judith meskill's knowledge notes...

change is constant ...

two years later ... attempting a bit of consolidation. taking the various bits of blogging that i've penned, over the past six or seven years, and combining them into one blog over at socmediarocks ... some of the oldest bits seeem to be lost forever, but ... most of the later posts are falling into place as i gather and export/import them from old movable type, blogger, blogsmith, and wordpress blogs. now off to munge about with templates, plugins, etc. on my new wordpress blog.

btw, what's up with wordpress and categories and/or tags? /cheers ...

where did all my 'social software' posts go?...

To the The Social Software Weblog - socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com.... See you there... (^:

blogging on steroids...

InternetNews :: BitTorrent, 'Gi-Fi,' and Other Trends in 2004
by Ryan Naraine

Blogging on Steroids

...If you were caught off guard by the wild popularity of blogs (define) in 2003, wait till you see what 2004 has in store. The next wave could be dubbed blogging-on-steroids -- as blogging technology is merged with wikis (blogging "best-practices" sites) (define) and integrated into social networks (the Friendsters of the world) to create a truly-connected world of online journals, Web collaboration and personals networking.

In 2004, the evolution of the weblog/wiki/personal network will make a huge impact in the way information is shared on the Internet. Doubters need just look at the way the heavyweight politicians have embraced blogging to take advantage of the conversational nature of the technology...

paul gillin on blogging...

Paul Gillin, TechTarget 'Editor in Chief,' gives his 2004 outlook: VoIP to rise, Sun to set.

In his 'Stuff to Avoid' category Paul Gillin warns that:

"...Blogging's wave has already crested now that millions of online diarists are realizing that not that many people actually read this stuff .... Social networking sites like Friendster. Puh-leeze. Don't we have better things to do? ..."

left, right, economic bloggers...

Bruce Bartlett, in Blogs galore!, gives his list of those who are, in his opinion, the most notable 'economic' bloggers - regardless of their 'political views' and affiliations:

Brad DeLong, Max B. Sawicky, Donald L. Luskin, Steve Antler, Ray Fair, Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok, Stephen Bainbridge, Glenn Reynolds, and Eugene Volokh.

is there a there there?...

In the Washington Post today, Leslie Walker shares her 'short list' of some of the hottest Internet services of 2003 in 'A Year For New Paths To Friends, Music, More.'

Leslie Walker's 'Web Watch' short list of 'hottest services' includes:

Apple - iTunes, Friendster, Vonage, Skype, Amazon, Google (and their acquisition of BLOGGER), Kazaa, and There.

top words of 2003...

Web User News :: Website names top words of 2003

...The word "blog" has been picked as one of the top words of 2003 by a US website specialising in language.

Website yourDictionary.com, which offers more than 2,500 dictionaries for more than 300 languages, has compiled a list of what it claims is the top word, phrase and name of the year.

According to the site, weblogs have come of age in 2003 and "regrettably, this lexical mutation [blog] with them". The word "blog" was ranked as the second top word of the year.

The top word of the year was "embedded" - the word used to describe news correspondents embedded in military units in Iraq. The word "SARS" ranked third. The top phrase of 2003 was "shock-and-awe" - the US strategy in US - and the top personal name of 2003 went to Saddam Hussein.

"This year the Iraqi War has dominated the English language as it has dominated the news," said Robert Beard, chief executive at yourDictionary.

However, Paris Hilton, the hotel-chain heiress, also featured in the list of top personal names following the "internet distribution of her extracurricular activities".

yourDictionary.com has also published a list of president George W Bush's top-five mispronunciations, including "new-cue-ler" (for nuclear) and "a-merr-ca" (for America), and top product names, which includes Apple's download service "iTunes"...

actionable sense...

and so i wish for you this holiday
a heightened sense of all that lights your fire
for passion is the thing that, come what may,
will help to manifest your deep desire.

so thank you for your praise of my tech prose
and in your heart please know that all you share
comes back to you and often overflows
with that for which your heart has steadfast care.

and as we find that 'sense in action' counts
with blogs and wikis in a 'socialtext'
we'll see that interest in our action mounts
as we with knowledge fill our 'social decks.'

twas lilia inspired here this prose
to 'actionable cohorts' - this 'sense' flows...

©2003 judith meskill

actionable cohorts...

Once upon a time, eons ago by weblogging measure, Dina Mehta traveled from India and visited the USA and Europe - meeting face to face with many of those who populate her 'blogroll.' When I met Dina, she told me of conversations with Stuart Henshall who wanted to form a 'troupe' of individuals from all over the world who have a passion for making true collaboration happen. This was an idea on which I had also been ruminating and had planned to discuss with Dina at our lunch meeting in Philadelphia.

And then, as often happens in weblogging land, a meaningful conversation began to emerge - among thought leaders and like-minded individuals - around creating an 'actionable sense.'

A partial list of cohorts who have been blogging about our 'actionable sense' collaboration follows - to their descriptions and 'conversations' I do defer:

Lilia Efimova - 'actionable sense'
Ton Zijlstra - 'Making Actionable Sense,' parts I, II, and III.
Dina Mehta - 'actionable sense'.
Stuart Henshall - 'Actionable Sense Troupe.'

intersection of knowledge management and blogging...

Back on 19 September 2003, Jim McGee referenced a post by Jon Udell on Kimbro Staken's new science experiment, Syncato. And now - actually twelve days ago - Silicon Valley Biz Ink published a press release - Sleepycat Software Honors XML Innovators.

Sleepycat Software, makers of Berkeley DB announced results for the 2003 Berkeley DB XML Innovation Awards. XML technology consultant Kimbro Staken took the second place award for developing Syncato, a weblog or "blogging" application that combines an easy-to-use online personal idea log with advanced knowledge management and publishing capabilities. Staken's system stores each personal log as XML that can then be searched via XPath.

"Syncato maximizes the value of people's ideas and information in blogs by making them easily searchable," said Staken. "Under the hood, the Syncato weblog system is a XML fragment management system that relies on the flexibility of Berkeley DB XML to store XML natively alongside non-XML and semi-structured data."

rss winterfest 2004...

DecisionCast announces IDG's InfoWorld as Media Sponsor for RSS WinterFest 2004, a free, two day Webcast, wiki, and Weblog event on January 21-22, 2004, that will explore the uses, applications, and future of RSS and Internet content syndication. "More and more companies and organizations are using RSS to alleviate e-mail overload as well as to manage projects, deliver important information, create effective knowledge management and content management systems, and push information to their customers."

Featured speakers include:

-- Anil Dash Vice President, Business Development, Six Apart
-- Jon Udell, Lead Analyst, InfoWorld Test Center
-- Chad Dickerson, CTO, InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
-- Bill French, Co-Founder, MyST Technology Partners
-- Robert Scoble, Technical Evangelist, US-.NET Platform Strategy, Microsoft
-- Scott Johnson, Founder, Feedster
-- Greg Reinacker, Founder, NewsGator
-- Chris Pirillo, Founder, Lockergnome
-- Ross Mayfield, CEO, Socialtext
-- Greg Lloyd, President & Co-Founder, Traction
-- Cynthia Carlson, Founder, KnowLogix Consulting
-- Graham Rasmussen, Consultant, KnowLogix Consulting
-- Matt McAlister, Vice President, General Manager, InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
-- Derek Scruggs, Founder, Escalan

blosxoms, bryars and blikis...

Huh, you say? Well, blosxom is a lightweight weblog implementation, created by Rael Dornfest, that describes itself as "the zen of blogging." Simon Cosens' Bryar is a modular, extensible weblog tool - more complex than 'blosxom' - primarily in its extensibility. A Bliki, according to the 'Wikipedia' is quite simply, a weblog with wiki support. If you are still saying 'Huh', then skip Simon's article and just read his conclusion excerpted below. Otherwise, in O'Reilly's Perl.com, Simon Cozens writes about 'Blosxoms, Bryars and Blikis.' - a worthy read for the 'Perl' and 'CGI' savvy.

Simon concludes with: "I consider the emergence of interest in social software to be one of the most fascinating trends in software engineering this year. Two of the most powerful and popular aspects of this, wikis and blogs, are particularly well-suited for extension and embedding, and Perl is a particularly well-suited language for achieving this.

Although part of the point of this article was to demonstrate Bryar, there were several other important points. First, that there are plenty of Perl implementations of both wikis and blogs that you can choose from; second, that Perl makes it really easy to create your own blog or wiki and customize to your own purposes, including embedding them in an existing application.

But finally, the point was to encourage you to think about good design and the power of extensible applications; if you can create a tool that is both powerful and generalizable -- just like Perl itself -- it may end up doing wildly different things to what you initially intended!"

weblogs 2003 retrospective...

In an OJR article: A Look Back at 2003, and What's on the Horizon for the Online News Universe, Mark Glaser reflects on his predictions for 2003 regarding, among other things, weblogs and blogging, and then offers up some predictions for 2004.

One of Mark's 2003 predictions was that "smart bloggers get their due, become famous, and can get paid for what they do. Media companies get it, and start assigning blogs as real jobs and not just extracurricular activities." Mark reflects that "Now a month doesn't go by without another media company announcing new Weblogs -- Fast Company, MSNBC.com, Variety.com, Wired Magazine, New York Magazine."

Read the article, it has an interesting Q&A section with a diverse array of opinions on - "the proliferation of people with camera phones breaking spot news stories; the rise of Google and Google News; the soap opera at (AOL) Time Warner; the continued inroads of paid content; RSS feeds; massive online coverage of the war in Iraq; viruses, worms and spam overwhelming newsrooms; the struggle for independent news in Zimbabwe, China, Iran and Iraq; and political rhetoric and election coverage." - among other things.

IMN, Inc. RSS Service...

EContentMag :: IMN, Inc. Releases Integrated RSS Service

...Emarketing firm IMN Inc. (formerly iMakeNews) has launched an RSS service that is integrated into its enewsletter and DirectBlog platforms. IMN customers can now publish their enewsletters or blogs so that they are automatically picked up through RSS content aggregators. The service is designed to offer marketers multiple ways to distribute their content, including email, the Web, or RSS feeds, increasing the number of alternatives for breaking through and engaging qualified recipients.

Through IMN's new service, marketers set their enewsletters or blogs to be published as RSS feeds at the same time that they post them to the Web. The process is designed to be transparent to IMN clients, who then use the same procedure to publish their content simultaneously as an email, Web site, and RSS feed. They use the same Web-based templates that they depend on to develop, publish, and distribute their content, and to measure customer behaviors in response. Phase two of IMN's RSS service will be available later in December and provide IMN's behavioral tracking capabilities, the same as those currently available through the company's newsletter and DirectBlog services...

more MT spam vulnerabilities...

If you utilize Movable Type for your weblog this is mandatory reading:
Musings: More MT Spam Vulnerabilities

danah decoding @ nyt.com...

Danah Boyd speaks out on Friendster, social behaviors, online environments, and social architectures.

Mentioned in this article, in order of appearance:

danah boyd, Friendster, connected selves, Joi Ito, Sixdegrees, Jonathan Abrams, Burning Man, Pretendsters, Fakesters, Sarah Tuttle, Intel Research Anthropologist, Genevieve Bell, Tribe.net, Mark Pincus, Peter Lyman, and SIMS: School of Information Management and Systems, UC Berkeley.

The New York Times :: Decoding the New Cues in Online Society
By MICHAEL ERARD

...quote...
A SOCIOLOGIST among geeks and a geek among sociologists, Danah Boyd has 278 friends who link her to 1.1 million others.

So says Friendster.com, whose millions of members have transformed it from a dating site into a free-for-all of connectedness where new social rules are born of necessity. A 25-year-old graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, Ms. Boyd studies Friendster, hovering above the fray with a Web log called Connected Selves (www .zephoria.org/snt) and interviewing Friendster users. Her irrepressible observations have made her a social-network guru for the programmers and venture capitalists who swarm around Friendster and its competitors.

