Appellate Lawyers Reading And Writing About Weblogs.

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process has been a staple subscription of mine for a long time. Delightfully enough, Gary O'Connor and Stephanie Tai have co-authored an article in the current issue about Legal And Appellate Weblogs: What They Are, Why You Should Read Them, And Why You Should Consider Starting Your Own. (Thank you Blogger and Blog*Spot for making it ridiculously simple for one of the co-authors to make this widely available.)

Note too that Stephanie has started The Blawg Review, reviewing law journal and academic articles.

[Bag and Baggage] 
11:49:11 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Friendster couture: random profiles on tshirts. From Gawker:

"Friendster couture -- Another example of Friendster run amok: Tom Gillis from Glossosaurus is making t-shirts with random Friendster profiles on them. [Tom, right, in a t-shirt featuring Xeni Jardin of BoingBoing's profile]. Friendster t-shirts [Glossosaurus]"

There are so many overlapping memes in that photo, I fear the entire blogosphere may implode any minute now. On his blog, Tom says: "If there's any interest in this, I'm going to be selling [random Friendster profile shirts] for $10 (hand made and unique) + $5 for shipping outiside Chicago (up to 3 shirts).... pretend it's 1993, and this is a zine or something. Except that then there wouldn't be anything like Friendster, and we'd all be wearing fake auto mechanic t shirts with other people's names embroidered on them." Discuss
[Boing Boing Blog] 
11:45:42 PM      comment []   trackback []  



"Blog Change Bot" [Daypop Top 40] 
11:33:54 PM      comment []   trackback []  



My Weblog, my Avatar. Dave Pollard says: [base "][sigma]I see the weblog becoming a ubiquitous communication medium, a proxy for every individual, where everything you want to know about that individual (which they have given you permission to see) can be called up. The effect of that will be to eliminate many communications whose purpose is simply to get information.

The blog will be the main vehicle by which we educate, inform and explain (the first of the five communication objectives) and express ourselves (the last... [Industrial Technology & Witchcraft] 
10:53:45 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Mining The Blogs And Blawgs.

From today's TVC Alert: "The current business news search engine Rocketnews now enables searching blog sources. Select 'Weblogs' from the pull-down category menu." And if you want to focus on what the legal bloggers have to say, Blawg Search by Detod lets you do just that.

[Bag and Baggage] 
10:18:53 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Sites you might be interested in.  Nanodot: Slashdot for futurists, managed by Foresight.   Smartmobs: group weblog (needs a redesign).  Daily Rotation:  filtered newsfeeds from tech sites, including weblogs. [John Robb's Weblog] 
10:17:18 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Moblogging the Tour de france. Jean-Luc in Paris says:

Xeni, do you remember Patrik, the Swedish postman who bicycled from Sweden to Gibraltar, moblogging his adventures daily with a Nokia 7650 phonecam and reporting his GPS Position with a Benefon GPS unit? Well, he moblogged live from the famous Tour de France race in the Alps on July 17. Here at the end of the 8th stage point: a live image of the Basque racing cyclist Iban MAYO who won this day, and another live pic of famous and popular racing cyclist Richard VIRENQUE. And on July 18, Patrik (the bicycle mologger) followed the 9th stage point of Tour de France and here, it's the leading racing cyclist of Tour de France (with a Yellow Jacket), he is american and his team is "US Postal" -- Lance AMSTRONG in Galibier pass. And here's a shot of the Swedish postman moblogger in the Alps.

Link, Discuss
[Boing Boing Blog] 
10:06:07 PM      comment []   trackback []  



"A lot of what we do in blogging is more like prophesy about what is going to be, than commentary on what is right now [~] at least for some of us." [The Doc Searls Weblog] 
9:57:20 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Technorati talks FOAF. Technorati reads the FOAF file from your blog and creates a profile. Your picture from your FOAF file and a link to your profile shows up when you appear in people's cosmos listings. A good reason to get a FOAF file. TypePad has FOAF built in. If you want to build a FOAF file, you can go to this foaf-a-matic site (thanks for the link Sifry) and make a FOAF file. Put the FOAF file on a server and point to in from your blog with a link tag like this:

<link rel="meta" type="application/rdf+xml" title="FOAF" href="http://joi.ito.com/foaf.rdf" />

FOAF stands for "Friend of a Friend" and it is a project to create a machine readable format for putting information about yourself and your friends on web pages.

