The response to my recent posts, Why you shouldn't offer a newsfeed and Why you SHOULD offer a newsfeed illustrates an issue suggested by a post last month on Blogs as serious news media: the potential for bloggers with skewed opinions to skew the opinions of readers. "Why you shouldn't offer a newsfeed" generated a...
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Some of us blog because we're full of ideas we'd like to express. But is blogging really smart? Lots of smart people don't blog. Which side do the smartest of the smart come down on? Do we blog because we think, or because we're not thinking clearly? Am I stupidly wasting my time at this...
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In the beginning, weblogs were little personal pages where you wrote whatever you felt like writing, and a few of your friends, an odd family member, a crazed stalker and other people who were into blogging read it. Many blogs are still little personal pages read only if you're lucky by friends, family, bloggers and...
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When I first heard the terms "blog" and "blogging", to be honest, I was turned off by them. The slang flavor of the terms gave the impression that it was the domain of egomaniacal script kiddies. I had no problem with the term "web logging", but why "blogging"? It just didn't roll naturally off the...
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Weblogs may have started out as personal babbling pages, and many still are, but more and more, weblogs are taking a mainstream news and communications role. This year's political campaigns have adopted weblogs as a way to reach a wider audience. People are getting paid for blogging. What is the future of weblogs as a...
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Many people are predicting a bandwidth crunch as RSS usage accelerates. Already, I've heard stories from people of how subscribers to their RSS feeds have pushed their bandwidth usage up so high that they either have to pay huge amounts for extra bandwidth or take the feeds offline. What can we do to stave off...
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As I read the discussions, arguments, specs, histories, etc. of RSS and Atom, it becomes more and more apparent that the principals behind these formats are primarily focused on blogging. That's fine, of course. But I can't help but get the impression that decisions regarding the formats and APIs are being made in such a...
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Watching 60 Minutes with my wife tonight, we were "amused" at the story of how Jessica Lynch became famous by getting knocked cold in a car wreck and then getting rescued, while the soldier who saved the lives of the group that was captured that day by singlehandledly picking off 7 people, one by one,...
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