Dave Sifry: "This weekend, I had a few hours of free time and I whipped a new feature with two interfaces:  It is a standard XML-RPC ping server... that you can add to your weblog software configuration... that will immediately add your weblog into a special high-priority queue for Technorati's indexing runs." [Corante: aa Corante on Blogging] 
7:42:57 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Clay Shirky reports on the preview of AOL's blogging tools he and a few others got on Thursday: "What happens at launch, and how the product develops over the first couple of iterations, could have a profound effect on how weblogging is used and perceived."

Jeff Jarvis: "Before we go any farther, allow me a moment to dare to lecture the blogging community: For us to be successful, we also need AOL's blogs to be part of our world. I don't want to hear us get snotty and snippy about AOL's entry into the blogosphere."

[Corante: aa Corante on Blogging] 
7:38:22 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Cameron Marlow: "In early March, 2003, I received a shocking email from Jimmy Wales. Jimmy was the former owner of blogdex.com, blogdex.net and blogdex.org, and emailed to offer them to MIT since he had no further use for them. No solicitation, no intent to sell, just the simple offer to move them over to MIT's control..." [Corante: aa Corante on Blogging] 
7:36:22 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Alan Reiter says many people are missing an important aspect of AOL's blog effort and the ability to post via an IM client: "It means you don't have to be held hostage by your wireless operator.  Since many of these new services are/will be operator-independent, it won't matter if your cellular operator doesn't offer a wireless Weblog service." [Corante: Corante on Blogging] 
7:35:24 PM      comment []   trackback []  



OK.  Here is a status report on the Weblog Network.

1. Sources of revenue.  I have five in mind.  None include banner advertising or sponsored sites.  I am going to work on firming these up and will keep them under wraps for competitive reasons. 
2. Expert weblogs.  The initial response has been great (my mailbox is full even though this is a holiday weekend).  I am working on a strategy for bootstrapping this into a structure (from both the readers and authors perspective) that provides value.  Great ideas on this front.  Will assemble a team to figure this out.
3. Infrastructure and hosting.  I am looking for ideas here.  The structure of the Weblog Network is fairly simple with relatively little centralized architecture.
4. Design and programming.  I have a preliminary conceptual design in place, however it is very rough and open to discussion.  Looking for help here of course.

If you are running a service aimed at webloggers and want to join in on this, let me know (BlogStreet, Daypop, Technorati, and others come to mind). [John Robb's Weblog] 
6:53:24 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Yahoo cuts a deal with Moreover to integrate its proprietary news syndication and filtering technology into Yahoo News.  Talk about running against the tide of RSS. [John Robb's Weblog] 
6:52:31 PM      comment []   trackback []  



The RSS tango. If you want a simple format that lets you notify subscribers when your site's content is updated, and makes it easy to include a few lines of that content so they can decide whether or not it interests them, RSS 2.0 fits the bill perfectly. If you want to syndicate all your content - every word, every script, every image - maybe what you're looking for is not a new syndication format. Maybe what you need is a news reader that understands XHTML.... [Jeffrey Zeldman Presents: The Daily Report] 
6:16:58 PM      comment []   trackback []  



About Blogs.

About.com empowered their 400 Guides with blogs last week.  Blogger and former SVP of Content Howard Sherman makes a case for significance:

• It's probably the single largest addition of content to the blogosphere to date.
• All of these sites are advertiser supported so it should help give credence to blogs as a viable business model.
• The sites are using Moveable Type software which is a vote of confidence in Moveable Type's technology.
• Another large media company -- in this case Primedia which owns About.com -- has adopted blogs as a publishing and communications tool.

The quasi-independence of Guides and structure of their site made this move easier than other traditional media outlets could do with editors.  You have to hand it to them for doing it right, selecting a best-in-class tool and turning their people loose.  How clueful.

The question is if Primedia will learn from this experience as the relevancy of their core business, trade magazines, is under the greatest threat from blogging.

[Ross Mayfield: On Blogging] 
3:28:15 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Blogs in the Workplace.

An NY Times article on weblogs in business that somehow missed Socialtext ;-(

..."People are starting to use Web logs to archive data that would have otherwise been lost," Mr. Tang said. He noted that much of the company's internal communications had been via instant messaging [~] and was lost as soon as the correspondents closed their chat windows. Now, though, employees are starting to post transcripts of relevant discussions on the Web logs, he said.

"It's not just making life more convenient," Mr. Tang said, "but actually giving us something new we didn't have before."

[via Scripting News]

[Ross Mayfield: On Blogging] 
3:26:45 PM      comment []   trackback []  



How selection of blogging tool functionalities influences specific uses of blogs?.

Clay Shirky about AOL choices for their blogging tools [Corante: Social Software]:

AOL, by its nature, will affect the future of weblogging by choosing to emphasize or de-empahsize certain aspects of these patterns, and some of those choices are already made.

I really wonder if there are more research on how selection of blogging tool functionalities influences specific uses of blogs [I touched this issue in my BlogTalk paper and also discussed off-line with Michael at I-KNOW 03].

 

[Mathemagenic] 
3:11:02 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Links.

Morning references:

• More on conference blogging [via James Farmer]
• Blogs in the Workplace (nice reading about corporate blogging with some case-study like material)

[Mathemagenic] 
3:09:49 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Space Blog. LooseChanj writes "Ed Lu, a member of the Expedition 7 crew of the ISS has been sending back some extremely well written and interesting commentary about his ... [Slashdot] 
3:08:29 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Via Hylton Jolliffe comes news that Blogdex finally has the Blogdex domain, through the generosity of Jimmy Wales, creator of Wikipedia. Should make a huge difference. [Scripting News] 
3:04:29 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Tasty tutorials and network effects. Mike Pick's sweet little tutorial on Pull Quotes and the Web, and Hebig.org's CSS trickery in "About the Title Pictures" will not only repay your interest, but the existence of material of this quality on independent personal sites also says a great deal about the rise of entrepreneurial authorship among designers. It also shows how network effects have succeeded at decentralizing the medium, as was intended from the day the web was created. But with that decentralization comes a question: what is the value of centralized web design resources like A List Apart when so much excellent material can be found across ten hundred thousand million design blogs? [Jeffrey Zeldman Presents: The Daily Report] 
3:34:28 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Blogs in the Workplace. The online journals known as Web logs are finding favor as an efficient way to communicate within the workplace. By William O'shea. [New York Times: Technology] 
3:28:35 AM      comment []   trackback []  



Torvalds talks. The Merc has published a long interview with Linus. [onlineblog.com] 
3:18:14 AM      comment []   trackback []