Even 'Dear Abby' has gotten into the game

You know that something must be important when Dear Abby (ancestor of blogs?) writes about it. Her Sunday column deals with the perils of blogging in relation to getting a job:

"DEAR ABBY: Please warn your readers that their Web pages and blogs could stand in the way of securing a job! Just as employers have learned to read e-mail and blogs, they have learned to screen candidates through their sites.

"Many people in their 20s and 30s wrongly believe their creations are entertaining and informative. Employers are not seeking political activists, evangelizers, whiners or tattletales. They do not want to find themselves facing a lawsuit or on the front page of a newspaper because a client, patient or parent of a student discovered a comment written by an employee.
The job market is tight, and job seekers must remember their computer skills can either help them land a position or destroy a job prospect. -- CHICAGO EMPLOYER

"DEAR EMPLOYER: You have opened up a line of thought I'll bet a lot of job applicants -- and future job applicants -- have never considered. Googling a name isn't difficult, and it could lead to an applicant's blog. Most bloggers write to be read, and invite people to comment. Thank you for the reminder that those who blog should remember that they are open to public scrutiny, and that if they apply for a job, everything about them will be considered -- including their blog. Prospective employers are certainly within their rights to make decisions based upon what they read."

Mood: Angry Letter Writing

In the tradition of self-aggrandizing, everyone-should-care-about-my-petty-problems blogging, I would just like to point out how much I hate trying to search the Denver Posts's webpage. I'm pretty sure I could get a copy of their articles much faster by carrier pigeon or wagon train. What do they think this is, a 14.4 world?! You hear me, Denver Post?!?

Remember the time when...

...our own University was involved in a blogging controversy? The Denver Post reported Sunday that the MSM (Main Stream Media) and PirateBallerina are at it again - debating who gets to take credit for the scoops in the never-ending and perpetually-nauseating Ward Churchill extravaganza!

Jim Paine, blogger extraordinare, says:

"We don't like to complain, but the various news reports of the resignations of two professors from the Churchill Investigating Committee are either unclear or coyly ignorant of who broke the story of the apparent pro-Churchill bias of those professors," Paine wrote. "For the record, it was PirateBallerina."

And some other guy retorts:

"Some in the Denver media seem to have surrendered their critical faculties to the bloggers," he said. "Paine steps up, rings his little bell and the dogs come running - or so it seems. From the outside, the level of hysteria is almost comical. As for myself, I wondered what has become of a sense of simple decency. ... A blog can be a democratizing influence, for sure, but so is a lynch mob."

I think we might want to make a slide about this in our presentation, if for nothing else than the fact that it hits so close to home. Just don't give anyone warning that we will be talking about Ward Churchill, because they are probably all so tired of the subject that they will surely come armed with rotten tomatoes, except Calabrese, who will come armed with another 20-minute oratory on the life story of Galileo, just like last semester. (I kid, I kid!)

Group Meeting

12-4 p.m. tomorrow at the Business Library, which is located on the third floor of the Leeds School of Business. e-mail if you ahve any questions.

real-time, distributed, massively parallel whining.

Some of the biggest (most visible, longest lasting) blogs are collaboratively edited ones.

Slashdot is kind of the granddaddy. It started out as some dorks collection of technology news, and it turned into a large community of tech dorks all complaining about how Internet Explorer has some sort of component that magically compromises your morals as soon as you use it.

Slashdot is archetypal: stories are submitted by readers, then "edited" by the "editors," then posted on the main page, and then discussed and dissected in the forums.


Then there's fark, an aggregator for news-of-the-weird type stories, as well as those common sense outrage stories that make so much damn hay. ("My tax dollars are going to pay for an art display that includes dildos?!?!") Fark's comment section is mostly just distilled idiocy but it makes some interesting contributions to the online lexicon at least (they really helped"asshat" get off the ground)

Plastic is what happened when Suck died. Does anyone even remember suck? It was awesome.
Anyway, plastic runs in much the same way as slashdot, but it has a broader field of subject matter and it's readers, while still able of horrendous acts of non sequitur and ad hominem, are generally quite good at dissection and analysis.

