Blogging

For those who visit the site rather than subscribing, you will notice a change in style. This is down to the upgrade to WordPress 1.5 which I have finally got round to putting into place. Will have a look at the various available templates at some point in the future, but at the moment the standard will just have to do!

One of the interesting things that this version of the software can do is create pages that are separate from the blog itself, so an ‘about me’ page is possible, or a longer page of links.

Steven Streight asks What is the Killer App for Blogs?

I wonder: has the killer app for blogs been realized yet?

What implementation of blogging holds the greatest promise for the future?

I really don’t think the perfect and ideal utilization of blogs is the digital diary.

Why? Because these are being abandoned, and the content in most cases is of little value or relevance to others. They are good therapy, personal expression outlets, but not the abode of great literary genius, in most cases.
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I think there will be more blogs turning into, with much editorial refinement, books. Publishers will find it easy to discover new writing talent, see the blogger’s writing style right there on the screen.

Very interesting point about using blogs in the writing of a book. This is certainly a useful idea for non-fiction books. Using a blog is a great way of organising pieces of work and making them available to an audience of proof readers, as The Red Couch has proved. Not sure it will work the same way for fiction, though, which is a far more personal affair.

Interesting article on the BBC News site about blogging:

Weblogs started off as a personal outpouring, a kind of digital diary.

If you work on the basis that a problem shared is a problem halved, you can share with millions and – who knows?

Now blogs feature everything from cant on cars, opinions on opera, to rants from the politically righteous East and West.

But not everyone is free to say what they think.

Reporters Sans Frontières campaigns for the rights of journalists in China, where the ability to turn a nice phrase in criticism can be frowned on from a height.

In fact, the list of things you cannot talk about in China is almost as long as the things you can, as Cai Chongguo, a Chinese dissident, explains.

“We can’t talk about police or military corruption.

“And of course we can’t say anything about workers or farmer demonstrations. All that’s taboo.

“According to Reporters Sans Frontières, at least 63 bloggers have been arrested, and most of those are publishing articles outside of the country.

“These are people who are really resisting government oppression.”

From Scbole:

Diego wants off of my link blog

Diego doesn’t want me to republish his blog posts. So far he’s the third person to ask me to stop doing that on my linkblog. What do I do? Simply unsubscribe so that I don’t see their posts anymore and am not tempted to link to them.

I used to do just headlines but, personally, that format is useless.

Why do I do my linkblog? For several reasons:

1) New readers need a way to find new blogs. I don’t quote every post from someone’s blog, just the most interesting ones to me. Out of 3,500 posts I usually put 100 on my link blog.

2) As a store for me to do my own searches later on. If I only had headlines in my RSS feed this would be useless. Instead, now, I have a way for me to find things that I found interesting months later.

3) As a way to get traffic and search engine juice to the people I find interesting. One link from this blog is worth quite a bit of Page Rank. Why? Because a lot of people link to it. Because of my publishing tool (Kunal Das wrote the tool, named OutlookMT).

4) It’s pretty clear after reading my linkblog for a while that everything there came from someplace else and every item links back to its original owner.

5) I’m doing this for people who are overloaded with information and want to keep up to date on what the tech blogosphere is doing. It’s a lot easier to read 100 items a day than 3,500.

How do I do this blog? I read all my feeds and anything I find interesting I drag over to a folder named “Blog This.” That item is automatically placed on my link blog.

I also greatly appreciate Matt Mullenweg. He’s donating the hosting and the back-end technology (it’s running on WordPress).

I do find it interesting that Diego finds my linkblog interesting to read. It’s interesting BECAUSE it has full-text reprints. If you want pure headline link blogs you can check those out on del.icio.us or bloglines. They simply aren’t as useful.

I have quoted his whole post. Seemed kind of appropriate.

The thing is, I can’t understand this attitude one bit. This sort of request really begs the question: why are you writing a blog? Jeez, most people would be delighted to have their stuff highlighted by Scoble, I know I was. It means you get a whole load of new readers, and lets you know you are on the right lines. At the end of the day, readers might not need to visit your blog to read that particular post, but, in general blog readers are an inquisitive lot and will visit your site and subscribe if they like what they see. So, if anyone wants to quote my witterings in full, in part or whatever, go right ahead!

More here and here.

My link blog also quotes in full, though I have to admit that I doubt many people ever see mine. Still, if anyone doesn’t like it, let me know.