Brave New Blog

Blogging, a favorite subject of bloggers, is back in the blogosphere after being deconstructed and analyzed in The Atlantic. Patrick, in quintessential blogger fashion, explains the whole thing so no one has to bother reading the actual print story. In case even his distillation is still too monotonous, I'll summarize the whole thing: bloggers should sound like incoherent twelve-year-olds because no one will take bloggers seriously anyway, and print journalism rocks.

The analysis is fundamentally flawed mostly because it begins with the assumption that a blog is still true to the etymological roots. True, the term blog might refer to a Web Log. But just as blogs themselves are instantaneous and ephemeral in their nature, so is the term already outmoded. Blogs aren't inferior to real journalism; they are the only journalism.

A blog is, in its most elemental definition, merely a descriptive way of organizing content; specifically, a blog organizes information in reverse chronological order without regard to relevance, importance or subject. Those J-schoolers obsessed with the inverse pyramid are probably flipping their shit right now.

A blog is not defined by its content or authority or intent, but simply by the structure of its content.

Consider for a moment the printed newspaper. What makes a newspaper? Its not accuracy, since we would consider both the New York Times and the New York Post newspapers, and arguably one is far less accurate than the other. The content varies too, with one paper offering insightful investigative journalism, the other sensationalist headline news. Sure, maybe you could argue the Post is a tabloid, not a newspaper. But extend the comparison to say The Asbury Park Press, or The Bergen Record-- far less authoritative than the New York Times. And even the intent of the author fails to define a newspaper. The Onion is a printed newspaper, but the intent is hardly to inform readers of the news. Satirical news may not report facts, but still the printed Onion is a newspaper.

The New York Times might arguably be the standard bearer of journalism (and considering the fun they are having there, the state of printed journalism might not be as grand as we have been lead to believe). But a Newspaper, or The Newspaper, is not the same as The New York Times. Newspapers vary in quality, accuracy, intent, and readership just as blogs do.

But then what does make a newspaper; how does a reader know they are reading a newspaper, for instance, and not a magazine, or a blog. A newspaper is defined by the structure of its content, just as blogs are. Even poorly edited newspapers share a common method of organizing information-- the most important information in the front or on the cover, with the less relevant information buried in the middle. The post's Page 6 maybe famous, but its still on the sixth page and not the cover because the information provided there is far less important than fear mongering headlines that sell copy.

A blog never considers the relative significance of content. Those stories that might be considered more important face the same relegation as any other story with each subsequent post. On a blog, A market crash or terror attack in the morning could be supplanted that afternoon by Paris Hilton. But that's the whole point of a blog. In a world that operates 24 hours a day, where the internet is always on, where 24/7 news channels hum along whether or not anybody is watching, a blog provides the immediate gratification of the here and now. See this! Read this!

If a blogger reformatted a website to organize content in the way the nytimes.com handles news-- that is giving 'important' stories greater prominence-- that blogger wouldn't gain credibility just because they adopted the organizational structure of a newspaper's format. Similarly, nytimes.com blogs aren't less relevant because they publish according to a chronological hierarchy.

Blogs are dead. Or at least the relationship between the term "Web Log" and "blog" is dead. The term blog, as quickly as it manifested, has been reinvented. It no longer signifies the incoherent thoughts of a marginalized bald white guy in grandmother's basement rambling on about politics and society and blogging. Instead, a blog has become something more. It has supplanted an outmoded medium that ineffectively delivers the news. Just as the Post is still a rag sheet and the Times the paper of record, there are good blogs and bad blogs, but the term does not necessarily mandate a specific style, an informality of words. James Joyce, were he alive, could be just as coherent as a blogger as he could be as a novelist; the format does not dictate the voice.

The era of print has passed. No one, of course, wants to hear that they have become irrelevant. If though, print masters are concerned of the decline of culture, the demise of journalism, the end of days-- then perhaps they should look introspectively. Blogs are not the bastard cousins of newspapers but simply the natural evolution of the printed word.