"She's definitely a Pied Piper for a bunch of different people," said Joichi Ito, a high-tech venture capitalist who lives in Tokyo. "At the same time she, as an academic, is able to articulate what is going on in a way that the people building the tools rarely understand or can articulate."

Ms. Boyd explained Friendster this way: "It allows you to purposely say who the people in your world are and to allow them to see each other, through a connection of you." An individual registered at Friendster has a home page with photos, a brief profile and photos of people to whom they have agreed to link. That person can then browse his or her network or search it for dates or activity partners.

Ms. Boyd says that the real world has a set of properties, which she calls architectures. With its deceptively simple set of features, her thinking goes, Friendster bends or replaces all of the real-world architectures.

For instance, when two people speak to each other, they assume their conversation is fleeting, but e-mail and instant messaging, by making that conversation persistent, offer a new architecture. When two people greet each other on the street, neither can see (nor hope to grasp) the range of the other's social network. For that matter, no individual can see information about his or her own social network: who knows whom, and how...
...end quote...

frequency...

Frequency is a desktop weblog client. If you have a weblog you manage with Blogger, Radio, Movable Type, or other Blogger API or metaWeblog API system, you can use Frequency to add new posts instead of logging into the web site every time. (comes in three versions, Mac OS X, Windows2000/XP, and Mac OS 9.)

blogging backtalk...

In Howard Kurtz's Media Backtalk (washingtonpost.com) today:

...begin quote...
College Park, Md.: In your column today, you quoted Bill Keller mentioning how he checks out blogs critical of the Times and that sometimes it provides him with a journalistic gut check: "Sometimes I read something on a blog that makes me feel we screwed up..."

Are these blogs by and large critical of the Times from the Left or from the Right? Do you think he gives equal weight to blog critiques from both sides of the spectrum? And lastly, can you name some of the blogs Keller may have mentioned by name so that we the news consumer can check out their critiques for ourselves to help us more critically understand the beefs that both sides of the spectrum, but particularly the Right, has with the Times?

(Above reference is to Bill Keller's Changing Times (washingtonpost.com) - Post, Nov. 24)

Howard Kurtz: I asked Keller that very question -- which blogs was he talking about? He declined to get specific, joking that he didn't want to provide a "blurb" by singling one out. But I thought it was refreshing that he checks this stuff out and doesn't dismiss it out of hand. Obviously the Times, like the rest of the mainstream press, gets criticized by the left as well as the right, though most of the critiques tend to be from conservatives.
...end quote...

'highly tech-savvy' americans...

According to the Globe and Mail "A study released Sunday found that 31 per cent of Americans are "highly tech-savvy" people for whom the Internet, cellphones and handheld organizers are more indispensable than TVs and old-fashioned wired phones."

In an aggregate of past studies performed by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and reported on a Daily and Overall Internet Population table: "About 59% of Americans (113 million) have gone online." Of that 113M who have gone online 93% send email and only 3% create a web log or "blog" that others can read online.

rss, weblogs and knowledge managment...

I am constantly searching for traditional news feeds that talk about weblogs, blogging, knowledge management, social software, and social networking. News items that cover the intersection of two or more of these areas are infrequent, but here is one today that speaks of weblogs, RSS, and Knowledge Management.

MarketingProfs :: RSS for the Real World
by Dana VanDen Heuvel

...RSS is a "techie" acronym for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary, depending on whom you talk to, the time of day and the day of the week. Also referred to as an RSS feed or XML feed, this protocol is an application of XML that provides an open method of syndicating (or distributing) and aggregating Web content.

RSS feeds are read by a Web-based tool called a news aggregator (such as News Gator) - typically a free download that allows you to view RSS site subscriptions. An RSS feed is produced whenever content is added to the site to which you've subscribed...

social networking and blogging...

[there are two news stories in this post.]

Silicon Valley Biz Ink :: Tickle Inc. Consolidates Social Networking Market With Acquisition

...SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Tickle Inc., formerly Emode, Inc., today announced the acquisition of Ringo, Inc., the third largest social networking company in the market. The acquisition integrates Ringo's robust feature set and more than 350,000 members with Tickle's newly-launched social networking services. The combined membership of more than one million consumers further solidifies Tickle's ten week-old social networking service as the number two player in the market. In a separate release, the company also announced today the appointment of industry veteran Samir Arora as chairman of the board and its name change to Tickle Inc.
"We are thrilled to be joining forces with one of the only other social networking sites that has viral growth and a rare team of people who are both technically excellent and understand the human side of the technology," said James Currier, founder and CEO of Tickle Inc. "Ringo's unparalleled feature set and groundbreaking technology will add more social networking power to our overall business and help us extend the incredible growth we've experienced so far. This move is the first step in a focused expansion strategy for Tickle."
Since its founding four years ago, Tickle has provided viral content such as self-discovery, matchmaking and social networking services to build a critical mass of over 16 million members. According to comScore Media Metrix, Tickle recently broke into the Top 50 most trafficked Web sites and was shown to be the number two Internet destination in the women's category -- currently, more than 65 percent of the company's members are women. Tickle has a solid revenue model with a majority of revenues coming from consumer subscriptions and a smaller portion from top-tier advertisers -- resulting in six consecutive quarters of profitable growth.
"We were approached by many companies, but ultimately we decided that Tickle had the most compelling vision for how social networking interacts with the rest of the Internet," said Michael Birch, co-founder and president of Ringo. "Tickle remains one of the most viral companies I've seen after many years in this industry, and I was excited to join the team and see where the power of our combined forces would take us."
Launched in early 2003, Ringo has built a significant offering that has grown virally and attracted a strong, diverse community of active users. Based in Walnut Creek, Calif., the company and its founders -- Michael Birch, Paul Birch and Morgan Sowden -- have been developing viral online applications for over four years and were most recently named by Spin magazine as "the next Friendster." The technology behind the service, Ringo's rapid application development environment, was specifically designed to develop and launch community applications quickly and seamlessly. Through the acquisition, Tickle further strengthens its reach into women, religious groups and music fans and will have access to Ringo's industry-leading, robust features set, including popular services such as blogs, events, forums, polls, calendaring and classified listings.
The acquisition of Ringo is a cash and stock deal, effective immediately. Key members of the Ringo team will join Tickle's product and engineering groups in San Francisco to accelerate the development of the Tickle social networking service.

Keywords: IAC, Yahoo!, AOL, Google, Match.com, Personals, Classmates, Friendster, HotJobs, CareerBuilder, Monster...

Silicon Valley Biz Ink :: FaceTime's Instant Messaging Customer Leadership Tapped by COMDEX

...FOSTER CITY, Calif., Nov. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Furthering its leadership as the premier provider of security, management and control solutions for instant messaging (IM) and other forms of real-time communications in the enterprise, FaceTime Communications today announced its CEO, Glen D. Vondrick, will lead a discussion at COMDEX entitled, "Instantaneous Online Communications: Instant Messaging, Presence and Blogging." The session will be held Thursday, November 20 at 11:30 a.m. as part of COMDEX's Digital Enterprise Conference. FaceTime is widely recognized as an industry pioneer whose multi-network IM business applications enable enterprises to safely embrace the real-time presence capabilities of AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo!, IBM, Jabber, Reuters and other networks in a myriad of critical business functions. At COMDEX, Mr. Vondrick will present several FaceTime customer case studies that demonstrate how IM security and management solutions can be used by fast-paced organizations to enhance such critical business functions as customer service, community collaborative workflow, regulatory compliance reporting, and IT management and security...

weblogs in the news...

[there are six news stories in this post, make sure to read 'below the fold' as there are some interesting reads.]

Wisconsin Technology Network :: The Blog Nation
by Chris Shipley

...Blogging may be the first truly disintermediated, widely distributed and democratic publishing medium. Because blog media is low- or no-cost, there is no barrier to becoming a blog publisher. Indeed, anyone can create a blog. Whether anyone else reads it is another matter, but it is at this point where the reader, rather than writer/publisher, is truly empowered. In print or even online publishing, publishers assume their access to the printing press (physical or digital) washes them in journalistic integrity such that they can say to the reader, "Trust me," without necessarily earning that trust. As readers, we are trained that the media establishment is legit, that they more or less print truths. That trust relationship is turned on its ear in blog media. The reader who returns again and again to the source says to the publisher, "I trust you." Breech that trust, and the feedback loop of comments and referring links and the like will relegate your blog to the long, long list of the unread. Credibility, point of view, integrity are the lifeblood of the blogger.

For this reason, exactly, it is more than probable that bloggers will become the most influential commentators on all aspects of business and society. They can publish quickly to loyal and trusting readers. The blogger's perspective will carry tremendous weight, just as the venerable New York Times or - in our industry - PC Magazine do with their readership. And just as savvy product marketers learned to court the favor of journalists in other media, they must learn to reach out to bloggers who will become the king makers of the future...

ONLamp.com :: Markov blogging
by Andy Lester

...Three times a week, MarkovBlogger posts an entry at use.perl.org. It always has something interesting to say, like:

My thanks to Joe for providing this valuable public service...

The Advertiser :: Logging protest 65m up a tree
By Tim Martain

...ENVIRONMENTAL activists took their fight 65m above the forest floor yesterday, setting up camp in one of the Styx Valley's tallest trees.

"We have satellite communications that enable web broadcasts, and weblogs will be uploaded daily on to the Wilderness Society's site for people around Australia and the world to look at." ...

Silicon Valley Biz Ink :: C I Host Enhances e-Memories Program to Empower Digital Camera Buffs

...BEDFORD, Texas, Nov. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- C I Host, a global leader in Web hosting, Internet infrastructure and software development, has completely retooled and re-launched its e-Memories software to capitalize on the holiday surge in digital photography.
Christopher Faulkner, CEO of C I Host, said, "e-Memories now can transform a photographer into a `virtual media mogul.' This is more than an on-line scrapbook. Version two is an on-line media center with streaming video, blogging, family TV, digital family trees, e-mail, slide shows, postcards, chatrooms, birthday reminders and more."
Experts estimate the digital camera market is a $4.5 billion industry. However less than 15 percent of camera owners have experimented with on-line slide shows and similar products, researchers say.
"Any one of these features alone could be priced higher than where we have positioned the entire e-Memories `bundle,'" Faulkner said. "The value of the product and the ease of use should attract many holiday shoppers hoping to complement their new digital cameras."
In addition, a person armed with a digital photo-equipped cell phone with Internet service literally can up load shots to their Web site on the go.
"With digital photography, people don't buy or process film, so they are shooting more frames," Faulkner said. "e-Memories is a great way to display their talents."...

Newswise :: How Blogs and the Internet Are Impacting the 2004 Presidential Campaign

...Newswise - Web logs or "blogs" and the Internet have already sparked much discussion in the presidential campaign, as candidates such as Howard Dean have used them to generate popular support and to raise money. But how much will they impact the presidential race between now and Election Day?

The discussion will be moderated by Alexis Rice, a fellow in the Center for the Study of American Government at the Johns Hopkins Washington Center. Rice is the creator of www.campaignsonline.org and the author of a recent report on web blogs, entitled, "The Use of Blogs in the 2004 Presidential Election."...

dot Journalism :: Blunt: a cut above the rest
By: Jemima Kiss
Email: jemima@journalism.co.uk

...Blunt, the web magazine run by journalism students at Cardiff University, was the surprise winner of the best web site award at this year's Guardian Student Media Awards.

The Guardian Student Media Awards are now in their 25th year and award prizes in 13 categories including best newspaper, best budget publication and best reporter. This year's judging panel included Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, Jon Snow of Channel 4 News, Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman and Rebekah Wade, editor of The Sun...

social networking and blogging...

MediaDaily:: All The News That's Fit To Blog? Not Yet, But Maybe Soon

By Larry Dobrow, Contributing Writer

...Blogging and social networking may or may not change the face of traditional media as we know it. But Web wonks at a freewheeling panel discussion in New York Thursday morning said the impact of both is already being felt up and down the media food chain. And with one of the panelists estimating that somewhere in the neighborhood of three million blogs currently exist - three million people decrying the Bush Administration's economic policies, overcrowding at the local zoo or the propriety of continuing "8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter" without John Ritter - it probably behooves those few who aren't paying attention to get with the program.

