More Companies Pay Heed to Their 'Word of Mouse' Reputation. Paul Resnick, a professor in Michigan, runs a Web site that evaluates the online reputations of companies. The companies are paying attention. By Nicholas Thompson. [New York Times: Technology]

Better to blog the light than curse the darkness.

Chris Lydon makes the case for Emerson as A God For Bloggers:

Here's my point. When we talk about this Internet and this blogging software, this techno-magic that encourages each of us to be expressive voices in an open, universal network of across-the-board conversation, we are speaking of an essentially Emersonian device for an essentially Emersonian exercise.Starting with the electronics. "Invent a better mousetrap," as Emerson wrote, "and the world will beat a path to your door." Well, here we are.

Was The Dial the first group blog? Chris thinks so:

Emerson was himself a sort of group blogger in The Dial, a magazine he founded with Margaret Fuller in 1840. He designed it as a compendium of the "good fanatics," like Thoreau, Alcott and Channing in his Concord circle. ³I would not have it too purely literary," he wrote to Fuller, venting a blogger's ambition. "I wish we might make a Journal so broad and great in its survey that it should lead the opinion of this generation on every interest and read the law on property, government, education, as well as on art, letters, and religion."

Makes sense. I also think the first blogger was Benjamin Franklin, and the first blog was Poor Richard's Almanac. (A sample.)

In any case, The Enlightenment continues.

Proliferating Iranian weblogs give voice to taboo topics. Entries reflect widespread feelings of frustration over the political deadlock holding back change in Iran. [Christian Science Monitor | Top Stories]