[there are five news stories in this post.]
U.S. Newswire :: AFGE Launches UnionBlog.com; Web Log Believed First for Labor Movement
...WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The nation's largest union for federal and DC government workers, AFGE, today announced the launch of its official blog web site believed to be the first of its kind: UnionBlog. Web logs, or blogs for short, are a sort of cross between an online diary and links to current news reports. Blogs have become a popular means of communication.
"We felt the need to launch a web log that would not only cater to our members, but government workers in general and the public as well," said AFGE National President John Gage.
UnionBlog will include typical features such as links to important media and information web sites and a personal column by National President John Gage, but the site will eventually integrate interactive activist features such as surveys and petitions. "We plan to give the people new vehicles to make their voices heard," said Gage.
AFGE represents 600,000 federal and DC government employees nationwide and overseas, including DoD, Department of Homeland Security, TSA, Social Security Administration, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. For more information on AFGE visit UnionBlog or the official AFGE web site...
Washington Post :: Movie Meltdown
By Howard Kurtz
As a footnote to his coverage of the debacle of the cancelled CBS miniseries - "The Reagans" - Howard Kurtz makes the following comments:
...the Web site Blogads has this scoop:
"John Kerry: first presidential candidate targeting advertising to blogs.
"Ads for John Kerry's presidential campaign are running on four sites this AM.
"For you news junkies, this is groundbreaking. Blogs are extraordinarily cheap AND influential, and it is great that a national campaign has caught on to advertising on the blogging medium.
"There are also some important philosophical ground to plow. Josh Marshall sketches a policy for accepting ads from campaigns he covers.
"The bottom line: bloggers have the lowest overheads in media and the most passionate audiences. Buying 5 million page impressions on blogs costs less than $3000. The same ads on WashingtonPost.com or NYTimes.com would cost $125,000 ... which would you buy?"
But could candidates lose votes over annoying pop-ups?...
City Journal :: Another Victory for the New Conservative Media
by Brian C. Anderson
...Conservatives have long lamented the Left's near monopoly over the institutions of opinion and information, which has enabled liberal opinion makers, including television producers, to present their own views as Gospel truth and to sweep aside ideas and beliefs they don't like as if they were beneath contempt, unworthy of argument. But as CBS has discovered to its dismay, conservatives suddenly have a sizable - and growing - media presence of their own, and not just on talk radio.
Consider the Internet, where conservative-friendly news and opinion websites like the Drudge Report, Dow Jones's OpinionJournal, National Review Online, and FrontPage, along with current-event "blogs" like AndrewSullivan and InstaPundit - all of them launched in the last several years - are having a seismic impact on politics and culture. Consulted daily by millions, including just about everybody who works in media, these sites (usually running on shoe-string budgets) serve as 24/7 B.S. detectors, relentlessly exposing liberal bias and lies wherever they rear up...
...IMlogic Inc., a leading provider of infrastructure solutions for the rapidly growing enterprise Instant Messaging (IM) market, today announced that its president and CEO, Francis deSouza, will be leading a discussion on "Instantaneous Online Communications: Instant Messaging, Presence and Blogging," at the Comdex Las Vegas 2003 event on Thurs., Nov. 20, 2003, from 11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. PST. In addition, deSouza will be presenting a featured discussion entitled, "Instant Messaging Infrastructure Solutions - Is IM 4 Real?" at the Comdex Digital Enterprise Innovation Center on Wed., Nov. 19, at 2:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. PST. IMlogic will also be exhibiting its market-leading technology at Booth # 5058J...
Yahoo PR NewsWire :: What Your Company's Web Consultant Doesn't Want You to Know
...SANTA BARBARA, Calif., Nov. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- For many small- to medium- sized business owners, maintaining and updating a Web site has been a costly and time consuming process. Expensive maintenance contracts or knowledge of HTML are required. Dynamic database-driven Web sites are priced out of reach for many business owners. Now, however, a powerful, yet relatively misunderstood Web publishing tool is available that business owners can utilize to quickly update their sites without waiting for busy and expensive Web consultants to perform simple tasks like adding new pictures, changing text or adding a new email address. And the best news - it's free! Welcome to the world of "blogging."
A blog or weblog, is a Web page made up of short, frequently updated posts that are arranged chronologically, like a "news" page. The content and purposes of blogs vary greatly, from commentary to news about a company, person or idea. Recently blogs have been appearing on political campaign Web sites.
Tom Mattson of Santa Barbara, CA-based Industrial Strength Design says most business owners are unaware of the potential of this new, free web publishing option: "I was reading the blogs of technical Web writers when I realized that blogs are really just Web pages. My clients could utilize a free tool like BLOGGER and update their own Web sites, the pages didn't have to be called `blogs.'"
Mattson spent considerable time testing the available blogging tools and found BLOGGER to be easy to use and free. BLOGGER was recently purchased by Google. The buyout is considered a huge boost to an enormously diverse genre of online publishing that has begun to change the equations of online news and information. Now Google is positioned to surge to the forefront of what David Krane, the company's director of corporate communications, calls "a global self-publishing phenomenon that connects Internet users with dynamic, diverse points of view while also enabling comment and participation."
Allen DeForrest of Wild Ideas, a local backpacking equipment company and one of Industrial Strength Design's clients, says BLOGGER is an extremely useful tool that increases the efficiency of maintaining a Web site: "We have been able to easily add new content during the backpacking season to our site. With the seasonal nature of our business, updating our site quickly is critical."
Mattson explains that if a person knows how to send an e-mail, they can update their Web site: "BLOGGER Web pages are easy to update with only a Web browser, from any computer, anywhere. BLOGGER driven pages can be integrated into existing sites or used to build new Web sites. Our team is eager to help our clients learn how to capitalize on this powerful, free Web publishing tool." ...
K-Collector