Scientists Create Software to Measure Happiness in Blog Posts and Tweets
Discovery News reports that Vermont scientists Peter Dodds and Chris Danforth have created a software program that analyzes blogs and tweets to ascertain how happy or sad people are. The scientists have also set up a website called We Feel Fine. Some of the findings based on data they have already collected is what you might expect. The happiest days were vacation days and the recent election and Obama's inauguration. An example of a sad day was the day Micheal Jackson died.
The consistently happiest days are, not surprisingly, vacation days and holidays. The overall happiest days of the last few years were election day (Nov. 4) and President Obama's inauguration (Jan. 20). On these days, people typically typed sentences with words like "pride" and "proud."
Some of the saddest days over the last few years have been the anniversaries of 9-11 and even the day before that solemn anniversary, Sept. 10. Michael Jackson's recent death also caused a drop in the average national happiness.
Analyzing blogs only measures the general climate of happiness across the entire United States (90 percent of the analyzed blogs were from the United States.) To find the level of happiness in your neck of the woods the researchers are now applying their software to 140-character Tweets.
"There are something like 1,000 tweets a minute," said Dobbs. "That's really a lot of data that we can analyze."
Tweets should give a good picture of overall mood. The researchers should be able to narrow down the mood by the hour or minute and not just the day.
CNN has an article about how smartphones, texting and Twitter are helping farmers communicate. Chuck Zimmerman, publisher of agwired.com, told CNN that its a misconception that farmers are slow to adapt the latest technology.
"In large part, farmers tend to be very early adopters of technology. We have the stereotypical image of a hayseed farmer that still persists -- out on a tractor with a straw hat on," he said. "The reality is that most of them are very highly trained from a technological standpoint."
Tucker said his job on the farm in Nebraska includes more than harvesting wheat, corn, sunflowers and millet.
He wants to bring urban Internet users along for the ride. And in doing so, he's become a sort of text-happy evangelist for rural America.
"People out in the cities aren't familiar with agriculture like it used to be 100 years ago. They may not have an appreciation or an understanding of what goes on out in the rural side of things," he said. "I just try to be an information source for whoever may be listening."
So that's what he does from his tractor -- one tweet at a time.
A Nebraska wheat farmer named Steve Tucker has more people following him on his Twitter account, @tykerman1, then live in his town. Take a look:
Profane Blogging Gets Washington Post Writer Fired
Washington Post journalist Michael Tunison was fired for blogging at Kissing Suzy Kolber, a humorous sports blog. Apparently, the Post was unhappy with the language Tunison used in the blog. Tunison used the pseudonym Christmas Ape while blogging and was fired not too long after revealing his journo job in this post where he says he works for a "dying medium."
Editor & Publisher posted this email from Tunison in a recent article.
"There was no conflict of interest between my writing for Kissing Suzy Kolber and my work for The Washington Post. The blog is not a journalistic endeavor and it is not something I was paid for until I revealed my identity. It is a humor blog about the NFL, whereas my job for the paper was to cover local news in a suburban county outside Washington, D.C. It is beat that has nothing to do with a professional football league.
"I also find it troubling that I was summarily fired for engaging in something that is core to the spirit of The Washington Post: full disclosure. Even if editors had a problem with the language used in the blog, they should have been able to respect that my goal was not to defame The Post, but to be forthcoming with my readers."
It certainly doesn't sound like the blog clashed with his Washington Post writing.
There's an update on the KSK blog called Ape Got Dooced. Dooced referring to when blogger Heather Armstrong was fired from her job in 2002 for writings in her blog Dooce.com.
The Discovery Channel is reporting that a study published in CyberPsychology and Behavior found that there may be some psychological benefits to blogging and/or using online communities like MySpace. The study followed about sixty people who were updating their MySpace blogs regularly. After two months of blogging these people felt more confident and more involved.
Researchers James Baker and Susan Moore have written two papers investigating the psychological benefits of blogging and regularly updating personal Web pages with information that invites others to comment.
The first, published in the latest issue of the journal CyberPsychology and Behavior, compares the mental health of people intending to blog with that of people not planning to blog.
Moore says the researchers messaged 600 MySpace users personally and directed them to an online survey. A total of 134 completed the questionnaire; 84 intended to blog and 50 didn't.
"We found potential bloggers were less satisfied with their friendships and they felt less socially integrated, they didn't feel as much part of a community as the people who weren't interested in blogging ... they were also more likely to use venting or expressing your emotions as a way of coping," Moore said.
"It was as if they were saying 'I'm going to do this blogging and it's going to help me'."
And it seemed to do the trick, as the researchers' second study shows.
This study, which is yet to be published, was conducted two months later. The researchers sent out questionnaires to the same group of MySpace users; this time 59 responded. Bloggers reported a greater sense of belonging to a group of like-minded people and feeling more confident they could rely on others for help.
The study found that the bloggers (technically MySpace users in this study) reported feeling "less anxious, depressed and stressed" after two months of blogging. To be fair the people going into the two month study were optimistic that blogging would help them in the first place. It is also interesting to know that there is a journal called CyberPsychology and Behavior. You can read more about the bi-monthly peer reviewed journal here.
Will geeks become an endangered species? Investor and prankster Yossi Vardi delivers this lecture on the dangers of blogging. Men especially should not ignore the risks of "local warming." This is the laptop local warming research the video is referring to. You may not want to keep your cellphone in your pocket either. The presentation includes one of Zoli's posts from 2006.
Wired has an article about Screenwriter Diablo Cody who they describe as an "up-and-coming scribe who's making waves in Hollywood." Cody was a stripper in Minneapolis before chronicling the details in her blog and in a book called Candy Girl. She's now a screenwriter involved in several projects. Cody first became noticed because of her blog called The Pussy Surprise so it is no surprise that one of Cody's tips for finding Hollywood success it to start blogging.
Step Two: Start Blogging and Wait to Be Discovered
After college, Cody left her native Chicago for the romantic Twin Cities -- trading Post-it Notes for pasties while exploring the frosty Minneapolis underworld as a stripper. She described the perils of pole-dancing on the popular Pussy Ranch blog.
Because there are only a few blogs online these days (Technorati currently tracks a mere 112 million), it was a safe bet that a successful Los Angeles literary manager (Mason Novick) would find Cody's work and inquire from 3,000 miles away about her literary ambitions.
"Before Mason found me, all I'd written was the blogs for City Pages in Minneapolis," Cody said. "He asked me if I'd thought about writing something else. I started my book after that."
Once you get noticed you then write your memoirs. Afer that you write and sell your first screenplay. It's all pretty simple. Cody tells Wired, "I think there's room for more talented bloggers to break into Hollywood. It seemed like a fluke when I did it, but I won't be the last blogger to have a film produced." Cody's path was unusual but she is correct that she won't be the last blogger to make the jump to Hollywood. The next blogger to sell a screenplay could be you.
Over 400 Bloggers Plan to Blog All Night For Blogathon 2007
This year's Blogathon will be begin on July 28th at 6:00am Pacific Time. Each year a group of bloggers post every 30 minutes for 24 hours straight to raise money for charity. One of the bloggers partipating this year is Raymond Angel who blogs at Amassed Lust and also has a live show on Ustream.tv called Rockstar Live. Raymond blogs that he will also be broadcasting live this year on a webcast called "Blogathon TV."
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.
Raymond Angel is raising money for Doctors without Borders. You can read more about his Blogathon TV idea here.
If you are interested in participating you still have time. The Faq says signups don't close until the day before the event. However, you are running out of time to both signup and get sponsors.
Study Finds Companies Firing Employees for Leaving Blog and Forum Comments
Wired's Threat Level blog cites an interesting study that found that nearly 10% of companies have fired at least one employee for leaving comments on a message board or a blog.
Nearly ten percent of companies have fired an employee for violating corporate blogging or message board policies, and 19 percent have disciplined an employee for the same infractions, according to a new survey from Proofpoint, a messaging security company.
Almost a third of companies "employ staff to read or otherwise analyze outbound email," while more than fifteen percent have hired people whose primary function is to spy on outgoing corporate email. A quarter have fired an employee for violating corporate email policies. Twenty percent of the companies and almost thirty percent of companies with more than 20,000 employees had been ordered by a court or a regulator to turn over employee emails.
Wired's Threat Level also notes that Proofpoint, the company behind the survey, is a "vendor that sells message monitoring equipment." Proofpoint's survey is very timely as one of the big business news stories this week was the trouble Whole Foods CEO John Mackey got in over comments he left on a Yahoo dicussion forum under the name "Rahodeb." Mackey's blog was even put on hold (via Ars Technica).
The fact that message board comments were lumped in with blog comments in this study is a little unfair to the blogosphere but there may not be much that can be done about it. Corporations tend to frown on employees leaving comments anywhere -- whether it is a blog, website, news article or online forum.
Paula Neal Mooney has a big list the includes the earnings of a number of bloggers. You probably saw the USA Todayarticle describing how tech bloggers Michael Arrington (TechCrunch) and Om Malik (GigaOm) have built businesses out of their blogs. If you are curious about what other bloggers make you should check out Paula's list of blogger pay.
The list isn't all-inclusive. For example, you will find Michael Arrington on Paula's list (it says he makes $1.8 million in ad revenue annually) but you won't find the blog-related income for Om Malik or Michelle Malkin. However, the list does provide the earnings for a wide range of bloggers from Mario Lavandeira (PerezHilton.com) who makes $468,000 - $832,000 to Lucia Liljegren (The Knitting Fiend) who makes about $3,000 a year from Google ads. Some of the annual blog earnings for other bloggers on the list include Darren Rowse ($360,000 or more), John Chow ($126,712), Randy Brown Grown Up Geek ($75,492), Thilak Raj Rao: Tech Buzz and Blog Talks ($36,735) and Matt Coddington: Net Business Blog ($12,000). The income is wide ranging but this is a long list of bloggers earning a good income or good supplemental income from their blogging activities.
The AFP reports that words like blog, wiki, blogosphere and folksonomy have topped a recent poll of hated Internet words. Folksonomy was found to the most irritating web word of them all.
"Blog", "netiquette", "cookie" and "wiki" have been voted among the most irritating words spawned by the Internet, according to the results of a poll published Thursday.
Topping the list of words most likely to make web users "wince, shudder or want to bang your head on the keyboard" was folksonomy, a term for a web classification system.
"Blogosphere", the collective name for blogs or online journals, was second; "blog" itself was third; "netiquette", or Internet etiquette, came fourth and "blook", a book based on a blog, was fifth.
"Cookie", a file sent to a user's computer after they visit a website, came in ninth, while "wiki", a collaborative website edited by its readers, was tenth.
Folksonomy is an irritating web word but it is used more often than you might think. Folksonomy has over 11 million results on Google.
Study Finds 39% of Bloggers Admit to Blogging Harmful Comments
The BBC reports that a new study commissioned by Croner, a UK human resources firm, found that 39% out of 2,000 admitted to making "harmful comments" in their blog.
More than a third of UK bloggers risk the sack by posting derogatory or damaging details about their workplace, boss or colleagues, a survey claims.
Human resources company Croner, which commissioned the study, warned that such bloggers could be sacked from their job for gross misconduct.
Croner surveyed 2,000 people who keep a personal internet blog or diary and 39% said that they made harmful comments.
Bloggers should consider the potential impact of all postings, Croner said.
A company named YouGov ran the study for Croner. The article doesn't elaborate on what kind of content qualifies as "harmful comments." Past surveys by Croner have focused on other employee habits that employers might not like such as this survey which discovered that 1 in 3 employee exaggerate an illness to get more time of work.
David Hauslaib's Jossip Initiatives is launching Stereohyped a new blog targeting black readers. Stereohyped offers a dozen posts a day about topics like fashion, beauty, politics, music, film, and books. The website says that, "Once you blog black, you never go back." The announcement was made in a press release.
Helmed by editor Lauren Williams, a Washington, D.C. native who has
been spearheading the blog's creative effort, Stereohyped is published by
Jossip Initiatives, the New York blog brand behind insider media blog
Jossip, award- winning gay lifestyle blog Queerty, and celebrity tabloid
blog MollyGood.
"The black community needs a blog of its own like Stereohyped," says
editor Lauren Williams. "Whether we're dealing with the Don Imus scandal or
potentially welcoming the first black president with Barack Obama, African-
American readers are craving a news and entertainment site that's entirely
dedicated to them. Nowhere else on the web is there something like
Stereohyped."