Other panelists explored whether social networks can help media companies build loyalty with existing readers. Tony Perkins, creator and editor-in-chief of AlwaysOn and the event's host, questioned whether newly emboldened readers will continue to be engaged by Web sites that don't allow them to comment on stories, editorials or columns. What the blogging and social networking era has done for these readers, he said, was reveal "the power of participating in media... the average citizen out there has something to say." As a result, he believes every Web site will eventually have to open itself up to readers' comments, or risk losing their trust...

MacNN News :: Rainjul launches Polywogg blog services

...Rainjul has released a first public beta version of Polywogg, a journaling/blogging service for Mac OS X Jaguar and Panther. "This first release of Polywogg is packed with innovative features, many never before seen on any journal service, such as video blogging with Apple's iSight camera and comprehensive desktop web client application support. The blogging and journaling phenomena are ultimately about the appeal of social networking." It is available as fully functional and non-expiring software with both a Polywogg Reader and Polywogg Publisher. For a limited time, a one-year subscription for five journals is free for Apple .Mac members and $15 for others...

weblogs in the news...

[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.

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:

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...

Business Wire :: IMlogic CEO Francis deSouza to Discuss Future of Instantaneous Online Communications at Comdex Las Vegas 2003

...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."

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." ...

ode to a weblogger...

and if you find yourself without a clue
of how to lure good readers to your page
just hearken back to that which you find true
and worthy of a writer's modest wage.

your navel gathers dust and at times bores
so switch your gaze to higher honest tales
of how you'd rather swim to distant shores
than find your weblog your good reader fails.

the knowledge that you share will surely shine
a glowing ember in the thoughts of those
who read your prose with hunger line by line
and find your wisdom to them freely flows.

and if you find this sonnet serves you well
i pray that your dear readers think you're swell.

an english sonnet in iambic pentameter
©2003 judith meskill

weblogs in the news...

[there are four news stories in this post.]

OJR article :: Free Content Becoming Thing of the Past for UK's Online Newspaper Sites
by Daithi O. hAnluain

Mentioned in this article, in order of appearance:

OJR article: UK News Sites:Free and Subscription Services, Times Online, Financial Times, Guardian Unlimited, Telegraph, Nielsen/Netratings, The Association of Online Publishers, Online Publishers Association, LexisNexis, ABC Electronic, mbites, Reuters, The Press Association, Bloomberg, CNN, Google News, EL PAIS, Hollinger Telegraph New Media, OJR article: The Guardian of the Web, Robert Fisk, Independent Digital, BBC, and BBC News Online.

...Just 18 months ago, the United Kingdom was the land of free online news: Readers surfed from site to site and read every word, searched every archive and subscribed to every news alert -- all for free.

The Telegraph is the most fee-free British broadsheet on the Net, charging for a digital edition aimed at overseas readers and for fantasy football -- though registration is required to access the free content. The Guardian plans to introduce registration soon, though they are anxious to keep their critical mass of deep links from blogs and Google (see OJR's Q&A with Emily Bell)...

In These Times :: From the Screen to the Streets
By Howard Rheingold

...Blogs and moblogs, such as the international network of Independent Media Centers, South Korea's influential OhMyNews and MoveOn.org's misleader.org are signs of what San Jose Mercury-News columnist Dan Gillmor calls an emerging "we journalism." Each of these sites offers up-to-the-minute news alerts, provided by a combination of citizen-reporters and trained staff. While the owners and administrators of such sites range widely - from passionate individuals to collectives to upstart nonprofits - these blogs are markedly more democratic than their corporate-run, top-down brethren.

Misinformation, disinformation, incredulity and magical thinking all are problems on the supply side of these new reporting modes. Aggregators of blog postings - which rank blog listings by popularity, similar to Google's page rank technology - already serve as a filter for this flood of amateur journalism. And reputation systems, filters and syndication services also could develop into useful tools for assessing the veracity of information sites. But political activists and those who sponsor progressive projects also have a role: For "we journalism" to have long-term credibility and lasting impact, progressives must fund, staff and promote media literacy - teaching users to create and consume this new journalism...

The Register :: Mac fan's blog leads to layoff in Redmond
By Ashlee Vance in Chicago

...A temp worker at Microsoft's in-house print shop appears to have lost his job as a result of his two biggest passions - Macs and blogging.

Earlier this week, Michael Hanscom posted a picture of several Power Mac G5s being off-loaded outside of the MSCopy print facility. Four days later, someone at Microsoft caught wind of the blog post and asked that Hanscom be removed from his position doing temp work for Xerox in the Microsoft shop.

"In the end, what it boils down to was a slight misjudgment on my part," Hanscom wrote in a fresh globule. "While I (and many other people) may find Microsoft's reaction to be extreme and unnecessary, chances are they had every legal right to make the decision that they did. I would certainly have preferred that they simply request that I take the offending post down (which I would have done in a heartbeat), but for whatever reasons, they chose not to take that route."...

Byte and Switch :: Info Overload! Billions of Bytes Born

...If you created 800 MBytes of new information last year, congratulations: You're as prolific as the average person on the planet.

...The Internet is the fastest-growing new medium of all time. The volume of information on the Web grew from between 20 and 50 TBytes in 1999 to 167 TBytes in 2003. There are about 2.9 million active Weblogs, containing a total 81 GBytes of text...

lilia efimova - lost in the matrix...

We are all very happy that Lilia Efimova and her Mathemagenic weblog are back online! You were definitely missed Lilia!

Lilia's post today on "What Matrix Persona Are You?" inspired me to take the Matrix quiz. My results:

You are Neo, from "The Matrix."
You display a perfect fusion of heroism and compassion.


What Matrix Persona Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

f2f conversations with dina...

dina mehta's blog
on california and friends
fine face to face fun...

haitech haiku™
©2003 judith meskill

weblogs in the news...

[there are five news stories in this post.]

Silicon Valley Biz Ink :: ONA Invites Esther Dyson, Top Editors to Forecast Future of Online News

...CHICAGO, Oct. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- The Online News Association will bring together seven of digital media's most forward-thinkers -- including Esther Dyson, a foremost authority on emerging technologies -- for a bold look into the future. The experts will give their views on where online news is headed during the ONA Annual Conference Nov. 14 and 15 in Chicago. Leonard Apcar, Editor in Chief of The New York Times on the Web; Richard Deverell, Head of News Interactive, BBC News; Mitch Gelman, Senior Vice President and Executive Producer of CNN.com; Ruth Gersh, Editorial Director of AP Digital; Retha Hill, Vice President for Content, BET.com; Dean Wright, Vice President and Editor in Chief of MSNBC.com; and Dyson, Chairman of EDventure Holdings and author of "Release 2.0: A Design for Living in the Digital Age," will come together for a conference-concluding "super panel" titled "Back to the Future." They will address such questions as what role the "amateur" journalist may play and what the next "killer app" will be for news presentation and delivery.
"We've assembled a group of digital pioneers and editors who can provide insights on the current state of online journalism and scenarios for the future," said the panel's moderator Bruce Koon, ONA President and Executive News Editor, Knight Ridder Digital. "They, along with our audience, will have a lively discussion to help working professionals view news and technology in new and fresh ways."
The conference, which will be held at the historic Omni Orrington in Evanston, Ill, will also confront some of the most critical issues facing online journalists today. More than 20 online media experts will be on hand to participate in panel discussions focusing on everything from Weblogs to war coverage. Among the highlights from this year's panel line-up:

* FLOGGING THE BLOGS -- Bloggers and editors from four media sites will debate such questions as whether Weblog entries should be edited and if journalists should be allowed to blog about the same news they're reporting on...

WorkingForChange-BuzzFlash interview :: Tom Tomorrow

...If you are a fan of "This Modern World," you will love this BuzzFlash interview with Tom Tomorrow (if you want to know Tom's real name, you'll have to buy the book, as they say). BuzzFlash chats with Tom about politics, the art of composing cartoons, FOX News, the endless "material provided" by George W. Bush, and coming up with creative ideas in the shower.

TOMORROW: Yes, there absolutely is. And yes, sometimes the ideas do come to me in the shower, or when I'm walking the dog or whatever. That's ideal, because sometimes it's just like being hit by lightning. I see the whole thing. I see all four or six panels. I see exactly how it's going to go. It's almost like a flash. Boom -- right there -- got it. But I wish that happened more often, because my life would be considerably easier if it did. More often than not, I sit down on Monday morning and I read through the newspapers and I read through the news sites online. And I look at the blogs. And I just try to find that intersection between what's going on and what I can do with it and make it interesting and funny. It's the diagram where you have the overlapping circles. I try to find that space in the middle that leads to a cartoon. Frankly, sometimes it can take a long time. Sometimes I can have bad Mondays where I sit there for eight hours and I've got nothing. And those are bad days...

Silicon Valley Biz Ink :: Microsoft Professional Developers Conference to Highlight Next Wave of Software Opportunities

...PDC pre-event buzz already is receiving extensive attention in weblogs, with some 200 bloggers participating through PDC Bloggers, a clearinghouse for bloggers interested in PDC and associated technologies. PDC Bloggers serves as a place where bloggers can connect, whether or not they are attending PDC in person. Widespread blogger coverage is expected throughout PDC, as well as on MSDN(R)...

Canada NewsWire :: Masters students and their professors providing real-time weblog updates on the proceedings of the RISQ 2003 - CANARIE ANW 2003 conference

...MONTREAL, Oct. 22 /CNW Telbec/ - It's a first in Quebec! Since yesterday, around ten graduate students and their professors have been posting real-time updates to a weblog about the presentations and workshops at the joint RISQ-CANARIE conference being held in Montreal this week. The public can access the blog to follow the unfolding of the conference by visiting RISQ 2003 - CANARIE ANW2003. Visitors can also post questions and comments in real-time.
"RISQ is very pleased to be part of this novel experiment. By opening our conference to cyberspace, numerous Internet users will be able to keep a close eye on the presentations and workshops being given by world-class researchers and experts," said Mr. Pierre Bouchard, CEO of RISQ (Réseau d'informations scientifiques du Québec)...

Wired 11.11: The Connectors
By Jeff Howe

...In 1974, a Harvard sociologist made a seemingly unremarkable discovery. It is, in fact, who you know. His study asked several hundred white-collar workers how they'd landed their jobs. More than half credited a "personal connection." Duh. But then it got interesting: The researcher, Mark Granovetter, dug deeper and discovered that four-fifths of these backdoor hires barely knew their benefactors. As it turns out, close friends are great for road trips, intimate dinners, and the occasional interest-free loan, but they suck for job leads and blind dates - they know the same people you do. In other words, it's not so much who you know, but who you vaguely know. Granovetter called the phenomenon "the strength of weak ties." He had discovered the human node.

Node wisdom: "The most important person you know is someone you haven't met. There was this urban myth rocketing around the Valley in the '90s that 500 people - certain CEOs and venture capitalists - ran the world. Then Shawn Fanning came along."...

weblogs in politics...

Fast Company | Joe Trippi's Killer App

Sidebar: Trippi's {TIPS} for Building a Better Campaign -- or Company

* Design the organization to be nimble from the start. A decentralized workforce can respond to local challenges more quickly if it doesn't have to wait for clearance from higher up the food chain. Be willing to let go of total control.
* Find ways to let supporters -- or customers -- talk to each other. Make it easy to connect, then step out of the conversation.
* Encourage ways for ideas to bubble up from the field. Understand that the more brainpower that is applied to a problem, the better the solution. Unleash the power of the people to be creative.
* Recognize that it's not about the technology. True, you need a basic level of technical sophistication to make things work, but the technology should be in service to the idea, not the other way around.

weblogs in the news...

