As we have recently stated, we have shifted from Google to Yahoo as our search engine of choice because of the fact that Google searches were too often resulting in sites that LINK to the desired page rather than the page itself.
A commentator informed us as to why the current Google search algorithm is faulty, precisely because it places too much emphasis on links, rather than paying more attention to what a site is about, even at the simplest level of the URL itself.
This emphasis on links has resulted, at its worst, in what is called Google Bombing, utilizing the principle that if enough sites link to any given site using the same link word or phrase, then that site will come up first on the Google results page.
Some links to Google Bombing are.
Adam Mathes - the original Google Bomber
Word Spy - definition of Google Bombing
A superb lengthy article by John Hiler on Google Blombing at Microcontent News - The Online Magazine for Weblogs, Webzines, and Publishing
Infothought - Seth Finkelstein's blog
The Underground Dailectic - blog
Links and Law - links
Saturday, February 26, 2005
Blog-Fearing ALA President Bitten by the Blogs
The Law Pundit has frequented libraries since his early days and has quite a private library of his own, so that he is certainly no enemy of good libraries.
However, we see that Google's digitization of millions of books for online access by "the masses" has the poor library people up in arms. Indeed, particularly the rise of the masses in blogs seems to be a cause for the librarians' wrath.
Michael Gorman, president-elect of the American Library Association, and Dean of Library Services, Madden Library, California State University, Fresno, has an appropriately blog-fearing article in the Library Journal of February 25, 2005 entitled Revenge of the Blog People!.
Gorman has made the mistake of attacking bloggers (this is generally done only by those who really understand nothing about blogging), and also the present posting is his reaping of the fruits of the seeds he himself has sown.
Here is how Gorman describes blogs:
"A blog is a species of interactive electronic diary by means of which the unpublishable, untrammeled by editors or the rules of grammar, can communicate their thoughts via the web. (Though it sounds like something you would find stuck in a drain, the ugly neologism blog is a contraction of "web log.") Until recently, I had not spent much time thinking about blogs or Blog People."
What a stupid thing to write. It is rather hard to believe that the president-elect of the ALA could be this out of touch with reality.
Not having learned from experience, he writes the above article defiantly after bloggers had already criticized him previously for questioning the usefulness of Google book digitization, by which he called into question the usefulness of digital availability of such information to all citizens. Some people still do not understand "democracy" in its core value.
With uninformed people like this at the head of the main US library institution, the demise of libraries is not far off. Mark our words that the next decades will be marked by massive library closings since all the world will doing their research on the screen. Blog Bitten People such as Gorman will have accelerated this development.
The entire controversy reminds us of the Egyptology library at the University of Trier in Germany, our former abode as Lecturer in Law. That library is kept unter lock and key like the safe of a bank to make sure that unauthorized persons do not obtain access to books which might be used to upset the dusty applecarts of the virtually mothballed academic disciplines which deal with this region of the world.
Freedom of Information is simply not something relished by information monopolists.
Gorman wirtes:
"In the eyes of bloggers, my sin lay in suggesting that Google is OK at giving access to random bits of information but would be terrible at giving access to the recorded knowledge that is the substance of scholarly books. I went further and came up with the unoriginal idea that the thing to do with a scholarly book is to read it, preferably not on a screen. It turns out that the Blog People (or their subclass who are interested in computers and the glorification of information) have a fanatical belief in the transforming power of digitization and a consequent horror of, and contempt for, heretics who do not share that belief."
Horror, no. Contempt, yes.
However, we see that Google's digitization of millions of books for online access by "the masses" has the poor library people up in arms. Indeed, particularly the rise of the masses in blogs seems to be a cause for the librarians' wrath.
Michael Gorman, president-elect of the American Library Association, and Dean of Library Services, Madden Library, California State University, Fresno, has an appropriately blog-fearing article in the Library Journal of February 25, 2005 entitled Revenge of the Blog People!.
Gorman has made the mistake of attacking bloggers (this is generally done only by those who really understand nothing about blogging), and also the present posting is his reaping of the fruits of the seeds he himself has sown.
Here is how Gorman describes blogs:
"A blog is a species of interactive electronic diary by means of which the unpublishable, untrammeled by editors or the rules of grammar, can communicate their thoughts via the web. (Though it sounds like something you would find stuck in a drain, the ugly neologism blog is a contraction of "web log.") Until recently, I had not spent much time thinking about blogs or Blog People."