"Launching a blog for the black community just makes sense," says
Stereohyped's 23-year-old publisher David Hauslaib. "We're heading into
this with creative people holding degrees in African-American Studies, an
appetite for informed analysis, and plenty of experience with gossip," he
says. "We're bringing a great editorial mix to Stereohyped. And in the end,
serving our black readership will matter most."
Jossip Initiatives also publishes Jossip.com, Queerty and MollyGood. According to the press release Jossip Initiatives is claiming a monthly readership of seven million across the network.
The Wall Street Journal has an article about how blogging can land you a job. A couple years ago the WSJ would have been a very unlikely place for such an article but times have changed. The article says corporate recruiters are surfing blogs -- especially in the tech and media industries. A Wal-Mart recruitment manager is one of the recruiters surfing blogs for potential employees.
Ryan Loken, a Wal-Mart Stores Inc. recruitment manager, says he spends one to two hours a week searching through blogs for new talent or additional information about the candidates he has interviewed. "Blogs are a tool in the tool kit," he says. Since he joined the Bentonville, Ark., retail giant three years ago, Mr. Logen estimates that Web journals have helped him fill 125 corporate jobs. Most of the recruits were referred to him by bloggers and blog contributors, and some were the writers themselves.
In addition to blogs that focus on their industry or field of interest, recruiters say they check candidates' blogs about noncareer-related topics for evidence of writing skills and clues to how well rounded they are.
Most blog-related recruits are professionals in technology and media because jobs in these fields often require knowledge of the blogosphere, says Kirsten Dixson, a founding partner at Brandego LLC, a career-management firm in Exeter, N.H., that specializes in personal branding.
In June, Brian Balfour's blog, SocialDegree.com, inspired an unsolicited offer for a product-manager job from an executive at Zoom Information Inc. "I was impressed by the points Brian was making and the way he was making them," says Russell Glass, vice president of products and marketing at the Waltham, Mass., technology company. The blog also offered details about Mr. Balfour's work history and education. "It was a no-brainer to give him a call and see if he'd be interested," Mr. Glass says.
Blogs offer recruiters a tool for assessing the skill level of the people writing the blogs. This is something that isn't nearly as easy to do with a resume. Bloggers will want to avoid the obvious things that will turn off recruiters -- foul language, discussing drinking and partying, lewd photographs, etc. If bloggers avoid the negatives and write well enough about the industry they work in or are interested in then it's possible to get a job from blogging -- even the Wall Street Journal says it's true.
The big discussion today in the blogosphere is about a proposed Blogger's Code of Conduct. It is currently the top story on Techmeme. Tim O'Reilly has posted a draft of the Blogger's Code here on his blog and here on Wikia. Tim O'Reilly says the "code" is a draft based closely on the BlogHer Community Guidelines. The code was devised following the recent blogger death threats. There is a sheriff type of badge for blogs that adhere to the code's guidelines. There is also an "anything goes" badge for blogs that will not follow the guidelines. This badge contains a stick of dynamite about to explode. Eventually the Blogger's Code of Conduct and badges bloggers can use will be posted at bloggingcode.org. Here is the first draft of the Code.
We celebrate the blogosphere because it embraces frank and open conversation. But frankness does not have to mean lack of civility. We present this Blogger Code of Conduct in hopes that it helps create a culture that encourages both personal expression and constructive conversation.
We take responsibility for our own words and for the comments we allow on our blog.
We are committed to the "Civility Enforced" standard: we will not post unacceptable content, and we'll delete comments that contain it.
We define unacceptable content as anything included or linked to that:
- is being used to abuse, harass, stalk, or threaten others
- is libelous, knowingly false, ad-hominem, or misrepresents another person,
- infringes upon a copyright or trademark
- violates an obligation of confidentiality
- violates the privacy of others
We define and determine what is "unacceptable content" on a case-by-case basis, and our definitions are not limited to this list. If we delete a comment or link, we will say so and explain why. [We reserve the right to change these standards at any time with no notice.]
We won't say anything online that we wouldn't say in person.
We connect privately before we respond publicly.
When we encounter conflicts and misrepresentation in the blogosphere, we make every effort to talk privately and directly to the person(s) involved--or find an intermediary who can do so--before we publish any posts or comments about the issue.
When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we take action.
When someone who is publishing comments or blog postings that are offensive, we'll tell them so (privately, if possible--see above) and ask them to publicly make amends. If those published comments could be construed as a threat, and the perpetrator doesn't withdraw them and apologize, we will cooperate with law enforcement to protect the target of the threat.
We do not allow anonymous comments.
We require commenters to supply a valid email address before they can post, though we allow commenters to identify themselves with an alias, rather than their real name.
We ignore the trolls.
We prefer not to respond to nasty comments about us or our blog, as long as they don't veer into abuse or libel. We believe that feeding the trolls only encourages them--"Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, but the pig likes it." Ignoring public attacks is often the best way to contain them.
There has been a backlash against the code by many bloggers and against the idea of badges for blogs. It is most likely that bloggers that choose to ignore the code are not going to post any kind of badge at all or they might alter the badges like Duncan Riley did here on a post at 901am.com.
Some parts of the code like not being libelous, not stalking and not infringing on copyright are things that we all hope reasonable bloggers are going to follow whether or not they have agreed to a code. There are also already laws that make many of these activities illegal. It is the parts of the Blogger's Code of Conduct about anonymous comments and trolls that are the most controversial. A lot of blogs allow the posting of anonymous comments and some bloggers talk to the trolls. Robert Scoble admits to feeding the trolls. Ensuring that commenters are who they say they are is also not an easy thing to do even if you wanted to. Zoli notes that commenters can hide by "just registering with bogus credentials."
The New York Times has an article about the Blogger's Code of Conduct. Jeff Jarvis points out that the code gave the Times an excuse to use "World of Nasty Blogs" in a headline. The article includes a photograph of the founders of BlogHer.org, where a similar code of conduct has been helpful in building that community.
The Guardian has an article that says many people are blogging off and abandoning their blogs or not posting as much as they used to. The article also cites a Gartner study that found 200 million blogs have been abandoned. They list a few examples of bloggers that haven't been posting as much lately.
Sandra Gidley, the Liberal Democrat MP, hasn't posted since January 2006. In one of her last entries, she wrote, "I made a new year's resolution to resume the blog, but to be honest the beginning of the year was depressing" (Gidley was one of those who called for Charles Kennedy to go). Tory MP Theresa May hasn't posted since December, stating the obvious with the comment: "OK, so my previous promise to make my blogs more frequent may have fallen by the wayside."
Sandra Gidley, the Liberal Democrat MP, hasn't posted since January 2006. In one of her last entries, she wrote, "I made a new year's resolution to resume the blog, but to be honest the beginning of the year was depressing" (Gidley was one of those who called for Charles Kennedy to go). Tory MP Theresa May hasn't posted since December, stating the obvious with the comment: "OK, so my previous promise to make my blogs more frequent may have fallen by the wayside."
Celebrity blogs are faring little better. "Oh my goodness, I am so sorry it has taken me so long to write!!" posts the actor Gillian Anderson in one of the last entries on her website in August last year, which shows she can't have been that sorry. Barbra Streisand's sideline in political commentary can't be dependent on keeping up the pressure - her last entry was four months ago. Some blogs, such as Mariah Carey's, in which she famously left rambling, incoherent messages before going into therapy, seem to have disappeared altogether.
"You have to be opinionated and passionate about what you write, or your enthusiasm will wane," says Drew Benvie, social media adviser for Lewis PR and a blogging expert. Benvie thinks now is the time to dig out your old password and get back to blogging. "Companies are starting to see them as a way of promoting their products. Write about films and you might get tickets to screenings; write about gadgets and you might be sent gadgets to test."
There is no question that many bloggers do not keep to a daily or even weekly schedule. Many blogs have probably also been abandoned over the past couple years. However, people still have plenty to say and love talking about themselves so the idea that blogging will go away completely is silly. What will happen is that blogging will peak at some point but there will always be networked communication and publishing tools that resembles blogging. The peak could literally be once every young person has some kind of profile somewhere. This seems like it is almost the case for the 13-21 year-olds. Tools like Flickr and Twitter and social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace also show that blogging can take a wide variety of forms: blogs, microblogs, photoblogs, social network profiles, etc. These variations on blogging will also make it very difficult to pinpoint exactly when blogging has peaked.
CNET has an article about the start of blogging that includes an interesting timeline on blogging. The article discusses several early bloggers including Justin Hall, Carolyn Burke, Jorn Barger and Dave Winer.
Was the first blogger the irascible Dave Winer? The iconoclastic Jorn Barger? Or was the first blogger really Justin Hall, a Web diarist and online gaming expert whom The New York Times Magazine once called the "founding father of personal blogging"?
Or did all three merely make incremental improvements on earlier proto-blogs? The answer is most likely "yes" to all of the above. In truth, awarding the title "first blogger" is more than a little tricky because the definitions of blog and blogger are slippery. Any definition should probably include posts sorted by date, with the newest posts at the top and the rest archived for future use (criteria that would eliminate the Drudge Report, for instance).
Winer is a pioneer of Web syndication techniques and editor of Scripting News, which launched on April 1, 1997.
He boasts on his site that Scripting News "bootstrapped the blogging revolution" and that it is the "longest currently running Web log on the Internet." A decade ago, however, Winer wasn't actually using the term "Web log," nor does he claim to have invented the term. Winer did not respond to repeated requests for comment from CNET News.com until after this article appeared. He replied in a post claiming "the first blogs were inspired" by Scripting News.
There were also a lot of lesser known people keeping web journals and online diaries back in the mid 90s before anyone called it a blogging. The article also talks about the .plan files that people used to pass around in Unix.
If you want to hear my thoughts going forward I suggest joining my twitter group: http://twitter.com/JasonCalacanis
you'll get like 2-15 alerts on your phone/AIM a day with my links, thoughts, discussions, etc.
I'm thinking of doing a week of Twitter-only blogging.... so, join now!
500 people are already on the group... crazy!
Clearly, Twitter is already reducing blog posts for some users. Some are suggesting that Twitter will become the place for short posts while regular blogs are used for longer posts and analysis. That's the long and short of it for now anyway.
The blogger at the Vancouver Housing Market Blog was blogging regularly until one day readers of the blog loaded up the site's homepage (or their RSS reader) to find this shocking message.
Things have changed on the off-line front. I have to go now. It has been a lot of fun. I might be back sometime in the future, but I need to stop for awhile anyway.
TaTa For Now.
And just as things are looking pretty grim on the housing front especially in the subprime market. The departure of the blogger at the Vancouver Housing Market Blog (VHB) resulted in this article appearing in The Tyee called, "Pop Goes Real Estate Bubble Blogger." The article says some of the blog's daily readers were shocked to read the blogger's goodbye message.
Usually, the VHB provides links, charts, stats and commentary (like about the number of properties on the Vancouver market and their average prices, historical patterns, comparisons between Vancouver and other cities) that have the implicit questions -- is this a bubble and will it crash?
His last post on Friday left no indication that a halt was in the works, so those who visited his blog on Monday morning expressed surprise. "This is very sudden and I am sad to hear that the mysterious VHB will no longer be making the prescient posts I have become used to reading over the past 12+ months," said a commenter named Mohican.
"Please!!! Don't go! She'll come round!! Just involve her more...She can do some graphs and you guys can research, together," said a commenter named Mighty Mouse.
"Well good luck with that. If you can, keep the site alive. It will be interesting to go back and check the comments in the future. We are going to look like either prescient geniuses or ignorant boobs. I don't think there is much in between," said a commenter named Freako.
When a local blogger covering a niche subject like the housing market disappears it can leave quite a hole. All that good fresh coverage and insight just stops coming. Since leaving the VHB blogger has returned to leave this message.
Thanks to all who have posted such nice things over the past few weeks. Life is going very well, thank you. I do miss blogging in a way, but on the whole it is better to get on with the coolness that is life. Enjoy the crash! (Whenever it comes . . .) VHB out.
It look like someone else will have to pick up the slack in local housing market coverage for Vancouver.
Calvin Klein is targeting the young blogging and text messaging crowd with a new fragrance called CK in2u and a new social network called What Are You IN2?. Did they base this campaign on some focus groups and market research that found bloggers buy tons of fragrances? Because it really isn't common knowledge that bloggers buy more of these products than anyone else. Or do they just think their campaign is so good bloggers will just have to buy some? The What Are You IN2 social network will launch on March 28th. The fragrance social network tie-in is a part of a new marketing campaign from Calvin Klein. The New York Timesreports that the marketing materials for this campaign actually include the following text.