What Not To Do When You Lose Your Google Rank

We're a web whore. And so we take the time to google for ourselves just to be sure our own website is the top result for our name or other things associated with us. Mostly this is vanity. After all, we want to make sure people searching for "ian macallen" get sent here and not to some Scot's sword making website. Or for instance, when hack writer James Rogauskas released a book titled Office Haiku, we wanted to make sure anyone searching for the key term Office Haiku got sent to our site. [And for the record, we've been writing better Office Haiku than Rogauskas long before he released his book, but we're not bitter. Not TOO bitter, anyway].

But if for some reason James Rogauskas built a half-way decent website promoting his office haiku book, and somehow was able to knock us off the top spot, we wouldn't email him a complaint. But that's what happened to blogger Dean Hunt, who without even trying, displaced a commercial website, who apparently received a strange requset to delist his own website from Google. And of course, you wouldn't be reading about it here had Mr. Hunt not put the email online.

So not only is Dean Hunt already more popular than the other site, but now thousands of bloggers are probably making him even more popular by linking to the article he wrote about the website that is less popular then his. The lesson here is, if some guy out does you in the Google ranking, don't get pissed off and send him an email asking him to make his site suck more than yours so you get higher in the Google ranking.

Author's Temporarily Confuse Themselves With Recording Industry, File Lawsuits

The Author's Guild filed a lawsuit against Google Print, a searchable online archive of books.

"This is a plain and brazen violation of copyright law," Nick Taylor, president of the New York-based Authors Guild

Even if this point is true, we have to wonder, is the President of the Guild really so stupid as to think Google print is a bad thing?

Let's review just exactly what google print is.

According to the C-net article reporting on the lawsuit, Google Print is "working to scan all or parts of the book collections of the University of Michigan, Harvard University, Stanford University, the New York Public Library and Oxford University. It intends to make those texts searchable on Google and to sell advertisements on the Web pages."

It might seem from this brief summary of the project, that in fact, writers and authors and book publishers should be very frightened of the project. It would seem that Google is in fact trying to take the hard work of these writers and make money from the books in collections of a few select libraries. But hold on just a second. Has anyone from the Guild or C-Net or anywhere actually used the service?

Let's say for a moment, you are like us, and are really turned on by a good discussion of suburban sprawl. Let's say you want to use Google Print to find out more information, so that, if you come across some one else who wants to talk about sprawl, you can.

Search Google Print for "Suburban Sprawl" and you get a list of books.

Wow! you think, looking over the list hoping to find the time to digest the entirely list before your next session of Suburban Sprawl Addicts Anonymous. You click on the first book. Suddenly you are looking at the table of contents, and you think, "this is a great book, I'm going to read the whole thing"

The trouble is, the whole thing isn't available for you to read. In fact, many of the titles only have the table of contents available to look at. What Google Print does provide is a number of places where you can buy the book-- Barnes and Noble, Amazon, the publisher, and others. In fact, if you want to read anything more than the table of contents in some cases, you need to buy the book.

Of course, there are some cases where you can look at text from the actually book, not just the table of contents. What does google do after you click through a few pages? Google blocks the rest of the book. Again, you are encouraged to buy the whole thing.

In both cases, the user does not have access to the whole book. The user has no more access than they might reasonably have at a bookstore or a library after casually flipping through a few pages of the book. Even in the case where a few pages of the text are visible, the true contents of the book are kept safely sealed away in the google archives.

What might this remind you of? Amazon.com started a system of scanning its books in for searching a year ago, although, with permission of publishers. In essence, Google print is no different than Amazon, except Amazon is working with publishers and Google is working with libraries.

Google print will actually produce greater book sales for authors. Authors from small presses like those attached to universities and without the mass market appeal will find a whole knew audience. Even better, the readers who come across their book will actually read the book because they have an interest in the book-- thus they searched for a keyword.

Sure in some cases, people might read the table of contents and decide a particular book is not for them. But those people are not avoiding purchasing the book because Google Print "infringed" on the copyright of the author. Those people are instead not buying the book because it is not what they were looking for.

Google Print will be a fabulous service that will help connect authors with readers. It will help organize information in age when there is already too much and not enough ways of tracking it. The author's Guild is moronic to think Google Print will do anything but help them.