[there are five news stories in this post.]

OJR article: NY Times Reporter Has Seen It All Before, and He's Still Pessimistic
by Adam Clayton Powell

OJR [Adam Clayton Powell] interviews ...John Markoff [who] has been writing about computers, technology and the Internet for The New York Times since 1988. Before joining the Times, Markoff covered technology for The San Francisco Examiner and Infoworld, and wrote a weekly column for the San Jose Mercury News. ...

When I tell that to people ... they get very angry with me ... I also like to tell them, when they (ask) when I'm going to start a blog, and then, 'Oh, I already have a blog, it's www.nytimes.com, don't you read it?'...

journalism.co.uk :: Digital journalism Latin-style

...Buenos Aires will host the 2003 Latin American Congress of Digital Journalism from 29 - 31 October.

Sessions will include seminars on using new technology, developing multi-media content and the role of web blogs in online journalism. Some debates will also be broadcast live on Clarín.com. ..

XML.com :: The Atom API
by Mark Pilgrim

...Atom is an up-and-coming format for editing, syndicating, and archiving weblogs and other episodic web sites. The final details are still being hashed out, but that's never stopped me before, having written several articles about XHTML 2. To understand the problems that Atom is designed to solve, we should look briefly at what came before it...

Yahoo :: Lycos Angelfire Now Gives Teens Access to the Most Affordable Subscription Packages to Blog and Build

...WALTHAM, Mass., Oct. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Terra Lycos (Nasdaq: TRLY and Madrid Exchange: TRR), the global Internet Group, today announced the launch of Angelfire Elements on Lycos Angelfire (www.angelfire.com), the number one site within the Teens category for teens (ages 13-17) and tweens (ages 18-24). Angelfire Elements give teens a choice of four very affordable subscription packages to meet all of their Web page building and hosting needs in one place. Each one of the packages includes access to Lycos's award-winning Blog Builder(TM) tool.

The new Angelfire Elements subscription plans are based on the table of elements, creating a fun, flashy and very distinct appeal, catering to the hip, tech-savvy Angelfire teen demographic. The four plans -- Ne (NEON), Ar (ARGON), Xe (XENON) and Kr (KRYPTON) -- range in prices from $4.95 a month to $14.95 a month. Each of the new subscription packages gives teens the ability to build and blog with no ads served on their pages...

smh.com.au :: Where websites go to die

...The National Library of Australia is a world leader in tracing the evolution of the internet. But, writes Lauren Martin, with the average life of a website now only 44 days, time and money are short. ...

Phillips is concerned about what PANDORA cannot yet collect: webcams ("because it's an important commentary on how people are using the internet and their attitudes to privacy"); "blogs" (there are now a few on PANDORA), chat rooms, databases, even games. But for now her staff must concentrate on the limited areas of significance chosen in 1996: government publications, academic journals, conference papers, e-journals, and topical sites...

mt-comment spam blocker...

If you are a Movable Type weblogger then you need to install:

MT-Blacklist - A Movable Type Anti-spam Plugin, courtesy of Jay Allen.

weblogs in the news...

[there are six news stories in this post, on politics and statistics.]

Correspondences.org :: News for the people by people: Lost: Voice of Youth. Reward if Found
by Melissa Blaustein

...As a 15 year old non fiction student, I'm one to read the news and know what's going on. Recently I've been extremely interested in the recall election and who will be the next governor of my state. However, I'm overwhelmingly alarmed by the complete absence of any sort of acknowledgement of California's youth opinion. Sure, I'm not 18 just yet, and I can't vote, but does this mean that my ideas, values and what I want for my country don't matter? I wonder why children are even mentioned if we are completely irrelevant to anything until we can vote. When I turn 18, I know that I'd be much more likely to vote for someone who cared about me and my peers when I was 15 then someone who miraculously notices me when I turn 18 and am able to vote. The truth is, those under 18 today are the people of tomorrow. Unfortunately, no one really seems to realize that until such a tomorrow occurs.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing all modern media and all political candidates. I simply pose the question; where do I as an adolescent stand? Do my words, my ideas, and my peers words and ideas matter to you? Because simply the sporadic mention of the children and better education just don't do it for me...

internet.com :: As The Blogs Churn
By Robyn Greenspan

...According to Perseus Development Corp., a significant number of Internet users jumped on the blog [define] bandwagon and then jumped off, as the company found that two-thirds of the 3,634 hosted blogs that were surveyed were inactive.

Interestingly, The National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE) Blog Census finds almost the exact reverse: of the 1,372,266 Weblogs that are indexed by the NITLE, an estimated 905,695 are active...

Internet Magazine :: George W Bush weblog launches

...The Bush-Cheney 2004 Presidential campaign now has its own official weblog - and guess what? The regularly-updated diary seems to run on the open source weblogging software, Movable Type.

Whatever your opinion, there's no doubt that once the President himself has a blog, weblogging has gone mainstream...

MIT Technology Review :: Enter The Cybercandidates
By Henry Jenkins

...By now, you've probably heard that savvy use of the Internet has helped to push Howard Dean, the previously little known former governor of Vermont, into the front ranks of candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination. Dean has raised more money online than any other campaign in U.S. political history; his staff is using blogging technology to create a more intimate, real-time relationship with its supporters; and they are deploying "smart mob" style tactics to quickly launch rallies around the country. Dean won 40 percent of the vote in an online "primary" run by MoveOn.org - an event that attracted more voters than the 2000 Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary combined. Pundits are calling Dean the cybercandidate...

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette :: Wesley Clark loses campaign manager over 'growing pains'

...Sterling Newberry, who helped lead one of the two major draft-Clark efforts, told Wired magazine last month that "there has been a tremendous amount of confusion and paucity of information coming from the campaign to blogs [Web logs], news sites and news people who have been Clark supporters."

COURTING LABOR Fowler has ties to the tech world. He took leave from Tech-Net, a California political organization that represents the technology industry, to join the Clark campaign. Fowler was in charge of Democratic outreach for TechNet. Newsweek magazine has reported that Fowler's ties to Clark go back at least to the spring of 2002, when Clark sought his advice on a presidential run. Clark, meanwhile, was in Tulsa on Tuesday, where he criticized President Bush's war and economic policies while courting union voters. Speaking before about 200 people at the Transport Workers Union Local 514, Clark repeated his promise to repeal Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and use that money - $100 million - to create jobs. Information for this article was contributed by Kevin Freking of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and Ron Fournier and Clayton Bellamy of The Associated Press...

FOXNews :: Hollings Retirement a Big Win for Liberty
By Radley Balko

...Each time progress has dared to poke its head into the hallowed halls of the U.S. Senate, Fritz Hollings has been there to beat it back with a Billy club.

Hollings' shameless shilling for the entertainment industry has earned him the title "the Senator from Disney," or "Sen. Ernest 'Fritz' Hollings, D-Disney" in blogging and tech circles...

weblogs in the news...

[there are five news stories in this post.]

BizReport :: Explosive Growth of New Web-Based Photo Sharing Platforms Linked Closely to Camera-Phones

...Future Image Inc., the leading provider of information and analysis on new trends in the imaging industry, today announced the results of its investigation into the geometric growth of a new form of multi-author web-based photo sharing. This hot new application, commonly referred to as "photoblogging," has registered tenfold month over month growth rates in both content -- number of images uploaded -- and users in recent months. It is closely related to the explosion in sales of camera- phones, which Future Image tracks closely through a series of research studies.

"Photoblogs: The New Paradigm for Photo Sharing" is based on extensive research of blogging, photoblogging and online photo journaling services, technologies and applications...

The Journal Times Online :: Blogging through D.C.'s fog
By Dustin Block

...When the scandal around President Bill Clinton broke back in 1998, I was sitting in my Madison apartment. My laptop was open on, well, my lap, and reports poured out - an intern had sex with the president in the Oval Office. The scandal was so fast that seemingly every hit of the reset button brought a new headline, a new twist in the coming national obsession.

3. People want to know what to read. That's his genius: Drudge, or his readers, sift through hundreds of Web sites everyday looking for the best stories. From this searching, the best few are compiled on an hourly basis with links to other Web sites. Drudge writes few of his "stories." Instead, he simply directs people to what's interesting, like a friend who lets you in on a secret. He puts the news in context, meaning anything that appears on his page must be important...

newsobserver.com :: Moblogging: The next big thing
By Rachel Leibrock, The Sacramento Bee

...Just when you got comfortable with the term "blogging" - i.e., publishing a regularly updated Web log of links and entries - along comes a new mysterious-sounding term: moblogging.

Push a button to connect to your blog server and voila! - instant update...

MediaDailyNews :: Suppose You Hosted A Blog And Nobody Came
By Paul J. Gough

..."Apparently the blog-hosting services have made it so easy to create a blog that many tire-kickers feel no commitment to continuing the blog they initiate," said Jeffrey Henning, who wrote the study for Perseus Development Corp. The study said that abandonment rates were higher for Pitas, BlogSpot and Diaryland and lower for Xanga and LiveJournal; three other sites didn't have enough sample to compare.

The study fleshed out demographics on the blogging population, which it said with 90% being created and written by people between the ages of 13 and 29. Fifty-one percent of bloggers are between 13 and 19, and 39% are between 20 and 29. Just under 6% are between 30 and 39, with 1.3% or under between 10-12, 40-49, 50-59 and 60-69. A slight majority of bloggers (56%) are female, and the study found they're more likely to stick to it than males...

Business Wire :: Six Apart Ltd. Launches TypePad Personal Weblogging Service for New Generation of Webloggers

...Six Apart Ltd., the makers of the highly acclaimed Movable Type weblog software, today launched TypePad(TM), a hosted service providing powerful, yet intuitive tools for creating full-featured private or public weblogs. Built in response to the needs of the next generation of webloggers -- everyday people who wish to use weblogs to communicate with family, friends and topic-focused communities -- TypePad is designed to make it simple for anyone on the Internet to publish easily accessible, media-rich weblogs and photo albums...

weblogs in the news...

Cliques, Clicks, Bullies And Blogs (washingtonpost.com)
Rachel Simmons

...Say hello to the newest strain of the bullying virus, technologically updated for the 21st century.

I've spent the past four years trying to uncover the hidden culture of aggression in America's schools. Students, parents and school administrators have all pointed to Internet bullying as the latest, most vicious trend in children's social cruelty...

weblogs in the news...

[there are five news stories in this post.]

WORLD :: Beyond the nightly news
By Mindy Belz

...The pencil came of age in the Civil War, the telegraph in World War I, and the transistor radio made tense early days of the Cold War bearable. War in Iraq will be known for popularizing the blogosphere.

Internet weblog chronicles have morphed under the police-blotter approach taken by traditional media in Iraq coverage. Instead of endlessly leading with what bleeds in Iraq, good bloggers are carrying raw footage from the front lines, letting servicemen and Iraqis chronicle the war unfiltered...

Forbes.com: Best Travel Blogs
Christina Valhouli

Forbes continues their "Best Blogs" series.

...While many travelers are able to keep journals on their trips, it is harder for most to update a blog from the road. It's one thing if the bloggers find themselves near a cyber cafe in, say, Amsterdam, but there are not many Internet connections in Outer Mongolia or the Amazonian rainforest...

California Aggie Online :: UCDefault: Campus a fail-safe for many
by Zachary Amendt

...Ivy League reject-ees like to share their dejection and euphoria in online weblogs, which are electronic diaries that replace the standard lock-and-key notebook.

An entirely new layer of media, blog entries are efficient ways to communicate the strengths and weaknesses of universities...