"She likes how he blogs, her texts turn him on. It's intense. For right now."
Valleywag has already created an ad based on this titillating marketing text. The fragrance is also being targeted to the "technosexual generation." Those are today's kids that apparently love to hook-up via blogs, IMs and text messages. The Hey Pretty blog explains:
I wasn't sure what the "technosexual generation" is either. Lucky, he goes on to explain. "Technosexuals" is apparently a new marketing buzz word for young people who use text messaging and blogging in order to meet and arrange hookups.
Yeah, yeah, I know. All the cool kids are doing it these days. But ew. Something about that description kind of makes me want to stop blogging forever and communicate with others only through Morse code. I feel, I dunno. Dirty.
Gawker says bloggers don't want to smell of blog and
the One Eleventh Ton Man remembers the smell of grunge. A post from the blogger who claims to have coined the word "technosexual" can be found here. If you want more coverage of the new in2u fragrance try Buzzfeed which has a growing roundup of links.
Future Competition for Human Bloggers: Super Intelligent Robot Bloggers
In the future human bloggers may face a new threat - robots that blog. These robot bloggers may have the advantage of having processors that are faster than our human brains and the ability to interface directly with the Internet. No typing necessary. The BBC is seriously reporting that South Korea is already concerned with ethical issues involving robots. They will be releasing the Robot Ethics Charter at the end of the year. South Korea's government also predicts robot surgeons by 2018.
A recent government report forecast that robots would routinely carry out surgery by 2018.
The Ministry of Information and Communication has also predicted that every South Korean household will have a robot by between 2015 and 2020.
The article also says that a UK study predicts that robots will demand the same rights as human beings before 2060. If the robots are smart enough to demand rights they will have no problem blogging.
Other bodies are also thinking about the robotic future. Last year a UK government study predicted that in the next 50 years robots could demand the same rights as human beings.
The European Robotics Research Network is also drawing up a set of guidelines on the use of robots.
This ethical roadmap has been assembled by researchers who believe that robotics will soon come under the same scrutiny as disciplines such as nuclear physics and Bioengineering.
A draft of the proposals said: "In the 21st Century humanity will coexist with the first alien intelligence we have ever come into contact with - robots.
"It will be an event rich in ethical, social and economic problems."
Even if all these robot predictions come true we humans should have at least another decade or two to blog freely without the threat of robotic competition.
Sahar Sarid at the Conceptualist brings up the possibility of a blogging subscription model emerging in the future. Sarid points out that newspapers, radio, television, etc all have subscrption models. Scott Karp, writing at the Blog Herald, discussed the concept more in this post.
The issue of whether any paid content online is "better than what you can get for free" has been debated since the dawn of the Web. What arguably makes some of the top blogs better than other blogs is that, by dint of their success, they have become scoop magnets, e.g TechCrunch, Engadget. That doesn't necessarily make their reporting or analysis better, but you can always get the information there first. Of course, if they were behind a pay wall, that advantage might disappear.
That's why the Seth Godin consultant model might be more viable. Darren Rowse at Problogger, for example, offers advice to bloggers equivalent to what you might get from a paid consultant.
The argument against a paid content model for blogging begins of course with ideology - there are many blog purest who would refuse to call a paid blog a blog. Blogging, traditionally, has been about openness and inter-connectivity, which a paid subscriber wall certainly does not foster.
In the future there will probably be some blogs run by experts in a particular field that will be able to charge a fee for access to their blog or feed. However, this will most likely be blogs/feeds that have to do with legal, medical and financial subjects that require an extensive knowledge base. There
have always been financial newsletters that people are willing to pay a fairly high fee for and there is no reason why this won't translate into paid blogs. But paying for blogs that simply offer blogging or marketing advice seems highly unlikely because there is so much of this information already readily available. If someone offering blogging or marketing advice tries to move their blog behind a subscription wall people will just go to other blogs offering similar content. There is no shortage of good blogging or marketing advice on the Internet.
The paid blogging model technically already exists as the New York Times has some blogs that are behind the Times Select subscriber wall. The Times has a blog called the Opinionator that can't be read without a subscription. There are several other blogs behind the Time Select wall as well -- see the "select features" section on the right.
The word "beme" was mentioned recently in an ABC News story (see the 4th page). Tom Hayes says he coined the word beme to describe a meme propagated by blogs and bloggers. Now Tom Hayes has a lengthier explanation of beme (via Doc Searls) on his Tom Bomb blog.
A beme is a turbo-charged meme made possible entirely by the existence of the network affect. A beme can be impactful because it is lurid--a photo of a panty-less Britney Spears, or humorous--a whimisical video of the band OKGO on treadmills, or gut-wrenching--the sad tirade by comedian Michael Richards. A beme can cement an idea with the public in a way that cannot be legislated or regulated. No legal effort by Cisco to enforce a trademark, for example, will make the public unlearn that Apple produces the iPhone.
A meme is old media, a beme is new media.
A meme takes off by accident, a beme by design.
A meme can take years to surface, a beme hours.
There are not very many mentions of beme on Technorati but it is a word that could ending up sticking.
A New Scientistarticle looks at new activities and habits of people in the Internet age like egosurfing, Google-stalking and being a Wikipediholic. Photolurking is probably the most disturbing activity discussed in the article.
Photolurkers spent most of their time online flicking through photograph albums posted by strangers
Whose looking at your family Flickr photos? Photolurking definitely has a creepy One Hour Photo feel to it -- as The Guardian suggested. The New Scientist article says two researchers at Lancaster University in the UK discovered photolurking.
Then there are photolog sites like Flickr. While most of us would rather die than be caught surreptitiously browsing through someone else's photos, there need be no such qualms about the private pics people put up on these sites. Haliyana Khalid and Alan Dix at Lancaster University in the UK have studied this new practice of "photolurking". Most people they interviewed who used Flickr and similar sites spent time each day browsing albums owned by people they had never met. They do this for emotional kicks, Khalid and Dix suggest: flicking through someone else's wedding photos, for example, allows people to daydream about their own nuptials.
What most of us find excruciatingly boring others apparently find quite fascinating. BuzzFeed has links to a few more blogs discussing the subject of photolurking.
Bloggers may also want to avoid this one:
Blog streaking: Revealing secrets or personal information online, which for everybody's sake would be best kept private.
Blogging under the influence is probably the best way to get yourself involved in a blog streaking incident.
A t-shirt being sold at CoolestShop.com features Samuel L. Jackson pointing a gun and the words "Say Blogosphere Again." The shirt features dark writing on a brown shirt which makes it a little hard to read. The t-shirt implies that Samuel L. Jackson will shoot you if you dare say the word "blogosphere" again. There are some bloggers who truly dislike the word. Boing Boing says it was fun for a couple months.
If you're tired of hearing the word "blogosphere" (which was kind of fun for a month or two in 2001) then this is the t-shirt for you: Samuel L Jackson in his Pulp Fiction persona, pointing a gun at the world and saying, "Say blogosphere again!"
The t-shirt is currently sold out but coolestshop.com appears to be in the process of getting more of them. We like the shirt but we also still like using word blogosphere now and then. Please don't shoot.
Dave Winer has posted a response to the ongoing blog comments argument. He says that a blog is the "unedited voice of a person" and that comments may actually interefere.
Do comments make it a blog? Do the lack of comments make it not a blog? Well actually, my opinion is different from many, but it still is my opinion that it does not follow that a blog must have comments, in fact, to the extent that comments interfere with the natural expression of the unedited voice of an individual, comments may act to make something not a blog.
We already had mail lists before we had blogs. The whole notion that blogs should evolve to become mail lists seems to waste the blogs. Comments are very much mail-list-like things. A few voices can drown out all others. The cool thing about blogs is that while they may be quiet, and it may be hard to find what you're looking for, at least you can say what you think without being shouted down. This makes it possible for unpopular ideas to be expressed. And if you know history, the most important ideas often are the unpopular ones.
Adding comments does not unblog a blog anymore than not having comments makes a blog not a blog. However, on some popular blogs comments do lead to a community atmosphere that may change the blog over time. Comments can make a blog more like a web forum if there are enough people leaving comments.
Those urging Google's Blog to add comments may be upset when Google finally does add comments and the conversation (and traffic) moves to Google's Blog and away from their own blogs. What if Techmeme added comments? Wouldn't this drain traffic from top comment blogs like TechCrunch?
Will some pro-community bloggers eventually argue that all blogs must have a feature like MyBlogLog in order to be a blog? Will they insist that these blogs allow little faces of other bloggers to appear on their blog? Will they argue that Google and other companies need these features on their corporate blogs in order for them to really be corporate blogs? There are good arguments that adding comments can increase traffic to a blog. There are also strong arguments that comments make a blog more interesting. However, there are not any good arguments that a blog is not a blog because it does or does not have comments.
Nielsen BuzzMetrics has released data about which Wikipedia articles bloggers most referenced from January 1st to December 10th. It isn't quite the entire year but it does give you an idea of what some of the top stories and top subjects of 2006 were.
Nielsen BuzzMetrics also said that Wikipedia outranks mentions of the term "encyclopedia" by a 6-to-1 margin. The BuzzMetrics press release also lists some Wikipedia-happy bloggers that frequently reference Wikipedia. The following blogs linked to Wikipedia 50 or more times since January 1st according to BuzzMetrics:
Boing Boing, Look at This, Micropersuasion, TCAL.net, SmartMobs, Gadling, Joho, Lifehacker, Metafilter, Gothamist, 2Blowhards, Splinters, Chris Abraham, Slashdot and Unmediated. No doubt there are probably many more bloggers that linked to Wikipedia at least 50 times in 2006 since that is only about once a week.
You are Time's new Person of the Year. Time has chosen "You" meaning YouTube users, bloggers, citizen journalists, etc. -- people who use Web 2.0 software and contribute to social media websites.
The tool that makes this possible is the World Wide Web. Not the Web that Tim Berners-Lee hacked together (15 years ago, according to Wikipedia) as a way for scientists to share research. It's not even the overhyped dotcom Web of the late 1990s. The new Web is a very different thing. It's a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old software. But it's really a revolution.
And we are so ready for it. We're ready to balance our diet of predigested news with raw feeds from Baghdad and Boston and Beijing. You can learn more about how Americans live just by looking at the backgrounds of YouTube videos—those rumpled bedrooms and toy-strewn basement rec rooms—than you could from 1,000 hours of network television.
And we didn't just watch, we also worked. Like crazy. We made Facebook profiles and Second Life avatars and reviewed books at Amazon and recorded podcasts. We blogged about our candidates losing and wrote songs about getting dumped. We camcordered bombing runs and built open-source software.
While it is nice to see Time magazine acknowledging the power of the Internet, Time's "You" actually leaves a huge number of people out. As high as 99% of all the people are left out if you follow the 1% rule. Many people may read blogs and many people may look at the videos on video sharing websites but the majority do not contribute any content at all.
New Law Turns Bloggers, Web 2.0 Sites Into Obscenity Police Force
CNET reports that a new law drafted by Senator John McCain would require blogs, social networks and websites to monitor posts or profiles for "obscenity" and child pornography. Any blogger found lax in this required monitoring could be fined $300,000.
The legislation, drafted by Sen. John McCain and obtained by CNET News.com, would also require Web sites that offer user profiles to delete pages posted by sex offenders.
In a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday, the Arizona Republican and former presidential candidate warned that "technology has contributed to the greater distribution and availability, and, some believe, desire for child pornography." McCain scored 31 of 100 points on a News.com 2006 election guide scoring technology-related votes.
After child pornography or some forms of "obscenity" are found and reported, the Web site must retain any "information relating to the facts or circumstances" of the incident for at least six months. Webmasters would be immune from civil and criminal liability if they followed the specified procedures exactly.
Critics are concerned with the new burden the law would place on blogs, social media and Web 2.0 sites. It would obviously tax photo and video sharing websites. Kevin Bankston, an EFF attorney, told CNET that he is concerned about traveling down a "slippery slope."
Internet service providers already must follow those reporting requirements. But McCain's proposal is liable to be controversial because it levies the same regulatory scheme -- and even stiffer penalties -- on even individual bloggers who offer discussion areas on their Web sites.
"I am concerned that there is a slippery slope here," said Kevin Bankston, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. "Once you start creating categories of industries that must report suspicious or criminal behavior, when does that stop?"
According to the proposed legislation, these types of individuals or businesses would be required to file reports: any Web site with a message board; any chat room; any social-networking site; any e-mail service; any instant-messaging service; any Internet content hosting service; any domain name registration service; any Internet search service; any electronic communication service; and any image or video-sharing service.