Put another way, the Author's Guild suit is akin to me suing Google for indexing this blog so that when people use google's search feature, they access the site. If an author doesn't want his book read, he or she never should have published it to begin with.

Who's Your Daddy? Getting Fucked By Your Webhost

A few months back a friend of ours was fired for blogging. That shook up the local blogsphere and a half dozen of the people we know closed up shop. In either case, we wrote a brief little bit we called Blogging With a Rubber, basically meaning, blog with protection.

We cited as one example, the creator of Foetry.com who in turn found our post and commented on it. Foetry's creator had gone through the trouble of using GoDaddy.com to register his domain hoping they would keep in confidence his identity. Sadly, GoDaddy only needed a letter written by a lawyer -- not a subpeana, not law suit, just a letter-- to reveal to the world who he was. GoDaddy fucked him hard. Who's your daddy now?

In either case, someone from GoDaddy, or claiming to be from GoDaddy, was sent out to our site and Foetry's message board to quell any negative talk. A few things on this:

GoDaddyGuy Writes:
While we are not at liberty to address the specifics of any individual situation, we can say that when our company is contacted about a domain held by one of our customers and registered with privacy, we go through the same process in every case.

Since Foetry.com's creator has said that GoDaddy Failed to contact him before breaching his confidentiality, we figure that GoDaddy will pretty much give up your information to whoever asks. So don't bother paying the extra money.

Further:
Once the complaint is received and processed, we levy an administrative fee against the registrant of the domain

As we understand it, GoDaddy charges extra money from the beginning to keep your information confidential. In essence, a person could file enough complaints with GoDaddy to bankrupt you into releasing your information. If GoDaddy is offering anonimity, they shouldn't be charging per complaint.

Anyway, the bottom line is, don't use GoDaddy, even if their superbowl commercial had a really attractive spokesman.

Instead, we'd recommend registering your domain with a reputable host [we use Dreamhost, and think you should too], just like we did. If you want anonimity, get a trustworthy person, a lawyer, or your own corporation to register the name. Don't trust third parties such as GoDaddy who have no reason to keep your information private.

Denton's Blog Empire In Decline

On Tuesday we noted the Similarity in three Gadget Blogs. Well, they're at it again, talking about the Evolution, a robot lawn mower from the makers of Roomba.

Engadget and OhGizmo were both there to cover the story in painfully similar detail. But Gosh, it seems Nick Denton's [Gawker Media] Gizmodo just couldn't get out of bed in time. No doubt in the next 72 Hours we'll get a third, nearly identical story about the latest in automated lawn care.

Blogging With A Rubber

Recent Blogsphere events have again brought to light the dangers of a misunderstood medium and of the corporate world. Call Center Purgatory coincidentally has posted about Work Blogs. But we thought it might be relevant to add our own thoughts.

Blogging is not much different than posting a personal website. While personal sites have existed for several decades, blogs are mostly an invention of the last five years or so. The only true difference is that most personal websites tend to be static while blogs are frequently updated. Blogs have increasingly become influencial. The mainstream media loves reporting on "the power of bloggers."

Due in part to the rise of popularity of blogs and their influence in society, people have begun to take notice. Like most new technologies or changing social patterns, blogs are misunderstood and feared. Plenty of high profile cases exist where people have lost their careers or have been harrassed because of what they say or do online. While we wait for laws and society to catch up to changing cultural patterns, there is in some cases a genuine threat to people's livelihoods or safety.

Take precautions.

Play Within the System Because You Can't Beat It

Many articles recently have suggested bloggers go underground and cover their tracks to avoid real life problems as a result of blogging. Inevitably, you will be caught, so play within the rules.

Know The No Policy
Some places of employment have specific policies addressing blogging. Others do not, and have an implicit policy addressing the issue. Other places actually encourage personal blogs, such as Sun Microsystems. Know what you are allowed or not allowed to do on company time or using company resources such as the internet. Some states such as California have laws prohibiting employees from being fired for off hours legal activity. This doesn't protect you while you are "on the clock."

