Blogging

Hmmmm... this is a small point, but worth a mention. Perhaps Forbes -- as a whole -- isn't as clueless I thought. One Forbes blogger* Rich Karlgaard writes in retort to attack of the blogs,

When companies and people do the right thing, the majority of bloggers will write good things about them. But that's the rub, isn't it? Any company that wants a good reputation in the blogosphere must earn it. That means treating customers, suppliers, employees and shareholders with fairness and dignity, doesn't it?

I've recently started reading a blogger named Guy Kawasaki. Strangely, this is the case where the name of his blog, Let the Good Times Roll, is less memorable than his name, and his tagline, "Blogger: Someone with nothing to say writing for people with nothing to do is." is the more memorable than his name. I wonder what Darren would think of such an odd emphasis of taglines/author name/blog name. But as usual, my thoughts have taken this ship wildly off course, and I can only ask you dear readers to pray -- pray for us.

I just re-enabled my traffic graphs, and found out that I've received just short of 200,000 hits in the past 30 days. It occurred to me that in this blogs year of existence, it has passed long one-million mark for page hits. This is a glorious moment for us -- me and my blog -- and so before celebrating our success, I wanted to thank all of the little people who made it possible for us to be here today:

Chapter 1 of a yet to be named guide on writing in the blogosphere.

In general, bloggers are terrible writers. They may spellcheck,proof-read, and provide sound, well-structured arguments. However, as any honest writing instructor knows, A+ papers are often excruciatingly dull. Yet, a paper that receives an F's can be so funny that the instructor can't help but but put it on the refrigerator of the faculty lounge. In the abstract sense, the F paper could be considered good writing in the blogosphere. Nevermind that the writer made a fool of themselves.

Attack of the Blogs – the cover story on Forbes magazine, wins this week’s award for shoddy tech reporting.  The article’s lead foreshadows its vague and pompous angle.

Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective.

Firstly, let me say that I do not spew forth invective – I’ll give an author credit where credit is due. I'll extend the olive branch, and freely acknowledge that “Invective” is a great vocab word. Using it in a sentence is sure to impress the high school English teacher. Nevertheless, the author's mastery of advanced vocabulary words doesn't make up for the article's lack of Substance (with a roman S).   I give Forbes a D minus; but not an F, because there were valid – and good points made. And I’ve listed those below:

On September 28, 2004, a search on “podcast” in Google turned up 24 matches. AS I write this, the number is 17,000,000.

-Seth Godin, in his new free* e-book on blogging and the new media

*BTW, when I say the e-book is *free*, I don't mean "free" like "free baby vomit." Rather, I mean, this book is well worth the short read.

Google has just announced their beta service, Google Blog Search. If I were a tech journalist, I'd be watching the evolution of this service very closely. And its not because this service happens to have the a capital "B" buzzword in it.

Now the first thing I noticed about google Blog Search was how badly the orange they used clashed with their fugly logo (their logo has a drop shadow, for f#ck's sake!). After my initial wave of nausea receeded, however, I began to take a closer look. There are more than a few things that set this service apart from google's regular search.

...and from the blogosphere's great pits of clay did emerege Meta-Hype

I couldn't resist the title. However, I do believe that hype about AJAX-hype has officially out-hyped the original hype about AJAX. Rarely have I read blog posts specifically about the capabilities, limitations, and techniques of AJAX; it's all just comments on the overhyping of AJAX. Ironic, isn't it? Only the blogosphere could create a beast as comical as meta-hype. Just an observation.

Public Service: What everyone should know about blogger depression

Today, I got to meet Rachel Nation, who is a designer I've been working extensively with. I've coded a new site for Arts Electronica, her design firm. The actual new design will be put up on Thursday, but I figured I'd throw her some pre-emptive google juice. Speaking of which, a past client, TD-Partners needs some juice as well.

Links Make a Great Gift! 

People often forget that to google, its all about who links to you. So while as a person, I cannot compare to either Rachel or TD-Partners in terms of reputation, for google I am a world class entity whose links are highly valued (thank you mysterious CNN spammers!), I figure why not spread the wealth. Plus, and strangely enough, linking to clients could be considered a valuable service. For now, however, its free and occassional. In addition, this isn't exactly the kind of entry that brings back readers.