CNET writes that another potential problem with McCain's bill are that the definitions of what constitutes child pornography can be very broad.
The U.S. Justice Department, for instance, indicted an Alabama man named Jeff Pierson last week on child pornography charges because he took modeling photographs of clothed minors with their parents' consent. The images were overly "provocative," a prosecutor claimed.
With the new law bloggers could become online police finding and storing any blog comments they find suspicious -- and being fined $300,000 if they miss anything. The law also requires website owners to remove any webpage that is "associated" with a sex offender.
The other section of McCain's legislation targets convicted sex offenders. It would create a federal registry of "any e-mail address, instant-message address, or other similar Internet identifier" they use, and punish sex offenders with up to 10 years in prison if they don't supply it.
Then, any social-networking site must take "effective measures" to remove any Web page that's "associated" with a sex offender.
CNET explains how "social-networking site" could also mean blog or forum based on the way the vague law is written. For a blogger to try and remove comments from a known sex offender they would have to match every user or commenter's name against an existing database of sex offender names. That is beyond the scope of what individual bloggers and many small companies are capable of.
The title of this post sounds like a strange question to ask but Andy Rutledge has a post about how social media can be boring, mediocre and possibly even civilization ending.
Mediocrity is the only possible result of a wide sampling of opinion or input. The only idea that can survive such a mechanism is one consistent with the lowest common denominator. The mob works to ensure that all other results are weeded out. Now, we might think that it is the highest common denominator that is promoted in this environment, but it's just not so. The "highest" anything is largely held by the masses as being discriminatory and elitist. So only the lowest common denominator wins out. The point is that in this sort of environment excellence does not survive.
Excellence is not the sum of opinions. Excellence is not born of consensus. Excellence is by its very nature something far outside the average. In fact, not even good is found in the average. Average is comfortable. Average requires no great effort. Average requires nothing exceptional. Average anything is..., well, just mediocre.
It is worth discussing how much value there is too social sites that let anyone edit or select content. There is truth in the idea that the content selected by online crowds is not always the best -- often it does seem like the worst content -- or the most sensational content -- rises to the top. Businesspundit agrees that social media can produce mediocrity. Businesspundit says the downside of easy publishing tools is that you have to put up with "a million yahoos."
I'm not anti-amateur, I'm just anti-mediocrity. Yes, low barriers to entry allow us to find the diamonds in the rough - the excellent writers and thinkers who otherwise would not have a publishing platform. Unfortunately, it also means we have to put up with a million yahoos who think they know way more than they do. Years ago I heard a minister say "if anyone tells you they have all the answers, run the other way." That's why I steer clear of Web2.0 pundits.
Not everyone agrees that the most popular videos on YouTube.com or the most popular stories on Digg are the best ones. That's why people turn to different blogs and websites for a different filter or a different perspective. Most bloggers are using social media websites as a tool and not as a way of life. Many bloggers allow comments but they certainly aren't turning their blogs into wide-open wikis that anyone can edit.
There is a problem with the argument that social media is anti-elitist because the people using social media are actually the elite. Remember over 97% of humans are blogless and most people in the world don't even have access to social media. Bloggers also do a good job of pointing out experts and some of the most popular bloggers in a particular niche are often experts in their field.
Andy Rutledge also seems to be linking social media mediocrity with the downfall of civilization.
Mediocrity and decadence: these are now our birthright and we work feverishly to ensure that they're the primary features of our social endeavors. This sort of thing has happened before. History is filled with stories of how societies, great and small, have followed this path. We can read about their beginnings and their inevitable endings, in books - and now in the so–very–accurate and august Wikipedia (monument to the wisdom of crowds - /sarcasm).
The waxing relevant engines of our culture are teaching us to follow a pat, clichéd script that has played out over and over again for millennia. Western culture is on the downhill slope and gathering speed toward the brick wall at the bottom. I’m talking about the hill where, at the bottom, lie the heaps of rubble that history refers to: great cultures all. Welcome to culture 2.0.
So, in a nutshell, Andy believes that crowds are grunting masses of baboons, and that anything that surveys a group of people will inevitably result in mediocrity. The great are pulled down amongst the rabble. Pretty depressing, right? At one point, Andy says that "Western culture is on the downhill slope and gathering speed toward the brick wall at the bottom." It made me want to crawl into bed with a copy of Wuthering Heights and a nice bottle of Dom Perignon and wait for the mob with pitchforks to attack my castle.
There is a lot about social media sites that is not praiseworthy. Many of the top 100 videos on Google Video are not important -- like the Guy pwned by girl! video (currently ranked 5th). Sometimes content selected or highlighted by social media sites as "the best" is often very boring, trivial, pointless, tasteless and/or stupid -- but most people using social media sites are conscious of this "reality tv" aspect of social sites. They also know that most of the people using some of these sites are very young. Social media won't end Western civilization and if Western civilization is nearing its end it isn't because of social media. Global warming, pollution, bird flu, crooked governments, censorship, nuclear war, rogue asteroids, exploding calderas are far biggers concerns and you can find them all discussed in blogs and social media websites.
California Supreme Court Protects Bloggers From Libelous Comments
The International Herald Tribune reports that a decision by the California Supreme Court gives bloggers, forum owners and publishers immunity from libelous comments posted on their websites by others. It is a good decision because bloggers should not be punished for any annoying trolls that stop by and post vicious comments and/or start flame wars.
The court, in a unanimous decision overturning a San Francisco appeals court ruling, said that those claiming defamation could sue only the original source of the disputed comments, not publishers or distributors, even if the distributor was an individual.
Internet users are protected by the same 1996 Communications Decency Act that grants immunity against defamation claims to publishers in most cases, the court said.
MSNBC.com has an article that includes what the California supreme court said.
In today's ruling, the California Supreme court said that granting such broad immunity for posting defamatory statements "has some troubling consequences."
Nevertheless, the court said, "Until Congress chooses to revise the settled law in this area" people who contend they were defamed on the Internet can seek recovery only from the original source of the statement, not from those who re-post it."
Instapundit calls the decision a free speech victory for blogs. Talk Left posted a link to the PDF file containing the text of the decision. Tony Hung at the Blog Herald writes, "And to that I say - let the libelous trolling flame wars begin!"
Paid Content reports that BBC staff are now allowed to pay for content generated by the public but the BBC wants to make it clear that payment should not always be expected.
New guidelines tell BBC staff they can make payments to members of the public who send in footage from mobile phones or cameras, but "audiences should not be encouraged to think that payment is the norm," which will definitely put more pressure on the editors in judging whether to pay or not.
The new editorial policy guidelines state: "In return for payment we may negotiate an assignment of copyright or exclusive rights - but bear in mind that material other than photographs may be copied and used by other news organizations under 'fair dealing'."
Vicky Taylor, the BBC's head of interactivity, said that "We do not want to give people the impression that we will pay for hundreds of pieces of user-generated content," said Ms Taylor.
It sounds like if you want the BBC to pay you for a photograph or video you are going to have to have something unique that the BBC doesn't already have and they are probably going to try and buy exclusive rights to the content.
The Houston Chronicle is reporting that at least 30 Texas death row inmates have profiles on MySpace. These profiles aren't written directly by the inmates. Instead they are written by friends or family members on behalf on of the inmates.
They're prison inmates and many, including those on Texas' death row, have moved their cell-based ponderings from isolated anti-death penalty Internet pages to the popular social networking Web site favored by the younger set: MySpace.
At least 30 Texas death row inmates have MySpace pages created for them. On these personal pages they detail their likes and dislikes, just like anyone else.
"I think I'm a pretty funny guy. I have a wacked sense of humor," writes Randy Halprin, who was convicted in the 2000 shooting death of an Irving police officer. "I can be a big kid at heart. I'm a hopeless (and I mean HOPELESS) romatic (sic)."
To be clear, no Texas inmate has Internet access. Instead, inmates send letters, journal entries or blog postings to friends and families who create the pages for them and post their writings for them.
"This is not new," explained Michelle Lyons, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. "The reality is that for many years death row inmates have had family and friends on their case, on the Internet, oftentimes to get pen pals and in some cases raise money for the defense."
A local ABC affiliate has details about one of the MySpace profiles. Another news story says there has been a request from the crime victims office for Houston Mayor Bill White for MySpace to remove the profiles.
Bloggers that blog about finding something very unusual can sometimes receive a big traffic surge. That's what happened to the Bent Corner blog when they posted about finding t-shirts for sale at Wal-Mart that contained the Totenkopf or Death's Head symbol once worn by German Nazi SS members. The shirts also contain the year 1978 on them.
I stopped in at Wal-Mart today after I got off work. I had to pick up a few things. As I was walking past the men's clothing area, something caught my eye. I noticed something weird over at a wall of t-shirts. One of the t-shirts had a design on it that looked remarkably like something related to Nazis. Specifically, the Totenkopf or "Death's Head".
I took a picture of it with my camera phone.
The Death's Head symbol was worn by the members of the German Nazi SS. The Totenkopf on the Wal-Mart t-shirt looks very similar to the divisional insignia of the 3rd SS Division Totenkopf. As you can see, It's almost an exact copy.
Bent Corner received 55,000 visits in a single day from the Totenkopf post. The blogger at Bent Corner also blogs that he received an email from Edelman, Walmart's PR firm, explaining that the Totenkopf t-shirts were stocked by mistake and that they would be quickly removed from Wal-Mart stores. In this same post, Bent Corner says that Wal-Mart isn't pulling the shirts fast enough and that gleeful teenage Nazi wannabes who saw his post have rushed out to Wal-Mart to buy the t-shirts.
Slight Increase in Youth Vote During 2006 Elections
The German Press Agency reports that there was a slight increase in voting by voters ages 18 to 29 during yesterday's midterm elections. The turnout for this age group was 13%. That seems very small but it is a 2% increase over the 2002 turnout of 11%. This age group favored Democratic candidates by 22% according to the news report.
Washington-Younger voters turned out in higher numbers in Tuesday's US congressional elections, giving a lift to Democratic candidates in a contest that gave the party control of the US House of Representatives for the first time in 12 years. "This is a new generation," Hans Riemer, political director of Rock the Vote, an organization that seeks to mobilize young voters, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. "They're more involved, more engaged, and less cynical."
Exit polls showed that voters between the ages of 18 and 29 cast 13 per cent of all votes, up from 11 per cent in the 2002 elections, the last non-presidential national election. Voter turnout is typically higher in presidential elections.
That increase is important because the proportion of young voters has become smaller in the same time period, causing the increase to outpace the growth in turnout among all voters, Rock the Vote said.
Young voters traditionally favour Democratic candidates and did so by a 22 point margin on Tuesday, the organization said, citing exit polls.
MySpace had a special section targeting voter apathy this year and so did Facebook.
Unfortunately, no one bothered to poll the voters to see if they read blogs or use social networks but we have seen in past surveys that the younger demographic is more likely to both blog and read blogs. They are also frequent users of social networks.
An article in the Guardian cites surveillance expert and professor Nigel Gilbert as saying there will be so much digital data within five years that you will be able to find out "what an individual was doing at a specific time and place." He makes it sounds like our lives will basically be liveblogged by video cameras and other monitoring devices. The article also says that Gilbert said that in five years you will be able to query Google to find out "what was a particular individual doing at 2.30 yesterday and would get an answer."
The answer would come from a range of data, for instance video recordings or databanks which store readings from electronic chips. Such chips embedded in people's clothes could track their movements. He told a privacy conference the internet would be capable of holding huge amounts of data very cheaply and patterns of information could be extracted very quickly. "Everything can be recorded for ever," he said.
He was speaking at a conference at which a report commissioned by Richard Thomas, the privacy watchdog, was launched. Mr Thomas has said Britain is "waking up to a surveillance society that is all around us" and that such "pervasive" surveillance is likely to spread.
Five years seems a little soon for there to be that much information available on the Internet about an individual but eventually it seems likely that the technology will be available that will allow this to happen. However, not everyone is going to accept pervasive surveillance and wear shirts with embedded chips or allow themselves to be constantly monitored.
An L.A. Timesarticle says CNN is hosting an "E-lection Nite Blog Party" that will feature bloggers blogging about the elections. The article says the Blog Party will feature bloggers from top liberal and conservative blogs. It will be hosted by CNN reporters Jacki Schechner and Abbi Tatton. One of CNN's Pipeline cameras will remain focsued on the Blog Party.