What a stupid thing to write. It is rather hard to believe that the president-elect of the ALA could be this out of touch with reality.
Not having learned from experience, he writes the above article defiantly after bloggers had already criticized him previously for questioning the usefulness of Google book digitization, by which he called into question the usefulness of digital availability of such information to all citizens. Some people still do not understand "democracy" in its core value.
With uninformed people like this at the head of the main US library institution, the demise of libraries is not far off. Mark our words that the next decades will be marked by massive library closings since all the world will doing their research on the screen. Blog Bitten People such as Gorman will have accelerated this development.
The entire controversy reminds us of the Egyptology library at the University of Trier in Germany, our former abode as Lecturer in Law. That library is kept unter lock and key like the safe of a bank to make sure that unauthorized persons do not obtain access to books which might be used to upset the dusty applecarts of the virtually mothballed academic disciplines which deal with this region of the world.
Freedom of Information is simply not something relished by information monopolists.
Gorman wirtes:
"In the eyes of bloggers, my sin lay in suggesting that Google is OK at giving access to random bits of information but would be terrible at giving access to the recorded knowledge that is the substance of scholarly books. I went further and came up with the unoriginal idea that the thing to do with a scholarly book is to read it, preferably not on a screen. It turns out that the Blog People (or their subclass who are interested in computers and the glorification of information) have a fanatical belief in the transforming power of digitization and a consequent horror of, and contempt for, heretics who do not share that belief."
Horror, no. Contempt, yes.
BlogBib Goes Biblio Blog
BlogBib, An Annotated Bibliography on Weblogs and Blogging, with a Focus on Library/Librarian Blogs..., by Susan Herzog, Information Literacy Librarian @ Eastern Connecticut State University has an excellent series of postings on blogging in 8 PARTS.
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Articles & Interviews About Blogs
Part 3: BlogBib: Blogging @Your Library
Part 4: BlogBib: Blogging Tools
Part 5: BlogBib: Select Librarian/Library Blogs
Part 6: BlogBib: Books on Blogging
Part 7: BlogBib: Studies on Blogging
Part 8: BlogBib: Presentations on Blogging
This is must read about blogging.
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Articles & Interviews About Blogs
Part 3: BlogBib: Blogging @Your Library
Part 4: BlogBib: Blogging Tools
Part 5: BlogBib: Select Librarian/Library Blogs
Part 6: BlogBib: Books on Blogging
Part 7: BlogBib: Studies on Blogging
Part 8: BlogBib: Presentations on Blogging
This is must read about blogging.
Thursday, February 17, 2005
The FeedBurner Weblog - Burning Questions
We have just subscribed to Burning Questions the offical FeedBurner Weblog, which has 934 subscribing readers as of this date +1 for our subscription. Take a look. The last posting there was on RSS Metrics and Podcasting.
Giving Google the Goodbyes
What has Google recently done to its search algorithm? It is a disaster.
There is an old wisdom which holds that "power corrupts" and "absolute power corrupts absolutely". And Google appears to be corrupted - absolutely.
Whereas most of the world has increasingly been singing the praises of Google, we have become increasingly wary of this search engine whose overly smart but increasingly complicated algorithms are perhaps beginning to run asunder.
Until about a week ago, the entry of "lawpundit" into Google expectedly returned the blog "LawPundit" as the first search listing, as it should be, since there are no competing websites or blogs with that name.
What we now find is that the entry of "lawpundit" into the Google search box no longer turns up that blog but an absolutely confused mess of websites that LINK to the blog. There appears to be no rhyme or reason to the listing whatsoever and many of the sites who do link to our blog are not very important, since some of them are our own LESSER, seldom used, blogs.
Or to put it another way, when looking for the blog LawPundit on Google, Google is useless. Even keying the words "LawPundit" and "Blog" does not provide the desired result. Something has gone very badly bonkers in the algorithm of the Google search system in the last week or two.