WORLD :: Blogwatch

...Blogs have helped soldiers in Iraq to provide first-person perspectives. Blogger Chief Wiggles (chiefwiggles.blog-city.com) wrote, "We feel like we are swimming in a sea of honey, hardly able to make any progress as we pull and push with every stroke, with every intention of moving forward along this journey but not sure if we have even moved an inch." Despite the difficulties, Chief Wiggles is optimistic: "We are still very positive about our efforts in the overall scheme of things, knowing deep down inside that each person we touch gets us that much closer to our goal of winning the hearts and minds of these people."...

peerfear.org :: NewsMonster is Hiring

...The NewsMonster team is hiring! Are you fascinated by blogs? Interested in RSS/RDF and aggregation? Think the next big thing might just be FOAF? Do you dream in Java and or C?

We're hiring one or two senior level engineers with a deep understanding of blog space...

forming blogs to inform...

research, aggregate
synthesize and analyze
pollard's prescription...

haitech haiku™
©2003 judith meskill

inspired by dave pollard's october 1st post - How to Make Your Blog More Valuable to Readers

don't be a 'deadlog'...

Independent.co.uk :: As easy as falling off a blog
by Andy Goldberg

In this article Andy Goldberg is all over the map in his estimation of weblogs and blogging, it is however apparent that blogging is not for him.

...Personal online journals are a dream come true for exhibitionists and computer geeks. But just how useful are weblogs? And how do you set up your own? Andy Goldberg joins the world of blogging. ...

To paraphrase the noted technology writer Clay Shirky, blogging is for those who seek "fame vs fortune" - for people more interested in reaching a wide audience by using cheap nano-publishing tools than in being rewarded financially for what they write...

weblogs in the news...

Business Wire :: FoneBlog -TM- Craze Hits Ireland

...The 'blogging' phenomenon has taken the world by storm over the last two years with millions of blogs or web logs created on topics as diverse as travel to politics to family events. With the massive success of Camera Phones, FoneBlog is bringing this hottest craze to the mobile phone user.

"Camera phone users are looking for new and exciting ways to use their phones. FoneBlog gives them their own personal website so they can send their pictures and share their views and experiences with people throughout the world," said Carol Clavin, Marketing Manager for www.foneblog.ie...

weblogs in the news...

[there are eight blogging news stories in this post, including articles on Microsoft, Amazon, Indiana University, and Autodesk.]

Yahoo News :: Progressive Electronics Retailer Leverages Power of Blogs

...Dynamism, the leading U.S. retailer of next-generation electronics from Japan and around the globe, launched a daily Web log, AkibaLive, today. Harnessing the immediacy and interactivity of blogging, Dynamism.com developed AkibaLive.com to educate and entertain passionate technology users about the latest consumer electronics products from Japan and from around the globe. The site, updated 6-8 times a day, provides breaking tech/gadget news from Tokyo and around the globe, live moblogging (or mobile-blogging directly from a photo-enabled cell phone) from tech hotspots like Tokyo's Akiba district, expert product reviews, and shopping links for the most unattainable notebooks, phones, and other gadgets...

seattlepi.com Microsoft Blog :: A few favorites

...As this Microsoft weblog gets up and running, I thought it would be good to point to some of the other Web sites and weblogs that track the company. Many of them have been doing it for quite some time...

Mentioned in this article:

Watching Microsoft Like A Hawk, Watching Google Like A Hawk, Microsoft Monitor, Microsoft Watch, Microsoft Bloggers, Paul Thurrott's WinInfo, Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows, ActiveWin, Dan Gillmor's eJournal, Dan Gillmor's Silicon Valley Column, The Paul Wall, Microsoft PressPass, Chris Anderson, Chris Sells, John Porcaro, Mike Vernal, Joshua Allen, Beth Goza, Harry Pierson, Robert Scoble, Douglas Purdy, Sara Williams, Diane R, Eric Rudder, Eric Rudder Biography, Sun Bloggers, Simon Phipps, Ken Bereskin, Dave Hyatt, Buzz Andersen, Living Without Microsoft, NewsForge, CNET News.com, Corante, InformationWeek, Good Morning Silicon Valley, and eWEEK.

Computerworld :: Microsoft to lift lid on Longhorn at Professional Developers Conference
by Joris Evers

...Microsoft Corp. will share more details on the next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, at its Professional Developers Conference (PDC) next month. However, the company likely will keep the new user interface, dubbed Aero, under wraps.

A buzz around the event is being built up by PDC attendees and Microsoft employees who discuss the event in their weblogs. Microsoft's secrecy around many of the PDC topics has helped build expectations for a show packed with new technology...

USATODAY :: Amazon moves to front line of shaping 'Web services'
by Byron Acohido

...Over the past 16 months, Amazon has inspired about 30,000 developers to invent myriad ways to extend Amazon's visibility on the Web. "Amazon basically hired the entire world to create Web services for them," says Calin Uioreanu, a Romanian tech engineer who in his spare time runs several online stores he created to funnel sales to Amazon.

Programmers ranging from hobbyists to skilled professionals have found ways to tie everything from text in word processing documents, to raw MP3 music files, to entries in online journals, called Weblogs, to items for sale on Amazon's Web pages. The incentive: Amazon pays a 5% commission for any sale directed to its system...

IDS: IU Weblogs offer diverse opinions
By Alli Stolper

...Indiana University students, faculty and staff are allowed to publish a diverse amount of information on the University personal home page service, as long as it complies with the law and University policy.

"If someone complains about something that they see on a personal page, and it's clearly illegal or against some IU policy, my office will tell the page owner to remove it," Bruhn said. In general, Bruhn said he does not have much trouble with controversial material on the pages...

Yahoo News :: Autodesk Enhances Subscription Offering with Web Support and e-Learning

...Autodesk Subscription customers will now be automatically qualified to participate in the AutoCAD beta program, giving them the power to help drive future product functionality. They will also benefit from exclusive webcasts and Web logs (blogs), a Web page made up of short, frequently updated posts that are arranged chronologically. Webcasts will include a variety of topics and speakers and the initial blog will focus on AutoCAD, with other product blogs to follow...

Network Computing Asia :: Web Site Automation
Dr Seamus Phan

...If you are in a large organisation with thousands of pages of information that needs to be frequently updated or refreshed, it will be unwise to keep the Web site manually updated.

The running costs will add up and your Web site will soon be bleeding profusely. In this scenario, automation can remove most of the hassle of keeping your content up-to-date.

And why shouldn't you automate? In scenarios where you have little content and you can do with a Weblog (blog) or journal-like script instead, automation will be overkill. There are many nice Web sites, as well as enterprise micro-sites that benefit nicely from blogs instead of full automation.

If you can modularise your Web site into micro-sites and manage running journals or blogs, then you may not want to use more sophisticated Web site automation scripts, since they come with a hefty learning tag...

Charleston: The Post and Courier :: GOOD MORNING LOWCOUNTRY

...We like children and dogs. We are not cat people. We're not morning people, either. Don't call before 10. We like salt water and our favorite journey is the road home. We love to travel but hate airports. We love road trips but never take a map. We seldom make reservations. We like science, math, weather, blogs, world events, strange news, extreme sports and rock and roll. You can contact us if you have nothing better to do at gmlc@postandcourier.com...

weblogs in the news...

[there are four blogging news stories in this post, all political.]

The New York Times :: The Role of the Delete Key in Blog
by Michael Falcone

...Is a blog still a blog if someone else edits it? A recent policy change at The Sacramento Bee has raised questions about whether taking an editor's pen to a Web log before it is published detracts from very nature of Web logs, or "blogs,'' as the online diaries are called.

Other bloggers weighed in, many sharply criticizing the new regulations that the editors imposed on Mr. Weintraub's popular "California Insider" blog, widely considered required reading for recall election news...

MENAFN.COM - Middle East North Africa :: Knight Ridder Newspapers
By Dick Polman

... it's clear that the Web is changing the way national politics is conducted. Campaign aides talk incessantly about conquering the "blogosphere" _ the corner of cyberspace where "bloggers" write daily logs about politics. ("Blog derives from "Web log.) Some campaigns are even courting the best-known bloggers (and, by extension, their online audiences), much the way candidates in the FDR era went hat in hand to the cigar-chomping party bosses.

For any serious presidential candidate these days, it's de rigeur to have a top-notch techno-geek on staff. Ten years ago, bragging rights went to the candidate who hired the best TV ad-maker. But in campaign `08, the big hire could be the tekkie who creates the best candidate blog _ an online journal accessed by the citizenry...

Contra Costa Times :: Bush campaign revs into higher gear
By David L. Greene Baltimore SUN

...Mindful of the success Howard Dean has enjoyed in raising money and rallying support over the Internet for his Democratic presidential drive, the Bush campaign has set up a Web site, www.georgewbush.com, that's cleverly designed to make it a cinch to donate money and other support. On the site, people are invited to give money, to call talk shows or write to newspapers in support of the president. (They can download suggested text.) They are also offered flashy campaign literature to post on their personal Web sites or blogs...

AP Wire :: Sharon Davis offers strength, solace to husband's campaign
by Beth Fouhy

...In an interview with The Associated Press, Sharon Davis said her goal is to acquaint California voters with the Gray Davis she has known for 25 years.

"I think she is able to convey a more personable side of Gray and their relationship," said Bruce Cain, a political scientist at University of California, Berkeley...

weblogs in the news...

[there are three stories in this post.]

MERIA :: CYBERDISSENT: The Internet in Revolutionary Iran
By Babak Rahimi

...Along with a growing internationally acclaimed film industry and an increase in demand for satellite dishes, the internet has become an important medium for interacting with the rest of the world, and this interaction has helped spur several changes in Iranian society. For instance, the rise of "coffee-nets," voice chats that have become an inexpensive way for the young to converse online, challenge the Islamic government and its oppressive imposition of moral guidelines for the separation of the sexes in everyday public places.(17) Another related phenomenon is the 20,000 active internet sites and weblogs (or blogs)--online journals where cyber-diarists meet to chat about the latest news in their personal lives, politics, or sports and enable young Iranians to express themselves freely and anonymously on various subjects.(18) Probing the freedom provided by the internet, internet users--especially women--are finding in blogs an alternative medium for expression that is denied to them in real public spaces.(19) The famous case of a former prostitute's weblog, detailing the underworld life of Iranian society, demonstrates how Iranians are defying the strict moral code imposed by the Islamic government. Such unabashed online diaries offer a rare glimpse into the frustrated lives of Iranian youth who have grown up under strict Islamic laws.(20) In short, the new generation has built online communities where couples meet to chat, young men dress as they wish and young women go uncovered without being harassed...

Macworld UK :: Apple's new .Mac gifts entice users

...Apple has added three new exclusive gifts to entice .Mac members in the US. Apple UK has been unable to confirm whether all the latest offerings will extend to .Mac subscribers in the UK. Joining the .Mac offering are a free copy of the iBlog weblog software (available to UK), a free VersionTracker Plus subscription and a US$30 discount on SmartDisk hard drives purchased through the US Apple Store...

OJR article: Red Herring Is Back With New Owner, New Editor ... and New Mission Too
by Mark Glaser

..."People don't realize that when we started Business 2.0 -- about the same time as the Standard started -- times weren't that robust," Daly said. "An economic downturn is a great time to start a publication. People are more rational, grounded. Investors are more realistic." He said the new Herring would continue in some ways as its old self, an ideas-based publication with a focus on venture capital news. He said there wouldn't be Weblogs on the site initially, though he's open to adding them in the future...

weblogs in the news...

[This weblogs in the news post contains five separate news items of interest. If you are reading my weblog via RSS, access my full RSS feed to continue reading.]

The New York Times :: For the World's A B C's, He Makes 1's and 0's
By Michael Erard

...MICHAEL EVERSON, a 40-year-old typographer who lives in Dublin, considers himself blessed because he has found his life's work: to be an alphabetician to all the peoples of the world. Mr. Everson's largest project to date - a contribution to a new version of Unicode 4.0, an international standard for computerizing text - is cementing his reputation. ... He keeps a photo of a stone inscribed with ogham, an ancient Irish alphabet that looks like hash marks, in a silver frame. ... It is because of Unicode that bloggers can muse in Arabic and domain names can exist in Chinese, or that National Security Agency analysts can scour the Internet for reports on the latest threats in East African newspapers. "Because of Unicode," Mr. McGowan said, "you can plunk down a vanilla off-the-shelf computer into a cafe anywhere in the world and have any user in any language walk up to it and use it for accessing the Web."...