Here's Marc Canter's profile

Update: As Dave Sifry says in the comments section, you must get an account on Technorati and "claim your blog" before it will make a profile from your FOAF. You can do that here.Technorati reads the FOAF file from your blog and creates a profile. Your picture from your FOAF file and a link to your profile shows up when you appear in people's cosmos listings. A good reason to get a FOAF file. TypePad has FOAF built in. If you want to build a FOAF file, you can go to this foaf-a-matic site (thanks for the link Sifry) and make a FOAF file. Put the FOAF file on a server and point to in from your blog with a link tag like this:

<link rel="meta" type="application/rdf+xml" title="FOAF" href="http://joi.ito.com/foaf.rdf" />

FOAF stands for "Friend of a Friend" and it is a project to create a machine readable format for putting information about yourself and your friends on web pages.

Here's Marc Canter's profile

Update: As Dave Sifry says in the comments section, you must get an account on Technorati and "claim your blog" before it will make a profile from your FOAF. You can do that here. [Joi Ito's Web Lite] 
9:50:32 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Jonathan Peterson: "The same tools and technologies that are empowering Amateur content creation are also empowering the next generation of entrepeneurs." [Corante: Corante on Blogging] 
8:09:33 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Tim Porter, on the blog of the Dallas Morning News' editorial board: "It takes the decision-making out of the room and into the public... Smart move. I'll expect other papers will follow suit." [Corante: Corante on Blogging] 
7:58:23 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Blosxom 2.0 out the door. Congrats to Rael Dornfest on getting version 2.0 of Blosxom, the tiny, perfect GPLed perl-based blogging tool out the door. All this, while he was greeting his second child (another 2.0!). Go Rael!

The biggest change in this latest incarnation of Blosxom is a plugin architecture, allowing the core of Blosxom to remain small, sleek, and simpler-than-pie while providing room for extension and integration. The Blosxom Plugin Registry is already home to some 140 plugins ranging from authentication to Google search, click-through tracking to writebacks (read: combination talkbacks and TrackBacks).

There's also a brand new Blosxom for Mac OS X Installer, the simplest way to get Blosxom on your laptop, desktop, or closet Mac without any of the muss or fuss of installing it by hand. A couple-three clicks of the mouse and it'll skip lightly through the nitty-gritties, installing Blosxom itself, some sample flavours, documentation, and some useful plug-ins.

Link

Discuss [Boing Boing Blog] 
6:57:36 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Public weblog portability.  I was e-mailing with xian about the portability of weblogs and how to maintain presence online.  Sure, there is nothing you can do if the people who own the domain you are using shut down your weblog or go out of business in regards to a seamless transition, however, there is alot that can be done.  Like what?  Here are some ideas for a service that would be really useful:

• First, I would start with single repository of weblogs where the owner of the weblog can change the location of their weblog and other descriptive data by signing into an account.  This service would need to be tightly controlled and trusted.   If you don't own the domain, your hosting company or hosting sponsor would need to support the account creation.   If you don't get this support from the domain owner, you are truly SOL (an old pilot term).  
  
• Second, weblog tools would need to support the option of using this repository as a means of keeping blogrolls and RSS subscriptions up to date.  A once a day check for new changes is all it would take.
  
• Third, this repository would be extremely useful if you could update Google and Yahoo automatically so that search returns on their tools find the intended data.  For example:  replace jrobb.userland.com with jrobb.mindplex.com.  In this case, all the the links to posts made in the past would work.  If there was some glitch in the folder structure, it couldn't get much worse that 100% 404 errors.

[John Robb's Weblog] 
6:49:12 PM      comment []   trackback []  



More on weblogs in business.