Our tolerance level for nonsense is low. We do not wait long. We have installed both the Yahoo and MSN toolbars and are going to give Google the boot. Yahoo's first four results for LawPundit are perfect:
1. http://www.lawpundit.com/blog/lawpundit.htm - the LawPundit blog page
2. http://www.lawpundit.com - the LawPundit website index page
3. http://lawpundit.blogspot.com - the previous LawPundit blogspot location
4. http://feeds.feedburner.com/lawpundit - the FeedBurner RSS feed
That's the way it should be. For any entered artificial keyword such as lawpundit, we - at the least - expect the search engine to find the comparably named URLs and RSSs and rank them ahead of sites that merely LINK to them. God forbid.
Goodbye Google. Yahoo is now our toolbar of choice. It has some new features we were not even aware of, such as an anti-spyware button which permits immediate scans of the hard disk. Terrific. And the search results are just as good, if not better now.
Giving Google the Goodbyes....
Crossposted to LawPundit.
There is an old wisdom which holds that "power corrupts" and "absolute power corrupts absolutely". And Google appears to be corrupted - absolutely.
Whereas most of the world has increasingly been singing the praises of Google, we have become increasingly wary of this search engine whose overly smart but increasingly complicated algorithms are perhaps beginning to run asunder.
Until about a week ago, the entry of "lawpundit" into Google expectedly returned the blog "LawPundit" as the first search listing, as it should be, since there are no competing websites or blogs with that name.
What we now find is that the entry of "lawpundit" into the Google search box no longer turns up that blog but an absolutely confused mess of websites that LINK to the blog. There appears to be no rhyme or reason to the listing whatsoever and many of the sites who do link to our blog are not very important, since some of them are our own LESSER, seldom used, blogs.
Or to put it another way, when looking for the blog LawPundit on Google, Google is useless. Even keying the words "LawPundit" and "Blog" does not provide the desired result. Something has gone very badly bonkers in the algorithm of the Google search system in the last week or two.
Our tolerance level for nonsense is low. We do not wait long. We have installed both the Yahoo and MSN toolbars and are going to give Google the boot. Yahoo's first four results for LawPundit are perfect:
1. http://www.lawpundit.com/blog/lawpundit.htm - the LawPundit blog page
2. http://www.lawpundit.com - the LawPundit website index page
3. http://lawpundit.blogspot.com - the previous LawPundit blogspot location
4. http://feeds.feedburner.com/lawpundit - the FeedBurner RSS feed
That's the way it should be. For any entered artificial keyword such as lawpundit, we - at the least - expect the search engine to find the comparably named URLs and RSSs and rank them ahead of sites that merely LINK to them. God forbid.
Goodbye Google. Yahoo is now our toolbar of choice. It has some new features we were not even aware of, such as an anti-spyware button which permits immediate scans of the hard disk. Terrific. And the search results are just as good, if not better now.
Giving Google the Goodbyes....
Crossposted to LawPundit.
Saturday, February 05, 2005
Brilliant Button Maker
Via the German law blog Streitsache, we point to a site which automatizes the making of buttons for blogs. See the Brilliant Button Maker by LucaZappa.com.
Friday, February 04, 2005
NOFOLLOW - a new attribute against spam
The Google Blog has the simplest explanation we have found of the new "nofollow" attribute on URLs as a means of preventing comment spam and similar URL spam abuses.
Not only have the major blog software makers signed on to this project, but MSN Search, Yahoo and also Wikipedia (1.4 Beta 6) are on board.
Do you follow?
Not only have the major blog software makers signed on to this project, but MSN Search, Yahoo and also Wikipedia (1.4 Beta 6) are on board.
Do you follow?
Saturday, January 22, 2005
Trackback for blogs by CNET
TMCnet.com has a January 20, 2005 story via the Business Wire from CNET News.com entitled CNET News.com Introduces TrackBack, Linking Blog Commentary to CNET News.com Stories. As written there:
"TrackBack is an emerging protocol that allows Web sites to automatically store records of any links which occur between them. For example, for each article produced by CNET News.com, TrackBack automatically creates and posts records of any blogs that link to that article. As a result, readers can easily find the blogs that discuss the story, gaining multi-faceted insight on the issues that interest them. In turn, bloggers using TrackBack gain visibility before the audience of one of the most popular news sources on the Web when they link to a CNET News.com story, and the CNET News.com editorial team gains valuable feedback to their stories and insight on which topics are generating the most buzz, so they can expand their coverage of those topics.
