

Wizbang is currently taking votes (until December 14 only) for its Weblog Awards in the following categories:

Best Overall Blog
Best New Blog
(Established in 2003)
Best Group Blog
Best Foreign Blog
Best Humor Blog
Best Looking Blog
Best Female Authored Blog
Best Liberal Blog
Best Conservative Blog
Best Media/Journalist Blog
Best Ecosystem Higher Beings &
Mortal Humans Blog
Best Ecosystem Playful Primates Blog
Best Ecosystem Large Mammals Blog
Best Ecosystem Marauding Marsupials Blog
Best Ecosystem Adorable Rodents Blog
Best Ecosystem Flappy Birds Blog
Best Ecosystem Slithering Reptiles Blog
Best Ecosystem Crawly Amphibians Blog
Best Ecosystem Flippery Fish Blog
Best Ecosystem Slimy Molluscs (and below) Blog
Most Egregious Omission

I have many personal favorites which are not included in the Wizbang lists and think that the blog selection is one-sided toward political blogs but it is still useful to look at Wizbang for lists of popular blogs.

All Stanford Law Students to Have Blogs and the Power of Blogs

All Stanford Law Students to Have Blogs and the Power of Blogs

Diebold and the Power of Blogs and the Internet

Word is getting around that the "blog concept" of internet information and dispersion is a tremendous source of power.

Via John Palfrey and his article: "As if Diebold folding weren't enough..." we learn that:

All Stanford Law Students to Have Blogs

"Word is that every SLS student entering next year will be offered a weblog, says Prof. Lessig."

Gee, was I not just reading Dvorak's opinion that blogs are dead?

See the previous posting on the Future of Blogging.

The Future of Blogging

The Future of Blogging

Via Shel Israel's blog ItSeemstoMe at "An Open Letter to John C. Dvorak: Time to Retire", we are directed to an attack on blogs by John C. Dvorak at his November 19, 2003 PC Magazine article "Co-opting the Future".

Dvorak's article has drawn cogent rebuttal, e.g. at

1. Steve Gillmor - "Gillmor Takes On Dvorak's Anti-Blog Stance", November 20, 2003

2. Adrian's Blog - Adrian Bacon has a great rebuttal to Dvorak's attack on blogs, November 21, 2003 and I like what he writes as a comment to Dvorak's post at Dvorak's site. I quote Adrian below [Update: September 22, 2004: Please note that Adrian has informed me that his blog has moved and now uses WordPress. He appears to have edited the original posting. That original posting is found below.]:

"I don't agree with you at all on this.

I blog. I Have done so for a long time. http://www.quicksurf.com/diary.html [Adrian's Blog]

I blog because it's an outlet. It lets me write what I want to write about, when I want to write about it, and how I want to write about it, because unlike you, I don't get paid for my writing, and I don't have to worry about deadlines or subject content. Even though I actually have quite a few regular readers, I really don't care if nobody reads my blog. It's there for me to put my thoughts down. I don't usually show any of the feedback I receive from my readers on my blog, but believe you me, I get comments about my blog. Some are sarcastic, some are funny, and some are a note of thank-you because I said something touching or provided a link to something that they found useful, or something like that. Some of it is hate mail. Some of the comments make it completely worth blogging. You never know how what you say is going to affect someone. By some counts, I have a bland blog. Others find my blog very interesting. You'd be surprised how many regular readers become regular readers because of one or two small things that you wrote that struck a chorde with them. A blog is a blog because it's personal, and it's about you.

Contrary to what you say, blogging is a complement to media companies. Jim Lynch said it best in his post."

3. In fact, see Jim Lynch and his November 21, 2003, writing on the future of blogging.

The opinion of PunditMania is...

The journalistic "pay for brains" model has its place in capitalist society, but it is not an exclusive phenomenon.

Many will find it to be a novel, revolutionary idea, but yes, people can also think, even if they are not paid to do so.

Indeed, he who is NOT paid to think or to write, has in some way far more freedom to write what he is thinking, than someone who must constantly look to see that he is not biting the hands that feed him.

So, blogging will not disappear. Quite the contrary, blogging will expand - indeed, into many new and novel areas.

Here are some areas in which blogging will influence the world or is already influencing that world substantially:

1. The Legal Profession. The legal profession is at forefront of blogging. See InstaPundit and the Volokh Conspiracy.

2. Publishing. The Publication of Ideas for many motives, e.g. Recognition and Establishment of a Reputation are important. Some forms of blogging will replace conventional publications.
Olaf Brugman at the Knowledge Bridge blog has posting that "Academic Publishing inhibits the Free Flow of Knowledge". Brugman writes:
"Publishing a book or chapter doesn't pay. And for most authors, to be paid is not the motive to publish. It is the recognition, the start of new conversations, the personal reputation that motivate to publish." These motivations are not going to disappear.