Thomas Burg points to B- Blogs Listing (see also for I-Blog Discussion List) and BloggingWorks Workshops. Business blogs world is speeding up. [Mathemagenic] 
6:29:38 PM      comment []   trackback []  



a weblog without an RSS feed.... Chad Dickerson: 

a weblog without an RSS feed is like a cheeseburger with only the bread

[Mathemagenic] 
6:28:12 PM      comment []   trackback []  



New! -- the invasion of LiveJournal users on Weblogs.Com. Sounds like a new sitcom on Fox. It's only 8AM in Calif, and it just hit a new high water mark, replacing one that's stood since early April. Starring Kiefer Sutherland. [Scripting News] 
6:24:20 PM      comment []   trackback []  



The Sharer of Secrets - Anonymous Blogging

The Village Voice had a very nice long piece on anonymous blogging that hangs on the story of Hasidic Rebel using an anonymous blogging tool called Invisiblog.  Invisiblog uses GPG and the Mixmaster anonymous remailer network which allow blogging without any need to divulge identity.

"Political activists, independent journalists, whistleblowersâo[per thou]anyone who is prevented from publishing by repressive laws or threats of violence" can benefit from covert-blogging software, writes Charles Farley of Invisiblog. Indeed, over the past year, online diarists in Cuba, Iran, and Tunisia have been jailed for publishing. Like these writers, Yeedel and several other Hasidic bloggers have put their lifestyle, if not their lives, on the line with their contentious chronicles.

Interestingly much of the writing on invisiblog blogs is much more about emotions and feelings than politics or revolution.  It feels stragely like evesdropping on a phychiatric session instead of listening to a bullhorn-wielding, masked anarchist.

[By way of BoingBoing]

[Corante: Amateur Hour] 
5:57:05 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Beginner's guide to trackback. Old news to most here, but with even Radio Userland now implementing the technology, trackback has the potential to be another kind of spam, with gratuitous self-links popping up all over the place. When everyone can blog, will the Blogosphere be the next victim of Usenet's neverending September? Whether providing "community support" or "publishing tool", how long before popular bloggers are forced to implement Bayesian trackback filters? [MetaFilter] 
5:44:58 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Brigittes kleiner Weblog-Führer. Na also, geht doch: Wiebke Peters in der Brigitte über Weblogs. Und die Dame spart sich alle halbgaren Vermutungen und Voyeurismen, erklärt kurz, was Sache ist, schaut den Bloggern aufs Maul und empfiehlt welche.

Gut schreiben ist doch ganz einfach: man muß nur die falschen Wörter weglassen. [Industrial Technology & Witchcraft] 
5:35:44 PM      comment []   trackback []  



RSS Feed Icon.

I replaced the  icon used for RSS feed with  from Bryan Bell.  Thanks to Brian for creating this wonderful icon!  I did shrink the image down a bit so it can line up with the coffee mug icon.  I hope you like it.  Now only if there was a bigger icon for Mail.  I want a red tomato with a mail stuck in it.  BTW, you are welcome to my shrunk version of the icon.

[Don Park's Daily Habit] 
5:24:53 PM      comment []   trackback []  



When Bloggers Meet.

It is trouble when bloggers meet.  It's like a convention for spinsters.  Uh, can I blog that?  Blah blah, oh, don't blog about this stuff.  Hey, I am getting a headache!

So I propose some rules for bloggers and non-bloggers.  If you are not a blogger and you are talking to a blogger, make it clear what is off-the-record.  If you are a blogger and you are talking to another blogger, everything is off-the-record unless you say it is on-the-record.  Why?  Because the blogger whose blab you are gonna blog about could have blogged about it himself when and if he wants to.

[Don Park's Daily Habit] 
5:19:12 PM      comment []   trackback []  



»Blogs are the democratisation of publishing«. BBC: A blog for everyone. »You know a web trend has reached a high pitch of popularity when AOL starts including it in its basic software. But can blogs be truly mainstream?« [Der Schockwellenreiter] 
5:06:19 PM      comment []   trackback []  



Martin Rölls tägliche kostenlose Consulting-Lektion. Heute: Link or Die. Rat für Weblogplattform-Betreiber. [Der Schockwellenreiter] 
5:03:29 PM      comment []   trackback []  



InfoWorld:  Debate over RSS. [John Robb's Weblog] 
4:47:23 PM      comment []   trackback []