Metafilter is a lot like plastic. Except aesthetically uglier.

BoingBoing doesn't do a lot of commentary, but it really is an exemplary model of how a team edited blog should be run. Plus, Mark Frauenfelder went to Boulder High School. I guess that's just trivia. I just like their subject matter. Copyright idiocy, counter culture, out-there media theory (lots of recent stuff on Douglas Rushkoff), stuff from Japan, cool devices, DIY...&c.

Drawn covers all types of illustration. I never knew there were so many illustrators with amazing portfolios on the web until I started reading drawn.

Popgadget is a female run gadget and tech blog, which is cool. Once you start reading a female perspective, you start to realize how this sort of stuff is normally seen from (and directed to) a male audience. A dirty, stinky, cheetos eating male audience.

Treehugger is really something else. It covers new design with a specifically ecological slant. It's edited and contributed to from everywhere. It's cool.

PS. I almost forgot memepool. How I could do that I don't know. It's kind of a collection fo the wierdest, most esoteric, half-baked stuff to make it onto the web.

SPAM!

Mmm ... good 'ole Spam ...

If you thought the bacon blog was good, then you've got to see this latest tribute to Hormel's World War II sensational creation ... canned meat! FOR PEOPLE! YAY SPAM!!!

The Chicken: SPAM MEat

Yum ...

Kanaka Maoli ... Native People ...

Indigenous Peoples Blog

Happy December!
If you've got a taste for indigenous issues or native news check out this blog ...
Indigenous People
Isn't this fun?! Blogs can cover so many topics!

Blogger Survey

Should any real bloggers happen to come by, perhaps they would like to share a little of their blogging knowledge about the social/economic impact of blogs:

Do you think you have had an impact in the world?
What has been the impact of blogging on traditional media?
Do you think blogging will ever replace journalism? Newspapers?
Do you think blogging will ever be profitable? Especially in terms of advertising?
Would you sell your blog for a profit?
Would you drop by my house and do the dishes for me?

Thanks, bloggers, should you ever see this. We, the group, promise to reward your valiant efforts with one (1) PowerPoint presentation on the subject of blogs.

What kind of name is 'Pirate Ballerina,' anyway?

As Nathan pointed out, bloggers can now do a little agenda setting and even change the course of current events. This has even happened in our glorious little hometown, Boulder. The Denver Post reports that a member of Ward Churchill's review committee resigned after this blog asserted that he could not be impartial.

Clearly, then, you don't even have to be a nationally known blogger to assert influence. Even small scale private citizens have their opinions felt. Like, OMG!

BLogging is not a crime.

Or something like that. Hey, blogging can get you fired, thrown in jail, or even killed.

In the U.S, you're more likely to lose your job than you're life, but there are legal and privacy concerns fro anyone who wants to blog.

The electronic frontier Foundation has a legal guide for bloggers. It gives a lot of information on the rights of bloggers, and the rights of those they blog about. Everything you wanted to know about defamation is right here, as well as what you need to know if your blog contains adult material, or if you want to use your blog as a journalistic enterprise. This is a bit more U.S. centric.

Reporters without Borders has a fantastic guide for bloggers. This is going to have a much more global scope, as should be obvious. It has a lot of tips and ideas for those who might be living under a repressive regime (*cough CHINA cough*)-- like how to get around censorship and how to blog anonymously.

This article from Foreign Policy magazine explains what's at stake here. Bloggers, improbably, have growing influence and power. They affect policy and politics everywhere from the US to Iraq--even though most of them are teenyboppers who blog to stay in contact with their friends. Like, OMG. Of course, it's the university professors and political junkies who are beginning to do some agenda setting for the mass news media.

The BOBs Website

Oh yes ... I almost forgot ...
Here's the website to The BOBs Award page ...
The Best of the Blogs

¡Mujer Gorda!

The Best Blogs of 2005

Blogs have reached such popularity, a German organization called The BOBs, has established the Deutsche Welle International Weblog Awards to honor outstanding internet entries. This year's competition received over 2,500 entries 9 languages.