The cable news network plans to host more than two dozen bloggers from across the political spectrum - including sites like RedState and Daily Kos - at a Washington Internet lounge where they can monitor the election returns on a slew of flat-screen televisions. (Each blogger will get his or her own monitor, which can be tuned to any channel.) There will be free wireless access — and plenty of food and beverages, natch.
CNN Internet reporters Jacki Schechner and Abbi Tatton have been assigned to cover the gathering and provide regular updates on the air about the topics that are generating the most chatter.
"Bloggers are leading the conversation," said David Bohrman, CNN's Washington bureau chief. "You could argue that most of the political dialogue in this country is happening online, so if you don't incorporate that into your coverage, you're missing a major element."
Subscribers to CNN Pipeline, the network's broadband service, will be able to monitor the happenings at the blog party through one of the online channels, which will be dedicated exclusively to footage from the event.
Tom Tomorrow at This Modern World says the idea of on-camera typing is "just painful."
Seriously, you don't ask newspaper columnists to sit in front of a laptop and write their columns on air, and we're way past the point that bloggers should have to humiliate themselves like that in order to get a few seconds of airtime. This isn't 2002, we all know what blogs are. If bloggers have something to contribute to the conversation, let them sit at a roundtable on election eve and contribute their thoughts like any other opinion writer, without treating them like teenagers at a TV dance party circa 1962 who need to be lured into the studio with "plenty of food and beverages, natch."
Tomorrow makes a good point. We did see a lot of bloggers typing madly at keyboards during the 2002 and 2004 elections. Hopefully, this time around CNN will treat the bloggers more like pundits and ask them their opinions instead of just following what they are typing. At least the bloggers get their own video stream on CNN Pipeline.
Please don't bother Phil at PhilTube. He is too busy blogging to take your phone call.
Phil loves blogging. If only he had more time. And we are not talking euphemism here, people, blogging is a serious pursuit. It is shaping everything from little licorice candies to fertile American minds to kid-crazy surfboard design to scrappy nascent video content providers. As you will see, you should be blogging too. It is awesome.
You can read more about PhilTube in this post from Eat the Press. The PhilTube website is sort of a spoof of YouTube with videos that follow a storyline similar to that seen on The Office.
David Berlind is blogging about a black video iPod he found on a plane in hopes that the owner can be found by using the "viral nature of the blogosphere."
Last week, I found a beautiful, sleek, black video iPod. It's one of the 30GB models that looks very much like the one pictured to the left. The owner of this iPod has been taking very good care of it by keeping it in a case. My guesses are that the owner lives in the New England area and flew on United Airlines on or about October 9th or 10th. The reason I haven't posted this notice until today is that I had to wait to get a hold of a charger to charge it up in hopes of finding some clue as to who the owner is. Sadly, the owner did not elect to have any contact information engraved on the back of the device. Also, I don't know much about iPods, but it seems as though there should be an easy way to load it with the owner's contact information and have it "boot" to that screen. I searched high and low through the device and about the only clue I could find was the text "De Monstrow."
Hopefully, the person who lost the iPod reads blogs. Another web lost and found option is lostandfound.com which lists 64,936 lost items and 26,610 found items.
The Associated Press reports that some individuals are turning away from the social networks in favor of face-to-face meetings.
For some, it would be unthinkable – certain social suicide. But Gabe Henderson is finding freedom in a recent decision: He canceled his MySpace account.
No longer enthralled with the world of social networking, the 26-year-old graduate student pulled the plug after realizing that a lot of the online friends he had accumulated were really just acquaintances.
He's also phasing out his profile on Facebook, a popular social networking site that, like others, allows users to create profiles, swap message and share photos - all with the goal of expanding their circle of online friends.
"The superficial emptiness clouded the excitement I had once felt," Mr. Henderson wrote in a column in the student newspaper at Iowa State University, where he studies history. "It seems we have lost, to some degree, that special depth that true friendship entails."
Simply dropping social network profiles may be unusual but some experts believe there could be a return back to face-to-face communication as the buzz over social networks wears off. A happy medium between real and virtual communications will eventually be established. Dr. Michael Bugeja, director of Iowa State's journalism school and author of Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in a Technological Age, told the AP that he lectures students about "interpersonal intelligence."
Though he's not anti-technology, Dr. Bugeja often lectures students about "interpersonal intelligence" - knowing when, where and for what purpose technology is most appropriate.
He points out the students he's seen walking across campus, holding hands with significant others while talking on cellphones to someone else. He's also observed them in coffee shops, surrounded by people, but staring instead at a computer screen.
"True friends," he tells them, "need to learn when to stop blogging and go across campus to help a friend."
Other social network users have found that people aren't nearly as exciting or interesting as they sound on their profile.
Steve Miller, a sophomore at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., joined Facebook as a way to meet people, but also quickly learned that it had limitations, too.
"I discovered, after meeting many of these [online] friends, that a good Facebook profile could make even the most boring person somewhat interesting," says Mr. Miller.
The article also says some people use social networks as a way to avoid social confrontations.
"Text messaging has become the easy way out," Mr. Miller says.
He's had friends cancel a night out with a text message to avoid having to explain. He's also seen some people ask for dates via text to escape the humiliation of hearing a "no" on the phone or in person.
"Our generation needs to get over this fear of confrontation and rejection," he says.
Looked at this way social networks could also make it easier for the other person to say "no." On the positive side at least people are using the social networks to set up actual dates in the real world. It is really up to today's youth to decide how much time they will ultimately spend with IMs, social networks, video games and persistent worlds. However, there have already been reported problems in the workplace with Gen Y workers who focus too much on chatty IMs and not enough on face-to-face meetings with coworkers and the boss. It will be important for today's kids to embrace Dr. Bugeja's interpersonal intelligence idea and understand when and why it is the appropriate time for a text message, IM, handshake, hug or face-to-face talk.
Lawsuits filed against bloggers are increasing according to a USA Todaynews story.
Legal analysts say the lawsuits are challenging a mind-set that has long surrounded blogging: that most bloggers essentially are "judgment-proof" because they - unlike traditional media such as newspapers, magazines and television outlets - often are ordinary citizens who don't have a lot of money. Recent lawsuits by Banks and others who say they have had their reputations harmed or their privacy violated have been aimed not just at cash awards but also at silencing their critics.
"Bloggers didn't think they could be subject to libel," says Eric Robinson, a Media Law Resource Center attorney. "You take what is on your mind, type it and post it."
Robert Cox, founder and president of the Media Bloggers Association, told USA Today that someday a blogger will be successfully sued and lose his or her home.
Robert Cox, founder and president of the Media Bloggers Association, which has 1,000 members, says the recent wave of lawsuits means that bloggers should bone up on libel law. "It hasn't happened yet, but soon, there will be a blogger who is successfully sued and who loses his home," he says. "That will be the shot heard round the blogosphere."
That is an alarming thought. It goes without saying that bloggers should be careful and avoid blogging things they know are not true about businesses and people. The EFF has a good FAQ about libel here. Cox does encourage bloggers to fight back and protect the right to free speech in lawsuits that are "filed merely to silence critics."
50 lawsuits have been filed over postings on blogs and web message boards over the past two years according to the USA Today article. The article didn't differentiate between blog posts and blog comments but there have been lawsuits over both. It also didn't say how many of the 50 lawsuits were filed specifically against blgos and not message boards. The bright side of the story for bloggers is that fifty lawsuits is still very, very small compared to the 50+ million blogs Technorati is tracking.
Creepy Content Doppelgangers Plagiarize Personal Bloggers
Even personal blogs are not immune from plagiarism. Plagiarists steal the lives of personal bloggers. These creepy content doppelgangers may even change names and places as they try to make another blogger's life their own. This Boston Heraldarticle from earlier this year talks about how some bloggers have found their posts and Flickr photos copied and used by someone else.
Anna from London logged on April 18 to find, through the referrer logs for her blog Little Red Boat, that a post in which she idly mused about what to do on a holiday weekend had been plagiarized by a blogger. Anna immediately did a screen grab of the stolen content and published it in a post called ''Tuesday morning. It's the new Monday morning."
''If people are going to nick your content, then why not do it logically and nick a well-crafted classic piece of writing rather than a bored musing?" Anna blogged.
Most of Anna's posts bring from nine to 30 comments, but this one quickly drew 66. In the ensuing discussion with her regular readers, Anna noted, ''Someone else did this once, copy and pasting my life and changing the names. The same thing's happened on Flickr in the last week -- someone's downloaded a couple of my photos and reuploaded them as their own -- but, and it's very similar: They're Not Even Some of My Best Photos. They are, in fact, BAD photos. WHY?"
The Boston Herald article also says a personal blogger named Beth found that a plagiarist had copied dozens of her posts. This plagiarist had even taken the trouble to change people's names so the plagiarist's blog would appear more original.
Last month, an alert reader informed Beth that her blog was being plagiarized. Dozens of Beth's blog entries had been stolen, word-for-word, over six months. Names of people in her life were changed to the names of people whom the plagiarist apparently knew, creating the impression that she had lived Beth's experiences and had thought her thoughts.
"What's the point of having a blog if you can't even write your own original content for it?" Beth -- who like many bloggers requested that her full name not be used in order to keep her blogging and professional lives separate -- wrote in a post about the theft.
Unfortunately the saying that "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" really doesn't help people like Beth who get betrayed by a plagiarizing reader. The blog Plagiarism Today, a great blog about plagiarism and content theft, is quoted often in the article. On the right hand side of the blog you can find a list of posts about stopping Internet plagiarism.
We certainly aren't going to dissuade you from blogging here on Bloggers Blog but we will point out this one how to article. A how to article on Wikihow offers tips for talking yourself out of launching a blog. Here are a couple points from the article.
Write on a regular basis in a text editor instead. If that doesn't satisfy your urge, and you feel that you must post your blog online, then you might just be craving attention and validation--which you'll never truly find in a blog. If you give up on your Wordpad journal after about three days, you'll do the same with a blog that just takes up server space.
Ask yourself if you really have the time to commit to a blog. What about that treehouse you wanted to build? Or the book you wanted to write? Or the car you wanted to fix up? Or the restaurant you wanted to take your significant other to? Or the new career you wanted to pursue? Instead of writing about pretty much nothing, or whining about all the things you wish you were doing instead, start doing something that'd actually be worth writing about. And if it's really worth writing about, you'll be having too much fun doing it to tear yourself away from it.
The article also contains some blog pessimism.
Consider that your voice, even if it is truly a good one, is a tiny peep against the massive wave of tripe out there. The odds of anyone you don't already know finding your blog are low.
This is overly pessimistic because if you do blog daily for a few weeks or more you can almost guarantee that someone you don't know will read your blog. You will be even more likely to get people you don't know to read your blog if you include links to other blogs in your post and you submit your blog to the blog search engines and blog directories. However, it is difficult to get lots of people you don't know to read your blog.
The article did seem to leave out one tempting dissuading concept -- if you don't blog you can just enjoy life as a blog reader and let everyone else do the hard blogging work. The article ends on this note that may encourage some to give blogging a shot.
"You may never know if you enjoy blogging unless you try it."
This is true. If you never start a blog you might miss out on something that you would have really enjoyed. (via Clicked)
Continuing improvements in communication devices and the increase of satellites is making extreme blogging more common. An article in the Sydney Morning Herald talks about extreme blogging and some of the blogs taking place in extreme climates and situations both on Earth and in Space.
Thanks to the growing number of expeditioners who are using blogs to chronicle their adventures, now the bravery, hardship and extreme challenges are just a click away.
But first they must master the vagaries of blogging equipment in environments so treacherous that sometimes even breathing is difficult.
We have also mentioned some blogs from extreme climates here within the past few months. We recently mentioned an Antarctic conservation blog. Anthropologists are also using blogs to provide reports from remote locations like the chimpanzee blog in Kibale National Park, Uganda. And last but definitely not least there is the blogged search for a mythical dragon-like creature in Gambia. The blogs provide readers with a view of locations, climates and wildlife they may never be able to experience for themselves.
Dave Taylor, author of the The Intuitive Life Business Blog, has an interesting post about why he thinks bloggers must be historical revisionists. Taylor uses the example of the JonBenet Ramsey case. Since John Mark Karr
is no longer a suspect in the JonBenet Ramsey case, Dave Taylor added an update to one of his earlier posts. Stephen Baker at Blogspotting writes that bloggers don't need to update anymore frequently than newspapers.
