Maybe blogs are actually bad for conversations: "Blogging is ruining
all my conversations, because I start to tell people stories, and they often say, 'I already read it on your blog,' so then we just stare at
each other awkwardly."
Angela Gunn at Tech Space has found this song
dedicated to library-themed blogs. Gunn says, "Be sure to share with the
entire office by turning those speakers up."
Congratulations to Stephen Baker at Blogspotting for his recent book
deal. Here's the blurb from Publishers Weekly: "Elsewhere at Houghton, Amanda
Cook preempted Business Week senior writer Stephen Baker's The Age of Numbers: In Which
They'll Get My Number and Yours from agent James Levine. Baker's book charts mathematicians'
increasing use of online data to map individual human behavior, and explains how the
mining of this data will change every aspect of our lives. Cook acquired North American
rights and will publish in spring 2008."
A feature on
Kotaku looks at the relationship between games and the game press and the growing role bloggers can play in supporting quality games.
A Whole Lotta Nothing says MySpace = Myutterconfusionspace: "I know there are millions of young people using it, but I can barely figure out what people use their profile pages for. Sometimes there is a blog, most often it's blank. Most all of them look like 1997 guestbooks filled with pointless me too testimonials from people with equally baffling profiles. When you click from one to another to another, you are transported back to Geocities back before Yahoo bought it, flaming animated gifs and all."
Last month bloggers imagined life without blackberries. Now bloggers can be thankful they won't have to live without them.
Grandinite on the economics of blogging: "Bloggers are 'sellers' of information, and their readers are 'buyers'. The currency they are trading in is 'attention', measured in comments,
trackbacks, links and hits to their site. Bloggers get a kick out of getting attention, and I know of many bloggers (myself included) who check their visitor logs every day
in order to gauge their impact on the marketplace of attention."
Blogue, a song by Owen Thomas about blogging based on Madonna's pop hit, "Vogue"
Elvira Black at Blogcritics.org explains her Blogger
Burnout: "After nine months of blogging, I've finally given birth to a whopping case of blogger burnout. Although I still love blogging, there are aspects that I used to enjoy that have become an effort, if not a downright chore, and my 'real life' has suffered gravely in the process."
Blogebrity has the scoop on the new dudes
at Wonkette.
Are we all gatekeepers or do some blogs have much, much more influence than others? The Gaping Void explains why some blogs don't get any traffic.
Newsome.org explains why it is "virtually impossible" to start a
new blog in 2006. Subnixus says you have a better chance of getting hit by lightning than becoming a professional blogger.
Plus, there is Technorati's authority slider which eliminates more and more blogs from the search results as web surfer's slide it forward.
Jeff Jarvis explains how Reuters gets the blogosphere: "He says that Reuters puts its RSS feeds out in the hope that bloggers will use them and include them in the conversation and if we quote a story they’re happy."
Techno-crack-i: Mark Glaser at MediaShift offers tips
for curing that Technorati addiction. He also lists dangerous ways Technorati could
be made even more addictive.
The Anoniblogging Wiki offers anonymous blogging tips. But keep in mind no blog can
say anonymous forever: "With enough time, resources and political will, a group or government can discover who you are."
Micropersuasion says pinging someone else's blog is unethical.
Blogs here and
here disagree. Why not just email the blogger
that you want to ping and ask them first -- instead of forcing a ping on their behalf?
Steven Silvers at Scatterbox is tired
of blogs about blogging. Munir Umrani at The Blogging Journalist
writes, "Steven
sounds as if someone is forcing him to read blogs about blogging. I hope that's not the
case. If it's not, my advice is just don't read them. I know I wouldn't be upset if he
doesn't read TBJ. The folks at Bloggers Blog probably wouldn't be upset either."
We would also not be upset. Silvers also said in his post
that he dislikes blogs about root canals. We looked but we did not find a blog all about root canals. However, there are
many posts about
root canals. There is even a post here
about a man who performed more than 10,000 root canals.This might be the worst post Steven Silvers has ever read.
A blog about blogging that is blogging about blogs that are blogging about root canals.