3. RSS and blogging. Blogs were the first to popularize the use of RSS, and RSS will be a gigantic development on the interent in the future - indeed, it alread IS a gigantic development.

4. RSS and the corporate world. RSS and blog-type communication at Triple Point show us the future of corporate interaction.

5. Blogs, RSS and PR (Public Relations). This is a natural field for blogging.

6. Weblogs in Education. Blogs in education will be one of the biggest areas in active applied learning. See the next posting at PunditMania for an inkling of what is to come.

7. Weblogs in Politics e.g. Bush/Cheney, Howard Dean, The Blogging of the President 2004 show this phenomenon already in action.

8. Blogs and Science. The so-called "scientists" are - remarkably - a bit slow, conservative and feeble, but even they will ultimately join the blog bandwagon, once they understand what blogs can do for them, their research, their understanding and their command of their areas of expertise.

New York City - The Big Apple - blogs index

New York City is still the Big Apple, so that the blogs index of Big Apple bloggers at the site nyc bloggers (New York City bloggers) is a must review for people interested in blogs. There is an A-Z list of New York City blogs and a map overview of their city location by subway line - a neat idea.

Important Bookmarklet Tips for All Bloggers : Technorati PopDex Waypath

Important Bookmarklet Tips for All Bloggers : Technorati PopDex Waypath

TECHNORATI

Technorati is a page which can be added to your Internet Explorer by dragging the red javascript link "Technorati Anywhere!" on the Technorati pages to your menu links toolbar on the IE browser (then rename the long text to something like Tchnrti to take up less space on the toolbar). Anytime you are on ANY blog page you can click on this Technorati button and it will instantly take you to Technorati, which will tell you how many inbound blogs and how many inbound links point to that blog page. For example, when at the LawPundit blog page one clicks on the Technorati link button, is taken to Technorati, which opens a page showing that LawPundit has 50 Inbound Blogs and 54 Inbound Links (as of November 3, 2003), listing these links in numerical order.

You can of course also go to Technorati at any time, plug the name of ANY desired blog URL in the search box on this page at Technorati and then click "Get Link Cosmos" to find out who is linking to that blog.

POPDEX

To find out WHO has linked to your blog and WHEN they did it, use PopDex:

Go the PopDex addlink page side-bar-listed as Add Popdex Search/Link, then scroll down a bit to "Popdex Citations Bookmarklet"
and drag the link "Get Popdex Citations" to your Links Toolbar in Internet Explorer.
After that, rename the text on the button to something like Ppdx so it does not take up as much space.

Once you have this bookmarklet on your menu tool bar, any time you are on ANY blog page, including your own blog - and that is of course the most important aspect - you can click on this bookmarklet and it will take you to PopDex telling you which sites have linked to your blog and when they did so. As PopDex writes: "This bookmarklet can be used to get the Popdex citations for whatever page that you are viewing at the time."

WAYPATH - essentially a DOCUMENT RELATIONSHIP SEARCH

Waypath can be dragged to your menu links toobar so you have it available for instant access. Waypath allows you to search blogs for particular subject postings by entering either Keywords or a URL in the search box.
Note that the clickable scroll on the drop-down box offers BOTH of these options.

Waypath describes its method of working as follows:
"Waypath's Related Weblog Navigation engine analyzes weblog entries to determine their core conceptual makeups, compares them with one another to find out how related they are, and presents you with its best guess as to what's related to your original input. This is done all automatically, using available technology."

First enter your weblog URL, then click Waypath It! and Waypath looks for weblog entries which touch upon subjects related to those to which you have posted on your blog.
You must enter a VALID URL or you will get a text-based ERROR page.

If you search by "Keyword" topic rather than URL, you have to scroll the search box drop-down list to "Keywords". Now enter e.g. "patent law" and you get ca. 3000 entries. Too many. Enter e.g. "patent law Eolas" and it becomes a manageable ca. 150 hits.
Note that these hits are distinctively different than what search engines such as Google or AllTheWeb produce with the same search words.

The only problem I have found with Waypath is that it is agonizingly slow - perhaps it is used by too many people and the servers are unable to handle the load?

LivingRoom >> A space for Life: Blog Statistic - Length of Stay

Via Blogcount I was led to Darren Rowse's Living Room : A Space for Life blog and his posting Blog Statistic - Length of Stay, analyzing blogs whose site statistics are monitored by Site Meter.