If you are looking to circumvent this and need to blog during work hours, most blog programs allow you to set the time stamp on the post to whenever you feel like it. You could date the whole thing in 1985 if you wanted to. Of course, some places will monitor incoming and out going net traffic, or randomly screen capture computers on the corporate network, so you aren't entirely safe.

Make Hoffa Proud
Labor organizing is federally protected by law and can have harsh consequences for employers who fire employees discussing unionization. Discussing issues of organizing your workforce may offer you some protection. This defense has not yet been tested in court specifically relating to blogs, or whether a blog that contains both union and non-union posts would be protected.

Don't Violate Their Trust
Don't violate the trust of employers by giving away corporate secrets. Don't pose nude wearing part of the corporate uniform. Many states allow "firing at will," meaning employers can fire employees for any reason other than race or sex. However, most employers are not going to fire a valued employee who does not violate their trust. That is to say, if you are blogging on your own time, without reference to your place of employment, most places will not care or merely issue a warning at first. Don't rant about your boss and expect him to pay a blind eye if he happens to discover your blog, even if every other post is about your new cat fluffy. But in most cases, if you keep a personal blog purely personal, most people will ignore it.


Going Underground
The internet has always been seen as an [semi] anonymous public forum. Sometimes this is abused with harrassment, but most often users enjoy the freedom their otherwise restrained lives prevent them from having. However, the internet is rarely truly anonymous, and even casual users can use basic tools like google to find information that is thought secure and private.

Red 5, Standing By
If you want to remain anonymous, the first thing you must do is never reference your name or even the names of those around you. Intials are sometimes ok to use, but even then, its probably best to use an alias. Change your codenames for different things: don't make your anonymous blog name the same as your email address or even a private log in for your bank account or other service. Your anonymity is only as strong as the weakest person who can identify you. Change the names of people you blog about. Don't give away to your friends that this is 'your blog'. Make sure people who do know who you are protect your identity when linking to you or blogging about you.

Private Information
Just like you shouldn't give out your mother's maiden name to people, you should never give away information that can identify you. For instance, don't say you live in "Muarry Hill", say "New York City" or even better, "A Major East Coast City," or best, "A Large American City." Even a simple post like "today is my birthday" reveals when you were born. This of course is difficult if you have an entirely personal blog as some events such as "Partied like a rockstar last night, really hung over," require a qualifier like, "because it was my birthday."

The One Armed Man Did It
Blog from public computers if you are really afraid. Most places like libraries can track their uers, date and time. However, for the most part, matching an IP address with a specific user in a public setting is very difficult. Internet cafes are another possibility, especially independently owned operations that don't keep track of users or net use.

A blog "Some Blogs Are Better Than Other Blogs" made a career out of poking fun of other blogs. The creator lived with two other people, who shared his IP address. After his roomates were accused of creating the blog -- they had semi public lives as psuedo journalists -- he had to confess to clean up their names. Be careful who is using your IP address. Just because you are taking precautions to remain anonymous, doesn't mean everyone else is.

E-Mail is alot more easily tracked as the mail servers do keep track of IP addresses. Sending email and posting to an anonymous blog at the same time can reduce your anonymity.

Go Corporate
Foetry was once an anonymous site dedicated to exposing corruption in poetry contests, until GoDaddy.com revealed the user's name and address. Feotry's creator was less than happy since as it turns out, his wife, a semi successful poet, was attempting to win many of the contests he was exposing. Also, many of the people he exposed were not too happy he exposed them and sent him fan mail telling him so. In either case, to really shield your identity, go through a third party. A lawyer may be able to help you out, registering the domain and other things in their name rather than yours. Or create a corporation for your blog. For instance, the mythical reporter Wally Edge of PoliticsNJ.com has withheld the scrutiny of the New York Times [not that they are authoritative hackers] because he has the protecting of a private company behind him.

Final Thoughts
Blogging is very new in terms of cultural phenomenons. Attitudes will change with time. In most cases, bloggers have gotten in trouble for doing things that people have always done -- gossip, rant, spread rumors, give away company secrets -- but have gotten in trouble because they have left an evidence trail. How often has someone been fired for talking about the boss's extra-marital affair around the water cooler?