The TrackBack protocol was introduced by Six Apart, makers of the Movable Type publishing platform and TypePad personal weblogging service, and is free to use. "We're pleased CNET News.com has chosen TrackBack to link blog comments with their news articles," said Ben Trott, Six Apart's co-founder and CTO and creator of the TrackBack protocol."
We are regular CNET website readers, for example, try this January 21, 2005 News.com article by Charles Cooper "When blogging can get you locked up", covering blogging dangers around the world.
Here is a description of CNET operations from that same article:
"CNET Networks, Inc. (http://www.cnetnetworks.com/) is a premier global interactive content company that informs, entertains, and connects large, engaged audiences around topics of high information need or personal passion. The company focuses on three categories -- personal technology, games and entertainment, and business technology - and includes such leading brands as:
CNET, [the computer and digital hardware site par excellence]
ZDNet, [technology news, blogs, downloads, white papers, reviews, prices]
TechRepublic, [e.g. their free download (to registered users) of "48 questions you need to answer for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance (according to the auditors)", a useful download for corporations and their legal staffs and counsel.]
MP3.com [music]
GameSpot, [games]
CNET Download.com, [downloads, but also analysis, e.g. their feature today is "The problem with porn We don't care whether you frequent adult sites, but we do want to help you keep spyware off your machine. Our newest spyware horror story describes how surfing for smut took a costly toll."]
CNET News.com, [e.g. today's article: "How Significant Is SCO's Win?" by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writing "How significant was The SCO Group Inc.'s victory in its discovery motion over IBM in the companies' ongoing battle over Linux copyright and Unix contract issues? It depends on which analysts and lawyers you talk to about Magistrate Judge Brooke Wells' decision."]
Webshots, [digital photos]
Computer Shopper magazine, [technology products] and
CNET Channel [structured and standardized product information for electronic catalogs in the IT industry]. With a strong presence in the US, Asia and Europe, CNET Networks has operations in 12 countries. "
Crossposted to LawPundit.
"TrackBack is an emerging protocol that allows Web sites to automatically store records of any links which occur between them. For example, for each article produced by CNET News.com, TrackBack automatically creates and posts records of any blogs that link to that article. As a result, readers can easily find the blogs that discuss the story, gaining multi-faceted insight on the issues that interest them. In turn, bloggers using TrackBack gain visibility before the audience of one of the most popular news sources on the Web when they link to a CNET News.com story, and the CNET News.com editorial team gains valuable feedback to their stories and insight on which topics are generating the most buzz, so they can expand their coverage of those topics.
The TrackBack protocol was introduced by Six Apart, makers of the Movable Type publishing platform and TypePad personal weblogging service, and is free to use. "We're pleased CNET News.com has chosen TrackBack to link blog comments with their news articles," said Ben Trott, Six Apart's co-founder and CTO and creator of the TrackBack protocol."
We are regular CNET website readers, for example, try this January 21, 2005 News.com article by Charles Cooper "When blogging can get you locked up", covering blogging dangers around the world.
Here is a description of CNET operations from that same article:
"CNET Networks, Inc. (http://www.cnetnetworks.com/) is a premier global interactive content company that informs, entertains, and connects large, engaged audiences around topics of high information need or personal passion. The company focuses on three categories -- personal technology, games and entertainment, and business technology - and includes such leading brands as:
CNET, [the computer and digital hardware site par excellence]
ZDNet, [technology news, blogs, downloads, white papers, reviews, prices]
TechRepublic, [e.g. their free download (to registered users) of "48 questions you need to answer for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance (according to the auditors)", a useful download for corporations and their legal staffs and counsel.]
MP3.com [music]
GameSpot, [games]
CNET Download.com, [downloads, but also analysis, e.g. their feature today is "The problem with porn We don't care whether you frequent adult sites, but we do want to help you keep spyware off your machine. Our newest spyware horror story describes how surfing for smut took a costly toll."]
CNET News.com, [e.g. today's article: "How Significant Is SCO's Win?" by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writing "How significant was The SCO Group Inc.'s victory in its discovery motion over IBM in the companies' ongoing battle over Linux copyright and Unix contract issues? It depends on which analysts and lawyers you talk to about Magistrate Judge Brooke Wells' decision."]
Webshots, [digital photos]
Computer Shopper magazine, [technology products] and
CNET Channel [structured and standardized product information for electronic catalogs in the IT industry]. With a strong presence in the US, Asia and Europe, CNET Networks has operations in 12 countries. "
Crossposted to LawPundit.