The Washington Dispatch :: Leading Recall Journalist Muzzled
Exclusive commentary by Garth Eisenbeis

Sacramento Bee columnist Daniel Weintraub is the proprietor of an excellent weblog covering the California recall called the California Insider. On Sunday the editorial board of the Bee smacked Weintraub because he drew the ire of the Legislature's (Democrat) Latino Caucus with one of his entries from September 1st referring to recall candidate Cruz Bustamante's ties to MEChA.

The Bee had been on the cutting edge of print journalism by offering a blog to readers allowing a free-flow of ideas outside of the print arena; a real-time e-paper, if you will. It is apparent that the Bee's formerly successful experiment has been shelved to satisfy Leftist politicians and an influential special interest group in Sacramento. Bee ombudsman Tony Marcano, late of the New York Times (hint, hint), wrote, "Since these incidents came to light, The Bee has instituted some reforms. Weintraub's blog now goes to the editorial page editor or his deputy before it's posted on sacbee.com. Editors will not be allowed to write items for the Web without another editor's review."...

KRT Wire :: Professor's university blog attracts controversy
BY Maureen Ryan, Chicago Tribune

...Rasmusen's blog resides on the server of Indiana University, where he is a professor in the business school. His posted musings on whether homosexuals should be allowed to be teachers, pastors or other kinds of "moral exemplars" have caused a major campus uproar in the past few weeks...

O'Reilly Network :: Back to the Memex [Sep. 25, 2003]
by Ethan Cerami

...I recently got a chance to reread Vannever Bush's 1945 Atlantic Monthly article, As We May Think. If you haven't ever read it, it is well worth the read, and still quite thought provoking. You can also check out a biography of Vannever Bush at Wired magazine -- Wired calls him the "Godfather" of the Internet.

Bush then goes on to describe a machine which is remarkably like the World Wide Web, as it exists today. For example, he describes "trails" between documents (think hyperlinks), indexes of trails (think Google), and publication of trails with commentary (think Blogs)...

AO :: The Blogger Revolt!

Tony Perkins reflects on his first 8 months running a super blog—or whatever you want to call it.

...Now that I have had a little experience dealing with these kind of digs, let me say a few things to set the record straight:

1. I have finally learned what a blog is. (Thank you Dave Winer!) It is an amateur author who posts a regular diary on his own site that is unedited, spontaneous, and generally comments on and links to other blog sites. I think the key attribute is the establishment of an individual voice that provides an alternative to traditional media.

2. While AO is built using "blogging" software, it is not a blog in a pure sense. AO is really a combination of professional editorials, reporting and interviews. The difference is that we use our blogging software set-up to encourage participation...

valdis krebs needs a weblog...

valdis krebs' inflow
mapping knowledge creation
weaving well-formed webs...

haitech haiku™
©2003 judith meskill

This morning I received a comment on my Notable Judiths - Judith Donath post of 31 August 2003 from Valdis Krebs [whom I met virtually in Jerry Ash's AOK: Star Series with Patti Anklam.]

I then did a search on my personal "k-loggers" blogroll [which I have built in the last three months since I began my "Knowledge Notes" weblog] utilizing "Blogs I Read" [courtesy of Micah Alpern] and found the following references to Valdis:

individual posts:
Danah Boyd's connected selves: Mapping and honing our interconnections,
Jack Vinson's Blogs and the Tipping Point,
Jim McGee's Social Network Mapping and Blogs,
Joy London's Social Network Analysis,
Lilia Efimova's Blogger social network mapping,
Peter Merholz's Interview with social network researcher Valdis Krebs, and
Richard Gayle's Political Patterns on the WWW,

multiple posts:
James Robertson's Column Two,
Jon Udell's Radio, and
Julian Elve's Synesthesia,

and a preponderance of posts:
Patti Anklam's Networks, Complexity, and Relatedness,
Phil Wolff's a klog apart,
Ross Mayfield's [old Radio] Weblog,
Sebastien Paquet's Open Research, and
Stephen Dulaney's Blogging Alone.

And this is just in my small corner of the blogging universe. When "googled" Valdis Krebs returns 2,350 hits. [See his article for HR.com on What's Your Google Number]. Maybe Valdis Krebs doesn't need a weblog after all? (^:

weblogs in the news...

Cleveland.com :: Web page comments have students in jam
by Jennifer Gonzalez and Scott Stephens
Plain Dealer Reporters

...What teenagers write in online diaries can come back to haunt them, as a half-dozen University School students found out this week. The students came under fire after administrators at the exclusive Hunting Valley preparatory school found they had made nasty comments about a fellow student on a "blog" - a Web page that functions as a publicly accessible journal. The episode is the latest of a growing number of incidents in which student musings have turned blogs and chat rooms into the high-tech equivalent of a lavatory wall...

Montgomery Advertiser : : Edgewood alum blog guru in NYC
By Teri Greene

...Blogging's recent rise in awareness and popularity has resulted in a strange phenomenon: media celebrities who have emerged from the niche world of the blog. Among the most successful of these is a hometown girl, 26-year-old Elizabeth Spiers, who hails from Wetumpka. Now living in Manhattan, this Duke University grad and Wall Streeter-turned-writer has penned the highly praised New York-based "Gawker" blog -- one of a growing number of blogs that actually bring in revenue. It launched last December. As editor, she's updated the site an average of 12 times a day, every day. And now she's hit the big time. Spiers announced Wednesday on her personal blog, www.elizabethspiers.com, that she's leaving Gawker for a permanent writing position at New York magazine. Editors there came to know her through Gawker and wanted her for their own. She'll hand her Gawker duties over to fellow blogger Choire Sicha. "And here's the real kicker," Spiers wrote, "New York magazine wants to start a blog."...

Montgomery Advertiser : : Blogs give writers a voice
By Teri Greene

...The addiction is spreading, all the way into Alabama; an informal Web search for Alabama bloggers yielded more than 50 of them, and there are likely many more. But blogging, at least in this part of the country, seems to be at a strange crossroads. While it's a craze for a relative few, blogs remain obscure to many. For every enthusiast, there are probably thousands more who have never even heard the word. ...Which elevates Alabama bloggers, at least as they see it, to a whole new level of cool...

KnoxNews: Bloggers flood net reporting on Isabel
By MICHAEL SILENCE, silence@knews.com

...While Hurricane Isabel moved up the eastern seaboard, the keyboards kept clicking to provide an electronic eye on the storm's movement and damage. With candlelight and backup battery power, bloggers, as they are known, provided first-hand accounts, at times taking breaks to deal with the storm's aftermath...

TechTV | Top Five Tips for Webloggers
By Brent Todd, The Weblog Review

...Anyone can create a weblog, but that doesn't necessarily make it good. Today on "Call for Help" a veteran blog critic tells us what makes a weblog worth reading.

1. Have good content. Compelling content is what gives people a reason to come back to your site. Don't write in shorthand, valley girl, or h@k0rz.
2. Update frequently. Regular new content is what distinguishes weblogs from static websites.
3. Stay focused on your content. Switching topics randomly can induce some readers to move on to another blog.
4. Create an About page. Give people an idea of who you are, but don't post personal stuff such as your name, address, or work place.
5. Have an original design. Make sure your site is easy to navigate. If you use a template, modify it. Of course, a pretty design doesn't mean the weblog is good. Make sure the design doesn't interfere with the content...

PRESS RELEASE ( PR Web) Social Networking Site Ringo.com Comes Out Of Beta With 200,000 Members

...Social networking site Ringo.com completed a 90 day Beta testing stage this week. Quietly launched in June 2003, Ringo already has 200,000 members, with a growth rate of 10% per week...

weblogs in the news...

ZDNet UK : News :: Search tool scans blogs for business

...Moreover said that blogs can represent a valuable source of business information that springs directly from consumers, rather than traditional media sources. "Weblogs highlight the news that matters as well as providing instantaneous commentary and opinions on a wide variety of topics and events," said Moreover chief executive Jim Pitkow, in a statement...

seattlepi.com Microsoft Blog :: More on Sun Java System

Weighing in on Sun's announcement of a Linux-based alternative to Microsoft's Windows operating system for desktop computers:
...various technology-related weblogs are offering commentary on the announcement. See, for example, the personal weblog of Microsoft employee Robert Scoble, a technical evangelist for the next version of Windows who was featured in our earlier story on Microsoft employee blogs. He, in turn, points to others outside Microsoft with views on the subject, including technical consultant and programmer Russell Beattie...

reviewjournal.com -- Opinion: EDITORIAL: FCC rules

...Far from stifling any "diversity of views" in broadcasting, the ownership rules proposed by the FCC would allow new technologies to let a multiplicity of voices flourish. They offer a formal acknowledgement that individuals now receive their information from a multitude of sources; newspapers and network affiliates compete with alternative weeklies, talk radio, 24-hour news channels and Internet Weblogs to inform and entertain...

InfoWorld TechWatch :: John Cleese's day in the Sun
by Mark Jones

...blogging live from John Cleese's keynote at SunNetworks ... here's a good slight at Scott McNealy: "And what about Scott's hair cut, you think he could afford a better hair cut than SuperCuts."...

Guardian Unlimited | Economic dispatch | Blogging on

...Victor Keegan reports on the Guardian's experimental linking of editorial comment and the world of the blog during this month's WTO summit...

Editor & Publisher :: Newspapers Try 'Really Simple Syndication'

...One of the newest RSS offerings is from The Telegraph in Nashua, N.H., where nh.com Editor Ernesto Burden's team built a feed for the latest presidential primary news. The Christian Science Monitor offers the entire paper in this format and also lets users subscribe to specific sections such as world coverage or arts, says Joel Abrams, partnership development specialist for csmonitor.com. While the site has no way of tracking individual RSS users, it serves over a million RSS files per month...

weblogs in the news...

Rocky Mountain News :: Blogging on
By Mark Wolf, Rocky Mountain News

Web loggers provide color commentary on just about everything...Pick a topic and bloggers - the journal-keepers - have it covered: politics, current affairs, culture, lifestyles, technology sports, the minutiae of everyday life...

Business Wire :: iMakeNews and ChannelWorks, Inc.

...iMakeNews and ChannelWorks, Inc. Announce Strategic Alliance to Improve Channel Marketers' Information Supply Chain... iMakeNews has pioneered Informative Marketing(TM), an approach that is based on the continuous measurement of responses to content and offers for an improved return on investment (ROI). The company's e-marketing services include e-newsletters, e-marketing campaigns and e-mailed Weblogs [DirectBlog™]...

RealMarket Today :: ICT Journal Weblogs Announced

...ChannelMinds announce the addition of ICTJournal.com - a new ICT Weblogs platform - to their portfolio of services offered throughout the ICT community...

Daily Trojan :: Blogging forums thrive
by Kyle Singhal

...Internet communication among students is surging, and with it has spawned a new phenomenon: online journals. Students and people of all ages are using Web-based journals - commonly called "Web logs" or just "blogs" - to keep diaries, post information and communicate...

weblogs in the news...

OJR article: For Pioneers of Web Journalism, the Future Is Still Full of Surprises

...Christopher Barr: Weblogs, or something very similar, were dreamed up more than 100 years ago by Jules Verne. In his 1890 futuristic "A Day in the Life of an American Journalist in 2890," he predicted that instead of being printed, every morning the news is spoken directly (IM'd?) to subscribers, who, from interesting conversations with reporters, learn the news of the day. Each subscriber owns a recorder (hard disk?) to gather the news if he doesn't want to listen to it himself.

Although he was off by 890 years, Verne accurately predicted that people would want to get the news as unvarnished as possible. Weblogs are good devices for encouraging conversation, although they are still in very early development and usage. I expect to see them become more useful and more sophisticated in the next decade...