Protections for bloggers will develope both through statutes and through court cases over time. The decline of labor unions over the last two decades has also meant that employers have taken increasing liberties with regards to abusing employees and making demands about their personal lives. Looking back through the history of labor movement, many of the events that are happening today-- firing bloggers, demanding unpaid over time, abusing workers-- caused the creation of labor unions to begin with. The backlash from Corporate America will inevitably result in changes in workplace laws and more laws like those in California protecting workers from legal, out of office activities. But again, these things take time.

The Revolution Will Be Blogged.

Oh, God! Look, Its a Blog!

Gawker has Casually Jested about the Times Article attempting to be trendy by talking about blogs.

One choice Segment:

One of the first to make the transition was Baghdad blogger known as Salam Pax, who wrote an online war diary from Iraq. Last year Grove Press published a collection of his work, "Salam Pax: The Clandestine Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi."

When we were in the 5th Grade we remember reading Zlata's Diary, the tragic tale of a girl surviving the war in Sarajevo. Many people at the time had compared it to Anne Frank's Diary, though Zlata is still alive collecting royalties from the book. We imagine Salam Pax's Diary to be much the same: the token war diary to commemorate the life of some poor schmo.

Maybe we're just jealous our Blog hasn't yet turned into a book deal.

Though we know that Some People are expecting this:

An editor "found my blog only three weeks after I started it and asked if I was interested in doing a book," he said, adding, "I was so surprised I thought he was my friend Larry playing a joke on me."

Also according to the article there are close to over 10 million blogs. If only all those people could read. Or maybe we're just jealous they aren't reading us.

We Were Drunk, Found Jesus, and Blogged

A few weeks ago we meant to blog about an experience we thought we had. [Maybe we did, and now, as a result of two martinis, two pints of Harp, Two glasses of medicocre red wine, and two Cape Coders, we couldn't find it].

It went like this [excuse us if we've already mentioned it]:
Walking by West End Cafe we were acknowledged by a fellow who knew us, but who we did not realize we knew. We asked how and why and where we should know this person from or as. We had no idea. When we said as much, he responded with, 'someday, you will figure it out'. We were concerned that we had a chance encounter with Jesus.

Indeed, we did not. As it turns out, the fellow was a sexual partner of a former editor of a certain literary magazine we once edited. Speaking of, we just bought, and recieved, an issue dating from 1966. We are excited.

Ahh, drinking.

Blogs for Everyone! Blogs for None! Blogs for Some!

Just when we thought the Mommy blogs were out of control, we came across a Surrogate Mommy blog.

We expect the termination of the election season to correlate with the collapse of the blog world. Republicans will have nothing left to do but gloat and Democrats will be shut down by the thought police.

Meanwhile we've experienced a few folks from BlogExplosion who decided to rate us badly, presumably because of our resenment towards the President. Others rated us badly becuase we did it to them, though in fairness, we were being honest, and they were being bitter. What can we say, except we're a Northeast Snob, and we didn't like your shitty blog.

And now at this rate, the only ones left blogging are going to be blogging mommies and surrogate mommies and suburban housewives.

We're beginning to think of the blogging world much they way we think of the country. We mean of course, there are those who should blog, and there are those who should not. You know who we mean.

But we will be here, to blog. You are here to read.

Where Will all the Bloggers Go?

Increasingly we've noticed many blogs dedicated to rightous causes for or against Bush or Kerry Finatics. [we've only really noticed this recently, becuase mostly, we don't read].

The anti-bush blog has been around for quite a while-- blogging's popularity really mirrored the growth of Bush Hatred. And surely there were Kerry haters out there as from the moment he announced he would be running for President.

But with all the propoganda flying around, the blog world is filled with polar opposites and links to Bush's Blog, Blogs for Bush, Kerry's Blog, ect.ect. But where will all these folks go on November 3?

We've expressed our own views on Bush [We've used words like Nazi, Dictator, Liar..] but we are alot more than another soapbox for a political party. [At least we'd like to think].

Then what will become of these blogs?

Most will likely fade off after a few weeks of calling for recounts or calling out frauds or claiming this conspiracy or that one, and again the blogging community will be ruled by angry stay at home moms. Yikes.