He has many interesting things on his site.

For example, he cites to a list of "god blogs" at Blogs4God for those seeking other "Christian Blogs". This is not my thing - I just note it since there seems to be a lot of this around.

Darren's blogs links are here.

Knowledge Management

Numerous blogs related to knowledge management are available at the site of Knowledge Board, The European KM Community at:
KnowledgeBoard blogroll - 15 Sep 2003 a list as of September 15, 2003.

THE GENDER GENIE and POLITICS

THE GENDER GENIE and POLITICS
SPEECHES OF AMERICAN PRESIDENTS
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, U.S. CONSTITUTION

The distribution of words in the speeches of American Presidents clearly shows that success in politics requires a much more balanced female / male type of man - at least in speech expression - than we might otherwise require in real life. (Some of this may be due to speech writers.)

President's speeches are a near balance of both female and male elements in most cases, with few exceptions. In fact, the President's speeches are not that different from speeches by the ladies. But there ARE exceptions.

President George W. Bush - Acceptance Speech Dec. 13, 2000
Words: 1302 Female Score: 1095 Male Score: 1435
President George W. Bush - Inaugural Address - January 20, 2001
Words: 1583 Female Score: 2469 Male Score: 2134

President William Jefferson Clinton - First Inaugural Address - Jan. 20, 1993
Words: 1583 Female Score: 2145 Male Score: 2286
President William Jefferson Clinton - Second Inaugural Address - Jan. 20, 1997
Words: 2157 Female Score: 2288 Male Score: 2626
By comparison:
Hillary Rodham Clinton - 4th UN World Conference on Women, Beijing, China, Sep. 5, 1993
Words: 2152 Female Score: 2104 Male Score: 4208

President George H.W. Bush - Inaugural Address - January 20, 1989
Words: 2315 Female Score: 2796 Male Score: 4107
For comparison:
Barbara Bush - Commencement Address, Wellesley College, June 1, 1990
Words: 1205 Female Score: 2022 Male Score: 2038

President George Washington - First Inaugural Address - April 30, 1789
Words: 1428 Female Score: 1868 Male Score: 1885
President George Washington - Second Inaugural Address - March 4, 1793
Words: 135 Female Score: 127 Male Score: 160

President Thomas Jefferson - First Inaugural Address - March 4, 1801
Words: 1721 Female Score: 2376 Male Score: 2199
Interesting, as Jefferson was known as the master writer.
President Thomas Jefferson - Second Inaugural Address - March 4, 1805
Words: 2149 Female Score: 3060 Male Score: 2667

President Andrew Jackson - First Inaugural Address - March 4, 1829
Words: 1126 Female Score: 1115 Male Score: 1427
President Andrew Jackson - Second Inaugural Address - March 4, 1833
Words: 1173 Female Score: 1046 Male Score: 1380

President James K. Polk - First Inaugural Address - March 4, 1845
Words: 4799 Female Score: 5412 Male Score: 6521
Under Polk's administration, the U.S. territory expanded more than under any other President.

President Abraham Lincoln - First Inaugural Address - March 4, 1861
Words: 3630 Female Score: 5120 Male Score: 5060
President Abraham Lincoln - Second Inaugural Address - March 4, 1865
Words: 699 Female Score: 921 Male Score: 888
President Abraham Lincoln - Gettysburg Address - Nov. 19, 1863
Nicolay Draft Version - Words: 239 Female Score: 260 Male Score: 403
Hay Draft Version - Words: 268 Female Score: 280 Male Score: 424

Theodore Roosevelt - First Inaugural Address - March 4, 1905
Words: 983 Female Score: 1290 Male Score: 1496

President Harry S. Truman - First Inaugural Address - January 20, 1949
Words: 2272 Female Score: 2477 Male Score: 3585

President John F. Kennedy - First Inaugural Address - January 20, 1961
Words: 1362 Female Score: 1495 Male Score: 1897

For Comparison

The Declaration of Independence - July 4, 1776
Words: 1331 Female Score: 1039 Male Score: 1400

The U.S. Constitution - Original Version
Words: 4406 Female Score: 4997 Male Score: 4756

And For Interest by Comparison

British Prime Minister Tony Blair - Speech to the Irish Parliament - November 26, 1998
Words: 2980 Female Score: 2480 Male Score: 4686

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger - Victory Speech - California Governer Election, October 8, 2003
Words: 955 Female Score: 989 Male Score: 1020
Surprise, surprise. Even here, a balanced match.