Friday, January 14, 2005
Enterprise Blogging
The FreePint Newsletter has an article by Laurel A. Clyde evaluating the current status of Enterprise Blogging.
The article is based on the Enterprise Blogging presentation at the December 2004 Online Information conference in London .
Clyde, e.g., cites to one law firm's experience with blogging.
Crossposted to LawPundit.
Via TVC Aert.
The article is based on the Enterprise Blogging presentation at the December 2004 Online Information conference in London .
Clyde, e.g., cites to one law firm's experience with blogging.
Crossposted to LawPundit.
Via TVC Aert.
Sunday, January 09, 2005
Six Apart buys Live Journal
Om Malik on Broadband (Om is senior writer with Business 2.0 magazine) reports that Live Journal is to be purchased by Six Apart, a story also found under the catchy title Turmoil in blogland in an article by Danah Boyd at Salon.com. Of course, Live Journal also has something to say about the deal as does Six Apart at Mena's Corner.
Friday, January 07, 2005
Citizen Journalists and Tsunami Coverage a Watershed
Steve Outing in Poynter Online and the article Taking Tsunami Coverage into Their Own Hands delivers his opinion and that of his colleague Dan Gillmor that the tsunami marks a watershed in the development of "citizen journalists".
Video Blogging (Vlogging) On its Way
As we might guess from the coming Vloggercon 2005 on January 22, 2005 in New York City at the Parsons School of Design, another new direction in blogging is going to be video blogging, something that Adrian Miles at VLOG 2.1 calls not Vlogging but "Vogging". Adrian even has his Vogma, a vogging manifesto, which has run into some legitimate criticism from Mike Slone to which Adrian has written a reply.
We think that the term vlogging will remain the term of art. Indeed, Jeff Jarvis at Buzz Machine already commented in detail on vlogging and vlogging software late in 2002.
As just announced at the CES 2005 in Las Vegas, Serious Magic at Vlog.com (pages still substantially under construction) will be introducing what it calls the world's first video blogging software Vlog It! in February, which will make vlogging possible by anyone, allegedly even those with no video experience or technical skills.
At the moment, there are still very vew vbloggers out there. See VideoBlogging.info which is trying to maintain a list of Videobloggers
It will be interesting to see whether vlogging will be incorporated into the existing blogosphere or whether it will create a vlogosphere of its own.
We think that the term vlogging will remain the term of art. Indeed, Jeff Jarvis at Buzz Machine already commented in detail on vlogging and vlogging software late in 2002.
As just announced at the CES 2005 in Las Vegas, Serious Magic at Vlog.com (pages still substantially under construction) will be introducing what it calls the world's first video blogging software Vlog It! in February, which will make vlogging possible by anyone, allegedly even those with no video experience or technical skills.
At the moment, there are still very vew vbloggers out there. See VideoBlogging.info which is trying to maintain a list of Videobloggers
It will be interesting to see whether vlogging will be incorporated into the existing blogosphere or whether it will create a vlogosphere of its own.
Thursday, January 06, 2005
Bill Gates on Blogs, RSS, IP Law and IT at CES 2005
Via the Law Pundit FeedDirect Newsfeed of Blogging News we are taken to Search Engine Watch and Search Engine News who comment on a January 5, 2005 News.com article by Michael Kannellos (Staff Writer, CNET News.com) entitled "Gates taking a seat in your den", which contains a Q&A session with Bill Gates at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2005) in Las Vegas.
Gates comments on blogs, RSS, intellectual property law (IP Law) and other new developments in information technology around the world. Read the article here.
Crossposted to LawPundit.
Gates comments on blogs, RSS, intellectual property law (IP Law) and other new developments in information technology around the world. Read the article here.
Crossposted to LawPundit.
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
SEA-EAT - The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog
The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog also known as "SEA-EAT" ("I saw the sea eat my wife and kids")
was set up as a clearinghouse to mobilize help for tsunami victims.
It has had over a million hits in its first nine days, showing the tremendous practical use to which blogs can be put.
Crossposted to LawPundit.
was set up as a clearinghouse to mobilize help for tsunami victims.
It has had over a million hits in its first nine days, showing the tremendous practical use to which blogs can be put.
Crossposted to LawPundit.
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