Dave Taylor wonders whether bloggers should keep updating their old posts as stories change. His concern: that Web-searchers will come across old blog posts that proved to be incorrect and take them as gospel. I say that bloggers don't need to do that anymore than newspapers do. The value of an old newspaper story is that it gives us a view of how events were being seen that day.
Unless there is an error in the post such as an incorrect fact or a misquote a blogpost doesn't need to be updated months later simply because something new has happened. That's why blog posts are dated. You can just make a new post about the subject and even reference your older post if you want to. There have been times when we made updates to a recently made post. For example, we had several updates to a World Cup post because it had information about the Zidane headbutt and a lot of people were reading that particular post. Another option for keeping readers up-to-date on a particular news item would be to update an older post by adding a link to the more recent post containing the new information. From a traffic mindset that probably isn't a bad idea since any readers looking at your old post would probably be interested in the new updated information.
A new blog called Ecorazzi is covering celebrities who are making an effort to heal the planet and fight global warming. The green gossip blog was founded by Michael d'Estries, the Managing Editor of Groovy Green, and Rebecca Carter, who runs the greenerMIAMI blog. The launch of the blog was announced in a recent press release.
"Inspiration to make the world a better place can come from anywhere -- even Leonardo DiCaprio or Woody Harrelson. We decided to create an online space for the public to learn about the environment and humanitarian efforts through the actions of celebrities," said Ecorazzi co-founder Rebecca Carter.
Celebrities often use their time in the public eye to bring awareness to important issues. Ecorazzi exists to highlight the people making this effort for the environment and other causes. At the same time, we get to have fun following celebrity gossip, with a "green" twist!
"There is no doubt that green is hot right now. Hybrids and organic are the 'in thing'," said Ecorazzi co-founder Michael d'Estries. "Celebrities are helping spread the message by incorporating 'green' into their everyday lives and working to help others. By highlighting their efforts, we are hoping to bring the green message to a more mainstream audience."
Rebecca added, "It's also just a great way to have fun. We don't need to take ourselves so seriously all of the time. The environment is an important topic, but let's face it, it can be boring or sometimes even depressing. By taking the topic and mixing it up with celebrity gossip, we're trying to give readers the best of both worlds."
BizJournals.com reports that Backfence.com, a community journalism website with sites for communities California, Maryland and Virginia, has a launched a crime blog with Alarm.com as a sponsor. You can read a the McLean, Virginia crime log here.
Backfence.com members will be able to get up-to-date statistics on local crime and then comment on safety issues through the new blog, which Alarm.com will sponsor. The ultimate goal, the two companies say, is to create a nationwide "citizen watch" focused on trends and tactics for protecting lives and property.
Backfence.com, founded in 2004, builds and operates community-focused Web sites that bring together content such as blogs, photo galleries and event calendars.
Alarm.com's technology allows customers to monitor and control their security systems remotely via the Web, and they can receive real-time text messages and e-mail alerts that keep them informed on all types of activity on their property. Alarm.com was founded in 2000.
It looks like it will be an informative blog for the local communities involved. It is also a smart marketing move by Alarm.com to sponsor the blog.
iMedia Connection reports that a recent polling of 350 college students by Experience, Inc. found that 22% of students blog.
Results indicate that 43 percent of the students that completed the survey spend 10 hours or more a week on the internet. Google, Yahoo and Myspace are the most visited sites. Sixty-two percent of the students that completed the survey download photos; 24 percent of the students participate in online bulletin boards, groups or chats.
Twenty-two percent of the students write blogs. With regards to advertisements that are displayed online, 40 percent of the students are more likely to respond to an advertisement that is humorous while 28 percent prefer fact-based advertisements.
"College students spend the majority of their time on the internet as opposed to other mediums and their usage behaviors have evolved," says Jennifer Floren, founder and CEO of Experience Inc. "They no longer just surf websites, rather they now use [the internet] to communicate with peers, conduct research, share photos and view videos. As a result, advertisers have a much greater opportunity to reach 18- to 24-year-olds online in a far more meaningful way."
Tha nearly 1/4 of college students blog is pretty significant. An even greater percentage probably use social networks where blogs are available but not always used. Some students are happy just having a profile page. The heavy use of blogs and social networks by college students is why colleges are warning kids about the risks this year at college orientations.
Site Plots Conversations From Overhead in New York
A site called Overplot is plotting the unusual conversations heard in New York City from the Overhead in New York blog using a the Google Maps API.
I've been a fan of Overheard in New York for a while. At some point, it occurred to me that each quote has a pretty precise location attached to it and that it would be cool to plot all of them on a map. I eventually got motivated enough to actually do it. The result is overplot, a Google Maps API-powered visualization of all of the quotes I could get my hands on.
Some of the busier parts of New York have 50 or more quotes from Overhead in New York. Union Square has accumulated 83 quotes so far according to Overplot. (via Tech_Space)
When we launched this new site and people started listing their blogs I was blown away by the blogs about cooking and knitting and crafts and gardening and everything else having to do with what goes on inside (and immediately outside) the home. Blogs with huge followings and sense of community; blogs with amazing visuals; blogs that brought back the feeling I had when I first bought my little house...that I wanted to be the next Martha Stewart. (That would be Martha the maker of beautiful things and very good business, of course, not Martha the felon.)
Much as eBay provided a path to profitability for a whole new breed of micro-business owners, blogs have created a similar opportunity. And food and arts & crafts bloggers are leading the way among bloggers who are building businesses.
There are tens of thousands of blogs covering arts, cooking and crafts. The panel included several BlogHers that are using their blogs commercially.
The panel included Maggie Mason, author of the Mighty Goods blog; Pim Techamuanvivit, who created the Menu for Hope charity for Kashmiri earthquakes victims; author Gayla Trail who blogs at You Grow Girl; Andrea Scher who sells hand-crafted jewelry and blogs at Superhero Journal; and Marnie MacLean who blogs and also sells knit and crochet patterns.
These BlogHers are just a small sample of the many bloggers who use their blogs to sell items like art, books, crafts and music. We mentioned an interesting artist the other day who is using his blog to sell paintings of tech gadgets. Will the next Martha Stewart be a blogger? It certainly seems possible. Of course, Martha Stewart is launching a social networking site next year. Maybe a blog written by Martha will be included.
Philipp Lenssen has created a game he calls Blog Surprise. The goal of the game is to shower blog newbies with attention and blog comments.
OK, I call this game "blog surprise". The objective is to surprise a blogger who just posted their very first blog post ever... by welcoming that blogger to the blogosphere, showering them with attention, and leaving lots of comments.
Lenssen says you can find some newbie bloggers by searching for "first post" on Google Blog Search. You could also use Technorati or another blog search tool. He found four blogger noobs here, here, here and here. Searching for Hello World works as well. (via Blogebrity)
Blogathon 2006 is about to begin. The Blogathon site says there are over 370 blogs blogging for various charities in the 2006 Blogathon. Participating bloggers will be blogging once every 30 minutes for 24 hours to raise money for the charity they are blogging for. You can sponsor one of the participating bloggers. Lorelle says over $65,732.67 has been pledged for worthy charities so far. Blogging begins at 0600 Pacific Time, on July 29. From the Blogathon FAQ we found helpful advice for bloggers looking to stay awake for 24-hours straight.
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.
The FAQ also says not to consume alcohol, which is good advice. Lorelle on Wordpress offers more tips for getting through the Blogathon. Here are some posts by bloggers preparing to write 48 posts in 24 hours.
Blogocentricity: "The past few days, I've been thinking of stuff to write about, though I've not actually jotted down any points. After thinking long and hard about it I decided not to tie myself up by giving my first Blogathon attempt any theme. Instead, I thought I'd write as many different things as possible - hopefully, I wont be snoring away after the first six hours!"
Dave Dorm: "It's almost time. I have taken the day off of work to rest up before the event. I am sure it will take a lot out of me, but it is for charity. My wife teases me that I just want to see if I have an all-nighter left in this old body of mine. Perhaps it's a little of both."
Foldedspace: "Blogathon 2006 is tomorrow, and I'll be writing for 24-hours straight at Get Rich Slowly. My theme will be Funny Money. I'll highlight stories and anecdotes and websites about money that are funny in some way. I mean both funny 'ha-ha' and funny 'strange'."
Zazzafooky: "I didn't have much of a schtick or theme, I'll be doing what I always do only faster and lots more of it. For the 24 hours & 48 Posts I'll be doing 24 autobiographical essays posted on the hour, 12 issues of Tids & Bits and 12 random posts to include music downloads, and other goodies."
All-Night.org: "I know I'm excited! How 'bout the rest of you? I know some people have everything planned out but I’m not one of them. I have a few ideas for posts. Expect some guest posting from Wolf, Squeakers and Diamond. Those are the various family pets. Expect some funny Wolfie videos as well. I’m not going to give all my post ideas away though! You’ll have to stay tuned tomorrow for that."
The Ice Palace: "Can you FEEL the sleep deprivation in the air? I can! I am going to the store tomorrow to stock up on snacks, and lots and lots of highly caffeinated beverages."
Pandora's Box: "The blogathon is coming up, and is due to start tomorrow morning 6AM (for my time zone). As stated in my own blog, my plan is simple. I have no plan. So having no plan is the plan. I don't have a set of topics I'm gonna talk about, or anything to talk about at all. I'm going to play it by ear, and see where it takes me. We'll see how it all goes."
lastsyllable.net: "I've been reading pieces of Julius Caesar all day, partially because I've been meaning to read it all week and partially because I haven't had much sleep today, so this functions as a trial run for the Blogathon - will I be able to stay awake enough to comment intelligently? Will "live lit-crit" work? Will I ditch the plan altogether and get sleepily philosophical? Tune in Saturday and find out."
Thinking about Blogathon inspired Binary Blonde to write a couple Blogathon haikus.
There are awards given at the end of each Blogathon. A list of last year's winners can be found at the end of this post. A couple newspaper articles about this year's Blogathon can be found here and here.
A Guardianarticle looks the 1% rule and what it means for content creation. The Guardian defines the 1% rule as "[for every] 100 people online then one will create content, 10 will 'interact' with it (commenting or offering improvements) and the other 89 will just view it." The Guardian looked at how the content creation rule applied to content sharing tools like YouTube, Wikipedia and Yahoo Groups.
The numbers are revealing: each day there are 100 million downloads and 65,000 uploads - which as Antony Mayfield (at http://open.typepad.com/open) points out, is 1,538 downloads per upload - and 20m unique users per month.
That puts the "creator to consumer" ratio at just 0.5%, but it's early days yet; not everyone has discovered YouTube (and it does make downloading much easier than uploading, because any web page can host a YouTube link).
Consider, too, some statistics from that other community content generation project, Wikipedia: 50% of all Wikipedia article edits are done by 0.7% of users, and more than 70% of all articles have been written by just 1.8% of all users, according to the Church of the Customer blog (http://customerevangelists.typepad.com/blog/).
The Guardian article also cites Bradley Horowitz of Yahoo who created a pyramid to explain Yahoo Groups usage. Horowtiz that found that 1% of Yahoo Groups users will create their own group.
1% of the user population might start a group (or a thread within a group)
10% of the user population might participate actively, and actually author content whether starting a thread or responding to a thread-in-progress
100% of the user population benefits from the activities of the above groups (lurkers)
If the 1% theory holds for blogging then a large number of blog readers are probably just happy having good blogs to read without having to do any of the work themselves. It also means the number of blogs in the world will probably peak at a number far less than the total number of potential blog makers.
A blog that helped Seattle writer Rebecca Agiewich get over a breakup has also led her to a book deal. Agiewich has a novel out called BreakupBabe: A Novel, which is based on her blog. The Seattle Post-Intelligencerreports that Agiewich first started the blog as an outlet to express her feelings and her frustrations about a recent breakup.
Looking for a way to get over her ex-boyfriend (the man she thought she was going to marry -- ouch) and seeking perhaps a wee outlet through which to vent her frustrations, the struggling Seattle writer began pouring her heart out -- pouring it out and then directly into a weblog.
That was back in 2002, and ever since then Agiewich not only has blogged her way through the ups and downs of that particularly pugnacious parting of ways, she also has blogged her way through a variety of dates and the breakups that followed and, more importantly, blogged her way right into a novel. (Yes, a novel. Take that, you unappreciative ex-boyfriend!)
The article also includes an interview where Agiewich recommends blogs to writers and to people suffering from a recent break-up. She also listed her favorite blogs which include Girl Gone Mad, I Am Shmool, Faster Than Kudzu, Pink Is the New Blog and Seattlest. In addition to her blog, Rebecca Agiewich also has an author website which can be found here.
