Wednesday, January 05, 2005

Weblogs, Inc. - Weblogs for business - The Future is Here

Weblogs, Inc. - Weblogs for business - is going blogs in a big way. As written at the Weblogs, Inc. blog:

"Weblogs, Inc. is dedicated to creating trade Weblogs (a.k.a. blogs) across niche industries in which user’s participation is an essential component of the resulting product...."

Take a look at AutoBlog, a member of the Weblogs, Inc. Network to see what's coming...actually, it is already here.

Weblogs, Inc. writes further:

"Partnering is better than owning. Our goal is to partner with individual bloggers, letting them do what they do best (writing, creating community, researching) and support them with what we do best (upgrading the software that drives their Web site, generating revenue, running the business). We split the profits 50/50 with each of our bloggers taking out only hard costs (i.e., sales commissions, credit card fees)."

The Weblogs, Inc. Network currently includes the following blogs:

Blogs for Consumers
Autoblog
Blogging Baby
Engadget
Gadling
hack a day
Joystiq
Luxist
TUAW (Apple - Unofficial)

Technology Blogs
Apple (Unofficial)
CSS
Digital Photography
Flash Insider
Google (Unofficial)
Grid Computing
JavaScript
Microsoft (Unofficial)
Office
Open Source
Peer-to-Peer
Photoshop (Unofficial)
RSS
SAS (Unofficial)
Search Engine Marketing
Social Software
Spam
Tablet PCs
VoIP
Yahoo (Unofficial)

Blogs for Wireless Technology
Bluetooth
Engadget: Cellphones
Engadget: GPS
RFID
Ultra Wideband
WiFi
The WiMAX Weblog
Engadget: Wireless
Wireless Dev
Wireless

Blogs for Video Games
Blogging E3
Engadget: Gaming
Joystiq
Playstation 3
Video Games
Xbox 2

Media & Entertainment Blogs
Art
Design
Digital Music
Documentary Film
Droxy (Digital Radio)
Independent Film
Magazine Design
Nanopublishing

Business Blogs
The Mortgages Weblog
Online Finance
Outsourcing

Life Sciences Blogs
The Cancer Blog
The Diabetes Blog
Medical Informatics
Telemedicine

Personal Blogs
Brian Alvey
Jason Calacanis
Blog Maverick
Gordon Gould
Judith Meskill

Events Blogs
Blogging E3
Blogging ETech
Future of Music
Blogging Milken
Blogging Sundance
Blogging Web 2.0

Other Blogs
Weblogs, Inc.

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

ABC News: People of the Year: Bloggers

ABC News has named Bloggers People of the Year.

That choice well understands the impact blogs are having and will continue to have on local, regional and world affairs. See also boing boing and popdex for more.

Crossposted to Law Pundit.

Monday, January 03, 2005

Blogs going Mainstream

Blogs going Mainstream

Jennifer LeClaire of EcommerceTimes, part of the ECT News Network, has a January 3, 2005 article which also appears on Technology News at TechNewsWorld indicating that blogging is going bigtime, referring to surveys by Pew Internet & American Life Project.

See - in .pdf format - the full article of the January 2005, Data Memo at Pew Internet on The state of blogging by Lee Rainie, PIP Director.

Rainie writes that "By the end of 2004 blogs had established themselves as a key part of online culture."

What is most interesting is that the number of blog readers increased in 2004 by a much greater percentage than the number of bloggers, clear evidence that blogging is becoming an integral part of what internet users regularly read online.

Friday, December 31, 2004

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.

Saturday, December 18, 2004

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.

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

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

Friday, December 10, 2004

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.

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

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.

Friday, November 19, 2004

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.

Monday, November 15, 2004

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.

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

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.

Monday, October 18, 2004

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.

Saturday, October 16, 2004

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.