Making Blogs More Than Just What's for Dinner (TechNews.com)
By Ellen McCarthy

...Meg Hourihan, co-creator of Blogger, the blogging tool acquired by Google, and co-author of "We Blog: Publishing Online With Weblogs," believes that businesses are only beginning to realize the capabilities of instant publishing...

Mentioned in this article:
Debbie Weil, Bill Kearney, Meg Hourihan, Scott Knowles, Gary Price, Macromedia, Fast Company, Gartner, New Media Society, NITLE Weblog Census, BLOGGER, Google, and Jupiter Research

Wired News: Website: Westerners Pretty Rich
by Leander Kahney

...A new website, the Global Rich List, starkly illustrates the worldwide distribution of wealth...Since going live last Monday, the site has attracted 120,000 unique visitors. It has earned a few brief mentions in the press -- the London Guardian, USA Today -- but most traffic has come from word of mouth, weblogs and newsgroups...

weblogs in the news...

OJR article: The Guardian of the Web
by Daithi O. hAnluain

(From an interview with Editor in Chief Emily Bell of the Guardian Unlimited, the most successful newspaper site in the UK, attracting 7.5 million unique visitors a month -– more than 2 million of them from the U.S. and many others from around the world.)
...In terms of the nature of journalism, blogging -- self publishing, whatever you want to call it -- is probably the most interesting challenge that we've got, and what it does to the orthodoxy of journalism is really interesting. We haven't seen long term what those effects will be...

Google to provide blogging for free - The Washington Times: United Press International

...Bucking the trend for paid premium Internet services, Google has decided to provide its Web blogging service for free...

TechCentral: The PC world according to Dvorak
By Chan Lee Meng, Kuala Lumpur

...Dvorak spoke out against another Internet phenomenon - blogging, which he hopes "will not catch on here as widely as in the United States." He steered the audience to anti-blogging websites and said a typical blog in America is inane and boring, and was created by person who doesn't get out much. He said most bloggers seem "to like to write about what they ate that day, as if anyone cares." On the plus side, blog-hosting websites are a good way to put up a complicated website quickly, Dvorak said. "The blogs themselves are horrible, but people are using them as cheap, fast, and efficient tools to set up elaborate websites," he said...

Dear Campaign Diary: Seizing the Day, Online
By Michael Falcone, The New York Times

...Since Howard Dean's Democratic presidential effort created one in March, the blog, with its spontaneous feel and wide reach, has quickly gained acceptance as a tool of technology-savvy political campaigns, along with online fund-raising and grass-roots organizing sites like MeetUp.com and MoveOn.org. But unlike many of the 2004 presidential candidates, who have teams of online writers churning out material, the bloggers in the recall race, including Ms. Huffington and Mrs. Davis, say they are writing their own entries...

AOL Adds Blogging-By-Phone

...America Online has gussied up its "AOLbyPhone" service with new features aimed at keeping its wireless phone-using members just a keypad away from checking e-mail or updating personal Weblogs...

Editor & Publisher :: It's Time to Blog Hard News on Your Site
STOP THE PRESSES! By Steve Outing

...It's time for increasing the speed of news sites -- to that of television news -- and Weblogs are the way to do it...

weblogs in the news...

MediaGuardian.co.uk | | Kelly's death excites online conspiracy theorists

...The Google internet search engine returns 235,000 results for a search on "who killed David Kelly?", 103,000 for "David Kelly conspiracy" and 39,200 when asked for links relating to "was David Kelly murdered?" The links reveal a massive network of websites, discussion forums and weblogs dedicated to the subject from countries including the UK, the US, Australia, Sweden, Canada and Germany...

MediaGuardian.co.uk | New media | Salam Pax: How I became the Baghdad Blogger

...It began as an internet joke with a friend in Jordan. But then the media - including the Guardian - picked it up, and suddenly he was the Baghdad blogger, the most famous web diarist in the world. Salam Pax describes what it was like to play cat-and-mouse with Saddam's censors...

Broadband Behavior: I Want My Info Now! :: AO

...Over 40% of broadband users have personalized their home page. And almost the same number say this is an important consideration for them in terms of what they want online...They do much more blogging and content offering...

NewsForge: Keep it Real Simple, Stupid: An introduction to RSS

...RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary, depending upon whom you ask. It's a Web content syndication format, meaning you can use it to send, receive, and aggregate Web content from a variety of sources. RSS was originally designed for news sites (like us) to make their content available. Nowadays it's also heavily utilized by bloggers...

OJR article: Top Sites, Blogs for California Recall

...Best Political Blog, Journalism Division: Daniel Weintraub's California Insider

weblogs in the news...

sunspot.net - technology
by Rachel Osterman, Chicago Tribune

"Employers are catching on to blogs as a way to replace the heaps of e-mail, faxes and telephone calls that slow office life."

Boston.com / News / Nation / A hired gun who muses with fingertips
Joanna Weiss, Globe Staff, 9/7/2003

"Mathew Gross, 31, former rock band drummer, Colorado River boatman, and environmental studies graduate student, became the blogmaster of the Howard Dean for President operation -- before the Dean campaign developed its tech-savvy reputation, before Dean's "Blog for America" even existed. A blog, shorthand for weblog, is an online bulletin board that includes personal thoughts and links to other sites."

Utica Observer Dispatch : O-D team heading to Bosnia

'From Faraway Lands' trip to include online diaries (weblogs), photos

Religious Blogs Provide Forum for Personal Opinions on Faith, Worship and Spirituality | theledger.com

Naples Daily News : Alphabet Soup: Getting 'blogged' for food lovers
by Kristen Smith, Features Editor

weblogs in the news...

Columbia Journalism Review : Emerging Alternatives: Blogworld
by Matt Welch

"This February, I attended my first Association of Alternative Newsweeklies conference, in the great media incubator of San Francisco. It's impossible to walk a single block of that storied town without feeling the ghosts of great contrarian media innovators past: Hearst and Twain, Hinckle and Wenner, Rossetto and Talbot. But after twelve hours with the AAN, a much different reality set in: never in my life have I seen a more conformist gathering of journalists.

... The papers once embraced amateur writers; now they are firmly established in the journalistic pecking order, with the salaries and professional standards to match...

The average blog, needless to say, pales in comparison to a 1957 issue of the Voice, or a 1964 Los Angeles Free Press, or a 2003 Lexington, Kentucky, ACE Weekly, for that matter. But that's missing the point. Blogging technology has, for the first time in history, given the average Jane the ability to write, edit, design, and publish her own editorial product - to be read and responded to by millions of people, potentially - for around $0 to $200 a year. It has begun to deliver on some of the wild promises about the Internet that were heard in the 1990s. Never before have so many passionate outsiders - hundreds of thousands, at minimum - stormed the ramparts of professional journalism."

weblogs in the news...

USATODAY.com - Conason's 'Big Lies' serves up red meat for hungry liberals

"It's a book tailor-made for a group that has grown increasingly angry in recent years and has been lashing out in a variety of ways, including enthusiastic letter-writing campaigns to media outlets and a zesty variety of Weblogs."

online news pioneers...

OJR article: Online News Pioneers See Lots of Changes in the First 10 Years

OJR: How important are Weblogs in the history of journalism, and how do they differ from personal home pages?

Winer: Weblogs drop the cost of publishing to near zero, making it possible for anyone with information or ideas to publish them. It's a huge change. Before, I used to get quoted occasionally by reporters, and they'd select the sound bites that were important to them, not me -- and they'd often mangle the quotes. It never served to get the ideas out that I wanted to get out. Now I can do it myself and have been since 1994. A lot of other people do it too now. About being different from the personal home page, geez, Weblogs are the personal home page. The difference is that Weblogs change and old PHPs were cute, and maybe a little snazzy, but never changed.

weblogs in the news...

MozillaZine Fifth Anniversary Poll - MozillaZine Talkback

"We want you to tell us what your main reason for visiting the site is... Maybe you like keeping up with the Mozilla developer weblogs. There's probably several reasons why you visit MozillaZine but tell us the main one."

Columbia Spectator Online - Committee Will Focus On ESC Programs

"...an e-community with weblogs and photo galleries, will be up and running later this fall."

rss killed the email star?...

Is RSS the Answer to the Spam Crisis? by Ryan Naraine

"With scam artists, spammers and virus writers all using the e-mail inbox as the main target, it has become a daily nightmare for legitimate online publishers and marketers to cope with mail filters, blacklists and irate subscribers. Enter RSS (define), the XML syndication format that allows publishers to shuttle content to news aggregators, avoiding the e-mail chaos altogether."

mentioned in this article (in order of appearance):
Lockergnome, RSS: Your Gateway To News & Blog Content, PaidContent.org, RSS Feeds are the Better Email Newsletters, FeedDemon, Feedreader, NewzCrawler, AmphetaDesk, Radio UserLand, NetNewsWire, Bloglines, MyWireService, Feed Me Info, NewsGator, Lockergnome's RSS Resource, MSFT, MSFT/DESC, and The Scobleizer.

weblogs in the news...

CNN.com - Internet newbies unite - Sep. 1, 2003

(CNN) -- I've been writing and talking about weblogs and news feed readers to the point that folks think of me as some sort of "blog nut." By writing this column, I risk perpetuating that notion, but this is too big of a deal to keep quiet.
By Christine Boese, CNN Headline News

TUNE IN!
Six Apart founders Ben and Mena Trott will be discussing their new product TypePad on CNN Headline News on Wednesday, September 3.

Internet Magazine - Now you can email Tony Blair

"One website bloggerheads.com has run a 10-month long campaign to persuade Blair to get an email address."

weblogs in the news...

San Francisco Chronicle : Internet giants catch on to blogs / Major portals provide services for online journals

"It definitely seems like blogging is losing its underground image," said Matthew Haughey, co-author of the book "We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs" and co-founder of Blogroots, a Web site that chronicles blogging news.

waypath buzz-o-meter...

The Waypath Buzz Maker gives you the option to enter up to five topics and chart their "buzz factor" among weblogs over the last 30 days. The following is a chart of five of my favorite topics in my "knowledge notes" weblog:

weblogs in the news...

Wired News: Today's Tech-Dependent Activists

"In addition to picket signs and megaphones, activists protesting globalization policies at next month's meeting of the World Trade Organization in Cancun will be armed with a number of new, high-tech weapons for getting their message across. These include using peer-to-peer networks to distribute video to television stations and setting up wireless access points so that activists can post updates to their weblogs. The aim is to help demonstrators make a bigger impact, even with fewer people, say protest organizers."

Narcissist, metrosexual, call us what you like, we're out and proud - smh.com.au

"In June, during the long hiatus from the Premier League's global fashion deities, the marketing and advertising conglomerate Euro RSCG sparked a feeding frenzy in magazines and on opinion pages, not to mention weblogs, about metrosexuals."

dan gillmor on rss...

The Seattle Times: Business & Technology: Silicon valley View: Latest wave of newsreader software beats e-mail

"Every morning I learn the latest from a variety of news organizations, Weblogs, newsletters and other online information sources. But I don't use my e-mail program or go surfing from Web site to Web site. Instead, I use a piece of software called a news aggregator or newsreader - in my case, it's called NetNewsWire and runs on Mac OS X - to scoop up headlines and summaries, along with links to the places where they originated."

mx developer weblogs...

SYS-CON Media Announces MX Developer's Journal

"MXDJ to Be Distributed to More Than 2 Million Macromedia MX Developers Using Studio, Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, FreeHand, ColdFusion, and Director...Each issue of MXDJ will include:
...The Blog Spot -- a round-up of the most insightful entries from the month's Macromedia weblogs."

burning man - 17th year...

Wired News: Burning Man Never Gets Old

"This year, tech installations will include live-from-Burning Man mobile blogs on trailers, flamethrowers with programmable control systems and several experimental projects that will put social-software networks to work on the playa."

california - total recall...