Artist Uses Blog to Sell Paintings of Tech Gadgets
Gautam Rao is a painter who has created several paintings of tech gadgets, including the Mac and the iPod. Rao blogs about his paintings and links to them to eBay where they can be purchased. Rao has photographs of some of his work in this blog post. The blog post also includes links to eBay where these paintings are currently up for bid. A few of his paintings, including the Mac painting, have already sold. The iPod painting can be found on eBay here. The Raw Feed briefly sums up Rao's creative practice in this post.
Some say technology is rendering traditional painting obsolete. But Artist Gautam Rao still paints the old-fashioned way: with paint and brush on canvas. However, his subject matter is a little less traditional: He PAINTS THE COMPUTER AND GADGETS on his desk, such as his iPod, his Mac screen and closeups of icons. He even did a self-portrait (his image as it appears on his web cam). And then he BLOGS the lot and sells them on eBay.
It is an innovative idea. Blogs are a tool more artists should use to showcase and sell their artwork.
How Much of a Time Commitment Does Blogging Success Require?
A new study on blogging (PDF) by Dr. Nora Ganim Barnes at the Center for Marketing Research at UMASS found that running a successful blog takes time. The study includes data compiled from interviews with 74 successful bloggers.
The study did find that one of the "truths of blogging" is that blogging takes time and commitment. However, one part of the study suggests that blogging takes hardly any time at all. 65% of responders said the amount of time they spend each day on their blog is less than an hour a day.
If you dig deeper in the study another question asks what is the biggest downside of blogging. Guess what the biggest downside of blogging is? Answer: "It takes a lot of time."
An hour a day is not much time. Most people would consider becoming a success in something by spending less than an hour a day working on it as remarkable. So why did many bloggers in the study say they generally spend less than an hour or day on their blog and yet list loss of time as their biggest complaint? Some of the 65% that spend less than an hour a day on their blog must have been the same people that listed "loss of time" as the biggest blogging downside.
Initially many of the bloggers in this study did not anticipate the time their blog would take. A good blog is one where posts are fresh and new posts are frequent. Researching interesting new things to share with your audience takes time. One blogger noted, "The worst blogs are those that are updated infrequently." He cautions others with, "Be prepared to spend more time than you think."
Yet over 65% spend less than one hour a day on their blog? Do these bloggers truly regret the loss of that hour? Maybe the bloggers that said they spend less than an hour per day on their blog were just trying to give the illusion that what they do is effortless. The bottom line: Ignore the tempting idea that you can have a profitable and/or popular blog by spending less than an hour a day on it. If you are spending less than hour a day on your blog then expect someone else to eventually out blog you. (via Micropersuasion)
Update: Tom Simpson at Webfeed Central makes a good point about the subjective nature of success.
Update 2: Joe Wilkert explains how just an hour a day of blogging can really add up over a week. Wilkert's blog was one of the 74 blogs that were part of the survey in question. He says he selected the "less than an hour" option in the survey. But he also admits that he sometimes works on his blog on the weekends. And he also may be a really fast typist.
Joe Wilkert is the book publisher for the Trade and Professional Divison
of Wiley; he published Robert Scoble's Naked Conversations, a book about blogging. As a book publisher, he brings considerable expertise and knowledge about the book publishing industry to his blog. The expertise factor is an important consideration in blogging. Experts who bring a great deal of knowledge to the blogging table may require less time to maintain their blogs and keep them interesting.
But the rules for beginning bloggers are quite different. Newbies will have to work overtime, both to acquire knowledge about the industry they are covering and to grow a blog readership.
New Law Would Force Bloggers to Constantly Monitor Outbound Links
A News.com article discusses a new law proposed by Wisconsin Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner that will basically force ISPs to keep a log of people's websurfing activity for a "reasonable amount of time." In addition the law would make bloggers responsible for any links on their sites that send people to a child pornography website. Bloggers could be charged with a felony if their blog was found to "facilitate access to child pornography" through hyperlinks.
Wisconsin Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, is proposing that ISPs be required to record information about Americans' online activities so that police can more easily "conduct criminal investigations." Executives at companies that fail to comply would be fined and imprisoned for up to one year.
In addition, Sensenbrenner's legislation--expected to be announced as early as this week--also would create a federal felony targeted at bloggers, search engines, e-mail service providers and many other Web sites. It's aimed at any site that might have "reason to believe" it facilitates access to child pornography--through hyperlinks or a discussion forum, for instance.
Speaking to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children last month, Gonzales warned of the dangers of pedophiles using the Internet anonymously and called for new laws from Congress. "At the most basic level, the Internet is used as a tool for sending and receiving large amounts of child pornography on a relatively anonymous basis," Gonzales said.
One major flaw with this law -- other than the obvious invasion of privacy problems -- is that links can change. A blogger can point to a site and that site can later change and become an offensive website -- this usually occurs when the site is abandoned and the domain name is re-registered by someone who redirects the domain name to a pornography website. A second problem is a blog could receive comment spam that contains links to child pornography or links to another site that then links to a child pornography site. This law could force bloggers to stop allowing links on comments, moderate all of their comments or simply terminate comments. The law follows the recently proposed and overly restrictive DOPA bill that would ban minors' access to blogging services, IMs and social networks at schools public libraries.
It's Mothers Day so it is an appropriate day to mention a new social network for Moms. A resource for Moms called ClubMom has launched a social network called TheMomNetwork. The network can be accessed on the ClubMom.com website. TheMomNetwork includes the usual social networking features like profiles and friends. Moms can find other Moms on the network by sorting by interests and location. Mom profiles can also be sorted by the ages of their children so mothers with children of similar ages can connect. (via The Blogging Times)
There are a lot of good times associated with an old weblog, but a lot of unhappy times, too. I'm not having fun with my site, and I think it shows in the writing. The only fun at the site has been what you all have been contributing: in comments, emails, and your own weblogs. That's enough to continue reading you–it's not enough to continue writing me, or whatever me is as the 'Bird.
It must seem as if "quitting" one's weblog is the hip new thing. I appreciate the fact that this is one of those few times I may be in with the insiders-actually, I savor the moment, wonder if I've developed a golden aura as a result-but this wasn't the impetus for this change. I don't plan on "quitting", but I do want to rethink what it is I want from my online presence.
Shelley Powers is right that quitting blogging seems to be "the new hip thing." Frank Barnako has a list of bloggers that have quit or plan to quit their blog including Dave Winer, Russell Beattie and Sarah Hepola. Sheila Lennon at Subterranean Homepage News comments on this trend as well.
Unfortunately for me and those of you who've been readers of Burningbird, her blog, Shelley has just joined the growing list of longtime bloggers packing it in.
Maybe the fad is over. Blogs were edgy four or five years ago, but the Web isn't as much fun now; not so quirky, there's less worth pointing to. Some early bloggers got famous from it, and now mostly blog their appearances elsewhere. The research that goes into daily blogging -- for bloggers who go beyond shooting from the hip -- takes a lot of time, time not spent sleeping, dancing, reading books, gardening, making love, going out, visiting with other humans.
Bloggers give many reasons for quitting. It becomes unfun or it gets in the way of other personal goals. For some bloggers the time commitment simply becomes to great. However, bloggers seem to almost always leave the door open for a possible comeback when they quit. Shelley is no exception: "I don't expect this to be my last post, forever, but this will be the last I write as Burningbird."
An article in the New York Timesdiscusses how profiles on social networking services like MySpace have become memorials after people have died. Friends of the deceased can visit the profile and leave notes for their lost friend. This particular excerpt from the article talks about 23-year-old Deborah Lee Walker who was killed in an automobile accident. Her profile has been active for weeks since her death and is monitored by her father.
So only hours after she died in an automobile accident near Valdosta, Ga., early on the morning of Feb. 27, her father, John Walker, logged onto her MySpace page with the intention of alerting her many friends to the news. To his surprise, there were already 20 to 30 comments on the page lamenting his daughter's death. Eight weeks later, the comments are still coming.
"Hey Lee! It's been a LONG time," a friend named Stacey wrote recently. "I know that you will be able to read this from Heaven, where I'm sure you are in charge of the parties. Please rest in peace and know that it will never be the same here without you!"
Just as the Web has changed long-established rituals of romance and socializing, personal Web pages on social networking sites that include MySpace, Xanga.com and Facebook.com are altering the rituals of mourning. Such sites have enrolled millions of users in recent years, especially the young, who use them to expand their personal connections and to tell the wider world about their lives.
Inevitably, some of these young people have died -- prematurely, in accidents, suicides, murders and from medical problems -- and as a result, many of their personal Web pages have suddenly changed from lighthearted daily dairies about bands or last night's parties into online shrines where grief is shared in real time.
We have discussed this topic before in a post called The Unplanned Afterlife of Blogs. That post looked at policies from social networks like Friendster and Yahoo 360. The Times article includes some information about what MySpace does when a profile owner dies.
Tom Anderson, the president of MySpace, said in an e-mail message that out of concern for privacy, the company did not allow people to assume control of the MySpace accounts of users after their deaths.
"MySpace handles each incident on a case-by-case basis when notified, and will work with families to respect their wishes," Mr. Anderson wrote, adding that at the request of survivors the company would take down pages of deceased users.
Another recent MySpace and death related issue is Army Pvt. Dylan Meyer who left a farewell note on his MySpace profile. The army has not yet released the cause of his death but the AP is calling the MySpace posting a suicide note. There is also a website called MyDeathSpace.com that keeps a directory of MySpace users that have died. It is a sad list to look at because -- as you might expect -- the list includes people that were all extremely young when they died.
Blog's Readers Create Rules and Slang for Cuteness
Time has an article from ex-Wonkette Ana Marie Cox that analyzes the cuteness found on the Cute Overload blog. Cute Overload provides readers with just what its name promises -- an abundance of cute animals like cute bunnies, kittens and hedgehogs. The blog covers unusual animals that are cute as well including some non-furry creatures.
Some of the images on Cuteoverload.com are exactly what you'd expect from a site with that name: a pile of kittens, a bunny nuzzling a blade of grass, a puppy sleeping on a quilt. A million Hallmark calendars have been sold on the enduring appeal of such images; that Cuteoverload.com could acquire 65,000 readers and hundreds of comments per day by designing a pleasant blog around them makes total sense.
But what to make of the other images on Cuteoverload.com? A tiny snail. A lizard curled up in the palm of someone's hand. Giant plush-toy versions of the e. coli and Gonnorhea viruses. And, genius though the concept may be, one suspects that Hallmark stores will not be featuring an aisle devoted to "cats'n' racks" — the site's term for the photo genre featuring felines nestled between breasts — any time soon.
Ana Marie Cox says Cute Overload's avid readers refer to themselves as cutologists and they have created their own rules and lingo for what is cute.
The site's fans call themselves "cutologists," and they have composed a careful list of cute rules, including "small ear to head ratio" (rule #15) and "a thing, accompanied by a smaller version of that thing, is always cute" (rule#7). That slang has grown out of the commenting community of cutologists is not surprising; that someone compiled a list of definitions is slightly more so. (I admit I have incorporated "redonk" — the comic-book sound-effect version of "ridiculous" — into my own vocabulary.)
Clearly, there is a big demand for cuteness in the blogosphere. Cute Overload has quickly accumulated over 4,700 inbound links since it was launched by Meg Frost last September. Cute Overload also had four Bloggies nominations and is up for a Webby in the Blog - Cultural/Personal category. Not bad for a blog that is still less than a year old.
The San Jose Mercury News is reporting that a blog post by Erin Hoffman as EA Spouse, the wife of game developer, helped ignite a revolt against game publishers that were overworking game developers. The complaints by game developers eventually led to several class-action lawsuits against publishers. Hoffman was frustrated at the unpaid overtime and 85 hour work weeks her husband was working.
So Hoffman, then 23, poured out her frustration -- under the pen name EA Spouse -- in a November 2004 blog that resonated so strongly with other video game developers that it helped spark an employee uprising inside EA and several of six lawsuits for unpaid overtime against three of the industry's most prominent employers.
Hoffman wrote on her blog that EA's attitude toward its workers was: ``If they don't want to sacrifice their lives and their health and their talent so that a multibillion-dollar corporation can continue its Godzilla-stomp through the game industry, they can work someplace else.''
Now, more than a year later, game developers have won settlements in three class-action lawsuits alleging EA created exhausting work schedules without paying overtime, and successfully pressed employers to ease unrelenting workloads. And EA Spouse, whose true identity has been cloaked until now, is becoming a voice against America's culture of overwork.