Blog winners are determined by an international jury of 12 members. However, there is also a User Award in each category, in which wired individuals can submit votes. According to Deutshe Welle,
"The winners ... couldn't be anymore diverse. They include freedom of expression activists, blog illustrators, podcast pirates, and an overweight woman."

Take a look at this year's winners ...

• Best Weblog of 2005 - Más respeto, que soy tu madre (A Little Respect, I'm Your Mother), Argentina
• Best Multimedia Blog - Blog à la ciboulette (Blog with Chives), France
• Best Podcasting Site - Antiwave, China
• Reporters Without Borders Special Award - Manal and Alaa's Bit Bucket, Egypt
• Best English Journalistic Blog - Global Voices Online, United States

Happy Blogging!

Hello!

I do not enjoy Bacon.

The Virtual Back-Pat

Another interesting area of dicussion is bloggers that blog about blogging. Or is it bloggers that blog about their blog project? At any rate, it seems that no other medium is nearly as self-referential as blogs are. You will never see CNN being all, "Guess what I heard on FOX News!"

Blogthenticity, a blog about business blogs, observes that we will never get anywhere with this whole blogging thing if bloggers can only ever talk about each other.

Celebrity Dish (not bacon)

You know what people love to do? Gossip about celebrities. And they do it online now, where the gossip quickly gets filthier than it could ever get on Entertainment Tonight. Unless you think Barry Gibb is just filthy and dirty by nature. But that's not exactly what I'm getting at.

Defamer is the flagship. They're snarky, irreverent, and have high user participation. Their "Hollywood Privacy Watch" feature is celebrity sightings sent in by various Los Angeles residents. They've recently featured highly skeptical and snarky coverage of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' engagement/meltdown/publicity stunt.


The Superficial and IDon'tLikeYouInThatWay share some editorial staff, and follow celebrities at their worst. They are distinguished by their hyperbole, mostly. A recent post insisted the Britney Spears and Kevin Federline's life's work currently consists of filling their swimming pool with beef jerky.

On top of that:
WhatWouldTylerDurdenDo
PerezHilton
HollywoodTuna
Egotastic
JustJared
GoFugYourself
and the always gruesome AwfulPlasticSurgery.

These all share this weird car-wreck-that-you-can't-stop-looking-at fascination with the world of the overpriveleged, fabulous, stupid and trashy.

The question is: Are people just starved for something mindless and trashy while they're stuck in a cubicle? Or is there some greater sociological drive to simultaneously deify and vilify celebrities?

The socio-economic impact of bacon.

Why is there more that one blog devoted to the subject of bacon?
The Bacon Show bills itself as one bacon recipe per day, every day, forever.


Bacontarian is so bacon centric that it has a thanksgiving (or thanks-taking if you're of that bent) recipe for a bacon covered turkey that ends up being just bacon. I mean seriously, it is totally optional to eat the turkey.

So, blogs allow people with monomaniacal tendencies to celebrate and indulge in their mania. It allows communities of like-minded maniacs (bacon maniacs specifically, here) to form around the blogs.

Look! Sushi! Isn't blogging fun??

Update...oh man, I just looked at this again and realized that those are jump drives in the shape of sushi. Neat! Okay, I am done now.

And now for a real post...

Okay, just so we all know, I am working on researching about blogging companies, the potential that blogging has for advertising and word-of-mouth marketing, and the impact blogging has on the corporate world at large.

Go, team, go!

Fun blog facts!

According to Technorati.com (a blog search engine), a new blog is created every second, and the amount of blogs doubles every 5 1/2 months.

According to Advertisting Age, in 2005 U.S. workers will waste the equivalent of 551,000 years reading blogs unrelated to work.

According to blogthenticity.com, 89% of corporations are blogging.

Wow!

And finally...this is a blog about sandwiches: http://keaggy.com/sandwich/

Welcome to the blog

Hi guys,

Hope you like blogging about blog projects! I think this'll be fun. If you want to say that I have a warped view of fun, then I suppose I couldn't argue with that. At any rate, I think it will give us an opportunity to try to coordinate the project without the need for a gajillion emails.

We may not be able to dress up as blogs and bake blog cakes, but darn it, we can blog about our project!