Tuesday, November 05, 2002

Are weblogs legit business tools? Mike Masnick says yes. Mark Hurst says that Mike's company does nothing but blogs, so of course he thinks they're business tools. To Mark I'd say, one day someone said that about phones, and today every company organizes its business on the phone, and using other communication tools such as airplanes, hotels, notepads, whiteboards, email, instant messaging, spreadsheets, conference rooms, etc. Weblogs are a tool, a good one, but that's all they are. We could stop having these debates, imho. [Scripting News] 11:34:27 AM

NWFusion.  Mark Hurst falls into the anti-hype trap regarding weblogs.  Like many consultants today, he is using anti-hype in a way that sounds very much like hype.  In this new anti-hype bubble (which seems to emerage during every tech downturn), consultants emerge to say the predictable things:  all new technology sucks, existing tools can do the job, IT departments should cut their costs, and companies should hire them as consultants/advisors to help "rationalize" the process. Here is a prediction: the anti-hype bubble will burst. I would normally have spent the time explaining why online publishing (which weblog tools make accessible to the individual by making it both easy and inexpensive) is important but the argument is moot.  The billions of dollars and countless hours that people have spent publishing sites on the Web and on Intranets speaks for itself.  It is also clear that e-mail publishing hasn't ever even come close to challenging the value of Web publishing.  Why people still bring that up is beyond me. [John Robb's Radio Weblog] 11:27:30 AM

Portals, Blogs, & RSS: Why They Are Your Future. HTML Slide Show presentation connecting the dots between portals, blogs and RSS, from the point of view of librarians. [Hypergene MediaBlog] 9:00:59 AM