Big Biz Blogs

Gakwer Media released some new blogs to add to their already large stash. [Defamer, Wonkette, Gizmodo]. The new ones: Jalopnik, Screemhead, Kotaku. Gawker is a regular William Randolph Hurst

Together, all of these blogs are marketed to advertisers as "Niche market" venues. Gakwer media has turned the blog into a corporate entity. Gawker Media really begs the question: when does a blog cease being a blog a simply become a gossip column?

And then there is Gothamist which publishes "Ists" for four other cities.

There are more, we're sure.

Essentially, these blogs have become industry or geographic specific gossip columns. We're not criticizing though, since we love gossip just like everyone else. Its just like Fox News.

No doubt the professional blogging community is over the next few years going to grow and in so doing displace some older media sources. Standard fair newspapers like the Times should be concerned. Adding credence to this analysis is the New York dailies and their heated fight for young readers, going to the length of handing out free dailies. They should blog instead.

But until then we're waiting for these installments from Gawker Media:

Jizmodo
MILFette

And this from Gothamist:

Trentonist

A Poet's Blog

Maybe some of the readers of this site should be aware [this the equivilant of a graphic images warning just before something grizzly appears on network tv].

What's grizzly? Your future career choice:

Killdeer is a blog by a post writing program poet. He says the the teaching job market is not a particularly good one.

Ok, so we knew that.

He has some interesting musings, and some thoughts on writing.

The Bloggen Canon

In the future, the Western Canon will be completely eliminated and replaced with the great works of literature known as Blogs. Perhaps not. But as it seems, I've been reading more of Gawker and New Yorkish and a few other prof-blogs, as well as some of those added under Linkywinks.

One might wonder where I have the time to read all this with a campaign just a matter of a few weeks away [33 days!]. Well perhaps we are reading the Times and CNN less frequently, or at least without as much depth.

But what blogs must I read--a similar question as to what books must an English major / graduate student read to be legitimate? With all the thousands of blogs begun each day its hard to root out the better ones. And of course, only maybe the ten best will ever be read consistantly.

Perhaps we have accidentally stumbled across the greatest challenge of the Information Age: how do we winnow away the information so we read the relevant information without missing crucial elements.

Well that's maybe why we have blogs. I think it seems a good portion of my blog has become a sort of quick link to interesting tidbits of information, with brief editorial commentary alongside it. But everytime someone does this, as bloggers, we are further adding to the information that readers must process. Imagine a chain of blog posts each linking to the next, each blogger adding their own commentary, and finally the original source. Its like a bad game of telephone.

So I propose eliminating novels, short fiction, poetry, and new editions of newspapers until we are entirely caught up with the last five years of the blog world. Good luck with that.


And a final side note, through no fault of our own, we have accidentally picked up the annoying habit of using "we" where we mean "I". Sometimes I float between these within a single post; sometimes it is days before I realize its even happened. But in either case, we can probably attribute this to reading Something Completely Similar with an unhealthy fervency.

Don't Be Evil

One of the most widely used blog publisher applications is Movable Type. [Blogger is free]. As of yesterday, Movable type introduced a new pricing scheme that essentially prices mid size casual bloggers out of the market.

As they are the MS Windows of Blog software, they stand to earn a huge wad of cash, though they still insist they offer a free version. Sure now, everyone stands to earn a bit of profit off of their intellectual property. But they are probably shooting themselves in the foot; most people blog are probably capable of downloading a pirated version of software.

In either case, the point I was originally trying to make is that Movable Type's business model is exactly the opposite of Google's corporate motto "Don't Be Evil". Essentially, Movable Type gave their service away, hooked users, and now are making them pay for it. It seems to me they are on the verge of violating Sherman Anti-trust laws. Bastards.

In either case, Im glad I use blogger. But it wouldn't surprise me if other internet services that people deem essential start trying to do the same thing; AOL IM, Hotmail, search engines Pay for Search, Subscriptions for online maps and directions, for online white page look ups, ect. ect.-- Indeed, if only everyone was as good as Google.