Vice-President Al Gore - Statement, December 13, 2000
Words: 1048 Female Score: 1338 Male Score: 1408
Al Gore - Speech to moveon.org, August 7, 2003
Words: 4604 Female Score: 4168 Male Score: 6671

Patrick Henry - Give me Liberty or Give me Death - March 23, 1775
Words: 1215 Female Score: 1878 Male Score: 1909

President Ronald Reagan - famous speech in Berlin - Tear Down this Wall - June 12, 1987
Words: 2683 Female Score: 2080 Male Score: 3353

President Jimmy Carter - On US Foreign Policy - June 1977
Words: 2633 Female Score: 3223 Male Score: 4036

William Jennings Bryan - famous Cross of Gold Speech - July 9, 1896
Words: 2621 Female Score: 3531 Male Score: 4730

Jesse Jackson - Time for Goliath to Fall - January 16, 1984.
Words: 678 Female Score: 572 Male Score: 1180

Winston Churchill - Blood Sweat and Tears speech - May 13, 1940
Words: 664 Female Score: 939 Male Score: 838

LADIES, YOU HAVE THE WORD

Mother Teresa - Nobel Prize Speech - December 11, 1979
Words: 3823 Female Score: 6299 Male Score: 5595

Pearl S. Buck - Nobel Prize for Literature - December 12, 1938
Words: 9065 Female Score: 10494 Male Score: 14307

Elizabeth Cady Stanton - The Destructive Male Speech - 1868
Words: 955 Female Score: 1028 Male Score: 1272

Madam Curie - Nobel Prize Speech - December 11, 1911
Words: 4293 Female Score: 3591 Male Score: 6231
Madam Curie - Speech on the Discovery of Radium - May 14, 1921.Vassar College
Words: 838 Female Score: 868 Male Score: 1351

Susan B. Anthony - On the Right of Women to Vote - 1873
Words: 483 Female Score: 420 Male Score: 764

Kathleen L. Sullivan - Dean of the Stanford Law School - Fall, 2003 Stanford Lawyer
Words: 761 Female Score: 673 Male Score: 1141

For other great speeches, see also The History Channel.

The Genie Gender confirms that the LawPundit is a Male

The Genie Gender confirms that the LawPundit is a Male

Via Insta Pundit I found the bookblog which has a page called "The Gender Genie" and an input box into which one can type or paste text to determine whether The Gender Genie thinks it is written (or spoken) by a male or a female - based on the frequency of certain key words used in the text.

We ran The Gender Genie on numerous of our texts in blogs and websites and received a clearly definite, correct identification every time - we now know even more where we stand, and, we mean this sincerely, we now understand why some of our postings receive aggressive responses from - especially - males, while females are often attracted to them - they ARE - based on The Gender Genie - pure male. In fact, the male output of words dominates the female output by on average more than 4 to 1 with a top near 90 percent. We are pleased.

Thank you Genie Gender for confirming what we suspected all along.

POSTINGS TO LAW PUNDIT and GENIE GENDER ANALYSIS
(we try to exclude quoted texts from our count):

Thursday, October 30, 2003
SnipURL service for Long URLs of Case Law or Statutes
Words: 191 Female Score: 25 Male Score: 458
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!

Tuesday, October 28, 2003
THE TERRI SCHIAVO CASE and SEPARATION OF POWERS
Words: 1955 Female Score: 1670 Male Score: 6505
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!

Tuesday, October 28, 2003
Controversial Succession Plan for Congress in Emergencies
Words: 323 Female Score: 192 Male Score: 678
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!

Tuesday, October 28, 2003
The Perfidious Senate Bill S 1558 IS
Words: 589 Female Score: 433 Male Score: 1917
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!

Tuesday, October 28, 2003
Separation of Powers - Checks and Balances
Words: 343 Female Score: 124 Male Score: 1067 (89%)
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
Part of that text - excluded from our count - is our selection of passages from the Federalist Papers, Number 51, by John Madison, a quite even-handed writer who has more female elements in his writing, i.e. THE FEDERALIST No. 51 excerpted Words: 706 Female Score: 921 Male Score: 1141

Thursday, October 23, 2003
Senate Anti-Spam Bill passed - Can Spam Act (S. 877)
Words: 643 Female Score: 485 Male Score: 1476
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
Part of that text - excluded from our count - is a press release by Burns and Wyden which is definitely more femalely : Words: 852 Female Score: 738 Male Score: 1155
Also part of that text - excluded from our count - was a section of a proposed Congressional Bill which we suggested was poorly drafted - Genie Gender says about this text
Words: 51 Female Score: 24 Male Score: 19 - looks like ladies are doing the Congressional drafting

Wednesday, October 22, 2003
Law Dictionaries English-German German-English
Words: 1176 Female Score: 628 Male Score: 2729
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!

