http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Sun, 8 Jun 2003 14:51:13 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/06/08/145113.php Mike WendlandI've been having fun checking out the many blogger groups and sites aimed at increasing traffic and building the blog community. You can find those I added to this blog as icons on the bottom right hand column of my E-Journal. There are really some cool ideas being tried out there in the blogoshpere - not the least of which, of course, is Blogcritics. Blogshares is a sort of link-sharing community that makes an "investment" every time a blog is linked or shared. I'm not sure yet exacty how it works, but I'm in. It's creating a lot of excitement out there and looks like it will be fun. Blogwise is a blog catalog, a search engine that categorizes almost 5,000 blogs by subject and geography. There are now all sorts of Web Blog Rings. i joined the Michigan version. Then there's Blogchalking. It specializes in what it calls "collaboratively mapping weblogs for smarter blogsearching" so the big search engines will pick them up. It keeps track of blogs by author, georaphic region, areas of interest and lets blogers "tattoo" their blogs with little symbols that "discloses something personal without revealing too much." The final addition is a cool traffic-generating idea called Blogsnob, which can be clicked to from a very, very tiny "BS" logo you'll find down n the right section of this page beneath my blogrolling list. It generates a random link to a member Blogsnob blog. I'm not sure how much extra traffic all of these services will really add to this blog. I'll post the results next week after a few days of monitoring my page views. But they're all a lot of fun and certainly show how active and big the blog community has become. What other traffic-building ideas am I missing? Sci/Tech6007@blogcritics.org Sun, 8 Jun 2003 14:51:13 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/05/27/072116.php Mike WendlandJay Walker, the guy who founded the Priceline online bargain site, has a new idea. He wants to set up Web cams around the nation's 47,000 power plants, airports and other critical infrastructure facilities. Then everyday Americans, paid $10 an hour, would monitor the cameras and report suspicious activities to the government. He calls his idea USHomeGuard and envisions a "Citizen Corps... composed of ordinary citizens who serve their countryworking from home over any Internet connection." Skeptics abound, and many are snickering loudly. But Walker's already stated signing up volunteers on his Web site. Sci/Tech5647@blogcritics.org Tue, 27 May 2003 07:21:16 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/05/26/093804.php Mike WendlandThe blogging craze shows no signs of slowing down, with more tools being made available each week that simplify the Web logging process. Bloki calls itself "a marriage between a word processor and a Web site" and offers both public and private access, along with lots of collaboration features. It's free and can be set up in two minutes, making "it as easy to write on the Web as it is to send an email message, according to Zapatec, the company behing the Bloki technology. And although its been around for a few months now, the folks at Lycos-run Tripod claim its Blog Builder, service is picking up lots of traction. Lycos was the first major portal to offer blogging tools for the masses. Google is about to do the same thing after buying the pioneering Blogger service and AOL, MSN and a flock of lesser ISP/portals are working on similar services for their users. But the blogging tool that is creating the biggest buzz comes from the husband-wife team behind the powerful Moveable Type platform. Ben and Mena Trott are close to releasing their new TypePad personal publishing syetem that promises to harness the power of MT but on a turnkey service that won't require the user to go through the often challenging setup or installation procedures that MT demands. I do this blog and my Mac-Mike blog on the MT platform and am blown away by its power and flexibility. Blogging, I believe, is the single most transformational development the Net has seen since the invention of the Web browser. Blogging has dramatically altered the way news and entertainment is being reported. Its democratized the entire information process though tens of thousands of "amateur" reporters who often out scoop the major media's "professional" reporters with a depth, perspective and immediacy that is been found no where else. Blogs truly give Publishing Power to the People. (Hey... I think I just coined a phrase. Remember, you saw it here first.) Sci/Tech5618@blogcritics.org Mon, 26 May 2003 09:38:04 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/05/20/134703.php Mike WendlandHere