Milford Daily News MA | Surf's up: Total recall

"No matter what you think of Gov. Mitt Romney, you have to admit things could be worse. Just look at California, where voters will decide later this year whether to recall and replace Gov. Gray Davis.":

Mentioned in this article: The Ultimate California Gubernatorial Recall Candidate List
Surf's Up is compiled by News correspondent Kurt Blumenau, whose e-mail address is deepthirteen@yahoo.com.

weblog news...

The Star Ledger | Business | Building Your Own Weblog

"The online journals known as weblogs have morphed from a cultish craze into a mainstream phenomenon. Even AOL is getting into the blogging business."

Weblogs mentioned in this article: LawMeme, The Shifted Librarian, Jaab Family, Petite Family, Freedom to Tinker, little. yellow. different., Fairvue Central | Third Annual Weblog Awards, SchoolBlogs News, Daypop, Blogging News - Corante, AOL Hometown, BLOGGER, Diaryland!!, LiveJournal.com, Tripod | Blog Builder, TypePad,
movabletype.org, pMachine, and Radio UserLand.
written by Allan Hoffman

Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Editorial / Opinion / Op-ed / Net gains

First came information, then opinion. The Internet's next step may be electing a president.
By Cory Doctorow, Globe Correspondent, 8/24/2003

Cape May County News: The Press of Atlantic City

"Unhappy shore tourists getting revenge online...While some people might be reluctant to complain to a hotel manager about a dirty room or poor service, they have no reservations about posting their vengeance anonymously on public forums or Weblogs."

weblog news...

TheFeature :: It's All About The Mobile Internet

Forecasting the use of cameras in mobile phones by examining weblogging in Poland.

weblog news...

Stateline.org: Bloggers Train Sites On State Governments

"Some of the best sources for information on the California recall election are not newspapers, not television stations and not radio shows. They are blogs."

Weblogs mentioned in this article: California Insider, Kausfiles, Lasso, and Eye on Olympia

weblog news...

OJR article: Weblog Indexes Help Journalists Track Stories -- and Boost Their Egos

"Daypop's Top 40, Popdex and the other services allow writers to see almost instantly how many sites are linking to their stories. Is such information useful, or simply a popularity linking contest?"

Las Vegas Mercury: The Basement Files: Fiona

"Among the thousands of Internet weblogs, none has fascinated the Mercury staff more than the offerings of Fiona Waterston, a 53-year-old Englishwoman."

TCS: Tech - What It Takes

"Weblogs are now becoming part of the upcoming presidential campaign. Two presidential candidates in particular -- Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich -- have weblogs of their own."

weblogs in the news...

Metroactive Movies | 'American Splendor'

"Harvey Pekar is one of the most imitated and influential comic-book writers of the past three decades," notes Andrew Farago, director of the San Francisco Comic Art Museum, where a retrospective of the art used in Pekar comic books is currently on display. "Given the webcams, weblogs, message boards and countless other Internet venues, it becomes more apparent every day just how far ahead of its time American Splendor really was and is."

weblogs - java.net...

Linux projects gaining momentum on java.net

"Java.net has also become host to more than 40 Java technology and community-related Weblogs, and grown to over 30 Java user groups from more than 11 countries."

weblog news...

Business Wire - TheFeature.com Relaunch Deepens Coverage of the Mobile Internet

"The new version of TheFeature will also feature weblogs from its top contributors, allowing them to share their thoughts on the latest happenings in the industry on an immediate and continual basis."

Wired News: Phoning in Photos for Posterity

"Camera phones have "become popular in the United States in the last six months," said Travis Larson, spokesman for the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association. "This may be the first major news event in which camera phones helped deliver the story. And they've done so in real time." Actually, this isn't the first time camera-phone owners made headlines. ... By Friday afternoon, when power was still out in some areas, at least a dozen people managed to post 65 photos on the same website that included Salinas's photographs. About 185 weblogs linked to that website, said Shawn Honnick, vice president of business development for textamerica, the company that set up the moblog."

Poynter Online - Seminars

"Poynter will help you develop a coverage plan to produce innovative coverage in such areas as candidate profiles and investigations, localizing national races, connecting with voters, finding the heart of your community's best politics stories, and developing your own weblogs, among other things."

weblogs - dear diary...

Weblogs attracting a growing number of readers, writers

"It occurs to me as I read printouts of their blogs that b-may and Mighty Girl are engaged to be married. No, these aren't super-heroes or cartoon characters or even the latest installment from Mattel in the Barbie and Ken line. These are regular folks who utilize the Web as an online journal of sorts, a way to document the day-in, day-out routine that is their lives."

weblog news - rss...

Mercury News | 08/17/2003 | New wave of newsreader software makes sense of the Web

"Every morning I learn the latest from a variety of news organizations, Weblogs, newsletters and other online information sources. But I don't use my e-mail program or go surfing from Web site to Web site. Instead, I use a piece of software called a news aggregator or newsreader -- in my case, it's called NetNewsWire and runs on Mac OS X -- to scoop up headlines and summaries, along with links to the places where they originated."

a down under viewpoint...

Herald Sun: They're a weird mob [17aug03]

"You have to do something very much out of the ordinary to surprise the hard-bitten residents of New York City."

warp & weft of well worn webs...

social stickiness
destiny or causation?
collective conscience

haitech haiku^tm
©2003 judith meskill
inspired by Clay Shirky's "A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy"

weblogs in education...

Can Johnny Blog?

"One of the trendsetters among educators is Will Richardson, supervisor of instructional technology at Hunterdon Central Regional High School in Flemington, N.J., who made use of blogs in his journalism and English classes last year to foster discussion and collaboration as well as to showcase students' work. Students in his class on modern American literature, for instance, created a blog to study the novel "The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd. The author posted a 2,300-word message, and a group of parents read along and contributed their thoughts. Other Web users also happened upon it."

social software on =the hill=...

Arnold, Howard terminating the old politics =The Hill.com=

"If anyone had told me a month ago that the two most exciting politicians in America this summer would be a muscle-bound movie actor with an Austrian accent and the ex-governor of the second-most sparsely populated state in the nation, I'd have asked them what they were smoking... The vehicle for Dean's startling surge was a new social software called the blog, which few politicians or pundits had heard of this time last year. Cyber-speak for "weblog," blogs are a kind of online diary for those who want to share their thoughts on everything from home tutoring to alien abductions."

weblogs - fascinating facets...

on tanya rabourn's faceted movable type:

finely faceted
topic, form, process, space, date
regex patterned gems

haitech haiku^tm
©2003 judith meskill

weblogs - on permalinks and impermanence...

Shelley Powers: Weblogging for Poets - four-part series published:
An excellent consecution of epistles on the importance of being earnest in your intention to remain "linkable" as you move from one form of weblogging to another (i.e. blogger to movable type...)

weblogging & instant messaging...

PRESS RELEASE ( PR Web): "Tipic, Inc. adds instant messaging to blogs: MOTIME.COM, the first blogging platform with instant messaging, lets ISP's, telecoms and portals to increase traffic, stickiness and revenues."

weblogging & social software news...

statesman.com: "Adam Weinroth has built one of the busiest Web sites in Austin. But if you're over the age of 30, you might not have heard of Easyjournal.com... Web experts put it in the realm of "social software" enabled by the Web, including instant messaging and chat. Some call blogging an easy form of online publishing."

Weblog Risks...

Risks abound in online journals, some turn to password protection: By RON WORD, Associated Press Writer, JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Annessa Rink and Robyn Pollman began their Weblogs as a way to express their views on current events and communicate with their families but both have learned that blogging has its risks."

weblog research abstracts...

Making sense of "Syndicated Collaboration" (ResearchIndex): "Abstract: This paper discusses the phenomenon of "syndicated collaboration", which is the collaborative use of weblogs, wikis and news aggregator tools, enabled by open standard protocols like Rich Site Summary (RSS). Existing development trends and the collaborative potential of RSS-based technologies are analysed. The widespread use of these technologies indicates a shift from traditional groupware technologies towards an environment of loosely-coupled tools connecting continuously evolving communities ..."

A Unified Abstraction for Messaging on the Semantic Web (ResearchIndex): "Abstract: Since its inception, the Internet has been a hotbed of several successful communications channels, starting off with e-mail, Internet Relay Chat and Usenet newsgroups and more recently adding Web annotation, instant messaging, and news feeds. However, these channels were developed fairly independently, and in many cases their respective functionalities have grown to overlap significantly."

Mining the Peanut Gallery: Opinion Extraction and Semantic Classification of Product Reviews (ResearchIndex): "Abstract: The web contains a wealth of product reviews, but sifting through them is a daunting task. Ideally, an opinion mining tool would process a set of search results for a given item, generating a list of product attributes (quality, features, etc.) and aggregating opinions about each of them (poor, mixed, good). We begin by identifying the unique properties of this problem and develop a method for automatically distinguishing between positive and negative reviews."

weblog news - last 24 hours...

Bloggers won't match Limbaugh =The Hill.com=: "Although it is never safe to predict with any confidence what will happen over the next 15 years, I doubt that blogging or any specific bloggers will match Limbaugh's record-setting pace for gathering influence in the political process. Blogging lacks four key elements in Limbaugh's formula for success."

webservices.xml.com: A Weblog API For the Grassroots [Aug. 05, 2003]: " Last month I looked at the Necho message format. I compared it to RSS, its predecessor. In this column, I want to look at its API. Joe Gregorio is the main author of the API, written in the IETF RFC format. Joe is using Marshall Rose's xml2rfc package, so various formats are available. Make sure to pick up the latest version; as of the time of this writing, draft 6 was the most current one. That API drafts use the name "Atom", which was the old favorite, but it had trademark conflicts.As you read the first of this column, I'll be talking about the Atom API, which is used to manipulate what I previously called Necho data. But both of those might end up being called Feedster pretty soon, judging by an entry in the Wiki, whose URL still reflect it's original name, pie. Whew! At least we know what it isn't: it's not RSS 2.0, which is now owned by the Harvard Law School."
OJR article: Dean's Blog Builds Support Despite a Lack of Personal Input: "The former Vermont governor has a slick and informative Weblog, but if you hope to glean some insight about the man, you might be better off shaking hands with him in person."

weblog news - the last 24 hours...

Behind the Scenes at the Daypop Search Engine, Part Two: "In May, SearchDay published part one of an interview with Dan Chan, founder and sole proprietor of Daypop, a specialized search engine focusing on weblog and news content. Today, we present the second part of our conversation with Dan."

NewsGator: "NewsGator retrieves news from news sites, weblogs, and other information sources that support the RSS syndication format, and automatically integrates the news items into Microsoft Outlook folders."
Blogs popularity on the rise - York Daily Record: "Weblogs, or blogs, are certainly not new, but they're hitting an exceptional level of popularity on the Net that's now brought blogging into the mainstream."
Story - Montreal Gazette - canada.com network: "Weblogs bleat about how depressing Sundays are. "I hate Sundays ... the way everything feels on Sundays," one scribe observed. "Just kind of blah, if you know what I mean."

weblogs - 2% write, 4% read...

Boston Globe Online / Business / Software helps blogs flourish: "Blogcount.com estimates that there are roughly 2.4 million to 2.9 million active blogs. Sounds impressive, but Jupiter Research says that only about 2 percent of the Internet community has created a blog; about 4 percent read them."

weblogs - m-blog launch...

Internet Week > Hosted Services > M-Blog Launches Hosted Weblog Service > August 4, 2003: "M-Blog Business, tailored to small and midsize organizations, can be used to facilitate open and private communication among associates or with customers while building a knowledge base for the company."

weblogs - the slashdot effect...

Guardian Unlimited | Arts special reports | Word of mouse: "the "Slashdot effect": a single mention on technology site Slashdot often results in more visitors than a website can handle."

weblog jungle drums...

TIME.com: The Dean Factor -- Aug. 11, 2003: "A year ago, Dean, 54, predicted he would come in "dead last in fund raising." Now he's ahead, and he has done it the hard way: $20, $50, $125 at a time."