Om, apparently called in sick, while Arrington, according to Leo Laporte, "forgot" about his commitment. The replacement? A chat with Justine Ezarik, who hosts a lifecasting videoblog under the name iJustine. For attendees who were disappointed by the switch, we offer one consolation: The comely video blogger is far, far easier on the eyes than Arrington or Malik. Hail the new cult leader!

Blogathon is an annual event in which participants like me will post a new blog entry every thirty minutes for twenty-four hours for charity.

This year I'm also going to be broadcasting LIVE for the entire 24 hours on "Blogathon TV" which will be a webcast in which I take a look at what is happening during the Blogathon.

"I don't have any groupies yet," said Ben Going when asked whether his Internet fame has changed his life. The 21-year-old waiter from Huntsville, Ala., has a regular YouTube audience that numbers nearly 26,000.

Two minutes after making his joke, Going was approached by two red-haired teenagers who asked him for an autograph. Going, known at YouTube as Boh3m3, shrugged at a reporter and appeared simultaneously thrilled and embarrassed. Lowering his hat, the one Going wears in many of his videos, he signed away.

"I watch you all the time," Eric Dutton, 14, from Pacifica, Calif., told Going.

Just two years ago, it would have been a curious thing for a 14-year-old Californian to revere a waiter from Alabama. No more. Dutton who spends two hours a day on YouTube, later said: "Boh3m3 is really honest on his blogs and he's naturally funny. Like the time he said he's never thrown a boomerang without it coming back to hit him in the head. That was hilarious. He thinks the Australians are trying to put one over on us."

What they have in common is a passion for communicating with the rest of the world via the Internet. Many of the top bloggers, such as DigitilSoul, TheHill88, and YourTubeNews, spend roughly 30 hours a week working on or watching YouTube videos. Frank Patterson, or DigitalSoul, is a 36-year-old, full-time father and part-time electrician from Pittsburgh.

About 5 months ago I was blogging away and something struck me "there is no tradeshow for blogging!" At least not a tradeshow for all bloggers that I could find. (I produce very big tradeshows for a living). Sure there were lots of great events but they each addressed a particular niche BlogHer, the Blog Business Summit (a very cool event btw), or Yearly Kos for example. I wanted to go to something that had everything any blogger could ever want. From publishing platforms, to broad band providers, to lap tops to badges, widgets and plug ins, to a dozen other things I could think of off the top of my head. It seems everyday I across some new product or service that Bloggers use /want/need.

Of course I would also want all of my blogging questions answered like how do I get a certain plug in to work right, How do I work this newsreader thingy?, What exactly is RSS and why does everybody tell me I need it? How do I get more people to read my blog? And thats just the basic stuff. Analytics, Search Engine Optimization, Affiliate Programs, Ad networks, it goes on and on.

I think you see where this is going. I told a very good friend, former boss and one of the best tradeshow people I know about my idea and her response was "I want in and we have to launch this show right now!"

They created a blogging purse by hacking fashion (handbag and fabric), hardware (Nokia 6682, pedometer, GPS device, custom stamp, breadboard, wires, soldering iron) and software (CSS, APIs) in less than 24 hours to produce a working prototype. The custom-designed handbag is rigged with a pedometer and a Nokia 6682. Every 10 steps (this is programmable), the pedometers triggers the 6682 to take a photo. The 6682 then uses Yahoo! Research Berkeley's Zonetag mobile client to geotag the photos and upload the photos to Flickr.

In one long moment In August 31st, bloggers from all over the world will post a recommendation of 5 new Blogs, Preferably, Blogs different from their own culture, point of view and attitude. On this day, blog surfers will find themselves leaping and discovering new, unknown Blogs, celebrating the discovery of new people and new bloggers.

1. Find 5 new Blogs that you find interesting
2. Notify the 5 bloggers that you are recommending on them on BlogDay 2006
3. Write a short description of the Blogs and place a a link to the recommended Blogs
4. Post the BlogDay Post (on August 31st) and
5. Add the BlogDay tag using this link: http://technorati.com/tag/BlogDay2006 and a link to BlogDay web site at http://www.blogday.org

Quick, cold showers.

Chatting online with other Blogathon participants.

Dancing! Dancing, singing and general moving help keep you awake in the late hours of the event.

Watch movies, television, play computer games or board games or anything that will engage your attention. Plus, you'll have something to write about.

Have a themed blog! If you're busy writing about the history of the yam or making a collage for your sponsors, you'll have a goal to sustain you through the event.

In a bid to lower the barrier to entry that keep many corporations from beginning to blog, marketing services firm ElectricArtists has come up with an option for the commitment-phobic -- the "pop-up" blog.

Unrelated to the loathsome pop-up ad but akin to the pop-up store, the pop-up blog is created with a clear lifespan set before it is launched. It pops up and fades away, and its brief life span corresponds with an event, product launch, or other time-sensitive cause, Marc Schiller, CEO and founder of ElectricArtists, told ClickZ News. It's a concept that others have employed occasionally in the past, but Schiller is the first to give a moniker to the phenomenon.

"The number one reason not to start a Weblog is the commitment involved. You can hire an agency to launch it, and put a team together to run it, but adding a new project that needs annual focus -- not just budget -- is difficult," Schiller said.

Blogging is an odd business, it's a bit like writing a diary you know lots of other people, most of them strangers, are going to read and possibly comment on.

Bloggers can write what they like on their blogging website, and there is no one in the ether to edit mistakes or curb worst excesses.

It's almost like online graffiti, except it is not against the law, and doesn't make a mess of your garage wall.

At a recent Harvard conference on bloggers and the media, the most pungent statement came from cyberspace. Rebecca MacKinnon, writing about the conference as it happened, got a response on the "comments" space of her blog from someone concerned that if the voices of bloggers overwhelm those of traditional media, "we will throw out some of the best ... journalism of the 21st century." The comment was from Keith Jenkins, an African-American blogger who is also an editor at The Washington Post Magazine [a sister publication of Newsweek]. "It has taken 'mainstream media' a very long time to get to [the] point of inclusion," Jenkins wrote. "My fear is that the overwhelmingly white and male American blogosphere ... will return us to a day where the dialogue about issues was a predominantly white-only one."

Viewed one way, the issue seems a bit absurd. These self-generated personal Web sites are supposed to be the ultimate grass-roots phenomenon. The perks of alpha bloggers—voluminous traffic, links from other bigfeet, conference invitations, White House press passes—are, in theory, bequeathed by a market-driven merit system. The idea is that the smartest, the wittiest and the most industrious in finding good stuff will simply rise to the top, by virtue of a self-organizing selection process.