we go again. Technology is like the proverbial horse out of the barn. Mac sites sharing music downloaded from the iTunes Music Store have the music industry in a tizzy. "It sounds as if it is a hole in the security that needs to be closed," Cary Ramos, an attorney for the National Music Publishers Assn., said last week. "I don't know what Apple can do to achieve that, but I would certainly hope that they would take steps immediately to address this issue."Guides on how to share are online and sites like iCommune, SpyMac, and iTunes Tracker are proliferating daily. Apple, by the way, says it's music store has now recorded over 2 million downloads. Sci/Tech5455@blogcritics.org Tue, 20 May 2003 13:47:03 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/05/20/134214.php Mike WendlandIs the fix in? Nobody ever expected much out of the purported indignation of Congressional sponsors of anti-spam measures but the bill that everybody thinks has the best chance of passing does more to protect bulk e-mailers than to control the junk that comes into our mailboxes. The solution to the spam mess will never be found in legislation. It's going to take a huge, concerted grass roots movement that uses technology and every legal dirty trick that can be mustered to put the spammers out of business and to expose the greed that is behind most of our legislators. Start by following the money that comes to politicians from the special interests. Complain frequently and vigorously to those reps. Familiarize yourself with the big spam gangs and good guy groups like the Spamhaus Progect that fights them. Picket the homes and businesses of spammers. Learn about how to organize boycotts. Learn all you can about fighting back. Get outraged! It's only going to get worse unless the Inernet community makes the culture and society look on spammers the same way we look at child molesters - which, through the increasingly perverted pornography they keep pushing, many of them in effect already are. Sci/Tech5453@blogcritics.org Tue, 20 May 2003 13:42:14 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/05/20/083034.php Mike WendlandI did a column on how the potential for e-government is falling short. While the column dealt with my state, Michigan, I interviewed a guy named Charles Kaylor from the Public Sphere Information Group, the organization based in Newton, Mass., that helped evaluate Michigan's local governmental sites for the study. He told me that most governmental sites are what Internet critics call brochure-ware -- public relations content seemingly aimed at boosting the images of the governmental units and the politicians who control them. Still, there are some excellent examples of local government sites that do it right.In Michigan, The Oakland County site is "one of the best examples of a local Web site anywhere in the nation," according to Kaylor. From filing an assumed name to ordering birth, death and marriage certificates to getting permits for county parks, Oakland's site exemplifies the way interactivity can help local government be more responsive and efficient, says Kaylor, an expert in the growing e-government movement. Then again, Oakland is something like the fourth richest county in the nation so it figures they'd do it better than most. If you want to see a list of the top 110 e-government municipal Web sites Kaylor's ghroup compiled, click here. The Michigan study, commissioned by a group called cyber-state.org. should be online later this week. Sci/Tech5438@blogcritics.org Tue, 20 May 2003 08:30:34 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/03/11/102538.php Mike WendlandTelevision network correspondents gathered in Kuwait in preparation with for the looming war with Iraq are using desktop video in a big way. NBC correspondent Kerry Sanders is covering the war preparations from Kuwait City and is a big Mac/Apple user. DV camcorders used by the CBS videographers attach by FireWire to an Apple G4 that Sanders uses to edit his pieces for the network. Final Cut Pro is his editing software. After the piece is cut, he runs it through the Discreet cleaner 6 compression program and then FTPs the finished report by satellite to NBC's receive station in New Jersey. CBS, meanwhile, is using all Windows PCs with three different editing programs -Avid Express for the more experienced editors who will be in regional centers like Kuwait City or more permanent base camps, Adobe Premiere for producers and photojournalists closer to the action, and the basic free MovieMaker 2 program that Microsoft includes with its Windows XP operating system. "This will be known as the digital war," Frank Governale, the CBS vice president of operations in charge of the network's war coverage technology told me. Culture3726@blogcritics.org Tue, 11 Mar 2003 10:25:38 EST