``We had received so many excuses, and they had done so much overtime and everyone was so tired,'' Hoffman said. She told her fiance, ``I need to write something about this. It's not right.''
The blog post was made almost two years ago and since then there have been three successful lawsuits made against game publishers. An old post from our Gamers Game blog from 2004 has links to some of the news articles that followed Hoffman's extraordinary post on EA Spouse. Erin Hoffman and her husband now run a game developers forum called GameWatch.org.
Henninger: The Blogosphere is a Dark Ride With Crazy People
You just knew when the news stories about the blogging cannibal killer appeared that somehow they were going to be used in an attack on the blogosphere itself. Well, wait no longer.
I don't think the blogosphere is breeding cannibals. But it looks
to me as if the world of blogs may be filling up with people who
for the previous 200 millennia of human existence kept their weird
thoughts more or less to themselves. Now, they don't have to.
They've got the Web. Now they can share.
Technorati, a site that keeps numbers on the blogosphere, reports
that as of this month the number of Web logs the site tracks is
35.3 million, and doubling every six months. Technorati claims
each day brings 75,000 new blogs. We know something's happening
here but I'm not sure we know what it is.
A great Guardianarticle says that while many people do not contribute to blogs or other forms of web content the ones that do contribute are influential and trendsetters.
More than half of the internet users on the continent are passive and do not contribute to the web at all, while a further 23% only respond when prompted. But the remainder who do engage with the net - through messageboards, websites and blogs - are helping change the national conversation, say researchers.
"We're seeing this growing," said Julian Smith, an online advertising analyst with Jupiter Research and author of the report. "The strongest part of their influence is on the media: if something online suddenly becomes a story in the local press, then it matters."
Although unprompted contributors are generally younger and more vocal than the wider online population, they are increasingly important as opinion formers and trend-setters. Mr Smith says businesses, media organisations and advertisers reading blogs should be wary of making assumptions about their wider significance, but that their muscle cannot be ignored.
"They're not representative of the larger audience, but what they're saying does matter," he said. "It's a good straw poll - a snapshot of the verbal conversations going on that we can't measure."
The article also includes a quote from Glenn Reynolds, author of An Army of Davids, who warns companies and people not to stick their heads in the sand.
Mr Reynolds admits the idea of small groups being able to pressurise wider decisions is nothing new, but those who ignore online buzz do so at their peril: "You can bury your head in the sand, but very quickly you'll look like a very old-fashioned company."
There you have it. Get blogging or get left behind.
Use Blogs to "Hide" Unwanted Web Content From Employers
There are still continuous stories published about how you can get fired for blogging. There is even one today. That's still true. You can still get fired for blogging. Offend your employer or publish company secrets and you could still find yourself fired for blogging. Meanwhile, a Boston Globeexplains how you can get hired by having a blog and how a blog can help rank your name higher in Google when employers run a search on you.
Employers regularly Google prospective employees to learn more about them. Blogging gives you a way to control what employers see, because Google's system works in such a way that blogs that are heavily networked with others come up high in Google searches.
And coming up high is good: ''People who are more visible and have a reputation and stand for something do better than people who are invisible," says Catherine Kaputa, branding consultant and author of ''Blogging for Business Success."
But pick your topics carefully and have a purpose. "The most interesting blogs are focused and have a certain attitude," says van Allen. "You need to have a guiding philosophy that you stick to. You cannot one minute pontificate on large issues of the world and the next minute be like, 'My dog died.' "
Maybe this is a way for people to outrank any negative stuff they don't want employers to see. Start a serious blog or two under your real name and keep them updated and maybe they will outrank the earlier stuff on the Internet you don't want employers to see. Maybe employers won't scroll down far enough in the Google listings to notice that link to those old photographs your old college "friend" posted or those outrageous comments you posted on another blog that you now can't get rid off. It would also behoove job seekers to try and remove all inappropriate content from the Internet before applying to a job. Ranking high is not helpful if it is content you don't want employers to see. If you can't remove it try and outrank it with something postive. If employers really are using Google it is better to have the Google results be something good about you, like your interesting blog, than a record of your college and high school hijinks.
CBS2Chicago reports on some bloggers that are using blogs to record their personal finances and motivate themselves to obtain financial goals.
Do you know your net worth?
Jonathan Ping, 27, does. At $91,820 he's a far stretch from his $1 million retirement goal, but he's keeping track of it.
And you can, too. Log onto his personal finance (PF) blog and see what he spends for the day, what his investments are and what he deems to be money saving tips.
Ping's blog can be found at MyMoneyBlog.com. Other personal financial blogs or PF bloggers mentioned in the article include Dawn's Frugal for Life and Jane Dough's Boston Gal's Open Wallet. Jane also offers some practical advice for staying out of debt.
"Many of my friends have bought luxury cars and are enjoying big vacations and I'm not. They see my small home and think 'Gee, is that all you can afford?' And yes, it is all I can afford. I'm not taking on debt. I'm not rewarding myself now because I know that I will have to pay for it latter."
Another PF blog called Clutter2Cash, which was not mentioned in the article, blogs that she wanted a more public account of her finances.
I started blogging because I wanted a more emotional record of what I was attempting than Quicken could give me. I thought that by making my intentions somewhat public that I'd hold myself more accountable (it works for me). And I also wanted to break the silence that many women seem to have when it comes to talk about money.
Many of the PF blogs include financial graphs or charts showing their progress. Clutter2Cash has some links to other PF blogs on her blogroll if you want to see some more. You can also check the blogrolls of the other pf blogs mentioned above. A few more personal finance blogs can be found here on Technorati's blog finder.
So far Steve Vaught has traveled 2,300 miles and lost over 110 pounds on his journey to lose weight by walking across the United States from San Diego to Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. Steve Vaught keeps a journal on his website, TheFatManWalking.com, which now receives over 700,000 hits per month thanks to media coverage and an Oprah interview. He has also received over 80,000 emails. The BBC reports that Steve's journal covers thoughts on life, his journey and junk food.
Steve's online diary is full of reflective musings, both on weight loss and the quest to live a better life in a car-dependent society where, in many areas, junk food has become almost a staple diet.
When he left San Diego last April, he passed 21 fast food restaurants in a four-and-a-half mile stretch of road.
"I thought when I got out into the country, I'd leave all that behind," he said.
"But I've walked through the Midwest, the breadbasket, and it is one of the most unhealthy places on earth.
His journal could use a couple more blogish elements (like permalinks) but the lack of these certainly doesn't diminish his interesting journal or the bold adventure he has embarked on.
Darren Rowse at ProBlogger has posted a response to a recent post by Scobleizer. Scobleizer's post discussed a new crop of A-list blogs that is more negative and acts like a lynch mob and "only tears down people and ideas but never puts new ideas, new products, new tools, out there to attack."
Rowse disagrees with Scoble that the new A-list blogs do not put out new ideas but he does see some rising negativity in the blogosphere.
While there has always been arguments, fights, flame wars and snarkyness in the wider blogging community I wonder if it's gone to new levels in the last year. Perhaps it is just me or the types of bloggers that I've been reading lately (and it could well be) - but I've noticed a significant increase in the mob mentality among some bloggers of late. Link baiting with 'attack' and/or 'shock' tactics has been used quite successfully by some bloggers to build their own profile with little (if no) regard for the impact that these strategies have upon those around them.
In his post which analyzes the negativity in the blogosphere Rowse also gives some advice that bloggers (especially newbies) should read. He warns bloggers that "what comes around goes around."
individual's rep - bloggers wanting to build a reputation on the back of attack need to be ready for the consequences of their own actions. For starters - 'what comes around goes around' and an attacking blogger can expect those they target (and their friends) to fight back and for their own blogging to come under intense scrutiny. Secondly blogs tend to attract readers that are like their bloggers and an attack blog can become a pretty negative and cynical place. Lastly - the web has a very long memory. Your written word becomes a permanent part of the web and can (and will) be used against you at a later time if you are not careful.
Mark Wade blogs about one of the comments to ProBlogger's post made by Brainshrub that says "personal attacks and snark are for lazy bloggers." This is true. It is easier to write something mean and snarky than to actually take the time to think about something. It also takes more time to write a critical post without sounding mean -- this can be especially difficult because it is often hard to understand the tone of a blog post.
Blogging is difficult enough that even a careful blogger who is generally positive will occasionally post something that someone takes offense to. However, blogs that are consistently and intentionally negative will eventually not be read by many. Unfortunately, blogs don't have snark ratings and there is no snark filter so it may take a while to filter out the genuine trolls.
Blogger Matthew Pullerits has issued a press release about his decision to quit his computer engineering job in Toronto so he can blog full-time.
"A few months ago when I decided to return to school, I realized this meant having no steady income, incurring high tuition fees and purchasing expensive textbooks - something which I did not like the sound of. In order to finance my education, I started to find other ways to make money without working a full-time job. This included investing in the stock market, selling goods and services on eBay, and creating popular websites. I created a journal of all these efforts at www.cwire.org which has become much more popular than ever expected," he said.
New Jersey Bill Would Stop Anonymous Blog Comments and Forums
A new New Jersey bill seeks to stop anonymous posts on blogs and forums. The synopsis for the bill says, "makes certain operators of interactive computer services and Internet service providers liable to persons injured by false or defamatory messages posted on public forum websites." And here is a statement about the bill.
This bill would require an operator of any interactive computer service or an Internet service provider to establish, maintain and enforce a policy requiring an information content provider who posts messages on a public forum website either to be identified by legal name and address or to register a legal name and address with the operator or provider prior to posting messages on a public forum website.
The bill requires an operator of an interactive computer service or an Internet service provider to establish and maintain reasonable procedures to enable any person to request and obtain disclosure of the legal name and address of an information content provider who posts false or defamatory information about the person on a public forum website.
In addition, the bill makes any operator or Internet service provider liable for compensatory and punitive damages as well as costs of a law suit filed by a person damaged by the posting of such messages if the operator or Internet service provider fails to establish, maintain and enforce the policy required by section 2 of the bill.
Bloggers are not going to want to have to collect the name and address of everyone who posts a comment on their blog and they shouldn't have to. The people coming up with these kinds of bills don't seem very concerned about people's privacy either. Hopefully, New Jersey will not pass this bill.
The bill sounds similar to the anti trolling law but the language in the New Jersey bill is more clearly targeted at anonymous comments and forum posts. We wish the lawmakers would be more like the clever Delaware Chief Justice who said, "plaintiffs harmed by a blog have an instant remedy available: blogging themselves." (via Drudge Report)
The Greensboro News & Record (thx The Blogging Journalist) has an article about a blog called View from the Sidewalk which discusses the problem of homelessness. The blog is run by Michael Brown who is currently homeless himself.
Brown, who works part time at a Kohl's store, said he has been looking for other work. He was a graphic designer for 13 years until he was fired from a job in 2003 -- for what reason, Brown said, he doesn't know. He hasn't been able to find another job in the field and has worked various jobs or freelanced since.
The bills began to mount, and eviction came Feb. 9 for the family, which includes Brown's wife, 17-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter. A 20-year-old son is already on his own.
The family packed as much as they could into a 16-foot truck, and the contents of their home are now in a 10-by-20-foot storage space.
In his latest post Brown offers a warning about how quickly a person can become homeless.
My point is that this can happen to any of us, at any time. My downfall was lack of money (and a modicum of poor planning) that led to eviction. But homelessness can come just as quickly under other circumstances. A fire. A tornado. A prolonged illness. Bankruptcy. Layoff. Job outsourcing. Incompetent political leaders. A meteor. The list goes on. It is easier than you think to have a house fulll of stuff one day and be living on the street less than a day later.
Homelessness can come like lightning (or by lightning...) Be vigilant.
Michael Brown is homeless but he is able to blog regularly. The News & Record says Brown usually blogs at the Greensboro Public Library's Central Branch. The article quotes Michele Forrest who says Brown is providing a valuable service by giving the perspective of a homeless person.
Michele Forrest, a blogger and a member of the Homeless Prevention Coalition of Guilford County, said Brown's words offer an invaluable critique of the region's homeless services. Lots of advocates discuss homelessness, but the input of the homeless is crucial, she said.
"The voice of the homeless is definitely missing," she said.
Brown's posts about being interviewed in the paper can be found here and here.
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So far Steve Vaught has traveled 2,300 miles and lost over 110 pounds on his journey to lose weight by walking across the United States from San Diego to Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. Steve Vaught keeps a journal on his website, 