Saturday, December 11, 2004

In the comments under the post introducing the GSO Live local blog aggregator, Roch Smith Jr. wonders who is behind the new site. I am. I thought that was clear, because I was looking at it on my computers, which are logged into Bloglines, but then I saw on another computer that it's anonymous to others. Why put up another aggregator? To experiment with the form -- I like the full screen view of GSO Live -- and to explore what it is an aggregator really does. As Roch notes, an aggregator may draw traffic away from sites as well as directing traffic to them. You can't stop that, short of killing your RSS feed. The aggregator itself is already a commodity -- I set up GSO Live for free and have spent less than an hour working on it. But as the local blog network grows, there will need to be subdirectories, aggregators of aggregators. Lots of value add there. 10:38:54 AM    comment []

Lux et Umbra: "So what made me any better at math than the rest of my friends? The drive by my culture for practical environments." 10:16:05 AM    comment []

The N&R sports blog has not quite hit its stride yet. It doesn't feel like the writers love it, and want to be doing it, like they are combing the web for links and looking for ways to use the odds and ends from their notebooks. Let me hasten to say that I sympathize with the staff -- I know firsthand that being asked to produce extra copy online can be a drag. But that's the problem: the sports blog feels forced, not fun. I think ACC Hoops (which I co-author) is working pretty well -- a fan's site, lots of links, a little 'tude. My hope is that the onset of basektball season will loosen up the N&R blog and really get this party started. 9:54:54 AM    comment []

College football has some problems deciding a champion. This doesn't really bother me, but it is annoying that the attempts to fix things, don't. And it's causing all kinds of trouble for the journalists who vote in the AP poll. 9:38:09 AM    comment []

"View from Blogosphere: Charlotte behind curve" is the headline on a letter to the Charlotte Observer from David Beckwith, aka anonyMoses. Quoth the penman: "Greensboro and the Triangle seem to have a better grasp of blogging's importance than we do in Charlotte -- hosting conferences and tying in with newspapers and universities...The best way to predict the future is to create it." One note: Greensboro didn't host a blog conference, bloggers did; local media types attended, and good things followed. 9:12:27 AM    comment []

The story of Iranian bloggers is inspiring and a little humbling. Ethan Zuckerman talked with Hoder, the influential Iranian writer and thought leader, about the web's role in opening up that country. "There's a conspiracy theory in Iran that all these websites - the "spider's web", a Koranic reference - is a CIA plot to undermine the regime. And the crackdown on blogs has already put dozens of people in prison." They're at the Harvard blog conference, which is being covered by (among others) Dave Winer and Jeff Jarvis. 8:59:59 AM    comment []