Tuesday, October 21, 2003
Headscarves and the Law
Words: 574 Female Score: 463 Male Score: 1514
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
We excluded from the count a quotation by Prof. Balkin of Yale which Gender Genie analyzed as follows:
Words: 69 Female Score: 119 Male Score: 174

Saturday, October 18, 2003
Spam and Spam Laws
Words: 1100 Female Score: 667 Male Score: 3025
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!

Saturday, September 27, 2003
LawPundit (TM) - The Law is a Seamless Web - Or is It?
Words: 777 Female Score: 494 Male Score: 1949
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!

Is God recognized "under Law"?
THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE and the WORDS "UNDER GOD"
Friday, October 17, 2003
Words: 2914 Female Score: 2433 Male Score: 8181
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!

Friday, October 17, 2003
Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison
Words: 896 Female Score: 630 Male Score: 2095
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!

WEBSITES

INTERNETLAWWEB.COM - The Internet Law Web
Home Page Text
Words: 265 Female Score: 46 Male Score: 352
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!

MEGALITHS.CO.UK - The Megaliths
Interesting is the remarkable change in male/female wording at my website Megaliths.co.uk - i.e. same person writing, however, having a different subject, and different objectives.
Words: 1711 Female Score: 1024 Male Score: 2401
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!

ANDISKAULINS.COM - Andis Kaulins
Index Page - here also we have different results based on the subject
Words: 935 Female Score: 912 Male Score: 1660
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
Page on Sources
Words: 1749 Female Score: 1700 Male Score: 3332
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
Person (here we go back to the more standard distribution as found in legal writings)
Words: 590 Female Score: 244 Male Score: 813
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
Academics (there seems no question that academics are more "female" in orientation)
Words: 594 Female Score: 564 Male Score: 624
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
Publications (academic publications and writing have a more female element)
Words: 379 Female Score: 459 Male Score: 579
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
Success (appears to require a good blend of both elements)
Words: 777 Female Score: 1006 Male Score: 1489
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!

Snip URLs - Reduce long URLs

Via TVC Alert from Genie Tyburski at The Virtual Chase
I spotted through her unusual URLs pointing to the domain snurl.com
- also at snipurl.com -
that there is a service to "snip" long URLs and reduce them to a specific small URL
which can then under certain circumstances be better used for linking.

The SnipURL website has the motto "Snippenty snip snip with your long URLs!" and offers a free service for snipping long URLs "into small, friendly and persistent links for sharing and remembering".

Register for SnipURL service here.

You can also drag the "Snip This!" link to your browser bar as a "bookmarklet" for quick snipping.

There is also e-mail spam protection for the snipped URLs.

As a registered user you can also keep track of your snipped web pages.

More features are also described.

This is a very useful service particularly since website services can truncate URLs by wrapping them to a new line and thus breaking longer URLs, which can make them "unclickable" - a problem that I have had up to now, for example, with the LexiLine group that I moderate on Yahoo Groups.

This problem should now be a thing of the past with the SnipURL service.

Please note, based on my experience, that there can be glitches at SnipURL: Sometimes I got the message that the website had already been snipped, along with its snipped URL (which was not true) and sometimes I got an error message that the nickname I had entered was already taken, even though I had entered nothing, or had entered a nickname so contrived that it could not have possibly already been taken. This occurred right after my registration and at the beginning of the snipping process. Later, the snipping worked - perhaps the server needs to time to register the registration information? In any case, do not give up if does not work immediately. It did work later for me and continues to work now.

For purposes of illustration, here are the snips of two blogs and my other websites:

http://snurl.com/2r57 - gives The LawPundit Blawg

http://snurl.com/2r5j - gives The PunditMania Weblog

http://snurl.com/2r4y - gives The InternetLawWeb Website

http://snurl.com/2r5p - gives The Andis Kaulins Website

http://snurl.com/2r5o - gives The Megaliths.co.uk Website

http://snurl.com/2r65 - gives The Megaliths.net Website

http://snurl.com/2r5k - gives The LexiLine Website

http://snurl.com/2r69 - gives The LexiLine Learning Website

http://snurl.com/2r5u - gives The LexiLine Learning Website in Germany

http://snurl.com/2r5z - gives The Dainas Website

http://snurl.com/2r61 - gives The Isandis Website

http://snurl.com/2r63 - gives The Tauta Website